Ranking Member DeLauro Statement at Fiscal Year 2026 Department of Commerce Budget Hearing
WASHINGTON — House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) submitted the following statement for the record at the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee’s fiscal year 2026 budget hearing for the Department of Commerce:
-As Submitted for the Record-
Thank you, Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Meng, for holding this hearing on the Trump Administration’s budget request for the Department of Commerce.
Secretary Lutnick, I welcome you to the House of Representatives. Thank you for appearing before the committee today.
However, I cannot thank you for submitting a budget request to undermine your own Department’s mission, stifling its ability to lower the cost of living, protect American families, and help manufacturers and small businesses grow and succeed.
But before we talk about your request to 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 and the middle class, but instead put billionaires, like yourself, in charge of the government.
This Administration is attacking programs and services that protect Americans and foster their economic success in order to pay for tax breaks for billionaires. We need the government to fight for the middle class, the working class, and the vulnerable. We have an Administration doing the opposite.
Mr. Secretary, you have been a fierce advocate for the President’s reckless and rudderless trade agenda, an agenda your Department plays a central role in realizing.
He imposes sweeping tariffs, which are taxes on the American people, and the Administration says it will create jobs.
When he takes tariffs away, it is ‘Art of the Deal.’
Raise tariffs, creating jobs. Lower tariffs, ‘Art of the Deal.’
Over and over and over again.
It is insulting to the intelligence of the American people to suggest that there is any grand strategy behind the President’s trade agenda.
Will tariffs significantly raise revenue and reshore manufacturing? Or are they just a temporary tool to bring other nations to the negotiating table? They cannot feasibly do both, Mr. Secretary.
The American people are desperate for help with the cost of living, and this Administration’s trade policies are causing their costs to rise even further. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the tariffs will lower American households’ purchasing power an average of $2,500 this year. That’s $2,500 most households living paycheck to paycheck do not have, Mr. Secretary. $2,500 is not much to billionaires. It is a lot for Americans struggling with groceries, health care, and housing costs.
And the level of uncertainty driven by the Administration’s chaos is harming the economy, jeopardizing small businesses, and stifling the investments that create jobs. Tariffs can be a useful tool when applied surgically and methodically. Blanket tariffs on our biggest trading partners, announced on a whim then withdrawn without warning, only create confusion, hesitation, and distrust of the American marketplace.
The harm does not stop there. This Administration is making the cost of living crisis worse by recklessly, and unlawfully, freezing and stealing funds from agencies, programs, and services across the government that help the American people, including grants and programs within your Department.
Funding for every state to provide seniors, veterans, rural families, and people with disabilities with the skills and tools they need to access the internet was frozen, as was emergency funding to help NOAA procure weather radars and satellites that help create lifesaving forecasts.
At NOAA, you have overseen the dismissals of National Weather Service forecasters and other critical employees, endangering American communities. As a result of funding and employee cuts within NOAA, we have fewer forecasters, fewer weather balloon launches, and less reliable weather data and forecasts that families, businesses, and state and local governments rely on to stay safe and stay open.
Weather forecasts are not waste, fraud, and abuse. Ensuring veterans, rural students, and seniors access the internet is not waste, fraud, and abuse. This does not provide efficiency. It creates chaos.
Turning to your budget, you continue to destroy our weather and climate forecasting capabilities, with over $1 billion in cuts to research, data programs, grants, and satellite procurement at NOAA.
You destroy a lifeline that promotes development in communities that have been left behind – abandoning the very people this Administration claims to support – by completely eliminating Economic Development Administration grants.
You set back our industrial competitiveness and hurt small and medium-sized manufacturers with cuts to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and a total elimination of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program. This program helps these smaller manufacturers expand, create jobs, increase their sales, and streamline their operations – and you take that away from them.
And while implementing your disastrous and chaotic trade policies, you slash the International Trade Administration, hurting our efforts to increase exports of American products and services and protect American producers against trade cheating by China and others.
Mr. Secretary, you are telling the American people one thing is happening, and you turn around and do the opposite. We will not tolerate this charade any longer.
I thank the Chair, and I look forward to your testimony.
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