June 27, 2024 Press Release WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05) delivered opening remarks at the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) subcommittee markup of the 2025 LHHS Funding Bill. Below is a transcript of his remarks and a link to the video: Image Click here to watch his full remarks. “As all of you know, I've been on this subcommittee for a long period of time with 20 years in between. When I came into this room this morning, I expected to be up on the dais and meet around. This is the way we used to do it. That doesn't make it right. But the reason we were [arranged] around the table was we came into this subcommittee, Bill Natcher was the first Chairman with whom I worked, and his comment here and on the Floor was, ‘As long as you take care of the health of your people and the education of your children, you'll continue to live in the strongest and best nation on earth.’ I believe that. I believe it still. “But the reason we were sat at this table is because – and around the table, looking at one another – and we had amendments for the subcommittee. The subcommittee was a real meeting, not a rubber stamp to say, ‘Well the Chairman put this mark through, and we're just going to send it onto full committee.’ The whole premise of the subcommittee is that those of us who serve on a subcommittee become somewhat expert in the subject. Maybe not total experts, particularly with a bill this large, but we would bring that perspective and we'd have exchanges. “We’d talk to one another about – what is the impact on early childhood education, what is the impact on the Cancer Institute or the Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and some other aspects, what is the impact on workers of cuts in the Labor part of our bill. We don't do that anymore. This is a pro forma process where we come to subcommittee. My presumption is none of us have the expectation that we're going to offer a change in what has been presented to us – something that we don't think is either cut far enough or is cut too much – and explain to one another in the committee the policy differences that we have. "Mr. Cole and I agree on a lot of things, one of which is you're not going to solve a budget deficit – which is out of control in the 30 trillions of dollars – by dealing with approximately 10% of the budget, maybe a little more, that is non-defense discretionary spending. It's not mathematically possible – forget about whether it's philosophically or politically possible, it's not mathematically possible. “So, I'm concerned, not about this markup per se, but about the way we deal with this subcommittee work – where subcommittees do not deal, as my experience has been in just this short year and a half I've been back, don't deal with the substance until we get to full committee. “The full committee, of course, is composed of the majority of us who are not on that subcommittee, have not dealt in a very deep way with the subject matter that comes before us, and we offer amendments. Most of those amendments are message amendments, in many ways from my perspective, on either side. Well I think that, Mr. Chairman, is regrettable. “An 11% cut that deals with the health and education of the American people is not, in my view, a responsible proposal. Nor is it a real proposal. Nobody around this room thinks this bill is going to be a viable piece of legislation to work towards compromise. “And in my view, what has happened is we have, in effect, estranged ourselves from the real process – which is essentially four offices – the Majority Leader in the Senate, the Minority Leader in the Senate, and the Majority party in the House. The Minority party in the House does not have a lot of clout unless, of course, the Majority party is divided and you need our votes, which has been consistently the case. “So this is not a real proposal. And while I have great respect for the Chairman and great affection for the Chairman of our full committee, and Mr. Aderholt and I have served on a number of committees a great deal and I have great respect for him, but we have hardly any hearings. If you'd served on this committee 30 years ago, you would have had 10, 15, 20, 30 [hearings]. “And when I first served on that, every institute at NIH – which are billion-dollar [subagencies], which have extraordinary impact on the health of the American people – we had a hearing on it. We did not have a single hearing on an NIH institute [this Congress], not one. The Secretary was here, but we didn’t plum, which we need for I think, intellectual knowledge of what we're doing. But also it was an extraordinary education for all of us on the committee to hear these extraordinary scientists and doctors tell us where we were and how we were applying those billions of dollars that we appropriated to solving cancer, to solving Alzheimer's, to solving other diseases. “Members also are precluded in this bill from funding priorities that they know about. I'm a strong supporter of what we call community projects, I still call them earmarks, because I think all of us around this room know more than anybody in Washington about what our districts need. I've always thought that. And the Constitution says that we have the responsibility of raising and spending. And the executive carries that out, but we make those decisions. And I think that's unfortunate that we precluded this subcommittee because the educational needs, the health needs, other needs of the local jurisdictions that each of us represent are important in and of themselves. And the fact that we cannot do anything to help them, no matter how small, $250,000 for some educational or health care need in our districts. “Now, we have just 30 minutes to consider this bill before rubber-stamping it, frankly, and passing onto the full committee. We know what the vote will be. The Majority party, whether it was us or you, is going to vote ‘aye’ and the minority party is going to vote ‘no.’ That's not really a process. That's just going through the form without substance. “All of this [work] for legislation that will never become law. Some of it will and the Chairman indicates that we will have to come to a place of agreement. And that's true, maybe, but more likely it won't be that we come to agreement, four offices come to an agreement – with input from some of us and certainly some of the Chairs. But ultimately, it will not be our decision and we will be called upon to either ratify or reject the central offices that have more and more and more made decisions that are the appropriators’ decisions to make. “You're not going to fix the national debt by these little – but substantial – cuts relative to the national debt. Instead, what we do with these cuts is we have a severe impact on the segments of our communities that we represent. One of the interesting things, Mr. Chairman, that I found during the course of the hearings, that as we had discussions it was almost invariably in individual interest that we had that was the object of the question and the Secretary would answer or some other official that was testifying would answer. “But what it indicated to me was that all of us do have interests that we think this bill is important to solve for our constituents, but there were really very few overall big questions. There were some, like eliminating education, eliminating other offices. “Now, I personally am very concerned. My wife, Judy, was an early educator. She started this school, literally a school that had been closed down – elementary school for early childhood education – three and four years old prior pre-K. There now are 86 of those in our state called Judy Centers, and we've cut severely on that [in Republicans’ proposed bill]. “Frederick Douglass, born a slave in my state, said, I think very cogently that, ‘It is easier to build strong children than it is to repair broken men.’ So that when we cut here and we fail to build strong children, we pay a higher price for their dysfunction and their failure to be positive participants in our society. “She recognized how essential these wrap-around services are to helping struggling children and their families get ahead. This bill deals with that issue. I could go on about the 57 programs cut in this bill, or maybe if that were the process, offer an amendment for the consideration of each and every one of you around this subcommittee who are supposed to be the experts on the labor health, the education, and the labor provisions of our government. And you could consider that. You might even have an amendment to my amendment – which would get us to what Mr. Cole says is that consensus, that agreement where you get your perspective taken care of and I get my perspective taken care of. And the theory of democracy is that that product would be a better product than mine or yours individually. “I could go on, as I say, about the 57 programs cut in this bill. Programs upon which countless American families across the country depend. But frankly, I don't want to dignify this broken process and what I considered to be – this is this is not a markup. We may call it a markup, but it's not a markup. Yes, the Chairman, and I'm not sure exactly the process, but it was a markup not by 95% of this subcommittee. And we will ratify it and send it to the full committee, where it will be too difficult to deal in a full committee with the substance here, particularly if we mark it up with other bills as we have done. “Mr. Chairman, I'm very disappointed. And when I say, Mr. Chairman, I refer to our full committee Chair and to our subcommittee Chair, with the lack of real substantive engagement on the important subjects in this bill in particular but all bills. And I think it undermines the quality of our product. Thank you. Mr. Chairman.”
