Mark Pocan Says Congress Has 'Fully Outsourced' Appropriations Process To Project 2025

During a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Monday, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) spoke about the appropriations process.

Transcript

00:00Yeah, I'll be under five minutes. I'll be, I'll be under five minutes. I'm going to make up for

00:15some. Gotcha. No, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, I've been pretty quiet throughout the

00:27entire appropriations process this time, because I have to disagree with one thing my friend,

00:31Mr. Hoyer said, this is not a broken appropriations process. This is a demolished

00:36appropriations process. We have fully outsourced ourselves to the authors. Thank you. We have

00:44outsourced this to the authors of project 2025, Russ vote and others. And honestly, it's, it's hard

00:52to look at this process and play fantasy Congress. I'm not a big fantasy football player, but

00:57you know, this is essentially what we're doing. We're going through all the motions. And at the

01:01end of the day, none of this is ever going to be real. And I think it's disrespectful to us as

01:06members of Congress to not appreciate article one of the constitution that gives us the power of the

01:11purse. So instead, we've got something that essentially comes to us from project 2025,

01:18something that is so ridiculous that it cuts the IRS enforcement by 44% at a time that we've got a huge

01:25debt because of a bill we just passed. It's going to cut the FTC, which protects consumers

01:30and tries to lower costs. We're going to cut the small business administration by 9%.

01:35You know, as small business owners, I'm glad we just sold our business a couple months ago after

01:3937 years. I'm glad we didn't have to go through the SBA process. I'd still be waiting for loan approval

01:44with the staff reductions that have gone on. But that's disrespectful to other small business

01:49owners. I'm looking at the money, the election security grants asked for 400 million, 15 million

01:56are given. This isn't even close to a real process. So I've been really quiet because again, I don't

02:02play fantasy football. It's hard to play fantasy Congress. It's hard to see the process so disrespected

02:07as we are doing right now with this. And on top of it, just to give the cherry on this Sunday,

02:15we actually increased funding for Doge to continue to do things that take away our allocations

02:22that we put out for Congress. And then as we let rescissions happen, I don't know about you, but

02:27you know, we go through a lot of work to get elected and to come back and forth and to leave

02:30our families. I didn't do it to do this. If I want to play fantasy football, I'll get in the league and

02:37do it. But fantasy Congress is another thing. So I'm not going to take all the time because there's

02:42really nothing to say. This is all not going to be real. I just feel like it is disrespectful

02:47to all of us to make this such an incredible waste of our time to go through a process that

02:52has zero chance of reality, may not even get to the floor. But I'm here. I was on time,

03:01like I always try to be. And I'll yield back my two minutes and 23 seconds.

03:06Appreciate your being here and on time. It's very thoughtful of you.

03:09Anyone else should be heard. Of course you do.