[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




                    DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN
                  SERVICES, EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES
                         APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2025

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 HEARINGS

                                 BEFORE A

                           SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

                       COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

                         HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                     ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                              SECOND SESSION

                               ____________

             SUBCOMMITTEE ON LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES,
                    EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES

                  ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama, Chairman

  MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho		ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
  ANDY HARRIS, Maryland			STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
  CHARLES J. ``CHUCK'' FLEISCHMANN,	BARBARA LEE, California
    Tennessee				MARK POCAN, Wisconsin
  JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan		LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
  JULIA LETLOW, Louisiana		BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
  ANDREW S. CLYDE, Georgia		JOSH HARDER, California
  JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
  JUAN CISCOMANI, Arizona
  CHUCK EDWARDS, North Carolina


  NOTE: Under committee rules, Mr. Cole, as chairman of the full 
committee, and Ms. DeLauro, as ranking minority member of the full 
committee, are authorized to sit as members of all subcommittees.

               Kathryn Salmon, Emily Goff, James Redstone,
             Laura Stagno, Kirk Boyle, and Laura Hatten Rell
                            Subcommittee Staff

                               ____________
                               

                                  PART 1

                                                                   Page
  Department of Health and Human 
Services................................
                                                                      1
  Fiscal Year 2025 Request for the 
Department of Education.................
                                                                    161
  Fiscal Year 2025 Request for the 
Department of Labor.....................
                                                                    265
  Members' Day..........................
                                                                    349




               [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]



                               ____________
                                 

          Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations

                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

56-664                    WASHINGTON : 2024











                      COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

                      TOM COLE, Oklahoma, Chairman


  HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky,		    ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
     Chair Emeritus			    STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
  KAY GRANGER, Texas,			    MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
     Chair Emeritus			    SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia
  ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama		    BARBARA LEE, California
  MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho		    BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
  JOHN R. CARTER, Texas			    C. A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER,
  KEN CALVERT, California		      Maryland
  MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida		    DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
  STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas		    HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
  CHARLES J. ``CHUCK'' FLEISCHMANN,	    CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
    Tennessee				    MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
  DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio			    DEREK KILMER, Washington
  ANDY HARRIS, Maryland			    MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania
  MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada		    GRACE MENG, New York
  DAVID G. VALADAO, California		    MARK POCAN, Wisconsin
  DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington		    PETE AGUILAR, California
  JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan		    LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
  JOHN H. RUTHERFORD, Florida		    BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
  BEN CLINE, Virginia			    NORMA J. TORRES, California
  GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania	    ED CASE, Hawaii
  MIKE GARCIA, California		    ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
  ASHLEY HINSON, Iowa			    JOSH HARDER, California
  TONY GONZALES, Texas			    JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
  JULIA LETLOW, Louisiana		    DAVID J. TRONE, Maryland
  MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas			    LAUREN UNDERWOOD, Illinois
  MICHAEL GUEST, Mississippi		    SUSIE LEE, Nevada
  RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana		    JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York
  ANDREW S. CLYDE, Georgia
  JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
  JERRY L. CARL, Alabama
  STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
  SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida
  JAKE ELLZEY, Texas
  JUAN CISCOMANI, Arizona
  CHUCK EDWARDS, North Carolina

 
                   Susan Ross, Clerk and Staff Director


                                   (ii)










 
DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, EDUCATION, AND RELATED 
                    AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2025

                              ----------                              

                                         Wednesday, March 20, 2024.

                DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

                                WITNESS

HON. XAVIER BECERRA, SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
    Mr. Aderholt. Well, good morning, and Mr. Secretary, 
welcome to the Labor, Health, and Human Services Subcommittee 
on Appropriations, and it is my honor to have you here for our 
first budget hearing of the year, and we look forward to 
hearing your testimony.
    And I know the discussion this morning will focus a lot on 
the facts, the figures that are related to the funding of 
public health, biomedical research, and services for children 
and families, and certainly those are all important issues.
    But I also want to raise another important topic that I 
think needs to be addressed, and that is the issue of human 
trafficking. Tragically, human trafficking is not limited to a 
few isolated border cities or towns. In my home state of 
Alabama, and particularly north Alabama, parts of my district 
have seen nearly a 200 percent increase in the number of 
unaccompanied migrant children placed with sponsors over the 
last few years. Unfortunately, I have learned that across the 
country only a small percentage of these placements involved an 
objective, professional home study in advance to determine 
whether or not the placement is safe for the minor.
    The shocking truth is that many of these unaccompanied 
children are the victims of trafficking, whether through their 
initial smuggling into the country or through placement with 
corrupt sponsors after their arrival date, due to the lack of 
proper due diligence from the Department of Health and Human 
Services.
    This subcommittee has been made aware of several instances 
of these minors being placed illegally, in dangerous jobs such 
as cleaning floors in meatpacking facilities and working in 
unsanitary and dangerous conditions in factories and on farms.
    Mr. Secretary, it is your department that has the 
responsibility of making sure these children are not exploited, 
that they are not enslaved and that they are placed in safe 
care until they can be heard by a judge.
    I understand from recent news reports that the Department 
of Health and Human Services rushes through background checks 
and other procedures that are designed to vet sponsors in order 
to move children quickly out of shelters and off your 
Department's rolls. It was reported that your agency has lost 
contact with a third of all unaccompanied minors within a month 
of placing them with the sponsors. And I will be asking some 
questions about this this morning, and I will go into further 
detail.
    But we have an unprecedented national security crisis at 
our border, as well. Americans deserve a secure border, and 
these children deserve to be protected from exploitation and 
from trafficking. And I fear the young people in already 
vulnerable situations are being deceived into coming to our 
country illegally with the promise of job security, only to 
find themselves abused and enslaved within these borders. This 
is indefensible, and your Department must do a better job.
    It is disappointing to see that your budget proposal in the 
next fiscal year continues out-of-control government spending, 
which only adds to our already high inflation rates. Inflation 
is a burden to every American, and it hurts those in margins of 
our society even more. The creation of new mandatory programs 
such as your proposal for Vaccines for Adults, seems to be an 
example of more unnecessary spending that will only add to our 
budget deficit.
    This morning I also hope to discuss many of the management 
challenges you face at the helm of the Department and from the 
continuing problems with recouping improper payments in the 
Provider Relief Fund to oversee public health agencies that has 
almost totally lost the public's trust. There are many other 
areas that the Department needs improvement. I hope to learn 
more this morning about what you are doing to take positive 
steps in these very areas.
    Finally, there are also many external threats facing the 
Department. There are threats to cybersecurity, such as we 
recently saw with Choice Health data breach, threats from 
antibody resistance, and the ongoing and growing health 
concerns of chronic disease. And again, I look forward to 
hearing your ideas on how we can combat those issues this 
morning, as well.
    Just as a reminder, the subcommittee and our witness will 
abide by the 5-minute rule, so everyone has a chance to ask 
their questions. But before we begin I do want to yield to the 
ranking member, the ranking member of the committee, the 
gentlelady from Connecticut, for her opening statement.
    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you 
for holding this hearing this morning on the 2025 budget for 
the Department of Health and Human Services. I begin by 
welcoming and thanking my dear friend, former colleague, 
Secretary Becerra, for your public service to our country and 
for testifying today. I want to thank you for your staff being 
here today, and if you would just give me a second I just want 
to say hello to Lisa Molyneux, who used to sit on the staff of 
this committee. So good to see you. Good to see you all here 
today.
    When President Biden and Secretary Becerra took office a 
little more than 3 years ago our nation was in the throes of 
dueling public health and economic crises, making HHS a leader 
in our government's response. Over the last 3 years, thanks to 
the leadership of President Biden and Secretary Becerra, we 
have made great progress in supporting working families, 
promoting public health, and expanding access to health care.
    While it is close to 6 months late, the House will be 
voting later this week on the fiscal year 2024 Labor, Health, 
and Human Services and Education Funding bill. It is not a 
perfect bill but it is a good bill that expands opportunity, 
supports families, grows the middle class, and I encourage my 
colleagues to vote for it, as I will.
    The bill is not public so I cannot discuss specific funding 
levels, but I am especially proud of the investments in child 
care and Head Start programs, which will support working class, 
middle class families, will ensure more kids benefit from high 
quality early education programs.
    Let me be clear. Much more funding is necessary to address 
the childcare crisis in this country and the staffing crisis at 
Head Start, and I know we will talk about that today. But for 
fiscal year 2024, we worked on a bipartisan basis, under tight 
fiscal constraints, to make sure that children and families 
were the number one priority.
    The bill continues to support research at the National 
Institutes of Health to develop cures or treatments for cancer, 
Alzheimer's disease, ALS, mental health, and maternal 
mortality, and it protects funding for so many other areas of 
lifesaving research.
    We are continuing critical investments in our nation's 
public health infrastructure, workforce, data modernization at 
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state and 
local health departments. The bill also makes investments to 
address our nation's most urgent health crises, including 
mental health, substance misuse, material health, gun violence, 
and health disparities.
    Critically, even with the restraints put on us by the debt 
ceiling deal we put the American people first and rejected the 
obscene funding cuts proposed last year by House Republicans. 
And for the last year, I have been firm that Democrats would 
not accept poison pill riders in the Labor, HHS, Education 
bill, including riders proposed by the majority that would 
block access to abortion and reproductive health services and 
block funding for gun violence prevention research.
    As I stated, I am proud where we ended up with this bill. I 
look forward to supporting it on the House floor later this 
week. But having said that, there is still unmet need for 
services funded in this bill, which brings me to the 
President's budget for 2025.
    Mr. Secretary, I am pleased to see how you have prioritized 
the vast needs within your Department's budget for 2025. The 
request for $119,000,000,000 to fund the HHS agencies within 
the Labor H subcommittee will help to lower that cost of 
living, grow the middle class, support working families, and 
protect women's access to reproductive care. The President's 
budget includes an increase of more than $1,000,000,000 for the 
Child Care and Development Block Grant and Head Start. 
Continuing robust support for childcare and Head Start will 
help us to reach the President's goal of every child achieving 
literacy by the third grade.
    As President Biden said to the Congress and to the nation 
at the State of the Union, and I quote, ``To remain the 
strongest economy in the world we need to have the best 
education system in the world,'' end quote. And every educator 
knows that building the foundation for a quality education 
begins well before a child reaches kindergarten.
    Families and providers are facing a childcare crisis. 
Parents are faced with either taking on extra work just to 
afford safe, reliable childcare or forego working altogether, 
accepting lower household income and a lower standard of living 
in order to stay home and take care of their children. We 
cannot force parents to keep making this impossible choice.
    Just this week the New York Times ran an article on the 
skyrocketing labor participation rate among women in Japan, 
thanks, in part, to an expansion of childcare availability. And 
the article says, and I quote, ``These days about 77 percent of 
prime-age women in the United States have a job or are looking 
for one. That number is about 83 percent for Japanese women, up 
from about 74 percent a decade ago, and about 65 percent in the 
early 1990s,'' end quote. Japanese children on nursery center 
waiting lists fell to below 3,000 this year, from 19,000 five 
years ago. Putting childcare infrastructure in place will help 
American parents join and stay in the labor force here, as 
well.
    We must support childcare and early education for our 
nation's children, from all walks of life, so that they can 
reach their potential and become the best learners that they 
can be and so that families, parents and children together, can 
thrive.
    As we begin to see the consequences of the disastrous Dobbs 
decision unfold across America the need to support reproductive 
health and family planning services has never been higher. The 
President's request prioritizes women's health, which includes 
an increase of more than $100,000,000 for Title X family 
planning as well as maternal and child health programs, 
including an increase of $27,000,000 for Healthy Start, which 
reduces maternal mortality, and doubling of funding for the 
Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health, to expand the use 
of patient safety bundles which address the causes of maternal 
mortality and morbidity, and to reduce the number of maternity 
care deserts. These are fundamental pieces of our health care 
safety net, and I will continue to fight to ensure these 
programs have the resources to serve every woman and child in 
need in this country.
    This budget will transform women's health research by 
doubling funding for the National Institutes of Health Office 
of Research on Women's Health, which would fund research on 
maternal mortality, morbidity, menopause, sex difference on 
health outcomes, and a range of health issues that are specific 
to women.
    When I joined the Appropriations Committee in 1993, I was 
proud to work with my dear friend and our former chairwoman, 
Nita Lowey, in securing language in the NIH Revitalization Act 
mandating that women and minorities be included in all NIH-
funded clinical trials, and in a manner sufficient to obtain 
information about both sexes and diverse racial and ethnic 
groups.
    In fiscal year 2021, as chair, I was proud to include a 
line item for the Office of Women's Health Research so that it 
had a dedicated budget and grant-making authority to assure 
there was specific funding for NIH-supported research that 
addresses issues that affect women, promote the inclusion of 
women in clinical research, and develop and expand 
opportunities for women throughout the biomedical research 
career pipeline. And this funding has grown thanks to 
bipartisan support for this office.
    Let me also recognize the President for his executive order 
this week to further expand the White House Initiative on 
Women's Health Research, which is building on our efforts over 
the past few decades to elevate research on women's health to 
equal standing. This initiative is led by First Lady Dr. Jill 
Biden, and I might add by my dear friend, Dr. Carolyn Mazure, 
the former head of the Women's Health Research Program at Yale 
University in New Haven. She is a world-renowned leader in 
women's health research.
    I am pleased to see the Administration take further steps 
to bolster the capacity for public health agencies, including a 
$500,000,000 increase for the Center for Disease Control and 
Prevention, including for the first time $20,000,000 in 
dedicated funding for wastewater surveillance, which is a 
critical method of detecting and tracking the spread of 
communicable disease throughout our communities.
    I am also encouraged to see the strong leap forward in 
mental health support, increases for programs at the Substance 
Abuse Mental Health Services Administration, which operates the 
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and the Mental Health Crisis 
Research Response Partnerships, and the National Institute of 
Mental Health at the NIH.
    I am also delighted to see a robust and desperately needed 
funding level for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid 
Services. CMS is tasked with doing extraordinary, critical work 
in administering the Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP for the 
American people, with a strong, narrowly tight resourcing. I 
will continue to fight to ensure that CMS is able to achieve 
its mission with a level of service and quality care the 
American people need and deserve.
    There are many, many other programs at HHS funded by this 
subcommittee that are critical to protecting the health and the 
well-being of American families, through clinical support, 
public health, social service programs, through groundbreaking 
research that keeps American health systems at the forefront of 
lifesaving technological and scientific breakthroughs, to 
protect and expand access to affordable, high quality health 
care, lower drug and other health care costs burdening American 
families, and to promote early childhood care and education.
    I look forward to securing this funding for HHS and helping 
deliver on the Biden administration's public health goals for 
the American people.
    I thank you and I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Ranking Member. And Mr. Secretary, 
again, we are honored to have you here today and thank you for 
all that you do at the Department. And we would love to hear 
your comments, and of course, everything will be included in 
the record. But we look forward to you addressing us this 
morning and tell us a little bit about what is going on for the 
next fiscal year at Department of Health and Human Services.
    Secretary Becerra. Chairman Aderholt, Ranking Member 
DeLauro, and members of the committee, thank you very much for 
the invitation to talk about the President's 2025 fiscal year 
budget.
    When President Biden took office in January of 2021, if you 
recall, COVID was ravaging our families, our economies, and 
Americans were dying at the rate of two to three 9/11s every 
day. Let me repeat that. Every day in America we were losing 
the same number of Americans that we lost with two to three 9/
11s combined every day.
    In January 2021, the number of Americans with health 
insurance was, like our jobs and economy, down and on the 
canvas. In January 2021, prescription drug prices were 
skyrocketing, with patients and their pocketbooks at the mercy 
of Big Pharma and its profits.
    Today, 3 years later, nearly 700 million shots of COVID 
vaccines have gone into the arms of Americans, and we can now 
manage COVID like the flu. Today, more than 300 million 
Americans, a record number, can go to the doctor or hospital 
and not go bankrupt because they have their own health 
insurance. More than 21 million of those Americans count on the 
Affordable Care Act marketplace for their insurance, another 
record.
    Today, while Big Pharma, while it is still big, but the 
President's new prescription drug law has brought down the 
price of insulin to $35 per month for Americans on Medicare. 
And as we speak, we are negotiating with drug companies to 
lower the prices of even more prescription drugs, even as they 
sue us to stop us.
    The President's budget doubles down to the investments that 
made the comeback of our jobs, our economy, and our health 
possible. It lays out a vision for a nation that invests in its 
most vulnerable, fosters innovation, and protects every 
American's access to the care she needs. This budget doesn't 
just strengthen Medicare, it strengthens it beyond our 
lifetime.
    This budget continues our shift from a health system that 
treats illness to one that sustains wellness. All told, the 
fiscal year 2025 budget proposes $130,700,000,000 in 
discretionary, and $1,700,000,000 in mandatory funding to 
advance our mission and advance in key priorities.
    Let me share some of the highlights. The budget provides 
Medicare-like coverage to low-income individuals in the outlier 
states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable 
Care Act. When that happens another 1.5 million Americans will 
have health care coverage and the peace of mind that comes with 
it.
    This budget builds on the largest investment in behavioral 
health in a generation. It bolsters the 988 Suicide and Crisis 
Lifeline. It gives young people support at home and at school. 
That means boosting our behavioral health workforce with 12,000 
new psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, 
marriage and family therapists, counselors, and peer support 
specialists.
    Across HHS the budget tackles the maternal health crisis by 
improving access to pre- and post-natal care, supporting 
emergency care services, and expanding maternal care in rural 
and underserved communities. We are making childcare more 
affordable for working families and more available where 
families actually live and work.
    This budget would provide increases wages for early 
childhood education workers, and it would fund more than 
750,000 slots for children in Head Start, and it funds 
universal preschool for our Nation's 4 million 4-year-old 
children. And as we move forward, eventually that will include 
our 3-year-olds, as well.
    Our budget grows and strengthens our cybersecurity 
initiatives to ensure patient safety and privacy and to keep 
our hospitals and providers, especially smaller ones and those 
in rural communities, running and secure.
    Finally, this administration has made tremendous strides in 
preparedness capabilities since the pandemic, and we keep 
building. This budget invests in countermeasures to combat 
antimicrobial-resistant drugs, expands our monitoring of supply 
chains, and integrates 200 data sources across Federal, state, 
and local governments to improve information sharing.
    We can't reduce the health and well-being of Americans to 
align on a budget spreadsheet, but we can transform the numbers 
on the balance sheet into investments and services that sustain 
health and promote wellness for all Americans.
    President Biden has presented a forward-leaning budget, and 
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to taking your questions.
    [The information follows:]
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    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, and as I mentioned 
in my opening statements it is alarming to hear about the 
reports of unaccompanied teenagers who enter our country 
illegally through the southern border and end up in the hands 
of human traffickers, and they are often forced to work long 
hours in very dangerous jobs.
    In your previous statements--and correct me if I am wrong--
you have compared your agency's work in releasing minors into 
the U.S. as an assembly line, encouraged your staff to expedite 
the release of children.
    My question is how many unaccompanied minors have actually 
entered the U.S. in the past 3 years?
    Secretary Becerra. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the 
question. And just to clarify, I didn't compare the work that 
we do at HHS to an assembly line. I said that we had to make 
sure that we had operations that would move quickly and 
efficiently and safely to make sure that children were placed, 
because by law we have custody of those unaccompanied children 
only temporarily. We must find a sponsor for them, and if we 
don't act expeditiously, with safety in mind, to find them a 
sponsor then we start to have a backlog of kids at CBP, the 
Customs and Border Protection agencies' headquarters, which do 
not have places for children.
    So what we have to do is make sure we are being efficient, 
always with safety paramount in our minds. And that is what we 
have been doing. We have placed more than, I believe it is more 
than 250,000 kids in the last few years, in various sponsors' 
homes, and will continue to do that process every day.
    But first and foremost, our responsibility, as you are 
aware, is to provide the care and custody of children 
temporarily until we can find a vetted sponsor to place them 
with.
    Mr. Aderholt. So do you have the number of how many 
unaccompanied minors have entered in the last 3 years?
    Secretary Becerra. I can get you the precise number, but I 
believe it is--I said 250,000 but it probably over 300,000 over 
the last three years or so.
    Mr. Aderholt. What is the average time that a minor, when 
they are held in your custody, before they are released to a 
sponsor?
    Secretary Becerra. Mr. Chairman, it depends. We have 
children in different categories, because some children, we 
know, are likely to have a close relative somewhere nearby in 
the U.S. And we are able to place a child who has a primary 
relative a lot sooner and with more safety than we do with a 
child who doesn't have a close relative in the U.S.
    And so it depends. It could be somewhere between 2 to 3 
weeks for a child where we have identified a parent in the U.S. 
who is able to take custody. If there is no close family 
relative it could take several weeks. In fact, we have kids who 
have been with us for far longer than several weeks.
    Mr. Aderholt. What steps have you taken to expedite the 
release of minors from your custody to sponsors other than the 
parents or first-degree relatives?
    Secretary Becerra. We have done a number of things over the 
last few years, now that we have the capacity to do so. For 
example, we have integrated the process of discharge, the 
vetting process for children and the sponsors, consolidated it 
into one operation rather than have more than 300 different 
programs that have kids do it individually. This allows us to 
have much more efficiency and be able to have better sight into 
people who are requesting to sponsor.
    We also have more technology now that we can use, whether 
it is fingerprinting or documentation of the different 
identifiers, where people live, where they work. That 
information is now easier for us to access, and therefore we 
can begin to get a sense if there is a sponsor that will 
qualify to take a child.
    Mr. Aderholt. And what follow-up does the Department do 
once the minors are placed with the sponsor that is actually 
not their parents?
    Secretary Becerra. I appreciate the question, Mr. Chairman. 
If the sponsor is not their parents--and we talk of immediate 
family members because they are not all parents, but more than 
three-quarters of the kids that we place end up with an 
immediate family member. That means a parent, an adult sibling, 
it could be a grandparent.
    But for those that don't have a close family relative we 
will go through a process and in some cases we will do home 
inspections to find out if the site will be a good place for 
this child. So we go far further with non-relatives in doing 
the vetting than we do with close family members.
    Mr. Aderholt. But once they are in there do you do a 
follow-up?
    Secretary Becerra. Okay. So once we release them, as you 
are aware, Congress, you all passed a law that gave us 
jurisdiction over these kids only while they are temporarily in 
our custody. We have used authority over the children. We have 
no custody authority over the kids once we place them with a 
vetted sponsor. And so that child and the sponsor have no 
obligations to stay in touch with us once we have released them 
into their care.
    Mr. Aderholt. So no follow-up then.
    Secretary Becerra. We do follow up voluntarily because we 
think it is good family practice, child welfare practice, for 
us to try to make sure that the handoff goes well. So we do 
post-release services. We will try, for example, to reach the 
child and the sponsor three different times after they have 
been released. So we will try to make a phone call. If they are 
close by we might do a visit. But we try to find out how they 
are doing, to see how the transition is going.
    But they are under no obligation to respond to us, to 
communicate with us. So we don't have the authority to require 
that.
    Mr. Aderholt. So what do you do to ensure that the minors, 
once they are released, that they are not put to work 
illegally?
    Secretary Becerra. Great question because we have no 
jurisdiction. The Department of Labor has jurisdiction over 
labor violations. We have had many discussions with Members of 
Congress on this subject. If you so choose, if Congress so 
chooses to give us more authorities we will implement the 
authorities you give us, with the resources that you give us. 
But at this stage, Mr. Chairman, our authority to go out and 
try to make sure that child, now in the community setting, is 
doing well, is not there, and we don't have the resources, as 
well, to try to do the follow-up. But we do voluntarily. We do 
because we think it is good child welfare practices to try to 
monitor the kid as best we can.
    Mr. Aderholt. This question, maybe you have already 
answered it, but if you want to expand on it just a minute. But 
let me just ask, do you have an idea of how many unaccompanied 
minors that the Department has completely lost contact with 
since you became Secretary?
    Secretary Becerra. So let me make sure, if you dissect the 
question, you are asking a question that the answer will be we 
don't lose children because once we discharge them to a vetted 
sponsor we don't have jurisdiction over them. So we can't track 
them because there is no obligation on their part, or the 
sponsor's part, to stay in touch with us.
    With that handoff--and that is why it is so important for 
us to do a good vetting process, because once we do the 
handoff, Congress did not give us authority to try to monitor 
them.
    So we can't lose a child that we don't have the authority 
to track, and that is why, while they are in our care, they are 
not exploited by companies to work. While they are in our care 
they get the health care that they need. While they are in our 
care we look for the most responsible person we can find, after 
vetting, to release them to as a sponsor.
    Mr. Aderholt. Yeah. So once you all release them then there 
is nothing.
    Secretary Becerra. Congress did not give us authority to 
follow up with them.
    Mr. Aderholt. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Ms. DeLauro.
    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. 
Secretary. Maybe Congress ought to take a look at providing you 
with that authority and with the resources, as well.
    I want to focus in on childcare for a moment, and then 
women's health investments.
    Childcare is essential and it is in crisis. We know what 
happened during the pandemic where the childcare sector was 
really at the verge of collapse, and quite frankly, we cannot 
overlook this and we can't understate the role that childcare 
providers play in our economy. When childcare centers are open, 
parents go to work, and if people do not have a safe, trusted 
childcare they are not going to go to work, and it is as simple 
as that. And we have the providers who are critically important 
to this economy.
    This committee has prioritized childcare for the last 5 
years. We increased the Childcare Development and Block Grant 
funding by $2,700,000,000 while I was chair. In fiscal year 
2024, that will be released in the next couple of days, I am 
proud of the investment we make in childcare. But childcare 
funding is only reaching a fraction of the children and the 
families eligible, and the workforce is struggling.
    Mr. Secretary, thank you for your request of $500,000,000 
for childcare. How does your budget address the larger 
childcare crisis, specifically the staffing shortages and the 
underpaid workforce in the childcare sector?
    Secretary Becerra. Congresswoman, thank you for the 
question, but most importantly thank you for your dedication to 
this issue for the years since I have known you, when we were 
both members in the House, back in the '90s, you have never 
stopped.
    What we do in this budget, the President makes it very 
clear we are going to try to make childcare affordable, so 
parents can really feel confident that they are leaving their 
child in a decent place. But one of the things that we believe 
is necessary to make that happen is to pay people a decent wage 
to be childcare givers. When you can leave a childcare center 
job and go flip burgers and make more money, there is a 
problem. And today childcare workers make less than a preschool 
instructor who has the same type of credentialing, and 
certainly, as I said, you can find fast-food jobs that 
sometimes pay you more than you can get at a childcare center.
    So part of the resources that we are investing would be to 
increase wages, provide better benefits to people, because we 
would like them to know we believe in them as professionals to 
do the work.
    Ms. DeLauro. And early childhood, I was just in a daycare 
center in New Haven last Friday, and they take infants, 6 
weeks. Now those providers need to have advanced degrees. We 
are not just saying anybody goes in and takes care of an 
infant. So they are people with advanced degrees and they are 
not getting wages commensurate with either their experience or 
with their knowledge. So thank you for doing that.
    Women's health. A priority of mine since I came to the 
Congress. Everybody here knows my own history as a survivor, 37 
years now, of ovarian cancer, so this is very, very important 
to me.
    I was pleased that the budget includes investments in 
women's health, that is Title X, NIH Office of Research on 
Women's Health, maternal and child health programs at HRSA, and 
more. ARPA-H's announcement of $100,000,000 for its Women's 
Health Sprint, using funds from previous fiscal years. Also, 
the President signed his executive order on advancing women's 
health research and innovation this past Monday.
    Can you share highlights of the executive order and discuss 
the role HHS will play in implementation? What is the plan at 
the NIH to support the executive order on women's health 
research? How can we work together and ensure that all of the 
relevant stakeholders understand the importance of the order?
    Secretary Becerra. Congresswoman, we are all in on this new 
initiative for women's health research, NIH, ARPA-H, as you 
mentioned. The White House certainly has been driving this ship 
from the very beginning. We believe it is going to make a 
marked difference in how we see research coming out from all 
the different institutions, whether it is NIH or academic 
institutions, where the focus will finally be on some of the 
diseases and conditions that have never gotten the attention 
they deserve. Why is it that everyone, when we heart attack, 
our first image is of a man, when, in fact, heart disease 
happens to hit women harder than it does men. We want to change 
that.
    And so we are going to not only do the basic research that 
the NIH does but ARPA-H, as you are aware--and thank you for 
the funding for ARPA-H--is engaged in a sprint. They are going 
to invest in $100,000,000, but it is a public-private 
investment, because we are going to turn to those innovators in 
the private sector who are having a hard time finding the 
investment capital they need to not only plant their idea to 
launch, and we are going to try to go forward with some of 
these ideas that can actually hit the ground in the next few 
years.
    And so stay tuned because we are going to have some great 
results to show.
    Ms. DeLauro. Okay. Thank you very, very much. And thank you 
for including, again, the Title X money, which I think is very 
important.
    Secretary Becerra. It is crucial, very important for the 
4,000 providers.
    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. And I 
just have a few seconds left, but I will just tell you when I 
first came and I said that with Nita Lowey, we were trying to 
get women and minorities into the clinical trials. We have come 
a distance, but now I think we have an opportunity to really 
have women's health, in the broadest possible sense, on that 
front burner. Thank you for putting it there. I appreciate it.
    Secretary Becerra. Thank you.
    Ms. DeLauro. I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Dr. Harris.
    Mr. Harris. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, 
for being here, and I have got to apologize to the chair and 
ranking member because I had to step out for a few minutes 
during your statements, because a group of Jewish students at 
universities, including actually UCLA and Stanford in your home 
state, have experienced blatant antisemitism on campuses, and I 
am sure you empathize with them.
    But let me bring it closer to home to HHS. Last December, 
the Chief Diversity Officer at a major grantee, like this 
institution in my state gets over $800,000,000 from HHS through 
the NIH, issued a screed where she called Christians a 
privileged group. Now, that may not offend you but that offends 
some people who got that, and it was university-wide. It spread 
through the entire medical campus.
    I am sure you are aware, under Title VII that you cannot 
discriminate based on religion at an employment when you employ 
more than 15 people. Do you think it is appropriate for the 
Department of Health and Human Services to directly fund a 
religious bigot through NIH grants, or an institution that 
hires a religious bigot to one of its highest levels of the 
administration?
    Secretary Becerra. Dr. Harris, first let me begin by saying 
I think I can agree with pretty much everything you have just 
said with regard to the need for us to respect everyone, to not 
discriminate against anyone, especially whether it is race, 
religion, national origin. And so I stand with you in that 
statement.
    And I would say to you that when we look at a grantee, we 
look at those applications and we do thorough research to make 
sure that what we are doing is making an investment that 
taxpayer would be proud of. If there is a particular case that 
you think didn't meet that standard, please let us know, 
because we can only look at the application to figure out what 
that grantee----
    Mr. Harris. So you are unaware of that case?
    Secretary Becerra. I am not aware of a particular case 
where because of our funding someone is being discriminated 
again.
    Mr. Harris. No. I am talking about giving hundreds of 
millions of dollars to an institution that hires a religious 
bigot onto their administrative staff. But anyway, let's move 
on.
    I am so glad that in January you hosted HHS's first-ever 
Food is Medicine Summit, because I have been trying to make 
this point for years. Now, if food is medicine, junk food is 
bad medicine, right? You are the doctor.
    Secretary Becerra. Right.
    Mr. Harris. All right. So if the scientific consensus is 
that, in fact, by restricting junk food and beverage we might 
be able to help prevent diet-related disease in low-income 
populations, do you believe that restricting, for instance, 
SNAP benefits to use on those bad foods is a bad thing, and 
should we pursue a science-based policy to restrict those 
benefits?
    Secretary Becerra. You know, I am listening to what you 
just said, and you almost had me shaking my head in the 
affirmative because I don't see anything you said that I would 
disagree with. Obviously, we don't get to control oftentimes 
what gets included in some of these programs, but I would say 
to you that we are trying to move us towards the fresh foods 
and the things that keep people healthy from the start. And so 
I want to make sure, because Dr. Harris, sometimes we don't 
agree, but I am with you in what you said.
    Mr. Harris. I am on a roll with you. We just agreed on a 
couple of things, I think, in principle.
    Secretary Becerra. By the way, I would love to work with 
you on food is medicine.
    Mr. Harris. And I thank you because I had the NIH director 
in the office. She is willing to do it. The NIH has institutes 
with nutrition. This, I have got to tell you, Mr. Secretary, 
this is a no-brainer. To me it is a no-brainer. But anyway----
    Secretary Becerra. Can I just mention grocers?
    Mr. Harris [continuing]. Let's move on.
    Secretary Becerra. If we can approach the grocers to buy 
into this.
    Mr. Harris. Oh, so Big Pharma is bad but Big Grocers is 
okay. Is that right?
    Secretary Becerra. No. What I am saying is----
    Mr. Harris. No, that is the problem, is that Big Grocers 
oppose it. And you are the Secretary of Health, not the 
Secretary of Groceries.
    Let me go on, and I only have a minute left. The No 
Surprises Act, you asked for another $500,000,000 over 10 years 
to help implement it. Do you intend to use some of the 
additional implementation funding to enforce timely payments to 
providers? You know this is a problem. I know you believe you 
need statutory authority. Will you help us on that?
    Secretary Becerra. Absolutely. I think we are beginning to 
find the sweet spot. We have narrowed down the number of 
ineligible claims. We are trying to work closer with our 
arbitrators so they don't feel overwhelmed. I think you are 
going to see good progress.
    Mr. Harris. Thank you. Last question. Look, women's health 
is important. Does HHS intend to define ``women''? Because I am 
going to ask the NIH Director the same question. When you 
enroll, people who have a Y chromosome and a single X 
chromosome in a study for women, you muddy data, for a wide 
variety of reasons I can get into scientifically. Three 
thousand genes existing that are unopposed on those two 
chromosomes. Are you going to define ``women''?
    Secretary Becerra. So Congressman, we are in the business 
of trying to improve the health of Americans, and we are going 
to put out program proposals that give Americans a chance to 
improve their health. We are going to work with anyone who has 
got a good idea to improve Americans' health.
    Mr. Harris. Thank you very much.
    Secretary Becerra. Thank you.
    Mr. Harris. I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Hoyer.
    Mr. Hoyer. Thank you very much. Mr. Secretary, thank you 
for being with us. Thank you for the job that you are doing for 
those of us who had an opportunity to work with you for well 
over a decade, maybe two decades.
    Secretary Becerra. Twenty-four years. Twenty-four years, 
Congressman.
    Mr. Hoyer. Thirty-four years?
    Secretary Becerra. Twenty-four.
    Mr. Hoyer. Twenty-four years. I knew you hadn't been here 
quite as long as I have been, but you have been here a long 
time. Thank you for your work that you did on the Ways and 
Means Committee, and focused on issues that you are now dealing 
with as Secretary, and thanks for the work you are doing.
    You visited a Judy Center in our state, in Baltimore City, 
with me, and it was a great visit, and you were obviously very 
knowledgeable about the subject. I appreciate that.
    Let me ask you a number of quick questions, if you will. 
Primary care. Obviously in the ACA we focused on primary care. 
Can you tell me about the investments that this budget makes in 
trying to extend primary care to people, in particular 
behavioral health issues as well. It is my understanding the 
budget provides three primary care visits without any cost 
sharing in this legislation that you are proposing.
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, thanks for the question and 
for the work you have done on these issues. I will tell you 
that not only do we try to beef up the services, the immediate 
services that people get, especially in preventative care, but 
we are going a little bit farther. Cancer screening--most folks 
don't think of preventative care as being cancer screening, 
especially if they are young. ``I am too young to get cancer.'' 
But screening is the way we are able to detect potential cancer 
fastest and save lives. So we are going to really make a push 
on that.
    Vaccination, we have seen a drop-off in vaccination. You 
have heard about the measles contraction that has occurred in 
various parts of the country. We had eliminated measles in this 
country, but not as many kids are getting vaccinated. 
Vaccinations protect you against the measles. Measles can be 
very dangerous.
    So we are doing a number of those effort that will do basic 
stuff that not only saves us money but keeps people healthy.
    Mr. Hoyer. Okay. I am going quick because the time is 
brief. The second question, Head Start. As you know I have been 
very involved in Head Start for a very long period of time. I 
am very interested in Head Start. First of all, you mentioned 
755,000 slots. How many children in America are eligible for 
Head Start? Do you know that off the top of your head?
    Secretary Becerra. Oh, it is about three or four times that 
number.
    Mr. Hoyer. So we have slots for less than half of the 
children that would be benefited by Head Start.
    Secretary Becerra. That is correct.
    Mr. Hoyer. That was a program, of course, George H. W. Bush 
and succeeding, Republicans and Democrats have thought that was 
a program that worked well.
    Secretary Becerra. Yes.
    Mr. Hoyer. On the other hand, how are we ensuring that it 
is spread to more rural areas of the country?
    Secretary Becerra. We are making an effort to try to find 
out where communities are under-resourced when it comes to Head 
Start programs, childcare programs, and we are trying to get 
them to apply to get the programs in place. The difficulty is 
oftentimes, as you know Congressman, is in a rural area, in 
lower-income areas, the costs are very expensive, and for 
states to try to sustain and support these centers it is tough, 
especially during COVID, so many went out of business. It is 
tough to maintain the personnel. We are going to try to work 
with states to make sure that not only do we establish centers 
but they can stay in place as a good business.
    Mr. Hoyer. Thank you. I am going to ask another question 
about Head Start, but I applaud you on your efforts to make 
sure that early childhood salaries are such that we can attract 
competent, capable people, particularly for children at the 
early years of life, because that makes such a difference in 
terms of their long-term prospects.
    Let me ask you something. One of the things Donna Shalala 
did, from 1965 to 1995, there was never a Head Start cancelled 
for non-performance. And I don't know what the process has been 
since Donna Shalala did that, but obviously we need to ensure 
that these Head Start centers that work, if they are properly 
operated, how are we making sure that the centers we are 
funding work in a way that is effective for children?
    Secretary Becerra. Perhaps the most important element of 
the President's proposal is to increase wages, because what we 
find is that centers that pay good wages have stable workforce. 
You have a stable workforce, you have committed people, you 
have committed children.
    We find that in many rural communities you have a pretty 
stable workforce because, again, it is small, there are not a 
lot of other options, and people are very committed to that. 
That is where you get some of the best results.
    And by the way, these are small businesses, these childcare 
programs. We need to make it so that they can survive and 
thrive as a business. So as states look to open up more slots 
and establish more centers we have to make sure that those 
centers can staff up with qualified people.
    Mr. Hoyer. Five minutes is such a superficial time to get 
into this, but Lois Frankel, unfortunately, has the flu and 
could not be here today. But she wanted to ask a question that 
she has been asking the Administration about the availability 
of contraception. You know, we wanted contraception to be 
accessible but we now understand insurance companies are 
limiting it to certain contraceptives which are not necessarily 
the woman's choice. Can you speak to that?
    Secretary Becerra. Under the Affordable Care Act, which I 
had the pleasure to work with many of you on to pass, 
individuals have the right to receive preventative care 
services. Contraception services are included among the 
prevention services that the ACA protects. Under Section 1557 
of the ACA we have the enforcement authority to go to those 
insurers who are not providing women with their contraceptive 
coverage at no out-of-pocket cost. And so we have reached out 
to many of these insurers, we have heard the complaints, and we 
are trying to make sure they understand what their obligations 
are under the law.
    Mr. Hoyer. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Moolenaar.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, 
thanks for being here with us today and for your service to our 
country.
    Last July there was a TB outbreak that spanned seven 
states, including Michigan, and infected at least 36 patients. 
There was a CDC public health notice on the outbreak. 
Unfortunately, that TB infection has taken the life of a 
constituent of mine as well as another constituent of a 
Representative in California. What was alarming is that this 
was an outbreak that was the second one in the past 3 years, 
and it had to do with bone graft material from cadavers 
infected with TB.
    Shandra Eisenga was my constituent. When I attended her 
funeral her family asked to make sure that this never happened 
again to anyone else. I am working on bipartisan legislation 
with Congresswoman Dingell. We are working to address this 
situation. But I would just ask you, Mr. Secretary, for your 
full support in helping to make sure this never happens again. 
In this case she was a woman who had back surgery and wanted to 
be able to spend more time with family, and as a result passed 
away from TB infection.
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, those are the heartbreaking 
stories because you and I know it didn't need to happen. We are 
all in. However you think we could be supportive please let us 
know, technical assistance in your legislation or letting you 
know what we are doing to try to help tackle this. We would 
love to be involved.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Thank you. Thank you very much.
    Just to switch topics, last week the Public Health 
Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise, which is the 
Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response chairs, 
released a multiyear budget. It is estimated that 
$2,389,000,000 is needed to supply and replenish the strategic 
national stockpile in 2025, yet the President's current request 
to Congress is only $965,000,000, which is less than last year.
    Could you please explain why the request does not closely 
match the need outlined by ASPR's own professional staff?
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, that is a great question 
because you all just swept up about $4,000,000,000 that we had 
in COVID funding, much of which would have gone to address some 
of these particular issues. We have to submit a budget that 
stays within the frameworks that you all have provided, which 
means we have to downsize our request to meet our budget end 
game. So that means that on something like preparedness we are 
having to make the tough choices about what is the most 
important thing to do.
    But I would tell you, you said our ASPR Administrator for 
Prepared and Response here today, she would let you know 
exactly what we would need, and we could use every additional 
resource you provide us.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Is that going to be a priority to try and 
replenish those supplies, because my understanding is there are 
decades-old products there that it seems like we would want 
updated stocks.
    Secretary Becerra. Yeah, absolutely. Let me give you a 
quick example. We have a lot of material in stock that is 
warehoused that expires, and if we don't take care of it the 
right way, refrigeration or the rest, we lose it even before 
its expiration date. We need to make sure we get funding just 
to be able to keep things frozen, keep things at the right 
temperature, and the budgets that we have to do these things, 
because COVID showed us we need to have real preparation in 
place, we are sometimes making really hard decisions on how to 
make this work.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Okay, thank you. I wanted to talk with you a 
little bit about regional health systems and local health plans 
are under a lot of pressure dealing with challenges, rulemaking 
activities, payment notices. They are also experiencing the 
impact of the recent Change Healthcare cyberattack. One of the 
things that has come to my attention is that often with respect 
to CMS priorities it seems that there is sort of a one-size-
fits-all approach that has negative impacts on the community-
based health service.
    I wonder if you could tell me what steps HHS is taking to 
ensure that its policies account for the diverse needs and 
circumstances of these critical health care providers.
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, we are working closely with 
most of the health care sector today because we know these 
cyberattacks are going to continue, and we are trying to help 
them understand where their vulnerabilities lie. And so in 
December we put out a concept paper for the sector to comment 
on, that really gives them a roadmap of where to go. We are 
going to continue to work with them because this Change 
Healthcare attack that essentially disabled a third, if not 
more of the sector when it came to getting payment and being 
able to share medical records, we can't have that happen. So we 
need everyone to be prepared, whether you are the largest 
hospital or the one-person doctor's office.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
    Secretary Becerra. Thank you.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Pocan.
    Mr. Pocan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. 
Secretary, for being here. I have said this before and I am 
going to say it again. You are the most accessible Secretary in 
this Administration, and I appreciate that. Whenever we have a 
question you, yourself, are often answering it, and we 
appreciate that so thank you for being available.
    Two areas I would like to try to cover in the time. The 
first one is Medicare and Medicare Advantage--I know you are 
shocked I want to talk about Medicare Advantage--and then also 
about Medicaid. On Medicare you have a strong budget proposal 
you have put together for the Administration. You have got 
plans to extend the life of Medicare, and thank you for having 
that in the budget proposal.
    Specifically on Medicare Advantage, though, one of the 
areas I hear the most from constituents who have complaints is 
around Medicare Advantage. Two questions on Medicare Advantage. 
One, we know that the overbilling and overcharging by Medicare 
Advantage companies is something like $140,000,000,000, enough 
to pay for Medigap insurance for every single person on 
Medicare.
    Is there more you can do without congressional authority to 
go after these companies to stop? And the second question on MA 
is you also had some proposed rules that are very strong, I 
think, to look at the industry and make sure. There is a 
particular part I would like you to talk a little bit more 
about, is prior authorization. We know that right now when 
people have to get prior authorization the number of people 
that are told no, it is in the millions. However, when they 
appeal that, over 80 percent are allowed to proceed, which 
means delayed time is often delayed care for people.
    Can you just talk about those two aspects, the 
$140,000,000,000, and anything else you can do on the 
overcharging, and specifically on prior authorization?
    Secretary Becerra. And so, Congressman, because I know some 
folks don't know the difference, but under Medicare you can 
have what is called traditional Medicare, fee-for-service, 
where you can go to any doctor, any hospital you wish because 
you are a Medicare beneficiary. And then there is Medicare 
managed care, which is called Medicare Advantage, which says 
you sign up to be part of a network that that insurance company 
will provide you access to, but only there. You can't go 
outside of network.
    And the Medicare Advantage program, which you are referring 
to, we are trying to extract more transparency in the process, 
because as you said, it looks like we are ending up paying more 
per person, Medicare recipient, who is in the Medicare 
Advantage program than we are for those in equal settings in 
the fee-for-service program.
    So more transparency. We would like to understand better 
how they make their decisions about prior authorization, so we 
are now requiring them to provide us with the background on the 
process they go through for prior authorization. And we are 
trying to make sure that they are working closer with the 
providers, so that the providers understand what is expected of 
them, so that when they bill they will get paid.
    Mr. Pocan. Do you know offhand what that percentage is? I 
know it is over 80 percent, the number when they are appealed 
the number that get turned back, so people actually get the 
care.
    Secretary Becerra. Yeah, I don't want to give you a wrong 
number. I don't have it with me, but I could get you that.
    Mr. Pocan. Okay. But it is over 80 percent if I remember.
    Secretary Becerra. You talk to any beneficiary or any 
Medicare recipient in Medicare Advantage and they will tell you 
it is too high.
    Mr. Pocan. Yeah. Thank you. Also Wisconsin, my state, is 
unfortunately one of 10 states that didn't do Medicaid 
expansion, and one of the things is when the redetermination 
process began last year we had about 268,000 Wisconsinites lost 
coverage, including probably 185,000 people for procedural 
reasons, that meant they were still eligible but not because of 
this redetermination process.
    Is there anything specifically that you are doing to help 
to make sure that those eligible in places like Wisconsin can 
still be enrolled?
    Secretary Becerra. Yeah, we are working as closely as we 
can with the governors and with their Medicaid authorities in 
the state, and Governor Evers has been very good about working 
with us. Oftentimes what happens is that the state's Medicaid 
program doesn't have enough resources and wasn't prepared to 
deal with the big number of folks who had to go through the 
redetermination process.
    But we are working closely. Some states have employed what 
we call the ex parte process, which allows, especially for 
children, for them to be automatically reenrolled, and then 
once the determination is made about eligibility they can make 
decisions. But most of these kids will be eligible, so there is 
no reason to knock them off of coverage when at the end of the 
day they will end up getting Medicaid coverage.
    Mr. Pocan. And is that related to part of the CHIP proposal 
that you have in the budget?
    Secretary Becerra. Our proposal actually would expand 
access to Medicaid to individuals in states like yours that did 
not expand Medicaid, so they will have access. Because we know 
that the folks most impacted by the loss in coverage under 
Medicaid redetermination are people who live in states that did 
not expand Medicaid.
    Mr. Pocan. Thank you. And I will actually yield back the 23 
seconds.
    Mr. Aderholt. Wow. Ms. Letlow.
    Ms. Letlow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member 
DeLauro, and Secretary Becerra, thank you for your testimony 
today and for being here. I represent a largely rural district 
that covers 24 parishes, many of which are considered medical 
deserts. I believe it is crucial that we support programs that 
seek to address the severe health care crisis in rural America, 
which is a passion of mine, and I look forward to partnering 
with you on that endeavor.
    My question. In the coming years, when we look back at 
COVID-19, we will always think of the effects on health as a 
result of delayed routine and preventative care, strained 
health care systems, and the increased mental health care 
crisis, which may be the worst of all for our children, 
especially those from low-income families who suffered 
significant harm during prolonged school closures, as well as 
the economic harm that upended many small businesses and 
communities.
    Mr. Secretary, you oversee the CDC. Correct?
    Secretary Becerra. Yes.
    Ms. Letlow. Do you believe that the CDC has a public trust 
crisis at hand?
    Secretary Becerra. A public trust----
    Ms. Letlow. A public trust crisis.
    Secretary Becerra. No.
    Ms. Letlow. Okay. Well, according to the Department's very 
own survey in 2023, nearly 60 percent of Americans have serious 
lack of faith in the CDC. Mr. Secretary, what is the 
Department's plan to engage with the public to restore faith in 
our public health institutions and the CDC?
    Secretary Becerra. Gosh, what a great question because I 
think you are right, although I think pretty much everybody 
these days--Congress, everyone else--ranks pretty low in the 
eyes of so many Americans, and we do have to regain the faith.
    And what CDC is doing is they are trying to reach out more 
directly with communities by working directly with folks on the 
ground. We typically work with the state and the state health 
care offices because we don't control health care in the 
various states. So CDC partners. But what we are trying to, 
especially as a result of COVID, is go directly into 
communities, because we have a ton of data that can help 
communities understand what is going on where they live, and we 
would like them to be able to have better sight to that.
    Ms. Letlow. That is encouraging to hear. I spoke with the 
NIH Director. She said that she was committed to going into 
rural communities like mine to try to rebuild and restore that 
faith. As you know, this is personal to me. I think back on the 
pandemic and lessons learned and what we would have done 
different. And many of us, rightly so, look to the CDC for 
guidance and advice. And it changed so often, and wherever I go 
in my district, in my communities, they have completely lost 
faith.
    So here is my fear. What happens during the next pandemic, 
and what is your plan, moving forward, to restore that faith 
and prepare for the next pandemic? Because again, this is a 
personal question to me, and I want to make sure it is 
something that you all are looking at. What did you do wrong in 
the past and how can we correct it, course correct it, moving 
forward?
    Secretary Becerra. Yeah. We would like to be able to 
connect the dots better. For example, one of the things that we 
did was we were trying to let communities know about 
availability of vaccines is we used trusted voices. Rather than 
have the CDC Director, the Secretary of HHS try to go out there 
and convince people what was available we used folks that 
people trusted, so whether it was the teacher, the barber, the 
clergyman. Whoever had the faith and trust of community folks, 
we tried to use them to have entree, to provide information.
    We would love to do more. If you are interested I know that 
the CDC Director would be more than willing to make a trip to 
speak to folks in the various communities, especially, by the 
way, rural communities, because it is not often that you get 
the Director of CDC to go into a rural town or a small 
community in rural America. We would like folks to know that we 
are accessible, probably best through their congressperson or 
perhaps through their county health authority. But we will try 
to make sure that we connect the dots, so people have the 
information, and hopefully that builds the trust that the 
information that they are getting is solid.
    Ms. Letlow. Looking back now, is there anything you would 
have done differently?
    Secretary Becerra. I think we would have worked closer with 
the state health authority more directly, quickly. Because 
again, the Federal Government doesn't do health care. We are 
only able to do health care when we are invited by the state 
health authorities to work with them, because states control 
health care. And we were not as well connected as we could be. 
That is a function of our Constitution, which gives states the 
authorities to govern health. And when a crisis comes we have 
national authorities to do much more. But it is tough to build 
that connectivity overnight.
    Ms. Letlow. Well, as someone who oversees the CDC I look 
forward to seeing a comprehensive plan on how you are going to 
address it, so we will be prepared for the next round.
    Secretary Becerra. I will let Director Cohen know that you 
asked quite a few questions about CDC.
    Ms. Letlow. Thank you. Thank you for your time.
    Secretary Becerra. Thank you.
    Ms. Letlow. I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mrs. Watson Coleman.
    Mrs. Watson Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good to 
see you, Secretary. I tell you, I am very encouraged by the 
President's proposed budget here, particularly as it relates to 
women's health care postpartum, pregnancy, disparities, 
children, you know, just all kinds of chock full of really good 
things. And things such as negotiating down the price of 
prescriptions, which is vitally important to me.
    So I am going to ask you three questions. I am going to put 
them out there right now because I don't have a whole bunch of 
time. One of them is about PBMs, one is about long COVID, and 
one is about obesity.
    With regard to PBMs, I want to know what can the Department 
do to--first I want to know what PBMs do to actually create, 
lowering the cost of medication that gets to the patient. I 
really want to understand how they do this, what their role is. 
I want to understand their value added, if there is any. I want 
to understand what kind of oversight and guidance your agencies 
have been able to provide and accountability, because that is a 
very thorny issue with me.
    With regard to obesity, we have finally found a way to lose 
weight and not have to be hyped up on drugs and things of that 
nature, and there are several evidence-based medications that 
are available to deal with obesity. But in addition, we 
recognize that nutrition, access to information is vitally 
important. What are we doing to increase resources to that end, 
both to helping people to understand how to live a healthier 
life, and how to access those evidence-based medications 
through your insurance coverage.
    And then thirdly, I want to know about long COVID, because 
I am continuously asked about it. I have no idea if I have got 
it. I know something, you know. But I know there is 
$130,000,000 or something like that, that the President is 
proposing with regard to long COVID. What are we planning, and 
do we think we have enough? What do we actually need to be 
doing here?
    Thank you. I appreciate. And I am sorry to hit you like 
that but I only got 3 minutes.
    Secretary Becerra. Let me try to address those, 
Congresswoman. I appreciate. They are all excellent questions.
    On pharmacy benefit managers, here is the tough part. They 
are middlemen.
    Mrs. Watson Coleman. I know that.
    Secretary Becerra. They are between the manufacturers of 
the drugs and the purchases of the drugs--hospitals, doctors. 
PBMs essentially determine at what price and to whom they go, 
and if you talk to the community pharmacists they will say PBMs 
are the main reason why so many of them are going out of 
business.
    So we are trying to get to the bottom of this, working with 
you all because I know there is bipartisan legislation to try 
to really address reform on PBMs. Everyone is interested in 
transparency. Most of us would like to see more consumer 
protections, so that consumers don't end up paying higher 
prices for their drugs than necessary. And we want to make sure 
that we prohibit the kind of interference that gets in the way 
of actually getting the drug to the person who needs it, as 
quickly as possible.
    So we are doing what we can to try to give technical 
assistance to those who are coming up with the legislation. We 
are somewhat constrained by law because we don't oversee PBMs. 
They are a creation of the manufacturers and the insurance 
companies. So what we are trying to do is have greater insight 
into what they are doing.
    On obesity, you know, I always talk about a great American 
who said, ``It is easier to build strong children than to 
repair broken men.'' That was Frederick Douglass. He said that 
about 160 years ago. We spend billions of dollars trying to 
repair broken men and women instead of building strong 
children.
    To your point about obesity, obesity is preventable for the 
most part, and we should be doing far more to keep people from 
becoming obese. Fortunately, we are finding new medicines that 
help us treat obesity. The difficulty for some is they can't 
afford them. And in the case of Medicaid, it is up to a state 
whether or not it will provide payment for obesity drugs. In 
the case of Medicare, as you know, Medicare has a statutory 
prohibition from using Medicare funds to pay for weight loss 
drugs. So we have to work with you to see what we can do. But 
clearly the first thing we should do is make sure we are 
preventing people from becoming obese, and secondly, help treat 
people so that whether it is because of diabetes or other 
reasons, we have to deal with these issues.
    Mrs. Watson Coleman. So this is to providers of information 
ought to be considered eligible for coverage, as well.
    Secretary Becerra. Yeah, well, again, we have to work with 
states on Medicaid. We have to work with you to change the law, 
if you would like to, with regard to Medicare. But clearly 
there are medicines out there, but there also programs out 
there that don't rely on medicines, to help you keep from 
gaining weight.
    I didn't get to long COVID. I apologize.
    Mrs. Watson Coleman. Long COVID is my last issue, sir.
    Secretary Becerra. We have the premier research project 
underway at the NIH to address long COVID--what it is, what it 
does, how to treat it.
    Mrs. Watson Coleman. Thank you. I wish that I could stay 
for a second round because I have got so many questions. But 
thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Clyde.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Chairman, for holding this hearing 
today.
    Secretary Becerra, I am deeply disturbed by reports that 
your agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, and 
the subagency, Office of Refugee Resettlement, has mishandled 
the flood of unaccompanied alien minors entering our country 
by, one, not properly vetting the minor, and two, by placing 
them in the hands of unvetted sponsors. Your agency is 
responsible for ensuring that the sponsors of these children 
will care for and support these unaccompanied children through 
the Unaccompanied Alien Children Program, and your agency is 
responsible for ensuring that these children do not become 
victims of trafficking or exploitation. Is that correct?
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, while they are in our 
custody we have an obligation to protect them, and we do. There 
is not a child that you can name that has been exploited or 
used for labor while they are in our custody.
    Mr. Clyde. Okay. But when you send them to a sponsor is it 
not your responsibility also to ensure that the sponsors of 
these children will care for and support these unaccompanied 
children?
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, that is where I turn the 
question back over to you because you, Congress, did not give 
us authority to have jurisdiction over those children once we 
have dispatched them to a vetted sponsor. So the answer no, we 
don't have authority or jurisdiction over that child, and you 
have not given us any authority so we cannot, as you know, by 
law, under the Constitution, I can't use a single dollar that 
you all give me to try to help monitor that child once they 
leave our care because by Constitution, I cannot spend a dollar 
for something you haven't authorized me to do.
    Mr. Clyde. Okay. I think we have a little different 
viewpoint on that right there.
    Secretary Becerra. But Congressman, there is no dispute 
here. We do not have statutory authority to go beyond care for 
that child once they leave our custody, and we have mentioned 
this on many occasions. It makes it difficult for us. We do a 
few things voluntarily, if we have the monies to do them, to 
try to see if we can monitor them once we release them. But 
those children and their sponsors are under no obligation to 
even respond back to us.
    Mr. Clyde. All right. You told Chairman Aderholt that over 
300,000 UACs have been processed since the beginning of the 
Biden administration. Is that correct?
    Secretary Becerra. Yeah, I could get you a precise number 
later.
    Mr. Clyde. I would like that precise number.
    Secretary Becerra. We will get that to you.
    Mr. Clyde. And you also said that you do voluntarily follow 
up on them.
    Secretary Becerra. We try to, yes.
    Mr. Clyde. You try to. Okay. What percentage are you 
actually able to connect with?
    Secretary Becerra. We make a commitment--it is not a 
statutory obligation--but we make a commitment to try to follow 
up with every child that we place with at least three phone 
calls to the child and three phone calls to the sponsor. We say 
three because we know that oftentimes we won't get to anybody 
in the first call or the second call, and so we try at least 
three times with child and sponsor.
    We also then provide them with information on what they can 
do once they are in the care of a sponsor if they need follow-
up services. And certainly for anyone where there is any 
suspicion of abuse or neglect, we try to make sure that they 
are aware that they could call a hotline number where we will 
try to make sure they get assistance.
    Mr. Clyde. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I would like to request 
unanimous consent to enter into the record this article from 
The New York Times, February 25, 2023, says, ``Alone and 
exploited, migrant children work brutal jobs across the United 
States.'' Have you seen that article.
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, my dad left the sixth grade 
to start working because that was what he had to do to feed the 
family, so I am very aware of the fact that a lot of young 
children, especially migrant children, end up working to help 
support a family.
    Mr. Aderholt. Without objection, that will be entered into 
the record.
    [The information follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you. In this article it quotes you from 
2021, saying, ``We don't want to continue to see a child 
languish in our care if there is a responsible sponsor.'' Well, 
let's talk about that responsible sponsor.
    According to reporting from the New York Times, HHS has, 
quote, ``pared back protections that have been in place for 
years, including some background checks and reviews of 
children's files. According to the HHS Office of the Inspector 
General, these policies have resulted in the failure of HHS to 
conduct required safety checks, including even sex offender 
address and name checks.''
    Secretary Becerra, has HHS rolled back any vetting 
requirements of sponsors for UACs?
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, we have not rolled back 
protections that would keep a child safe. We have constantly 
evolved our processes to meet the needs of the kids as we have 
them, but we have not rolled back safety protections which 
would harm any child.
    Mr. Clyde. Okay. Does HHS check to ensure that every 
sponsor of an unaccompanied minor child is not a registered sex 
offender?
    Secretary Becerra. Well, we go through the public 
registries for sex offenders.
    Mr. Clyde. What about the people that live with the 
sponsor?
    Secretary Becerra. So as I mentioned before in answer to a 
previous question, depending on who the sponsor is--if it is 
the parent, for example, we go through the process to verify 
that this is an individual who really is a parent or a close 
family relative. If it is a close family relative then we don't 
do the more extensive background checks. They are still 
extensive, but for someone who is not a family member we will 
go in and make sure people who are in the household, we check 
them as well, because we can't trust that if you are not the 
parent you are going to be as caring for that child. So we do 
far more than what we do with regard to the vetting for a 
primary family member.
    Mr. Clyde. Well, I am happy to hear that. If there is one 
thing I want to make sure is that Health and Human Services is 
not the last link in the chain of child trafficking.
    Secretary Becerra. I appreciate that. And Congressman, we 
would be more than willing to give you a briefing on the 
process that we undertake, because we have the different 
categories of kids, those who have an immediate family member, 
those who have a family member but not so immediate, those who 
we have identified to have someone who is a close friend of the 
family or a trusted name. Sometimes we get them from the family 
back in the home country. And then there are kids that we find 
no one who is close. So those various categories undergo a 
different type of vetting, the sponsors do, because we trust 
that a parent is going to care for that child far more than 
someone who says they are a friend.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Ciscomani.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, 
Secretary Becerra, for being with us today, for coming to 
testify.
    As you know, the U.S. has large disparities in health 
outcomes among U.S. women--we talked a bit about that right 
now--and minority populations, as well, when compared to men. 
And as the father of three girls I never want to see my 
daughters face undue challenges because of their gender or 
their race, and that goes for health care research to job 
opportunities, as well.
    So my question is, despite making more than half of the 
population, women have been historically understudied and 
underrepresented in health research as well as being 
chronically underfunded. And I am concerned many of the 
diseases we are focused on today, such as Alzheimer's and 
cardiovascular disease, impact women to a far greater extent.
    In light of this, how does HHS plan to advance women's 
health research across the agency to prevent, diagnose, and 
also treat health conditions in women?
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman Ciscomani, as a father of 
three daughters as well I feel for you because you have to 
sometimes go without the kisses and hugs that you get from 
those three daughters probably every you are around.
    Mr. Ciscomani. True all the way.
    Secretary Becerra. Yes, and I don't know how old yours are 
but mine are now in their 20s, and they are gems. In fact, one 
of them was in this room for a while. You are a lucky man.
    And what I will tell you is that the President has given us 
an opportunity to really focus in on women's health and women's 
health research. This week the President announced, through an 
executive order, that we are going to double down on doing 
health research.
    Quick thing I learned. Women athletes, for the most part, 
the athletic apparel they wear, whether it is their shoes or 
their jerseys, are simply downsized versions of the men's shoes 
and jerseys. Women's feet are very different from men, their 
arches are different, but yet they have to wear, professional 
athletic activity, shoes that were designed for me. Jerseys, I 
found out that the Spirit, I think is the name of the team, the 
women's soccer team here in Washington, D.C., their jerseys are 
just smaller men's jerseys. It goes to that extent that not 
only have we not done the research on heart disease, which 
attacks women more than me, but we don't even make sure that 
our athletes, our greatest athletes, are getting the kind of 
equipment they need.
    We have to do more. If you are interested in that we would 
love to chat with your team about what we are doing and how we 
could use your support.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Yeah, that was the full nature of the 
question. To begin to tackle this health disparity we need to 
begin with how agencies collect data, I think, as well. I don't 
know if you are aware that only about 5 percent of clinical 
trials even report the number of participants by sex.
    So how much of your budget is going to focus on women's 
health research, specifically?
    Secretary Becerra. Well, the President's budget actually 
increased it by several hundred million, the focus on women's 
research. And we have a particular project, and I hope you are 
familiar with ARPA-H, the new program that's similar to DARPA 
at the Department of Defense. They have what they call a Sprint 
on Women's Health. And what we are doing is we are going to 
reach out to private sector companies, usually small businesses 
that are having difficulty finding capital to move their 
project forward, and we are going to see which one of them--
it's sort of like a Shark Tank--and we are going to invest in 
some of these private sector innovators to see what we can move 
forward. And it is going to be on women's health research.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Well, I do want to take you up on a specific 
briefing on that.
    One more question, while on the topic of women's health 
here. I specifically want to ask about the Department's focus 
on maternal health. A critical component is having safe 
medications and therapeutics that can be used during pregnancy. 
But despite 90 percent of the pregnant women taking 
medications, less than 5 percent of the medications have any 
data on how it impacts women during pregnancy or her baby.
    Like I mentioned and you and I talked about, I am the dad 
of three girls. I am also a dad of three boys, so I have been 
with my wife through six different pregnancies. And to think 
that mothers are likely taking medications that have never been 
studied on pregnant woman, that is concerning.
    So what is the agency doing to begin studying common 
medications and therapeutics taken by pregnant women?
    Secretary Becerra. And the focus of the Women's Health 
Research Initiative is to absolutely make sure that not only 
are women included in general research projects but that there 
are those that are specifically geared towards their health and 
their conditions, so we understand them better. Why is it that 
women seem to get Alzheimer's at a greater rate than men? Those 
are the kinds of questions that these initiatives will actually 
help us answer, and we would love to have you on board, and 
congratulations on the three boys, as well.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Well, I definitely am on board. I want to 
make sure that the disparities here between the percentage of 
the research that we are actually conducting and the percentage 
of women getting these diseases is quite astounding. The 
numbers have been there for a while. This is not any new 
information to any of us. So we need to tackle that issue 
immediately. That would be my suggestion.
    Secretary Becerra. We will reach out to you.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Thank you, sir.
    Secretary Becerra. Thank you.
    Mr. Ciscomani. I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. LaTurner.
    Mr. LaTurner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Secretary, welcome 
today.
    Secretary Becerra. Thank you.
    Mr. LaTurner. We have seen a surge in recent years of youth 
mental health issues, and we are seeing, in particular, that 
children's use of social media is impacting their mental 
health. Many companies are more interested in making money off 
kids than protecting them, sadly. The data is alarming. For 
example, the rate of eating disorders has doubled amongst 
adolescent girls, and children's hospitals are seeing a surge 
of children showing up with serious mental health issues, 
including a 67 percent increase in referrals at Children's 
Mercy in my own state.
    The NIH has begun working on a study to better understand 
the impacts of social media on mental health. Are there any 
current findings that you can share with us today?
    Secretary Becerra. I would like to tell you that we have 
had some definitive research done and we can give the findings, 
but I am not aware of it. I can make sure we check with NIH, 
and if you would like us to follow up with we can. And not just 
NIH but there are a number of agencies, a number of private 
sector and academic research institutions are trying to look 
into this, as well.
    Mr. LaTurner. Well, that is what I wanted to talk about. 
What is HHS doing to prevent research and intervene early when 
a child is struggling with their mental health, especially in 
the case of serious mental illness like eating disorders?
    Secretary Becerra. I can try to make sure we respond back 
with the different projects that are underway, research 
projects underway at NIH, and we can certainly make sure that 
our agency, our SAMHSA agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental 
Health Services Administration, also follows up with you 
because they are the ones that are doing the more direct 
services to communities today. So for example, when you all 
passed a bipartisan bill on gun violence and provided monies 
for mental health services, SAMHSA was the agency that was 
charged with trying to dispense those dollars best.
    Mr. LaTurner. I would love some of those follow-up answers. 
That would be helpful.
    The crisis of antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, threatens 
modern medicine, and is currently a leading cause of death 
worldwide. I am encouraged that the Administration recognizes 
AMR as a serious and urgent threat to patients and public 
health by including a proposal that aligns with the bipartisan, 
bicameral PASTEUR Act, which I am proud to co-lead in the 
House, to encourage the development of innovative antimicrobial 
drugs and ensure we are armed with an adequate supply of 
properly stewarded antimicrobial products against highly 
dangerous, drug resistant microbes.
    Can you describe your budget proposal on antimicrobial 
subscriptions in more detail, including an expected timeline 
for implementation?
    Secretary Becerra. Yeah. Congressman, we don't know each 
other well but I would love to give you a hug because there 
just aren't enough Members of Congress who want to touch this 
issue of antimicrobial resistance. And in so many ways, as you 
know, people are dying at rates that sometimes surpass COVID. 
And we have an obligation to make sure people are safe, and we 
don't lose quality medicines because they are not used properly 
or they are overused, and we don't prepare for the next 
bacteria that may come at us really hard.
    So what we are trying to do is, very similar to what you 
are proposing in the PASTEUR Act, is figure out a way to make 
it worthwhile for manufacturers of these medicine to stay in 
the game. Because many of these medicines, as you know, don't 
have a lot of profit behind them, and so it is tough for a 
business to stay afloat trying to sell drugs that you can't 
sell for very much money and often aren't needed until there is 
a crisis.
    So the subscription model, which says everyone will buy in 
and start to try to do the manufacturing, give us an industry 
that could be available, they can do that because we will have 
a subscription model where everyone pays in early so there is 
money to be had so you don't have to wait until there is a 
crisis to know that you will get paid for your good work in 
manufacturing a particular medicine.
    Mr. LaTurner. I appreciate that. Of the over 100 million 
Medicaid enrollees, approximately 40 million are able-bodied 
adults. Over the past several years your administration has 
revoked multiple waivers, allowing states to test work 
requirements for these able-bodied adults on Medicaid. At the 
same time, we have seen data from state Medicaid agencies 
indicating that many of these same able-bodied adults are not 
working at all. We have had work requirements as a core 
principle for participants in the TANF program for decades now.
    What is your opposition to allowing states to experiment 
with policies to move these adults from welfare to work?
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, let me make sure I am 
clear, because you mentioned both TANF, the welfare program, 
and Medicaid, which is a health care program. So tell me where 
you want me to focus.
    Mr. LaTurner. Well, focus specifically on your revoking 
multiple waivers, allowing the states to test work 
requirements.
    Secretary Becerra. So this is in regard to Medicaid, which 
offers waivers to states----
    Mr. LaTurner. The 1,115 waivers.
    Secretary Becerra. 1,115 waivers are part of the Medicaid 
program within the CMS agency. The waivers are provided to 
states--and to make sure it is clear--Medicaid has certain laws 
that Congress has passed on how we implement Medicaid, how we 
get resources to states to implement the program. That is 
principally for lower-income Americans to have access to 
doctors and hospitals. Medicaid is a matching program----
    Mr. LaTurner. I am running out of time. Get to the core of 
my question, which is my observation that there seems to be an 
opposition to allowing states to test things like work 
requirements.
    Secretary Becerra. Sure. The Medicaid program's focus is on 
health care, making sure health care is improved. If you look 
throughout the Medicaid statute you won't find a single word 
that says ``work requirements.'' And what we do is we make sure 
that any proposal by a state, whether it is direct Medicaid 
servicing or through a waiver of those servicing requirements, 
that the health of that individual who will be impacted by the 
waiver improves.
    And so that is what we look at. We don't look at any other 
thing. A state may want to try to do other things, which is 
fine, but our purpose is to make sure, if you are going to ask 
for Medicaid dollars, that when it is applied to that 
individual in your state it improves the health of that 
individual. And so that is what we look at, and if certain 
waivers are retracted it is because we are not seeing results, 
and taxpayers have a right to demand results when states spend 
taxpayer dollars.
    Mr. LaTurner. I will tell you what is good for people's 
health also is understanding the dignity and pride that comes 
with work, and not allowing states to pursue this, and to have 
the opportunity to observe what works in one state and what may 
not work so that we can have best practices is not a good 
thing.
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman----
    Mr. LaTurner. And I hope that you will rethink your 
position on this.
    Secretary Becerra. I just want to make sure that we are 
clear. We don't stop any state from----
    Mr. LaTurner. My question was very clear. Your answer 
wasn't so much.
    Mr. Aderholt. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. LaTurner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Edwards.
    Mr. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. 
Secretary. I appreciate you being with us this afternoon.
    Secretary Becerra. Congratulations on your assignment to 
the committee.
    Mr. Edwards. Well, thank you. I am honored to be among this 
group of Who's Who Congress men and women up here.
    In this year's State of the Union address, President Biden 
said that he would be directing his Cabinet to review the 
Federal classification of marijuana. Have you had any 
conversation with the President to this date on the 
classification of marijuana?
    Secretary Becerra. The only communication that I have had 
with the President directly on this is when he issued his 
directive to us to evaluate cannabis and report back to the 
Drug Enforcement Agency on this.
    Mr. Edwards. And so the news reports that I have been able 
to look at indicate that you have already taken a position that 
marijuana should be, I am going to say decriminalized.
    Secretary Becerra. Descheduled.
    Mr. Edwards. Yeah, descheduled from a Class I to a Class 
III.
    Secretary Becerra. It can still be a criminal violation, 
depending on its use.
    Mr. Edwards. But wouldn't you agree that between that 
declassification and President Biden's statement--because I 
believe that he did go on to say, in his State of the Union 
address, that it shouldn't be--and I am not quoting him 
exactly--it shouldn't be such a crime to possess marijuana. But 
between those two things wouldn't you think that that would 
make marijuana more available to the citizens of our country, 
particularly youth?
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, I don't know about your 
state but in my state of California, and probably more than 
half of the states of the nation, marijuana is already somewhat 
available, whether for medical purposes or even for 
recreational purposes. What we are talking about here is the 
Federal treatment of marijuana, of cannabis, because Federal 
law treats cannabis differently than most states. And what the 
President asked us to do is examine where we are with cannabis 
today at the Federal level. And as you are aware, right now 
cannabis is listed, it is scheduled as a--I am going to get it 
wrong, V or I----
    Mr. Harris. One.
    Secretary Becerra. Yes. Thank you, Dr. Harris--a Schedule 
I, which means the most potent and dangerous type of narcotic.
    Mr. Edwards. So I don't mean to cut you off but I am going 
to run out of time here in just a minute. I have got a couple 
more questions that I would like to get to. And the whole issue 
of the states implementing a law contrary to Federal law is a 
whole other discussion maybe we can have at another time.
    Secretary Becerra. Okay.
    Mr. Edwards. I find it very conflicting to look in your 
report that you provided to this Committee, and I will read a 
sentence or so. ``The budget also addresses the sobering impact 
of the behavioral health crisis on our nation's youth. National 
surveys of youth have shown significant increases in certain 
mental health symptoms, including depressive symptoms and 
suicidal ideation.''
    And yet much of the research that I see indicates that the 
use of marijuana creates these tendencies. Are you aware that 
according to the CDC, people who use marijuana are more likely 
to develop temporary psychosis, hallucinations, and paranoia, 
and long-lasting metal disorders, including schizophrenia, and 
the association between marijuana and schizophrenia is stronger 
in people who start using marijuana at an earlier age and use 
marijuana more frequently.
    Are you aware of that report, or a report similar to that?
    Secretary Becerra. I am aware of a number of reports and 
studies. When I was the Attorney General in California we dealt 
with the issue of marijuana. And as the Secretary I have worked 
closely with the Food and Drug Administration, which is the 
agency charged with making a determination about the 
scheduling, well, recommending scheduling of marijuana.
    Mr. Edwards. And are you aware of a 2021 NIH study that 
suggests a link between cannabis use and higher levels of 
suicidal ideation, plans, and attempts?
    Secretary Becerra. The various studies you are probably 
referring to are the types of studies and reports that the Food 
and Drug Administration would have taken into consideration, as 
it did in its assessment of cannabis.
    Mr. Edwards. Thank you. So you are aware of those reports 
out there. I have a real concern that in light of the mental 
health issues that we have today, that our Federal Government, 
the Department of Health and Human Services, and President 
Biden are considering, descheduling a substance that is far 
more potent today than it was when any of you all ever used the 
drug, that will contribute more to depression, suicidal 
tendencies, schizophrenia, and those types of things.
    And so I would urge you, and I will say that I will 
continue to resist any effort to make these types of substances 
more available to our youth today, where in your report you go 
on to say we need more money to treat. That seems very 
contradictive to me.
    So with that, thank you.
    Secretary Becerra. I appreciate your comments.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Secretary, we would like to do a second 
round if you are available.
    Secretary Becerra. At your bidding, sir.
    Mr. Aderholt. All right. I appreciate that very much, and I 
am going to yield my time to Dr. Harris, and then we will go to 
Ms. DeLauro.
    Mr. Harris. Thank you very much, and I will be brief. It is 
approaching the noon hour. Let me follow up on what Mr. Edwards 
said, because I think he is absolutely right. You know, in 
front of this subcommittee Dr. Volkow, who kind of works for 
you, has come and said it is just a bad idea. I mean, 
recreational marijuana is just a bad idea, and brings up the 
fact about brain development in youth and things that Mr. 
Edwards brought up. So I have a concern when the HHS, kind of 
with both arms, hugs this idea of reducing the scheduling.
    I also have the concern about the international treaties, 
the 1961 U.N. Single Convention, of course, the 1988 Convention 
Against Illicit Trafficking of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic 
Substances, which some people, I know there is disagreement. 
Some people think we would be violating our international 
treaty agreement.
    Now, given that this Administration is all in for a treaty 
agreement with the World Health Organization on pandemic things 
that would give up our rights as states in a free nation, I am 
a little surprised that they want to have this beef with the 
World Health Organization on the Single Conventions. But I will 
leave it at that.
    I have a disagreement with the Department's proposed rule 
change governing the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, 
the TANF program, that eliminates pregnancy resource centers, 
and it specifically says that they don't fulfill the three 
purposes. That can only be written by someone who hasn't been 
in a pregnancy resource center. They fulfill all three purposes 
that we require for funding. Eighty percent of Americans agree 
with the idea that you should have a resource for women who 
feel they might be in need, and the excuse that it only, quote, 
``help women only after they become pregnant,'' again is just 
not true with regard to anyone who has visited a pregnancy 
resource center. And I will follow up with some QFRs on that.
    Finally, and to end, I am so glad that you agree--we are 
going to agree on something else--women athletes are actually 
different than men athletes. You actually said that their foot 
structure is different between a woman and a man. Well, that is 
interesting because my daughter was a six-time all-American 
track and field person, and I am convinced that if she had to 
compete against someone, a man who thinks they are a woman now, 
whose foot structure is different, that puts her at a 
competitive disadvantage. I don't care what kind of shoes she 
wears. I am, she is at a structural, competitive disadvantage 
because women athletes are different than men athletes. Period, 
full stop.
    So are you investigating that, as well, in addition to what 
shoes an athlete might wear, like whether or not it is actually 
fair to let men compete with women in women's sports, to undo 
all the things we've done to get women competitive, to get the 
ability to compete in college sports, to get athletic 
scholarships. Are you going to help us not throw that all under 
the bus, or is it just going to be about sneakers?
    It is a rhetorical question. You don't have to answer. I 
yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. The gentleman yields back. Ms. DeLauro.
    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you. Mr. Secretary, a couple of 
questions. One on public health. And public health, as you 
know, is just not about infectious diseases. You have got food-
borne outbreaks, cancer prevention, safe drinking water.
    The committee in the past has made significant investments 
in that public health infrastructure, public health data 
modernization, public health workforce. And sometimes it is not 
understood that 80 percent of the CDC's budget goes to our 
public health partners. That is the state and local health 
departments, and these departments rely on the funding for 
their activities and that impact all of our communities, 
because they need to be response ready when something happens.
    So we need to not backslide on our public health 
investments. We need to understand what is going on in our 
communities, and it is the public health departments that are 
on the front line.
    As you travel the country, what do you hear from state and 
local departments? How do you see the Federal investments 
impacting the role that they play at the local level?
    Secretary Becerra. Congresswoman, one of the things I hear 
all the time is that the coordination that we saw when we were 
crisis mode with COVID really brought states and the Federal 
Government together to try to address the needs of our people. 
But that absent that type of crisis or emergency, we don't work 
as well together as we should, and the coordination is 
something that CDC is trying to maintain. So whether it is data 
sharing--and I don't know if folks understand this but except 
for the public health emergency, when it came to having data on 
COVID, who was getting sick, who was dying, we didn't have the 
authority to have that information. Usually we have to request 
it, but because of the public health emergency we had emergency 
authority to say, ``You must provide us with this data.''
    We would love to be able to coordinate better with our 
state and local health care partners, and the more we do, the 
better off Americans will be.
    Ms. DeLauro. Yeah. Thank you. And this committee, like I 
said, has made significant investments in the public health 
infrastructure, which is what you are talking about. We know 
during the pandemic, public health infrastructure almost 
collapsed on us. And that is why I am very concerned that we do 
not backslide on that public health investment. So I appreciate 
the efforts and look forward to working with you on that, and 
to make it more known, particularly to members, the role that 
their state and local health departments have with the CDC. 
Eighty percent of the budget goes there. So thank you.
    Last question is on behavioral health, and I am so pleased 
to see your focus in that area. I have seen the positive impact 
of substance use in our--we have peer review counselors now, 
crisis response teams around the country, one in my own 
hometown of New Haven, Connecticut.
    The other area is I am a long-time supporter of the 
National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative, that looks at 
mental health care for kids. I was able to visit one of the 
programs in my district and impressed by their positive impact.
    This subcommittee has made behavioral health, I might add, 
a major priority, including the doubling for SAMHSA over the 
last 8 years from $3,800,000,000 to roughly $7,600,000,000.
    And my question, Mr. Secretary, behavioral health is 
complex. It requires serving people over the course of their 
lifetimes. How does the budget request proposed address the 
variety of behavioral health needs of our country?
    Secretary Becerra. Excellent question, Congresswoman, and I 
would tell you that one of the things we are doing is trying to 
go outside the box. So we are trying to make sure that primary 
care physicians, family care doctors actually get training in 
behavioral health so that while they may not become specialists 
in behavioral health--psychiatrists, psychologists--they have 
some training so they can identify issues faster.
    Because right now what we see is you go in to see your 
family care doc, and your doc says, ``Oh, I can see that Johnny 
has got some issues, but I am going to refer you to the 
specialist,'' and then you have to wait 2 more months before 
you see the specialist, as opposed to having a doctor who says, 
``I recognize this. I am not a specialist but I recognize it. 
So here is what we are going to do.'' And we want folks to be 
trained as primary care, family docs, to be able to quickly 
address behavioral health, so we don't treat it like a 
stepchild to physical health.
    We are also trying to make sure that we have more graduate 
medical education slots, the residency programs, that are in 
behavioral health, so we drive more doctors and nurses into the 
behavioral health sciences. So this way we beef up the 
workforce because we are so desperate need of more people, 
especially in rural and underserved communities.
    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you very much. I think the Department of 
Education, we had mental health counselors in schools. That is 
first line, as well, to look at that and put resources there.
    Thank you so much.
    Secretary Becerra. Thank you.
    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Aderholt. Ms. Letlow.
    Ms. Letlow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Secretary, I 
know you have addressed some of these concerns but I want to 
circle back to it.
    According to your own Department's Office of Inspector 
General's OIG report from last month--I have a copy here--in 
February, the Office of Refugee Resettlement often transferred 
unaccompanied children to adult sponsors in the U.S. without 
thorough screening. Additionally, the report alleged that HHS 
neglected to conduct timely safety assessments after the 
children were released. The findings revealed that 16 percent 
of child case files lacked documentation of sponsor background 
checks by ORR.
    This is extremely disappointing. As a mom, myself, it is my 
deep concern that many of these children fall victim to child 
labor and sex trafficking.
    Mr. Secretary, I am a mom. You are a father, correct?
    Secretary Becerra. Yes.
    Ms. Letlow. Do you share my concerns in this?
    Secretary Becerra. Congresswoman, not just for my kids but 
any child. We owe them a great deal more attention, and the 
services that we would expect for our own children. So I 
absolutely agree that we have to do as much as possible.
    Ms. Letlow. Okay. You mentioned to my colleague, 
Congressman Clyde, that they do background checks on all adults 
and sponsor households before releasing the children. I believe 
the truth is that you all only started doing that after this 
OIG report came out this year, exposing them for not properly 
screening kids. Is that correct?
    Secretary Becerra. No. No, that is not correct.
    Ms. Letlow. Okay.
    Secretary Becerra. We have done background checks from the 
very beginning. Now what I will tell you, and because you 
referenced an OIG report, that was from 2021, and it covered 
about a 2-month period, which was when we were seeing the 
height of the influx of children. And because, as I mentioned 
before, our obligation is to place them in the care of a 
sponsor because it is always better to be in a family setting 
than in a congregate care setting for any child, especially 
very young children, we have an obligation, by law, to try to 
place them. So we were going through the process of trying to 
make sure we did it efficiently but safely.
    So what we are now experiencing is a very different 
situation, and what we have learned over the course of these 
last few years is how to make sure we do it as good as 
possible. So that is why we now have different categories of 
kids and how we treat them in trying to vet their sponsors.
    So we continue to learn. We appreciate the work that the 
OIG did to give us recommendations. In almost every case we 
have either completed or are on the way to completing many of 
the recommendations, because at that point we were flying the 
plane while it was still in repair. And what are now doing is 
making the best use of everything we have learned, to make sure 
best practices are being applied for these children.
    Ms. Letlow. Okay. Well, that is a nice segue to my next 
question, because it is my understanding that we have shattered 
the record for migrants crossing the border illegally, with 
over 2 million just last year. So would it be accurate to say 
that HHS and ORR are overwhelmed with processing and vetting 
placements for these children?
    Secretary Becerra. No. Today, no.
    Ms. Letlow. Okay. I beg to differ. It has been reported 
that ORR has lost contact with over 85,000 children. That seems 
that ORR is overwhelmed, or that they are not doing their job.
    I have a simple solution to solve this crisis, and that is 
for the Administration to secure the border and enforce our 
immigration laws.
    With that I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Hoyer.
    Mr. Hoyer. The problem with simple solutions is they are 
usually not correct, although I share the view that we need to 
slow, very, very substantially, those who come in, and we need 
to fix the immigration system, and it is very sad that a 
bipartisan proposal that was put forward was tanked by the 
person who wants to be President of the United States, not the 
incumbent. It is a sad thing.
    The other observation, Mr. Edwards, I would make to you, I 
don't do this for applause or detraction. I have never smoked, 
I have never had marijuana, I have never had any other drug 
other than prescription drugs, and I don't drink alcohol. I 
represent the tobacco-growing area of Maryland, however, 
southern Maryland, which does not grow tobacco any longer. Took 
the buyout.
    But I think that cigarette smoking is far more lethal and 
costly to the country and to human beings than is marijuana. 
Our state has legalized marijuana by a vote of the people. I 
don't know how many states, but you referred to half the 
states, somewhere in that neighborhood.
    So I think it is somewhat ironic that we are focused on a 
less lethal drug, according to the medical community, 
marijuana, which I have never used, don't intend to use, and 
urge my daughters not to use, and cigarettes, which I also urge 
them not to use. Unfortunately, two of them do. I make that 
observation because I think that it is clear, for whatever 
reasons, the American people, in every state in which it has 
been voted, including Mississippi but not North Carolina--have 
voted pretty handily to authorize that substance.
    And as a result, where we find ourselves is in a 
contradictory situation between the states' legalization and 
the Federal Government. Particularly, there is a bill that has 
been pending, and I have been strongly for it, not because I am 
for selling marijuana per se--I am not necessarily for making 
it illegal because people are going to use it, do use it, and 
then get incarcerated for what is being used generally by the 
public, and apparently approved generally by the public that 
has voted on it.
    But we have a banking system that does not accept at the 
Federal level dollars that are being legally earned in states 
that have legalized the sale, but they don't have any place to 
deposit. I think that is a dangerous situation that is leading 
a lot of cash hanging around people's businesses that is 
subject to being stolen and their places broken into. I say 
that as an aside, just because I think it is somewhat 
contradictory and confusing for the public, and harmful for the 
public, as well.
    Let me go back to Head Start. I am very interested in Head 
Start. You went to the Judy Center. Judy, my wife, headed up 
Head Start. About 20 percent of the Head Starts in America 
operate through their local Department of Education, 80 percent 
of them operate through their local Social Service Agency. I 
think they all ought to be in Education--that is my own view--
because kids are ready to learn at 3 years old. They were ready 
to learn at 2. They were ready to learn at 1. But we had a 
concept in 1965, when Head Start was established, that children 
being exposed to education before the age of 5 or 6 would have 
too much pressure on them. Hillary Clinton and scientists and 
educators have all said that is not true.
    But I am also concerned, in looking at this I think the 
figure is either $19,000,000,000 increase for the Childcare 
Development Block Grant and $12,000,000,000, increased to just 
over $12,000,000,000 in the Head Start program.
    Mr. Secretary, this is not a question so much as an 
observation and an encouragement. That is a lot of money we are 
spending. I think we are spending it in the right place, but I 
think there are some places where it is not being used very 
efficiently and effectively, to the end that those children--
you quoted Frederick Douglass, ``Easier to build strong 
children than it is to repair broken men.'' That is absolutely 
right. And we have to make sure that $19,000,000,000, that is 
$20,000,000,000 is being spent to the benefit of those 
children.
    And I will say, and it is going to be controversial, and I 
know some people are going to get on my back about it, but 
there are some programs that are not being carried out to the 
benefit of children as they should be, and we need to look at 
that because that is a lot of cash we are putting on the table. 
It is necessary to do, and it is critically important for those 
children that they are getting the best that we can give them, 
and getting the best results for them as well as for the 
taxpayers' expenditure of that money.
    That is not a question, but it is--as I say, I was amazed 
when Donna Shalala told me, she was sitting where you are 
sitting now, in 1986, that we had been from '65 to '95 without 
ever cancelling a program for non-performance. I can tell you, 
because of Judy's experience nationally, there were some 
programs that didn't work for children, and we need to make 
sure they do.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Clyde.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you. In follow-up to my previous questions 
I want to talk about the issue of properly vetting the minor 
now. Because not only do we need to protect the unaccompanied 
alien minor from exploitation but we also need to protect 
American citizens from any potentially dangerous individuals 
who are entering the United States through the Unaccompanied 
Alien Children Program.
    Mr. Secretary, are you aware that HHS has processed minors 
with criminal records into our country?
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, we are obligated by law to 
make sure that when the Department of Homeland Security has a 
child who is unaccompanied who has crossed the border that they 
are transferred to our care. And if there is a child who may 
present security issues we take measures to provide for that. 
But we are obligated, under law, to take a minor who is 
unaccompanied from the Department of Homeland Security.
    Mr. Clyde. I get that, but do you do a background check or 
criminal background check?
    Secretary Becerra. We work with the Department of Homeland 
Security both vet that particular individual, the minor, and 
when it comes to the process of trying to place the minor we 
also go through a vetting process for the potential sponsor.
    Mr. Clyde. Okay. In July 2022, Kayla Hamilton, an American, 
was sexually assaulted and murdered in Maryland by a 16-year-
old alien, MS-13 gang member from El Salvador, who was allowed 
to enter the U.S. through the Unaccompanied Alien Program. This 
16-year-old illegal alien was apprehended by Border Patrol in 
Texas on March 23, 2022, and then referred to the Office of 
Refugee Resettlement. According to the alien, members of his 
family paid $4,000 to a guide who smuggled him to the southwest 
border. On May 3, 2022, ORR place the alien with a sponsor, his 
alleged first cousin in Maryland.
    As revealed in his case file, the alien had been arrested 
by police in El Salvador on January 21, 2020, for illicit 
association with the MS-13 gang. The illegal alien's case file 
also includes information from law enforcement officials dated 
August of 2022, noting that the alien had tattoos affiliated 
with gang activity. There was no indication in the case file 
that either DHS or HHS provided that noted gang-affiliated 
tattoos on his body at the time of his apprehension, or 
placement into the United States.
    So Secretary Becerra, that is really concerning to me. Here 
you have illegal alien minors with gang tattoos being brought 
into our country.
    The Judiciary Committee sent you a letter a year ago, 
February 27, 2023--I am sure you have read it--and in this 
letter it asks for a detailed description of, and related 
documents regarding how HHS established and verified, if at 
all, the familial relationship between the women he identified 
as his aunt and the case materials referring or relating to the 
vetting of the sponsor, the woman he identified as his aunt.
    You have not responded to this letter with those questions. 
Can I get your commitment right now to respond to this letter, 
to the Judiciary Committee, concerning this perpetrator, this 
monster that killed this young lady, that brutally raped and 
murdered her?
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, I was not aware of that 
particular letter not having been responded to. Let me get back 
to you. I commit to you to work with you to make sure that we 
can try to respond to your question.
    Mr. Clyde. Well, thank you. As someone from whose community 
another illegal alien murdered a very young lady, a nursing 
student, Laken Riley, this is greatly concerning to me. And I 
think it is paramount that HHS vet not only the sponsor but vet 
the child or vet the UAC coming into our country, especially 
when the person has, on their body, visual evidence that this 
is a gang member and a violent person. We cannot allow American 
citizens to become victims of illegal aliens.
    Secretary Becerra. And Congressman, once again, we can go 
through the process with you if you would like a briefing on 
the vetting that we do of the children along with the vetting 
that the Department of Homeland Security does.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Ciscomani.
    Mr. Ciscomani. On that note real quick I am also interested 
in a briefing there on the vetting, both the minor and for the 
sponsor, as well, if you can add me to that.
    Secretary Becerra. Okay.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Secretary Becerra, I appreciate you 
highlighting in your testimony the need to advance technology 
and continue to digitally integrate providers into the rest of 
the health care system. But I have got to question your 
Department's seriousness when the administration, your 
administration, took weeks to inform the public about a 
cyberattack on February 21st, that saw millions of dollars in 
lost and delayed revenue for providers in my district. This was 
a big, big deal for specifically one provider in my district. 
This delay is obviously unacceptable.
    Can you just briefly walk me through the timeline of this 
event and share why the delay occurred, and also why, after my 
staff reached out about this weeks ago, weeks have passed, and 
we still haven't had a response from your office on this 
incident, the cyberattack.
    Secretary Becerra. Okay, Congressman. I absolutely will 
follow through with you. But I want to make sure I understand 
because the day that the cyberattack occurred, on February 
21st, we already had stood up our ASPR operations, our 
preparedness and response operations, to start working on this, 
and within 24 hours we were in the mode of trying to respond, 
and within less than a week we were already in deep 
communication with providers. We started communicating with 
United Health, the owner of Change Healthcare within 24 hours, 
I believe, of the cyberattack.
    So I am not sure where you got the information, but from 
the get-go we have been working it. That is why we responded so 
quickly, and to date we have already put out close to, I 
believe, $2,500,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 in advance payments 
to the Medicare program to providers who aren't getting paid 
otherwise, and we made flexibilities available to those 
providers so they could get their payment now instead of 
waiting for the processing to occur.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Well, I do want to see that information 
because--that is one of the questions that we asked that we 
haven't gotten a response to. So to add some clarity here, some 
transparency on what happened, because a provider in my 
district, literally, they were the only ones, but they saw a 
bit hit on their delayed revenue here. So this was an impact 
for my district. That is what I am hearing from my own 
constituents on this, and that is why I brought it up. I 
haven't gotten a response besides what you just mentioned. So I 
am looking forward to getting a more detailed response and 
walk-through of what happened and how to prevent this from 
happening again. Because I want to know, when we look at 
funding this, the billions of dollars, and we don't have a full 
measure of accountability and transparency, we can't allow 
that.
    So I want to know what guarantees you can provide that will 
open the process and be transparent with us, with the Members 
of Congress, for the future in these kinds of incidents. So I 
will wait to hear a response from you, hopefully in writing 
soon here, since we wrote to your Department weeks ago.
    Secretary Becerra. We will follow up. I would say this. I 
can tell you one thing that we will need. It will be the 
flexibilities under existing law within Medicare and Medicaid 
because we cannot--for example, we can only forward, through 
advance payments, so much money, by law. So we are restricted. 
So if the Change Healthcare organization doesn't get its 
systems back up in place quickly, we will be constrained by 
statute on how much flexibility we can provide.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Well, I do want to talk to you more about 
that, so I look forward to getting that response.
    I want to fit in one more question on Head Start. On the 
notice of proposed rulemaking published by the Office of Head 
Start, titled ``Supporting the Head Start Workforce and 
Consistent Quality Programming,'' which several leaders in the 
Head Start community have expressed concern about that to me. 
While increasing the pay of overall lifestyle of educators is a 
worthwhile goal that I also share, the rulemaking states that 
implementing the various provisions of the rule would cost 
around $1,600,000,000--that is the estimated--each year until 
2033.
    Now your budget request only includes about $543,000,000 
increase for the Office of Head Start. Does that mean that the 
Biden administration is either moving away from the proposed 
rulemaking, or is this an unfunded mandate?
    Secretary Becerra. Neither. We are providing funding for 
the slots that can be used. You are probably aware that we, 
right now, authorized close to three quarters of a million Head 
Start slots in America, but I think close to 100,000 of them 
are not filled. We have about 560,000 slots that are used by 
children in Head Start, but states are authorized to provide up 
to--I don't know the precise number--650,000 or so.
    What is happening is it is very difficult for some of these 
centers to fill those slots because of costs and finding 
professionals to offer the care. And so what we are simply 
saying is let's recognize what we can fund, but let's do it the 
right way. Let's not try to have people working for less money 
than they can earn flipping burgers at the fast-food joint. And 
so what we are doing is being realistic. Let's have quality 
Head Start slots for these kids, and let's make sure that we 
are providing quality workforce for these families.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Well, I am in agreement on the pay here, and 
I recently introduced two different bills that support and deal 
with Head Start and making sure that we have what we need 
there, specifically on the workforce area. I just want to 
caution your Department on the one-size-fits-all here solution 
for all and having unrealistic and detrimental for small rural 
Head Start programs that are more likely to have less financial 
flexibility and community resources to draw from. That is a 
concern of mine. That is the largest part of my district in 
terms of geography. Head Start is important in every aspect of 
my district, both the urban and the rural areas, so this is an 
important issue for me. And I want to make sure we don't have 
these unfunded mandates or that we are holding true to making 
sure that Head Start
    is----
    Secretary Becerra. I hear you. And by the way, some of the 
best Head Start centers are in rural communities.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Edwards.
    Mr. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Hoyer, I appreciate 
your comment, and I mean that respectfully. And I don't want to 
get into the debate about marijuana and cigarettes right now, 
although I believe we need to be having some more conversation 
up here on this Hill about the harmful effects of marijuana and 
the states' rights to circumvent Federal law. But this is 
probably not the time for that. So since I saw the word 
``appropriations'' over the door out here I am going to try to 
turn back, Mr. Secretary, the conversation to appropriations.
    As this committee puts together a funding bill for the 
upcoming fiscal year, we are going to have to set priorities 
about how to spend the taxpayers' dollars, and importantly, we 
have to stick to the limit set for our subcommittee. With that 
in mind, I want to ask you about some of the ways HHS's budget 
proposes paying for its priorities, because some of those 
appear to exceed the principles agreed to in the Fiscal 
Responsibility Act.
    The HHS budget also has mandatory funding proposals for 
things traditionally paid for with discretionary 
appropriations. A few examples include $1,400,000,000 for 
Cancer Moonshot activities at the National Institutes of 
Health, $150,000,000 for a Community Violence Intervention 
Initiative at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 
and another CDC proposal for $1,000,000,000 for Vaccines for 
Adults.
    Why, Mr. Secretary, did the Administration propose these 
expansions to the mandatory side of the budget, especially 
given the warnings that we hear from the CBO about the 
projected growth in mandatory spending and what it means to our 
growing debt?
    Secretary Becerra. Congressman, thank you for the question, 
and it is clear that you have hit the ground running in your 
new committee assignments, so congratulations to you.
    Let me just use one of the examples, Vaccines for Adults. 
We have a program for children, the Vaccines for Children 
program, which is very successful, and the reason so many 
children have been vaccinated and kept safe from things like 
measles or other types of very contagious diseases. That 
program, Vaccines for Children, is on the mandatory side, and 
it is because it is widespread, the utility and value is well 
known, and rather than have to go through the constant 
discretionary budgeting process of allocating money for 
something we know is indispensable, we considered a mandatory 
program.
    Vaccines for Adults is no different. We know from COVID 
that if you didn't get vaccinated chances are you were the one 
in the hospital or perhaps dying. We want to move that to the 
mandatory side because, again, it is indispensable, it is 
universal, and it is something that will not only benefit the 
individual but American society.
    And so the purpose of moving some of these programs on the 
mandatory side is because there is a clear value in not having 
to go through the yearly exercise of saying you will allocate 
dollars for a very worthwhile purpose.
    Mr. Edwards. So to follow up, exactly what would that value 
be? Do you not think that the taxpayers deserve to have this 
dialogue and to have the expenditures questioned, year after 
year? Why should we just take for granted that, carte blanche, 
for perpetuity, that we will spend these mandatory dollars?
    Secretary Becerra. Yeah. Congressman, having served where 
you are for 24 years, you have that opportunity to have that 
discussion. In fact, you have the right, not just the 
opportunity, to actually change that, so that it won't be a 
mandatory program, or it will become a mandatory program. That 
is the purpose of these hearings and your debates. You all 
decide if it is a mandatory or a discretionary program. We live 
by your direction, and we will try to make sure that we provide 
the type of services that you expect.
    But honestly, the reason the adult vaccination program is 
not mandatory is because Congress has not yet decided to do so. 
President Biden has said we believe it is now time to make it a 
mandatory program. It is worthwhile to do.
    Mr. Edwards. All right. Thank you. I would just like to 
make a comment to the chair and to the rest of the committee 
that I would resist adding any more mandatory spending to our 
budget. I think every dollar should be challenged with every 
budget.
    Thank you. With that I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. With a final statement I want to recognize 
Ranking Member DeLauro.
    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I really 
appreciate the opportunity.
    Just one or two observations. I think we have got a task 
cut out for us on this committee, one that was raised by Chair 
Aderholt, and that is with the follow-up services, if you will, 
to unaccompanied children, and what HHS's responsibility, you 
have that responsibility as unaccompanied if they come from, 
that we have to, by law, accept unaccompanied children. But 
then when the sponsors are vetted, et cetera, and the child 
goes, then after that HHS does not have authority to check into 
what is happening.
    And I think that we ought to examine the kinds of authority 
that HHS should have, and quite frankly, that should not be an 
unfunded mandate. That should be one in which we deal with the 
resources that are necessary to be able to accomplish that. And 
I think that would answer some of the questions of safeguarding 
children in this country.
    And I might add, with regard to that, because the issue 
that came out in the conversation about that was what is 
happening with youngsters, and they wind up in child labor 
situations. And you made a reference, Mr. Secretary, to the 
Department of Labor. I have been working with the Department of 
Labor on this issue, and we have been trying to get increases 
through the Wage and Hour Division, so that, in fact, we could 
investigate what is happening in some of these enterprises 
which are dealing with child labor, in some of our very big 
corporations in this nation.
    And I might also add that the Administration did ask for 
increased dollars last year for this very purpose. But I also 
will add that we could not come to an agreement to increase the 
funding to look into this effort. So we can outline the 
problem, but we need to then be willing to look at the solution 
and to provide the resources for the solution, as well.
    So those two issues, and I welcome you, Mr. Edwards, to the 
committee. I should have done that early on. It is a great, 
great committee, and I think people will tell you that I speak 
my mind on this committee. Is that true, Mr. Moolenaar?
    But I would just say I heard Mr. Clyde's comment, and I 
will see him on the floor and mention this to him, troubled by 
some of the issues that he did. Life is precious. No one's life 
should be taken, under any set of circumstances.
    But I would also say some of us get very, very troubled--
and I hope it is widespread--that are troubled by the mass 
murders that are committed, something like Sandy Hook and 
Uvalde. Those were committed with an AR-15 weapon, and that we 
don't seem to want to deal with any kind of a solution to that 
problem. We can't be troubled by only one source of victimizing 
or killing of people, but we must look at it more broadly, and 
we have the power in this institution to do something about 
that.
    I want to say a thank-you to you, Mr. Secretary, for being 
here. But thank you so much for the years of public service. It 
was Shirley Chisholm who said, ``Public service is the rent we 
pay for space on this Earth,'' and you have paid that rent over 
and over and over again.
    I am pleased with the priorities in the President's 
budget--childcare and Head Start, women's health, reproductive 
health, public health, behavioral health, biomedical research, 
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS. We need to 
continue to build on the investments of the last 2 years in 
that critical Health and Human Services program.
    I look forward to working with you to finalizing 2024, and 
I am hoping it is a matter of the next couple of days on Labor 
H, which will provide important investments and stability at 
HHS for the rest of this year, and how we can work together in 
2025.
    Thank you so much for being here and for your work. Mr. 
Chairman, thank you very much for the time.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, and Secretary Becerra, thank you 
for your time today. I know you have got a busy day today. We 
appreciate your answers and being available for this committee 
hearing, so thank you very much.
    And with that, seeing no further business, we are 
adjourned.
    [Questions and answers submitted for the record follow:]

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                                         Wednesday, April 10, 2024.

        FISCAL YEAR 2025 REQUEST FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

                               WITNESSES

HON. MIGUEL CARDONA, SECRETARY, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
LARRY KEAN, BUDGET DIRECTOR, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
    Mr. Aderholt. Well, good morning. We will get started. Good 
morning, Mr. Secretary.
    Secretary Cardona. Good morning.
    Mr. Aderholt. Good to see you today. I had a chance to 
speak with you yesterday and chat with you on the phone, and 
welcome you to the subcommittee once again. And we all look 
forward to your testimony here this morning and hear from your 
Agency and some of the requests that you have got and how we 
can be helpful. So again, we welcome you here this morning and 
glad to have you.
    When you came before the subcommittee, I guess, just about 
a year ago exactly, myself and a lot of my other colleagues had 
expressed some concern about the proposed Title IX rule that 
would force schools to allow biological teen males into girls' 
locker rooms and promote unfair competition on the playing 
field. The original intent, as you know, of Title IX was to 
protect women, so I hope your Department's delay in finalizing 
this misguided rule signals that the administration agrees with 
most of America that this proposal would harm women and girls 
in sports and set them back decades. And I will want to follow 
up with that with some more questions a little bit later, but 
for now, I want to turn to your budget proposal.
    I am concerned about the new programs, the increases and 
the cuts that are proposed by your fiscal year 2025 budget and 
what they say about the Department's priorities: $25,000 for a 
new preschool demonstration program, $10,000,000 for an 
unnecessary initiative for fostering diverse schools, and a 
large increase to administrative accounts to carry out student 
loan debt transfers that are funded by the new budget gimmicks 
are just a few of the issues that are concerning to many of us 
on the committee. Rather than create more new programs along 
with additional bureaucracy that would require our educational 
budget, needs to focus back on just barely the basics.
    Four years after schools were shut down across this 
country, 26 percent of all students are still chronically 
absent from schools. For the poorest students, that number 
rises to a staggering 32 percent. Obviously if children are not 
in school, they are not learning. How would the new proposals 
in your budget get those kids back into the classroom? How 
would they address the significant declines in math and reading 
scores, which are felt the hardest in minority communities? How 
would they help regain the trust of parents? These are tough 
questions that the budget needs to address.
    I also have questions regarding your Department's proposal 
to cut grants to charter schools by $40,000,000. This program 
has been flat funded for 5 years, but, according to my 
understanding, charter schools are outperforming traditional 
public schools in student achievement. At a time when our 
Nation faces skyrocketing debt and inflation, we should be 
targeting investments in education in what works, not 
duplicative, ideological programs that merely sound great but 
no difference in the learning process. Your budget also 
proposes $600,000,000 to increase the office that oversees the 
Federal Student Aid Program, including the Department's student 
loan cancellation schemes. Even though the Supreme Court struck 
down the President's signature, one-time student loan program, 
your Department has doubled down on canceling loans through 
other avenues. In fact, on March 21st, your Department boasted 
that it had canceled a total of $144,000,000,000 in loans thus 
far. This doesn't even account for the new loan repayment 
program that the Department unilateral created last year, which 
makes loan repayment even more generous, including by cutting 
borrowers' payments in half and accelerating loan forgiveness 
for some borrowers. Last September, the CBO estimated this 
repayment program would cost approximately $260,000,000,000 
over a 10-year window. It is clear that the Department's 
student loan forgiveness policies are unfair to Americans who 
did not go to college or that paid back their loans, and it 
sends a dangerous message to students, and that is to borrow 
more and just send the taxpayer the bill.
    I also continue to hear about how free speech is under 
attack on college campuses across our Nation. Our colleges and 
universities should be places that support free academic 
inquiry and where different ideas can be expressed and can be 
exchanged. So it is alarming to hear about speakers being 
disinvited or angrily shouted down at events, or about faculty 
being canceled for expressing views that do not conform to the 
popular thinking of others on campus. This cancel culture is, 
ironically, increasing at a time when universities are failing 
to adequately condemn the rise of antisemitism and support of 
terrorist organizations at our universities, creating a hostile 
environment for Jewish students, faculty, staff, and all this 
is simply unacceptable.
    According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and 
Expressions, more than half--56 percent--of students surveyed 
for their 2024 college free speech rankings report said they 
worried about the reputation or harm because someone 
misunderstood something they said or something they did. 
Twenty-eight percent of students today engage in self-
censorship fairly often or very often during class discussion. 
One in 5 students said it is not clear that their campus 
administration protects free speech, and 43 percent says it is 
only somewhat clear that free speech is protected. I think you 
would agree that these statistics are concerning to any of us. 
We can do better, and we must do better, both to foster free 
speech at our college campuses while also pushing back against 
terrorist rhetoric that has no place in our schools.
    Mr. Secretary, as you can see, there are a lot of important 
topics to talk about today, but that being said, I do 
appreciate your attendance here today and having a chance to 
interact with you and ask some questions and the subcommittee 
members. And at this point, I would like to recognize my 
colleague and friend, and, of course, the ranking member from 
Connecticut, Ms. DeLauro for her opening statements, and I 
yield to Ms. DeLauro.
    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you so much, Chairman Aderholt, for 
holding this critically important hearing this morning on the 
Department of Education's budget. If I could just start, just 
take a moment of personal privilege, with the Secretary being 
from Connecticut as well. I think there are some Connecticut 
folks in the audience. I just say, ``Go Huskies. Yes, hear-
hear. Well done. Well done.
    Anyway, I want to say a thank you to our witness this 
morning. Secretary Cardona, thank-you for appearing here, but 
thank you for your lifetime's work and your public service. It 
was Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman who 
served in the House of Representatives, and she said, ``Public 
service is the rent you pay for space on this earth,'' and, Mr. 
Secretary, you pay that rent over and over and over again, and 
we are grateful for that. And we thank you for dedicating to 
investing in and improving the outcomes of our Nation's youth.
    When Secretary Cardona and President Biden took office over 
3 years ago, students and families were facing unprecedented 
disruptions to their education, and indeed learning loss and 
chronic absenteeism are still critical challenges we must work 
diligently to resolve. But thanks to the leadership of 
Secretary Cardona and President Biden and investments made by 
the House Appropriations Committee, schools now have essential 
resources to support student academic recovery, address mental 
health needs, and tackle nationwide teacher shortages.
    We increased financial aid to help students pay for 
college, and we invested in colleges and universities so 
students from diverse backgrounds all have a fair shot at a 
high-quality post-secondary education. And I am taking a look 
at the array of tee shirts that I see here this morning, 
``Literacy and Justice for All.'' Amen. And thanks to the 
administration's historic success in canceling student loan 
debt, 4,000,000 Americans living paycheck to paycheck under the 
weight of burdensome and oftentimes overwhelming debt are 
feeling major relief to their household's bottom line and 
helping families with the high cost of living.
    Students and families do not just need help to pay tuition. 
Housing, food, and transportation expenses are staggering. 
Nearly 1 in 3 college students experiences food insecurity. 
That means hunger. Let me translate food insecurity: they are 
hungry. And so any assistance that we can provide will continue 
to make education even more affordable and more accessible to 
hardworking Americans. And lest you think I made up the 
statistics, this is an article that appeared in ``The Hartford 
Courant'' in Connecticut: 1 in 3 college students can't afford 
food, which is a fact of life for our youngsters today.
    The strength of our great country and the resilience of our 
democracy depends on how well we prepare our next generation 
with the knowledge and the skills necessary to face future 
challenges, which is why support for high-quality, affordable 
education is one of our subcommittee's most solemn 
responsibilities. I was proud to work with Democrats and 
Republicans in the House and Senate to complete the work on the 
fiscal year 2024 Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education 
funding bill. I am proud that we protected the historic 
investments this subcommittee made in education programs during 
the first 2 years of the Biden administration.
    Last year, House Republicans proposed a destructive 80-
percent cut to Title I, the cornerstone of our Federal 
investment in public education, which would have removed 
224,000 teachers from classrooms serving low-income students 
nationwide. We spent months communicating the devastation this 
would bring to urban, suburban, and rural communities across 
our country, which is why I am so proud that we not only beat 
back these cuts, but we passed a bill that increased Title I by 
$20,000,000.
    Despite the tight fiscal constraints that were placed on 
us, I was also pleased to secure a $20,000,000 increase for 
IDEA grants to States to equip special educators with the tools 
they need to support students with disabilities. And finally, I 
was particularly proud to secure at least $74,000,000 in new 
awards for a total funding level of over $170,000,000 for 
school-based mental health grant programs that were created by 
this subcommittee to advance our goal of making sure every 
child can count on the support of a qualified mental health 
professional at their school. We also removed each of the 
dozens of poison policy riders proposed last year by the 
majority, including new riders that would have blocked access 
to student loan relief, new income-driven repayment options, 
and rules that would protect students who are victims of sexual 
assault.
    I am proud of where we ended up with the 2024 
appropriations bill, but there is still unmet need in 
education, which brings me to the President's budget for 2025. 
The request for $82,000,000 for programs funded at the 
Department of Education will help support working middle-class 
families and help secure future opportunities for America's 
children regardless of their socioeconomic status. Increases of 
$180,000,000 each to Title I and IDEA grants to States will 
build on the progress we made in supporting students with the 
highest needs, and I am thrilled to see a $50,000,000 increase 
to full service community schools, a program I was proud to 
double in size to $150,000,000 in fiscal year 2023, which we 
also were able to protect in 2024. And I was pleased to see the 
administration's proposal to shore up the Pell Grant and avoid 
a devastating shortfall, with a plan to provide an additional 
$2,100,000,000 for Pell in fiscal year 2025 to support an 
increase to the maximum award.
    Horace Mann called education ``a great equalizer of 
conditions of men.'' Indeed, a quality education which provides 
the knowledge and skills needed to solve complex challenges is 
a prerequisite to finding success in life. It is, therefore, 
our duty to invest in every American child so that they may 
have the opportunity to reach their potential, achieve their 
dreams, and become the leaders of the next generation. I look 
forward to securing this funding for students and families, and 
helping to deliver on the Biden administration's education 
goals for the American people. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Thank you, Ranking Member DeLauro, and, Mr. Secretary, you 
have the mike. We look forward to hearing your testimony.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you. Chairman Aderholt, Ranking 
Member DeLauro, distinguished members of the committee, thank 
you for the opportunity to testify today on President Biden's 
fiscal year 2025 budget request for the United States 
Department of Education. I speak to you today in my capacity as 
Secretary of Education, but I also look at this budget as a 
lifelong educator, and especially as a father of a son in 
college now and a daughter in her final year of high school. In 
that spirit, I come here today to discuss a budget that is not 
only about our priorities at the Department of Education, but 
about what we are hearing directly from parents and others all 
over this country, in red and blue States alike, about where we 
have common ground when it comes to our hopes for our children.
    I am also here today because education opened doors for me 
as it did for many of us. At its best, public education is the 
great equalizer, putting opportunity within reach for all 
Americans. So where some seek to defund public education, I am 
here to defend it unapologetically as the foundation of the 
American Dream.
    This budget is about making responsible choices together to 
invest in that foundation for American opportunity and raise 
the bar for our Nation's future. It is about the responsible 
choice to continue to sustain our Nation's academic recovery 
from the impacts of the pandemic through $82,000,000,000 in 
calculated investments to accelerate learning and success 
instead of minimizing support at a very crucial time for our 
students to regain lost ground. It is about the responsible 
choice to invest in a stronger future for all Americans by 
boosting funding to close achievement gaps in low-income 
communities through Title I, to support students with 
disabilities through IDEA, to support multilingual learners 
through Title III, recruit, retain, and develop great teachers. 
It is about the responsible choice to invest in safer schools 
and the mental health of our students by making more funding 
available for more school counselors and mental health 
professionals and more full-service community schools.
    It is about the responsible choice to give more young 
people access to the American Dream by building more pathways 
to higher education for all students by improving college 
affordability, retention, and completion, including through 
free community college and increased student supports. And it 
is about the responsible choice to make these investments in 
our Nation's future while fully honoring the caps under the 
bipartisan agreement to reduce the deficit.
    It is also about working together again, as we did in a 
bipartisan fashion last year, to reject the sort of extreme 
policies and the extreme cuts proposed by some at the time. 
These could have resulted in the loss of more than 200,000 
teacher jobs at a time when those teachers are critical to 
recovering their students' learning in reading and math. Yes, 
there are some in our Nation who benefit from stoking division 
in our schools and inflaming culture wars, but let me be clear. 
My purpose here today is to propose a budget that helps protect 
and support all of our Nation's students instead of creating a 
spectacle for the benefit of the media or provoking divisions 
that aim to bring attention to some but do nothing to help our 
young people succeed.
    At a time when there is, in fact, so much common ground 
about what matters most for our Nation's students, such as 
getting all students to read by 3rd grade, providing mental 
health supports in the midst of a youth mental health crisis, 
opening up career and college pathways so students have more 
options for rewarding lives and careers, and making higher 
education more affordable and accessible for those who choose 
that path, I know we can and we will prioritize results over 
rhetoric. We can raise the bar for our Nation together. I look 
forward to working with you to do so. Thank you.
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    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, and again, we 
appreciate your testimony, and I appreciate your words about, 
you know, coming here and talking about the budget. There are a 
few issues I think we need to talk about because of your 
Department that I do want to bring up. And as I had mentioned 
in my opening statement, I am concerned, and I know many people 
are about the proposed Title IX regulation, which, in my 
opinion, would do grave harm to the safety and the success of 
young girls and women across this country. Particularly, I am 
worried about how this could impact girls in elementary school 
for whom these school years are crucial for physical and mental 
development and building confidence.
    Under these proposal rules, as you have laid out, the 
elementary age students would generally be able to participate 
in school sports teams consistent with their gender identity, 
and that would mean that a 6th grade boy who simply identifies 
as a girl could play on the same basketball team as young 
girls. My question: when can we expect the Department to 
finalize the Title IX rule?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you, Chair Aderholt, for the 
question. We know this is a very important issue and an 
important question that many have opined on. We have received 
over 150,000 comments, and we are working vigorously to move 
forward on that rule. We know it is important, and we are 
working hard on that.
    Mr. Aderholt. Is there things that the Department is doing 
to ensure that a final rule would protect vulnerable young 
biological girls?
    Secretary Cardona. As I said before, you know, the safety 
of all students is critically important to all of us, and it is 
important that we work quickly on these rules, and we are 
working as quickly as we can. I would ask, sir, that you 
consider the $22,000,000 budget increase that we have for the 
Office for Civil Rights to help us facilitate the work of not 
only writing regulation but also investigating.
    Mr. Aderholt. Also, I mentioned in my opening statement 
that many of us are concerned about the pervasive cancel 
culture at our institutions of higher education and the 
chilling effect that it has had on campus free speech. 
According to the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression 
study that I had mentioned, students are self-censoring in the 
classroom and in conversations with other students. Speakers 
have been disinvited or angrily shouted down at events, and 
professors have lost their positions or suffered reputational 
harm for expressing their views. It is also apparent that 
students are not getting a consistently clear message from 
campus administrators regarding free speech protections. Do you 
think the status quo is acceptable given how critical free 
speech and free inquiry is concerning higher education?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you. I agree with you that higher 
education institutions should be places where free speech is 
allowed. I also agree that we have to make sure we are making 
our campuses as safe as possible for students and that we take 
concerns about safety very seriously. I recently had 
conversations with students at Towson University and Bowie 
State talking about safety on campus, talking about making sure 
that they are heard, so I do take that very seriously.
    At the Department of Education, we have worked really hard 
to ensure that there is more guidance on this, and we have 
worked closely with university leaders to help them with 
resources and tools to ensure free speech and an environment 
where people can communicate their thoughts while also 
maintaining safety, which is of utmost importance. I have 
spoken to parents who also felt, you know, uneasy about their 
children being on campus, given some of the challenges we have 
been hearing about on campus. But we are committed to working 
with you and others to make sure campuses are places of free 
speech, but also that they have the tools needed to protect 
students.
    Mr. Aderholt. Can you talk about any particular things that 
the Department is doing to ensure this protection of free 
speech as it relates to colleges and universities----
    Secretary Cardona. Sure.
    Mr. Aderholt [continuing]. That, of course, Federal 
funding? I know you mentioned you are trying, and I understand 
that, but are there some specific steps that you all are 
looking at or that you have taken?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. If you go to 
Ed.gov, you will see a link right there to some of the 
materials, the guidance that we put forward, and in those 
materials, you will see very specific strategies that we have 
shared with colleges. We have had numerous webinars with 
college leaders, folks on campus to make sure that they are 
understanding how to balance promoting free speech and allowing 
for free speech, but also keeping safe environments. So happy 
to follow up more on that. We are working with, you know, 
leaders from different sectors on this as well, so this is 
something that I am really proud of the work we are doing, and 
I welcome an opportunity to share more with you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Well, just please know that this cancel 
culture mentality is a real issue out there, and I think it is 
something that needs to be addressed, especially when 
universities are receiving Federal dollars. And we hope that 
you can be helpful in trying to make sure that students don't 
have to self-censor in the classroom and also in conversation 
with other students, and also make sure that speakers are not 
disinvited----
    Secretary Cardona. Right.
    Mr. Aderholt [continuing]. Or angrily shouted down when 
they come and express their views. With that, let me turn to 
Ms. DeLauro.
    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. 
Secretary, we are on the same page that chronic absenteeism 
from school is a profound crisis for our kids. Our rates have 
increased from 15 percent pre-pandemic to 26 percent in 2023, 
and our Nation's highest poverty school rates have increased 
from 19 percent to an alarming 32 percent in 2023. Something 
has shifted in our schools with causes and explanations that 
are complex and sociological. And I am not trying to plumb all 
those reasons----
    Secretary Cardona. Right.
    Ms. DeLauro [continuing]. But at all levels of government, 
we have a responsibility to reverse this unacceptable trend. 
Presently, two-thirds of States use chronic absenteeism as an 
official indicator for statewide improvement plans under the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act. On the Federal level, 
your Department is responsible for monitoring States' evidence-
based responses to the indicators in their plans. How satisfied 
are you with how States are implementing their chronic 
absentees and plans? What would you like to start seeing from 
States in your Department's next round of monitoring?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you for that question. As a 
lifelong educator, I share that concern. Chronic absenteeism--
you know, you are not learning if you are not in the classroom 
with your peers, so that is an issue that was exacerbated after 
the pandemic for various reasons, and in our budget we have 
proposals that will help address that. We have been very 
focused on ensuring that States are also--what we call, raising 
the bar--really doubling down efforts on that, and we are 
seeing some good progress.
    But to answer your question, we have a technical assistance 
center that we are focusing on chronic absenteeism. So 
technical assistance, what is working? You know, what are the 
best strategies across the country? The technical centers are 
helping with that. I have written to every State education 
chief and asked them to take additional steps to address 
chronic absenteeism. We are monitoring the data more at the 
Department of Education regularly. We are working specifically 
with States not making as much progress as other States, and we 
are going to continue to do that. We are working closely with 
the White House as well to bring in educators and leaders who 
are having success with this so that we can highlight best 
practices.
    In our budget, we believe, you know, the increase for full-
service community schools will make a big difference. I was 
recently in Pennsylvania speaking to parents in a parent 
center, and they were learning about how they could be equipped 
with tools to help other parents reduce chronic absenteeism. 
So, you know, this is an area, as you said earlier, we have to 
focus on, and we all have a role to play. At the Department of 
Education, increasing accountability, targeting, support, and 
making sure we are listening to the best practices and sharing, 
those are some of the strategies we are taking.
    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you, and if there is any way in which 
you can share some of that information that is coming through 
with what the programs and plans are, that would be helpful to 
the committee I think. Thank you. Thank you.
    Let me move to another issue. Last year, your Department 
took action against Grand Canyon University, a predatory for-
profit college, over the school's failure to accurately 
disclose its cost to students, driving up the true cost for 
those students, requiring them to pay for continuation courses 
before they would graduate. Scam courses added about $10,000 or 
more to the cost of education for these kids. The students 
settled a class action lawsuit against Walden University, 
another scam for-profit, targeted women and black students with 
false advertising, misrepresenting how long it would take to 
complete their degrees. This is far from being a few rotten 
apples in the bunch. Predatory for-profit colleges have engaged 
in a range of deceptions designed to increase enrollment and 
student costs to drive more revenue for owners and 
shareholders. Beyond these individual actions, how are you and 
your Agency committing to increased oversight of these 
institutions, and are there any ways in which we can shut these 
folks down?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you for that. If I could 
contextualize this for a second, in 2021, when I was named 
Secretary, the President made it very clear to me that we have 
a broken higher education system, and we have to fix it, that 
the system that we had separated the haves and the have-nots, 
and there were a lot of practices there that prevented students 
from accessing higher education or finishing higher education. 
So with that frame that there is a broken system, you know, we 
did multiple strategies: borrower defense, which I will get to 
in a second, debt discharge, increasing Pell, holding colleges 
more accountable, holding higher education solutions more 
accountable.
    And with borrower defense, going after those predatory 
schools that are preying on first-generation students, you 
know, you have a shiny brochure and a great commercial, but the 
product is not worth the paper it is written on. We have 
students graduating $60,000, $70,000 in debt, only eligible for 
jobs making under $30,000. That to me is unacceptable.
    We have provided $22,000,000,000 in debt discharge for more 
than 1.3 million borrowers. We increased enforcement of our 
FSAs through our Office of FSA to go after these folks and 
really cracked down on these behaviors. We have levied the 
largest fine in Ed history against a school that lied to 
students about the cost and what it cost to get a degree, and 
we have terminated a school from the Title IV program as well. 
So we are cracking down on them, not only to shut them down, 
but to send a message across the country that you cannot prey 
on our students and expect to be successful.
    Ms. DeLauro. Mm-hmm. Thank you very much, and I want to 
thank the chair for the indulgence with time. Thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Yeah. Dr. Harris?
    Mr. Harris. Thank you very much. Mr. Secretary, thanks for 
being here.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you.
    Mr. Harris. Let me follow up a little bit on this Title IX 
discussion. Would you agree that Title IX was necessary to help 
establish women's sports because women can't fairly be expected 
to compete on biological male teams?
    Secretary Cardona. Yeah. Especially after last week, I am 
really proud of what I saw in women's sports, and----
    Mr. Harris. Please no filibuster.
    Secretary Cardona. Yeah.
    Mr. Harris. Do you agree that that is why we have Title IX?
    Secretary Cardona. Yes, and I am----
    Mr. Harris. Okay. For input on the rule, are you seeking 
input from HHS?
    Secretary Cardona. Say that again, please?
    Mr. Harris. Are you seeking input from HHS on this rule?
    Secretary Cardona. We work closely with all departments 
when we are making----
    Mr. Harris. You are? So are you aware of what Secretary 
Becerra testified in front of this committee 3 weeks ago when 
he was talking about women's health and women's health 
research, said, ``Women's feet are different from men, their 
arches are different, but yet they have to wear for 
professional athletic activity shoes that were designed for 
men.'' Would you agree that women are physically different than 
men?
    Secretary Cardona. I see where you are going with this, and 
I am not going to talk about----
    Mr. Harris. No, no. Would you agree with Secretary Becerra 
that there is evidence that women are physically different from 
men?
    Secretary Cardona. So, Dr. Harris, I know where you are 
going with this. I would love to talk about how we can work 
together to support----
    Mr. Harris. Mr. Secretary, do you agree that biological 
women are different from biological men physically?
    Secretary Cardona. I think----
    Mr. Harris. This is a simple question for an educator. You 
are not going to answer. Okay. Let's go on to the next topic. I 
believe that your proposed Title IX rule could obviously roll 
back the protections of Title IX, and it is an affront to women 
in this country. It is an absolute affront that you are even 
considering a change to that rule given the Secretary of HHS' 
testimony in front of this committee 3 weeks ago. Now let's 
move on.
    Charter school grants, and your reason for decreasing it, 
one of the reasons is so that you would prohibit program funds 
going to schools operated by for-profit entities. So if a for-
profit entity demonstrates that it can educate a child better 
than the failing Baltimore City Public School System, for 
instance, where 5 percent of students are actually proficient 
at something when they are done, you don't think the Federal 
Government should support a for-profit entity that has evidence 
that they can deliver a better product?
    Secretary Cardona. I recently visited a charter school that 
provided outstanding education, and throughout the course of my 
career, even before Secretary of Education, I have supported 
high-performing charter schools.
    Mr. Harris. So if they are high performing and they are 
for-profit, what your budget request suggests is that you are 
unwilling to have the Department support them, a for-profit, 
highly-performing charter school.
    Secretary Cardona. I am----
    Mr. Harris. Am I reading this wrong because it says 
``prohibit program funds to charter school operated by for-
profit entities.'' Am I reading that right? I mean, unlike 
Baltimore City School children, I actually have reading 
proficiency. Is this correct? Is this what your Department 
wrote?
    Secretary Cardona. Sir, I think, you know, to respond to 
that comment, if you support our budget, we can provide enough 
Title I to districts to help all students read, which is why I 
am here today.
    Mr. Harris. It says you want to prohibit them, for-profit 
entities, even if they are highly performing. Is that correct?
    Secretary Cardona. I am a big believer in public charter 
schools, and, no, sir, I do not believe public dollars should 
go to private institutions.
    Secretary Cardona. Even highly performing. See, the problem 
in my district is I may not have a public school entity that 
actually can set up a highly-performing charter school, but a 
for-profit entity might be able to move in there. So the 
districts that really don't have the infrastructure to set 
these up, they are the ones you are going to punish. 
Interesting. Okay.
    Last thing I want to talk about is student nutrition, and 
you are an educator. You are aware, and I am going to ask to 
enter this into a record, a study entitled, ``A Four-Day 
Western Style Dietary Intervention Causes Reduction in 
Hippocampal-Dependent Learning and Memory and Interoceptive 
Sensitivity.' A carefully-done study out of Australia suggests 
that a diet high in added sugar and saturated fat actually 
interferes with learning and memory.''
    [The information follows:]

   [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Mr. Harris. Now, given the science behind this, and we will 
share this with your office to review, don't you think it is 
about time that we actually limit the government paying for 
sugary beverages under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance 
Program so that we can actually help students learn better 
given the science behind it?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you. Thank you for that, and I 
look forward to receiving that. Dr. Harris, I look forward to 
working with you on the things that we have common ground, 
including helping those schools in your districts that you say 
are not helping students. And nutrition, I agree with you. We 
have to make sure our students are healthy, so I look forward 
to working with you in the future. Thank you.
    Mr. Harris. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. I yield 
back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Pocan.
    Mr. Pocan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sorry about that. 
Making a mess here. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here.
    Congress established the Pell Grant as the main investment 
in college affordability for low- and middle-income students, 
but today, the Pell Grant has the lowest purchasing power in 
more than its 50-year history. We have seen rising pressure on 
Pell funding in recent years due to increases in the maximum 
award, more people returning to college, and more students 
becoming eligible. Recent analysis from the Committee for a 
Responsible Federal Budget found that without significantly 
increased funding, smaller awards, tighter eligibility, or some 
combination of the above, the Pell Reserves could be exhausted 
by 2026, possibly sooner. Can you just discuss the resources 
that will be required to double the maximum Pell Grant by 2029 
and maintain the Pell Grant solvency without cutting award 
size, rolling back recent expansions like the year-round Pell, 
or narrowing grant eligibility.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you. Pell really is a lifeline for 
so many in our country. There are students whose reliance on 
Pell will determine whether or not they have access to chasing 
their dream and filling out their potential, and I believe, 
Congressman Pocan, that we are not meeting our country's 
potential because we have a system that is broken, as I said 
before. Increasing Pell, supporting Pell is a big part of that. 
It really is. When we talk about leveling the playing field and 
making sure that education is the great equalizer, the Pell 
Grant is a huge lever for them. In 1979, it covered 80 percent 
of the cost of attending a 4-year college. Let that sink in. 
Eighty percent was covered by Pell. Today, that number is about 
31 percent.
    So number one, it is not keeping up, but the President's 
increase would bring it up to $8,145, which is an increase of 
$750 per student per year. To me, increases are going to be 
needed in order to ensure solvency, so that is an ask that we 
have. I can tell you every year, it is more and more important, 
and while we are going to work on accountability and improving 
the return on investment in higher education because that is 
part of the broken system, we recognize that without supporting 
Pell, the increase in Pell, we are basically just exacerbating 
gaps in our country that exists now.
    Mr. Pocan. Well, thank you, and as a Pell recipient myself, 
you know, I wouldn't probably have been able to go to a public 
even university, much less some other universities without that 
help. So I am glad that we are doing the effort to double Pell 
Grants, so thank you for that. And also, just because of time, 
thanks for the new initiatives that you all are proposing, the 
President announced in my district on Monday, again, to help 
people who are repaying loans. I think having people 
automatically fall into some of the programs rather than having 
to apply is extremely efficient in going after those predatory 
colleges that took advantage of people.
    Your fiscal year 2025 budget requests a $22,000,000 
increase for the Office of Civil Rights to better respond to 
rising discrimination complaints. In your testimony, you 
highlighted antisemitism and anti-Arab discrimination as key 
areas of concern, and I agree. I also want to make sure we are 
paying close attention to the rising threats to the LGBTQI+ 
students in prioritizing their rights and protections as well. 
A recent Washington Post analysis found that in States with 
anti-LGBTQ laws, the number of hate crimes targeting those 
students in K to 12 schools has more than quadrupled, while 
advocates report that calls to the LGBTQ youth crisis hotlines 
have exploded.
    Will you commit to ensuring that your efforts to address 
discrimination in schools will also prioritize rising threats 
to LGBTQI+ students, and do you believe the additional funds 
you have requested for OCR will be sufficient to meet this 
growing need?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you for that question, and I 
wholeheartedly agree with you that there has been an increase 
in threats and exclusionary behaviors for students who are 
LGBTQ. And I need those students to hear directly from me that 
they should come as they are, and they should feel as welcome 
as the next student in their school. They should feel a sense 
of belonging, a sense of being a part of something bigger than 
them in order for them to reach their potential. Again, ``all'' 
means all. We need to stand up for the students who are being 
marginalized.
    Look, we are asking for a $22,000,000 increase. Ninety 
percent of this will go directly towards investigations. And 
let me tell you, since 2009, our complaints to the Office for 
civil rights have tripled while we have lost 58 people due to 
budgets. So that tells you the issue that we are dealing with 
here. All students deserve dignity and respect, and the office 
for Civil Rights is ready. The budget proposal that we have 
here will really help us move forward, not only with our 
students who are LGBTQ, but also the rise in antisemitism and 
the rise in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment that we are 
seeing as well.
    Mr. Pocan. And thank you for that, and, you know, just as 
rising rhetoric even in the halls of Congress on this issue, I 
think the reality I just want people to remember is, kids are 
getting not just beat up and threatened, but suicides are 
rising among youth. And it is just really important we all keep 
that in mind when we talk about these issues. Thank you. I 
yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Aderholt. Ms. Letlow.
    Ms. Letlow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. 
Secretary, for being here with us today. Would you agree that 
FAFSA is one of the most important documents that a student 
fills out when trying to determine their college path?
    Secretary Cardona. Absolutely. As a parent, I can tell you 
I have experienced the old system and the new system, and I do 
believe FAFSA is a very important document that students fill 
out.
    Ms. Letlow. Right, and that leads me to my second question. 
As a parent----
    Secretary Cardona. Yeah.
    Ms. Letlow [continuing]. You mentioned your son and 
daughter. As you are planning for your child, you are very 
curious about what financial aid will be available for your 
child. So you would think it would be important for parents as 
well?
    Secretary Cardona. Absolutely.
    Ms. Letlow. Okay. As a former higher education 
administrator myself, I know how important it is that we 
receive that FAFSA data in a timely manner. So you would also 
agree that for higher education administrators, as they are 
planning how many sections they are going to have, how many 
professors are needed for each section, that that also would be 
very important for them as well.
    Secretary Cardona. Absolutely. I talk to financial aid 
administrators daily. I spoke to one in person yesterday, and I 
understand the situation that they are in, and we are working 
with them to make sure we can support them.
    Ms. Letlow. Sure. So you know where I am going with this. 
It is no secret that the rollout of the new FAFSA has been an 
absolute disaster: multiple delays, technical issues, long 
processing times, and now incorrect data supplied to 
universities, so my question begins with this. At what point 
did you realize there were going to be some real problems 
getting the FAFSA rolled out on time, and when did you know the 
Department was not going to meet the traditional FAFSA 
deadlines?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you. Look, I understand the 
challenges our students, our families, our universities, 
financial aid administrators are facing. There is nothing more 
important right now at the Department of Education. We are 
working on this around the clock because we want to make sure 
our students have information that they need to make informed 
decisions. And let me tell you, Congresswoman, 30 years ago 
when I was 17 and I was going to fill out the FAFSA, I knew the 
burden that it would put on my parents.
    Ms. Letlow. Right.
    Secretary Cardona. And it was too much.
    Ms. Letlow. Yeah.
    Secretary Cardona. I never filled it out.
    Ms. Letlow. Yeah.
    Secretary Cardona. We need to move forward to a better 
system----
    Ms. Letlow. Right.
    Secretary Cardona [continuing]. But we need to do it in a 
way that gives the students the information in a timely way.
    Ms. Letlow. Sure. Sure. So it is my understanding that the 
FSA has around 1,400 career staff known as FTEs. I read on your 
website that the office oversee or handles the Federal student 
loan programs, including the FAFSA, student loan repayment, and 
student loan forgiveness. Is that correct, 1,400?
    Secretary Cardona. I can verify that with you, but that 
sounds about right.
    Ms. Letlow. Great. Of those 1,400 employees, how many focus 
on FAFSA implementation, and how many of those FTEs have been 
focusing on the $144,000,000,000 of student loan forgiveness, 
which your Department has rolled out over several tranches?
    Secretary Cardona. Mm-hmm. So I can get more specific 
information to you because you are asking very specific, the 
number of employees. But I can tell you the FSA office is 
responsible for also bringing 28,000,000 people back into 
repayment. We changed contracts to make the process better for 
students, so we are moving contracts for us to oversee those 
programs in addition to FAFSA. I don't want you to think that 
they are not doing FAFSA because they are working on something 
else. FAFSA has been a priority since day one when we got into 
these positions, and it will continue to be a priority until we 
deliver for these students.
    Ms. Letlow. It is my understanding that it has been an 
absolute nightmare. I hear from university administrators all 
the time. This isn't a partisan issue.
    Secretary Cardona. Right.
    Ms. Letlow. This is something that is affecting higher 
education as a whole. It is affecting parents, students, and at 
a time when I hear from my constituents, industry leaders, that 
we are facing one of the worst workforce shortages in history, 
that we shouldn't be creating a deterrent for our students to 
go into higher education so that we can answer that workforce 
shortage that we have. And so I am concerned that you didn't 
pull employees away from working on loan repayment for people 
who have already gone to college. At what point did you start 
prioritizing those people who have already finished their 
college degree from making sure that we can get a steady 
workforce prioritizing students to go into college?
    [Clerk's note.--Later corrected to ``loan forgiveness'']
    Secretary Cardona. As I said earlier, you know, it is not 
either/or. We have been working on FAFSA since we have got here 
to the Department, and I agree with you. This system is over 40 
years old, and it needs overhaul. We expect over 650,000 more 
students to be eligible for Federal aid, which is great for our 
workforce, great for our country. We expect 1,700,000 more 
students to get top aid, okay?
    Ms. Letlow. Mm-hmm.
    Secretary Cardona. A total of $7,100,000 students getting 
aid with this new system, and because it is 20 minutes, we 
expect the completion rates in this country to go up. We have 
been satisfied or we have normalized 60-percent completion 
rates, 70 percent. We have to do better for our students, and 
this better FAFSA will get us there, but I do empathize with 
the challenges and the frustrations that folks are feeling. We 
need to do better, and we are going to get better. And I 
encourage students who are listening to go to StudentAid.gov 
and fill it out. You fill it out today, by Friday, this 
information will be in the schools.
    Ms. Letlow. I am happy to hear that. I hope this debacle 
never happens again. I hope that you will have a plan in place. 
The American people want to see you focused on getting students 
into the classroom, not repaying loans for people who have 
already been there.
    [Clerk's note.--Later corrected to ``forgiving loans'']
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you.
    Ms. Letlow. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Ms. Frankel.
    Ms. Frankel. Thank you. First of all, I want to just 
welcome those who are advocating for literacy and justice. 
Thank you very much for being here.
    So I heard just a quick response to a remark by one of my 
esteemed colleagues about what is an affront to the women of 
this country. Respectfully, I do not believe it is the size of 
the feet of boys and girls. I didn't quite understand that, but 
I will tell you what is an affront. An affront is the 
Republican banning and restricting abortion all over this 
country. That is what the affront is. And a forced pregnancy on 
a 12-year-old or a 15-year-old, I respectfully suggest will 
greatly interfere with their education and their future, but I 
will move on, Mr. Secretary.
    I want to talk some good news first. Did everybody watch 
the women's NCAA basketball finals? Hooray to the women 
athletes, had over 18,000,000 viewers watching, 4,000,000 more 
than the men. Sorry. Sorry about that. [Laughter.]
    Ms. Frankel. The most viewers for any basketball ever on 
ESPN, including the NBA, and it is predicted that this year, 
women's sports revenues will pass $1,000,000,000, so that is 
really the good news. But there is some not so good news, which 
is that the NCAA continue to offer more athletic opportunities 
to men than to women in a very, very large way. So I am 
wondering what, if anything, your Department is doing to make 
sure female athletes, including athletes of color, which also 
seem to be on getting the short end of the stick, receive the 
same investment as the male athletes.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you for that, and I did reflect on 
the NCAA tournament and the amazing work of, you know, so many 
of those teams as a byproduct of the Title IX fight that has 
been happening in this country for many, many years, but as you 
pointed out, there is still so much to go. We still shouldn't 
be satisfied. The contracts for viewership that the women got 
was much less than the men, yet the results, as you pointed 
out----
    Ms. Frankel. Yeah.
    Secretary Cardona [continuing]. Were far greater, and I 
think that is a sign of where we are going, but we have a lot 
of work to do. We are working really hard in the Office for 
Civil Rights to move forward with the Title IX regulations. As 
you know, this is an important topic to so many people across 
the country. We received over 240,000 comments that we review 
carefully in order to make the decision, and we are committed 
to ensuring that the Title IX regulations are fair, responsive, 
and effective. And while I can't speak specifically to the 
content of that because it is still not final, I will tell you 
that we recognize that while we have made some progress in this 
country, we still have a ways to go.
    Ms. Frankel. Thank you for that. You know, I would 
appreciate maybe if you have a plan of action on this specific 
issue, I would love to see it.
    Secretary Cardona. Okay.
    Ms. Frankel. I think a lot of people would be interested in 
that. And my colleague here, Mr. Pocan, raised the issue of 
antisemitism on the college campuses as well as other 
discrimination, and we know there is something like 75 percent 
increase in antisemitism on the college campus. This is very 
alarming, very unacceptable. Students can't learn if they don't 
feel safe.
    Secretary Cardona. Mm-hmm.
    Ms. Frankel. And I know that you are taking some actions, 
and I would like to know how your budget request affects your 
work, and what is the shortfall in terms of enforcement? Is it 
the dollars?
    Secretary Cardona. Right? Well, yes. I mean, as I said 
before, we are down 58 people, despite having 3 times as many 
cases since 2009, and we are talking investigators, right? So 
the budget proposal will bring on 86 new staff members, 90 
percent of whom would work on investigations, but let me just 
contextualize. Since October 7th, we have 134 open cases, and 
that was updated this morning. It was 128 last week. One 
hundred thirty-four open cases----
    Ms. Frankel. Excuse me. Open cases where? Are these on 
college campuses?
    Secretary Cardona. Under shared ancestry.
    Ms. Frankel. Oh, shared ancestry.
    Secretary Cardona. Yeah. Right. So that goes to show the 
volume. We have opened many more from the last administration. 
I think they opened 27. So it goes to show the demand that 
there is for investigations. Last year, we were not able to 
increase funding for OCR, and we are concerned that if we don't 
have funding this year, getting to those investigations, and 
they are thorough investigations. Oftentimes we will 
investigate one thing, and something else will come up during 
that investigation. So it is critical that we have funding for 
the Office for Civil Rights to make sure that our 
investigations are thorough and quick.
    Ms. Frankel. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Moolenaar.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and, Mr. Secretary, 
thank you for being here today.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you.
    Mr. Moolenaar. I want to follow up on Representative 
Letlow's questions with the concern that this problem with 
FAFSA. I am wondering if resources were diverted from the 
Department, people who could have been implementing FAFSA 
working on, you know, the cancellation of $144,000,000,000 in 
Federal student loans. Can you tell me how many people were 
working on the canceling student loans and what resources were 
used in that process?
    Secretary Cardona. Sure. So the way it works at the 
Department of Education, we have the Office of the 
Undersecretary that is working on helping develop policies to 
provide debt relief to millions of Americans who are really at 
risk of default or having issues. So that is the process where 
we develop, whether it is through rulemaking or through 
different proposals. The implementation of those when it comes 
to the student accounts goes through the Federal student aid 
offices. So it is not that we are taking employees from the 
Federal Student Aid Office to sit at OUS to work on policies. 
That is not how it works. There are, let's say, 28,000,000 
people that have to go back into repayment. They have to go 
into repayment either way. If they have debt discharge, there 
are changes to their accounts----
    Mr. Moolenaar. Mm-hmm.
    Secretary Cardona [continuing]. That lead to the debt 
discharge. So there is no strategy where we are taking folks 
from one building and saying, go to this building to work on 
this strategy that we have to fix the problem.
    Mr. Moolenaar. But I would assume implementing, you know, 
$144,000,000,000, you know, canceling that debt would require 
resources and focus that would take people maybe who could have 
been working on FAFSA and improving that situation. Do you not 
see that or?
    Secretary Cardona. Well, I think, you know, 
operationalizing our policies falls under FSA regardless of 
what the policies are.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Mm-hmm.
    Secretary Cardona. So I think I would rather communicate it 
that way, that we are working really hard on fixing a broken 
system, which means providing a lifeline to millions of 
Americans who right now are underwater and need help.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Okay. Could I----
    Secretary Cardona. So FSA is the body that is implementing 
the decisions that were being made in other places.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Okay. In my district, I hear from parents 
who paid for their children's education and feel that it is 
unjust to say, okay, some people are having their loans 
forgiven, but they had to pay everything, people who went into 
the skilled trades who didn't take out student debt and made 
that decision, and they are saying, now I have to subsidize 
people who chose to take on student debt going to college. I 
hear from students who, you know, work part time or took time, 
you know, in their career and then went back to school, they 
aren't getting their student loans. Do you see the fundamental 
injustice in how this administration has, you know, picked 
winners and losers in this process?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you for that question, 
Congressman, and I have met with people across the country who 
have shared different perspectives and listened to them 
thoroughly. I think my response to that is that messaging makes 
sense if we are protecting the status quo. We have a very 
broken higher education system, and as a former school 
principal who has spoken to students who said, I can't go to 
college, that is too expensive for me. At 11 years old? This 
kid who is one of the smartest kids in my school, in front of 
his father, normalizing, I am not going to college.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Well----
    Secretary Cardona. We have to fix the system, sir.
    Mr. Moolenaar. What you are doing is subsidizing a broken 
system, right?
    Secretary Cardona. So you could make the same case----
    Mr. Moolenaar. And you are creating incentives for people 
not to do what the families that saved, what the people who 
made decisions----
    Secretary Cardona. Right.
    Mr. Moolenaar [continuing]. Going into the skilled trades. 
You are incentivizing people to not pay back student loans and, 
at the same time, penalizing and forcing people who did to 
subsidize those who didn't.
    Secretary Cardona. Sir, thank you for sharing that 
perspective. I don't see it that way. I feel that the people 
that received PPP loans were given support when they needed it 
most to get back on their feet. We have over a million people 
defaulting on loans, so we have a responsibility to fix it. And 
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the career and technical 
education tracks. We are doing more in this administration to 
create pathways to trades to make sure that all the great work 
of the Invest in America provisions, that we meet the moment, 
so I agree with you on that, and I don't see it as unfair. I 
see it as we are fixing something that is broken. We have 
better repayment plans now, so we don't have to be in the 
business of forgiving loans in the future. But we have an 
inequity that we are leveling now to get to a future that has 
greater accountability, higher Pell dollars, and making sure 
that people can pay off their loans.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Well, I just want you to know, I am hearing 
from parents, I am hearing from students, I am hearing from 
people who went on different tracks, that they feel like it is 
fundamentally unfair, and I just want you to have that message. 
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Mr. Moolenaar. Mrs. Watson-
Coleman.
    Mrs. Watson-Coleman. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. 
Secretary. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Secretary, I have been doing a lot of work around 
mental health issues, from the very young all the way up to me. 
[Laughter.]
    Mrs. Watson-Coleman. And I stand firmly with the President 
on doubling that number----
    Voice. That took hours. [Laughter.]
    Mrs. Watson-Coleman [continuing]. Number of mental health 
professionals in our schools. Can you please explain to this 
committee how the $216,000,000 for school safety national 
activities and the new $25,000,000 investment in the fund for 
the improvement of post-secondary education helps us reach that 
goal?
    Secretary Cardona. Mm-hmm. Well, prior to the pandemic, as 
an educator, I would categorize our mental health supports in 
schools as an emergency room model. We waited for the trauma to 
happen, we waited for the student to have an outburst, and then 
we approached it, and unfortunately, in many places in our 
country, it became discipline. It is insufficient. We are 
seeking to transform how we view accessing mental health in our 
pre-K THROUGH 12 schools and our higher education institutions. 
Those dollars are intended to develop proactive programming to 
meet the needs of learners so they can be successful in a way 
that is supportive.
    You know, students are 6 times more likely to receive 
mental health supports if it is offered in a school, compared 
to if it wasn't offered in the school and they had to get it in 
the community. So in addition to those dollars that you are 
talking about, we are also proposing full service community 
schools that connect with community partners and bring them 
into the schools. Look, we have to fundamentally change how we 
approach mental health supports in our schools. I believe this 
is one of the most purple issues that we have, and it is an 
opportunity for us not to go back to what it was before the 
pandemic.
    Those dollars that you made reference to will do that in 
higher education because what I am seeing, Congresswoman, is 
that the higher education institutions that focused on mental 
health when reopening schools did a better job reopening 
quickly and more safely, and kept their students greater. 
Higher education institutions recognize that importance, and 
they are moving forward in that, so those dollars are intended 
to support their efforts.
    Mrs. Watson-Coleman. I am glad to hear that. What kind of 
guidance are you all actually giving to make sure that these 
funds reach the underserved communities?
    Secretary Cardona. Yeah. So, you know, in 2021, the 
Department issued guidance on mental health in schools. And it 
was shocking to me to learn that that was the first time mental 
health guidance was provided from the Department of Education, 
knowing that, you know, today we are in a youth mental health 
crisis. So since then, there have been numerous other guidance 
documents, technical assistance webinars, working specifically 
with higher education institutions, talking about how to 
support. For many institutions, they are developing smaller 
programs to provide mental health supports.
    So we are working with them, sharing best practices on our 
website. We have resources. We have a Department whose focus is 
to make sure that universities have that support, and we are 
going to continue to do that. We recognize that this is an 
opportunity that we have to really shift the narrative around 
accessing mental health supports as we reduce the stigma that 
has been so prevalent in the mental health space. We have a 
responsibility to do better for our students, and we are taking 
every advantage to work with them at the ground level.
    Mrs. Watson-Coleman. Particularly in the underserved 
communities.
    Secretary Cardona. Absolutely.
    Mrs. Watson-Coleman. I just want to add a comment. I want 
to thank you, I want to thank the President for working around 
as much as you can to provide as much student debt relief as he 
can. I don't think anybody desires to take a loan out----
    Secretary Cardona. Right.
    Mrs. Watson-Coleman [continuing]. If he or she has the 
financial capacity to pay for what it is that is before him or 
her. And so I know that this has been a very hard road to hoe, 
I should say, given what our colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle and what our unfortunate wrongheaded courts have been 
doing, and so I just want to say that you got a fan in me on 
this issue. I think this is vitally important to our 
communities that represent the need.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you.
    Mrs. Watson-Coleman. And there is so much more to do. Thank 
you. I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Ciscomani.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, 
Secretary Cardona, for coming before us today to talk about the 
budget. You know, I have got several questions, but I want to 
start off with the Charter School Program, and on that, in my 
district alone, almost 17,000 students attend charter schools, 
and over half of those students are minority students, and the 
majority of those minority students are Hispanic.
    Now, I understand you talked about increase in Title I 
funding, but this program is still very much needed in my 
community. My own kids attended charter schools for the first 5 
years of their schooling, the older three. I have six, so I 
have a lot of experience here. But given the popularity of the 
program, why does your budget propose a $40,000,000 cut to the 
CSP?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you, Congressman. You know, I have 
seen examples of charter schools that do exceptional work, 
public charter schools, and I visited E.L. Haynes recently, a 
fantastic school. To be very frank with you, the demand hasn't 
kept up, and I just want to remind folks, the charter school, 
even with the proposed $40,000,000 cut there, the charter 
school competitive grant is still the largest pre-K 12 grant 
that we have at the Department of Education. The demand has 
really diminished, so in keeping with the Fiscal Responsibility 
Act, that is a concern that we have.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Well, let me jump in here because, you know, 
when you talk about the size of the budget, less than 1 percent 
of the K through 12 Federal spending is on charter schools.
    Secretary Cardona. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Ciscomani. So that is a very low number based on the 
demand that I see in my district. Now, you talk about, you 
know, the demand, so let me say this respectfully. You know, 
from the meetings that I have with educators, with parents of 
kids that my kids went to school with, it is evident to me that 
the slow spending is not due to the lack of interest in 
applying, but rather the burdensome regulations your Department 
has put on this program. I have heard that from many people. 
Like I said, educators, teachers, those that are trying to 
start charter schools.
    Secretary Cardona. Right.
    Mr. Ciscomani. The regulations and just the burdensome toll 
of people trying to start these schools is incredible. So 
charter school leaders have told me that the wait times and the 
red tape that exists when applying for the programs make many 
give up on the application process entirely, and I have seen 
that happen with people that I personally know. So rather than 
suggesting a cut in the program, I would suggest you meet with 
charter school leaders about their current difficulties they 
are facing when applying to this program.
    You mentioned you visited a school recently. From what I 
saw in the reports, I think you have visited a couple of them, 
but there are a lot of great examples out there, and my State 
included. I would personally invite you to come to Arizona, and 
I can show you some of the best charter schools that you will 
see in the country that do this work, that are high performing, 
that are working for our students, and let me tell you 
something. In mostly all of them, there is a waiting list.
    Secretary Cardona. Yeah.
    Mr. Ciscomani. So I respectfully disagree with the fact 
that there isn't a demand. There is actually more demand than 
they are being able to be met with. And in the majority of the 
charter schools, at least in my district, are in the K-8 
section. There are very few high schools. So students, after 
they go through a charter school life experience, then they are 
left with very little options in high school. That is at least 
the story in my district, so I want to push back on that a 
little bit and say the demand is there. The demand is there, 
but when you make it as hard as the Department has made it for 
the charter schools to actually be erected and work and 
function for our kids, again, let me say, in my district, the 
vast majority of these kids being minority students and the 
majority of that group are Hispanics, like my kids example, 
that is a problem.
    Secretary Cardona. I appreciate your passion. I could----
    Mr. Ciscomani. I am very passionate.
    Secretary Cardona. No, and I welcome an opportunity to 
visit with you in Arizona. I think anytime we can show 
bipartisan effort on supporting students, I welcome that. I 
will tell you with this grant that I am speaking to 
specifically, and I am going to ask my team to follow up with 
you on sharing the demand, with regard to the notion of making 
it difficult, look, we have increased accountability across the 
board, all schools. We should not be satisfied in this country 
with where our students are. We have to raise the bar, and that 
means across the board we are increasing accountability because 
that is what our students deserve.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Well, let me, just because I am out of time 
here, we need to increase accountability, of course. We need to 
make sure that parents have the choice for their kids' 
education, and that is what I am very passionate about. It is 
choice, choice and education that parents should have. My 
family moved to this country when I was 11 years old. We 
immigrated here. The top reason why we came here was a better 
job for my parents and a better education for the kids. That 
was us. That is what we need to be protecting. That is what we 
need to be fighting for. I admire your story and your 
background and where you came from and where you are today. We 
got to work together, like you said, on a bipartisan basis to 
make sure that all students, regardless of their background, 
can have a real shot at the American Dream, and that comes 
through education. So I reiterate my invitation to Arizona. I 
look forward to working with you and welcoming you there.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you.
    Mr. Ciscomani. I yield back, sir. Thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Ms. Lee.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, thank you, 
Ranking Member, and thank you, Mr. Secretary. Mr. Secretary, I 
have been working very closely with HHS Secretary Beccera and 
USDA Secretary Vilsack to address food and nutrition 
insecurity. The President's budget provides over 
$15,000,000,000 to allow more States and schools to leverage 
participation in the Community Eligibility Program and provide 
healthy and free school meals to additional 9,000,000 children. 
Thank you very much. Can you provide me with just a bit more in 
terms of the details of the coordination efforts between the 
Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human 
Services, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding food 
and nutrition insecurity in schools? I am really pleased that 
the coordination is there----
    Secretary Cardona. Yeah.
    Ms. Lee [continuing]. But want to see how seamless this 
coordination will be.
    Secretary Cardona. Sure. Thank you, and let me just drill 
it down a little bit, if I could. I come from a district that 
has that benefit, right, the community benefit. And I remember 
prior to this happening, we had so many different issues where, 
you know, students were getting different meals because they 
didn't pay for their lunch or the paperwork wasn't filled, you 
know, in a district that has 75, 80 percent of the students 
eligible for free or reduced lunch. So what it did to remove 
the stigma--sometimes we don't talk about that here--what it 
did to remove the stigma, make sure students had a healthy meal 
and were able to function like every other student, what a 
significant difference that made when that happened. And I 
happened to be a school principal when that happened, so thank 
you for that support and for the work on that.
    Look, we recognize we cannot work in silos at the 
Department of Education. When we talk about Medicaid 
reimbursement to get mental health dollars, HHS and Department 
of Education have to work together. School meals. Tom Vilsack 
and I have had conversations. Our Departments have to work 
together. When we are talking about career opportunities in the 
trades and technical education, DOL, Energy, Commerce, 
Transportation, we are connected at the hip. We meet regularly 
as part of our structure at the Department of Education to make 
sure that, you know, Larry is spending time with his 
counterpart at the other agency if we are working on grants 
together.
    And we are thinking about it from the perspective of the 
consumer, right? They don't need a Department of Education over 
here with rules, Transportation over here with rules. So we 
work really closely to make sure we are thinking about the user 
experience, and the user in that case might be a school 
district. It might be a State office. So it is just kind of how 
we are designed to work together.
    Ms. Lee. Good.
    Secretary Cardona. And the President expects it.
    Ms. Lee. Good. Good, good, good. You know, we talk about 
intersectionality quite a bit.
    Secretary Cardona. Yeah.
    Ms. Lee. And I think that this is a good example of what 
other agencies can do for our young people and adults in 
general. Also, I want to thank you for working to address and 
to eliminate the teacher shortage. Especially encouraged to see 
the President's budget that includes more than $650,000,000 to 
support a diverse and well-prepared pipeline of educators and 
an increase in $15,000,000 for the Hawkins Centers of 
Excellence Program. Although teachers shortages remain 
disproportionately impacting students in underserved 
communities, it is important to retain quality educators, 
especially those that represent the community, and, you know, 
this continues to be really challenging for many communities.
    And so what are the plans to ensure that teacher diversity 
is institutionalized and that teacher diversity is 
representative of communities that they serve, well, 
especially, you know, in underserved communities, but we have 
to be intentional about that.
    Secretary Cardona. Right. We have to be, and we can't keep 
doing what we have done, or we are not going to ever catch up, 
so thank you for that. You know, I always say our profession 
should be as beautifully diverse as our country, and right now 
it is not, and if we are not intentional, then we are not going 
to make improvements there. So we are taking a lot of steps. 
The Augustus Hawkins grant, you mentioned it. I was at Bowie 
State recently, and I saw a program. They had 50 men of color 
going into the teaching profession, being mentored by former 
superintendents that are being there, giving their time to help 
these young men become teachers. And so that was a recipient of 
the Augustus Hawkins grant. We are asking----
    Ms. Lee. Mr. Secretary, let me just mention, I was a 
staffer----
    Secretary Cardona. Were you?
    Ms. Lee [continuing]. And an intern for Congressman Ron 
Dellums and had a chance to get to know Congressman Gus Hawkins 
very well. He would be very happy about this.
    Secretary Cardona. It is just one of those things that just 
felt fantastic because I know that community is going to be 
better. So there are specific grants to that. We are really 
shifting how we are thinking about this. We are at the doorstep 
of another crisis if we don't think about educator shortages, 
and I am proud to see that California is one of those States 
that has an apprenticeship for teaching. The days of free 
student teaching should be in our rearview mirror. No other 
profession does that. And while teachers get paid, on average, 
24 percent less than people with other similar degrees, we need 
to make sure that we are creating a pipeline for teachers to 
get into the program.
    And then this is why, you know, when some people talk about 
student debt relief as something negative, we are fixing a 
bipartisan bill in 2007, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness 
Program, to provide debt relief to educators because they chose 
teaching, not to become rich, but to help their community, and 
we are proud of the work that we are doing. I spoke to a 
teacher of color Monday in New York City who took out a loan 
for $30,000, and we know educators of color typically have to 
take out loans for their whole amount. A $30,000 loan about 10 
or 12 years ago, the interest is brought up to $60,000. So this 
teacher benefited from debt relief and is benefiting from the 
plans that the President has announced.
    So for me, this is how we also help maintain teachers of 
color in our profession. We have to make sure that we are 
increasing salary, creating good working conditions, being 
intentional about recruiting, and creating pathways and 
apprenticeships. I believe we have good strategies. We just 
have to fund them and support them across the country. Thank 
you.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Fleischmann.
    Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, 
Secretary Cardona. Thank you for being before us today.
    Mr. Secretary, it has been brought to my attention that the 
Department is attempting to significantly alter a program that 
allows college students to receive their educational materials 
at below market rates and before the first day of class. 
Additionally, since 2016, data from College Board has 
demonstrated prices for educational materials for college 
students has decreased by over 40 percent, which indicates to 
me that these affordable access programs are working. My 
understanding is that the Department will force these programs 
to operate in an opt-in manner, which will likely decrease the 
effectiveness of the programs. So my question, sir, has the 
Department conducted any studies to determine if these programs 
are sustainable under a proposed opt-in method and if the 
current benefits to students would be preserved in an opt-in 
system? If not, would you commit to doing so before 
promulgating these regulations? I thank you.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you, Congressman, for raising that 
and for sharing your perspective on that. We have spoken to 
many college leaders and heard different perspectives on that. 
We have heard from families as well, and I know we are in that 
rulemaking process, which prevents me to go any deeper in that. 
But I will go back to my team and see if there are any studies, 
as you mentioned, that we have referenced, and I will have my 
team follow up with you on that important issue. Thank you.
    Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Mr. Chairman, I 
will yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Hoyer.
    Mr. Hoyer. I don't know that anybody wants to hear me, but 
I will turn on the mike. Let me say, Mr. Secretary, I apologize 
for being late. I had a speech to give that just conflicted 
with this, and I was the one that had to give the speech, so I 
wasn't here.
    First of all, let me say that very much appreciate your 
taking this responsibility. At the Federal level, it is 
somewhat controversial, but, in my view, and I tell people 
every place that I go, the most important people in any society 
are its teachers. If we don't educate the young, we won't have 
the kind of society that we want, so I think this is a primary 
investment for all levels of government, Federal, State, and 
local. While the primary is local, the State has a significant 
impact in terms of funding, and the Federal a less direct, but 
a significant role.
    I was very pleased to see that you have put money in for 
full-service community schools and, particularly, early 
childhood schools. Oh, and by the way, congratulations for 
visiting Bowie State University, which is in my district, as 
you probably know.
    Secretary Cardona. Right.
    Mr. Hoyer. And it is a wonderful institution, badly 
underfunded. Prior to the middle 60s and when we had 
redistricting and the State Senate became more representative 
is when we started to invest in Bowie State University, and now 
it is an outstanding institution.
    But back to the full-service schools. I think that early 
childhood education is absolutely critical in terms of this 
education continuum. We have some people wearing ``Literacy and 
Justice for All'' shirts here. My wife, Judy Hoyer, was a 
reading expert, but she was also a first grade teacher, and 
then she was the administrator of early childhood education in 
Prince's George County, one of the larger school systems in the 
country, and she started an early childhood school.
    I am going to take you to a Judy Center. I don't think you 
have been to a Judy Center, but it will fall within the 
category of this new program. I didn't talk to anybody about 
this program. I didn't know about this program until I read my 
book today, and I am glad to see that is done because it is 
tough to get people who are not just passionate about being an 
educator. My wife wanted to be an educator, and she told her 
mother that at age 7, and she went to Towson State, which was 
then a teacher's college. This is all to say that we need 
investment in this area, and as we need investment, we need 
accountability.
    I mentioned this when Secretary Becerra was here because it 
is in Health and Human Services. I think Head Start ought to be 
in Department of Education. The expertise in 1965 when Head 
Start was started was that it was not an educational program 
because if kids were confronted with education, that might be 
too much pressure on them at that young age. Well, we know that 
was incorrect. In fact, out of the womb, children are sponges 
and ready to learn. So I want to congratulate you on pursuing 
this program and urge you to, as we pursue this program, pursue 
accountability to make sure that it is working for kids. I 
mentioned that with respect to Head Start to Secretary of HHS, 
Mr. Beccera.
    I have just asked the staff to give me, I want the 
statistics, and this goes to one of the questions that was 
asked on Pell Grants. I am a big supporter of Pell Grants. I 
have been on this committee since 1983, but I also have a 
concern about every time we increase Pell Grants, college 
expenses go up 1-and-a-half times as much. I don't know how we 
can deal with that, but I think we do need to deal with it, and 
so I would urge you to do that. That is not a question.
    Ms. Frankel, I understand, asked the question about 
antisemitism. Antisemitism is a cancer on the international 
global community now, increasing at a faster rate than any time 
since World War II, and we need to be very vigilant, 
particularly on college campuses. Young people need to be 
educated, Mr. Secretary, on the background of the millennia of 
discrimination and hate directed at the Jewish community. 
Millenia. I got 2 seconds left, so I haven't asked you a 
question, but I do want to raise those two issues, three 
issues, in particular, that I would ask to direct you and your 
staff to focus on, and I will follow up on all three.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you.
    Mr. Hoyer. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Ms. Hoyer. Mr. Clyde.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Chairman Aderholt, for holding this 
hearing today.
    In recent years, we have seen a drastic increase in radical 
gender ideology being promoted and pushed by government 
bureaucrats and educators through school curriculums. Pseudo 
scientists are attempting to redefine gender to include in 
individual's feelings rather than focus on their biological sex 
at birth, and our Nation's top executive branch officials 
cannot clearly define what a woman is. So, Mr. Secretary, I am 
sure you remember that in our last hearing last year, I gave 
you an opportunity to answer that question, and I will give you 
a second chance. Can you define what a woman is?
    Secretary Cardona. I will respond, Congressman Clyde, the 
way I did last year. I am here to talk about the budget and how 
to support the students in your district.
    Mr. Clyde. Well, I think it is very important that you 
determine that you know how to define a woman. As Ms. Frankel 
mentioned over there, she wanted to be sure that women had 
their fair share of funding. If you can't define what a woman 
is, how in the world can you determine that they get their fair 
share of funding? If you cannot understand and clearly define 
what a woman is, how can you make rules that protect women's 
rights? You can't. So I would ask you to please respect this 
committee and the U.S. Congress by answering my question.
    Secretary Cardona. I respect your role, I respect this 
committee, and I said, I am here to talk about the budget, and 
if you have a question about the budget, I would be happy to 
respond.
    Mr. Clyde. I am asking you a question, and you are refusing 
to answer.
    Secretary Cardona. Be happy to respond to questions about 
the budget, which is why I am here.
    Mr. Clyde. You are here to answer whatever questions I want 
to ask of you, and this question directly correlates to the 
budget.
    Secretary Cardona. We are asking for a $22,000,000 increase 
for the office for Civil Right so that we can----
    Mr. Clyde. That is not my question. My question is, can you 
define a woman?
    Secretary Cardona. As I said earlier, I am not interested 
in getting----
    Mr. Clyde. All right. Okay. So you are not interested in 
respecting the question of a member of Congress.
    Secretary Cardona [continuing]. Personal content.
    Mr. Clyde. All right. Your answer is cagey, evasive, and 
reveals to me that you have an inability to serve and protect 
the interest of young women, especially women athletes in this 
country. Female athletes are having their safety and rights 
violated by biological males competing in women's sports, and, 
as a result, our Nation's women and young girls are suffering 
the consequences. Yet despite the grave need for protections to 
cover female athletes, the Department of Education is moving to 
eradicate these protections by redefining gender in clear 
contradiction to biology through its proposed Title IX 
rulemaking.
    Mr. Secretary, I hope you realize this proposed rule 
unilaterally forces schools to allow biological males to 
participate in women's athletics by threatening to withhold 
Federal assistance from schools across the Nation, assistance 
that is currently used to benefit all students, I might add. So 
do you think a woman's safety is in jeopardy by allowing 
biological males who claim to be women to compete in women's 
sports?
    Secretary Cardona. All students should feel welcome and 
connected to our schools, and the protection of students is 
something we take very seriously. We are, as you know, in a 
rulemaking process for Title IX. I can't get into specifics on 
what our proposal will be. I can tell you that we have had 
hundreds of thousands of comments that we take very seriously, 
comments that have different perspectives, which is why it is 
really important that we listen and we read all those comments 
before we respond with a rule.
    Mr. Clyde. Okay. But you haven't answered my question. Do 
you think women's safety is in jeopardy by allowing biological 
males who claim to be women to compete in women's sports?
    Secretary Cardona. I believe all students should be safe in 
school and should be protected, and all students should be 
welcome in our schools. Again, I see what you want----
    Mr. Clyde. Okay. So you are not going to answer my 
question.
    Secretary Cardona. Could I finish my response, sir?
    Mr. Clyde. No. I will tell you something. I am very 
thankful----
    Secretary Cardona. Could I finish my response?
    Mr. Clyde. You are not answering my question. You are 
filibustering. I am very thankful that the NAIA, the National 
Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, has decided to only 
allow biological female student athletes to participate in 
female sports. The NAIA understands. They understand the safety 
issue here. They understand that it protects women's 
achievements. They understand the hard work of women needs to 
be honored. The NAIA understands that they need to prevent the 
stealing of future honor and accomplishments from women by 
allowing biological men to take those honors and hard work that 
women have worked years and years and years to accomplish, and 
yet it is not happening. So do you think that biological males 
who claim to be women should be allowed to use women's locker 
rooms?
    Secretary Cardona. We are in the Title IX regulations 
process, and you know, sir, that I cannot speak premature to 
the rules being put out.
    Mr. Clyde. I am asking your opinion. I am not asking----
    Secretary Cardona. I can tell you, as an educator and as a 
father, I want to make sure all students in schools feel 
welcome, seen, and protected. I can answer that. As a lifelong 
educator, that is something that I fought for, and that is what 
I am fighting for as Secretary of Education.
    Mr. Clyde. I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Edwards.
    Mr. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Cardona, thanks for 
being with us this afternoon.
    Let's begin with this. How many public schools, let's say, 
K through 12, have you visited in the last 12 months, just 
roughly?
    Secretary Cardona. In the last 12 months?
    Mr. Edwards. Public K through 12 schools.
    Secretary Cardona. I couldn't give you an exact number, but 
dozens.
    Mr. Edwards. Ballpark.
    Secretary Cardona. I would say dozens. I would say dozens 
at least, yeah.
    Mr. Edwards. What about charter schools that serve K 
through 12 students? How many have you----
    Secretary Cardona. I can tell you I recently visited one. 
Some of the other schools that I visited might have been 
charters. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head.
    Mr. Edwards. Thank you for that honest answer. I would like 
to continue the conversation my friend, Mr. Ciscomani, began a 
while ago on charter schools because your response really 
piqued my interest in a number of ways. What are your views, 
what are your opinions of charter schools and the role that 
they play in preparing for young people for life and working 
careers today?
    Secretary Cardona. Sure. Thank you for the opportunity to 
respond to that. You know, not only in this role, but in 
previous roles as an educational leader, I have always valued 
parents' ability to choose where they want their children to 
attend, whether it is a local public school, a technical 
school, a charter school, or even a private school. I myself 
chose to go to a technical high school. I didn't go to my 
neighborhood school, so I am a believer in choice, student 
choice and in parent choice. I am a believer in public charter 
schools being an option for families who choose to not attend a 
local school or send their children to a school that might have 
a specific focus, whether that is, you know, STEM or a 
different area that is of interest to students similar to 
magnet schools, so I have always been fine with that.
    What I am not in favor of is public education dollars being 
used to fund private tuitions for schools that are often non-
inclusive as much as the community needs it. So that is what I 
am really concerned about, and that is what I am not in favor 
of.
    Mr. Edwards. You had said while we recognize there has been 
a proposed $40,000,000 cut----
    Secretary Cardona. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Edwards [continuing]. To the charter school program, 
and during a Department of Education briefing on the 
President's budget, your staff stated that the cut was due to a 
lack of interest.
    Secretary Cardona. That is right.
    Mr. Edwards. Can you help me better understand the basis in 
that statement?
    Secretary Cardona. Sure.
    Mr. Edwards. Are there any surveys, any data that you are 
pointing to that says there is a lack of interest? And the 
reason I ask that is because I am not sensing that from my 
district. In fact, folks in my district seem to be more 
interested in more choices for educating their children.
    Secretary Cardona. Sure. Sure. Thank you, and I would be 
happy to have my staff follow up with yours to give you the 
specifics, but I will tell you that the demand has been 
decreasing for this competitive grant. I can't say that in some 
pockets of our country, there is not a greater demand for 
charter schools. That is not what I am saying here. What I am 
saying is for this grant, $400,000,000 grant, there is less 
demand for it. We anticipate that we are going to still be able 
to make the same number of awards as previous years, and what I 
have learned from my staff who looked into this is that 
oftentimes we are frontloading dollars.
    Mr. Edwards. And so you have answered my question.
    Secretary Cardona. Okay.
    Mr. Edwards. I am sorry.
    Secretary Cardona. Sure.
    Mr. Edwards. I am going to run out of time, and there is 
more I would like to do here. So there has not been as many 
requests is what I hear. Have you gone as deep to find out why 
there have not been as many requests?
    Secretary Cardona. Again, I can have more information sent 
to you from staff who do work with grantees and who get 
feedback from grantees because that is a critical part of what 
we do when we are putting out grants.
    Mr. Edwards. So let me just take my last minute to share a 
couple thoughts. I see, I hear there is a greater demand for 
charter schools for a number of reasons.
    Secretary Cardona. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Edwards. And I would suggest, and I am anxious to see 
the data that you are going to provide to this committee, there 
may be a lot of other reasons--
    Secretary Cardona. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Edwards [continuing]. That there is not a request for 
as many grants. One is 107-page application, which I think 
speaks to Mr. Ciscomani's point about regulation and the 
difficulty. I would also suggest that maybe there are income 
requirements that are preventing people for applying for 
grants. In some cases, I know they have been too low, and in 
some cases I know that they have been too high, one of the 
reasons that I know that folks do not apply for charter schools 
or that they cannot receive grants of substantial form to send 
their children to a charter school. Maybe a particular grant 
that they can receive in a State would offer a small amount, 
that they can't afford the greater amount.
    And I will just summarize by saying the folks in my 
district very strongly believe in charter schools and the niche 
that they provide, and that they had rather have choices for 
their education for a sundry of reasons. So thank you, Mr. 
Chair. I yield.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you.
    Mr. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Edwards. Mr. Secretary, you are 
very popular, so we are going to go ahead and ask a few more 
questions. What we will do, we will do a second round, but we 
will do it limited to 3 minutes. Because I know some members 
have a few follow-up questions, I want to go forward, and so I 
will kick off the first question.
    Last summer, of course, you remember the Supreme Court 
struck down the President's one-time student loan cancellation 
program, and after more than a 3-year pause, borrowers started 
loan repayment back last fall.
    Secretary Cardona. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Edwards. Can you tell us what is the share of borrowers 
now repaying their student loans?
    Secretary Cardona. I do recall having that information 
reported to me soon after we got back, and I think the number, 
I want to say the 60 percent compared to what it was before. It 
was maybe 10 or 15 points below, but I don't want to misspeak, 
so what I will do, Chairman, is have that information sent to 
you today.
    Mr. Aderholt. So how does that compare to before the pause?
    Secretary Cardona. Well, we were dealing with over a 
million defaults before, and we saw progress ramping up. We did 
implement many programs, sir, to help borrowers who are 
struggling to make repayment, the Fresh Start Program. So there 
were a lot of new things that we put in place to help borrowers 
who are struggling get back on, so I will have my team reach 
out to and follow up.
    Mr. Aderholt. Okay.
    Mr. Aderholt. And as I mentioned, the Department has touted 
that the Biden administration has found ways to cancel 
$144,000,000,000 in student loans. The Department is also 
pursuing debt cancellation through a negotiated rulemaking 
process that has created a 1-year ``transition period'' during 
which borrowers won't face consequences, like native credit 
reporting, if they don't make repayments. It seems like a lot 
of mixed messages that are being sent. What exactly is the 
Department communicating to borrowers about paying back their 
loans?
    Secretary Cardona. Yeah, thank you for that, and, you know, 
that 1-year where we weren't sending information to crediting 
agencies, we heard from many, many borrowers who were 
struggling to make that first payment and get back on after 
having about 3 years of pause. So we wanted to make sure that 
we get them back on their feet so they are successful so we 
limit the number of defaults because that is never good for 
them or the local economy.
    So I think in terms of mixed messaging, we wanted to make 
sure that they come on smoothly. For many of these folks, this 
was the first time they were ever going to make a payment 
because it was paused after they graduated. So, you know, we 
feel that the steps that we took to ease them back on, 
communicate more effectively, communicate more regularly, find 
those folks who we didn't hear from. FSA did a lot of work to 
try to make that process as smooth as possible so we could 
reduce the number of defaults that our borrowers were facing.
    Mr. Aderholt. Well, wouldn't you think that the 
Department's repeated promises of debt cancellation affect a 
borrower's interest in repaying their loans as well as decision 
of current students about how much to borrow?
    Secretary Cardona. No, that is a fair question, and to be 
very frank, part of our communication was you have to restart 
payments, and these are some things that we are doing to fix a 
broken system. You may be a part of that, you may not, but it 
doesn't negate the need to go back to repayment. We were very 
careful with our messaging to prevent what you are referring 
to.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Ms. DeLauro.
    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just see if I 
can get in two questions, one on learning loss. The committee, 
the Democrats worked with the President and with you, 
$130,000,000,000 to K through 12 schools in the American Rescue 
Plan, 20 percent to deal with learning loss. Recovering from 
the pandemic, there has been a struggle. Recovery is underway. 
Between Spring of 2022-2023 students nationwide recovered one-
third of their learning loss in math, one-quarter of their 
losses in reading. We need to continue on, but the strategy is 
ensuring States and districts focus like a laser on evidence-
based responses to learning loss. One question. Can you 
describe how your Department is driving this important work 
across the country dealing with learning loss?
    In terms of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, we 
know that prior to the Biden administration, the program was 
broken. Seven thousand borrowers have never received 
forgiveness. This deals with teacher shortage. The question is 
there have been improvements made. Sixty-two-and-a-half-billion 
in student debt has been canceled for 871,000 borrowers. The 
improvements to the PSLF have been essential in helping us to 
retain a top-notch public servants. How is your Department 
streamlining the experience for borrowers participating in 
PSLF?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you. So look, we should be just as 
concerned about our literacy rates, our math rates as we were, 
you know, when the pandemic hit.
    Ms. DeLauro. Right. Right.
    Secretary Cardona. We are seeing recovery with the American 
Rescue Plan. We have recovered a third of the pandemic-era 
learning loss in math, a quarter in reading. Math, twice as 
much growth last year; reading, 5 times as much growth. I am 
not proud of where we are, but I just want to paint the picture 
that the American Rescue Plan dollars focused money on 
achievement gaps is critical. The gains for black students from 
2022 to 2023 were greater than any year since 2009, okay? We 
need to continue to invest in the strategies that work, and we 
are going to continue pushing Title I. That is why we are 
pushing that.
    Moving to PSLF. Look, the President announced Monday, we 
are talking about teachers, nurses, veterans, police officers, 
firefighters, who are choosing to go into public service, and 
talk about barriers? We need to remove barriers. My mentality 
is we should be going to them telling them, you worked for 10 
years, you have paid your loans for 10 years, you are done. 
These are public servants that choose to make the community 
better. So we are trying to streamline the process that way.
    But as you noted, $62,000,000,000 in debt relief. It went 
from 7,000 people in the 4 years in the last administration to 
over 840,000 in 3 years with us. We are committed to fixing a 
broken system. PSLF is a good example of that.
    Ms. DeLauro. Look forward to working with you offline on 
what the progress is on learning loss because I think that is 
information----
    Secretary Cardona. Absolutely.
    Ms. DeLauro [continuing]. That needs to get out and how 
successful the PSLF Program has been.
    Secretary Cardona. Absolutely.
    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Aderholt. Dr. Harris.
    Mr. Harris. Thank you very much. Just two quick things. 
First of all, just to follow up on the Title IX, you know, the 
NAIA just announced this policy that is not going to allow 
males to participate in female sports, biological males 
participate in female sports. I mean, I think there are over 
200 NAIA colleges. Your Title IX rule doesn't in any way 
threaten their ability to cooperate with Federal funding, would 
it?
    Secretary Cardona. So thank you for that question. 
Congressman Clyde mentioned that earlier as well. You know, as 
I said before, I am not sure if I said it when you were asking 
questions, but we are in the regulation process, which we have 
just for athletics alone, over 150,000 comments that we are 
going to review carefully before we come up with a proposed 
rule. So for me to be speaking about on what impact it would 
have on the recent rule you made reference to would be 
premature.
    Mr. Harris. Yeah. But you are telling me the Department, I 
mean, that is within the range of consideration to basically 
educationally defund the Federal-level institutions that 
wouldn't cooperate with your mandate to allow men to 
participate in women's sports? I mean, that is within the range 
of something you are considering, or that is off the table?
    Secretary Cardona. Is your question whether the 
announcement that you made reference to this week----
    Mr. Harris. Yes.
    Secretary Cardona [continuing]. Would impact how our Title 
IX regulations would roll out?
    Mr. Harris. No, could that potentially threaten their 
ability to participate in Federal education funding----
    Secretary Cardona. Oh.
    Mr. Harris [continuing]. Such as student loans, Pell 
Grants, things like that?
    Secretary Cardona. I see what you are saying. So again, as 
I said earlier, you know, we are committed to moving quickly on 
our Title IX regulation. For me to talk about it before it is 
out would be premature, and I wouldn't want to do a disservice 
to the thorough work that we have to do to read through the 
comments and consider them before making a decision.
    Mr. Harris. Sure. I would just hope that the administration 
doesn't defund hundreds of colleges because they think that 
biological men shouldn't participate in sports with biological 
women. I mean, I just hope that, but I am only one of 150,000 
comments, I guess. Serious subject. Many universities, 
including University of Maryland, is considering a BDS sanction 
policy. Is the Department willing to stand up for our allies in 
Israel and limit educational funding to those universities that 
implement BDS sanctions?
    Secretary Cardona. You know, we take antisemitism, anti-
Arab, anti-Muslim comments very seriously. We take what is 
happening on our college campuses very seriously, which is why 
since October 7th, we have done more than any other 
administration, not only to provide open investigations of 
these issues or investigations from the Office of Civil Rights, 
but we have done a lot to make resources available to college 
leaders, to families, ensuring that freedom of speech and 
safety can coexist on college campuses.
    Mr. Harris. Do you consider BDS policies to be antisemitic?
    Secretary Cardona. Without looking at a BDS policy in front 
of me, I don't want to make a comment on something that I 
haven't reviewed.
    Mr. Harris. Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Ms. Frankel.
    Ms. Frankel. Thank you. Well, with all due respect to my 
colleagues' concern about the men and the women's sports, which 
I think is probably not a really big issue in this country, but 
here's something that you should be concerned about: the rights 
of women and girls to have reproductive freedom. I am going to 
say it again. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, one-third 
of women in this country of reproductive age have lost access 
to legal abortion. That is about 25,000,000 women. So I would 
respectfully suggest if you really care about girls and women, 
care about their access to be fully in charge of their 
healthcare and their future.
    Now, with that said, I do have a question, Mr. Secretary, 
and this is about book banning. According to the American 
Library Association, in 2023, a record 4,200 different books 
were targeted for bans in schools and libraries nationwide, 
with Florida and Texas leading the Nation. I live in Florida. 
This dangerous censorship is overwhelmingly targeting LGBTQ+ 
content and books about black history. In Florida, believe it 
or not, we have banned books about Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, 
and even a book about two male penguins raising a chick 
together. How is your Department handling this? Are you sending 
out guidance? What actions are you taking to make sure that 
diverse material remains available to students?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you, Congresswoman Frankel. You 
know, the topic of book banning, we have seen an increase in 
that tremendously. The number of titles targeted for censorship 
in public libraries increased by 92 percent over the last year. 
Ninety-two percent. School libraries did increase 11 percent, 
and 47 percent of those titles are books about LGBTQI or BIPOC 
individuals, so that shares kind of the perspective of which 
books are being, you know, targeted.
    We recognize how important this is and how, while we don't 
at the Department of Education dictate curriculum, we do feel 
that we needed to make sure that we have materials and supports 
available. So the Office for Civil Rights will continue to 
support the public but also our school communities in 
understanding their rights. We hold trainings for schools, for 
libraries, and for educational stakeholders on, you know, laws 
and how to address situations when they are needing help when 
it comes to book banning.
    Ms. Frankel. Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Ms. Letlow.
    Ms. Letlow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, in the 
2 years prior to my time in office, Congress provided almost 
$200,000,000,000 through the CARES Act, the Coronavirus 
Response and Relief Supplement Appropriations Act, and the 
American Rescue Plan for K through 12. Those dollars were to be 
used to improve online learning capability to sanitize schools 
with special equipment, to purchase PPE, and to address 
learning loss caused by school closures. Do you believe that 
this funding provided for K through 12 schools was 
appropriately spent?
    Secretary Cardona. Yes, I do.
    Ms. Letlow. Okay. While some of that funding may have been 
appropriately spent, we saw misuse of funds, too: providing new 
synthetic turf for football stadiums, baseball field, drainage 
improvements, and brand new weight rooms. Secretary, it has 
been between 3 to 4 years since these three bills passed, and 
the funds are set to expire in September. Have the schools 
spent all of their funding to date?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you, Congresswoman. I was a 
commissioner of education in Connecticut during those years, 
and I recall the important efforts that were taken to provide 
PPEs----
    Ms. Letlow. Mm-hmm.
    Secretary Cardona [continuing]. And to ensure maintenance 
of air handling systems that, to be very frank with you, for 
decades have been, you know, had deferred maintenance, so I do 
know those dollars were used to safely reopen our schools 
quickly. I know in Connecticut, for example, we focused on 
that, and we relied on those dollars. We know that 99.6 percent 
of CARES ESSER has been used; CRRSA ESSER, 99 percent. Sixty-
eight percent of the current $130,000,000,000 of the American 
Rescue Plan dollars have been used with the drawdown date 
coming up soon. And then while you didn't ask that, I would 
want to share also, we have homeless children and youth 
dollars----
    Ms. Letlow. Mm-hmm.
    Secretary Cardona [continuing]. Provided by Congress, and 
44 percent of those dollars have been drawn down, and we are 
working closely with States to continue to draw them down.
    Ms. Letlow. I want to get to my point. I looked on your 
website this morning. Louisiana still has only spent 70 percent 
of the total that they were awarded during the pandemic. That 
is concerning to me because in your budget, you proposed a new 
$8,000,000,000 mandatory program labeled the Academic 
Acceleration and Achievement Grants. The justification for this 
specifically labels this new program as a way for the Nation's 
schools to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and specifically 
addresses learning loss due to COVID. Why should we appropriate 
more money for this program, this mandatory program, when we 
haven't already spent the money that was given during the 
Pandemic for learning loss specifically?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you, and I say this respectfully, 
but there are many students in Louisiana and other States that 
are reading well below the level. So those dollars are 
critically important to sustain efforts of tutoring, summer 
school programming, and 70 percent in Louisiana is about 
average. I said the country's average is 68 percent ESSER 
drawdown, but if you talk to any school principal, 
administrator, superintendent, board member, they will tell 
you, because I have been speaking to them, those dollars are 
being used, and they expect them to be drawn down. They are for 
social workers, reading teachers, additional afterschool 
programs, so they are obligated dollars. They just haven't been 
drawn down because the work hasn't been performed.
    But they are also telling me in Louisiana and other places 
that they are concerned when this ARP dollar sunsets, the needs 
of the students are still great. So I encourage you to support 
the budget and the $8,000,000,000 for tutoring, for additional 
reading support, and summer programming.
    Ms. Letlow. Thank you. I have gone over my time, but I 
would just expect us to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars. 
I don't believe in appropriating more funds when we haven't 
already spent the funds that we already sent. Thank you. I 
yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Ms. Lee.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you very much. Mr. Secretary, I am really 
delighted to see that the President's budget request includes 
the $21,300,000 in funding for strengthening HBCUs' Master 
Program, which supports STEM and tech education among black 
graduate students. The Department's focus on supporting 
emerging STEM and tech black graduate students is extremely 
important, and we know that there is still a lot of work to be 
done. I am excited that I am introducing once again the 
Computer Science for All Act with Representatives Fleischmann 
and DelBene. This has been a bipartisan bill since President 
Obama actually announced Computer Science for All, and we have 
been working together to invest in preparing our young people 
for the STEM jobs of the future by providing the training and 
learning opportunities, especially in low-income and in 
underserved communities.
    So I wanted to just find out in terms of your 
administration, what are you doing, short of our legislation 
passing, to enhance access to STEM and tech education and 
workforce outreach efforts to underserved communities, 
especially K through 12 students who are low income and 
students of color?
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you. Thank you for that question 
and for your work on this because it is critical. It is 
critical not only to level the playing field and make sure all 
students have access to good STEM programming, but, quite 
frankly, if we are going to meet the moment with CHIPS and 
Science Act, with the, you know, energy provisions under the 
Inflation Reduction Act, and even some of the infrastructure 
work that is happening, STEM has to be a bigger part of our K-
12 programming and our higher ed program. So, you know, going 
specifically to HBCUs, you know, we are asking for an increase 
of $35,000,000 to bring it up to $431,000,000 for HBCUs. What I 
heard from HBCU leaders is, look, we are ready to go for these 
contracts. We are ready to give our students the same 
opportunities that students in other universities have. 
However, due to decades of underinvestment in HBCUs, we don't 
have the infrastructure.
    So we have to make sure that we have the STEM labs, we 
have, you know, the same facilities that will give our students 
access to those programs. So we are putting dollars in minority 
science and TEACH engineering improvement programs. There is 
$60,000,000 there, FIPSE, again, a lot of it targeting towards 
minority-serving institutions, to level them up, make sure that 
they have the same opportunity. In K-12, we are trying to, what 
I call evolving our high schools, evolving in the sense that 
our K-12 institutions need to be better aligned to the 
opportunities that our students are going to have after 
graduation. You don't need to have a 4-year degree. You could 
have a 2-year degree. You could have a credential. I am 
visiting schools where students are graduating with an 
associate's degree in high school before their high school 
degree.
    So we need to push that through our innovation dollars, 
through our STEM dollars, but make sure that these STEM career 
pathways or these STEM classes are connected to the 
opportunities that exist for these students.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you very much, and this is one of our 
bipartisan bills, incidentally----
    Secretary Cardona. Yes. Good.
    Ms. Lee [continuing]. That we have been working on for 
years. Thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Moolenaar.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, just 
to follow up on some of the STEM-related questions at 
universities. The National Security Presidential Memorandum 33 
outlines research security requirements for U.S. government-
supported R&D programs at universities across the country. If a 
university fails to comply with this guidance, the Secretary of 
Education can suspend or deny Federal financial aid to the 
university. Are you familiar with this guidance and the 
authority you have been given?
    Secretary Cardona. Are you referring to Section 117?
    Mr. Moolenaar. Yeah. Well, that is part of the Higher 
Education Act. This is actually the President's National 
Security Presidential Memorandum 33.
    Secretary Cardona. Okay. Yeah. So I am sure my team is on 
that. I can get more information on it.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Okay.
    Secretary Cardona. I don't have specifics on it now, but I 
would be happy to follow up with you on it.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Have you used this authority?
    Secretary Cardona. Happy to have my team follow up with 
you. We take those issues very seriously, and we know that 
accountability of the expectations are part of the work that we 
do at the Department of Education.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Can you tell me what steps you are taking to 
ensure that universities are complying with this guidance?
    Secretary Cardona. Happy to follow up with you with more 
specifics.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Do you plan to suspend Federal financial aid 
when universities fail to comply?
    Secretary Cardona. We will follow the law as written by 
Congress to make sure that we are upholding the expectations of 
compliance.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Are you sharing PRC-related information 
obtained through Section 117? As you mentioned, with the FBI 
and other agencies, the Department of Education recently found 
that numerous large and well-resourced institutions have 
aggressively pursued and accepted significant amounts of money 
from the People's Republic of China, while failing to comply 
with the transparency requirements of Section 117 of the Higher 
Education Act. Are you sharing that information?
    Secretary Cardona. Yes.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Okay. The public version of the Department's 
Section 117 report, dated October 2020, is redacted. Will you 
commit to providing the members of this subcommittee with a 
classified briefing to discuss this and other classified 
information connected with the Section 117 investigations?
    Secretary Cardona. Are you referring to a report that was 
redacted in the last administration?
    Mr. Moolenaar. Yes.
    Secretary Cardona. Okay. I can have my team reach back out 
to yours about that.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Do you have someone in particular on your 
team who is reviewing the information obtained through the 
Department Section 117 investigations?
    Secretary Cardona. I certainly do, and I can have that 
information shared with you.
    Secretary Cardona. Let me tell you, Congressman, that we 
have reported 38,900 foreign gifts worth $21,400,000,000. We 
take this very seriously, and I think it is really important 
that the American people know which gifts are coming to which 
universities. We have been more transparent than any other 
administration, and we work closely with FBI's National 
Counterintelligence Task Force, sharing information regularly 
to ensure not only transparency, but that, where investigations 
need to happen, the correct authorities are involved.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Will you commit to providing the members of 
this subcommittee with the classified briefing on this?
    Secretary Cardona. I will have my team get back to you on 
whether or not that is going to be possible, but for me, 
transparency is really important, and sharing with you is very 
important.
    Mr. Moolenaar. I have to say, Mr. Secretary, I appreciate 
the spirit in which you say these things, but I am disappointed 
in the response you have given because it doesn't appear to me 
that you do take this as seriously or you don't take the 
subcommittee as seriously to offer information to us today. So 
I am disappointed with that.
    Secretary Cardona. Sorry you feel that way. Thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Edwards.
    Mr. Edwards. Thank you again, Mr. Chair. Mr. Secretary, one 
of the things that I continually hear from folks in my district 
and from all around America is that Washington seems to have 
forgotten so much of the working class. And I see no better 
example of that than the Student Debt Relief Program that is 
being suggested right now, where folks with dirt and grease 
under their fingernails are being asked to pay for folks' 
college education that wear a crest on their sport coat. I am 
going to give you a chance right now in the time that I have 
left to explain to that working class why this proposed 
program, this debt relief program is fair and not turning its 
back, our back, on those folks that have calluses on their 
hands and really have built this country.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you for sharing your sentiment. I 
will say this. If you look at the 4,000,000 people we have 
helped and the 30,000,000 that the President proposed, those 
are the working class. Those are exactly the folks that you are 
talking about. When we are talking about increasing Pell 
Grants, it is those we are talking about, unlike 
multimillionaires that have tax breaks. We are fighting for 
working class people. We are pushing for dollars----
    Mr. Edwards. Mr. Secretary, I am talking about the folks 
that are plunging toilets every day, and cutting pipes, and 
laying bricks that didn't have an opportunity to go to college, 
and now we are asking them to pay for the education of the 
folks that you are trying to describe there. Those are 
different classes. So tell the brick layers and pipe fitters 
out there right now--you have the floor for a minute and 3 
seconds--why they should feel good about paying for these 
student debt relief programs.
    Secretary Cardona. We are not only increasing opportunities 
for those pipe pipefitters to have opportunities to get more 
credentials, to get more pay, and some of the legislation that 
was passed, some of it in bipartisan fashion, are going to 
increase the opportunities for those folks that you are talking 
about. But those folks also have children that are going to 
school, and many of those folks have children who are saying, I 
can't go to college because I can't afford it because it has 
gotten out of control. We are fixing a broken system.
    This debt relief work that we are doing shouldn't happen 
forever because now we have the SAVE Program. So the children 
of those brick layers, those who are building our country, 
those people that deserve an opportunity to be thought about as 
well, their children are going to have access that they 
wouldn't have had before the Biden administration----
    Mr. Edwards. Mr. Secretary, however, the parents of those 
children that are laying bricks and fitting pipes----
    Secretary Cardona. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Edwards [continuing]. Have already made their decision. 
They are into their career, and they are being asked to pay for 
a different class of folks' education. I find that just 
tremendously unfair, and I will be anxious to go back and 
employ your comments over to the folks back at home and see if 
you have convinced them of that.
    Secretary Cardona. Happy to work----
    Mr. Edwards. Thank you.
    Secretary Cardona. To support those folks.
    Mr. Aderholt. Ms. DeLauro, I think you have got some 
closing comment. Okay.
    Ms. DeLauro. Secretary Cardona, I took very seriously 
something that you said in your opening statement, and I will 
quote, and tell me if this is accurate. We must defend public 
education, not defund public education. I believe that this is 
our charge as Federal public servants to protect and to 
strengthen the Federal programs that serve as the cornerstone 
of public education. And quite frankly, I have watched with 
dismay, both in the last budget deliberations and just 
listening today, and I am sure that this will continue, where 
some of my Republican colleagues view that there is a need for 
us to defund public education and look to protecting private 
institutions.
    Now, what is the charge of public education? Who does 
public education serve? As I understand it, nearly 50,000,000 
students in public schools, over 3.6 public school teachers, 
and yet in the last budget, there was an attempt to cut 80 
percent of teachers, almost 224,000 teachers, to jettison them. 
Public school teachers. The charge over public education is for 
the 25,000,000 students who are supported by Title I services 
for high-need populations.
    So we have an enormous responsibility to deliver for the 
students in a system that should be our country's great 
equalizer, to help those brick layers, to help their kids, to 
help the pipe fitters, to help the first generation of kids 
like you and myself to be able to get to school. We need to 
lift up and we need to be supporting public education, combat 
chronic absenteeism, address learning loss as you are doing, 
dealing with students who have mental health needs, help them 
to recover. And we must support the basic needs of students in 
college to deliver on the vital goals of Claiborne Pell, a man 
to the manor born, as affluent as anyone in our history, who 
viewed public education for the sons and daughters of working 
families as something that the Federal Government should be 
deeply involved in so that we have an educated citizenry.
    And it is a real concern of mine of what is happening, and 
I won't point to the many ways in which in the last budget 
discussion we were eroding public education. That is not what 
you are doing. That is not what President Biden is doing. You 
take this responsibility very seriously, and I will just say 
for one that I stand ready to support your work, to support the 
continued investment in public education as a necessity for the 
strength, the future strength. Whether it is our national 
security, our domestic security, wherever else we are going, if 
we do not have a strong public education system, we are doomed 
as a Nation.
    I thank you for your service, I thank the President, and I 
thank you both for both of your commitments to making sure that 
the vast majority of these people in this country have the 
opportunity not just to succeed, but to thrive through 
education. Many thanks, Mr. Secretary, for being here this 
morning.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Ms. DeLauro. Thank you, Mr. 
Secretary, and, Mr. Kean, thank you for being here as well. You 
got off easy today, but it is good to have both of you here, 
and we look forward to working with you. Thank you for taking a 
lot of these comments and questions that our members brought to 
you seriously, and I think they reflect what they hear back in 
their districts. It is not, I don't think, something that they 
just, or any of our questions are something we just came up 
with out of the blue. It is things that we hear back home, and 
I hope that you can take that message back to the Department 
with you. And we look forward to your follow-up on some of 
these issues as we move forward.
    So with that, again, thank you both, and we look forward to 
working with you as we continue on through the budget process.
    Secretary Cardona. Thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Dismissed.
    Thank you. Thank you.
    [Questions and answers submitted for the record follow:]

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                                         Wednesday, April 17, 2024.

          FISCAL YEAR 2025 REQUEST FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

                                WITNESS

HON. JULIE SU, ACTING SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

                        Chair Opening Statement

    Mr. Aderholt. Good morning. The subcommittee will come to 
order, and I just want to welcome Acting Secretary Su to the 
Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee. 
Pleased to have you here to hear about the budget for the 
coming year and look forward to your testimony. Of course, as 
we know, the role of the Department of Labor is to foster, 
promote, and develop the welfare of wage earners in the United 
States, to also improve their working conditions, and to 
advance their opportunities for profitable employment.
    The purpose of this hearing this morning is to review the 
fiscal year 2025 budget request. While there are many open jobs 
in the economy, persistent and painful high inflation, driven 
by the Democrats' out-of-control spending and regulatory 
overreach, has burdened the American workforce and their 
families for more than 2 years. Last week, the Department that 
you are in charge of reported that consumer prices were up 3.5 
percent this week from a year ago. Everyday essentials like 
groceries, rent are more expensive, and as I have said before 
in these hearings, inflation is a tax on every American. 
Continued high inflation in our country is unacceptable and 
should be a number one concern for all of us.
    I am concerned that the budget request attempts to go 
around discretionary limits that are established in the Fiscal 
Responsibility Act by calling for the creation of a new $8 
billion mandatory training program. Out-of-control mandatory 
spending got us into this fiscal mess, and it is certainly not 
the tool that will get us out of it. On a more positive note, I 
do appreciate that this budget request no longer includes the 
partisan Civilian Climate Corps proposal that was included in 
last year's proposal, but I am disappointed that you continue 
to call for the creation of a new sector partnership grant 
program that has been repeatedly rejected by Congress. The 
presumption that local employers, educators, training 
providers, or State and local government officials need a 
Federal grant to collaborate is indicative of a top-down 
command-and-control approach to economic development that 
simply does not work.
    I am concerned that the budget request demonstrates a lack 
of support for employers. Nationwide, unemployment remains low 
at 3.8 percent. In my home State of Alabama, unemployment is 
significantly below the national average at only 3 percent. 
Businesses are struggling to find workers. The workforce 
shortage inflames the pressure of inflation and risk a 
recession that would threaten the livelihoods of literally 
millions of Americans, yet I do not see policy and spending 
proposals from the administration that reflect the very 
realities that we face. The budget proposal fails to 
demonstrate industry-based partnerships that can address what 
employers say they need but can't find.
    Beyond the spending concerns, the regulatory agenda the 
Department is pursuing is increasingly worrisome. A recently-
finalized rule regarding independent contractors threatens to 
disrupt millions of freelance and independent workers around 
the country, as well as businesses who rely on these workers. I 
would hope that the Department will be supporting innovation, 
entrepreneurship, and those who choose to work in the growing 
freelance economy because of the flexibility it affords, rather 
than restricting opportunities for personal economic 
advancement.
    I am also deeply concerned the Department's proposal to 
rewrite overtime regulations would further worsen the 
challenges faced by small businesses. It would destabilize the 
economy and reduce opportunities for career advancement. The 
Fair Labor Standards Act is the benchmark of the U.S. Wage and 
Hour law. Within this national framework, States may elect to 
implement overtime law and regulations that respond to their 
economic situation and the needs of their workers and their 
employers. The Department's proposed regulation fails to 
recognize that the American economy is made up of many 
different local and regional economies. I find the 
administration's advancement of a one-size-fits-all regulatory 
agenda deeply concerning, given the potential to harm workers 
and small businesses, especially in the district I represent. 
The more than 417,000 small businesses in Alabama employ over 
47 percent of private sector workers in our State. The Small 
Business Administration's Office of Advocacy expressed concern 
that the Department's regulatory analysis was insufficient and 
that it underestimated the economic impact of the rule on small 
businesses and nonprofit organizations, with potential negative 
consequences for employers, such as loss of benefits and 
reduced worker flexibility.

                   REGISTERED APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM

    Madam Secretary, while the Department of Labor regulatory 
matters are frequently contentious, we have often been able to 
find bipartisan and common ground on skilled training. Last 
year, I would have expressed my appreciation and support for 
the Department's continued commitment to Registered 
Apprenticeship Program. Unfortunately, earlier this year, the 
Department that you are in charge of issued a proposal to 
reinvent the Registered Apprenticeship in a manner that would 
imperil the Alabama Office of Apprenticeship, an office that 
was created in 2019 and is the first new State apprenticeship 
agency in over 2 decades with the specific goal of improving 
labor market participation through apprenticeship. 
Apprenticeship produces positive outcomes for workers and job 
seekers because it puts what should be the end goal of all 
workforce development programs, a job first. These programs 
only exist where businesses choose to adopt this intensive 
approach to human capital management. We have seen support for 
these programs flourish under multiple administrations.
    The Alabama Office of Apprenticeship was in part created to 
respond to employer frustration with the Department of Labor's 
management of the Registered Apprenticeship Program. These 
frustrations include a bureaucratic and outdated one-size-fits-
all approach to skills training and overly-prospective 
requirements. Employers across the country know that every 
industry and every employer cannot expect impartiality from the 
Department of Labor in reviewing apprenticeship program 
applications. The Department's proposal would turn a 2-page law 
into a 776-page rule that would, in the name of equity and 
inclusion, reduce opportunities for American workers for all 
races and both sexes.
    I am concerned the Department is more interested in 
catering to beltway-based liberal social policy concerns rather 
than responding to the very real needs that real Americans deal 
with, whether they be workers, job seekers, or employers. What 
else could explain the Department's publishing a regulation 
that would eliminate the highly successful competency-based 
approach to apprenticeships, that would reduce the ability of 
States to recognize these programs, or impose national testing 
requirements similar to the No Child Left behind law that was 
repealed and replaced by Congress. Rather than replicating the 
failures of the Department of Education, we should be ensuring 
that American workers and job seekers have access to career 
pathways that work for them. Apprenticeships represent an 
opportunity and pathway to high-paying jobs. Unfortunately, the 
barriers to growth of this career training model will not be 
solved through funding alone. Improved program administration 
and more effective leadership at and by the Department can 
better support the adoption of registered apprenticeships for 
workers for our Nation's workforce.
    These are just some of the policy differences I am sure we 
will discuss today, and I am sure they will come up in the 
questioning. I am hopeful that as we work through this 
shortened budget year, that we will be able to, once again, at 
the end of the day find some common ground. In closing, I do 
want to thank you, Acting Secretary, for appearing before us 
today and look forward to your testimony and your continued 
work on our shared priorities, which I do believe that we can 
find quite a few of those. At this time, I would like to 
recognize the ranking member of the committee, Ms. DeLauro, for 
her comments.

                    Ranking Member Opening Statement

    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you very much, Chairman Aderholt, for 
holding this hearing on the 2025 budget for the Department of 
Labor. Just before I make my comments, I do want to make a very 
quick comment about the issue of the high cost of groceries 
these days. And I think while we are making comments about 
inflation and the causes of inflation and the causes of high 
price of groceries, we need to take a very hard look and 
investigate the price gouging that is being done by 
corporations, by the consolidation of the industry which 
increases food prices. And understandably, there is no shortage 
of food in the United States. That means that we do not have to 
raise food prices, but we need to take a hard look at the 
corporations who are raising the prices because they can. I 
think that should be a focus of our attention, probably in this 
committee and in other committees as well, with the Federal 
Trade Commission and others.
    So I want to say a thank you to our witness, Acting 
Secretary Su, for appearing today, for your many, many years of 
public service, for your dedication to protecting the rights of 
American workers, though I must say I am perplexed by the 
acting prefects in your title. I will not pretend to understand 
why the Senate does what it does, but it is my hope you will be 
confirmed in the very near future. I have said this in other 
hearings with our secretaries in the last couple of weeks, but 
Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to 
the House of Representatives, once said, ``Public service is 
the rent you pay for space on this earth,'' and, Secretary Su, 
you have paid that rent many times over. You set an example for 
the rest of us by continuing to do so.
    I also want to say thank you to you for visiting my 
district, the 3rd District of Connecticut, earlier this year to 
celebrate a grant awarded in the 2023 bill that will boost 
Connecticut State colleges and university system. You, like me, 
believe that our workforce is our infrastructure, and, thus, 
our current and future workforce is one of the best places for 
us to invest.
    When we think of the benefits that many of us might take 
for granted today, say, for working conditions, paid leave 
weekends, an 8-hour workday, and a 40-hour work week, we have 
the hard-fought victories of unions and the labor movement to 
thank for all of that. In recent years, workers have been 
organizing at a pace this country has not seen since the Great 
Depression. This is unequivocally a good thing. We all know 
that labor unions are the driving force for progress. The 
middle class is built on a union label.

                            WORKERS' RIGHTS

    The fight for workers' rights has always had a special 
place in my heart. I am the daughter of a garment worker. My 
mother toiled in the old sweatshops in the City of New Haven, 
sewing shirt collars, piecework, and obtaining pennies on the 
dollar for that hard work. So every day now, I work to ensure 
that her early struggles were not in vain. When President Biden 
took office over 3 years ago, the economy was in crisis. 
Workers were struggling. Unemployment was over 6 percent. 
Millions of Americans were out of work. The economy has begun 
to make progress in giving workers a fighting chance, and that 
is thanks to President Biden and to you, Secretary Su, to your 
leadership and the investments made by Democrats on the House 
Appropriations Committee.
    But the economy, as we all know, is still difficult for 
working people today, and we admit that. Too many families are 
weighed down by the high cost of living. They do live paycheck 
to paycheck. They struggle to make ends meet. And while 
unemployment is down, families are barely able to scrape by, 
and wages haven't gone up for these folks. But we have the 
largest corporations, the biggest corporations who have reaped 
record profits, and I might add, 55 of these corporations pay 
no tax at all in the United States, which is why your fiscal 
year 2025 budget request and your Department's regulatory 
actions are so vital.
    I specifically commend your Department's work to fight wage 
theft when employers fail to compensate workers for the wages 
they have earned. And through your independent contractor and 
overtime rules, you are putting desperately-needed dollars back 
into the pockets of these workers. That addresses cost of 
living today. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle want to roll back these essential 
protections, but we cannot go backwards. The rollbacks they 
want would take earned wages away from American workers and 
their families, hurting their ability to pay their monthly 
bills and making the cost-of-living crisis even worse. And 
while it was a challenging process, I was proud to work with 
Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate to complete 
our work on the 2024 Labor, Health/Human Services, and 
Education funding bill. I am proud that we protected the 
investments this subcommittee made in job training, worker 
protection programs during the first 2 years of the Biden 
administration.
    Last year, House Republicans proposed a destructive cut of 
$4.7 billion to the Department of Labor. They proposed the 
elimination of Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, WIOA 
job training programs, which would have denied opportunities 
and services for 420,000 youth and adults who face barriers to 
finding good-paying jobs. They would have eliminated Job Corps, 
which would have taken away vital training experiences for 
50,000 young people. And they would have eliminated the Senior 
Community Employment Service Program and would have cut 40,000 
community service positions for low-wage seniors. We spent 
months communicating the devastation this would bring to 
working people across the country, which is why I am so proud 
that we protected these programs and avoided the cuts to worker 
protection agencies, like Wage and Hour and OSHA. We rejected 
dozens of poison pill policy riders proposed last year by the 
majority, including a new rider that would put workers at risk 
of being unlawfully misclassified as independent contractors.
    I am proud of where we ended up with the 2024 
appropriations bills, but there are still unmet needs for 
workers, which brings me to the President's budget for 2025. 
The request for $14.2 billion for programs funded at the 
Department of Labor will help grow middle class, support 
working families, ensure America remains the land of 
opportunity for all her children. And while it is nice to see a 
modest increase to strengthening community college training 
grants, a program I created in my first year as chair of the 
Labor, HHS Subcommittee, I believe there is much more we should 
do to boost this program. Community colleges are uniquely 
positioned to support local workforce development and industry 
needs. They are more accessible to more families, and they 
should be a focal point for our investment. And I am happy to 
see an increase of $50 million for registered apprenticeship 
programs.

                         COMBATING CHILD LABOR

    In addition, I am pleased to see a strong $35 million 
increase to the Wage and Hour Division to fight wage theft and 
to combat child labor. And I am glad that the President's 
budget once again calls for the establishment of a 
comprehensive paid family and medical leave program so that 
Americans can take up to 12 weeks of paid leave and do not have 
to make the impossible choice between providing for their 
families or taking care of the health of themselves or a loved 
one. I am also pleased that the President's budget calls on 
Congress to require employers to provide 7 paid sick days each 
year. I have fought tirelessly for paid leave and paid sick 
days in the Congress, and I look forward to working with the 
administration to make this a reality for American workers. It 
is a reality for members of Congress. They can take all the 
sick time that they need, all the paid leave that they can 
take, and what is good enough for members of Congress is good 
enough for the American people.
    In our recent hearing with HHS Secretary Javier Becerra, 
several members raised concern about the scourge of child labor 
and child trafficking. I noted that the Department of Labor has 
requested additional funding to investigate employers who prey 
on child labor, including in some of our most dangerous 
industries. Again, I strongly urge my colleagues to support the 
Department of Labor in its efforts to combat child labor and 
child trafficking, and to penalize employers who profit by 
exploiting vulnerable children. Finally, I am thrilled to see a 
$46 million increase to the Bureau of International Labor 
Affairs, ILAB, so it can continue to effectively monitor and 
enforce the labor provisions of the United States-Mexico-Canada 
Agreement, the USMCA.
    Acting Secretary Su, thank you for your commitment to 
workers for ensuring that there is a pathway to good jobs and 
to the middle class, and for protecting the wages and benefits 
that workers have earned with their hard work. We have made 
great progress over the past 3 years, but there is still much 
to do, and I believe we have the opportunity before us to forge 
an even brighter future for the American labor movement and for 
hardworking Americans across this country. Thank you for being 
here this morning. I look forward to our discussion. I thank 
you, and I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you. Madam Secretary, we look forward 
to your testimony, and, of course, your comments will be 
included fully in the record, so look forward to hearing your 
comments this morning. You have the mike.

                           Opening Statement

    Ms. Su. Thank you so much, Chairman Aderholt. Chairman 
Aderholt, Ranking Member DeLauro, and members of the 
subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify in 
support of President Biden's fiscal year 2025 budget request 
for the Department of Labor.
    As the acting Secretary of Labor, I get to travel the 
country to meet with workers, workers like Mariah, a single mom 
who was living paycheck to paycheck, worried every day about 
how she would have enough to get by. She went to her local 
social services office to apply for SNAP benefits and Medicaid. 
That is where she noticed a flyer for a job training program in 
the pipe trades. Today, Mariah is in a good union job, and she 
has quadrupled her income. What struck me about Mariah was not 
just how much a good income meant to her. It was the pride she 
felt in putting in a hard day's work and getting rewarded for 
it, and the pride she saw in her children's eyes. It is 
undeniable. Good jobs change lives. This $13.9 billion request 
will help more people like Mariah get good jobs that can 
support families, lift up communities, and bring the dignity 
and pride that are core to the American Dream.

                         PATHWAYS TO GOOD JOBS

    I want to frame our request under two priority areas. 
First, pathways to good jobs for all of America's workers. I 
have met with thousands of workers like Mariah who are in 
programs that work, programs that exist because we have 
invested in them. That is why we are requesting investments to 
develop and expand proven models to connect workers to the good 
jobs they want and need, and employers to the workers that they 
want and need. For example, we are requesting $8 billion for 
the Career Training Fund. That investment would help as many as 
750,000 people who do not see 4-year college as their path 
enroll in evidence-based, high-quality training programs for 
actual jobs in their communities.
    Workers who complete high-quality programs don't end up 
with a job search. They end up with a job. On that, we agree, 
Chairman. We also seek $335 million for apprenticeship 
programs. Registered apprenticeships provide training for the 
actual skills that employers need, they allow workers to earn 
while they learn, and they increase job pathways for 
underrepresented groups, including women, people of color, 
veterans, and individuals with disabilities. When I talk to 
business owners, many tell me that their top concern is 
recruiting and retaining workers. Well, the investments in our 
budget request are how Congress and the Department of Labor can 
tap into the talents and skills of all of America's workers and 
make sure that the supply of skilled workers meets the demand 
right now and well into the future.

                           WORKER PROTECTION

    The second priority I would like to highlight is the 
Department of Labor's mission to protect workers, including and 
especially those most vulnerable to exploitation. Too often, 
employers who hire 13-year-olds to work in hazardous conditions 
fail to pay workers overtime for a 60-hour work week, or who 
put workers at risk of losing their limbs or even their lives 
on the job do it because they think they can get away with it, 
that no one will stop them, that they can operate in blatant 
disregard of the laws Congress has enacted. Not on our watch. 
That is why we are requesting modest, but important, increases 
for the Department's worker protection agencies because we 
can't do this vital work without dedicated public servants--the 
Wage and Hour investigators who combat child labor; the team 
that ensures workplaces are free from safety hazards; the 
benefits advisors who answer the phone when panicked patients 
have been denied coverage for mental health services by their 
health insurance company.
    We are asking for $7.5 million for additional staff to 
combat wage theft and child labor; an additional $23 million to 
investigate high-hazard workplaces, protect whistleblowers, and 
give employers compliance assistance; and an additional $10.7 
million for my solicitor's office, which has been essentially 
flat funded for more than a decade. The President's request 
would also help us advance worker rights and promote a level 
playing field internationally for U.S. workers and businesses, 
and it would better support implementation of Congress' Secure 
2.0 Act, the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity act, and 
the No Surprises Act because when you pass laws, we should make 
them real.
    In all, the budget request will help make sure that workers 
can come home safe and healthy at the end of the workday and 
get high-quality jobs with the power to truly change lives. 
Again, I thank the subcommittee, and I look forward to taking 
your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Acting Secretary Su follows:]

   [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you for your comments and overview. And 
we will start our questioning time, obviously, as we normally 
do, 5 minutes per person, and we look forward to your responses 
to our questions.

                       RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION RULES

    Let me begin. Last year, the Office of Federal Contract 
Compliance Programs rescinded a rule that provided clarity and 
certainty around religious exemptions. Those were for 
organizations that contract with the Federal Government. The 
rule allowed religious organizations to operate according to 
the religious beliefs while participating as Federal 
contractors. Now that the rule is rescinded, what steps has the 
Department taken to ensure that religious organizations will 
receive fair treatment and protection in the Federal 
contracting process?
    Ms. Su. So, Chairman Aderholt, the religious exemption does 
remain in place. We believe that nobody should have to choose 
between their religion and their ability to operate a business, 
and that they should still be in compliance with laws that 
protect against discrimination, so the religious exemption 
order is still in place. Our final rule on that that you 
mentioned actually reestablished OFCCP's long-established 
policy that was in place under both Republican and Democratic 
administrations, that analyzes a contractor's exemption claims 
on a case-by-case basis, and it is consistent with the views of 
both DOJ and the EEOC, as well as the courts. I might also 
mention that while the previous administration's rule was in 
place, only one business received an exemption, and since the 
rule was rescinded, no contractors have requested such an 
exemption.

                     CIVIL RIGHTS CENTER ACTIVITIES

    Mr. Aderholt. Okay. Your fiscal year 2025 budget request 
included a 22-percent increase for the Department of Civil 
Rights Center. Can you talk a little bit about the activities 
by this center thus far in fiscal year 2024 that is related to 
religious rights of DOL employees and program participants?
    Ms. Su. Thank you very much for that question, Chairman. So 
in general, what that center does is it makes sure that both we 
are in compliance and they conduct investigations. One of the 
things that I believe is also in our budget request is making 
sure that we are providing services to all workers, and part of 
that is ensuring language access for individuals who need 
translated services. That is one of the areas of focus, and we 
have a Language Access Center as part of that area of work. But 
the other thing is that we do investigate if there are 
complaints that are made internally. That that is part of the 
work, also, of our internal Office of Civil Rights.

                       REGULATORY FLEXIBILITY ACT

    Mr. Aderholt. And let me switch gears to the Regulatory 
Flexibility Act, which requires Federal agencies, as to 
consider the effects of regulations on small businesses and 
other small entities by performing initial regulatory 
flexibility analysis. As I mentioned in my opening statements, 
small businesses provide essential job opportunities to the 
constituents I represent, and regulatory action taken by the 
Department, without consideration of their effects on these 
entities, unfairly harms, in my opinion, rural Americans, 
especially. When considering the potential regulatory actions, 
what steps does this Department take, number one, to meet the 
requirements of the Regulatory Flexibility Act, and number two, 
ensure that proposals developed in Washington take into 
consideration their effect on small businesses, especially in 
rural America?
    Ms. Su. So Chairman, you might be referring to, there is a 
provision that requires, when OSHA adopts laws, to go through a 
small business review, and that is very important because what 
you are saying is true. We do take and must take great care to 
make sure that the rules that we put in place have the impact 
that is intended and don't have negative unintended impacts. 
And that is why many people complain that our rulemaking 
process takes too long. Part of that is because we do go 
through a very careful review that includes small businesses. 
And so for some of the rules that are pending, we have 
completed that small business review. For others that are 
upcoming, we will obviously comply with that.
    The other is that even outside of the OSHA space, we engage 
with, we listen to beyond just the regular public comment 
period, which is also a time in which we hear the kinds of 
comments that you were talking about, but we do reach out to 
small businesses. We do listening sessions. We invite input. We 
take all of those things very seriously because, as you have 
mentioned, small businesses are really the engines of our 
economy. I know that because my parents had small businesses. 
We have to make sure that we understand the impact of any of 
our rulemaking on all affected stakeholders.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you. Ms. DeLauro.

           RESOURCES FOR WAGE AND HOUR AND SOLICITOR'S OFFICE

    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Su, in your 
testimony you clearly state, ``The Department is committed to 
combating illegal child labor because we cannot build our 
economy on the backs of children.'' First of all, thank you for 
your moral clarity and unwavering focus to keep kids safe from 
harm and dangerous workplaces. 2023, your Department 
investigated 955 cases of child labor violations. It involved 
almost 5,800 children nationwide. Just last month, you cracked 
down on a parts supplier for John Deere that relied on children 
as young as 14 to conduct dangerous work. The Department's work 
is outstanding. We need much more of it, which is why I believe 
the Wage and Hour Division and the solicitor need far more 
resources to continue going after companies that exploit 
vulnerable children.
    How would additional resources for Wage and Hour and the 
solicitor expand the Department's efforts to combat child 
labor? Can you explain why securing penalties and judgments 
against offending employers is so resource intensive?
    Ms. Su. Thank you so much, Ranking Member, for your moral 
clarity as well. We are seeing really unconscionable cases of 
child labor. We are seeing 13-year-olds working the night shift 
on the kill floor of meatpacking plants, working with toxic 
chemicals doing cleaning. We see young people working as 
sawmill operators, doing roofing, work that is, understandably, 
by law, illegal for children to work in. We are not talking 
about a child who is working at the corner store, learning how 
to show up on time and provide good customer service, and the 
importance of responsibility and a paycheck. We are really 
seeing really terrible cases in which children are being put in 
harm's way.
    One of our most important jobs is to put a stop to such 
child labor, to investigate, and our budget request includes 
$7.5 million specifically for child labor, to increase the 
number of boots on the ground, to increase the number of 
investigators in the field who can investigate. These cases 
often usually involve employers who don't want to be 
discovered. They don't want people to know what is happening. 
And so it requires us to be innovative, it requires us to be 
smart, it requires us to ask the right questions, and 
oftentimes this happens because the location where the work is 
being done is not the direct hirer of the children. They often 
hire through a contractor, which creates other vulnerabilities. 
And so our investigations involve understanding who is 
responsible, what the right penalty should be, and include 
using tools that Congress has given us, like the ``hot goods'' 
provision.
    Ms. DeLauro. Okay. I just will say about that, we need to 
give you the resources to crack down on companies that exploit 
children. Let's not mince words on my part. We need to shut 
companies down that exploit child labor, and we need to send 
those responsible to prison.

             LOW SALARY THRESHOLDS FOR OVERTIME ELIGIBILITY

    Let me just ask you about low salary thresholds. Because of 
these low salary thresholds for overtime eligibility, under 
outdated regulations, employers have been strategically 
misclassifying their employees as ``managers'' in order to 
avoid paying overtime. This is wage theft, plain and simple. A 
recently-published study found that giving workers these 
inflated job titles results in 13-percent less pay or a loss of 
$4 billion in overtime payments each year. By raising the 
overtime threshold, how would a revised regulation help to 
prevent this kind of grand-scale wage theft from low-wage 
workers that is happening across the country in a wide range of 
industries?
    Ms. Su. Yes. Thank you so much, Ranking Member. Our Wage 
and Hour investigations find that overtime violations are some 
of the most common that we see. And as you noted, overtime 
violations deny workers a just day's pay. It is one of the 
fundamental promises in the Fair Labor Standards Act, that when 
you work longer hours, you will be paid for it. And that form 
of misclassification, giving someone a title but their work is 
still very much the work of a frontline employee in order to 
avoid paying, is a real problem. That is one of the reasons why 
we have engaged in a rulemaking process because titles 
shouldn't be used to obscure what workers are really doing, and 
the salary test is one part of helping to ensure that workers 
who are entitled to overtime get overtime. And so it is just an 
important very important piece of ensuring that workers who go 
to work each day get the wages that they have earned in their 
pockets.
    Ms. DeLauro. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you.
    Ms. DeLauro. What is interesting is just a news article 
that talked about--actually, it was on CBS--would you rather be 
a front desk clerk or a ``director of first impressions?'' I 
think that really is carrying this to a different level, so we 
know how they are trying to circumvent the overtime rules, and 
it is wage theft. Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Aderholt. Dr. Harris.

                           H-2B VISA PROGRAM

    Mr. Harris. Thank you very much, and thank you very much, 
Madam Secretary, for being here today and speaking with me 
yesterday. I brought up a couple of the issues yesterday, and 
we talked a little bit about the H-2B Visa Program. I 
appreciate that things are being expedited. I still think there 
is room for over about 4,000 additional visas this year, as we 
spoke about yesterday, and maybe you can follow up with that 
and just see if there is any way we can get a few more visas 
released.
    With regard to H-2B visas, the lottery system is a real 
problem because you pick winners and losers. If somebody comes 
up as a loser 2 years in a row or 3 years in a row and they 
depend on these H-2B workers, they will go out of business. 
They have in my district. So I will ask you, and, again, we 
will follow up later about whether or not you could, in fact, 
eliminate the lottery system, go to a proportional or where a 
certain proportion of eligible applications get filled for an 
employer instead of all or none because I think that would 
help. Especially, as you pointed out yesterday in our 
conversation, with the increase in applications, this becomes 
even more important that we perhaps go to some proportional 
system. You will have to get back to me whether or not that can 
be statutorily done.

                    NO SURPRISES ACT IMPLEMENTATION

    Mr. Harris. With regards to the No Surprises Act 
implementation on ERISA plans, there is still an issue with 
insurance companies not having timely payments to providers. 
They are supposed to pay within 30 days. Less than a third pay 
on time, and, again, you will have to get back to me as to 
whether or not the Department, if they just need more resources 
to enforce this with the insurers. We kind of solved the 
problem for the patients, but we kind of put it on the backs of 
the providers now instead of the insurance companies where part 
of that burden should reside.
    Mr. Harris. But let me talk about a couple of other issues. 
Look, I am sorry that there is bipartisan opposition to your 
confirmation in the Senate, but it is bipartisan, and, again, 
we don't deal with Senate politics. But I am glad we have a 
functioning acting secretary because the Labor Department does 
important things.
    You know, there was criticism from the other side over 
attempts to rein in government spending. Look, you are aware we 
have over $2 trillion deficit this year, a $34 trillion Federal 
debt, and I am still waiting to hear, other than tax increases, 
what is a possible way out. Madam Secretary, you know as well 
as I do that the President's budget, despite almost $6 trillion 
in tax increases, still keeps that deficit going. So if the 
other side wants to recommend how we deal with it, I am all 
ears, but just criticizing our attempts at fiscal 
responsibility I don't think is responsible, to be honest with 
you.
    But what I want to concentrate on in the last couple 
minutes is what is the Department of Labor doing because I 
think you will agree with me that wage growth has not kept pace 
with inflation. That is just a fact, and we have a lot of data 
points to show that, and I believe that part of it is, is that 
we have 9 million working-age people who crossed the border 
illegally in the past few years. I have got to believe they 
have entered the job market, sometimes legally, sometimes not, 
and that that is suppressing wages. What is the Department 
doing to help the American worker from that border invasion 
that has resulted in almost 10 million workers entering this 
country who, you and I both know, probably get paid a little 
less than an American union worker and depress wages overall.

                           H-ZB VISA PROGRAM

    Ms. Su. Thank you, Dr. Harris. I did very much enjoy our 
conversation yesterday, and there are many issues that I feel 
like we could work on together. I want to just acknowledge the 
H-2B issue. I know it is important, and businesses should not 
be going out of business because they can't get the workers 
that they need. That is why we have taken a hard look at what 
our Office of Foreign Labor Certification is doing to try to 
speed up while maintaining integrity of that system.
    As you acknowledge, the number of applications that we have 
received has really skyrocketed. In the first 3 days of 
January, we got more applications, 4 times more than the cap, 
and so just acknowledging that I look forward to working with 
you and on sharing whatever we have done to try to make it 
better. But also you mentioned the potential for statutory 
improvements. I hear this from many of the members of your 
body, and I would love to make sure that we are doing what we 
need to do there so that employers can meet their workforce 
needs. Also appreciate I know you have probably a particular 
expertise in the No Surprises Act and why it is so important, 
and we do do enforcement in that space, but also look forward 
to a conversation about what we might need to do to ensure that 
those who should be paying are actually paying at the same time 
that we protect patients.

                        FY 2025 BUDGET PROPOSAL

    Just one thing on the budget itself. So our proposal is a 
4-percent increase over the fiscal year 2024 enacted. It also 
stays within the Fiscal Responsibility Act cap. And so I 
appreciate your point about we are in a place of making 
difficult choices, and I believe that the Department, we have 
done that. Some of what you are hoping for would require us to 
have more resources, which was why we have asked for them, 
including in the H-2B space.
    The last thing is, I would say the data about where we are 
in the economy is that wage growth has actually outpaced the 
rate of inflation. This is especially true for low- and middle-
income workers. I am not saying that everything is great. I am 
not saying that everyone is doing great. There are still too 
many people, as the ranking member said, who live paycheck to 
paycheck, who struggle. That is the work of all of us to do 
everything we can with the powers that we have to try to 
alleviate some of that suffering. But real wages are up, and 
that means more wages in workers' pockets. That means more 
breathing room, as the President likes to say, for working 
families.
    And I think one of the solutions to what you raise is that 
if we create a pie that is big enough for everybody, then we 
can see good job opportunities for all, and that is what we 
have seen since President Biden came into office. We have had 
15.2 million jobs created. We have historically low 
unemployment. The chairman mentioned in his State, it has been 
under 4 percent for 26 months straight. That has not been true 
since the 1970s. And labor force participation is high, so it 
is not that the unemployment rate is low because people aren't 
working. People are coming into labor market, they are looking 
for jobs, and they are finding jobs. And so when you have 
strong GDP growth, steady jobs growth, and you invest in 
policies that help working families, we create a bigger pie in 
this country, and that is the President's vision. I share that 
vision, and I know that there are areas that we can work on 
together to pursue that vision.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you. You yield back. Ms. Lee.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, 
Madam Secretary.
    Ms. Su. Good morning.
    Ms. Lee. Let me first say thank you very much for your 
tremendous leadership, Acting Secretary, Madam Secretary. Thank 
you.
    I wanted to ask you a couple of things about what you are 
doing to promote job quality and pathways to good jobs for all 
workers, especially historically-underrepresented workers that 
tend to be from communities of color. I am happy that in the 
Department request, you include $5 million for the Women in 
Apprenticeship and Non-Traditional Occupations Grant Program. 
Now, in June of 2023, black women over the age of 20 had an 
unemployment rate of 5.4 percent, which is higher than white 
women at 2.6 percent, AAPI women at 3.2 percent, and Latinas at 
4.1 percent. Of course, this is very concerning to hear. We 
know that black women have also been disproportionately 
impacted by the lingering impacts of COVID-19 and the pandemic, 
and so wanted to find out what actions are you taking in the 
Department of Labor to really address job access disparities 
impacting women of color in general and African-American women 
in specific, or Black women in specific.

              JOB ACCESS DISPARITIES IMPACTING BLACK WOMEN

    Ms. Su. Thank you, Congresswoman. This is an issue that is 
very near and dear to my heart. This is something that we have 
to get right. When the President says that we are going to 
build an economy from the middle out and the bottom up that 
leaves no one behind, he knows and I know that we have to be 
clear-eyed about who has been left behind for too long in the 
past. Our budget includes investments in workforce training 
programs that are creating opportunity in communities across 
the country.
    I mentioned the historic job growth, and these are 
opportunities for people who want to work, who have talent and 
potential, and the desire to be in a training program, and want 
nothing more than their shot at their piece of the American 
Dream. And so we need to do everything we can to break down 
systemic barriers that have existed for too long. Some of those 
are because of bias and discrimination. Some of those exist 
because of occupational segregation. We have seen that, too 
often, black workers are relegated to jobs that have lower job 
quality and lower pay, and then, because of our lack of valuing 
their work, that becomes justified in that industry. We have to 
do better than that. The care industry is a good example of 
that.
    So what are we doing about it? Our programs include, as you 
mentioned, WANTO (Women in Apprenticeships and Nontraditional 
Occupations) grant. We are seeking an increase in order to use 
proven models. We see across the country that there are women, 
like I mentioned Mariah, but there are thousands others who are 
in programs that will allow them to do work that maybe they 
didn't know existed before, or maybe they didn't even imagine 
for themselves, but oftentimes, as we know, when someone is in 
there, others can see that they can do it, too, and so we are 
investing in programs. There are programs also that are led by 
black women, black tradeswomen in particular. So we have an 
investment in a group called Chicago Women in Trades that is 
demonstrating how when you give black women a chance, they can 
do any trade, any job, but a trades job that has a square path 
to the middle class. We also invested in scaling their model 
toward others.
    The last thing I will mention is, I know we talked about 
this, Congresswoman, but we have something called Mega Project 
at the Department of Labor. That is an effort to take 
construction projects of $35 million or more and provide 
assistance from the beginning. Now, the chairman said not 
everything is a Federal solution, and we agree with that. So 
the question is, how can the Federal Government help to advance 
our goals of a strong economy, good jobs for all, and equity? 
What we are doing in this space is assisting project owners, 
contractors, and subcontractors before a single shovel even 
hits the ground to make sure that they are getting the 
workforce that they need and tapping into every community for 
that. So it is about recruitment policies, it is about outreach 
to make sure people know that there are jobs, and we are doing 
that in a way that is very intentional about leaving no one 
behind.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you very much, Madam Secretary, because this 
whole issue of equity, it has many, many layers, and I am glad 
to see that you all have looked at this and advancing through 
executive orders, also, equity in contracting, which is 
extremely important for minority- and women-owned businesses. 
Also, very quickly, in terms of professions and workers who are 
working outdoors, given the fire dangers now, especially in 
California, I am trying to figure out how OSHA helps protect 
workers outside from these harmful effects of climate change, 
and we talked a little bit about the bill that I have, the 
SMOKE Act. Mr. Chairman, do I have another 30 seconds on this?
    Mr. Aderholt. Go ahead. Go ahead.

                THE SMOKE ACT TO PROTECT OUTDOOR WORKERS

    Ms. Lee. I just want to raise the increased funds used to 
protect outside workers, like construction workers and 
longshoremen, people who are impacted by the effects of 
climate. What are we doing to protect them, and if you can look 
at this more closely.
    Ms. Su. Absolutely, Congresswoman. Very much eager to work 
with you on this to see what we can do. There is not a Federal 
standard on smoke, but as you know, the general duties clause 
applies to all employers who are covered by the OSH Act, and we 
have to do everything we can to keep workers safe, including 
from outdoor hazards. We are currently working on, as I think 
you all know, the first Federal standard ever to combat the 
hazards of heat. That is both an outdoor and an indoor 
potential hazard, but very much aware of the need to protect 
workers against outdoor issues and happy to work with you on 
what we can do.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Moolenaar.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

                   SMALL FARMERS AND THE H-2A PROGRAM

    Mr. Moolenaar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Madam 
Secretary. Food production, production agriculture is vital for 
our country. It is vital for Michigan and for my constituents. 
You talked earlier about the economic engine, small businesses. 
In rural America, agriculture is the economic engine, and these 
family farmers are vital. Many of the farmers, the small farm 
operators in my district, use the H-2A program. Are you 
familiar with that program? Okay.
    Ms. Su. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Unfortunately, the Department of Labor 
continues to hurt the work they do to feed Michigan and our 
country. For 10 straight years, the Department has mandated 
adverse effect wage rate increases that outpace inflation. I am 
hearing from fifth- and sixth-generation farmers that they may 
only have 1 or 2 years left before they are forced to leave the 
business. Even H-2A workers are concerned about the increases 
because they know their job will be lost if the farm goes out 
of business. That is why I introduced the Supporting Farm 
Operations Act to pause the AEWR increases and help these farms 
stay open. While this wage freeze would give farmers some sense 
of stability, there is also the problem with the flawed 
methodology used to calculate AEWR.
    Madam Secretary, I noticed in your remarks you didn't 
mention meeting with small farm operators. Have you met with 
farmers about this issue?
    Ms. Su. Thank you, Congressman. I want to acknowledge the 
importance of the program. I have certainly heard from many 
about why the H-2A Program is so important for them to meet 
their workforce needs. Part of the H-2A Program is to make sure 
that H-2A workers do not undercut the ability for workers in 
the United States already to do the jobs and to be paid a 
wage----
    Mr. Moolenaar. No, I am familiar with the program, and I 
think there are good safeguards to ensure that we aren't in any 
way forcing Americans out of jobs. But this is a matter of the 
Biden administration raising the costs on these family farmers 
to the point where these mandated Department of Labor increases 
are at risk of putting them out of business. And so I am 
wondering if you have heard about that concern.
    Ms. Su. Yes. Yes. So as you know, the Department has 
completed a rule on that, and so as with all of our rules, we 
invite, seek out, and take input. So, yes, it is a space in 
which, as you say, we both need to help employers meet their 
workforce needs, and we need to ensure that the safeguards are 
in place.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Thank you, Madam Secretary, but I guess my 
question is, there are negative consequences to that rule 
forcing family farms out of business. And my question is, are 
these intended consequences or unintended consequences with 
this policy because what I am hearing you say is you have heard 
the message and, you are not concerned about it.
    Ms. Su. Well, Congressman, I have also met with some of 
your colleagues about this, and I want to make the same offer 
to you, which is, I am happy to have my team come and talk to 
farmers who are affected by this to understand the impact of 
the rule. The rule that we did, it was a very narrow part of 
how AEWR is used. Most----
    Mr. Moolenaar. Well, let me just say----
    Ms. Su. Yeah.
    Mr. Moolenaar [continuing]. In my district, it is having a 
huge effect----
    Ms. Su. Yeah.
    Mr. Moolenaar [continuing]. When it comes to people growing 
cherries, apples, asparagus, carrots. I mean, across the board, 
people growing fruit and vegetables are affected by this, and 
they need desperate relief. I guess the question is, could you 
actually, on your own, pause this increase to give them some 
time to get back on their feet?
    Ms. Su. Let me say this, Congressman. I am happy to have 
our staff work together on what they need. In addition to what 
I responded to earlier with the chairman's question about how 
we engage with small businesses, including small farms and any 
rules that affect them at the front end----
    Mr. Moolenaar. I will take you up on that.
    Ms. Su [continuing]. We also do compliance assistance----
    Mr. Moolenaar. Okay.
    Ms. Su [continuing]. Across all of our agencies, and this 
might be an area where that could be.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Well, I will take you up on that. I guess 
one last question. Secretary Vilsack claimed that the Farm 
Labor Survey is an accurate and appropriate vehicle to set the 
AEWR. Your own Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that in 
Michigan, the general farm worker wage is $2 less than the Farm 
Labor Survey rate. How do you explain setting the AEWR based on 
the Farm Labor Survey, when your own data show that it is $2 
less?
    Ms. Su. Well, so, Congressman, I have tremendous respect, 
obviously, from my colleague, Secretary Vilsack, and it is true 
that our AEWR is based on their survey. My understanding of how 
the H-2A guardrails is that we have to ensure that an H-2A wage 
is not less than not AEWR, but the prevailing wage, a 
collective bargained wage, the Federal minimum wage. So it is 
the highest of those things.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Mr. Chairman, just one last question?
    Mr. Aderholt. Yeah, real quick.
    Mr. Moolenaar. All right. Well, just so you are aware, in 
Michigan, it is $18.50 an hour, which is vastly above any of 
the rates you were talking about. Often, housing is provided, 
and transportation is provided. So in my view, that far exceeds 
anything that you are comparing it to.
    Ms. Su. I am very happy to follow up with you on this, 
Congressman.
    Mr. Moolenaar. Thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Pocan.
    Mr. Pocan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, appreciate it, and 
thank you, Madam Secretary.
    I want to acknowledge the remarks that Rosa made as well 
about you are Secretary Su, period, and you have been doing 
outstanding work in working with business and workers and 
doing, I think, a really great balance with your Department, 
and I just want to thank you for all that work.
    As you know, we are kind of in an interesting point where 
the amount of unionization is at an all-time, I think high. At 
least the public opinion on unions is highest in 50 years. We 
are seeing people organizing in areas that we have never seen 
organize before. In your budget, there is a slight increase to 
your Office of Labor Management Standards, which helps protect 
union members and their right to organize.

              PROTECT WORKERS FROM UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES

    I have two questions. First, given the significant rise in 
unionization over the last year, is this funding sufficient to 
meet the needs of workers nationwide? And then, also, I know it 
is independent agency, but the National Labor Relations Board, 
many of us have advocated for a much stronger increase, and 
they are still kind of chronically underfunded, leading to 
significant drops in staffing nationwide. How can we continue 
to protect workers from unfair labor practices with all this 
new unionization and support the NLRB, a vital independent 
agency that safeguards employees' rights, to seek better 
working conditions?
    Ms. Su. Thank you very much, Congressman Pocan. Yes, we 
have seen historic levels of organizing in this country, and we 
have seen really historic gains at the bargaining table for 
workers represented by unions. We are also seeing, as has long 
been the case, that when that happens, there are benefits not 
just for the members of that union, but for wages in that 
industry, and that is very much a key tenet of President 
Biden's vision of a strong economy.
    To your point, there were about 400,000 workers who joined 
unions in 2023, and to Congresswoman Lee's question earlier, 65 
percent of them were black. And so we also know that unions 
have been a pathway to the middle class for all workers, but 
has been very important as a way to combat racial inequity in 
wages. Our OLMS, as you mentioned, Congressman, has a role to 
play. Part of what we do is investigate to make sure that union 
elections are held according to the law. That is something that 
we take very seriously. And another is that on a form called 
the LM-10, employers who engage in certain practices that would 
be seen as dissuading their workers from joining unions have to 
report this activity to us. So we have done some work to try to 
make that easier. We have updated the form, and we also take 
that work very, very seriously. As you acknowledge, the NLRB is 
a separate body, so I won't speak to that work except to say 
that we do believe that the right of a worker to choose whether 
or not to join a union belongs entirely to that worker, full 
stop.

                        CHILD LABOR PROTECTIONS

    Mr. Pocan. Great. Thank you. And then I just want to talk a 
little more about child labor protections. You know, we have 
seen a number of States introduce legislation and pass 
legislation that has kind of rolled back protections, waiving 
work permit requirements, including in my own State. Things 
have been proposed to allow 14- and 15-year-olds to be able to 
work, and, in many cases, as you said, hazardous or 
exploitative sort of circumstances. With the budget that you 
have proposed, do you think that you can adequately address 
what is happening in the States, given there are so many laws 
passing that are, I would say, weakening standards on child 
safety?
    Ms. Su. There is no one who would like to see truly 
sufficient resources to combat the scourge of child labor in 
this country than me. Our request--it is $10.5 million for 
child labor to our Wage and Hour Division--is very much 
intended to make real progress in building those resources and 
to be respectful of the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the caps 
that were in place.
    It is true that while some States are increasing 
protections, they see what is going on, they don't want to see 
children working in hazardous conditions, getting injured on 
the job, falling off of rooftops and dying, working with 
hazardous chemicals, working with dangerous equipment, and they 
are increasing their own penalties, there are also some States, 
as you know, that are doing the opposite. One important message 
is that Federal law does apply regardless, right? The Federal 
law is a floor, and we make sure that the Department of Labor 
enforces that floor so that children, regardless of the State 
protections, understand that there is a floor beneath which 
nobody should have to live and work, and that is the Federal 
standard.
    But we also have tried to improve our working in 
partnership with State and local enforcement agencies. So in 
States where there are higher protections, we really defer to 
the work that they do in order to allow our resources to be 
really utilized where the Department of Labor is truly the 
first and last line of defense for vulnerable individuals.
    Mr. Pocan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, appreciate it.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Clyde.

              DOL'S RULEMAKING AND INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS

    Mr. Clyde. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Aderholt. Acting 
Secretary Su, in the last 3 years, Americans have experienced 
sky high inflation. Our national debt has continued to climb as 
a result of the Biden administration's failed policies. 
Moreover, our Nation is facing a serious labor shortage across 
the board, from the healthcare sector to childcare services to 
various skilled positions. So I think it is more important than 
ever that we eliminate unnecessary barriers and red tape for 
our labor force to ensure that employers, especially small 
businesses, are able to find the employees that they need. Yet 
despite this labor shortage, the Department of Labor continues 
to push dangerous rules that will destroy businesses across our 
country. Hardworking Americans have become increasingly wary of 
the Department of Labor's authoritarian legislating through 
rulemaking.
    The National Labor Relations Board rule, Standards for 
Determining Joint Employer Status, published on October 27 last 
year, and the Wage and Hour Division's rule, Employee or 
Independent Contractor Classification under the Fair Labor 
Standards Act, published on January 10 of this year, are two 
such rules. While I am relieved that both the House and the 
Senate have passed a Congressional Review Act resolution 
disapproving of the joint employer rule, threats from the White 
House to veto the CRA are extremely concerning. Furthermore, 
knowing that a U.S. district judge in Texas has already vacated 
the rule on March 8 of this year, I urge your Department not to 
pursue further action on this matter.
    This rule, if allowed to go into effect, will devastate 
small business franchises and entrepreneurs by placing 
unnecessary and burdensome requirements on mom-and-pop shops. 
These businesses should have the autonomy to determine their 
own hiring practices, wages, and benefits in compliance with 
current Federal law. They often lack the financial and 
administrative means to satisfy labor union demands, yet your 
Department would place legal liability on these small 
businesses to do just that. If that were not enough of a blow 
to our economy, your Department is also pursuing the 
independent contractor rule, which would upend the concept of 
independent contractor work, exposing businesses to additional 
legal liability and limiting opportunities for individuals to 
work as independent contractors.
    Whether it is a full-time profession, a second job, or 
part-time work, roughly 45 percent of the American workforce 
are pursuing employment as independent contractors to keep food 
on their tables and provide for their families. These workers 
choose an independent contractor status because of the 
flexibility and the autonomy it provides, allowing them to 
determine when and with whom they do business. Those contracts 
between businesses and independent contractors are agreed to by 
both parties, and it is far beyond the Department of Labor's 
reach or authority to intervene in these private business 
dealings. By making it harder for individuals to qualify as 
independent contractors, the Department of Labor is placing 
additional liability on business, resulting in fewer contract 
opportunities for independent workers and a slower, more 
tedious hiring process.
    Acting Secretary Su, independent contractor work is a 
cornerstone of the American economy. Would you agree?
    Ms. Su. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Clyde. It is composed of more than 72 million 
Americans. In light of the devastating effects your rule will 
have on these workers, what is the Department of Labor doing to 
ensure that Americans can continue to work as independent 
contractors?
    Ms. Su. Thank you very much, Congressman. I appreciated you 
taking a moment for us to chat yesterday before this hearing. 
So let me answer the various issues that you raised.
    The first is, I know you know, but to be clear, the NLRB is 
an entirely separate entity, and while I have tremendous 
respect for them, the joint employer rule was not put out by 
the Department of Labor, and we did not play any role in the 
joint employer rule.
    Mr. Clyde. Okay.
    Ms. Su. To the point of the independent contractor rule, 
which was ours, I do agree that independent contractors play an 
extremely important role in our economy, and our rule does not 
affect that. Bonafide, true independent contracting, it is a 
way that people make a living. It is the way that they put 
their expertise into developing their own independent business 
operation, and then they get hired to do that. That remains in 
place.
    Mr. Clyde. Okay. Well, then, let me ask you this.
    Ms. Su. Okay.
    Mr. Clyde. Did your Department conduct any studies in order 
to determine the economic impact if millions of workers can no 
longer qualify as independent contractors?
    Ms. Su. So what our independent contractor rule did was 
bring the test back to be aligned with decades of Federal case 
law on this. We didn't make up the test. The test comes from 
cases that have interpreted how to decide whether somebody is 
an employee or an independent contractor under the Fair Labor 
Standards Act that have been decided, again, for a very, very 
long time, and we did engage with, as we do with all of our 
rulemaking. I think we had something over 30,000 comments on 
that rule, and we, of course, review them all. We respond to 
them all. Our goal really, Congressman, was to make sure that 
somebody who should be an employee and, therefore, should enjoy 
all the protections of a century's worth of labor law 
protection, like minimum wage, like the right to overtime, like 
unemployment insurance.
    Mr. Clyde. I get that, I get that, but what I see is that 
what you are doing is you are putting a Federal foot on the 
ability of people to be an independent contractor, and I don't 
see that. I know I am over my time. I have one more quick 
question, if I may?
    Mr. Aderholt. Real quick.
    Mr. Clyde. Okay. All right. You are asking for $8 billion 
here on a new Federal program. We are $34 trillion in debt. How 
can you do that? How is this a Federal authority? Where is it 
in the Constitution that you are going to spend another $8 
billion?
    Ms. Su. Well, it is a request, and I am here to make a case 
for our request. This is really very much a part of, and we 
have heard some of this theme already, employers want and need 
workers with the right skills for the jobs that they are 
creating. And working people, job seekers want good jobs in 
their communities, and part of the Department of Labor's role 
is to try to create the connections----
    Mr. Clyde. I agree, but I think that is a State 
responsibility, not a Federal responsibility, and I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Ms. Frankel.

                         WOMEN IN THE WORKFORCE

    Ms. Frankel. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, 
welcome. Thank you, Madam Secretary, and I applaud the good 
work of your Department and your team. And I have heard some 
concern from my friends over on the other side of the aisle 
about inflation, about regulation, so I am just going to give 
you my little point of view here.
    What I am concerned about, what I think a lot of people 
concerned about, a trend for women being driven out of the 
workforce. Why? What is happening? First of all--first of all--
I use my triple, ``my, my, my.'' There are 25 million women in 
this country. I know this is not your Department issue, but 
there are 25 million women in this country of reproductive age 
who now live in States where abortion is banned or severely 
restricted. You know what that means? That means they are going 
to be potentially thousands and thousands of women who have 
forced pregnancies, which means many of those women are going 
to be forced out of the labor market. And you want to talk 
about inflation? We are going to talk about the costs rising 
for those families.
    Number two, the cost of childcare and long-term care are 
rising. Centers are closing all over the country. I have two 
little toddler grandchildren. I just spent my week off trying 
to find childcare for them this summer. It is very, very 
difficult all over this country. And also, not having paid 
leave, medical leave policies, also driving women out of the 
country--out of the country--may drive them out of the 
country--out of the workforce. When you compare us to like 
countries, I saw a report from the Labor Department that this 
is costing our economy billions of dollars. I think it was up 
something like $700 billion.
    So my first question to you, and let me just add something 
else. What is that called, adding insult to injury? Adding 
insult to injury, last year, the Republican majority proposed 
an appropriation bill that completely eliminated the Women's 
Bureau. First question: why is it important to have a dedicated 
Women's Bureau at the Labor Department?

                      IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN'S BUREAU

    Ms. Su. Thank you very much, Congresswoman. I think in much 
of what you said, you provided the answer. We have seen women 
come back into the workforce after COVID in record numbers, and 
we certainly saw how women, in particular, but obviously 
everybody was devastated by the economic impacts of the 
pandemic. Just to your point about childcare, we know that when 
we make the right investments, it works. So under the American 
Rescue Plan Act, the investments in childcare allowed some 
225,000 childcare centers to stay open. At the same time, it 
allowed increase in childcare workers' wages, right? The 
President believes, as do I, I know you do as well, that we 
should not have to choose between reliable, accessible, 
affordable childcare and the well-being of childcare givers, 
that those two things, we can uplift them at the same time.
    Our Women's Bureau has done a study. Two I will mention. 
One is the national database of childcare prices. It shows just 
how much childcare costs at a very granular level. I think it 
is down to by county or district, but it is really indicating 
just how untenable it is to not have a childcare infrastructure 
that can support all individuals, but because those 
responsibilities still primarily fall to women, women workers. 
The other is the study that you mentioned, which is that if we 
invested in childcare in this country and other family-
supporting policies the way comparable industrial countries do, 
like Germany and Canada, we would allow some 5 million more 
women to join the workforce, and that would result in $775 
million of economic activity a year. So I know the conversation 
is often about how can we afford to do this. I think the real 
question is how can we afford not to do it.

                          AFFORDABLE CHILDCARE

    Ms. Frankel. Thank you. You talked about apprentice 
programs or uplifting jobs. There are a lot of jobs that women 
have that we need, especially in the care industry. What, if 
anything, you are doing to try to make sure that those workers 
are getting the salaries they need to take care of their own 
families?
    Ms. Su. Yeah, that is right. So this is a whole-of-
government issue, and many agencies are hard at work on this. 
The President issued an executive order on increasing access to 
care and supporting caregivers. The Department of Labor has 
some work in that space, including samples that we created so 
that workers who work in people's homes, whether as nannies or 
caregivers or housekeepers, can actually have an agreement with 
their employer to set out rights, responsibilities, 
expectations, and the like.
    The other thing that I will mention is this kind of relates 
to, Chairman, your point about the sector grants, is there are 
industries in which employers say they really, really need 
workers. Childcare is one of them. Healthcare is another. 
Education is a third. And so when we talk about apprenticeship 
programs and training programs, we often focus on the trades. 
That makes sense because the trades are the gold standard when 
it comes to apprenticeship programs, but these training 
programs, tried and true, also work in other industries. So we 
have invested in other sectors. Childcare is one of them. 
Teaching is another. We now have apprenticeships in industries 
that didn't exist before.
    Ms. Frankel. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. LaTurner.

                       REGISTERED APPRENTICESHIPS

    Mr. LaTurner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Always pleased to 
follow my colleague from Florida as well. I am sure all of my 
colleagues here can testify to the fact that our Nation is 
experiencing a workforce crisis that our current system is not 
adequately addressing. I hardly take a meeting with Kansas 
employers where they don't share about struggles to close the 
skills gap and find workers to meet the needs of their 
business. Given the current status of our labor force, I have 
serious reservations about the proposed rule that your 
Department has put forward under the National Apprenticeship 
Act. I would specifically like to discuss a provision that 
would strip State apprenticeship agencies of the ability to 
recognize suitable occupations for apprenticeships and 
centralize this authority with DOL's Office of Apprenticeship, 
completely undermining State autonomy and almost certainly 
leading to a disconnect between local labor markets and the 
needs for apprenticeship opportunities.
    While I understand you cannot answer proposed questions on 
the regulation, employers have significant concerns that under 
the current system, the Department of Labor is already not a 
neutral arbiter when it comes to reviewing and approving 
apprenticeship applications. Can you please share the number of 
requests for a new apprenticeable industry and the average time 
it took the Department to approve the request?
    Ms. Su. Thank you, Congressman. I have heard this now a 
couple times about neutral arbiter, so I do want to say that 
our approach to workforce development overall, but definitely 
apprenticeships, is that they have to be demand driven. They 
have to be tied to the needs of employers. It just doesn't make 
sense to train for skills or skills that are not needed or jobs 
that don't exist. That is one reason why registered 
apprenticeships are so invaluable, is that they engage 
employers on their needs. There is clarity about what the 
skills are needed, how they are going to be acquired, and then 
individuals can earn while they learn. I talk to lots of people 
who would love to go into a training program to get a better 
skill and to get a better job and to be able to afford more of 
the basics of life, but they can't do that because they have 
bills to pay. They have a job they are currently in.
    Mr. LaTurner. For the applications the Department did not 
grant, can you please share some examples of why the Department 
reached that decision?
    Ms. Su. So I don't know about a specific situation, but I 
will say that one reason why registered apprenticeships are so 
valued is that they do have real standards built into them, and 
it is standards not only for the training, but also standards 
for the job. There is a job quality component to it: wages, 
wage progression, the opportunity to move up. There is also----
    Mr. LaTurner. I have very limited time.
    Ms. Su. Okay.
    Mr. LaTurner. I have to move on, but I would love to talk 
offline about that.
    Ms. Su. Yes.

                          H-2A PROGRAM CHANGES

    Mr. LaTurner. In much of my district, agriculture and ag-
adjacent industries comprise a large portion of the workforce 
in the State's economy. Across Kansas, farmers experience 
challenges in securing a consistent workforce, and many utilize 
the H-2A Program. I already hear from farmers across my 
district of the complexity of the applications. Especially when 
employers utilize the program, they must interact separately 
with multiple different government agencies who are slow to 
process applications and delay decisions on whether an employer 
may proceed with the hiring process.
    The Department of Labor's changes to the program wage 
methodology through drastic increases in the adverse effect 
wage rate and changes to occupational classification codes have 
created more uncertainty for producers in my district who are 
forced to absorb the cost of the rulemaking. In many cases, due 
to either the cost of the program or delays in processing, 
those jobs have remained unfilled. When you responded to 
Congressman Moolenaar's question about the impacts of the H-2A 
changes on a small and mid-sized farms, you mentioned that the 
Department helps with rule compliance. How does the compliance 
with new wage requirements help producers for whom the program 
has become unaffordable?
    Ms. Su. Thank you, Congressman. As I discussed with 
Congressman Moolenaar, the H-2A Program is a balance of meeting 
the needs of employers and ensuring protections not just for 
the H-2A worker, but for U.S.-based workers, right? There are 
requirements around recruitment, and part of that is the wage 
protection. I mean, this is by Congress, so you don't want, but 
I also don't want a workforce that is more vulnerable and that 
brings down the wages in an industry. It could be a job that 
somebody in the U.S. wants to do. For example, we had a 
complaint involving H-2A farmers, farmers who were using the H-
2A Program to bring in workers and purposely not hiring black 
farm workers in Mississippi. We don't want a program that will 
undercut the ability of U.S. workers to have a good job.
    Mr. LaTurner. We also don't want the compliance to be such 
that folks can no longer afford it. Forgive me for going over. 
I yield back, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mrs. Watson-Coleman.

                     FEDERALLY-CONTRACTED PROJECTS

    Mrs. Watson-Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, 
Madam Secretary. Thank you for your testimony regarding all the 
good work that I believe this administration and your 
Department have been dedicated to. All good intentions don't 
lead to all good outcomes, and so I want to kind of talk to you 
about that a little bit.
    The projects that are funded through the Bipartisan 
Infrastructure Plan were devised to provide good jobs, repairs 
that needed to be made, increased diversity, increased 
training, and all those kinds of things, be it contractors or 
employees. I have a question about does the Department have the 
resources to ensure that those priorities are actually taking 
place. What accountability is there to certify that workforce 
diversity goals are being met for federally-contracted 
projects? Who keeps that information? Is it in any way 
available for us to evaluate because at the end of the day, I 
want to make sure that the diversity proposals and promises 
actually came through for underserved communities, particularly 
minorities and women.
    Ms. Su. Thank you, Congresswoman. As I said, this is 
something that is very important to me and to the Department as 
well. We can't build an economy that leaves no one behind if we 
are not honest about who is being left behind. As you note, the 
historic investments being made right now in our country is 
about repairing roads and making sure there are safe bridges. 
It is about making sure that every family who turns on the 
faucet gets clean drinking water. It is about ensuring that 
every community has access to high-speed, reliable, affordable 
internet. And all of those are opportunities to create good 
jobs in the communities that need them the most. And so as we 
put shovels in the ground, as we replace lead pipes, we also 
have to be sure that those jobs are available to every single 
community.
    One way of doing that, one policy mechanism is to have 
local hire provisions when it comes to contractors who receive 
Federal funds. My sister agencies, who are putting out the 
money, do have mechanisms for reporting on how those projects 
are going. We similarly, I mentioned earlier in response to 
Congresswoman Lee's question, we have a Mega Project effort 
which is designed to help employers make sure that they know 
where ready talent is. Everybody has correctly noted the 
challenge of employers in finding workers. Well, there is a lot 
of untapped talent in this country. There is a tremendous 
amount of potential, and this is our moment to make sure that 
they enjoy all of the same opportunities that we are creating 
in communities across America, and that is how we build more 
pathways to the middle class. That is----
    Mrs. Watson-Coleman. Can I respectfully interrupt you----
    Ms. Su. Of course. Please.

             WOMEN AND MINORITIES BEING CONTRACTED FOR JOBS

    Mrs. Watson-Coleman [continuing]. Because I agree with 
everything that you are saying about what we intend to do, what 
we want to do. What I can't get clarified for me is, is it 
happening. So I know that you have an Office of Civil Rights. 
Every Department has an office of civil rights. No one is 
taking responsibility for collecting the data that tells us 
whether or not women and minorities are being either hired or 
contracted in these jobs. There are a gazillion dollars being 
spent. I don't want there to be an ``oops'' at the end of this 
process. We had every intention of getting to minorities and 
women, helping them to build their companies, helping them to 
build their skills, get their jobs, but we didn't meet the 
mark. So tell me, where do I need to go?
    Ms. Su. It is a very, very important question. I will give 
an example of a program within the Department of Labor. So we 
have talked about apprenticeship several times, right. Our 
budget request includes $335 million for registered 
apprenticeships. That is an increase of $50 million. In the 
last 3 years, we have expanded apprenticeships to different 
industries. I don't think I said earlier there were no teacher 
apprenticeships for teachers when this administration came in. 
There are now----
    Mrs. Watson-Coleman. I know what you are doing. I just want 
you to tell me where are you logging in your successes or the 
gaps that you are missing, and then what would be the course 
corrections. I know what you want to do.
    Ms. Su. Yeah.
    Mrs. Watson-Coleman. I know what you are telling people to 
do. What I don't know is whether or not it is happening and if 
the appropriate course corrections are being taken place.
    Ms. Su. Yeah. Yeah.
    Ms. Watson-Coleman. Excuse me for interrupting you.
    Ms. Su. No, no. It is an issue that you are passionate 
about, and so am I. So within the apprenticeship programs, 
though, we are seeing greater diversity. So it is just we know 
that when we make the right investments, when we are 
intentional about inclusion, we can move the needle, but there 
is much more work to do on that, and I would be very happy to 
continue to have conversations with you about how we do it 
right.
    Mrs. Watson-Coleman. Thank you, and, Mr. Chairman, to you. 
I do want to have specific conversations regarding this because 
at the end of the day, I want to see the numbers. Thank you 
very much, and I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Ms. Letlow.

                ACCESS TO PAID FAMILY AND MEDICAL LEAVE

    Ms. Letlow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Acting 
Secretary Su, for being here with us today.
    As we discussed yesterday, you know that this past year I 
have been working with a bipartisan group of my colleagues to 
explore ways to improve access to paid family and medical 
leave. In January, our Paid Family Leave Working Group 
identified several areas of consensus among the members of the 
group and released a legislative framework with four pillars. 
One of these pillars included a proposal to create an 
interstate paid leave action network, known as the I-Plan, to 
drive coordination and harmonization across the growing numbers 
of States with paid leave programs. While these States share a 
common purpose in providing workers with access to these 
critical benefits, they were not built and designed to function 
in tandem with the program of another State, let alone the 
structural variations of programs implemented in now 13 States 
and D.C.
    This siloed approach has presented many challenges for 
workers, States, and employers, and is one of the top issues we 
hear about from our large employers with multiple locations 
around the U.S. The I-Plan would incentivize States with paid 
leave programs to create, adopt, and improve on interstate 
agreements to simplify the process for workers accessing these 
benefits, providing employers a way to offer a consistent paid 
leave benefit to their employees, and improve the affordability 
of benefits across States for an increasingly mobile workforce.

                                 I-PLAN

    My question is this, Secretary Su. How would improving 
timeliness, accuracy, and portability, all purposes of the I-
Plan, help boost workers' access to State paid leave benefits?
    Ms. Su. Congresswoman, thank you so much, and I very much 
enjoyed our conversation about at least two issues that we both 
care deeply about----
    Ms. Letlow. Yes.
    Ms. Su [continuing]. This and creating real opportunities 
in rural communities. We are--the President says this often--
the only sort of industrialized Nation that does not have a 
national paid leave policy, and this is costly. It is costly in 
the ways that I mentioned earlier, our study that demonstrates 
that if we had one and invested in other kinds of supports in 
infrastructure that can support mostly working women but 
working individuals, we could improve our economy to the tune 
of $775 million a year. This is significant.
    We also through our Women's Bureau do work to track and 
make sure that we know and States know what other State leave 
policies there are, so in the absence of a national policy, 
States can learn from one another. States can share stories 
about what is working and what is not, what some of the 
challenges of implementation are. So those are also some of the 
ways that we approach this space.

                         UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE

    Ms. Letlow. Sure. Great. And right now, there is no shared 
technological systems across States with paid leave programs, 
which differs from other social insurance programs, like 
unemployment and insurance. How does the absence of a shared 
technological system make it difficult for State paid leave 
programs to combat fraud and ensure program integrity?
    Ms. Su. That is a very interesting question. I will 
approach it from an angle that I know because it is something 
that we have been working on for the last few years, which is 
in the unemployment insurance space, we have seen that the lack 
of national efforts to combat fraud can be very damaging. It is 
very difficult for States to do a State-by-State effort, and it 
makes sense to have systems in which there can be information 
sharing but also flagging of different practices. So I am very 
happy to talk to you more about what that could look like in 
the area that you are talking about.

               45S AWARENESS CAMPAIGN AND 45S TAX CREDIT

    Ms. Letlow. Wonderful. In the final fiscal year 2024 
appropriations package, report language was included to 
encourage the Women's Bureau to coordinate a campaign designed 
to increase awareness of the tax credits for paid family and 
medical leave authorized under Section 45S of the Internal 
Revenue Code. How do you envision this 45S awareness campaign 
will be implemented, and will the Women's Bureau be working 
with other Federal agencies and outside stakeholders to 
increase awareness of the 45S tax credit?
    Ms. Su. Yes, and this is another space I would be very 
happy to follow up with you and have our staff work together so 
that we tap into your expertise and the ways that we can 
improve that outreach. I think, again, what you are saying is 
true. It can be confusing, especially for employers who operate 
in multiple States. That is why a national policy is so 
important, but in the absence of that, very happy to work with 
you on this issue.
    Ms. Letlow. Wonderful. Thank you so much for your time. Mr. 
Chairman, I yield back.
    Ms. Su. Thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Hoyer.

            APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM AND CAREER TRAINING FUND

    Mr. Hoyer. Thank you very much. You have an extraordinarily 
impressive background (inaudible) making probably 6, 7, 8 times 
what you are making as Secretary, so we appreciate the time and 
effort you are giving. I want to ask at least two questions, 
and I will be brief on the questions about my Make It In 
America agenda.
    The last Congress was the most Make It In America Congress 
in which I have served. We are going to get lots of new jobs, 
and we need to train people for the jobs, as we pointed out. I 
want you to speak to the apprenticeship programs and the Career 
Training Fund, both which are looking for the same thing. 
Making sure that as we create a surge in new industries with 
new jobs available, we have tripled or quadrupled the private 
sector investment in manufacturing over the last year. So speak 
to me of how we are going to implement that and reference the 
problems we have had in the Congress in getting to an 
apprenticeship program that can be agreed upon.
    Ms. Su. Thank you very much, Congressman, and thank you for 
your kind words coming from you. They really do mean a lot.
    So yes, we are in a moment of tremendous job growth and the 
need to connect job seekers to those jobs. I often say it this 
way. We are investing in infrastructure like never before. The 
idea that jobs should be in America, that we can make things in 
America, is very fundamental to the President's vision for this 
country and I know to yours as well. Physical roads and bridges 
are one form of infrastructure. Our workforce system is also 
infrastructure as well, as the ranking member said, and they 
are the roads and bridges that connect people to the good jobs 
they want and need, and employers to the people that they want 
and need. And we need that infrastructure to be just as strong 
as our physical infrastructure.
    So registered apprenticeships are really like superhighways 
in that infrastructure because of the way that they connect. 
They are demand driven, they have a good job at the end of it, 
and it is an opportunity to recruit from communities that might 
not otherwise be able to do a training program. I get to see 
them from Oregon to New York, from Chicago to Las Vegas. These 
are programs----
    Mr. Hoyer. From California to the New York Island. 
[Laughter.]
    Ms. Su. That is right. And so our budget really seeks to 
double down on something that we know works, that is needed in 
this time. Part of our sectors include advanced manufacturing. 
There is no reason, as President Biden says all the time, we 
can't make the things that we invented here in America with 
American workers, American talent in good jobs that will 
provide a pathway to the middle class. So we have already 
expanded apprenticeship programs significantly. We have 6,500 
new apprenticeship programs since President Biden came into 
office with over 11,000 employers, and we know that we still 
have more work to do on that. So that is part of building an 
infrastructure that will help meet the workforce needs of 
America's employers and create really good pathways.
    The other thing about registered apprenticeships that I 
think is important is because they have standards that can 
often be nationwide. I really hear this idea that one size does 
not fit all. I know that to be true, but when you have national 
standards, you also give workers more power to be mobile, 
right? Now workers are not just tied to a single employer. They 
have skills that they can use if they have to or want to move.
    Mr. Hoyer. Madam Secretary, to what extent, as I referenced 
in my question, have our inability to come to an agreement on 
Federal law impeded our success here?
    Ms. Su. It certainly is helpful to the field when there is 
clarity about standards and expectations. You also asked about 
the other career training fund that we have in place. The idea 
there is to provide about $10,000 for about 750,000 individuals 
for training purposes. Again, we know that not only do people 
sometimes not get to train for a job because they didn't know 
that it existed, but sometimes they simply can't afford to 
leave a job to do it. Sometimes they need supportive services. 
We say that all the time, that the inability of someone to get 
to a job is a massive barrier to them doing the job. It is not 
because Americans don't want to work. We are the most 
hardworking people in the world. The President says all the 
time, right? You could never bet against America's workers, but 
sometimes the infrastructure doesn't exist for things like 
childcare, for transportation, and so we are looking to put a 
fund in place that would help to support those needs.
    Mr. Hoyer. Thank you very much. Just one observation, 
brief, Mr. Chairman. It is interesting that we have a lot of 
people saying employers are having a tough time finding people, 
thus there are job openings. It is ironic that some contend 
that the economy is doing poorly, but employers can't hire 
enough people. That didn't require an answer.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Ciscomani.

                            SILICA EXPOSURE

    Mr. Ciscomani. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, 
also, Acting Secretary Su, for being here with us today. Nice 
to meet you.
    Representing Arizona's 6th Congressional District, which 
continues to expand with new industry and career opportunities, 
I have a strong interest in ensuring that we are equipping our 
workforce with the skills and be able to compete not only 
today, but for future generations to come as well. So I have 
got several questions where I could go, but I want to focus in 
on two main industries. One is mining.
    As you know, Arizona is a national leader in the mining 
industry, but I have heard concerns from my constituents 
regarding Department of Labor and also the Mine Safety and 
Health Administration, MSHA, proposed rule regarding silica 
exposure. Now, specifically, there are concerns that the 
incurred costs necessary to abide by these regulations, these 
new regulations, are incredibly stark. They are concerned that 
they are not properly considered on their feedback, their 
concerns weren't. So can you explain how your Agency reviewed 
and incorporated industry and stakeholder comments in that 
process?
    Ms. Su. Thank you so much for raising that, Congressman. So 
actually, that is a rule that we just rolled out yesterday. We 
just announced it yesterday. I was in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, 
along with many miners who talked about just what the impact of 
exposure to silica dust has been. As I said there, the trends 
are going in the wrong direction. You know, 1 in 5 miners get 
sick because of silica dust. They develop irreversible damage 
to their lungs, and their lifespan is cut short by an average 
of about 12 years. It is just an unconscionable situation. And 
our rule, as is true with all of our rules, was developed with 
input from the industry in mind.
    I think it might be important to note, based on what you 
said, Congressman, that one of the pieces of feedback that we 
took and incorporated into the rule is that while the rule 
limits the permissible exposure level for silica as well as 
other airborne hazards, it has a ramp-up time for mine 
operators. So for coal mines, they will have to come into 
compliance by April of 2025, and for metal/nonmetal mines, they 
have until April of 2026, so they have 2 years. That is an 
example, I think, of what you were talking about, which is we 
can protect workers and make sure that nobody finds their job 
to be a death sentence, but we can also do it in a way that 
takes into account what the responsibilities of the employees 
are.
    Mr. Ciscomani. And that is what I am getting at, so I am 
glad to see that the timeframe for compliance, it was correctly 
extended. MSHA and OSHA appear to be operating off of maybe 
different silica standards, though, on this, and some companies 
are looking at hundreds of millions of dollars in compliance 
cost. What is MSHA going to offer in the way of compliance 
assistance, especially when it comes to the feasibility of the 
medical surveillance requirement for mental and non-mental 
miners--I am sorry--metal and non-metal miners.
    Ms. Su. That is right. So as I have said, we provide 
compliance assistance as a matter of course, and we would be 
very happy to do that also in your district with the mines that 
you were mentioning. I could just share with you, Congressman, 
that in terms of the comments that we got to the rule, we had 
157 written comments during the public comment period. That did 
include comments from industry. We also held three public 
hearings with virtual and in-person participation, and over 500 
attendees participated in those three hearings. So in terms of 
your----

                              H-2B PROGRAM

    Mr. Ciscomani. Well, thanks for that feedback, and I do 
want to take you up on the opportunity here to work with you, 
specifically in my district with the mines. I have a heavy 
mining district. With the few seconds that I have left, I want 
to switch over to the visa conversation we were having earlier. 
I hear consistently from my constituents about issues with the 
need for more workers. This ranges from high-skilled to low-
skilled jobs. In fact, there are many workers who want to come 
to work here and return home as well, guest workers from 
international, but as you know well, there are issues with 
numerical caps. How can we ensure that businesses are able to 
address their labor needs and non-immigrants are able to more 
easily travel back and forth from their home countries to work 
here in the United States?
    Ms. Su. So I think you are referring to the H-2B Program, 
which we talked about earlier.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Yes, uh-huh.
    Ms. Su. Yeah. It is an important part of the overall puzzle 
of how employers have the workforce that they need and how we 
continue to protect workers and make sure that every job is a 
good job, and working people go home healthy and safe at the 
end of the workday. We have put in place efforts to improve the 
speed at which we approve H-2B visas.
    Mr. Ciscomani. The numerical caps, if I may, because I am 
out of time, so that specifically.
    Ms. Su. I will have my staff follow up to talk about those 
caps. Those are not entirely within the Department of Labor's 
discretion but happy to work with you to understand what the 
challenges and the needs are.
    Mr. Ciscomani. Yeah. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Aderholt. Mister Edwards.
    Mr. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Madam Acting Secretary, 
thanks for being with us this afternoon. Thanks for the offer 
to have a conversation with you yesterday. I apologize that I 
wasn't able to carry through with that scheduled phone call, 
but I appreciate you reaching out and giving me the 
opportunity.

               DOL'S PROPOSED NEW DEFINITION OF FIDUCIARY

    My first question is this. On November 3, 2023, the 
Department of Labor proposed a new definition of ``fiduciary'' 
with a 60-day comment period. I would like to highlight that 
the comment period fell over two major Federal holidays, which 
would result in a comment period that was less than 45 actual 
days. Many industry stakeholders and members of Congress sent 
letters to the Department of Labor highlighting the shortened 
comment period and asking for an extension for impacted 
industries to provide feedback, and despite that pushback, the 
Department declined. It seems that perhaps the Department of 
Labor wasn't interested in hearing the constituency, and maybe 
that was because of pushback that the Department had received 
in the past. And instead of extending that comment period, the 
Department of Labor effectively shortened it even more by 
holding a hearing on the proposal in the middle of the comment 
period on December 12, 2023, requiring industry stakeholders to 
understand and articulate their concerns to the Department of 
Labor even sooner.
    I am just curious. Can you tell this committee why the 
Department is not adequately considering feedback from industry 
stakeholders and rushing a rule that will significantly impact 
choice for low- to middle-income Americans and result in 
millions of Americans losing access to investment advice?
    Ms. Su. Congressman, I am glad that we have a chance to 
meet today, although we did not connect before this hearing. 
Thank you for that question. We absolutely want to hear input. 
I just want to answer that question straight up. There is 
absolutely no desire, no benefit on the part of the Department 
not to allow full input, feedback, and letting us understand 
the impact of what we do. This rule is a long time in the 
making, right? This is a rule that there has been informal 
conversations and there were prior rules for probably 8 years 
at least now, but this proposal did include a 60-day comment 
period. That is that standard, not just for the Department of 
Labor's rules, but for rules generally. We did receive over 400 
individual comments and just under 20,000 petition submissions.
    I am a little bit confused by what you said about. We did 
have hearings also, which were meant to invite more comment and 
give another forum in which to give comment. They certainly 
weren't meant to say, you have to do it now, and, therefore, 
you can't give comments at the end of the 60-day period. They 
were really more efforts to be open and accessible when it 
comes to hearing from comments. And in fact, the rule that we 
have proposed now is different from the rule that was proposed 
back in 2016.
    Mr. Edwards. I am going to run out of time, so I am going 
to cut you off there, respectfully, but I have to comment that 
your words seem different than your actions because you 
received a very specific letter asking for more time with what 
I think is a valid reason, and that is there was two major 
holidays in between. So I hear your comment, but it looks 
insincere.

          IMPROPER PAYMENTS FOR PANDEMIC UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

    Let me ask this question real quick. The Department of 
Labor reported an improper payment rate of 22 percent covering 
the period 2020 to 2022, in which Federal taxpayers paid out 
nearly $900 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits, of which 
GAO has reported an estimated a hundred to $135 billion was 
lost to fraud. What effect, real quick, can you tell us, would 
the Department's 2023 guidance on the application of State 
finality laws have on how the Department calculates improper 
payments?
    Ms. Su. Thank you for raising that, Congressman. I know we 
haven't talked about that at this hearing yet. So the UI 
system, as you know, is a safety net that helps workers get 
through hard times, temporary periods of unemployment through 
no fault of their own. I think you said almost $900 billion. I 
think it was like $880 billion worth of benefits, the vast 
majority to eligible claimants who needed it to get through 
those extremely difficult and uncertain months. And at the same 
time, the pandemic revealed gross inadequacies in the system, 
mostly borne out of two things. One is decades of 
underinvestment in the system. So most States, if not all, 
most, the vast majority were operating under computer programs 
that that were created before the internet was invented. And 
because the safety net itself doesn't reach everyone, Congress 
passed a specific program called Pandemic Unemployment 
Assistance that has been found where the vast majority of the 
fraud occurred because it was built in not to have the same 
safeguards.
    Mr. Edwards. Thank you. In respect of the Chairman's 
timekeeping, I will just thank you for your response there and 
say that I think that it is all of our responsibility as 
appropriators and as secretaries and stewards of the taxpayer 
dollar, that we do everything that we can----
    Ms. Su. Yes.
    Mr. Edwards [continuing]. To limit the horrendous improper 
payments----
    Ms. Su. Yes. Yes.
    Mr. Edwards [continuing]. And suggest to the chair we make 
that a top priority in this session. Thank you.
    Ms. Su. Thank you, Congressman. I am happy to follow up and 
talk to you about that, too, because we have been making 
enormous steps to make sure that the system can function well 
in the next crisis. Thank you.
    Mr. Edwards. As we approach the noon hour, I want to 
recognize the ranking member. She may have some comments. I 
will have some closing comments, and then we will adjourn. So 
Ranking Member DeLauro.

                            CHILD LABOR LAWS

    Ms. DeLauro. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I am going to 
try to make two points. I want to say thank you to you, 
Secretary, for your commitment and focus on the issue of child 
labor. And quite frankly, not you--you are dealing with much 
more stringent enforcement, et cetera--but as a Nation, we are 
going backward in this area. We have watched many industry 
groups are encouraging States to roll back child labor 
protections, laws making it easier for kids from 14 to 17 years 
old to work longer and later and in occupations that were 
previously off limits for minors. Ten States in the past 2 
years have introduced or passed laws rolling back child labor 
protection. I won't go through the details, but it is Arkansas, 
Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, 
Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin.
    Iowa has passed one of the most radical laws, children as 
young as 14 to work in meat coolers and industrial laundries. 
Teens 15 and older can work on assembly lines around dangerous 
machinery. Teens as young as 16 can now serve alcohol in Iowa 
restaurants as long as two adults are present. I will say we 
are going backward in this area. This is going back to a 
previous time in our history when we came forward with child 
labor laws to protect children in this nation.

                           FIGHTING INFLATION

    My second point is that my colleagues across the aisle 
repeatedly share their interest in fighting inflation, but as 
is the case for working families, each night at their kitchen 
tables, I believe actions speak so much louder than words. So I 
will ask, what plans do they have to help families afford 
groceries by taking on food companies that reap record profits 
due to price gouging? One, Tyson Foods, the largest meat 
company in America, more than doubled its profits between 
quarter one of 2021 and 2022, and raising the price of their 
product. What plans do they have to help working families keep 
dollars in their pockets?
    Well, we have heard folks today, loud and clear. Let's roll 
back your Department's regulatory efforts to fight wage theft, 
misclassified workers as independent contracts so that they 
lose Federal wage protections, deny new overtime protection for 
millions of workers. This vision would take away earned wages 
from workers and their families, hurting their ability to pay 
their bills and to get by. We need to reject this vision, and I 
believe you reject this vision, which is why I will work 
tirelessly with you and the President to support the Department 
of Labor's budget requests, your regulatory efforts to make 
sure that working people are getting a fair shot in this 
economy, and that we use this government and its power to 
provide economic security for people and put money back in 
their pockets, helping them with today's cost of living. Thank 
you for being here, Madam Secretary.

                        CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRIES

    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Ranking Member DeLauro. In 
conclusion, I think we have had a very good hearing today, and 
a lot of members got to ask a lot of questions. Just before we 
adjourn, because I know a lot of folks have other hearings to 
go to and other meetings, but I do want to call to your 
attention about the congressional inquiries. It has been called 
to my attention that since you have become Acting Secretary of 
Labor, the Committee on Education and Workforce has sent more 
than 25 letters, including a duly-served subpoena, and the 
Department of Labor has failed to provide responses in full and 
forthright answers in these oversight inquiries. Also, the 
Department's response to questions for the record following 
hearings such as even this one, were often late and provided 
few insights on the matter that are important to so many 
members of Congress.
    I guess my question in closing, can we expect to more fully 
and timely get responses from your Department as we continue on 
the remainder of the 118th Congress?
    Ms. Su. Chairman, it is my understanding and my expectation 
that we always cooperate, that obviously, we respect the role 
of this body in oversight and all other matters, and if you are 
not getting what you need, then I will certainly talk to my 
team about that. But I trust that that is what they are doing 
also and working closely with yours.
    Mr. Aderholt. Well, like I said, it has been called our 
attention that that has been an issue, and so if you could 
check into it, I would appreciate it.
    And with that, we stand adjourned.
    [Questions and answers submitted for the record follow:]

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                                           Tuesday, April 30, 2024.

                              MEMBERS' DAY

    Mr. Aderholt. Well, good morning. Thanks for being here, 
and of course it is a pleasure to welcome you to the Labor, 
Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee on 
Appropriations, and look forward to taking testimony from 
members this morning. It is an opportunity, of course, for us 
to hear directly from members as we want to hear what is 
important to them and the congressional districts they 
represent. And I appreciate Mr. McGovern being here. I have 
been before his committee before, so it is actually good to be 
on the other side of the mike. So but you are welcome here, and 
we look forward to hearing from you. And before I begin, I will 
turn over to Mr. Pocan, who is sitting in for the ranking 
member, for any remarks that he would like to make.
    Mr. Pocan. Thank you, Chairman Aderholt, for holding the 
Member Day hearing. As this is the largest non-defense 
appropriations bill, the subcommittee allocates approximately 
$225,000,000,000 in annual funding. The programs in this bill 
fund lifesaving biomedical research, they equip our Nation to 
deal with public health emergencies, they level the playing 
field for low-income children looking to get a good education, 
and they help Americans get the skills they need to find a job. 
I could go on, and I am not going to. These programs directly 
impact the lives of Americans across the country, especially 
children, families, and seniors. So as the subcommittee begins 
to draft a new bill for fiscal year 2025, it is important we 
hear from our colleagues and their top priorities. Thank you 
for doing this, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Mr. Pocan. I would like now to 
recognize our first witness, Mr. McGovern.
                              ----------                              

                                           Tuesday, April 30, 2024.

                                WITNESS

HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF 
    MASSACHUSETTS
    Mr. McGovern. Well, thank you, Chairman Aderholt, and my 
friend, Mr. Pocan, thank you so much, and members of this 
committee, thank you for the opportunity, that gives me the 
opportunity to testify today on some of my priorities for the 
fiscal year 2024 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education 
and Related Agencies Appropriation Act. And let me thank the 
members of this committee for the time and the effort you put 
into these bills and to the staff in particular. I mean, this 
is a lot of work and just know that some of us are grateful for 
all of your efforts.
    Look, we hold in our power the ability to lower diet-
related disease, improve health outcomes, and lower healthcare 
spending. Food is medicine, and we can do all of these things 
by better incorporating nutrition in our healthcare. A 
bipartisan group of members, including my dear friend, Barbara 
Lee, who serves on this subcommittee, have authored a request 
for funding and report language directing the Department of 
Health and Human Services to advance this work, as outlined in 
the 2022 National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health. 
The letter calls upon this subcommittee to increase funding for 
the Office of Nutrition Research and NIH, including support for 
the Food is Medicine Centers of Excellence. We are also asking 
for $5,000,000 to continue the incredible work at HHS to 
implement the National Strategy and to establish a knowledge 
hub that will collaborate with other Federal departments to 
craft best practices, tools, and guidance to advance Food is 
Medicine initiatives nationwide.
    Additionally, we are requesting report language to improve 
medical nutrition education for doctors, better incorporate 
medically-tailored meals and produce prescriptions into our 
current healthcare programs, and provide technical assistance 
to States seeking to expand their Food is Medicine work under 
the Medicaid 1115 waiver. Taken together, these advancements 
would dramatically scale up Food is Medicine work happening 
within the U.S. Government and across the country, helping to 
save lives, improve nutrition, and lower healthcare costs.
    I want to thank you for the committee's longstanding 
support for the innovative approaches to the Literacy Grant 
Program which is authorized in the Every Student Succeeds Act 
and administered by the Department of Education. The innovative 
approaches to the Literacy Grant Program has awarded over 200 
grants to nonprofits and school districts around the country 
since its creation in fiscal year 2012. IAL grants provide 
access to community-based literacy programs for students in 
low-income and underserved communities. Given the emerging 
evidence of pandemic-related learning loss, bolstering programs 
to support children's literacy is more important now than ever, 
and I ask the committee to maintain its historic commitment to 
this program and prioritize funding for the IAL Grant Program.
    In addition to my general support for IAL grants, I want to 
express my specific support for those grants that go to 
programs that support pediatric literacy programs that are 
provided during well child visits by medical providers, trained 
in research-based methods of early language and literacy. Reach 
Out and Read, the only national pediatric literacy model, 
endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, reaches 
4,400,000 children across every State, and in Massachusetts' 
2nd Congressional District, which I represent, Reach Out and 
Read has 42 sites and 361 participating providers. And I ask 
the committee to support language that encourages the 
Department of Education to use a portion of the funds 
appropriated for IAL grants to support pediatric literacy 
programs.
    I would also like to highlight the importance of supporting 
additional health-related requests. I ask that the committee to 
support language and increases funding for mitochondrial 
disease research and prioritizes the development of lifesaving 
therapeutics. I ask the committee to support language directing 
the NIH to allocate funding for research and awareness grants 
relating to childhood post-infectious neuroimmune disorders, 
such as pediatric acute onset neuropsychiatric syndrome and 
pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with 
streptococcus. I also ask the committee to support language 
that encourages ARPA-H to provide continued funding for the 
Investor Catalyst Hub and Spoke Network and Language, and 
encourages the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and 
Bioengineering to continue to expand the innovation funnel 
model beyond COVID-19 testing to address other critical unmet 
needs in diagnostic testing. I provide further details of the 
importance of these four requests in written testimony that I 
am submitting today.
    And lastly, I am grateful for the committee's previous 
support of neurofibromatosis research. As you craft the next 
appropriations bill, I ask that the committee continue to 
consider the Americans suffering from this disease and include 
report language in the Office of the Director account, 
encouraging various institutes at NIH to continue to expand 
their NF research portfolios I would just say finally, this is 
particularly personal to me. I have a daughter who is 22, who 
suffers from neurofibromatosis, which has developed into a 
cancer which she is being treated for right now in a clinical 
trial. But she is making progress in large part due to the 
investments that we have made at NIH that have produced some 
breakthroughs, and my hope is that it will ultimately lead to 
her cure. So I appreciate your patience, and I will end there.
    Mr.  Aderholt. Thank you. Thanks for your information about 
those particular projects and those particular programs, and 
especially for mentioning your daughter with the NIH funding. I 
know that you all have been through a process with that, and we 
certainly will keep her in our thoughts and prayers as we move 
forward, but certainly, we are glad that that has been 
beneficial, too, at NIH.
    So with that, do you have any questions or anything from 
the ranking member?
    Mr. Pocan. No.
    Mr. Aderholt. Okay.
    Mr. McGovern. Thank you, and I will----
    Mr. Aderholt. Those two pages are not----
    Mr. McGovern. Thank you, and I will remember this courtesy 
when you come to Rules.
    Mr. Aderholt. Yes.
    Mr. McGovern. All right.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you. Good to have you here. Thanks. 
Thanks so much.
    Okay. Our next witness will be Representative Ruiz from the 
great State of California, 25th District, and we look forward 
to hearing your testimony this morning about some projects or 
programs that are of special interest to you.
                              ----------                              

                                         Wednesday, April 30, 2024.

                                WITNESS

HON. RAUL RUIZ, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF 
    CALIFORNIA
    Mr. Ruiz. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. As an 
emergency physician, I work hand in hand with infectious 
disease physicians on the H1N1 response, and I appreciate from 
firsthand experience the critical role that ID physicians 
played in our responses to COVID-19 and Mpox.
    As we have heard time and time again in the Select 
Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic where I serve as 
ranking member, outbreaks and pandemics will be more frequent 
in our increasingly interconnected world. And it is critical 
that we ensure all of our communities have the ID workforce 
they need to prepare and respond. ID physicians are critical to 
care for patients with serious infections, to develop and lead 
infection prevention protocols that keep our healthcare 
facility safe, to collaborate with public health officials on 
investigations and surveillance, and to conduct research, 
including clinical trials for medical countermeasures.
    Patients with serious infections who are cared for by ID 
physicians have better outcomes, shorter hospital stays, and 
lower healthcare costs, but nearly 80 percent of counties in 
our country do not have a single ID physician. And last year, 
only 50.8 percent of ID physician training programs in the U.S. 
filled, down from 56 percent in 2022. Hospitals across my State 
of California aimed to recruit 35 new ID physician trainees 
last year but were only able to recruit 24.
    ID faces a unique recruitment barrier because our 
healthcare system does not adequately value ID physicians' 
expertise. According to Medscape, ID has the third lowest 
reimbursement of all specialties. High medical student debt 
understandably drives many new physicians to higher renumerated 
specialties, leaving our communities without the ID experts we 
need to be resilient in the face of the next outbreak or 
pandemic. That is why I am asking the subcommittee to provide 
funding for the Bio-Preparedness Workforce Pilot Program at 
HRSA, which was authorized at the end of 2022 and has not yet 
been funded. The pilot will incentivize health professionals to 
pursue careers in ID in bio preparedness and to work in 
communities where they are most needed. No Federal programs 
offered loan repayment for providing ID care or conducting 
emergency preparedness activities in healthcare facilities 
prior to the establishment of the pilot program. This program 
fills a discrete, but critical need without duplication of 
Federal resources.
    So with respect to healthcare workforce shortages generally 
and other barriers to accessing care, rural communities, like 
the congressional district I represent, are disproportionately 
affected and need additional resources to ensure access to 
care. According to the Health and Human Services 
Administration, over half of designated health professional 
shortage areas were rural. Additionally, many rural hospitals 
are under-resourced and are at risk of closure, putting vital 
health care services for the community in jeopardy. That is why 
I am urging the subcommittee to support funding for rural 
healthcare programs in this year's funding bill, including the 
CDC Office of Rural Health, the Small Hospital Improvement 
Program, or SHIP, the Rural Residency Planning and Development 
Program, the Rural Maternity and Obstetric Management 
Strategies Program, and the Rural Communities Opioid Response 
Program. These programs are instrumental to bolstering the 
healthcare infrastructure in rural communities. Thank you, and 
I yield back.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Mr. Ruiz, for your testimony here, 
and I will defer to the ranking member if he has anything.
    Mr. Pocan. Nothing. Thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Well, again, thank you for calling this to 
attention. My cousin's husband was an infectious disease 
physician over at Johns Hopkins, and so I understand the 
importance of infectious disease, and especially after the 
pandemic last year, understand the importance of making sure 
that infectious disease is something that we pay close 
attention to. So thanks for calling my attention to this 
subcommittee, and we look forward to working with you on this.
    Mr. Ruiz. Thank you.
    Mr. Aderholt. Thank you. If there are no other comments, 
then we stand adjourned.
    [Statements submitted for the record follow:]

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