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Secretary Bessent Testifies on the FY2027 Treasury Budget Before House Ways and Means, Jun. 4, 2026

June 4, 2026 · Ways and Means Committee Republicans · 4:46:38

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on June 4, 2026, on the President’s fiscal year 2027 budget for the Treasury Department, in the committee’s official broadcast of the full hearing. It was his second day of budget testimony on Capitol Hill, following the Senate Finance Committee the day before, as the Washington Examiner reported.

Chairman Jason Smith opened with the filing-season record: refunds up more than 11% and totaling nearly $325 billion; a family of four making $73,000 or less owed zero federal income tax; some 62 million Americans claimed at least one of the President’s new relief provisions — no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security and no tax on auto-loan interest; nearly 6 million children now have Trump accounts; and nearly 40 million families claimed the child tax credit increased to $2,200 and permanently indexed for inflation, as he stated the figures.

The hearing’s sharpest exchanges concerned the settlement of the President’s lawsuit against the IRS and the audit-immunity deal that followed it. Members pressed Bessent on a 25-page memo by career IRS attorneys and on the resignation of a Treasury general counsel; Bessent answered, “We always follow the law,” as the hearing transcript records. In her closing remarks, Representative Linda Sanchez called it “the most corrupt Treasury Department in our nation’s history.” Given the chance to respond, Bessent said: “The congresswoman is slanderous. She has nothing but unsubstantiated opinions, and I will not stand for that. There is nothing corrupt,” as the transcript records and the Washington Examiner reported. Democrats also pressed him on inflation, tying price increases to the energy shock from the war with Iran, as the Examiner reported.

Why it matters

The FY2027 budget hearing is where Bessent’s two records meet congressional oversight at once: the tax record, where the committee majority credits the Working Families Tax Cuts with the filing-season figures the chairman recited, and the institutional record, where the IRS settlement fight produced the most direct corruption charge — and the Secretary’s most direct rebuttal — of his tenure so far.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the filing-season figures as stated on June 4, 2026 — refunds up more than 11% to nearly $325 billion, some 62 million filers claiming at least one of the new relief provisions, and nearly 6 million Trump accounts opened — and the status of the IRS audit-immunity settlement as contested at the hearing. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: House Ways and Means Committee, “Full Committee Hearing with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent,” June 4, 2026 (committee broadcast, embedded above); Washington Examiner, “Inflation, Trump immunity, and Bill Pulte: Takeaways from Scott Bessent’s testimony,” June 2026; hearing transcript reviewed in the site’s private research store. Figures and characterizations as stated by the participants.