Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Trump Administration’s Dangerous Project 2025 Inspired Agenda And The Nomination Of Its Chief Architect Russell Vought

Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor to voice his opposition to President Trump’s ultra-right nominee for Office of Management and Budget Director and chief architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought, and the widespread effects of last week’s OMB funding freeze on programs like Head Start. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

If you want to understand the risk of letting DOGE take over the Treasury Department, all you have to do is look at what happened last week at OMB. OMB unilaterally froze trillions in potential funding and unleashed chaos.

That is why today I will join every single Democrat in opposing the nomination of Russell Vought. All 47 Democrats are opposed to Vought's nomination. And we will take the floor early this afternoon and spend the whole night discussing how bad this nomination is and how it badly affects working families.

His confirmation would be a disaster for working families, and a godsend to billionaires who don’t pay their fair share in taxes. All they want, these billionaires, is to cut any program. They don't care what they are, they don’t care what the consequences are, they don't care how it hurts people, as long as they, the ultra-wealthy, can get a deeper tax break – even though they're doing very well right now.

So we will come to the floor to sound the alarm on Russell Vought through the night.

We will expose his ultra-right record as the chief architect of Project 2025.

We will expose how he’s turning Project 2025 into the White House agenda. Now, when Donald Trump was running for president and Project 2025 was made public, it was regarded so horrifically by the American people that Donald Trump had to say he didn’t know anything about it. But right now, with Mr. Vought, who is one of the chief architects of Project 2025, as head of OMB, all of it – much of it damaging, dangerous for the American people – will be implemented.

And that's why Americans do not want Russell Vought, the author of Project 2025, to head such an all-powerful, all-encompassing agency as OMB.

We will hold firm in standing against Russell Vought because of all the ways he stands against the working people of America.

Even a week after Donald Trump backed off his ill-designed funding freeze, the collateral damage still lingers for millions across the country. He was forced by public pressure, by Senate Democrats and by others, to back off on the funding freeze. But that doesn't mean the harm all went away. It's still being done.

And a painful example is the damage done to Head Start programs everywhere. Every single Head Start program was halted last week, despite White House claims that they were exempt. And that's a fact – just go ask your Head Start program in your state.

Does Donald Trump realize what Head Start does? It’s childcare for kids. It’s dental care. It’s adult education. Does he realize that most families in America are either single-parent families or families who have two parents but both are working?

And if there is no Head Start, the families can get in a panic. Who is going to watch the kids? Do I have to take off from work? Will my boss dock me of pay? Will my boss fire me? And how do I get good care for the kids if Head Start isn't working?

It's a nightmare for people throughout the middle-class in America. And that's why childcare is so important. That kind of trauma that people would face, that daily worry about how you find child care if Head Start is gone, is supremely cruel and will make life more expensive for working families.

Now, do you want to know where the idea to eliminate Head Start comes from? Russell Vought and Project 2025. When we're talking about how bad Project 2025 is and they say oh, we just want to get rid of waste. Oh, no. They want to eliminate the whole thing. They explicitly want to eliminate the program altogether – who cares, they say, what it does to kids and parents?

This is another reason why Democrats will never – never – support someone like Russell Vought to lead the OMB. We will all oppose him on the floor and speak about it through the night.

Even a week after the funding freeze supposedly ended, I’m still getting calls that Head Start programs throughout New York are missing funds, suffering technical issues, or are unable to operate at all.

There's no one to answer the phone. You're a Head Start program. You get money every two weeks. You've got to pay the rent. You've got to pay the workers and you call up and say I haven't gotten my check. You say the freeze is over. There's no one at the other end of the line. No one to answer it. It's chaos, cruel chaos.

In Upstate New York, the Head Start program that serves Cattaraugus and Wyoming counties, very conservative areas, Republican areas, haven’t received funding in over a week, and have been forced to temporarily close. Two hundred kids have lost out on child care from this one incident. Every single staffer has been laid off. This is the handiwork, my fellow Americans, of Russell Vought and Project 2025. Put him at OMB, you will see a lot more of this, a lot more damage to average working families.

And this is not just New York. It’s happening across the country, in states like Washington, Michigan, Connecticut, Wisconsin. All this chaos with Head Start is precisely what Russell Vought and Project 2025 want.

I am writing to HHS demanding they take immediate actions to fix the problems with Head Start.

First – we need HHS to immediately fix the payment system, and get out the money that is now overdue, and we need them to do it now.

Second – stop the disruptions and fix every glitch preventing Head Start from accessing funding.

And third – we need HHS to stop leaving our childcare providers in the dark. They need to explain what went wrong and how they’ll fix it and how quickly they’ll fix it and when people are getting the dollars they were promised to pay the rent, to pay the workers, to care for the kids.

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