U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, delivered an opening statement at a Committee oversight hearing on President Trump’s FY2027 Budget request that slammed the President’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Russ Vought.
Merkley said: “Immediately upon opening this budget, I was struck by what was missing. No plan to bring down gas prices. No plan to bring down grocery prices. No plan to save Social Security, which will start running out of money in just six years, requiring a 28 percent cut to seniors’ benefits according to the most recent estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.”
MERKLEY: You didn’t include deficit numbers in the budget. Why not?
VOUGHT: We didn’t want to confuse the country.
MERKLEY: The deficit can be extracted if you do the math—it’s $2.2 TRILLION in 2027. Perhaps you didn’t include it because you didn’t want to draw attention to it. pic.twitter.com/93ChB6tDd6
— Senate Budget Democrats (@SenateBudget) April 16, 2026
Merkley continued: “No funding for aid to farmers hurt by Trump’s tariffs. No additional funding to deal with unexpected disasters, like wildfires, floods, or hurricanes. No meaningful revenue proposals. And no credible plan to reduce the debt, which is now over 100 percent of GDP.”
The lack of debt reduction planning in the budget led Merkley, who mentioned his own budget bona fides, to accuse Vought of breaking the law in his report by inadequately assessing the ballooning deficit.
“In addition,” Merkley said, “as a former Congressional Budget Office analyst, I went looking for the deficit projections, but you didn’t bother to put them in, yet again ignoring the law – 31 U.S. Code § 1105 – which requires the President’s Budget to include at least 5 years of deficit and debt projections – but yours does not. So, you are breaking both the spirit and letter of the law.
“What your budget does include are projections that the President’s tariffs will raise an eye-popping $1.6 trillion in revenue more than CBO estimates. And CBO’s estimates were made before the Supreme Court ruled Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional. So, your revenue projections should have been even lower than CBO’s, not higher. Making your estimates here simply fictional.”
When Merkley asked Vought why he didn’t include deficit numbers in the budget, as required by law, Vought said: “It’s a discretionary budget. One of the things that I think is important is not to confuse the country when we’re in the middle of several reconciliation efforts over the next year.”
Merkley responded: “I disagree with the notion that it’s discretionary to follow the law. The law did require deficit numbers.”
Extrapolating from the budget’s revenue numbers — even as he portrayed those numbers as dubious — Merkley reported that he did the math and that the deficit amounts to about $2.2 trillion. Merkley told Vought, “I think perhaps the reason you didn’t want to include deficit numbers is you didn’t want to draw attention [to them].”