Ranking Member DeLauro Statement at the Subcommittee Markup of the 2025 Homeland Security Funding Bill

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, delivered the following remarks at the Subcommittee's markup of the 2025 Homeland Security funding bill:

Thank you, Chairman Amodei, Ranking Member Underwood, and Chairman Cole for holding this markup today. We have two new faces leading this subcommittee, and I thank you both, Chairman Amodei and Ranking Member Underwood, for your work on this bill. I also thank the subcommittee staff in the majority and minority for their efforts, especially Bob Joachim and Shannon McCully.

This Homeland Security bill fails to secure the border and instead, stokes chaos and disorder – wasting hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars along the way.

The House majority has rejected every serious legislative effort to address and end the crisis at the border. They rejected one of the toughest bipartisan border bills in history that had a viable path to passage, pronouncing it dead without any debate. It would have allowed the administration to adjudicate cases that are not eligible for asylum. Their alternative, H.R. 2, is unserious and inhumane and has no path to becoming law.

As far as being serious about solving anything at all, the bill before us is simply a façade. In the midst of a crisis situation at our southern border, the majority's bill cuts Border Patrol operations by $2.1 billion – a 25 percent cut from fiscal year 2024. The bill once again wastes taxpayer money on impractical border measures and ineffective barriers, rather than focusing resources where we need them most.

This bill withholds the resources needed to manage the border humanely, to process and vet the increased number of people arriving in the United States, and to support border communities and cities receiving migrants across the country.

This is a missed opportunity to support humane pathways and processes for people who require and are legally entitled to refuge in our country, and it is a missed opportunity to reinforce our security, our preparedness, and our response capabilities.

The majority's bill weakens our national security with inadequate cyber and infrastructure security investments, and by failing to counter extremism.

The bill specifically inhibits the government's ability to counter disinformation campaigns, which are increasingly being used by global adversaries and foreign actors seeking to undermine our elections.

And, like the other appropriations bills we have considered thus far, the majority's Homeland Security bill has once again included dozens of pointless and cruel policy riders that harm women, divide Americans, divide the Congress, and create chaos.

We all know that the final version of this bill will require bipartisan negotiations to make sound investments. But once again, the majority's process is driving Congress towards further chaos, dysfunction, and shutdown threats.

This bill's anemic and misplaced investments are standing on a house of cards, built upon drastic cuts to the funding bills that keep teachers in classrooms, keep rooftops over families, keep our nation secure, and ensure a fairer economy for working class Americans.

We should not consider this Homeland bill until the majority abandons their harmful and partisan process and provides all 12 bills with funding levels that can gain the agreement of Democrats and Republicans in the House, be accepted by the Senate, and become law.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act provided for, and Democrats will accept nothing less than, a one percent increase for all domestic and nondefense programs. Increasing funding for the Homeland Security bill – just to waste it by not securing the border – does nothing to help Americans with what they care about most.

Last month, we received a letter from dozens of stakeholder organizations already frustrated by the House majority's stance. It reads:

"We ask that you take the opportunity in fiscal year 25 to restore some normalcy by rejecting these extreme and polarizing provisions and cuts, which are as damaging as they are unrealistic."

Again, I ask that the majority reconsider the path it is on, and when they do, I look forward to improving this bill so that we can manage our border responsibly and invest in programs that make our country more secure. I yield back.

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