Hoyer: If We Abdicate Our Responsibility as a Coequal Branch of Government, We Will No Longer Be One

WASHINGTON, DC - Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05) delivered opening remarks at the House Appropriations Full Committee Markup of the FY 2027 Legislative Branch bill. Below are a video and transcript of his remarks:

Click here to watch a video of his remarks.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank [you] Chairman Valadao for his work on this bill, and certainly the Ranking Member, my dear friend, and the Ranking Member of the subcommittee. When I look at this bill alongside all the others we've considered, Mr. Chairman, there's one theme that I think connects them all: they are all sounding retreat from our Constitutional responsibilities. Very frankly, I think this bill is deeply underfunded, given the responsibilities we have. I think the MRAs are not sufficient. I think the committee staff is not sufficient - I'll speak about that - to oversee a bureaucracy of two million people. The majority, in my opinion, in so many instances, wants to take the cops off the beat; no oversight, no accountability. In many cases, no hearings. Now, I want to congratulate Mr. Valadao because I think we had more hearings than anybody else. Mr. Chairman, thank you for that.

"This bill, as I said, raises the MRA accounts to pay our staff a little more, certainly not as much as they deserve. The bill does not provide for increases in pay for leadership staff and committee staff. Why is that important? Because it is leadership staff and committee staff that really has the intellectual heft and the time in grade to give us the opportunity to have real, significant, effective oversight. No cops on the beat. It's not just this bill, of course. We marked up the FSGG bill in April, gutting IRS enforcement and reducing funding for election security. We say we want to have people operating effectively, but if you have no hearings, and you have staff that is not experienced and effective, you're not [going to] have oversight. Cutting 5% from the Office of Government Ethics while it remains dangerously headless, no leader. Frankly, cutting all of these - and the President, when he came to office, talking about waste fraud and abuse, the first thing he did was fire all the IGs. [They] were not political. And this bill hamstrings the FTC, and the SEC. No cops on the beat.

"Last week, we had a CJS bill, which handcuffs on leading scientists from being able to help solve critical problems. And but for, in my opinion, Chairman Rogers, it would have been deeper, and I thank him for doing that. And this morning, we marked up an Energy and Water bill that cuts $252 million, or 12%, from the program that helps prevent rogue states like Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. No cops on the beat. This applies not only to the content of these bills, but to the character of our process. Very few hearings - hear me, very few hearings. I'm not sure what we're basing our opinion on with all these subcommittees, but it is not hearings. Very few hearings, not a single hearing in FSGG since the markup. And only one hearing - two hearings before that. In a general sense, they will really just be placeholders, these bills, until we inevitably fail and have to take up a CR - shamefully short of our responsibility. No cops on the beat. If we abdicate our responsibility as a coequal branch of government, we will no longer be one. Or to put it another way, as I've said now, at least three times, we are continuing to be the authors of our own impotence.

"Trust in Congress as an institution is already very low. Our constitutional framers are mourning the death of Article One. They knew the danger of an overly powerful executive in a weak legislature was possibly one of their greatest fears. When Benjamin Franklin famously said, as he walked out of the Constitutional Convention, people asked him what he had created, he said 'A Republic.' But then we all know, he added, 'If you can keep it,' and the only way you can keep it is through being vigorous in oversight. As the people's representative, that means us. It's our job. Sadly, I feel, though, we are engaged in both misfeasance and malfeasance as an institution. If we do not assert Congress's equal power of our constitutional system so critical to the check of abuse of power, which our founders so feared, it will be destroyed, and tyranny and corruption will be its progeny. I yield back."