Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 4664, Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2024. With this bill, House Republicans are enabling tax cheats, harming consumers, and inserting unacceptable right-wing policy riders.

With the $1.1 million cut to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) budget in H.R. 4664, Republicans are once again protecting sophisticated tax cheats and greedy corporations over hard-working families. The Department of Treasury recently announced that, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS is pursuing back taxes owed from about 1,600 taxpayers with income over $1,000,000. The IRS has closed 100 of those cases and collected $122 million in back taxes. If Republicans were really serious about cutting down on our national debt, they wouldn't be gouging the budget of the agency responsible for ensuring everyone pays their fair share and follows the law. Additionally, the IRS needs to be fully funded to ensure that my constituents have their tax refunds processed quickly and aren't placed on indefinite holds when they call the agency. Democrats know that if the IRS budget is cut, it will only make it easier for tax cheats to skip out on paying their fair share.

Republicans are also including drastic cuts to agencies designed to ensure the products we buy aren't harmful to our families. Since 1972, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has worked with manufacturers to protect Americans from unsafe consumer products by issuing recalls, developing safety standards, and conducting research into product-related illness and injury. Republicans have cut the CPSC budget by over $13 million. Why would we limit the CPSC's ability to issue recalls on products that will harm our families? Instead, Congress should be encouraging CPSC to explore all allegations that appliances or other consumer products are unsafe to children and adults and should give the CPSC more, not fewer, resources for eliminating or mitigating the safety risks they uncover.

My opposition to the bill is not solely due to the inadequate funding levels. This bill, like all of the Republican appropriations measures, embraces right-wing social policy fights that have no place in the bills that fund our government. H.R. 4664 would prohibit the IRS from developing a free tax filing software for all taxpayers, prohibits agencies from enforcing regulations to curb climate change, and prohibits federal employees from using their health insurance to make personal healthcare decisions. These provisions must be rejected.

Mr. Chair, we are nine days away from a government shutdown. Instead of reevaluating their extreme 2024 funding bills and working to find a bipartisan path forward to fund the government beyond November 17th, House Republicans have once again moved forward with a bill that is so extreme that they can't even get members of their own party to vote for the bill on the House Floor. Republicans don't have the power to pass their own bad bill. H.R. 4664 joins two other appropriations bills in a purgatory of the Republicans' own making, with no chance of ever becoming law. I urge my colleagues to work in a bipartisan fashion to cut through this Republican chaos and avoid a government shutdown.

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