Ranking Member DeLauro Remarks on 2025 Appropriations: "The house of cards is crumbling."

WASHINGTON —Today, Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro shared the following remarks at a press conference on the dire consequences of the House Republican majority’s dangerous spending cuts and the harmful and discriminatory policy riders throughout all 12 fiscal year 2025 funding bills:

Welcome, to everyone. Thanks so much. I want to talk about folks who are here who will speak this morning. Mila Becker from the Coalition for Health Funding; Kimberly Diaz Scott of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association; Superintendent of Mayfield City Schools Michael Barnes; AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond; Deborah Weinstein of the Coalition on Human Needs; Public Citizen Co-President Rob Weissman; and David Shadburn of the League of Conservation Voters.

I am so appreciative to all of you for being here to share your voices on where House Republicans are trying to take the country through the annual funding bills.

As I think many of you know, this year’s process is not far removed from what was the chaotic path that the majority took us down for fiscal year 2024.

We are going through the same song and dance they did last year. They are pushing bills with irresponsible and dangerous spending cuts and obscene policy riders that are not going to become law.

Immediately after the final 2024 bills passed with broad, bipartisan support, the majority doubled down on last year’s failed strategy of pursuing blatantly partisan bills for fiscal year 2025.

The house of cards is crumbling. Legislative Branch, one of the easier bills to be able to get passed, was rejected by the full House earlier this month. The majority’s decision to stuff it with awful policy riders tanked any chance of broad support. The majority found broad bipartisan opposition, and once again, in my mind, it is just demonstrative that they cannot govern. This is chaos.

This week, two funding bills are being considered on the House floor – Energy and Water, and Interior. There were supposed to be two more, Financial Services and Agriculture, but the majority has pulled those from floor consideration this week.

Your guess is as good as mine as to why they have chosen not to move those bills forward, but it echoes last year when they struggled and failed to pass several bills.

Quite frankly, all 12 of the majority’s bills are terrible, and they are only getting worse on the floor. Republicans are blocking Democratic amendments to remove the poison pill riders, and they are increasing the number of riders that are very extreme.

It is not going to become law. But let me make this statement, because lots of folks in the press and others will say to me, ‘well, Congresswoman DeLauro, isn’t this all going to be reconciled at the end?’ Let me just say, how much clearer can the majority be in who they are for, what they are about, and what is the direction they want to take this country? It’s there. That is what needs to be focused on – what they are willing to do and how they want to harm the American public at this juncture.

That is what we should focus on. And it is on display. They will take critical investments, they will take from our kids’ education, and health care, our workforce, and our environment.

If you want to talk about public education, and eliminating public education, I can go through it with you chapter and verse going back to last year. That is the goal. What does Project 2025 say about public education? ‘Let’s end the Department of Education. Let us eliminate it.’ It also says Title I – the bulwark of public education in this country – they talk about overtime eliminating Title I. That is where they want to go. This is an agenda. This is where they want to take the country, as I said, and I think we should be singularly focused on that.

Take the Labor-HHS-Education bill, for example. The bill eliminates funding for Title X Family Planning, funding for the Ending HIV Epidemic Initiative and Minority HIV/AIDS Initiative, funding for Gun Violence Prevention Research, Tobacco Prevention, Rape Prevention, and Suicide Prevention, and the funding for programs that were created following Sandy Hook.

They cut the Department of Education by $11 billion, including a $5 billion cut from Title I, meaning 72,000 teachers from low-income classrooms will be jettisoned.

Page 325 of the full Project 2025 manifesto reads, and I quote, “The federal government should confine its involvement in education policy to that of a statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states.” End quote.

No role for the federal government in ensuring that America’s children receive an education that allows them to realize their dreams and aspirations.

Again, these bills are not going to become law. But nevertheless, this is what they want to do. 920 pages, I am plowing through it, and what we are going to do with appropriations is look at Project 2025 and the appropriations bills, and look at what they are already trying to move forward through the appropriations process.

There is lots of things happening, and there is not a lot of focus on appropriations, which there should be. Because it is where it is happening, in what they are prepared to do. And that needs to be countered every single day.

I want to be clear, you have heard me say this before but I will say it again.

The 2024 appropriations acts provided a nondefense funding level of $778 billion – that was a one percent increase over the 2023 nondefense topline.

Let me be clear: Democrats will accept nothing less than a one percent increase over 2024 in nondefense and defense funding. Any increases over the one percent for defense shall be matched dollar-for-dollar.

That is the message, that is what we are talking about, because everything flows from what is that topline in what we can do about the programs and each of these efforts.

Leader Jeffries and I are in lockstep in this funding fight.

Republicans are not going to succeed. But they have shown the American people what they will do if given the opportunity. We need to deny them that opportunity.

I would now like to introduce the Executive Director of the Coalition on Human Needs, Deborah Weinstein.