Dear Friend,

I’m striving to fix how Washington works by reducing the size of the federal government’s bloated, taxpayer-backed bureaucracy.

This week, the House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education (Labor HHS) Subcommittee did just that by passing a fiscal year (FY) 2025 appropriations bill that weeds out wasteful government programs and brings our nation back to the core American values and principles that have made our nation so great.

With soaring costs, American families across the nation, including in our own mountains, have had to learn to do more with less, and the federal government should not be any different when spending your hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

While the administration has tried to spend federal dollars on promoting divisive ideologies like Critical Race Theory, funding abortion, Title X family planning, and abortion-on-demand providers like Planned Parenthood, infringing on Americans' due process rights and religious liberties, student loan bailouts, and supporting antisemitic conduct and religious discrimination, we prohibited funding for and effectively eliminated the administration’s ability to do any of the above.

At nearly $24 billion (or 11 percent) lower than the FY24 effective spending level, and $36 billion (or 15 percent) lower than the president’s request, the FY25 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education appropriations bill prioritizes fiscal responsibility and puts an end to budgetary waste.

In the FY25 Labor HHS appropriations bill, we eliminated 57 unnecessary programs, including 21 programs that Congress never authorized. On top of that, we cut funding for 48 more programs, many of which had bloated budgets, concerning missions and have been wasting taxpayer money.

Many of the cut and eliminated programs, 23 to be exact, were social engineering programs under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC saw an overall decrease of $1.7 billion (or 22 percent) and the remaining funding refocuses the Center on their primary mission of communicable diseases rather than social activism.

My key responsibility as an appropriator is the efficient and meaningful use of the people’s money. Eliminating and cutting the wasteful programs has allowed us to not only save taxpayer dollars, but to also redirect funds to meet more critical needs. Despite all of these cuts, we were still able to increase funding for things like school choice, career and technical education opportunities, and education for children with disabilities.

But what I’m most proud of is the way the FY25 Labor HHS appropriations bill stands up against the administration’s radical, far-left social justice priorities and protects American values.

These are just a few of the many wins for our district and nation that I am proud to have passed, and I will continue to work with my colleagues to get the FY25 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education funding bill advanced through the full committee, House floor and eventually to the president’s desk.

With my warmest regards,

Chuck Edwards
Member of Congress