with respect the office of management and budget, senate republicans lined up to approve russell vought after he was at the heart of the scandal that led to president trump's impeachment, withholding security aid to an ally at war, ukraine. if senate republicans are worried about someone with a partisan background at o.m.b., perhaps they shouldn't have voted to confirm russell vought who used to work not just at the heritage foundation, but for its partisan advocacy arm. if senate republicans are concerned about someone who made comments, controversial commence running o.m.b., perhaps they shouldn't have qirnd russell vought who once said muslims do not know god because they have rejected jesus christ his son and they stand condemned, unquote. that was the previous o.m.b. director. the republican majority confirmed him despite these inflammatory comments and despite his conduct as interim director and despite his career as a partisan warrior. but a few critical tweets about substantive policy positions have caused senate republicans to label ms. tanden's nomination, quote, radio active.

anand we didn't get a response o that letter to secretary mnuchin and c.b.o director vought, so i askedsecretary mnuchin about this issue at a senate banking commtee hearing on september 24. i said, mr. secretary, why shouldn't we me this voluntary? why should you require members of our armed forces and federal employees to participate in a program if they don't want to? and his response was yh, it would be, quote, reasonable for the payroll tax to be voluntary. quote, i people don't want to participate. sounds like common sense. from theecretary of thefollow-up treasury. nothing. so we sent a follow-up letter, again a bipartisan letter. nothing. so now it's december, and the trump administration is still forcing members of our armed forc and federal employees who don't want to participate in this now forced deferral program, they want to connue to force them to do it. and so we introduced a bipartisan piece of legislation lled the proteing employees from surprise taxes act. and it's pretty straightforward. itays if a federal employee or a member of our arm services wants to participate