Wyden Opposes Faulkender Nomination
As Prepared for Delivery
The Senate will soon take a vote on the nomination of Michael Faulkender to serve as Deputy Treasury Secretary. I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination, and I want to explain why he got zero support from Democrats in the Finance Committee.
Let’s start out with the big picture.
For the last two months, Elon Musk and Donald Trump have set loose a pack of henchmen who are looting the United States of America. They’re violating laws, they’re blocking all accountability, and they’re breaking key programs in ways that are going to hurt a lot of Americans and ruin lives. All the while, there’s been a parade of Trump nominees marching through the Senate, and one after the other they pretend they know nothing about it. They all swear up and down that they’ll follow the law. Under their watch, everything will be on the level. The reality is, in nearly every case it’s a fraud.
Just yesterday in the Finance Committee, the nominee to head up Social Security told me that he was not involved in any discussions regarding DOGE personnel at Social Security. I asked him that directly. That was his response. It was a lie. The Committee had received whistleblower testimony from a senior official who worked at Social Security and recently left. The whistleblower said this nominee had personally intervened to get key DOGE officials installed at Social Security.
This is happening again and again. Trump nominees show up in the Senate and pretend they’re a bunch of choir boys. But they’re directly involved in the ransacking of this country, which has Americans outraged from coast to coast.
Dr. Faulkender is another example.
He’s been in the building at the Treasury since January 21st, working in an unofficial capacity. He knows what’s going on there. He knows that DOGE personnel showed up at the Treasury with the intent to violate our Constitutional authority over federal funding. Yet, when he was asked about DOGE’s activities at the Treasury and at the IRS, he had nothing to say. It was a whole bunch of dodging and ducking.
I asked him directly whether the president has the authority to impound funds, which is a constitutional breach. His answer was, “I do not know the legal authority of the president when it comes to impoundment.” However, during a television interview last year, he actually said he supported impoundment and talked about how the president should use it to trample over Congressional appropriations and our Article One authority.
If confirmed, he’ll be the number two official at the department that oversees the IRS, but he had nothing to say about the fact that the administration is intent on violating taxpayer privacy laws and weaponizing the IRS against American taxpayers.
But colleagues, it wasn’t all bobbing and weaving during the hearing. In fact, the most telling moment came near the end, when Dr. Faulkender decided to give an awfully revealing answer to a question he probably could have avoided.
Here’s what happened. Everybody understands that the Treasury Department’s big job under Donald Trump is giving enormous handouts to billionaires and corporations. They plan to pay for it in part by slashing Medicaid and kicking tens of millions of Americans off their health insurance. Senator Warnock asked Dr. Faulkender a pretty simple question -- quote, “Do you think that it's a good idea to take families off of Medicaid?” The funny thing is, nobody would have blamed him for saying that the Treasury doesn’t have jurisdiction over Medicaid so he doesn’t have a position on that matter. But that’s not what he said! Dr. Faulkender went out of his way to defend the Republican plans to slash Medicaid and kick tens of millions of Americans off their health care. He answered with the same old Republican spin about, “self-sufficiency and getting off of government dependency.” We’re talking about a health care program that covers nearly 40 million kids.
Half of all kids with special health care needs.
Two-thirds of all nursing home beds in America.
Without Medicaid, rural America becomes even more of a health care desert.
Dr. Faulkender’s nonsense about “self-sufficiency” is basically just trickle-down economics for health care. It’s a talking point that papers over an agenda that benefits the wealthy at the expense of everybody else.
So colleagues, this was another case of a nominee dodging nearly all the tough questions and misrepresenting his role in what’s going on within the Trump administration. The most forthcoming answer we got during his nomination hearing indicated that he’s totally on-board with an agenda that’s going to put people’s lives in danger by kicking tens of millions of Americans off their health insurance -- all so that billionaires like Elon Musk can afford bigger yachts and private islands.
Dr. Faulkender has been at the Treasury since January 21st. He’s already tied up with DOGE, and he’s already made himself a part of the harm the Trump administration is inflicting on the American people.
Zero support from Democrats on the Committee. I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination when the Senate votes later today.
A web version of this statement is here.
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