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Acting Secretary Sonderling Testifies on the Labor Department's FY2027 Budget Before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, May 19, 2026

May 19, 2026 · PBS NewsHour · 1:03:01

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What happened

Acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling testified on the President’s fiscal year 2027 budget request for the Department of Labor before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on May 19, 2026, in PBS NewsHour’s live carry of the hearing. The budget’s centerpiece, as Sonderling presented it, is the “Make America Skilled” grant program: consolidating workforce programs so states receive flexible funding for the training their own labor markets need, with grantees required to spend at least 10 percent of funds on registered apprenticeship programs — a floor he told Senator Husted does not exist under the current system. He committed the department to the President’s goal of one million registered apprenticeships, noting that new apprenticeship programs are now being approved within 30 days, as he stated it.

The sharpest exchange came with Senator Murphy, who challenged the request as, in his figure, a roughly 26 percent reduction for the department and defended Job Corps against what he called a false narrative about the program; Sonderling answered that the department is asking to “put the money in more effective programs,” pointing to a $35.8 million fund related to manufacturing including shipbuilding and $13.8 million in cooperative agreements sending U.S. workers overseas for shipbuilding training from South Korea and Finland, as he stated the figures. Senators Shaheen, Hyde-Smith, and Husted pressed him on H-2B and H-2A processing backlogs; Sonderling described the budget’s proposed Office of Immigration Policy — the Office of Foreign Labor Certification — as a dedicated office for the H-2A, H-2B, and H-1B portfolio, built for customer service and faster processing, as he described it. The ranking member’s opening statement, as delivered, put the proposed cut at more than $4 billion, or just more than 30 percent of the department’s current funding, and charged that the administration’s changes had made workplace discrimination and misclassification easier — criticism carried here as she stated it.

Sonderling also walked Senator Britt through the department’s proposed rulemaking creating a new excepted-benefit category for fertility coverage: nearly 60 percent of employers offer no fertility coverage at all, as he stated the figure; the department believes the final rule will double the number of employers offering the benefit and impact 750,000 employees, as he projected it. He further explained the budget’s proposal to move the Bureau of Labor Statistics to the Commerce Department, combining it with the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis to improve data quality, as the President’s budget proposes it. Questions for the record were due May 26, 2026.

Why it matters

This is the fullest Senate-side statement of the FY2027 Labor budget Sonderling carried as Acting Secretary: a smaller department reorganized around state-flexible training money, a hard apprenticeship floor, a dedicated immigration-certification office, and a BLS move to Commerce. The Job Corps and overall-cut fights in this room are the contested record the appropriations outcome will be checked against.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Sonderling’s FY2027 budget commitments as he stated them on May 19, 2026 — the Make America Skilled consolidation with its 10-percent registered-apprenticeship floor, the one-million-apprenticeships goal, the proposed Office of Immigration Policy, the fertility-benefits rulemaking projections (a doubling of offering employers; 750,000 employees impacted), and the proposed BLS move to Commerce. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: PBS NewsHour, “Acting Labor Secretary Sonderling testifies on Labor Department budget before Senate” (live carry, May 19, 2026, embedded above; testimony as delivered by Acting Secretary Sonderling and members of the subcommittee).