Patel Testifies Before House Appropriations on the FBI's 2026 Budget, May 7, 2025
May 7, 2025 · CBS News · 1:59:56
Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube
What happened
FBI Director Kash Patel testified on May 7, 2025, before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies at its hearing titled “A Review of the President’s Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request for the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” carried in full by CBS News. The administration’s proposal called for cutting the FBI by more than $500 million — about $545 million — to, in the White House’s stated rationale as the Associated Press reported it, “reform and streamline” the Bureau and reduce “non-law enforcement missions that do not align” with the President’s priorities. Patel broke with the number in the room: the Bureau needs “more than what has been proposed,” he told lawmakers, and “we can’t do the mission on those 2011 budget levels” should the cuts be implemented, as the AP reported his testimony.
Pressed by Rep. Rosa DeLauro for what his budget actually was, Patel drew the line that defined the hearing, as the C-SPAN transcript records: “That’s the proposed budget — not by the FBI. The proposed budget that I put forward is to cut us for $11.1 billion, which would not have us cut my position” — and confirmed, when DeLauro restated it, that an $11.1 billion budget would mean “no additional positions deleted” and that 904 positions were currently slated for transfer from Washington, D.C., to field offices and were vacant. He testified the proposed cut would force the Bureau to cut about 1,300 employees, and he defended the plan to relocate about 1,000 FBI employees from the Washington area to cities around the country, one of the first initiatives he announced on taking office in February, as the AP reported. The hearing’s sharpest personal exchange came with Rep. Madeleine Dean, who accused Patel of eagerness to carry out the President’s “revenge tour” and called him unfit to lead the agency; Patel answered by challenging her candor and demanding she state how he had committed perjury, as contemporaneous accounts of the exchange recorded.
Why it matters
This is the first half of Patel’s two-day May 2025 budget pair — the day he asked Congress for roughly a billion dollars more than his own administration proposed — and it only reads correctly alongside the second half, his May 8 Senate appearance, paged on this site, where he said he would “make the mission work on whatever budget we’re given.” The $11.1 billion figure, the 1,300-position warning, and the Washington-to-the-field relocation plan all entered the record here, in the House, before he reconciled them with the President’s budget in the Senate.
Scoreboard watch
This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: Patel’s May 7, 2025 appropriations testimony — his $11.1 billion Bureau request against the administration’s proposed $545 million cut, his 1,300-position warning, and the roughly 1,000-employee relocation out of Washington — each as stated at the hearing, to be checked against the enacted fiscal 2026 FBI appropriation and the Bureau’s staffing moves.
Sources: House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, “A Review of the President’s Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request for the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” May 7, 2025 (full hearing as carried by CBS News, embedded above; Patel’s written statement via the Department of Justice); Associated Press, May 7–8, 2025, on the budget break and the relocation plan; C-SPAN transcript of the May 7, 2025 hearing. All figures and characterizations as stated by Director Patel and committee members at the hearing.
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