WATCH Hakeem Jeffries Rip Trump Budget to Shreds at Hearing: ‘A Living Breathing Fact-Check’ of Trump’s ‘Lies’

Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought got an earful Wednesday from Democratic New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, who tore apart President Donald Trump’s 2021 budget proposal and declared it “a living breathing fact-check on all of the public lies” Trump has told on policy.

Vought testified Wednesday before a hearing of the House Budget Committee about Trump’s 2021 budget proposal, which features deep cuts in domestic spending, while increasing the deficit to make his tax cuts permanent.

Rep. Jeffries used his time to grill Vought on the discrepancies between public statements that Trump has made, and the cuts contained in the budget proposal.

“On February 8th President Trump tweeted ‘We will not be touching your Social Security or Medicare in fiscal 2021 budget. Is that correct?” Jeffries asked, and when Vought confirmed, said “But the 2021 budget in fact would result in a $500 billion-dollar cut to Medicare over a 10-year period, true?”

Vought denied this, eventually trying to recast popular cuts in the budget as “savings,” but Jeffries said “Okay if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and looks like a duck, it’s a duck. It’s a 500 billion dollar cut to Medicare over a 10-year period of time.”

The Associated Press pegs the cuts to Medicare at $465 million.

Jeffries described cuts to Social Security disability, which Vought called “reforms,” and  Jeffries asked him to “stick to facts, as opposed to alternate facts.

“During the president’s State of the Union address, he stated ‘I have made an ironclad pledge to American families we will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions,'” Jeffries said, and asked “Did he make that statement?”

Vought confirmed, and insisted that the budget contains a provision that “reflects a future proposal” to protect pre-existing conditions, and when Jeffries confronted him about the Trump administration’s lawsuit to completely overturn Obamacare, continued to insist that some future proposal is anticipated in Trump’s budget.

After some wrangling on that point, Jeffries said “Okay that’s inaccurate, but let’s move on, President Trump repeated a campaign promise recently that Mexico would be paying for a wall on the southern border. He says Mexico is, in fact, you will soon find out paying for the wall. Did he make that statement in January?”

“He has made that statement, I think if you look at the what Mexico is doing…” Vought began, but Jeffries reclaimed his time.

“Does your budget propose $2 billion in American taxpayer money for the border wall along the US Mexico border?” Jeffries asked.

“It continues to propose money for the border wall along the southern border, we believe Mexico is doing a tremendous job in allowing, and helping us deal with the apprehensions along the southern border, unfortunately they’ve had to come up and step up to the…” Vought said.

“Thank you, reclaiming my time,” Jeffries said, then concluded “Just simply, you know, the president’s budget is a living breathing fact-check on all of the public lies that he has told relative to his policy priorities, and that’s shameful.”

Watch the clip above via C-Span.