Terry Gerton Before the Senate recessed last week, you all had passed a minibus of appropriations and the president signed them on Jan. 23. One of those that was included in that was the Commerce-Justice-science bill. And I wanna drill in for a minute on the science piece of that because I know how important that is to you. Those bills really rejected the Trump administration’s attempts to defund the big science agencies like NASA, NOAA and NIST. What would you have seen as the biggest risks to those agencies if the president’s budget proposal had gone through?
Sen. Chris Van Hollen There were many risks because the president’s proposal risk cutting dramatically into these federal agencies and really decimating the budgets for science. Just for example, at NASA, their space science proposal was 47 percent cut, was a 47 percent cut from where it’s been, which would really decimate both space science and earth science efforts, including at places like NASA Goddard, which is in my state of Maryland, but other places around the country. Also, they proposed virtually eliminating the National Science Foundation, NSF, and we were able to provide substantial funding for that. So those are just a few of many examples at EPA, at NOAA, and at NASA, where otherwise we would have seen dramatic cuts.
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Terry Gerton So how does the final version of the bill then change the trajectory for those agencies?
Sen. Chris Van Hollen Well, it changes it dramatically. Now, I don’t want to underestimate the harm that has already been done to many of these agencies over the last year in terms of the reduction in staff, a combination of people who took the buyout combination of people who were let go. So, for example, at NASA Goddard, we saw it go from about 9,000-some employees to around just over 6,000. There are a number of factors at play there. But when Elon Musk came in with his chainsaw, and that’s the metaphor he used, they did a lot of damage across the government and without securing any sustainable savings. And much of that damage was done in some of these agencies. However, the budget that we’ve passed provides strong funding for these initiatives across the board and I’m happy to dive into other examples. But I do just want to say that one of the other things we did was we put what was normally in report language with respect to these programs into the law itself. And I’m happy to dive more deeply into the significance of that.
Terry Gerton Let’s do that because normally report language is there as often taken as guidance. So by having some of those provisions in the statutory language itself, what are you expecting to hear from the agencies?
Sen. Chris Van Hollen Well, what this does is protect these programs and these spending levels if the administration tries to ignore them. So in the past, administrations, presidents of both parties, Republicans, Democrats alike, have respected the report language that congressional appropriations committees adopt. It is guidance, but it has been clear that if that guidance was not followed, there would be consequences. What happened with the Trump administration was they essentially ignored report language whenever they wanted to. And so what we’ve done here is taken language that was in reports and put it right into the law. So, for example, if the Trump Administration decides to ignore it or grab the funds, transfer them to another place, not spend them at all and impound them, then we have a much stronger case when we go to court to require compliance.
Terry Gerton One of the other pieces of language here that got put into statute as opposed to report was concerning the FBI headquarters. You put some language in there to require architectural engineering and security plans before FBI could relocate its headquarters. Is that because you thought they might not follow that guidance?
Sen. Chris Van Hollen Well, yes, that is why, and they, the Trump administration, has totally ignored the decision that had been made previously through a competitive process to cite the new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt, Maryland. That was a multi-year process with competition, and there were three sites, two in Maryland, one in Virginia, Greenbelt, Maryland won. The Trump administration came in and has decided to ignore it. They want to move the FBI to the Ronald Reagan building. And so we’ve had, you know, quite a debate about this and the Senate Appropriations Committee, but I am pleased that we have this language indicating that no matter where the FBI goes, they have to develop these plans and demonstrate how their plans meet the security requirements and the mission requirements for the men and women of the FBI.
Terry Gerton Speaking with Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland, let’s just pull that thread one more string maybe, and talk about, you mentioned, in case you have to take them to court. What is in the back of your mind as a Senator about making sure that Congress is able to execute its oversight responsibilities here?
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Sen. Chris Van Hollen Well, the constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. And of course that power is meaningless if after we provide certain sums for certain initiatives, the president of the United States can ignore it. I mean, this whole issue was debated back during the Nixon administration when they attempted to exercise what’s called a line item veto. In other words, president Nixon said, Congress has passed all these programs but I’ll take the ones I like and I’ll veto the ones I don’t. And the Supreme Court said, no, no no no, you can’t do that. That’s effectively an illegal impoundment. So what we’re trying to do here is make sure that the Congress’s powers under the Constitution are upheld and can be enforced. Otherwise, you might as well just take a marker and X out Article 1 of the Constitution.
Terry Gerton And how has that relationship played into the negotiations over the 2026 appropriations bills? As an example, do you negotiate from a position of trust?
Sen. Chris Van Hollen Well, we don’t trust the Trump administration because we’ve witnessed what they’ve done over the last year. I mean, they’ve engaged in many illegal withholdings of funds. That’s not just my opinion. That’s the opinion of the GAO and they’ve provided multiple examples. And, you know, you would hope that Republicans in Congress would also want to protect the power of the purse, and so we were able to make not as many changes we wanted, not as many guardrails as we wanted. But we were able to, again, put some of these budget numbers and the requirements written into the law. And let me give you an example of why this is so important. Early in the administration, they tried to tell research universities that the universities could no longer spend a certain amount of their funds on overhead. The good news is when it came to NIH funding, Congress had put in the law the allowance for certain amounts of overhead spending. And if you think about it, it’s important. If you were a chef, you need your stove, you need you’re cooking equipment. The same is true if you’re researching in biology. I mean, you the infrastructure to go with it. In any event, because that provision was written into the law of the NIH budget, not just report language, the courts that looked at this, including federal courts in Massachusetts, said to the Trump administration, no, no, you don’t get to unilaterally change this. So that was an important lesson. And so we tried to adopt that lesson in other parts of the budget, throughout the budget. And that’s why we decided to move these provisions from report language into law.
Terry Gerton I’m sure for the agencies that now have their 2026 appropriations, that’s a big load off and they can begin to move forward. But as we said up front, many of these agencies have already been dramatically reduced in terms of staff, in terms of grant programs and contracts that have been terminated. So when Congress passes appropriations that significantly exceed the president’s budget, And as you’ve just emphasized, write the provisions into law, not report language. How will you make sure that the agencies are actually able to meet these higher budgets?
Sen. Chris Van Hollen Well, that’s where oversight comes in, and we will be very closely monitoring what the agencies are doing, whether or not they are complying with these requirements, both in terms of the amount of funds that they’re investing in these programs, as well as the way in which they’re doing it. So this is where the hearing and oversight process is really important. And of course, we’re still trying to wrap up fiscal year ’26’s budget, but we will soon embark on the fiscal year ’27 budget and the hearings on the Fiscal Year ’27 budget will give us an opportunity to determine to what extent they’re complying with the fiscal Year ’26 budget.
Terry Gerton Well, let’s come back to 2026, because you do have that one big group of appropriations bills left to tackle in the Senate this month, or this week. And January 30 is just a few days away. What are your predictions for whether or not we’ll get those last bills across the finish line?
Sen. Chris Van Hollen Well, it is important to point out, and I think you have, that we’ve already passed about six appropriation bills. So, you know, six departments and lots of agencies have the fiscal year ’26 funding that they need. Others are operating under the continuing resolution that was passed in this last year. So, here’s what’s going to happen, I think, because of the awful killings that we’ve witnessed in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We’ve now seen two Americans shot and killed by Trump’s Department of Homeland Security agents, Renee good and Alex Pretti. And if you just read the statement from his family, you know, you’ll understand why it’s so important that we hold the Department of Homeland Security accountable and require dramatic changes in the way ICE operates, as well as the border security folks. So at this point in time, what Democrats in the Senate are demanding is that we split the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill and separate it from all the other bills, appropriation bills that include, for example, the Defense Department, Health and Human Services, Department of Labor. There’s no reason that Republicans should hold all those bills hostage, as we work to rein in and dramatically reform DHS, the parts of DHS that need to be dramatically reined in. So that will be the question, whether or not Republicans in the Senate are willing to do that. In the House of Representatives, they voted on these bills separately. They had a separate vote on the Department of Homeland Security. They didn’t lump that in with everything else. And so, that’s what we should be doing in the United States Senate. And then we can dive in and make necessary changes to the Department of Homeland Security budget, including accountability. I mean, I think everybody’s watching as Donald Trump and Republicans of the administration simply lie about what happened because people can see from the video themselves that these individuals are not quote, domestic terrorists.
Terry Gerton Been speaking with Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland. Sir, thank you so much for joining me today. We’ll be watching for the rest of the week.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen Well, thanks for covering it. I do want to say that in addition to, you know, restoring the proposed cuts to NASA Goddard, we were able to fully fund all the Chesapeake Bay programs and actually increase a few of them, as well as the NIST programs, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. So their initiatives are going to be especially important during this era of AI and cybersecurity. So glad on a bipartisan basis we rejected these very harmful cuts to investments in science.
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