Ranking Member Meng Opening Statement at the National Weather Service Hearing
Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-NY-06), Ranking Member of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the Subcommittee's National Weather Service hearing:
-As Prepared for Delivery-
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to welcome our witness, Assistant Secretary Taylor Jordan, for his first appearance before this subcommittee.
We all recognize the vital work performed by NOAA and the National Weather Service, but recognition isn’t enough. It is crucial that we maintain and improve the nation’s ability to forecast weather quickly and accurately and to communicate forecasts effectively. As climate change continues to impact our nation and planet, severe weather outbreaks are becoming increasingly frequent.
That is why it was extremely concerning to see the Weather Service lose roughly 600 employees, including many meteorologists, in the early months of the Trump Administration last year, specifically as a result of the firings and early retirements engineered by Elon Musk and his DOGE team. This was confirmed after Secretary Lutnick falsely told this subcommittee last year that no meteorologists were among the hundreds of employees fired.
Local weather forecast offices were greatly stressed and understaffed across the country. Numerous offices were forced to limit weather balloon launches due to limited staffing. These are devices that measure temperature, pressure, and relative humidity at high altitudes. At one point last year, 45 percent of local weather forecast offices had vacancy rates of 20 percent or higher—the threshold for critical understaffing—while eight offices were missing more than 35 percent of their staff. Sixteen offices were missing their Warning Coordination Meteorologist—the person responsible for making sure emergency managers and the public know what to do when disaster strikes.
Extreme weather impacts us all. It was only a few years ago that Hurricane Ida killed several of my constituents in Queens and dozens more in the region. My heart breaks when I see how deadly the floods in Texas were, or the recent tornadoes in the Midwest. An adequately staffed National Weather Service is essential. It is a matter of life and death for countless communities impacted by extreme weather events. The bottom line is that a hollowed-out National Weather Service is a risk we simply cannot afford.
Despite the difficulties caused by the staffing shortages, the Trump Administration refused to allow for the backfilling of critical frontline National Weather Service meteorologists and other staff until last August, when the Administration finally recognized the problem it had created, and allowed the Weather Service to begin backfilling some vacant positions at local weather forecast offices.
Further compounding these problems, the Trump Administration has required that every contract decision greater than one hundred thousand dollars must first go to the office of Secretary Lutnick for his approval. This has caused bottlenecks and delayed critical missions, impacting the National Weather Service.
For example, a backbone information technology system used by the Weather Service came within hours of shutting down. A local weather forecast office in Kentucky utilized portable toilets in its parking lot during a major storm, due to an inability to get permission to hire a plumber. These are just two examples.
Even under these circumstances, the men and women of the National Weather Service have continued to show dedication to their jobs and have worked hard to bring reliable weather forecasts to the American people.
In your submitted statement, you mentioned the recent efforts by NOAA and by National Weather Service director Ken Graham to streamline the management structure of the Weather Service. There is nothing wrong with seeking efficiencies, and there are several good things in this recent plan. At the same time, I need to emphasize that the Trump Administration’s purposeful massive staffing losses at the National Weather Service last year, including the widespread firings of probationary employees, must never happen again.
That and other bad policies, such as the unreasonable bureaucratic delays on contracts, are not good at all for the National Weather Service. They greatly risk the Weather Service’s mission and risk further losses of talented meteorologists and other critical front-line personnel.
Given the relationship between our changing climate and the frequency of severe weather, I also want to note the critical role that NOAA has played for decades in preserving and collecting data about the planet’s changing climate. At the same time, however, the Trump Administration has pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. It has removed, and in some cases rewritten, climate change-related information from federal agency websites.
Last year, the Trump Administration disbanded the author team and dismissed hundreds of scientists working on the Sixth National Climate Assessment, a legally-mandated report that is used to help shape environmental rules, legislation, and infrastructure projects. The Administration is currently pushing to eliminate the Endangerment Finding, which, since 2009, has underpinned the Federal Government’s ability to fight climate change.
All of this is wrong and harmful for the country. The connection between climate change and the frequency of severe weather is very real.
Finally, I want to express my disappointment that the Commerce Department has not yet issued its fiscal year 2026 spend plan, which was legally due to the Appropriations Committee on March 9th. This delay is unacceptable.
All that said, I look forward to the discussions of the issues at today’s hearing. Thank you very much.
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