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Carr Testifies at House Appropriations FCC Oversight Hearing, May 21, 2025

May 21, 2025 · Forbes Breaking News · 1:42:57

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What happened

Brendan Carr testified on May 21, 2025, at an oversight hearing on the Federal Communications Commission before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, carried in full by Forbes Breaking News. In his testimony, Carr pointed to proceedings to free up mid-band spectrum and urged Congress to restore the FCC’s spectrum auction authority, and he described an agenda that also covered accelerating infrastructure deployment, boosting the space economy, reducing regulatory burdens, protecting consumers from robocalls, and a new Council on National Security inside the agency, according to the committee’s hearing summary.

The sharpest exchange concerned Carr’s claim that the FCC had saved $567 million by eliminating contracts. Subcommittee Chairman Dave Joyce and Ranking Member Steny Hoyer pressed him on how much of that figure was real, and Carr acknowledged that the bulk of it was based on projected contract-ceiling reductions rather than actual spending cuts, as Broadband Breakfast reported. “I don’t mean to mislead on the numbers,” Carr responded. “The numbers speak [to] a contract ceiling number, which people can debate the significance of.” Carr said roughly $27.8 million would be realized over the next two years, and that the cuts came mainly from IT contracts and duplicative services identified by an internal review group. Asked by Representative Steve Womack when Congress could expect the FCC’s fiscal year 2026 budget request, Carr replied, “I have no news to break on the timing” — the agency had not yet submitted a formal request — while emphasizing that the FCC was operating under a $390 million continuing resolution and remained on “very stable, comfortable financial footing.” Carr also testified that the FCC had 78 fewer employees than when fiscal year 2025 began, according to Communications Daily’s report of his testimony.

Criticism at the hearing ran in two directions. Hoyer argued the once-independent agency had been politicized and had become the “speech police,” and Representative Glenn Ivey challenged whether the FCC had conducted any formal investigation before raising “invidious discrimination” claims in its approval of Verizon’s acquisition of Frontier, as the Benton Institute’s hearing recap recorded.

Why it matters

This was Carr’s first budget-season accounting to the appropriators who fund his agency, and it put the central number of his efficiency pitch — $567 million — on the record with its composition attached: mostly prospective ceiling reductions, with $27.8 million identified as realized over two years. The hearing also fixed two checkable facts of his early chairmanship: the FCC was running on a $390 million continuing resolution without a fiscal 2026 request yet filed, and its workforce had shrunk by 78 positions since the fiscal year began.

Scoreboard watch

This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: Carr’s May 21, 2025 savings claim — $567 million in reduced contract ceilings, of which about $27.8 million was identified at the hearing as realized over the following two years — and his statement that the FCC’s fiscal year 2026 budget request timing was still unannounced, each as stated at the hearing, to be checked against the request as filed and the savings as realized.

Sources: House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, “Oversight of the Federal Communications Commission,” May 21, 2025 (full hearing as carried by Forbes Breaking News, embedded above); Broadband Breakfast, May 21, 2025, on the savings exchange; Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, hearing recap, May 2025; Communications Daily, May 21, 2025, on Carr’s workforce testimony. All figures and characterizations as stated by Mr. Carr and committee members at the hearing.