This afternoon, Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (TX-16) provided opening remarks at the the FY2026 Budget Resolution at the House of Representatives Committee on Rules, which begins the Senate-led reconciliation process.
The video can be found here and a (lightly edited) transcript has been provided below:
Rules Committee Chairwoman Virginia Fox: Miss Escobar, you're recognized.
Congresswoman Escobar: Thank you so much, Chairwoman Fox and Ranking Member McGovern. I'm here to voice my strong opposition to this budget resolution, both because of its outrageous spending allocations and because of my serious concerns with the process of how this was done.
It's important for everyone to understand what is happening in America today. Americans are struggling. The latest Gallup poll shows that nearly half of American adults - 47% - describe American's current economic conditions as poor. That's up from 40% one month ago, and it's clear why they feel this way.
Republicans' so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill," slashed access to Medicare and Nutrition Assistance programs. Republicans refuse to renew subsidies that helped Americans pay for their health insurance, causing their premiums to shoot up by 114%.
Trump's tariffs have cost the average family more than $1,700 in 2025 alone, and now his war in Iran has made gas prices skyrocket and prices are likely to get worse.
Instead of focusing on how we stop this economic collapse, Republicans are demanding an additional $70 billion, potentially as high as $140 billion, for CPB and ICE. The One Big Beautiful Bill, which provides tax breaks to billionaires by making drastic cuts to programs Americans depend on, also gave ICE and CBP $140 billion. This was for President Trump's mass deportation program, but that $140 billion could fund the entire Department of Homeland Security through next year.
So why are we really here? In the wake of the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, Republicans are choosing to jam through additional funding for ICE and CBP instead of working with us to find bipartisan solutions that both protect our communities and ensure that ICE and CBP are just as accountable to the public as normal law enforcement agencies are.
I have the privilege of sitting on both the House Budget Committee with my colleague and friend, Mr. Arrington. I also sit on the House Appropriations Committee, and this partisan approach to government funding is not the way we should do things. The original Homeland Security Appropriations bill that passed out of the committee had protections for U.S. Citizens against what we saw in Minneapolis and many other American cities. But Donald Trump and Stephen Miller stripped out those protections because they knew they could do this: use Republicans in Congress to jam through a bill that grossly inflates these agencies' budgets, and also clears the way for a supplemental defense package that will fund the president's war in Iran, a war that has already cost us an estimated $50 billion.
Let's be clear: Section 4108 of this bill sets the stage for a future supplemental defense funding package, without us knowing what the actual cost of that will be. Just two weeks ago, during a hearing in the Budget Committee, I asked the OMB Director, Mr. Vought, if he could tell me how much would be requested in the Iran supplemental, and he either couldn't tell me or he wouldn't tell me. He wouldn't even ballpark it.
We should not be clearing the way to fund Trump's war of choice, which has not only driven up the cost of everyday essentials, but more importantly, resulted in the death of 13 American service members.
Frankly, I am astonished to see my colleagues in the House of Representatives rubber stamp this. This budget resolution will allow Senate Republicans to jam the House with little to no consideration. By allowing the Senate to move on reconciliation first, that means the House will not be able to hold any committee markups and will instead have to eat whatever the Senate passed reconciliation bill includes.
I am going to be voting no on this rule, no on the concurrent resolution, and I urge my colleagues to do the same. We have an obligation to treat a matter as serious as increasing the deficit with the attention it deserves.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
