At a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) questioned Sec. Kristi Noem about DHS spending money on an ad on border security.
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00:00The chair now recognizes the ranking member of the entire committee with an excellent sense of patience.
00:07The gentlelady from Connecticut, the floor is yours.
00:09Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman and ranking member.
00:13Madam Secretary, earlier this year, the administration unveiled a thinly veiled propaganda ad about border security.
00:21This is about $200 million paid for by American taxpayers, I might add.
00:26The ads are supposedly about border security, but honestly, if you see the ad, it's like a political ad.
00:33All of us know what political ads look like.
00:36The conservative Cato Institute says the ads are a perfect example of wasteful government spending that Doge should cut.
00:46I also might add that, and this is a direct quote, Madam Secretary, it says that earlier this year that President Trump had instructed you on how to fashion the campaign.
01:04He said, and again I quote, I want you in the ads, I want your face in the ads, Noem recalled at the conservative political action conference, adding that Trump told her for the first ad, quote, I want you to thank me for closing the border.
01:22Now, that's politics, quite frankly, at its worst, I understand that on April 30th, your department awarded an additional $6.7 million to a political consulting company called People Who Think, bringing their total award for this ad to $11.6 million.
01:45Your department has also awarded $35.5 million for this ad to a company called Safe America Media, and my understanding is that you used funding originally appropriated for CBP and USCIS for these awards.
02:03This sounds like a payout to Republican political consultants to fund ads that do more to tout the president than to secure the border.
02:13You know, how were the contracts awarded, competitive process, if so, why is USA spending say that the contracts were given an exclusion from the Doge group's limitation on spending awards?
02:29This is $200 million.
02:31Somebody just talked about billboards.
02:33This is a $200 million ad campaign taking the money from CBP and USCIS to promote a political advantage.
02:46It's really kind of the height of arrogance.
02:50You're looking for more money from us to do that, but you're going to take a portion of the money that we have given you, and you're going to spend it on political advertising.
02:59I mean, that really is, in Yiddish, the word is chutzpah.
03:04It really is that you, you know, engaged in here.
03:07So, I know you're going to tell me.
03:10Would you like me to answer it?
03:10Yeah, I would.
03:11And I foresee that you're going to tell me that these were all competitively bid.
03:15They were.
03:15Et cetera.
03:16And through the exact same process as any other ad campaign would be done, absolutely.
03:20And I would tell you that it's not $200 million and that President Trump was very clear from the very beginning that he recognized that the fake news in this country was not going to tell the truth of what the work had been done at the border to secure this country.
03:35And these ads aren't only playing in the United States.
03:37They're playing in other countries where we had the largest invasion coming into this country from.
03:41Where do you disagree on the policy?
03:43And overwhelmingly, if you look at the data on the ground in these countries where these ads have been playing, the flow has stopped.
03:49With all due respect.
03:50Even when I was in Mexico and having conversations.
03:51Excuse me, Madam Secretary, the time is mine.
03:54With all due respect, this is a political ad campaign.
03:59And really, let's just not try to sugarcoat it.
04:03I had just somebody talk about billboards and you talking about how use of taxpayers' dollars.
04:09These are taxpayers' dollars as well.
04:10Let me move to the program I mentioned earlier.
04:13This is the BRIC program.
04:16In early April, FEMA cut the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.
04:22Claiming, and I quote,
04:23Under Secretary Noem, DHS is eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.
04:28End quote.
04:29When the committee staff asked for evidence of waste, fraud, or abuse in this program,
04:34or the authority used to end the program,
04:36FEMA said that the due diligence for these projects can take a long time
04:42and failed to give examples that met GAO's definition of waste, fraud, or abuse.
04:49The legal authority you used to cancel most of these projects was also not provided.
04:55And I'm just going to make this flat-out statement.
04:58You do not have, nor does the president have, the legal authority to abrogate what the Appropriations
05:04Committee appropriates.
05:06The power of the purse.
05:07It's in the Constitution.
05:09And I think if I heard right in the last couple of days,
05:12the president wasn't sure that we should abide by the Constitution.
05:16But we tried to abide by the Constitution, those of us who raised our right hand
05:20and said we will abide by the Constitution.
05:23There is no legal authority.
05:25There is no inherent authority to claim the Appropriations Funds can be used for other
05:30than what they were appropriated for.
05:34I don't know that you can, we, basic questions from your agency on essential programs
05:42that the communities represent or rely on.
05:45You all can't, you should just say, waste, fraud, abuse, and you think that that covers it.
05:50Well, Madam Secretary, I will tell you it doesn't.
05:53You're going to challenge that and you have no authority.
05:56And I'll get you all the data's statute references that we are operating under the authority
05:58that the Department of Homeland Security has.
06:00You have no authority to abrogate these funds.
06:03It's the prerogative of the Appropriations Committee.
06:06The power of the purse resides here and not there.
06:12Keep it in mind because it is the Constitution of the United States.
06:16I'm very familiar with it.
06:17I'm happy to have this conversation take place off the clock.
06:20But now we're going to move to the gentleman.