Oversight Hearing of the U.S. Department of the Treasury
House Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government
2025-05-06
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Source: Congress.gov
Participants
Transcript
Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government will come to order. The hearing is titled the Oversight of the United States Department of Treasury. Members will have five legislative days within which to revise and extend their marks and insert extraneous material into the record. I would note we have a hard stop today at 1130. I now recognize myself for an opening statement. I would like to thank Secretary Besant for being here today and for his leadership in his steady hand over the last several months. We are living in an increasingly complex world with no shortage of issues. Whether it be taxes or tariffs, rightsizing regulation, or creating a regulatory framework for digital assets, the Department of Treasury's role is fundamental to the resolution. If we think about it, this is why the Department of Treasury was created. The Department is central to maintaining a strong economy, creating jobs, and promoting economic growth, both here and abroad. It was created to bolster our national security and to assure our economic stability, and it continues to thwart terrorists and criminals and protect the financial system from illicit activity every day. Fulfilling these responsibilities is no easy task. As the Department's fiscal year 2025 spending plan reveals, it takes significant resources. It starts with a strong workforce, the most updated technology, and appropriate working conditions, including buildings that are sufficiently maintained. But this doesn't happen in a vacuum. This also takes cooperation, transparency, and accountability. As this committee looks to fund the department's future operations, we need to understand the priorities and how the department is deploying resources across its divisions and bureaus and why. There are definitely efficiencies to be identified, but changes need to be thoughtful and deliberate to ensure the department's mission is still accomplished. We need to ensure our financial system, the economy, and leadership around the world is safe, secure, and thriving. Secretary Besant, there are and will be challenging times ahead, but I believe you are the right person at the right time to overcome those challenges. I look forward to working with you, and I now recognize the ranking member for his opening statement.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and welcome, Mr. Secretary. This is our first substantive hearing dealing with the devastating actions that the Trump administration has taken in the first three months of 2025. actions planned and predicted by Project 2025. I look forward to having more such hearings with other agencies under our jurisdiction, especially the principals of DOGE, OMB, GSA, and OPM, which are having such profoundly negative impact on our country. What we've seen in the first hundreds of days of this administration is unprecedented, and so the polls tell us, disturbing to the American people. An irresponsible, incoherent tariff policy has plunged the Americans and global economies into chaos. These past three months, the American economy shrank for the first time since the final days of the pandemic. The stock market fell more in the first 100 days of the Trump administration than in the first 100 days of any presidency in the past half century.
Consumer confidence is at its lowest since May of 2020, the height of COVID-19. That uncertainty has also rattled the bond market, with investors dangerously starting to doubt the full faith and credit of the United States. Most importantly, Americans are hurting. Families see their costs going up. Retirees watch their life savings losing value. Small business owners and farmers risk going under as they struggle to navigate ever-changing tariffs. Our economy is in chaos, and so I think is our government. Donald Trump, Russell Vogt, and Elon Musk are orchestrating an illegal purge of our federal employees. They clearly had a lot of ideas on how to remove these people and dismantle these programs as quickly as possible. Sadly, they had no clue, in my view, as to the devastating consequences of their actions on our country, our government, our allies, and the professionals we rely on to serve the American people. I am particularly concerned about the Internal Revenue Service, which has been severely understaffed and underfunded for decades. So far, the Trump administration has forced the IRS to cut as many as 11,443 employees, or over 11 percent of its staff. That includes 6,700 workers who were fired at the height of this most recent tax session. Now the administration is planning to reduce the IRS workforce, I understand, by another 40,000 jobs, or 40%. That includes up to half of the IRS enforcement staff. Additionally, Trump's 2026 budget cuts funding for the IRS by 20%. These actions at IRS, in my view, and every other government office, have bludgeoned morale, destroyed efficiency, and increased waste.
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