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Press Releases

June 29, 2017
Even a bill worthy of our support, as this one is, should be part of a coherent budget strategy. It doesn’t appear that the majority has one. In fact, according to the reporting, Republicans are further away from agreement on a budget this week than they were last week.
June 28, 2017

I'd like to thank Chairman Aderholt, Ranking Member Bishop, and Chairman Frelinghuysen for their work on this bill.

As we begin our fourth subcommittee markup, it is difficult to limit our discussion to how the Department of Agriculture, FDA, and CFTC are being shortchanged. After all, today's markup is occurring concurrently with the House Budget Committee again failing to advance a budget resolution.

June 28, 2017

Thank you for yielding Mr. Chairman.

As Chairman, you have always set a cooperative tone and I want to thank you for continuing to be inclusive as we work through this process. I believe the Chairman has worked very hard with very limited time and an even more limited allocation to get to this point. Though the President's draconian request gave me severe concerns about what this bill would look like, I am pleased that you've rejected so much of it outright.

June 28, 2017
The majority’s continued dysfunction jeopardizes this Committee’s ability to meet the significant challenges we face, including many that are attacked in the bill before us.
June 28, 2017
This bill funds incredibly important programs that can unlock America’s full economic and environmental potential. Unfortunately, to say the process by which this Congress is proceeding is in disarray would be understating where we find ourselves.
June 28, 2017
The FY 2018 Legislative Branch appropriations bill provides $3.58 billion (excluding Senate items).
June 28, 2017
The FY2018 Defense Appropriations bill would exceed the Budget Control Act limit on defense spending without raising the cap, and trigger a 13% sequestration of all defense accounts across five Appropriations bills.
June 23, 2017
While these investments are extremely important, I cannot say that everything in this bill is positive. The Government Accountability Office would receive $568.3 million for FY 2018, $46.2 million less than its budget request. It is irresponsible to underfund the GAO, especially when Administration officials have reportedly been ordered not to comply with Democratic oversight requests.
June 23, 2017
Even though this is a good bill, we’re still budgeting blind. The Republicans control the entire government but they can’t agree with themselves on a budget or a plan to adjust the statutory spending caps. As a result, we don’t know if approving this bill means we won’t have any money left for cancer research, job training programs, or fighting the opioid epidemic.
June 21, 2017
The budget request for the Department of Energy, while providing healthy increases of 9% to defense accounts, unfortunately, slashes the non-defense energy accounts by more than a third, of which science is cut by 17%.