Ranking Member DeLauro to Secretary Chavez-DeRemer at DOL Budget Hearing: “We are on a path that will only lead to fewer jobs and higher costs for Americans”

WASHINGTON — CongresswomanRosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the subcommittee’s fiscal year 2026 budget hearing for the U.S. Department of Labor:

Thank you, Chairman Aderholt, for holding this important hearing on President Trump’s anti-worker budget request for the Department of Labor.

Secretary Chavez-DeRemer, welcome. It is great to see a House colleagues here. Congratulations to you. 

I have always believed that the Department of Labor, with regard to resources, has been shortchanged, so I am not saying anything different than I have to whatever Administration there has been, but I particularly regard the President’s budget request for the Department of Labor as anti-worker.

Let me start off by stating that I do not take protections for American workers lightly. On Friday, I joined more than 3,000 striking machinists on the picket line at Pratt & Whitney’s plants in East Hartford and Middletown, Connecticut, as they fight for fairer wages and job security. Unions built the middle-class in this nation, and are the reason we have a minimum wage, a weekend, overtime pay, and better working conditions. I will always fight for trade unions in the Congress. 

I am the daughter of a garment worker. My mother worked in the old sweat shops in the city of New Haven, sewing shirt collars and piece work for pennies. She had me meet her there every day after school, and I did not realize the method of her madness until I was an adult. I watched those women hunched over those sewing machines, not taking a lunch break, and in the needle trades, if you get a needle in your finger, you do not go get a tetanus shot. You just pull away, you wrap it up, because if you get a drop of blood on the garment, you do not get paid for it. My mother’s admonition to me was to get an education, so that you do not have to do this. And so I have been an advocate for workers, for working people, for unions, and for better working conditions. The conditions she worked in were deplorable. The American people earned, and deserve, far better. 

Our country’s history is a story of desperately hard-fought progress for the rights of the American worker, and Madam Secretary, let me be clear: we will not go backwards. 

Not for Elon Musk and any other billionaires who want to pillage the middle class and continue extracting and hoarding extraordinary wealth. And not for the corporations lining up at the White House for special privileges and for tax breaks.

To that end, I strongly oppose your proposal to cut the funding for the Department of Labor by $4.7 billion. I believe it is a 35 percent hatchet job to the crucial programs that help workers gain skills to secure middle class jobs, and to the agencies whose mission is to protect the safety, health, and hard-fought rights of American workers.

But before we talk about your request to really suffocate your own Department next year, I want to talk about what is happening right now.

The American people are demanding help with the cost of living. But President Trump is not laser focused on the cost of living crisis—he is actually making it worse. He promised to fight for workers but instead he put Elon Musk and billionaires in charge of the government. 

Madam Secretary, this Administration is recklessly, and unlawfully, freezing and stealing Congressionally-appropriated funds from agencies, programs, and services across the government that serve the American people. The Congress holds the power of the purse. It is in the Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 7. 

President Trump, and Elon Musk, and you as Secretary, are attacking job training programs and labor protections to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. Government should fight for the middle class, for the working class, and for the vulnerable. Not the interests of billionaires like Elon Musk.

Already, in fulfilling Elon Musk’s agenda rather than fighting for the needs of American workers, you cancelled more than two dozen Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) grants that support women in trades like construction, manufacturing, and information technology. These are some of the most in-demand jobs in communities nationwide, and yet women make up less than 25 percent of the workforce in those sectors. 

How can we take you seriously on the economic issues that matter most to American families when you are turning your back on women in the workforce?

One of your first actions as Secretary was to cancel grants funded by the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) around the world—demonstrating we are not serious about making sure trade partners live up to their labor commitments to America, so we can protect jobs for workers here in America. When they undercut the standards that we have, they undercut the American worker.

Your recklessness sells out American workers by turning a blind eye to countries relying on exploitative labor conditions, including child labor and forced labor, to sell a high volume of low-cost goods here in the United States. By cutting these programs, you are waving a white flag to countries that will steal American manufacturing jobs from us.

What else could explain your decision to cancel countless grants that make sure Mexico fulfills its USMCA labor commitments, and specifically, grants to implement critical labor justice reforms and strengthen Mexico’s enforcement of labor laws? 

If this is your plan to complement President Trump’s reckless and rudderless trade policy, then American workers and manufacturers are in for a brutal awakening. 

At best, you do not understand your agency’s responsibility to make sure American workers are not ripped off by our trade partners. At worst, there seems to be not a care if workers lose manufacturing jobs to other countries with nonexistent labor standards. 

Either way, your tenure as Secretary of Labor has been hampering the American workforce, and I intend to hold you accountable. I want to work with you, but I am going to hold you accountable on behalf of American workers. That is the role and the function of the Department of Labor. 

Under your leadership and the President’s scheme to tax families and businesses even more, we are not on a path to reshoring critical manufacturing jobs and boosting American productivity—we are on a path that will only lead to fewer jobs and higher costs for Americans.

It has been reported that you plan to fire 90 percent of staff at the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), leaving just 50 employees to conduct civil rights investigations, enforce equal employment opportunity law, rectify pay disparities for women, and protect the rights of some 3.6 million federal contractors. There are already reports that you have placed many of these staff on administrative leave. 

This is all happening today—right now. We are not talking about hypotheticals or what-ifs or worst-case scenarios. This destruction of support for workers has happened, and it is happening, today.

Turning to your budget request for 2026—we are now well into May with only a skinny budget, and the Administration has provided almost no details about its proposal to cut the Department of Labor by $4.7 billion, a staggering cut of 35 percent. But we do know the American workforce will bear the brunt.

A central component of your plan is to eliminate WIOA, that is the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, Adult and Youth Programs and replace them with a block grant to states, but you propose to provide $1.6 billion less to train America’s workforce. A block grant is a cut. States cannot afford to pick up the slack.

Eliminating WIOA Adult Job Training would deny job training and employment services for more than 300,000 adults who need help to find a good paying job, and eliminating WIOA Youth Job Training would rob 135,000 young people of employment opportunities.

In fact, Chairman Aderholt and this subcommittee held a hearing in February on “Innovations from Community Colleges and the Private Sector,” and one of his invited witnesses, Dennis Parker from Toyota USA, testified about the critical roles of WIOA resources in setting up and scaling the Alabama Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education (FAME) program. 

He said, and I quote, “Strategic federal funding, such as resources allocated through [WIOA] plays a crucial role in scaling workforce training programs like FAME. By allowing employer collaboratives to direct funds toward specific training needs, these resources help institutions acquire equipment, build facilities, and hire instructors—critical elements for launching and sustaining high-quality programs.” End quote.

Madam Secretary, your proposed cuts would abandon employers like those in Alabama and all around the country, and job seekers looking for opportunities would suffer the consequences. 

You propose to eliminate Job Corps, where we know that there are more than 10,000 youngsters waiting to get in, as well as the Senior Community Service Employment Program, setting back our efforts to help low-income youth and seniors looking for work.

So we have seen zero detail, but the sheer magnitude of your cuts mean you must be aiming to slash worker protection agencies by close to $1 billion. 

Will those cuts be to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), jeopardizing the lives and safety of workers toiling in some of the nation’s most hazardous conditions, like meatpacking, poultry, and agriculture? I told you about the conditions my mother worked in.

Or will you be cutting the Wage and Hour Division (WHD), which makes sure Americans get paid for the work they perform—and ensures that children who should be in school are not instead being exploited in the fields or on the factory floor?

Madam Secretary, I want to know how the Department of Labor will be able to perform its functions and protect the American workforce while under this hatchet. The American people deserve to know what will become of the programs and protections that so many workers throughout our nation’s history fought and died for.

I understand the Administration is eager to find a way to pay for tax breaks for billionaires, but doing so by dismantling protections for workers, stealing from job seekers, and throwing the middle class and our workers’ livelihoods under the bus, is indefensible.

We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis and yourself, Elon Musk, and President Trump will be making it worse. Republicans in Congress could stop the mayhem, could stop the chaos, and destruction today if they had the courage. They remain silent, petrified of the President’s scorn, his revenge, or his retaliation. 

Those of us in elected office, and we are blessed to serve, we have the moral responsibility to work on behalf and provide services to the American people. We know what is right and we know what is wrong, and we understand the harms being wrought on the American people—we need to stand up, we need not be afraid, because this is the time to meet the moment.

As the leading Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, I assure you, we will never stop fighting against this dangerous dismantling of the Department of Labor and its agencies, which is jeopardizing the paychecks of the middle class, working families, and the vulnerable, and undermining the safety and health of our workers.

Thank you, and I look forward to your testimony. And yes, I do look forward to working with you.

I yield back.

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