Hoyer Opening Floor Remarks on the Republican FSGG Appropriations Act
WASHINGTON, DC — Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05), Ranking Member of the Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks on the House Floor this morning opening debate on the dangerous and disastrous Republican FSGG Appropriations Act. Below is a transcript of his remarks and a link to the video:
Click here to watch his full remarks
“First of all, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Speaker, let me say that I echo the remarks of the Chairman of this committee. The American public I think would be pleased and say – look this how it ought to work. Mr. Womack and I have great respect for one another and we are great friends, and have been long before we were Chair and Ranking Member on this subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee. He is a person of great integrity, great insight, and great work ethic. He is somebody that I think the House can be proud of, and somebody that I hold, as he said of me, a dear friend.
“I also want to echo his comments about the staff. The public doesn't see the staff, for the most part. As frankly, they don't see the majority, the overwhelming majority, of federal employees. Who are not known to the general public. And there's a tendency, I think, to talk about the bureaucracy - and bureaucracy is used as a pejorative term, not as a descriptive term. And that's unfortunate. Because the overwhelming, overwhelming majority of federal employees carry out their duties with great fidelity to their responsibilities, and to the American people.
“So this bill, which is not the bill that for the most part most people focus on. But it is one of the most important bills that we consider. Because all the other bills, all 11 other appropriations bills, are reliant on the collections made through this bill. And that's why I think it's so critical. Mr. Speaker, every Member of this House ought to make it their goal to preserve America’s fiscal health. Sharing that common goal, President Biden, Speaker McCarthy, and 149 Republicans, 165 Democrats – 314 people – 75%, essentially, of this House agreed on a plan of going forward.
“And the first thing you do on a plan is decide how much are we going to spend? The President had a higher level. Some in this House and the Senate had a lower level. And Speaker McCarthy and President Biden came together, and they agreed on a spending level. That is what we call, if we had done it through the regular order, a 302(a) allocation. In other words, what we're going to spend on the discretionary side of the ledger which, by the way, is smaller than the mandatory side.
“We did that. We adopted that bill, as I said, with over 300 votes. And unfortunately, a week later that agreement was broken by the Republican side of the aisle in saying –no, we're not going to do that. We're not going to follow that agreement. We're going to fund at a much lesser level.
Now the problem with that is the Senate, Republican and Democratic, Members of the Senate, pursued under that agreement. And so there are literally billions of dollars different than we will be when these 12 bills, assuming we pass these 12 bills and send them over to the Senate. And there's some in this House who have a theory that, well that gives us the opportunity to negotiate from our numbers.
“The problem with negotiating from our numbers, nobody believes they're real. Well that's not true. Some do. Some do. Some few in this body believe this is real and they're going to somehow leverage these numbers and force the Senate and the President to do what they want them to do. The President of the United States and his administration have issued a veto threat on this bill if it were to be adopted. They're not going to have to exercise that veto because this bill is not going to be adopted.
“But, I will tell you Mr. Speaker, if Mr. Womack and I were left to our own devices –and he has a different perspective than I do, and that's what makes this body work – we would come to an agreement that we think, I think, would pass the Senate and be signed by the President. Why? Because we would do what, in a democracy, you have to do – come together and compromise. Realizing full well that we have a Democratic President, we have a Democratic controlled Senate, and we have a Republican almost majority – it's an absolute majority, I understand that politically – but it is not a majority that can always hold together. And therefore, can't always affect the policies that it knows are reasonable and can be adopted.
“Now I said at the beginning that we ought to preserve the America’s fiscal health. I believe that sincerely. The deal that we made, 67% of House Republicans voting for it, that bill that we have before us, does not honor that agreement. As I said, it does not establish a foundation really for negotiation. It does nothing to avert the shutdown looming just a few days from today. And crucially, it will increase the deficit over time. I will explain why.
“In fact, this legislation severely undermines the government's ability to lower the deficit and to uphold the law of the land. It defunds crucial agencies that enforce laws, regulations, and rules established to protect the American people, American families, and America’s children. Those cuts include the FTC, the SEC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Election Assistance Commission, and the FCC.
“Essentially saying to Americans: you're on your own. We're going to reduce oversight. This bill [defunds] justice, if you will. It dramatically cuts funding for the Federal Public Defender program which helps ensure every American can exercise their constitutional right to an attorney. Other law enforcement agencies face dire cuts under this legislation. Among them, Mr. Speaker the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Now we hear a lot about fentanyl. We hear a lot about money laundering. We hear a lot about the drug cartels making a lot of money. Well, we created the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, otherwise known as FinCEN, for the specific purpose of following the money. That's how Willie Sutton obviously got caught, tax evasion – follow the money. And we've undermined that premise in this bill.
“We then decreased the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Terrorism – one of the great challenges of our time. And what do we do? We decrease the agencies that charged with overseeing that, among other agencies. The office of National Drug Control Policy. Now you would think, given the expression that all of us have and concern we have about fentanyl and drug abuse and drug deaths in this country, that we'd beef up that office to make sure we can in fact confront this scourge on our people and our country. No, we cut it.
“The emergency planning and security costs in this city, the capital city, to which millions of our constituents come, reduced.
“In total this bill cuts $345 million or 6.2%, below the enacted for crucial law enforcement agencies. It provides $1.32 billion, over 20.2% less for law enforcement than what President Biden requested in his office.
“Mr. Speaker, in that context I would ask, who is defunding the police? And yet Republicans have the nerve, frankly – not my Chairman, but some Republicans –have the nerve to accuse Democrats of trying to defund law enforcement. Paring back enforcement has dire consequences for the deficit as well, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Speaker. This legislation is the latest salvo in Republicans, some Republicans, long campaign to defund the Internal Revenue Service.
“The number of annual tax returns, Mr. Speaker, increased from 140.1 million in 1979 to 269 million in 2021. That's a 92% increase in workload. And so what is our response? Over the years to reduce from 85,000 people in 1979, trying to handle this extraordinary workload to in 2021, 78,661 – an 8% decrease, while a 92% workload increase occurred.
“That means refunds get delayed, returns aren't audited, owed taxes go uncollected, tax cheats and lawbreakers – tax cheats and lawbreakers – are not held accountable and our debt grows even bigger. If your business is trying to get the revenue you're owed, frankly, you don't fire the collection department. If you have bad debt, you go after them.
“This bill just does just that — cuts the collection department. Contrary to Republican claims, this issue isn't about raising taxes on anyone. My friend, the Majority Leader, opined on this Floor that these agents were going to raise people's taxes. Those agents can't raise anybody's taxes. The only people that could raise or lower taxes are the people who sit in this body and across the hall and the President of the United States. No agent can do that.
“All the agents can do is collect what is owing under the laws that we passed. Those agents that we each pay the share we legally owe, enforce that and they go after the cheats and lawbreakers who don't. If you're for law and order, that's what you're for –if people cheat, if people break the law, you hold them accountable. But if you're going to hold them accountable, you need the personnel to do so, because some of them have got scads of lawyers and accountants and very complicated returns of thousands of pages.
“Too often those lawbreakers are Americans with a lot of wealth and with complex tax filings. I'm not talking about the overwhelming majority of Americans who, by the way, taxes are withheld on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. I’m talking about the select few who use pass-throughs, shell companies, offshore accounts to shield their vast wealth from taxation. I don't want them to pay any more than is owed, and I don't have any brief against anybody who is wealthy. What I have brief against is people who cheat and cheat their country.
“... Harvard and Treasury experts found that there is 12 to 1 return on investment for IRS enforcement of the top 10% of earners. 12 – spend $1 get [$12] back. That's a pretty good deal and would make a real difference.
“Years of budget and staffing cuts have limited the IRS ability to conduct these company audits. Why? Because they're extraordinarily time consuming and complex. Millionaires were 88% less likely to face an audit in fiscal year 2022 than they were in fiscal year 2010 – [an] almost 100% reduction from essentially $9 plus to $1. The results is a backdoor tax cut, but only for those with a means to and guile to exploit accounting trips to hide profits, income and in the end, tax obligation – their duty to support their country, their national security, the health care investments that we make in Medicare and Social Security.
“This bill includes 22.2% cut below the request for IRS enforcement. My Chairman will correctly observe that the other items he will point out have been held relatively harmless. So, it's only the collection department that was cut. And by the way, a recent article just last month pointed out that IRS now assumes there are, estimates that there are $688 billion in unpaid taxes. Think of what that would do to the deficit over time if you collected the money that was due – not that you're increasing, but that was due. That's a disservice to hardworking Americans who patriotically and conscientiously pay their taxes.
“This bill defunds those agencies of government that keep us safe with a cut below the enacted of $9.6 million for the Office of National Drug Control Policy – which I talked about, $24.2 million for FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network—follow the money, and $9.2 million to the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence – confront terrorism everywhere you find it.
“It disrupts the agencies that ensure the products we buy in the markets we invest in aren't overrun with fraud by undermining the independence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and by cutting the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It’s very hard for consumers, Mr. Speaker, to make a determination – is this product safe? Has it been tested? But they rely on us to make sure that— yes, it's been tested and yes, it's safe, so it won't hurt or kill my children. And [cuts funding to] the SEC by $149 million — which disrupts the markets if people don't trust them. If you don't have an overseer, you didn't have an overseer in 1920s. Now you have an overseer and people have much more trust because of that overseer.
“It hampers the agencies that make those who try to get one over on the rest of us think twice and that hold these people accountable with a cut of $7 million to the FEC, $53 million to the Trade Commission, and $8 million to the Federal Communications Commission, which, by the way, in part is responsible for making sure we don't get all those junk calls all the time that annoy the living daylights out of all of us.
“These are just some of the cuts – if Republicans want to be the party of fiscal responsibility, if they want to be the party of law enforcement, they need to shelve this bill. They know this legislation will never become law. They've loaded it with partisan poison pills, which I have not spoken on, but I'm sure will be spoken up during the course of this, to undermine a woman's right to choose.
“I'm sure that everybody saw what happened in Ohio yesterday. Now, Ohio, for the most part, has been a red state, [but] overwhelmingly said – a woman's right to choose needs to be protected. We believed in that so much that we're going to put it in our Constitution.
“This bill has been loaded with partisan poison pills designed to varnish American history. We don't want to talk about slavery, when we don't want to make anybody feel badly about what they, their country, did to people because of the color of their skin or their sexual orientation— undermined diversity, equity, and inclusion and exacerbates the climate crisis.
“Mr. Speaker, we'll talk about a lot of this bill for the next few hours, and I hope it's few hours and not more than that. I think the Chair and I will try to achieve that objective. We ought to stop this nonsense. We're going to have a lot of amendments to reduce salaries to one dollar. That's not a serious Congress. It's not a serious Rules Committee who has amendment after — 55 amendments, reducing salaries by $1, to $1, not by – to $1 that we're going to vote on I don't know how many we’ll vote on, we’ve done some 55 to date. The only ones that have been approved have been approved by bipartisan by voice vote. Every other one has been defeated. Yet we keep dealing with these silly amendments while we undermine America's ability to collect the revenues it needs to protect the American people, play our role throughout the international community, and make America safer and a greater country and all it can be.
“I yield back the balance of my time.”