Contact: Matt Handverger (Pocan)
| MADISON, WI – Yesterday, Punchbowl News profiled U.S. Representative Mark Pocan (WI-02) and his goals for the House Appropriations’ Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee in their Portal newsletter: |
Pocan’s FSGG Oversight Wish List One of the Trump administration’s biggest headaches next year could be an appropriations subcommittee led by Rep. Mark Pocan(D-Wis.). Pocan is in line to lead the House Appropriations Committee’s Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee if Democrats win the House in November. The panel oversees spending for the Office of Management and Budget, the White House, the Treasury Department and several regulatory agencies. Should he get the gavel, Pocan wants to turn the subcommittee into an oversight machine. “There’s a lot of important jurisdiction that we’re going to certainly make sure that we’re doing our proper oversight and proper budget review,” Pocan said. “Having jurisdiction over the White House budget, the Office of Management and Budget, Treasury, anything DOGE related, gets us a lot of potential places to look at what happened.” Hearing blues. Pocan first and foremost wants to ensure Trump administration officials are publicly testifying before the panel. Throughout this year, Democrats have been frustrated that there were so few budget hearings with agency heads before the committee marked up its FY2027 funding bills. Pocan said every official should have to come before appropriators for proper budget hearings. That includes a long list of officials from the White House, OMB and the Treasury Department. Few officials testified before House appropriators overall, but it was especially true for FSGG. The subcommittee only held a couple of oversight hearings, one with OMB Director Russ Vought and another with the Supreme Court justices. No officials from Treasury, including the IRS, testified to defend their budgets. Some officials, including IRS CEO Frank Bisignano, had private discussions with appropriators, Pocan said, adding that there also needed to be public testimonies. House Republicans attributed the lack of hearings to the lateness of the White House’s budget request.On the attack. If Democrats win the House in November, much of next year will be Pocan versus Vought. With jurisdiction over OMB, the FSGG panel would be a key venue for Democrats’ fight against any attempts by the White House budget office to impound congressionally approved funds. Democratic appropriators have been particularly critical of any impoundment attempts, though Republicans haven’t done much to push back. “That’s certainly something that we’re going to take a good look at,” Pocan said. “We’re going to make sure that OMB quits stealing money that Congress, in a bipartisan way, approves.” Pocan said OMB will also need to justify what it’s doing with the funds the office received from the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill. If Democrats don’t like what they’re seeing from OMB, Pocan said they can always go after OMB’s budget.Pocan would also press the Trump administration on the aftermath of DOGE. When testifying before appropriators earlier this year, Vought said he didn’t plan on writing a final report on DOGE’s actions and results. “It’s pretty obvious that was a major screw up,” Pocan said. – Samantha Handler |
