Maggie Goodlander Assails Trump For His 'Unprecedented Assault' On Congressional Funding Authority

10 hours ago

During a House Small Business Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) spoke about President Trump's unilateral freezing of congressionally appropriated funding.

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Transcript

00:00And we now recognize Ms. Goodlander from New Hampshire for five minutes.

00:03Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ranking Member Tran.

00:07I really believe deeply in the work of the Oversight Subcommittee.

00:12We all swore—one thing that unites us all in this committee and in Congress is we all

00:16swore an oath to protect and defend this important document, the United States Constitution.

00:21And one of the core responsibilities of Congress is oversight.

00:27It's because oversight is about transparency, which is essential to public trust.

00:32Oversight is essential to cracking down on waste, fraud, and abuse, which I'm deeply committed to.

00:37Oversight is about making sure that our government works for hardworking people

00:42and that we give the American people and our small businesses the certainty that they need

00:46and deserve. Another core constitutional responsibility of Congress is the power

00:52of the purse, the power to direct and control federal spending. And that's because we live

00:58in a democracy and not in a monarchy. And so what we've seen in the last 51 days

01:03is an unprecedented assault on this power of Congress. It's an assault that is lawless,

01:09it's dangerous, and it has had a really bad impact on so many of our small businesses and workers

01:16across this country and across New Hampshire. Mr. Trent, you testified that federal funding

01:22freezes are a direct attack on small businesses, on the stability that small businesses need.

01:27And that's certainly what I'm hearing from small businesses across New Hampshire,

01:31who are unsure about whether they can keep workers on payroll, who aren't sure how they're going to

01:36provide health care to those workers. I wondered if you could say more about what you're seeing

01:42from federal funding freezes across the country. So we've got hundreds of members that were

01:49directly impacted by those funding freezes and the impact ripples throughout their own local

01:55economy. One member in New Glarus, Wisconsin, runs a child care facility, worried about state block

02:02grant funding. She thought that she might not be able to make payroll the next month and would

02:06have to fire half of her team. We have in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a member who does groundbreaking

02:13research for the government. She logs into her funding portal one morning and finds that the

02:20funding that was supposed to be powering her work was nowhere to be found, totally frozen.

02:25We've still got folks who are wrestling with these freezes. And everyone is just told to

02:32be excited about the incoming deregulation regime. And so it's really unfair. And

02:40we're certainly hearing from most of our members that this is something that's impacting them

02:45every single day. Well, I should say also the impact of these freezes has been on SBA workers

02:53in the state of New Hampshire. It's not just here in the capital. It's across the country

02:58in field offices, which is harming our small businesses, too. Mr. Trent, you wrote about

03:05a subject that I care deeply about, fair competition. And I think it's another issue

03:10that should unite us all here in Congress. Our antitrust and consumer protection laws are as old

03:16the ideas in them are as old as America. It's about checking power. And here on the Small

03:20Business Committee, we're about bringing power back to our small businesses at a time when

03:25the American economy has never been more consolidated. You wrote about the impact of

03:31the unprecedented access that an unelected billionaire in the White House has to the

03:36sensitive data of small businesses and of people across the United States. You testified that this

03:43destroys fair competition alongside the destruction of public trust. Can you say more about that?

03:49So there's a reason why Walmart doesn't have access to the books of the mom and pop stores

03:55right down the street from it. There's a reason why no other CEO in this country has access to

04:00the bank statements, taxpayer data of small businesses, because it's an unbelievably

04:06unfair advantage. And this includes the taxpayer data and bank statements of some of Elon Musk's

04:12actual competitors. And so we need to be doing everything in our power to make sure that the

04:16playing field is level for small businesses to compete. And I'll just respond by respectfully

04:22disagreeing with some statements around deregulation and tax code that have been made.

04:27With deregulation, it can be good, but very often the benefits accrue to the largest companies in

04:33the world. The repeal of Dodd-Frank and the lessening of restrictions around capital

04:38requirements inevitably led to the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank. JPMorgan was quick to gobble

04:44up thousands and thousands of depositors, while a lot of different small banks languished, right?

04:51The tax code, 82% of surveyed small business owners believe that the tax code is currently rigged

04:57against them, favoring large corporations. So you've got a growing sentiment among small

05:01business owners that things aren't fair and we need to do something to fix that.

05:06Thank you. The woman's time has expired. I yield back.

Maggie Goodlander Assails Trump For His 'Unprecedented Assault' On Congressional Funding Authority

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