Steny Hoyer

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, I can assure my friend, I understood the proximity of the date being this month on November 17.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, if I said February, I thank the gentleman for correcting me.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the distinguished former chair and current ranking member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, this is a continuation of the majority party's contention that there are these thousands of agents that are going to be at your door armed to the teeth and ready to intimidate you. That is not true. It is a good political scenario, but it is again the demonizing of people who are trying to catch tax cheats, tax dodgers, criminals, drug dealers, and others; many of whom are very dangerous people and who are very heavily armed themselves. This is a defund the police argument that the Republicans are making. Why? Because they want to somehow intimidate. Frankly, I don't care much about getting this information. I think this information is certainly worthwhile having. It is not worthwhile in terms of its intent to continue ad nauseam and contend something that is not true. Most of the agents that are going to be hired and have been hired are accountants, tax attorneys, and investigators to go through these voluminous tax returns that are filed by corporations and individuals. We could have included this in the report language. This is an add-in and then add-out language. It has no fiscal impact. It is unnecessary. Here we are some 10 days from the close-down of government. We are spending time on a number of these amendments, some of which votes have been asked for, while we twiddle our thumbs until February 17, without having resolved that issue. I think it is unfortunate that we continue to misrepresent to the American public that we are trying to make sure that people who do not pay their taxes do not put a greater burden on patriotic Americans-- small, medium, and large--who do pay their taxes, and to somehow give this misnomer or mischaracterization or misinformation that somehow, as they have said over and over again, these armed 87,000 agents-- absolutely untrue--are going to be at somebody's door trying to collect their taxes. We are trying to collect taxes from some pretty bad people. The agents we asked to do that work are doing it for their country and putting themselves in harm's way. Some assertion that somehow the IRS has become an army of agents showing up at doors with machine guns is absolutely wrong. I hear it all the time. Apparently, it makes good politics. Apparently, some don't believe that people ought to pay their fair share of taxes, that drug dealers who try to hide their money ought to not have somebody come to their door or come to their place of illegal business and say: You are a lawbreaker. You are a criminal. You owe us and the American people money, legally. You are doing it illegally and avoiding your taxes. I hope that this aspersion that somehow the IRS has become this armed army that is assaulting the American people is retracted by those who, for political purposes, continue to spew this argument. It is not fair to those people we ask to conduct the law enforcement business of America. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, first of all, our economy is doing better than almost any economy in the world. I have had numerous debates, Mr. Chair, or discussions with the majority leader in the last Congress. He kept talking to me about American energy. I kept pointing out to him, almost every time he raised it, we were producing more energy than we had under the previous President, and yet they kept wringing their hands about how we were undermining the energy industry. Now, at the same time we are not undermining the energy industry, we are also trying to deal with an extraordinary crisis that confronts the global community, and that is climate change. This amendment blocks any whole-of-government strategy led by the White House to build a resilience both at home and abroad against the impacts of climate change. Nationwide, communities are already facing severe impacts that will continue to intensify. In 2022, there were 18 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters that impacted the United States: hurricanes, floods, wildfires, droughts, among other events. We had a very substantial investment we made in alternative energy. Now, I happen to be a huge supporter of alternative energy, particularly in nuclear. I have been a supporter of nuclear energy for a very long period of time. I have a big nuclear plant in my district. It is an alternative clean energy option. I want to see that further expanded. Right now it is somewhat cost prohibitive in terms of getting loans. Mr. Chairman, at the time of tremendous need and challenge, this amendment will make us less prepared to prevent and withstand the severe impacts of climate change that our country already faces on a regular basis, as does the world. Industries have recognized that need and are pursuing that need--not as vigorously as they were perhaps last year or the year before that-- but pursuing it vigorously. I visited a number of the energy companies themselves who were involved in the fossil fuel industry, also looking at alternative energy because they see that as the future. This amendment undermines both the focus and the process of moving toward that, which the White House is trying to do. Why? Because they have a responsibility for all Americans. They have a responsibility to look at more than 24-month cycles. We, in Congress, are sort of hidebound by 24-month cycles. We need to look long term. That is what President Biden is trying to do; look long term and be prepared. Be prepared for a time when we are smothering our little globe and heating it up and melting the ice of the world. We are making agriculture unattainable in certain areas. We are making life difficult in certain areas. It is necessary that we look long term. It is necessary that we have a longer vision. It is necessary that we have an administration that has the ability and inclination to do just that. That is what they are doing. I think this amendment certainly speaks to one segment of the energy that we have in this country, and that is fossil fuel. We are going to be using fossil fuel for some years to come, maybe some decades to come. We need to look long term at more efficient and effective energy sources that do not cause a danger to humanity. Mr. Chair, I urge that we not pursue this, we allow the administration to continue its efforts, and we admit that climate change is a crisis happening now. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HOYER. What funds are in this bill to be spent for that objective?

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. HOYER. Well, I will be half as articulate about it. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First of all, Mr. Chairman, 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 is how it ought to work. Mr. Womack and I have great respect for one another. We are great friends and have been long before we were chair and ranking member on this subcommittee on the Appropriations Committee. He is a person of great integrity, great insight, and a great work ethic. He is somebody who the House can be proud of. He is somebody whom I hold, as he said of me, as 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 overwhelming majority of Federal employees who are not known to the general public. There is a tendency to talk about bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is used as a pejorative term and not as a descriptive term, and that is 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 is not the bill that, for the most part, most people focus on. Nevertheless, it is one of the most important bills that we consider because all 11 other appropriation bills are reliant on the collections made through this bill, and that is why I think it is so critical. Mr. Chairman, 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, and 165 Democrats--314 people, which is 75 percent essentially of this House--agreed on a plan of going forward. The first thing you do on a plan, Mr. Chair, is to decide how much are we going to spend? The President had a higher level, and some in this House and the Senate had a lower level. 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, it is what we are 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. Unfortunately, a week later that agreement was broken by the Republican side of the aisle in saying: No, we are not going to do that. We are not going to follow that agreement. We are going to fund at a much lesser level. Now, the problem with that is Republican and Democratic Members of the Senate pursued under that agreement, and so they are literally billions of dollars different than we will be when these 12 bills, assuming we pass these 12 bills, are sent over to the Senate. There are some in this House who have a theory that, well, that gives us the opportunity to negotiate for more numbers. The problem with negotiating for more numbers is that nobody believes they are real. That is not true. Some do. Some do. Some few in this body believe this is real and that they are 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 are not going to have to exercise that veto because this bill is not going to be adopted. Nevertheless, I will tell you, Mr. Chair, if Mr. Womack and I were left to our own devices--and he has a different perspective than I do, and that is what makes this body work--then we would come to an agreement that we think would pass the Senate and be signed by the President. Why? It is because we would do what in a democracy you have to do, Mr. Chair. We would come together and compromise, realizing full well that we have a Democratic President, a Democratic-controlled Senate, and a Republican almost majority. It is an absolute majority. I understand that politically. Nonetheless, it is not a majority that can always hold together, and; therefore, it can't always effect the policies that it knows are reasonable and can be adopted. Now, I said at the beginning that we ought to preserve America's fiscal health, and I believe that sincerely. The deal that we made, 67 percent of House Republicans voted 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. Crucially, it will increase the deficit over time, and 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. This is essentially saying to Americans: You are on your own. We are going to reduce oversight. This bill defends 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. Chair, is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. We hear a lot about fentanyl, we hear a lot about money laundering, and we hear a lot about the drug cartels making a lot of money. Mr. Chair, we created the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, otherwise known as FinCEN, for the specific purpose of following the money. That is how Willie Sutton, obviously, got caught: tax evasion. Follow the money. We have undermined that premise in this bill. We then decrease the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Terrorism is one of the great challenges of our time, and what do we do? We decrease the agencies that are charged with overseeing that, among other agencies. The Office of National Drug Control Policy, now you would think, Mr. Chair, given the expression that all of us have and concern we have about fentanyl, drug abuse, and drug deaths in this country, that we would beef up that office to make sure that 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, are reduced. In total, this bill cuts $345 million, or 6.2 percent, below the enacted for crucial law enforcement agencies. It provides $1.32 billion, or 20.2 percent, less for law enforcement than what President Biden requested in his Office. Mr. Chair, in that context, I would ask: Who is defunding the police? Yet, Republicans have the nerve, frankly--not my chairman--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. Chair. This legislation is the latest salvo in some Republicans' long campaign to defund the Internal Revenue Service. The number of annual tax returns, Mr. Chair, increased from 140.1 million in 1979 to 269 million in 2021. That is a 92 percent increase in workload. So what is our response? It is over the years to reduce from 85,000 people in 1979 trying to handle this extraordinary workload to in 2021 78,661. This is an 8 percent decrease while a 92 percent workload increase occurred. That means refunds get delayed, returns aren't audited, owed taxes go uncollected, tax cheats and lawbreakers are not held accountable, and our debt grows even bigger. Mr. Chair, if you are a business trying to get the revenue you are owed, frankly, you don't fire the collection department. If you had bad debts, you would go after them. This bill does just that. It 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 who can 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 owed under the laws that we passed. Those agents instead ensure that we each pay the share we legally owe, and they go after the cheats and lawbreakers who don't. If you are for law and order, that is what you are for. If people cheat, if people break the law, you hold them accountable. If you are going to hold them accountable, you need the personnel to do so because some of them have 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 complex tax files. I am not talking about the overwhelming majority of Americans whose taxes are withheld on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis. I am talking about the select few who use passthroughs, shell companies, and 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 beef against anybody who is wealthy. What I have beef against is people who cheat and cheat their country. Harvard and Treasury experts found that there is a 12-to-1 return on investment for IRS enforcement of the top 10 percent of earners. If you spend $1, you get $12 back. That is a pretty good deal, and it makes a real difference. Years of budget and staffing cuts have limited the IRS' ability to conduct these complex audits because they are extraordinarily time consuming and complex. Millionaires were 88 percent less likely to face an audit in fiscal year 2022 than they were in fiscal year 2010. That is an almost 100 percent reduction, from essentially $9-plus to $1. The result is a backdoor tax cut, but only for those with the means and guile to exploit accounting tricks to hide profits, income, and, in the end, tax obligation. They have a duty to support their country, the national security, and the healthcare investments we make in Medicare and Social Security. This bill includes a 22.2 percent 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. It is only the collection department that was cut. By the way, a recent article from just last month pointed out that the IRS now estimates that there is $688 billion in unpaid taxes. Let's think of what that would do to the deficit over time if you collected the money that was due, not that you are increasing, but that was due. That is 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; and $9.2 million for the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence that confronts terrorism everywhere you find it. It disrupts the agencies that ensure the products we buy and the markets we invest in aren't overrun with fraud by undermining the independence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. By cutting the Consumer Products Safety Commission, it makes it very hard for consumers, Mr. Chair, to make the determination of: Is this product safe? Has it been tested? They rely on us to make sure that, yes, it has been tested and that, yes, it is safe so it won't hurt or kill their children. They are cutting the SEC by $149 million, which disrupts the markets if people don't trust them. You didn't have an overseer in 1920. 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 Federal 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 have loaded it with partisan poison pills, which I have not spoken of but that I am sure will be spoken of during the course of this, such as undermining a woman's right to choose. I am sure that everybody saw what happened in Ohio yesterday. Ohio, for the most part, has been a red State, but it overwhelmingly said a woman's right to choose needs to be protected. They believed in that so much that they are going to put it in the Ohio Constitution. This bill has been loaded with partisan poison pills designed to varnish American history. We don't want to talk about slavery. We don't want to make anybody feel bad about what their country did to people because of the color of their skin or their sexual orientation. This bill undermines diversity, equity, and inclusion and exacerbates the climate crisis. Mr. Chair, we will talk about a lot of this bill for the next few hours. I hope it is a few hours, not more than that. I think the chair and I will try to achieve that objective. We ought to stop this nonsense. We are going to have a lot of amendments to reduce salaries to $1. That is not a serious Congress. It is not a serious Rules Committee to have 55 amendments reducing salaries to $1. The only ones that have been approved have been approved by a 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 a safer and greater country. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First, let me say I am sympathetic to the issue that the appropriations committee needs to conduct oversight, but I will tell everybody in this Chamber and those who are watching, this matter was a subject of very serious debate and resolution, and the resolution was we wanted to keep this agency independent and free of any political pressure. It was adopted on that basis by the House and the Senate and signed by the President of the United States. It is now the subject of a Supreme Court hearing. This is authorizing in the extreme an appropriation bill which, but for the waiver that was issued by the Rules Committee, a point of order would be applicable and would not be considered. I suggest that this is an authorizing matter. It is a matter that the Financial Services Committee needs to be seized of and report the gentleman's legislation out to the floor and that ought to be considered in the regular order. This is not the regular order for a major authorizing change, which was very controversial at the time it was raised, and it was passed to make sure that consumers are, in fact, protected and insulated from political pressure. Therefore, at such time, I will support an amendment to take this from the bill. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Levin), my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the chair if he has any more speakers?

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Number one on this issue--it is pending before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court can decide whether it is constitutional or not. We can't decide whether something is constitutional or not. Ultimately the Supreme Court decides that. We pass laws, and we certainly hope and expect them to be constitutional. I would, again, reiterate my opposition to the gentleman's amendment on this bill. Mr. Chairman, in closing, let me say this bill underfunds the most important aspect of the Federal Government, and that is collecting the revenues to run it in a balanced way. It undermines that effort. I urge opposition to the bill. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Beatty).

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I support the gentleman's amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, this amendment, of course, is an add and subtract and will have no fiscal impact, and the policies do bear problems on this side of the aisle as to the implications they may have. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.