Republican on key Appropriations subcommittee says panel colleagues help slicing FBI funds

A House Republican who serves on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department and the FBI says GOP lawmakers are able to rein within the FBI’s funding.

Rep. Ben Cline of Virginia mentioned Thursday that the debt ceiling settlement between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden has led GOP appropriators to hunt deeper cuts as they undergo this 12 months’s 12 appropriation payments.

“We’re pushing the speaker to go below those levels — cut even deeper, especially in the Justice Department/FBI category, where we are making progress,” Mr. Cline mentioned on SiriusXM’s Wilkow Majority program.

“We have support from the subcommittee chairman — Hal Rogers. So we’re fighting hard to drain the swamp here in D.C.,” he mentioned.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray testified earlier than the subcommittee on April 27 to help the bureau’s 2024 funds request of $11.4 billion to hold out the FBI’s nationwide safety, intelligence, felony regulation enforcement, and felony justice providers missions.

In Thursday’s present, Mr. Cline expressed particular skepticism concerning the FBI request for cash for a brand new headquarters.

In March, the president’s fiscal 2024 funds proposal included a $233 million discretionary appropriation for the Federal Buildings Fund from the Federal Capital Revolving Fund to offer for the primary of 15 years of reimbursement towards the FBI’s new suburban headquarters.

Ultimately, it will quantity to a $3.5 billion allocation.

Over the final decade, Virginia and Maryland officers have been vying to be the federal regulation enforcement company’s new location.

But Republicans have taken difficulty over the FBI’s and Justice Department’s actions towards former President Donald Trump, his 2016 marketing campaign, his former administration, investigations of Catholic church buildings and fogeys protesting faculty boards, executing warrantless searches on U.S. residents, and dispatching raids on pro-life activists.

“When it comes to the FBI headquarters, you know, so many of these employees are working from home now. They’re phoning it in. When it comes to needing a building, essentially the size of the Pentagon, that just doesn’t fly,” Mr. Cline mentioned.

“They want to move out [of DC] and just take over a large swath of land and set up a new empire. But, you know, with the abuses that have been going on at the FBI, there’s a real resistance to that not just in the Freedom Caucus, not just on the Appropriations Committee, but across the entire Republican conference,” he mentioned.

“So you are seeing pushback, and you are seeing a move to actually put the brakes on this new headquarters,” he mentioned.

Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, a fellow Appropriations panel Republican, beforehand informed The Washington Times he thought that the FBI constructing’s funding “is in definite jeopardy.”

Mr. Cline and Mr. Harris are half of the 4 Freedom Caucus members who serve on the Appropriations Committee, a panel recognized for more-establishment lawmakers who don’t ordinarily shake up federal division budgets. The different two Freedom Caucus members on the panel are Reps. Michael Cloud of Texas and Andrew Clyde of Georgia.  

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rep. Pete Aguilar of California lately condemned Mr. McCarthy, California Republican, for appointing such “extreme” GOP members on the committee who will likely be marking up appropriations payments for fiscal 2024.

“Speaker McCarthy has placed some of these extreme members on the Appropriations Committee as part of his deal when he was auctioning off seats and trying to get the speaker’s gavel,” Mr. Aguilar informed reporters at a weekly press convention.

Mr. Cline says that there’s now a push on the panel from GOP management to redirect funds from the FBI to regulation enforcement on the southern border.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the previous second-ranking House Democrat, is considered one of his state’s main voices combating to deliver the bureau there. In an announcement to The Times, Mr. Hoyer known as the Republicans’ probably transfer “blatant hypocrisy.”

“For more than a decade, we’ve had bipartisan agreement that the current FBI Headquarters fails to meet the needs of the FBI’s mission and their security requirements. Republicans’ latest effort to hold this independent law enforcement agency hostage during the Fiscal Year 2024 Appropriations process puts our national security at risk,” Mr. Hoyer mentioned.