Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) accused President Trump's proposed budget of being racist while invoking the treatment and stereotyping of slaves on Wednesday.
Russ Vought, the acting director for the White House's Office of Management and Budget, was testifying to the House Budget Committee on Trump's proposed budget for fiscal year 2021 when Jackson Lee used her time to rip into the proposals because of work requirements.
Jackson Lee compared stereotypes of slaves being lazy and how "laws were put in place that if you were picking cotton, you couldn't get assistance."
"This document is trying to uproot the long belief that poor people, particularly African Americans, and now immigrants and others, are lazy. This budget clearly emphasizes that unfortunately racially charged direction, in cutting Medicaid, in cutting nutrition programs, in cutting housing," she said.
"Congresswoman, that is ridiculous. President Clinton signed into law welfare reform and it included work requirement, Congresswoman," Vought interjected, prompting Jackson Lee to say he was out of order and had not yielded her time yet to him.
"How do you justify a budget like this that is full of the highway of damaged human being and you continue to do so with this destructive domestic cuts budget?" Jackson Lee asked.
Vought again pointed to how Clinton signed welfare reform that saw more people getting off of welfare because of a work requirement.
"It led to historic drops in case load. Why? Because people were getting off of welfare and getting onto the ladder of economic opportunity. The only thing we do is expand it to food stamps, expand it to Medicaid, expand it to housing because we think it is a principle that will lead to more opportunity rather than less," Vought said.
Jackson interjected that she voted against the welfare reform bill because it was wrong.