Today, Congressman Sean Casten (D-IL), the Vice Ranking Member on the House Financial Services Committee, delivered the following opening statement at a full Committee markup.

Today, President Trump, Elon Musk, and Trump’s cabinet of billionaires are illegally firing thousands of federal workers and closing down agencies that are charged with protecting Americans. They are also illegally withholding payments that are both a violation of Congress’ Congressional Power of the Purse and the Impoundment Control Act. They have halted food for millions of people starving in Somalia and medicines to the poorest children around the world. They are publicly betraying our allies, while embracing a brutal dictator –Vladimir Putin – who has illegally invaded, bombed, and pillaged Ukraine. As we sit here right now, there are Ukrainian children who were kidnapped by the Russian army who are being held by Russian families, and there is not a word out of the White House about looking out for the interests for those kidnapped children. I don’t see any Native Americans in this Chamber and yet the Trump Administration is demonizing immigrants. They are openly selling American citizenship to Russian oligarchs and Trump is levying 25% taxes on Americans and American businesses when they buy household goods from Canada and Mexico.

If you don’t believe this, you can look at what the stock market has done falling by 1500 points over the last two days as investors freak out that our economy is crumbling. And Russian officials are gleefully celebrating Trump as he parrots their lies and falsehoods. Trump and the Republicans have done nothing to bring down costs for Americans. While I agree that only female chickens lay eggs, the anti-DEI initiatives are not doing anything to increase the number of egg laying roosters, or to lower the price of eggs and I would challenge Vice President Vance to stand in front of a pile of egg cartons today if he disagrees.

But in this Committee, the public is being asked to ignore all those realities and instead pretend that higher prices are good for you and that we have a President who actually obeys the law.

For example, Republicans would like to overturn a rule that limits bank overdraft fees to $5 – down from $35 or more – and is right now saving American consumers $5 billion a year. Working-class families are already struggling with the Trump price increases on eggs and other groceries, the cost of housing, and the meltdown from Trump’s economic policies. Not surprisingly, more than 80 percent of Americans, including Republicans, want to see those overdraft fees capped. And yet, the majority will vote to raise those fees today and say that higher fees are good for America.

If you want more proof that their Committee is operating in some bizarre alternative reality today, look no further than the slate of bills making reforms to institutions that Trump is already dismantling. We’re going to review bills today about activities at International Financial Institutions, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Even as Trump, is making plans to withdraw from those organizations. What are we choosing?

We’re also going to see bills on combating fentanyl and extending sanctions, even as Trump is gutting essential financial crimes laws like the Corporate Transparency Act and is firing people from the organizations tasked with inspecting containers that come into our borders often from China that contain fentanyl precursors. This is what you do if you want to increase the amount of fentanyl in the United States, not reduce it.

If Republicans are serious about taking on China, we’d be considering serious legislation to rein in Trump and Elon Musk, as they cozy up to China. Elon Musk has billions of dollars of business in China. You may recall that he blocked the outbound investments screen, in no small part because Tesla sales in the U.S. are plummeting, but he is trying to build out manufacturing facilities and AI training facilities in China and wants to cozy up to their government. Donald Trump, of course, issued his Trump meme coin where hundreds of millions of dollars of those initial purchases of that meme coin were bought by Chinese investors and hundreds of millions of dollars of deal fees were paid to Donald Trump and Trump affiliated organizations for that meme coin by the Chinese government for something that is worthless. That is a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution as China seeks to influence the United States President.

Just three years ago, and in a bipartisan manner, the Members of this Committee sought to impose new sanctions on Putin, to isolate Russia, and to support Ukraine as Putin illegally invaded our democratic ally. But according to recent reporting from Reuters, Trump is preparing to lift sanctions on Russia and take other actions that violate that bipartisan legislation. I would ask Mr. Chairman, whether we still have a bipartisan agreement that Russia is our enemy? I’d ask further, do we believe that if we pass legislation in this Committee to defend Taiwan that Trump would follow through? If the White House is unwilling to carry out the laws that are passed by the legislative branch and we are unwilling to do our oversight against the Executive Branch’s failure, what is the purpose of Congress?

I yield back.

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