Hoyer Remarks on Republicans' Failure to Fund Essential Services in FSGG Appropriations Bill

WASHINGTON, DC – This morning, Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05), Ranking Member of the Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) Subcommittee delivered opening remarks at the FSGG Subcommittee hearing on the failure of the Republican bill to fund essential services like the IRS, the Election Assistance Commission, and the FBI Headquarters. Below is the transcript from his remarks and and a link to the video:

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Click here to watch full remarks

“Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for your friendship. I thank you very much for your responsibility. I will say candidly — I think if you and I were putting this bill together as a team, this bill would not be in the position that it’s now in. That’s my view — may be accurate, may not be — but that’s my view.

“We’ve had quite a debate. A few weeks ago, 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats — 314 of us in the House of Representatives — came to a compromise to avert default. That compromise included what we believed was not our objective, but was something to which we could agree to not only avoid default, but avoid disinvesting in the operations of our government to the welfare of our people. Some of my friends across the aisle, Mr. Chairman, as you know, believe that that deal was not appropriate, voted against it, and then forced, in my opinion, a breach in that agreement which puts us to where we are today. This bill, essentially, was cut by 58%. It is backfilled, as you pointed out, but cut by 58% — the smallest allocation and largest cut of any of the 12 appropriation bills. The greatest proportional cut of any of the appropriation bills is sustained by this bill. Why? It is not a popular bill, it is not a sexy bill, it’s not a bill which people lay awake at night and think: ‘What’s happening with the financial services and general government bill?’ 

“As you know, Mr. Chairman, I have been on this committee for a very long time–this is my 24th year. I’ve had some time in between my service. In my view, this isn’t a real bill.

“Mr. Chairman, I agree with you that this is the beginning of a long process. You and I have discussed that, and I will reserve much of what I might say — for both the full committee and as we move through this process — hopefully resulting in a bill that can be signed by the president, probably sometime in December, to fund [the] government and keep it operating on behalf of the American people and on behalf of the security of our country. The fact is, Democrats who voted for it, overwhelmingly 165, of us to avoid default, would not have voted for that, in my view, had we not thought that it was the kind of reasonable compromise that we could support. Our subcommittee, unfortunately, has been relegated to the sidelines of what I believe to be a superficial process. We are expected to simply read out the majority’s version of this bill without any influence over what goes into it. Now, that seems to be the practice over the years. It was not the practice when I was a member. The first time, we actually marked up, we did amendments, and [had] greater discussions in subcommittee. However, neither side has pursued that, so this is going to be relatively truncated, this process.

“If that's all that needs to happen, just read the bill and then vote on it — and as I've said in full committee that vote is 34 to 27 for the most part  — if that is all that needs to happen, why just not mail a copy to the members and save us some time? Which I ask myself when I'm sitting in full committee.

“Clearly, the process shouldn't work that way and it shouldn't work like this either. Republicans, in my view, have disregarded our compromise in our agreement, and the appropriations process is not only a disappointment to this institution, it also has serious consequences for America.

“Mr. Chairman, you were very involved in the budget process. I want to give you my observations on the budget process. The budget process essentially is a process that comes up with an overall discretionary spending number. We call it the 302(a) number. That's essentially what the Budget Committee does. The Budget Committee doesn't decide how that's going to be spent. What it decides is — what is affordable for America, and I think that's what you mean by the budget process not succeeding. In that, I think we agree. But we didn't have a budget process this year, essentially. We haven't had it under Democrats, we haven't had it under Republicans, [which proves] the failure to reach compromise and reach agreement. And in light of the fact you essentially need that to get something through the Senate — we have not had a budget. But we did have a 302(a), and that was the agreement reached between the president and Mr. McCarthy.

“The budgets and bills that we are considering now, we believe, are substantially undermining some of the most important responsibilities this Congress has and the Appropriation Committee has — and that is to make sure that our people are served in a way that gives them an opportunity to have a life that is sustainable and of some quality. Whether that's dealing with education, whether it's dealing with health care, whether it's dealing with nutritional programs, our Chair has very well outlined, on a repeated basis, the consequences of this budget. This 302(a) number that was originally proposed as a 22% cut. This bill, and some of the other related bills, are among other things, undermining protections for consumers, which you referred to. We do not share that view. The independence of the CFPB was absolutely critical. Critical when we created it, and critical now to make sure that it is the consumer that is the object of its work and not politics of the Congress or of the president. This bill also undermines law enforcement — CFPB is essentially an enforcement agency to ensure that people are safe.

“The bill, undermines, limits the Treasury's ability to enforce sanctions on countries like China and Russia, which there's a lot of discussion [about], but it costs money and it requires personnel. This bill does not provide that, and the cuts in this bill will have, in my view, very adverse effects. I want to highlight a few of them.

“The bill cuts IRS funding by $1.1 billion below Fiscal Year '23, and $2.9 billion below the request. We have a lot more taxpayers.

“Again, I will expand upon this in the full committee, but there are a number of recent articles which show a former Republican Chair of the IRS under President Trump who pointed out that the IRS's workload has increased very substantially over the last 10 to 15 years and its ability to perform those functions has been substantially decreased during those 15 years. There’s a lot of talk about reducing the budget. You will not reduce the budget if we do not have revenues. We will not have revenues that are legally due unless we have people who are going to enforce the law.

“Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, we reject, as you know, the concept that there is an army of people that are going to be descending on small businesses and individuals. The Secretary of the Treasury has made clear that's not going to be the case. The President of the United States has made sure it's not going to be the case, and I have no examples shown [to] me that that is the case, period, as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act. What that bill is designed to do, however, is to make sure that those at the very top of the income level pay their fair share, not more than they are due by law, but to pay their fair share. And in fact, statistics show us that if they do so, the return, particularly at the top 1% or top 1/10th of a percent – the return is as much as 12-1. So every dollar you cut in overseeing the biggest taxpayers in America, may cost us $12 in revenue. Now, there have been different estimates — $6, $8, whatever the number is — it is clearly a significant ignoring of income due by the uncalled for, and I think harmful, cuts to the IRS. I'll be arguing that in greater detail with some charts, which I'm not going to go into this morning, on the different analyses as to how much each dollar cut in enforcement costs [American taxpayers]. I would urge you to check your facts, not you, Mr. Chairman, but opponents of that, as to exactly where the money is being spent and what return it will have for the U.S. Government. If you're going to balance the budget, it will be because, in part, you receive the revenues that our tax laws would provide for.

“We also, Mr. Chairman as you have pointed out, we need to be careful on how we spend the money, because that's the other way — you cut taxes or you spend money. And by the way, cutting taxes, some of you heard me recite, when we had deficits — because there's a lot of talk about deficits — the largest deficit accretions were after the tax cut of 1981, the tax cut of 2001, and the tax cut of 2017.

“If you look at the statistics, the largest increase in the deficit occurred those following years. And they occurred because the tax cuts did not pay for themselves, which Chairman Greenspan pointed out in testimony before the House. So cutting the funding, in effect, is defunding the police – because the IRS is an enforcement agency, CFPB is an enforcement agency. According to a report released by Harvard University and the Treasury Department this month, every dollar [given to] the IRS to crack down on fraud, among high earners, generates $12 in return. I said that. The study found that $20 billion in claw backs in the debt limit deal [could cost us up to $220 billion in lost revenue]…

“...So that when you talk about bringing debt down, understand that, yes, spending is a part of that, but also tax evasion or tax fraud is a significant part of that, and we've agreed on that for many, many years.

“This bill also neglects several priorities that I've been working on for years: it fails to include funding for the Election Assistance Commission's Election Security Grant. A lot of talk about election fraud, stealing the election. We don't think it occurs. We think it's very minimal – are there fraudulent cases? Yes, there are human beings who operate this, and that occurs. But overall, the U.S. Election system is a fair one. But cutting the Election Assistance Commission's Assistance to Elections — and I was the sponsor of the EAC bill — is undermining getting at a fair election, and getting at an administration at the local level that can conduct effectively our elections. Until we passed the EAC, under Republican control, George Bush signed the bill, we had never participated in helping local elections be conducted. Although they conduct elections for President, U.S. Senate, and Congress, it had all been on their dime.

“I'm concerned that this bill also fails in funding for the FBI's new headquarters. A lot of talk about defunding the police. Now, if you defund the police, because you don't like what they do — which is what some people have called for — you have a cry that we're defunding the police. The FBI is not popular, particularly with the Republican Party at this point in time because it's going after somebody who's committed crimes, in my view. That's unfortunate, because cutting out the dollars for a new building for the FBI — and obviously I have an interest, Mr. Chairman as you know — but cutting out that will not adversely affect the present people because they're not going to benefit from a new building. The people who will benefit are the law enforcement effectively having a place in which they can be co-located, in which it's designed for the work that they now do. [The current HQ] was designed for the work they did 50, 60 years ago now, and so cutting that now is undermining law enforcement — something which many of your members decry as defunding the police. That is essentially what that is doing. That building has been asked for by FBI directors over a 20 year period – Republican and Democratic.

“It's falling down, it is dangerous for people walking around the FBI building. And to cut it in response to the disdain that so many members on your side of the aisle, Mr. Chairman, seem to feel about the FBI seems to be vengeful and very, very unwise. The lack of a new headquarters also undermines the FBI's ability to protect our national security – there's a lot of talk about that. They're a major agency that does this. Bringing them together also saves a lot of money in lease space, which GSA will have to pay for in the alternative.

“Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, let me say that we did spend a lot of money. We spent trillions of dollars. None of that money would have been spent if Donald Trump had not signed the bills. We spent additional trillions of dollars trying to make sure that the assault that we had sustained — as a people, as a country — by the pandemic did not devastate our people or lead us into recession or depression. And in fact, America came back better than any other country. Marcy Kaptur made, I thought, an excellent statement in pointing out how resilient this economy has been, how many jobs we've created — 13 and a half [million] — faster than any other time in the history of our country. Unemployment is low. Unemployment among sectors that have historically had higher unemployment rates is low. And America's economy is going well.

“The rest of the world, and ourselves, have experienced inflation as a result of [the] pandemic — the upping of demand when the pandemic went away, and the lessening of supply — which leads inevitably in a free market to higher prices. We need to bring those prices down — we are bringing them down — and the Inflation Reduction Act was designed to do that.

“So, Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, let me say that I look forward to working with you. I have great respect for you, as you know, and great affection for you. This process is going to be a long process, and hopefully all of us working together will ensure that we do not shut down the government of the United States at any point in time during this process– whether it's in September 30th or whether it's by December 31st, because that's our responsibility, and I think that's our objective. And I look forward to working with you toward that effort.”