Ranking Member DeLauro Statement at the Subcommittee Markup of the 2026 Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Funding Bill
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, delivered the following remarks at the subcommittee markup of the 2026 Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies funding bill:
Thank you for yielding. It is a pleasure to be here with you today, Chairman Womack, Chairman Cole, and Ranking Member Clyburn. I want to share my appreciation for the subcommittee staff’s work, in particular, Christina Monroe, Jackie Kilroy and Nora Faye.
I oppose the bill before us today, which will make affordable housing and quality transportation options more expensive and out of reach for more Americans.
We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, and housing and transportation are two of the largest expenses for American households. The burden of everyday necessities – rent, mortgage rates and housing prices, home insurance, car insurance – has skyrocketed. Americans are desperate for help with housing and transportation costs, but President Trump is not laser-focused on the cost of living, which he is actually making worse.
Nor are House Republicans.
Their Big Ugly Bill is handing massive tax breaks to billionaires and the biggest corporations while driving up the cost for middle class families to buy a home and abandoning neighborhoods devastated by natural disasters and struggling with historic disinvestment.
And today, we are considering another House Republican bill which will raise costs for struggling American families and make it harder for them to get by each month.
Never mind that we have no complete budget and no allocation, we are holding this markup in a completely unprecedented time, as the Congress’s authority is being challenged by a lawless Administration.
Since taking office, President Trump’s Administration has stolen resources, appropriated by the Congress, for programs and services across the federal government, including several in this bill that help to grow the middle class, protect workers, and support American businesses.
President Trump and Elon Musk have attacked and destroyed programs that help the most vulnerable in our society seek stable and affordable housing, and which help strengthen local economies and opportunities between neighborhoods and across regions.
Grants for non-profits to fight the scourge of housing discrimination were terminated, meaning many Americans, including people with disabilities, will go without safe and sufficient housing. Organizations and local governments helping get people off the streets face continuous delays in accessing the resources this Committee provided to get people into stable housing.
As seniors and families face increased energy costs this Administration is freezing a program that helps make their housing more energy efficient and resilient from natural disasters.
Tax-payer funded investments to repair our roads, bridges, transit systems, and ports that create jobs and boost local economies have been stolen, creating costly delays, and risking jobs. The states, Tribes, and communities that were counting on and planning around these investments are left high and dry.
All of these programs, Congress enacted and appropriated funding for in law. I repeat, in law. They are substituting Congress’ decisions and judgment with their own, turning Article I of the Constitution on its head.
Yet, this bill ignores these facts and realities, setting an extremely dangerous precedent for handing over our power to the executive branch.
And these cuts are not numbers on a page – they are not only felt in Washington, DC, they affect all of our constituents.
In my district, a grant awarded to The Towers, a nonprofit that provides housing for Jewish seniors in need of support and care, was frozen by the Trump Administration, as an illegal grab to eliminate investments in energy efficiency and healthy housing, preventing critical renovations for the 55-year-old building.
And just a few weeks ago, I joined Ashley Bailey, a lifelong New Haven resident, and her daughter London, at their home on Howard Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut.
Ashley is in the process of becoming a homeowner, moving herself and her daughter out of their apartment and back into the home she lived in as an infant, thanks to the help of Neighborhood Housing Services.
Neighborhood Housing Services restored and rehabilitated the home on Howard Avenue to make it more habitable, and is selling the home to Ashley at a subsidized rate, using the HOME Investment Partnership and Community Develop Block Grant programs – both of which were necessary investments to revive this property and add value to this neighborhood, yet, the transformative investments made by the HOME Investment Partnerships program are entirely eliminated in this bill.
Ashley’s family is not the only working family to benefit from these programs in Connecticut. Neighborhood Housing Services has helped 300 families in New Haven buy homes – creating more homeowners, and making the American dream possible for people who otherwise may not have reached it.
But the Trump Administration’s stealing, and the bill before us today, puts the American dream further out of reach for the working class and middle class, and makes it more difficult for those struggling to keep a roof over their head to secure and remain in affordable housing.
This bill is a pro-eviction, pro-homelessness, pro-discrimination platform.
It fails to prevent several hundred thousand evictions across the country by shorting rent payments for Public Housing by $1.5 billion and the Section 8 voucher program by $3 billion.
This bill falls short of providing vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities the safety net they need to stay secure in their homes.
And while the people of Hawaii are still recovering from devastating wildfires, this bill slashes resources for Native Hawaiians to live in affordable housing on their ancestral homelands.
Nearly three quarters of a million Americans experience homelessness on any given night, but this bill shortchanges Homeless Assistance Grants, which would mean nearly 28,000 fewer people living on the streets will get the help they need to secure housing.
After blowing up the deficit by trillions of dollars to hand billionaires and corporations a massive windfall, the majority is pinching pennies by kicking Americans, including children, out of their homes and onto the streets.
While housing costs are escalating faster than Americans can keep up, so too are the costs of transportation. New cars, used cars, and insurance are all making transportation unaffordable. So, what does the majority’s bill do to help? Gut investments in our transit networks that relieve Americans of high transportation costs.
No discretionary funding for Amtrak’s National Network and Northeast Corridor – a robbing Peter to pay Paul gimmick – are you kidding me? The majority is zeroing out investments for Amtrak, forcing the railroad to dig in the couch cushions in hopes of finding what they need to pay their workers, maintain service, and keep their train system safe – as you walk away from investments that actually transform our intercity passenger rail system? Did your constituents go to your town halls and tell you they are desperate for more traffic on our roads?
Business travelers and commuters rely on Amtrak service to get to work. This bill kicks the can on rail infrastructure improvements already underway from New York to Norman, Oklahoma.
This bill’s evisceration of commuter transportation does not just impact Amtrak, it halts projects that improve rail and bus operations everywhere from Miami, to Salt Lake City, to Columbus, to San Antonio.
Americans cannot keep up with the costs of housing and transportation, and this committee has more power than most to do something about it. But unfortunately, the majority has instead pursued draconian funding levels, and a pro-eviction, pro-road congestion agenda that will only make household budgets tighter.
But, hey, at least the billionaires in President Trump’s cabinet and corporations like Exxon Mobil are getting even more tax breaks. I am sure those will trickle down any day now.
I cannot support this bill. I yield back.
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