FBI Director Kash Patel reversed course on May 8 and said that he can make do with the cut the Trump administration has proposed to the bureau.
“My view is that we will make and agree with this budget as it stands, and make it work for the operational necessity of the FBI,” he told the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“As the head of the FBI, I was simply asking for more funds because I can do more with more money.”
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), a committee member, told Patel that he is “concerned that the scale of the proposed reduction could force the FBI to eliminate vacant positions and leave positions unfilled.”
The committee’s ranking member, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), rebuked Patel for not putting forth a budget blueprint for the FBI.
“We also need a full budget request, not a single paragraph full of wild talking points that we saw with the skinny budget proposal. We’re now having a budget hearing without a budget request,” she said.
Patel said it is a work in progress and that he will release it when it is approved.
His comments to the Senate committee were a contrast to his telling the House Appropriations Committee on May 7 that he did not agree with the $545 million cut to the FBI proposed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
It is ultimately Congress that decides what to appropriate.
“The skinny budget is a proposal, and I’m working through the appropriations process to explain why we need more than what has been proposed,” Patel told Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the committee’s ranking member.
The administration has proposed $10.2 billion for the FBI.
Patel said he needs about $1 billion more than what has been requested by OMB.
“So what do you need?” asked DeLauro. “You need $11.2 billion?”
“Approximately,” responded Patel.
Patel told DeLauro said the FBI has “not looked at who to cut” and instead is “focusing our energies on how not to have them cut, by coming in here and highlighting to you that we can’t do the mission on those 2011 budget levels.”
The administration said that the proposed cut is for “undoing the weaponization of the FBI that pervaded the previous administration, which included targeting peaceful pro-life protesters, concerned parents at school board meetings, and citizens opposed to radical transgender ideology.”
This, said the administration, “reflects the president’s priority of reducing violent crime in American cities and protecting national security by getting FBI agents into the field by cutting FBI D.C. overhead and preserving existing law enforcement officers.”
After all, they said, there is “a new focus on counterintelligence and counterterrorism, while reducing non-law enforcement missions that do not align with the president’s priorities.”
