Ranking Member DeLauro Statement at the Full Committee Markup of the Fiscal Year 2027 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Funding Bill
WASHINGTON — Congresswoman Rosa 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 during the full committee markup of the fiscal year 2027 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies funding bill:
Thank you so much Chairman Cole, and above all thank you for your friendship and our opportunity to work together. I want to say a thank you to you, to Chairman Aderholt…
I want to begin by thanking the subcommittee staff for all of their work on this bill: Stephen Steigleder, Jackie Kilroy, Laurie Mignone, and Philip Tizzani for the minority, and Kathryn Salmon, Emily Goff, Kirk Boyle, Jaime Varela, Michaela Boudreaux, and Alexandra Mandewo on the majority. Thank you so much for all that you do to bring these bills to fruition.
I oppose the bill we are considering today. Americans struggle to afford everything from gasoline to groceries; from utilities to health insurance; from mortgage payments to medical bills. But instead of doing anything to address the affordability crisis, this bill makes the problem even worse.
Affordability is not a “hoax” or a “con job” despite what President Trump might claim. Clearly, the cost of living is not a problem for him or for his family. But it is a real crisis that impacts millions of Americans. It is a crisis that this bill does nothing to alleviate. In fact, in many regards it will only make it worse.
Thanks to the president’s signature piece of legislation – the One Big Beautiful Bill – healthcare costs are going up, and hospitals are shutting down. Fifteen million Americans will likely lose their health insurance, while the very wealthy and large corporations continue to rake in record profits and enjoy the benefits of their $4.5 trillion tax cut.
The president wants to increase the Defense budget by half a trillion dollars. He claims we do not have money for child care, for Medicare, for Medicaid, because, quote, “we are fighting wars.” Meanwhile, this bill cuts funding for education, public health, reproductive health, and job training.
Horace Mann called education the “great equalizer.” Lyndon Johnson called it, “the only passport from poverty.” FDR called it, “the real safeguard of democracy.” The belief in education as an inalienable right is woven into the fabric of our country. It is the promise we make to each succeeding generation that they will be better off than the last.
Yet this bill cuts $8 billion – 10 percent – from the Department of Education. That includes a $2 billion cut to Title I grants, which will push 30,000 teachers out of their classrooms, and leave countless children with a worse education.
Throughout history, access to a quality education has always been the pathway for the working class, middle class, and vulnerable Americans to greater prosperity and opportunity. These cuts are an attempt to undo the progress we have made, to cut off access to these opportunities. It is a step down the path toward eliminating public education – that, I believe, is their ultimate goal.
This bill eviscerates funding for employment and training programs by $3.3 billion – one-third below the 2026 level. It eliminates funding for adult and youth job training entirely, while cutting funding for the Job Corps in half.
As inflation outpaces wage growth, and new technology upends the workforce, we ought to be investing in programs that support workers, not cutting funding and leaving them out to dry.
This bill cuts funding for Health and Human Service programs by $4.5 billion, including a $1 billion cut to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority of these cuts target programs that combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic, jeopardizing the extraordinary progress we have made toward defeating this disease.
The recent Ebola outbreak threatens to become the deadliest in history. Because the Trump administration chose to dismantle USAID, to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, and to drastically scale back our global health footprint, this outbreak has a significant head start.
Humanitarian aid workers are trying to contain the outbreak without adequate personal protective equipment, in active combat zones, waiting days just to get test results back. We are in this position because this administration tore apart our existing programs. Now we are facing the consequences.
Further compounding the risk to our public health security, this bill leaves funding for CDC global health activities stagnant, which will not be nearly enough to sustain our global presence after the State Department’s decision to restructure the PEPFAR program.
The bill cuts funding for Title X Family Planning, leaving 2.6 million men and women without access to preventive care services and contraception. It eliminates the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program entirely. And it includes dozens of partisan provisions that target reproductive health care access.
Even now, years after Roe was overturned, and reproductive healthcare has become much more difficult and even dangerous to access in much of the country, this bill would restrict access even further – no matter what state you live in.
This bill cuts $2 billion in operations funding from the Affordable Care Act marketplace, threatening health care coverage for millions of Americans. Even if you qualify for an affordable plan through the program, you will have a harder time accessing it. After the Big Beautiful Bill cut $1.2 trillion from Medicaid and food assistance, it seems the Republican plan is to make it even more difficult to access health care in this country.
This bill squeezes working families from both ends – increasing costs for daily necessities while hollowing out health, education, nutrition, and employment programs that support the working class, middle class, and vulnerable Americans.
Additionally, the bill does nothing to protect nonpartisan research from the political influence of the president and his allies. Since they took office, this administration has been taking steps to condition grant funding based on political preference. They have imposed purity tests, holding up crucial support for critical research at NIH, for example, simply because it included the word “gender.”
Now, they are trying to formalize this process by issuing a new federal regulation, subjecting all grant making across the government to political interference. Not peer review, not objective merit, not empirical evidence – just personal political preference. This cannot be allowed to happen. We must exercise our power of the purse.
I have strong objections to this bill as written, and as it moves through the legislative process, I will continue working to improve it. That being said, there are some bright spots that I believe are worth recognizing.
First, I am glad to see the overall funding level for the National Institutes of Health is slightly increased under this bill, especially targeted increases for research on cancer, Alzheimer’s, ALS, diabetes, women’s health, and rare diseases.
Second, during our subcommittee hearing on the Science of Reading earlier this year, I called for this committee to reestablish a National Reading Panel to explore ways to improve how we teach our children to read.
I am pleased that this committee has answered that call, and I want to commend Congressman Harder for his advocacy on this issue. I support these provisions and applaud their inclusion. However, I remain overwhelmingly opposed to the legislation as a whole.
Taken together, the bill undermines education, jeopardizes public health, and limits workers’ opportunities. It does nothing to address the rising cost of living, while stripping away crucial support that helps families who are navigating the affordability crisis.
I encourage my colleagues to oppose this legislation, and call on our friends in the majority to work with us to craft a bill that meets the needs the American people are facing.
Thank you, and I yield back.
###