Congressional Testimony
Here's a look at documents involving congressional testimony and member statements
Congressional Testimony
Featured Stories
ESPN Broadcaster McEnroe Testifies Before House Education & Workforce Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development released the following written testimony by ESPN broadcaster Patrick McEnroe from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Who Gets the Scholarship? How the Global Shift in College Sports Affects Americans":
* * *
Chairman, Ranking Member, members of the Subcommittee, thank you for having me.
I have spent most of my life in tennis -- as a player, coach, broadcaster, Davis Cup captain and now working with young athletes, their families, and the broader fan base of sports.
Earlier this ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development released the following written testimony by ESPN broadcaster Patrick McEnroe from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Who Gets the Scholarship? How the Global Shift in College Sports Affects Americans": * * * Chairman, Ranking Member, members of the Subcommittee, thank you for having me. I have spent most of my life in tennis -- as a player, coach, broadcaster, Davis Cup captain and now working with young athletes, their families, and the broader fan base of sports. Earlier thisyear, I started raising an alarm about what I was seeing in college tennis. At the SEC and ACC men's finals, only three of 24 singles players on court were American. Today, international athletes make up more than 60 percent of Division I tennis. At many schools, this is true for 90 percent or more of the team.
I called tennis the canary in the coal mine.
I'm here because the canary was right. This isn't just about tennis anymore.
The same incentives are increasingly showing up across college sports. Coaches are under enormous pressure to win now. And if you can recruit an older, fully developed international athlete -- often someone who has already competed professionally -- why spend several years developing an 18-year-old American?
And so this phenomenon is growing in basketball, soccer, track and field, cross country, golf, swimming, and other Olympic sports. Women's teams are impacted equally if not more than men's.
I understand the temptation. But we need to understand its consequences.
Let me be clear about something first. I welcome international athletes. I played with them, competed against them and coached them. They make our teams better. They bring talent, culture and competition to American campuses.
This is about balance -- and making sure we don't close the door on our own kids in the process.
Because roster spots are finite. When one athlete gets the spot, another doesn't.
And the families who will feel that most aren't the wealthiest ones.
Youth sports is already extraordinarily expensive. Families with means can buy more coaching, more tournaments, more travel, and more opportunities to be seen. Middle-and working-class families have fewer options when the pathway narrows.
But there's something else we shouldn't underestimate: hope.
I work with young athletes and parents all the time. Most of these kids aren't going to be professionals. Their dream is much simpler: Can I play in college? Because college provides opportunity.
That possibility keeps kids practicing. Competing. Studying. Getting back up after they lose. And becoming our future leaders. But what does a 15- or 16-year-old American kid think when he looks ahead and sees college rosters filled with older, fully developed players from around the world -- some with professional experience?
At some point, the message changes from work hard and you might earn your opportunity to maybe that opportunity isn't really there for you anymore.
For millions of kids, college sports isn't a professional dream. It's the next rung on the ladder. Take away enough rungs and eventually kids stop climbing.
For decades, college sports served as one of America's most important talent-development systems. Universities helped young athletes mature physically and academically.
They produced Olympians, national team players, coaches, business leaders and countless successful professionals whose careers had little to do with sports. The goal was not simply to identify finished products.
That's why this is bigger than tennis. And it's bigger than sports.
College athletics has always been one of America's great engines of education, development, leadership and opportunity.
We should continue welcoming talented young people from around the world.
But American colleges also have a responsibility to develop American kids.
We can do both. We just need to restore the balance.
Chairman Walberg's TEAM USA act places a reasonable cap on international participation. It would still leave room for international athletes. It would also keep a real path open for American kids.
I look forward to your questions.
Thank you.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/9.16_patrick_mcenroe_written_testimony_.pdf
* * *
Chairman, Ranking Member, members of the Subcommittee, thank you for having me.
I have spent most of my life in tennis -- as a player, coach, broadcaster, Davis Cup captain and now working with young athletes, their families, and the broader fan base of sports.
Earlier this ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development released the following written testimony by ESPN broadcaster Patrick McEnroe from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Who Gets the Scholarship? How the Global Shift in College Sports Affects Americans": * * * Chairman, Ranking Member, members of the Subcommittee, thank you for having me. I have spent most of my life in tennis -- as a player, coach, broadcaster, Davis Cup captain and now working with young athletes, their families, and the broader fan base of sports. Earlier thisyear, I started raising an alarm about what I was seeing in college tennis. At the SEC and ACC men's finals, only three of 24 singles players on court were American. Today, international athletes make up more than 60 percent of Division I tennis. At many schools, this is true for 90 percent or more of the team.
I called tennis the canary in the coal mine.
I'm here because the canary was right. This isn't just about tennis anymore.
The same incentives are increasingly showing up across college sports. Coaches are under enormous pressure to win now. And if you can recruit an older, fully developed international athlete -- often someone who has already competed professionally -- why spend several years developing an 18-year-old American?
And so this phenomenon is growing in basketball, soccer, track and field, cross country, golf, swimming, and other Olympic sports. Women's teams are impacted equally if not more than men's.
I understand the temptation. But we need to understand its consequences.
Let me be clear about something first. I welcome international athletes. I played with them, competed against them and coached them. They make our teams better. They bring talent, culture and competition to American campuses.
This is about balance -- and making sure we don't close the door on our own kids in the process.
Because roster spots are finite. When one athlete gets the spot, another doesn't.
And the families who will feel that most aren't the wealthiest ones.
Youth sports is already extraordinarily expensive. Families with means can buy more coaching, more tournaments, more travel, and more opportunities to be seen. Middle-and working-class families have fewer options when the pathway narrows.
But there's something else we shouldn't underestimate: hope.
I work with young athletes and parents all the time. Most of these kids aren't going to be professionals. Their dream is much simpler: Can I play in college? Because college provides opportunity.
That possibility keeps kids practicing. Competing. Studying. Getting back up after they lose. And becoming our future leaders. But what does a 15- or 16-year-old American kid think when he looks ahead and sees college rosters filled with older, fully developed players from around the world -- some with professional experience?
At some point, the message changes from work hard and you might earn your opportunity to maybe that opportunity isn't really there for you anymore.
For millions of kids, college sports isn't a professional dream. It's the next rung on the ladder. Take away enough rungs and eventually kids stop climbing.
For decades, college sports served as one of America's most important talent-development systems. Universities helped young athletes mature physically and academically.
They produced Olympians, national team players, coaches, business leaders and countless successful professionals whose careers had little to do with sports. The goal was not simply to identify finished products.
That's why this is bigger than tennis. And it's bigger than sports.
College athletics has always been one of America's great engines of education, development, leadership and opportunity.
We should continue welcoming talented young people from around the world.
But American colleges also have a responsibility to develop American kids.
We can do both. We just need to restore the balance.
Chairman Walberg's TEAM USA act places a reasonable cap on international participation. It would still leave room for international athletes. It would also keep a real path open for American kids.
I look forward to your questions.
Thank you.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/9.16_patrick_mcenroe_written_testimony_.pdf
One Heartbeat CEO Brown Testifies Before House Education & Workforce Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development released the following written testimony by Tommy Brown, CEO and founder of One Heartbeat Inc., and former collegiate head coach and athletic director, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Who Gets the Scholarship? How the Global Shift in College Sports Affects Americans":
* * *
Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee: thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony. I come before you as a coach, an athletic director, an educator, and someone who has spent ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development released the following written testimony by Tommy Brown, CEO and founder of One Heartbeat Inc., and former collegiate head coach and athletic director, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Who Gets the Scholarship? How the Global Shift in College Sports Affects Americans": * * * Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee: thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony. I come before you as a coach, an athletic director, an educator, and someone who has spentmore than three decades helping young people grow through sports. The purpose of my testimony is not to close American college athletics to the world. It is to preserve a fair place in that system for the American students whose families, schools, and communities have invested in them for years.
International students enrich our campuses, and many international athletes are outstanding teammates, students, and citizens of their college communities. The concern I bring to Congress is about scale, incentives, and balance. When a publicly supported or federally assisted American college team can fill most of its competitive opportunities with older, highly developed recruits from abroad, the mission of college athletics begins to drift away from developing students and toward importing finished athletic talent.
My testimony addresses a connected set of pressures on opportunity: international recruiting is a small-school issue as well as a major-college issue; many small institutions use athletics to support enrollment; partial-scholarship systems can concentrate meaningful aid on a few immediate-impact recruits; some lower-division rosters are now predominantly international by listed hometown; that imbalance reaches historically Black colleges and universities; expanded eligibility can further slow roster turnover; and a uniform per-team limit can restore balance without ending international participation.
My Background and Perspective
I spent more than twenty years in college basketball, including service as head men's basketball coach and athletic director at Bluefield College and as head men's basketball coach at Lee University. My teams reached the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) national tournament repeatedly, and I later worked at the NCAA Division I level. I also served in high school athletics, including as athletic director at Boyd Buchanan School in Tennessee.
Across those roles, I recruited athletes, allocated limited aid, built rosters, supervised coaches, and answered to presidents, families, and communities.
Today, through One Heartbeat, I work with coaches, athletic departments, and student-athletes on mental performance, leadership, accountability, and team culture. One Heartbeat has trained more than 1,000 teams in 43 states. That work keeps me close to the daily realities of college and high school sports, including what coaches are rewarded for, what families are experiencing, and how roster decisions affect opportunity.
This is not only a professional concern for me. It is personal. My stepson, Blake, came out of high school unranked and unrecruited. I made the calls that helped him find a division III opportunity at Berry College. He played nine total minutes as a freshman. By his junior year he was All-Conference. As a senior, he was Conference Player of the Year. In a fifth year at University of Alabama in Huntsville, a division II program, he was the Gulf South Conference Tournament MVP, and he has since had opportunities to play professionally. Blake needed the years that a finished, ready-made recruit does not need. I think about him every time I hear a coach describe an experienced international signee as the safer choice over an eighteen-year-old who has not yet become what he is capable of becoming. Every roster spot that goes to an established international instead of a developing American kid is not just a game-day decision, it is a chance at that kind of growth that gets taken away.
My views are therefore not theoretical. I know the pressure to win. I know the pressure to enroll students and generate tuition. I know what it is like to stretch a limited scholarship budget across an entire team. I also know the difference between college athletics as a developmental opportunity and college athletics as a market for ready-made talent.
The Small-School Reality
The national conversation often focuses on football and basketball at the largest universities.
That is only part of the story. College athletics also includes many other sports and divisions.
International recruiting is deeply present at smaller NCAA institutions, NAIA schools, and junior colleges. The NAIA itself reports that athletes from 170 nations compete at its member institutions. The reach of this issue is broad precisely because smaller institutions often depend on athletics to drive enrollment.
At many tuition-dependent colleges, adding a sport is also an admissions strategy. A roster can bring twenty, thirty, or more tuition-paying students to campus. Coaches are not simply filling a lineup; they may be expected to meet enrollment targets, retain students, and produce a competitive program at the same time. International recruiting services make it possible to identify experienced athletes from around the world quickly, often through video, centralized contacts, and established pipelines.
This does not mean every coach or school uses the same strategy, and it does not mean that recruiting an international student is improper. It means the incentives are real. A coach who can enroll an older, technically polished athlete with high-level club or professional-system experience may view that recruit as less risky than an American high school senior who still needs time to develop.
How Limited Aid Can Shape Recruiting
At the lower divisions, the phrase "athletic scholarship" can be misleading. NCAA Division II uses an equivalency model, and the NCAA explains that most Division II athletes receive partial, not full, athletic scholarships. Those awards may be combined with academic, need-based, and other institutional aid. In practice, a coach works with a limited pool and tries to assemble complete financial packages for an entire roster.
That structure can produce a pattern I have seen in small-college athletics. Several American athletes may receive modest athletic awards, enough for the school to say they were recruited or received a scholarship. A larger share of scarce athletic or institutional aid is assembled for a high-end international recruit who is expected to make an immediate competitive impact. The exact accounting differs by school, division, and sport, but the practical result can be the same: several small awards preserve roster depth while the most powerful package goes to the most developed recruit.
I want to be clear about what I am saying. Combining forms of aid is contemplated by existing rules, and an international athlete who receives aid has not done anything wrong. The problem is the incentive structure. When athletic aid, merit aid, tuition discounting, and admissions goals interact without a meaningful limit on international roster concentration, a school can comply with each individual rule while still producing a roster that leaves very little opportunity for American high school athletes.
What Lower-Division Rosters Now Show
Public rosters make the change visible. As one current example, not an accusation against any school, the 2026 men's soccer roster at Southeastern University (an NAIA institution), lists 39 players. Twenty-eight list hometowns outside the United States. That is approximately 72 percent of the roster. The listed hometowns span Brazil, Italy, England, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Sweden, Serbia, South Africa, Jamaica, Colombia, Costa Rica, Israel, and the Isle of Man.
A listed hometown is not the same thing as citizenship, and this single roster should not be treated as a national census. It is, however, a concrete illustration of what coaches and families can see with their own eyes: in some lower-division sports, international recruiting is not supplemental. It is the dominant roster-building model.
The opportunity cost is substantial because college roster spots are already scarce. NCAA data for 2024-25 estimate that only 5.9 percent of boys' high school soccer players, 4.7 percent of boys' tennis players, and 5.4 percent of boys' golfers will compete at any NCAA level. On the women's side, the estimates are 7.9 percent in soccer, 4.0 percent in tennis, and 6.9 percent in golf. These figures do not include NAIA or junior-college opportunities, but they show how narrow the NCAA pathway already is.
The Value of a Mixed Roster -- and Where It Inverts
I want to be direct about something Congress should not miss in the numbers above: a genuinely mixed roster is valuable, and I do not want this testimony mistaken for an argument against international teammates. I have watched cross-cultural exposure benefit American and international student-athletes alike, and I believe in that exchange.
My concern, drawn from firsthand experience with the teams I have worked with through One Heartbeat, is that this benefit inverts once a roster tips so heavily international that the American players on it describe playing for another country's team rather than their own. I have seen how American kids react to that shift, and it is not the experience of enrichment their families expected when they signed on. Balance is what turns a roster into a genuine cross-cultural experience. Imbalance is what turns it into something else.
A Uniquely Important Consequence for HBCUs
This dynamic is not confined to major conferences or predominantly white institutions. It reaches historically Black colleges and universities with particular force, and Congress should not overlook that reach.
Tennis shows the pattern most starkly. Across all sixteen MEAC tennis programs, roughly two out of every three listed roster spots are held by international student-athletes. At Norfolk State, the men's team has been entirely international. At South Carolina State, the men's team has been close behind, at roughly 92 percent. NPR reported on this trend at HBCUs in 2023, and it has not reversed since.
Basketball, the flagship HBCU sport, shows a smaller but still meaningful share. A full roster audit across all forty Division I HBCU basketball programs in the MEAC and SWAC found 44 international players among approximately 575 total roster spots, or roughly 7.5 percent./6 That is a lower rate than tennis, but every one of those spots is a spot that did not go to an American student, at institutions whose founding mission has been to build pathways for students America once denied elsewhere.
Golf shows the same story in miniature. At Alabama State, eight of nine roster spots on the men's golf team have gone to international players, a pattern an Andscape investigation documented as far back as 2018./7
HBCU athletics has always been about more than sport. A roster spot at these institutions can become an education, a network, a career, and a foothold in leadership that a young person carries for a lifetime. When international recruiting concentrates in these specific programs at these rates, it does not just shrink a roster. It narrows one of the clearest pathways American students and Black American students have to the developmental and economic benefits college athletics provides.
The Fifth Year Further Slows Roster Turnover
In 2026, NCAA Divisions I and II adopted new age-based eligibility models. The change is sometimes described as a blanket fifth year, but the details matter. The framework generally provides a continuous five-year eligibility period tied to age and enrollment, and it may allow an athlete who enrolls on time to compete for an additional season. It is not a retroactive extra season for everyone. Athletes who exhausted eligibility in 2025-26 do not receive another year, and transition provisions govern current and incoming athletes./8
Even with those qualifications, the practical concern is clear. The rule does not automatically create a new roster position or a new scholarship for every returning athlete. When an established player stays for a fifth season, that player may occupy a place and financial-aid package that otherwise would have turned over to an incoming freshman. In announcing its Division II transition, the NCAA itself recognized that granting another season to athletes who had already exhausted eligibility could disrupt expected roster spots, playing time, and aid packages, including those of incoming freshmen./9
I have written about how this changes recruiting decisions. A coach comparing an 18-year-old high school senior with a 21 or 22-year-old college veteran is not comparing equal levels of physical maturity, strength, academic adjustment, or experience. In one example I described, a fifth-year team started five fifth-year players. Coaches under pressure naturally reduce risk by choosing older, proven players, especially when a younger player who develops successfully may soon transfer. The result is fewer developmental chances and fewer scholarships for high school graduates./10
This is not a criticism of athletes who use the eligibility available to them. It is a warning about cumulative policy effects. Fifth-year returners, transfer-market veterans, and older international recruits all compete for the same finite positions. As rosters age and turnover slows, the entry point for an American high school athlete becomes narrower still.
Why Coaches Make These Decisions
Coaches recruit internationally for understandable reasons. They are evaluated by wins and losses. They may need immediate contributors, not three-year development projects.
Experienced international athletes can arrive with advanced tactical instruction, physical maturity, and extensive club competition. Recruiting networks can present multiple vetted players efficiently. At a tuition-dependent school, an international recruit may also help the coach satisfy both competitive and enrollment objectives.
If one coach takes that route and begins winning, conference rivals feel pressure to respond.
What starts as a competitive advantage becomes an arms race. Individual coaches cannot solve that collective-action problem by voluntarily stepping back. Asking one program to restrict itself while its competitors operate without limits is not a durable policy. A common rule is necessary.
Roster-Balancing Rules Already Exist in Professional Sports Abroad
A roster limit of this kind would not be an untested idea in sport. Professional leagues outside the United States already use roster-composition rules to preserve meaningful opportunity for domestic or locally developed players while continuing to welcome talent from abroad. The details vary, but the governing principle is familiar, open competition can coexist with a protected domestic foundation.
In Italian professional basketball, the Italian Basketball Federation's 2026-27 rules allow Serie A clubs to operate under a 5+5 or 6+6 formula. Those formulas pair a maximum number of players who were not trained in Italy with a corresponding minimum number of players who were trained in Italy. This is a development-based classification rather than a simple citizenship test, but it demonstrates that a high-level European basketball system can place an enforceable boundary around imported, ready-made talent./11
The Canadian Football League provides another example. Its current game-ratio rules set a maximum of 19 American-designated players and require at least 21 National players, along with Global-player requirements. The CFL's classifications and labor structure are its own, and I do not suggest copying them word for word. The relevant lesson is that a professional league can protect opportunities for players connected to its home country without barring Americans or other foreign players from participating./12
These comparisons do not settle the proper number for American colleges, and professional labor rules are not legally identical to student-athlete eligibility rules. They do answer one practical objection: roster-composition limits are workable tools already used in competitive sports.
Congress can develop a transparent and education-centered version suited to American institutions.
A Reasonable Federal Policy
Congress should support a clear, uniform per-team limit on international student-athletes.
Legislation such as Chairman Walberg's TEAM USA Act would set that kind of limit while still allowing international participation. The limit should apply consistently within each sport across similarly situated divisions and governing associations, so that a coach is not placed at a competitive disadvantage for protecting domestic opportunity. The purpose should be balance, not exclusion: international students would remain an important part of college athletics, but no team could allow international recruiting to become a near-total substitute for recruiting and developing American students.
A workable policy should include four safeguards:
1. A clear definition. The rule should rely on citizenship or lawful permanent-resident status, not birthplace, accent, surname, or listed hometown. Students who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents should be treated as domestic athletes.
2. Transparent reporting. Schools and governing associations should report aggregate roster and aid data by sport and status, with appropriate privacy protections. Congress and families should not have to estimate the scope of the issue from roster biographies.
3. A fair transition. Current athletes and signed commitments should be protected. A phased implementation would allow schools to comply without taking away a scholarship or roster position already promised.
4. Anti-circumvention and narrow hardship review. The rule should cover roster participation, not merely the label attached to a particular aid source, while allowing carefully defined relief for genuine humanitarian or unusual individual circumstances.
The principle should not be optional: an American college team should maintain a meaningful core of opportunities for American students.
Conclusion
College athletics is one of America's most effective classrooms. It teaches discipline, resilience, teamwork, leadership, and accountability. It also provides access to education and a community that can change the course of a young person's life. Those benefits are valuable to international students, and our colleges should continue to welcome them.
Welcoming the world, however, does not require surrendering the developmental purpose of American college sports. A reasonable per-team limit would preserve international participation, reduce the pressure on coaches to join an escalating recruiting arms race, and restore a fair measure of opportunity for American high school athletes. It would create one understandable rule for everyone rather than asking individual coaches or schools to solve a national problem alone.
I respectfully urge Congress to place domestic athletic opportunity alongside NIL, transfers, eligibility, health, and competitive balance in any comprehensive college-sports framework. If we believe college athletics exists first to educate and develop students, our roster policies should reflect that mission.
Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony. I would be pleased to answer the Committee's questions.
* * *
Source Notes
The policy judgments and firsthand observations in this testimony are Tommy Brown's. Public sources below support biographical statements and descriptive data.
1. National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, "International Students" (athletes from 170 nations), https://www.naia.org/student-athletes/prospective/international-students/.
2. National Collegiate Athletic Association, "Scholarships & Financial Aid" and "Division II Athletics Scholarships" (partial-scholarship and equivalency model), https://www.ncaa.org/studentathletes/scholarships-and-financial-aid/.
3. Southeastern University Athletics, "2026 Men's Soccer Roster" (author's count of listed hometowns; accessed September 8, 2026), https://fire.seu.edu/sports/mens-soccer/roster.
4. National Collegiate Athletic Association, "Probability of Competing Beyond High School" (2024-25 participation estimates), https://www.ncaa.org/student-athletes/probability-of-competing-beyondhigh-school/.
5. NPR/WABE, "HBCUs recruit international athletes for tennis. Some are calling it into question" (Nov. 2023); official 2025-26/2026-27 rosters published by MEAC tennis member institutions, including Norfolk State and South Carolina State athletics.
6. Official 2025-26/2026-27 basketball rosters published by all 8 MEAC and all 12 SWAC member institutions (author's roster audit).
7. Andscape, investigative reporting on international recruiting in HBCU golf (2018); Alabama State University Athletics men's golf roster.
8. National Collegiate Athletic Association, "Division I Adopts Age-Based Eligibility Model" (June 23, 2026), https://www.ncaa.org/division-i-adopts-age-based-eligibility-model/.
9. National Collegiate Athletic Association, "Division II Adopts Age-Based Eligibility Model" (August 5, 2026), https://www.ncaa.org/division-ii-adopts-age-based-eligibility-model/.
10. Tommy Brown, "The New Recruiting Reality: What Today's College Basketball Landscape Really Looks Like," Coaches Insider (August 5, 2026), https://coachesinsider.com/mens-basketball/the-newrecruiting-reality-what-todays-college-basketball-landscape-really-looks-like-2/.
11. Federazione Italiana Pallacanestro, Disposizioni Organizzative Annuali 2026-2027, section 13.2, "Le Formule" (Serie A 5+5 and 6+6 roster formulas), https://fip.it/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/DOA26_27-versione-1.pdf.
12. Canadian Football League, "Game Ratio Rules" (maximum American and minimum National roster classifications; accessed September 9, 2026), https://www.cfl.ca/game-ratio-rules/.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/tommy_brown_testimony_final.pdf
* * *
Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee: thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony. I come before you as a coach, an athletic director, an educator, and someone who has spent ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development released the following written testimony by Tommy Brown, CEO and founder of One Heartbeat Inc., and former collegiate head coach and athletic director, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Who Gets the Scholarship? How the Global Shift in College Sports Affects Americans": * * * Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee: thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony. I come before you as a coach, an athletic director, an educator, and someone who has spentmore than three decades helping young people grow through sports. The purpose of my testimony is not to close American college athletics to the world. It is to preserve a fair place in that system for the American students whose families, schools, and communities have invested in them for years.
International students enrich our campuses, and many international athletes are outstanding teammates, students, and citizens of their college communities. The concern I bring to Congress is about scale, incentives, and balance. When a publicly supported or federally assisted American college team can fill most of its competitive opportunities with older, highly developed recruits from abroad, the mission of college athletics begins to drift away from developing students and toward importing finished athletic talent.
My testimony addresses a connected set of pressures on opportunity: international recruiting is a small-school issue as well as a major-college issue; many small institutions use athletics to support enrollment; partial-scholarship systems can concentrate meaningful aid on a few immediate-impact recruits; some lower-division rosters are now predominantly international by listed hometown; that imbalance reaches historically Black colleges and universities; expanded eligibility can further slow roster turnover; and a uniform per-team limit can restore balance without ending international participation.
My Background and Perspective
I spent more than twenty years in college basketball, including service as head men's basketball coach and athletic director at Bluefield College and as head men's basketball coach at Lee University. My teams reached the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) national tournament repeatedly, and I later worked at the NCAA Division I level. I also served in high school athletics, including as athletic director at Boyd Buchanan School in Tennessee.
Across those roles, I recruited athletes, allocated limited aid, built rosters, supervised coaches, and answered to presidents, families, and communities.
Today, through One Heartbeat, I work with coaches, athletic departments, and student-athletes on mental performance, leadership, accountability, and team culture. One Heartbeat has trained more than 1,000 teams in 43 states. That work keeps me close to the daily realities of college and high school sports, including what coaches are rewarded for, what families are experiencing, and how roster decisions affect opportunity.
This is not only a professional concern for me. It is personal. My stepson, Blake, came out of high school unranked and unrecruited. I made the calls that helped him find a division III opportunity at Berry College. He played nine total minutes as a freshman. By his junior year he was All-Conference. As a senior, he was Conference Player of the Year. In a fifth year at University of Alabama in Huntsville, a division II program, he was the Gulf South Conference Tournament MVP, and he has since had opportunities to play professionally. Blake needed the years that a finished, ready-made recruit does not need. I think about him every time I hear a coach describe an experienced international signee as the safer choice over an eighteen-year-old who has not yet become what he is capable of becoming. Every roster spot that goes to an established international instead of a developing American kid is not just a game-day decision, it is a chance at that kind of growth that gets taken away.
My views are therefore not theoretical. I know the pressure to win. I know the pressure to enroll students and generate tuition. I know what it is like to stretch a limited scholarship budget across an entire team. I also know the difference between college athletics as a developmental opportunity and college athletics as a market for ready-made talent.
The Small-School Reality
The national conversation often focuses on football and basketball at the largest universities.
That is only part of the story. College athletics also includes many other sports and divisions.
International recruiting is deeply present at smaller NCAA institutions, NAIA schools, and junior colleges. The NAIA itself reports that athletes from 170 nations compete at its member institutions. The reach of this issue is broad precisely because smaller institutions often depend on athletics to drive enrollment.
At many tuition-dependent colleges, adding a sport is also an admissions strategy. A roster can bring twenty, thirty, or more tuition-paying students to campus. Coaches are not simply filling a lineup; they may be expected to meet enrollment targets, retain students, and produce a competitive program at the same time. International recruiting services make it possible to identify experienced athletes from around the world quickly, often through video, centralized contacts, and established pipelines.
This does not mean every coach or school uses the same strategy, and it does not mean that recruiting an international student is improper. It means the incentives are real. A coach who can enroll an older, technically polished athlete with high-level club or professional-system experience may view that recruit as less risky than an American high school senior who still needs time to develop.
How Limited Aid Can Shape Recruiting
At the lower divisions, the phrase "athletic scholarship" can be misleading. NCAA Division II uses an equivalency model, and the NCAA explains that most Division II athletes receive partial, not full, athletic scholarships. Those awards may be combined with academic, need-based, and other institutional aid. In practice, a coach works with a limited pool and tries to assemble complete financial packages for an entire roster.
That structure can produce a pattern I have seen in small-college athletics. Several American athletes may receive modest athletic awards, enough for the school to say they were recruited or received a scholarship. A larger share of scarce athletic or institutional aid is assembled for a high-end international recruit who is expected to make an immediate competitive impact. The exact accounting differs by school, division, and sport, but the practical result can be the same: several small awards preserve roster depth while the most powerful package goes to the most developed recruit.
I want to be clear about what I am saying. Combining forms of aid is contemplated by existing rules, and an international athlete who receives aid has not done anything wrong. The problem is the incentive structure. When athletic aid, merit aid, tuition discounting, and admissions goals interact without a meaningful limit on international roster concentration, a school can comply with each individual rule while still producing a roster that leaves very little opportunity for American high school athletes.
What Lower-Division Rosters Now Show
Public rosters make the change visible. As one current example, not an accusation against any school, the 2026 men's soccer roster at Southeastern University (an NAIA institution), lists 39 players. Twenty-eight list hometowns outside the United States. That is approximately 72 percent of the roster. The listed hometowns span Brazil, Italy, England, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Sweden, Serbia, South Africa, Jamaica, Colombia, Costa Rica, Israel, and the Isle of Man.
A listed hometown is not the same thing as citizenship, and this single roster should not be treated as a national census. It is, however, a concrete illustration of what coaches and families can see with their own eyes: in some lower-division sports, international recruiting is not supplemental. It is the dominant roster-building model.
The opportunity cost is substantial because college roster spots are already scarce. NCAA data for 2024-25 estimate that only 5.9 percent of boys' high school soccer players, 4.7 percent of boys' tennis players, and 5.4 percent of boys' golfers will compete at any NCAA level. On the women's side, the estimates are 7.9 percent in soccer, 4.0 percent in tennis, and 6.9 percent in golf. These figures do not include NAIA or junior-college opportunities, but they show how narrow the NCAA pathway already is.
The Value of a Mixed Roster -- and Where It Inverts
I want to be direct about something Congress should not miss in the numbers above: a genuinely mixed roster is valuable, and I do not want this testimony mistaken for an argument against international teammates. I have watched cross-cultural exposure benefit American and international student-athletes alike, and I believe in that exchange.
My concern, drawn from firsthand experience with the teams I have worked with through One Heartbeat, is that this benefit inverts once a roster tips so heavily international that the American players on it describe playing for another country's team rather than their own. I have seen how American kids react to that shift, and it is not the experience of enrichment their families expected when they signed on. Balance is what turns a roster into a genuine cross-cultural experience. Imbalance is what turns it into something else.
A Uniquely Important Consequence for HBCUs
This dynamic is not confined to major conferences or predominantly white institutions. It reaches historically Black colleges and universities with particular force, and Congress should not overlook that reach.
Tennis shows the pattern most starkly. Across all sixteen MEAC tennis programs, roughly two out of every three listed roster spots are held by international student-athletes. At Norfolk State, the men's team has been entirely international. At South Carolina State, the men's team has been close behind, at roughly 92 percent. NPR reported on this trend at HBCUs in 2023, and it has not reversed since.
Basketball, the flagship HBCU sport, shows a smaller but still meaningful share. A full roster audit across all forty Division I HBCU basketball programs in the MEAC and SWAC found 44 international players among approximately 575 total roster spots, or roughly 7.5 percent./6 That is a lower rate than tennis, but every one of those spots is a spot that did not go to an American student, at institutions whose founding mission has been to build pathways for students America once denied elsewhere.
Golf shows the same story in miniature. At Alabama State, eight of nine roster spots on the men's golf team have gone to international players, a pattern an Andscape investigation documented as far back as 2018./7
HBCU athletics has always been about more than sport. A roster spot at these institutions can become an education, a network, a career, and a foothold in leadership that a young person carries for a lifetime. When international recruiting concentrates in these specific programs at these rates, it does not just shrink a roster. It narrows one of the clearest pathways American students and Black American students have to the developmental and economic benefits college athletics provides.
The Fifth Year Further Slows Roster Turnover
In 2026, NCAA Divisions I and II adopted new age-based eligibility models. The change is sometimes described as a blanket fifth year, but the details matter. The framework generally provides a continuous five-year eligibility period tied to age and enrollment, and it may allow an athlete who enrolls on time to compete for an additional season. It is not a retroactive extra season for everyone. Athletes who exhausted eligibility in 2025-26 do not receive another year, and transition provisions govern current and incoming athletes./8
Even with those qualifications, the practical concern is clear. The rule does not automatically create a new roster position or a new scholarship for every returning athlete. When an established player stays for a fifth season, that player may occupy a place and financial-aid package that otherwise would have turned over to an incoming freshman. In announcing its Division II transition, the NCAA itself recognized that granting another season to athletes who had already exhausted eligibility could disrupt expected roster spots, playing time, and aid packages, including those of incoming freshmen./9
I have written about how this changes recruiting decisions. A coach comparing an 18-year-old high school senior with a 21 or 22-year-old college veteran is not comparing equal levels of physical maturity, strength, academic adjustment, or experience. In one example I described, a fifth-year team started five fifth-year players. Coaches under pressure naturally reduce risk by choosing older, proven players, especially when a younger player who develops successfully may soon transfer. The result is fewer developmental chances and fewer scholarships for high school graduates./10
This is not a criticism of athletes who use the eligibility available to them. It is a warning about cumulative policy effects. Fifth-year returners, transfer-market veterans, and older international recruits all compete for the same finite positions. As rosters age and turnover slows, the entry point for an American high school athlete becomes narrower still.
Why Coaches Make These Decisions
Coaches recruit internationally for understandable reasons. They are evaluated by wins and losses. They may need immediate contributors, not three-year development projects.
Experienced international athletes can arrive with advanced tactical instruction, physical maturity, and extensive club competition. Recruiting networks can present multiple vetted players efficiently. At a tuition-dependent school, an international recruit may also help the coach satisfy both competitive and enrollment objectives.
If one coach takes that route and begins winning, conference rivals feel pressure to respond.
What starts as a competitive advantage becomes an arms race. Individual coaches cannot solve that collective-action problem by voluntarily stepping back. Asking one program to restrict itself while its competitors operate without limits is not a durable policy. A common rule is necessary.
Roster-Balancing Rules Already Exist in Professional Sports Abroad
A roster limit of this kind would not be an untested idea in sport. Professional leagues outside the United States already use roster-composition rules to preserve meaningful opportunity for domestic or locally developed players while continuing to welcome talent from abroad. The details vary, but the governing principle is familiar, open competition can coexist with a protected domestic foundation.
In Italian professional basketball, the Italian Basketball Federation's 2026-27 rules allow Serie A clubs to operate under a 5+5 or 6+6 formula. Those formulas pair a maximum number of players who were not trained in Italy with a corresponding minimum number of players who were trained in Italy. This is a development-based classification rather than a simple citizenship test, but it demonstrates that a high-level European basketball system can place an enforceable boundary around imported, ready-made talent./11
The Canadian Football League provides another example. Its current game-ratio rules set a maximum of 19 American-designated players and require at least 21 National players, along with Global-player requirements. The CFL's classifications and labor structure are its own, and I do not suggest copying them word for word. The relevant lesson is that a professional league can protect opportunities for players connected to its home country without barring Americans or other foreign players from participating./12
These comparisons do not settle the proper number for American colleges, and professional labor rules are not legally identical to student-athlete eligibility rules. They do answer one practical objection: roster-composition limits are workable tools already used in competitive sports.
Congress can develop a transparent and education-centered version suited to American institutions.
A Reasonable Federal Policy
Congress should support a clear, uniform per-team limit on international student-athletes.
Legislation such as Chairman Walberg's TEAM USA Act would set that kind of limit while still allowing international participation. The limit should apply consistently within each sport across similarly situated divisions and governing associations, so that a coach is not placed at a competitive disadvantage for protecting domestic opportunity. The purpose should be balance, not exclusion: international students would remain an important part of college athletics, but no team could allow international recruiting to become a near-total substitute for recruiting and developing American students.
A workable policy should include four safeguards:
1. A clear definition. The rule should rely on citizenship or lawful permanent-resident status, not birthplace, accent, surname, or listed hometown. Students who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents should be treated as domestic athletes.
2. Transparent reporting. Schools and governing associations should report aggregate roster and aid data by sport and status, with appropriate privacy protections. Congress and families should not have to estimate the scope of the issue from roster biographies.
3. A fair transition. Current athletes and signed commitments should be protected. A phased implementation would allow schools to comply without taking away a scholarship or roster position already promised.
4. Anti-circumvention and narrow hardship review. The rule should cover roster participation, not merely the label attached to a particular aid source, while allowing carefully defined relief for genuine humanitarian or unusual individual circumstances.
The principle should not be optional: an American college team should maintain a meaningful core of opportunities for American students.
Conclusion
College athletics is one of America's most effective classrooms. It teaches discipline, resilience, teamwork, leadership, and accountability. It also provides access to education and a community that can change the course of a young person's life. Those benefits are valuable to international students, and our colleges should continue to welcome them.
Welcoming the world, however, does not require surrendering the developmental purpose of American college sports. A reasonable per-team limit would preserve international participation, reduce the pressure on coaches to join an escalating recruiting arms race, and restore a fair measure of opportunity for American high school athletes. It would create one understandable rule for everyone rather than asking individual coaches or schools to solve a national problem alone.
I respectfully urge Congress to place domestic athletic opportunity alongside NIL, transfers, eligibility, health, and competitive balance in any comprehensive college-sports framework. If we believe college athletics exists first to educate and develop students, our roster policies should reflect that mission.
Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony. I would be pleased to answer the Committee's questions.
* * *
Source Notes
The policy judgments and firsthand observations in this testimony are Tommy Brown's. Public sources below support biographical statements and descriptive data.
1. National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, "International Students" (athletes from 170 nations), https://www.naia.org/student-athletes/prospective/international-students/.
2. National Collegiate Athletic Association, "Scholarships & Financial Aid" and "Division II Athletics Scholarships" (partial-scholarship and equivalency model), https://www.ncaa.org/studentathletes/scholarships-and-financial-aid/.
3. Southeastern University Athletics, "2026 Men's Soccer Roster" (author's count of listed hometowns; accessed September 8, 2026), https://fire.seu.edu/sports/mens-soccer/roster.
4. National Collegiate Athletic Association, "Probability of Competing Beyond High School" (2024-25 participation estimates), https://www.ncaa.org/student-athletes/probability-of-competing-beyondhigh-school/.
5. NPR/WABE, "HBCUs recruit international athletes for tennis. Some are calling it into question" (Nov. 2023); official 2025-26/2026-27 rosters published by MEAC tennis member institutions, including Norfolk State and South Carolina State athletics.
6. Official 2025-26/2026-27 basketball rosters published by all 8 MEAC and all 12 SWAC member institutions (author's roster audit).
7. Andscape, investigative reporting on international recruiting in HBCU golf (2018); Alabama State University Athletics men's golf roster.
8. National Collegiate Athletic Association, "Division I Adopts Age-Based Eligibility Model" (June 23, 2026), https://www.ncaa.org/division-i-adopts-age-based-eligibility-model/.
9. National Collegiate Athletic Association, "Division II Adopts Age-Based Eligibility Model" (August 5, 2026), https://www.ncaa.org/division-ii-adopts-age-based-eligibility-model/.
10. Tommy Brown, "The New Recruiting Reality: What Today's College Basketball Landscape Really Looks Like," Coaches Insider (August 5, 2026), https://coachesinsider.com/mens-basketball/the-newrecruiting-reality-what-todays-college-basketball-landscape-really-looks-like-2/.
11. Federazione Italiana Pallacanestro, Disposizioni Organizzative Annuali 2026-2027, section 13.2, "Le Formule" (Serie A 5+5 and 6+6 roster formulas), https://fip.it/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/DOA26_27-versione-1.pdf.
12. Canadian Football League, "Game Ratio Rules" (maximum American and minimum National roster classifications; accessed September 9, 2026), https://www.cfl.ca/game-ratio-rules/.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/tommy_brown_testimony_final.pdf
National Student Legal Defense Network President Ament Testifies Before House Education & Workforce Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development released the following written testimony by Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Who Gets the Scholarship? How the Global Shift in College Sports Affects Americans":
* * *
Chairman Owens, Ranking Member Adams, and Members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to testify today and discuss the critical issues facing our nation's students.
My name is Aaron Ament, and I am the President of the National ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development released the following written testimony by Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Who Gets the Scholarship? How the Global Shift in College Sports Affects Americans": * * * Chairman Owens, Ranking Member Adams, and Members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to testify today and discuss the critical issues facing our nation's students. My name is Aaron Ament, and I am the President of the NationalStudent Legal Defense Network ("Student Defense"), a non-partisan, non-profit organization that works to advance students' rights to educational opportunity and to ensure that higher education provides a launching point for economic mobility.
I am here today to discuss the many struggles facing tens of millions of student loan borrowers, and how the crisis is worsening during the Trump Administration.
Rising costs of college. Over the past three decades, the average tuition and fees at public four-year colleges have roughly doubled after adjusting for inflation, and tuition at private four-year colleges has climbed nearly as sharply (up about 74%).1 A major driver of that long-term increase at public universities has been state disinvestment. Particularly in the years following the 2008 recession, state legislatures cut funding for public colleges and universities, and institutions shifted more of the cost burden onto students through higher tuition.2 At the same time, the Pell Grant, relied on by over 7 million students in 2024-2025, has not grown in step with these increases.3
In the 1970s, the maximum Pell Grant covered more than three-quarters of the cost of attendance at a public four-year college, whereas today it covers only about a quarter of that cost--eroding one of the primary tools designed to keep college affordable.4
* * *
1 Jennifer Ma et al., Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025, College Bd. 12 (Nov. 2025), https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/Trends-in-College-Pricing-and-Student-Aid-2025final_1.pdf.
2 Kelsey Kunkle & Rachel Burns, State Higher Education Finance: FY 2024, State Higher Educ. Exec. Officers Ass'n (2025), at 8-12, https://shef.sheeo.org/wpcontent/uploads/2025/05/SHEEO_SHEF_FY24_Report.pdf.
3 Ma et al., supra note 1, at 3.
4 Nat'l Ass'n of Student Fin. Aid Adm'rs, Issue Brief: Doubling the Maximum Pell Grant (July 31, 2026), https://www.nasfaa.org/issue_brief_double_pell; Cassandria Dortch, Cong. Rsch. Serv., R45418, Federal Pell Grant Program of the Higher Education Act: Primer (Nov. 6, 2024), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45418.
* * *
In the for-profit college sector, attendance costs at four-year programs in the 2024-2025 school year were more than double in-state tuition at public institutions, as investors and private equity backers pressured schools to increase profit margins, with little incentive to keep tuition low.5
Students are taking on debt they cannot afford to repay. As college tuition rises, students and families are forced to borrow at extremely high rates. Students and parents borrowed $102.6 billion (federal + nonfederal) in 2024-2025 alone, of which $88.7 billion was federal loans.6 Too often, these loans are used to attend programs with low graduation rates and poor outcomes.
Previous administrations attempted to implement Gainful Employment regulations aimed at ensuring that for-profit and career-oriented programs would only be eligible to participate in the Title IV federal student loan program if their graduates earned enough on average to repay their debts. However, the Trump Administration chose not to implement any version of the previous Gainful Employment rules, and H.R. 1 established a new accountability framework with an extremely low baseline, merely ensuring college graduates earn more than the average high school graduate or GED holder in their area.7 Student loan defaults are a growing problem. The post-pandemic return to repayment has led approximately 9 million borrowers--with about $220 billion in federal student loans--into default, representing around 13% of the total $1.64 trillion federally managed portfolio as of March 2026./8 Combined with borrowers who are seriously delinquent, that number could approach 13 million by the end of the year.9 Yet the Trump Administration-- at a time when affordability is more critical than ever--is poised to restart involuntary collections, including the seizure of tax refunds and social security benefits, and the garnishment of wages.10 These aggressive collection techniques on people who already cannot afford their student loan payments will only deepen financial hardship across the country, and will be felt disproportionately by borrowers of color and their families.11
* * *
5 Nat'l Ctr. for Educ. Stat., U.S. Dep't of Educ., Table 10: Average Costs Associated with Attendance for Full-Time, First-Time Degree/Certificate-Seeking Undergraduates at Title IV Institutions Operating on an Academic Year Calendar, and Percentage Change, by Level of Institution, Type of Cost, Control of Institution, Residency, and Student Housing: United States, Academic Years 2022- 23 and 2024-25, Integrated Postsecondary Educ. Data Sys. (IPEDS), Winter 2024-25 (Provisional Data), https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/search/viewtable?tableId=36538.
6 Ma et al., supra note 1 at 7.
7 See 20 U.S.C. Sec. 1087d(c)(2)-(3) (2025); 91 Fed. Reg. 40136 (July 1, 2026).
8 Fed. Student Aid, U.S. Dep't of Educ., GENERAL-26-38, Federal Student Aid Posts Updated Reports to FSA Data Center (June 23, 2026), https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledgecenter/library/electronic-announcements/2026-06-23/federal-student-aid-posts-updated-reportsfsa-data-center.
9 Suzanne Blake, Student Loan Update: Nearly 13 Million at Risk of Default This Year, Newsweek (July 7, 2026), https://www.newsweek.com/student-loan-update-nearly-13-million-at-risk-ofdefault-this-year-12168756.
10 Robert Farrington, Wage Garnishment On Defaulted Student Loans Restarts This Fall, The College Investor (May 28, 2026), https://thecollegeinvestor.com/80311/wage-garnishment-on-defaulted student-loans-restarts-this-fall/; see also Press Release, U.S. Dep't of Educ., U.S. Department of Education Delays Involuntary Collections Amid Ongoing Student Loan Repayment Improvements (Jan. 16, 2026), https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-educationdelays-involuntary-collections-amid-ongoing-student-loan-repayment-improvements (explaining, as of January 2026, that involuntary collections would be paused in order to implement H.R. 1 and give defaulted borrowers time to evaluate repayment options).
* * *
Default and delinquency are especially prevalent for students who attend for-profit colleges. According to the Federal Reserve, 35% of borrowers with outstanding student loans who attended for-profit institutions were behind on their payments, compared to 16% of those who attended public institutions and 15% who attended private not-for-profit institutions.12 Moreover, while for-profit schools enroll just 8% of all postsecondary students, they accounted for 30% of all federal student loan defaults prior to the COVID-19 pandemic-related payment pause.13
Repayment chaos and confusion. The combination of the massive Reduction in Force (RIF) at the Department of Education and the botched implementation of H.R. 1 has created chaos in the student loan system. Around 7 million student loan borrowers are about to be kicked off the SAVE Plan; unless they select a new plan by September 29, 2026, they will be automatically enrolled in the most expensive option available.14 H.R. 1's elimination of the SAVE plan and its replacement with new, less generous repayment plans will disproportionately harm borrowers of color, who are more likely than other borrowers to lose the $0 monthly payments and income protections available under prior repayment plans.15 And due to massive cuts at the Department, borrowers have been left largely on their own to figure out how to enroll in a new repayment plan that is most beneficial to them. Federal watchdogs found that the Department's reduced staffing has left it unable to properly oversee loan servicers, with four of five servicers not meeting the Department's standards for keeping accurate records.16 And the GAO recently published findings that Federal Student Aid (FSA) stopped assessing servicers on accuracy and call quality in February 2025, citing the staff reduction as the reason for the change.17
* * *
11 See, e.g., Ama Takyi-Laryea, Phillip Oliff & Regan Fitzgerald, The Student Loan Default Divide: Racial Inequities Play a Role, The Pew Charitable Trusts (Dec. 10, 2024, updated Apr. 4, 2025), https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2024/12/the-student-loan-default-divideracial-inequities-play-a-role.
12 Bd. of Governors of the Fed. Reserve Sys., Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2024: Higher Education and Student Loans (May 2025), https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in2024-higher-education-and-student-loans.htm.
13 Letter from Richard J. Durbin, U.S. Senator, to Illinois School Counselors (Apr. 17, 2026), https://www.durbin.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_forprofit_college_warning_letter_counselor_2026_final.pdf.
14 Robert Farrington, SAVE Plan Borrowers Now Getting 90-Day Notices: What They Say And What To Do, The College Investor (July 1, 2026), https://thecollegeinvestor.com/83642/save-plan-borrowersnow-getting-90-day-notices/.
15 Victoria Jackson, Raising the Cost of Borrowing, Reducing Access: How the One Big Beautiful Bill Reshapes Financial Aid and Repayment, The Education Trust (Nov. 2025), https://edtrust.org/wpcontent/uploads/2025/11/OBBBA-Student-Loan-Repayment.pdf. (explaining how H.R. 1 "will do lasting harm to the American higher education system and will hit low- and middle-income students and students of color the hardest"); Junlei Chen & Jesus Villero, Biden's SAVE Plan - Distributional Impact Analysis, PENN WHARTON BUDGET MODEL (Sept. 25, 2024), https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/p/2024-09-25-bidens-save-plan-distributional-impactanalysis/ (finding that approximately 43% of the total benefits from the now-eliminated SAVE plan accrued to Black borrowers with outstanding debt, despite being a much smaller share of the overall borrower population). See generally Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau, Insights from the 2023- 2024 Student Loan Borrower Survey 3 (Nov. 13, 2024), https://www.consumerfinance.gov/dataresearch/research-reports/insights-from-the-2023-2024-student-loan-borrowersurvey/https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_Insights-from-the-2023-2024Student-Loan-Borrower-Survey_Report.pdf ("63 percent of borrowers reported ever having difficulty making their student loan payments and 37 percent have missed at least one payment, with significantly higher rates for Black and Hispanic borrowers, Pell Grant recipients, and for those with less than a four-year degree.").
* * *
Lack of school oversight and relief for defrauded students. According to the OIG, 32 of the 72 suboffices at FSA were left with no employees following the RIF. This included several offices with nobody left to perform their statutorily required functions, such as overseeing loan guaranty agencies and servicers participating in the Title IV Federal Student Loan Program, and the office tasked with program eligibility, certification, and financial analysis of schools participating in Title IV.18 This leaves virtually no federal oversight of colleges that are misleading and defrauding student loan borrowers.19
At the same time, the Department has failed to provide debt relief to thousands of student loan borrowers who were defrauded by predatory colleges, many of whom were promised loan discharges years ago but are still waiting for relief, their lives on hold and negative impacts on their credit reports continuing.
* * *
16 U.S. Gov't Accountability Off, GAO-26-108534, Federal Student Loans: Education Needs to Address Gaps in Servicer Oversight 7 (March 5, 2026), https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26108534; Adam Minsky, Student Loan Giant Accused Of 'Stunning Error' As Senators Open Investigation, Forbes (Aug. 27, 2026), https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2026/08/27/student-loan-giant-accused-of-stunningerror-as-senators-open-investigation/.
17 U.S. Gov't Accountability Off., supra note 16.
18 U.S. Dep't of Educ., Off. of Inspector Gen., Rep. No. ED-OIG/F25DC0245, Review of U.S. Department of Education Changes in Staffing and Operations 16-17 (June 22, 2026), https://oig.ed.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2026-06/FY26%20F25DC0245%20%286.22.26%29v100_508_SECURED.pdf.
19 See, e.g., Declaration of Chris Miller, NAACP v. United States, No. 8:25-cv-00965-JRR (D. Md. July 1, 2025), ECF No. 61-88.
* * *
Similarly, in August 2022 the Department announced that it had approved borrower-defense relief for approximately 79,000 borrowers who attended Westwood College, based on widespread misconduct by the school, including substantial misrepresentations to students about the value of Westwood programs and the employment outcomes they could expect.20 Four years later, approximately 12,000 of these borrowers still have not received the promised relief.21 We stand ready to work with this Committee to ensure that longstanding, promised relief is finally delivered to these borrowers.
Administrative chaos with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. Millions of teachers, firefighters, nurses, and members of our military are facing new barriers caused by the chaos at FSA as they pursue Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). This includes what appear to be many thousands of people who--over the last month--were stunned to discover qualifying PSLF payments wiped from their accounts with no explanation.22
Borrowers in contact with Student Defense have since started to receive a "Qualifying Payment Reduction Notice" indicating that past PSLF credits are being permanently changed to "non-qualifying." The Department has not explained what it is doing, leading to widespread panic and confusion. Is the Department permanently deleting previously awarded PSLF credits? If so, what is the basis for these deletions, how are these determinations being made, is the process ongoing, and how many borrowers are impacted? Congress should demand answers.
* * *
Each of these problems is made worse by the turmoil and disorder at what remains of the Department of Education and FSA. On March 20, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order directing Secretary McMahon to close the Department.23 The Order itself acknowledged that FSA was grossly understaffed, noting that although Wells Fargo and FSA manage a similarly sized loan portfolio, Wells Fargo has over 200,000 employees while FSA had fewer than 1,500.
* * *
20 Stacy Cowley, Government Will Cancel $1.5 Billion in Loans for Westwood College Students, N.Y. Times (Aug. 30, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/business/debt-relief-for-profitwestwood-college.html.
21 Joint Status Report, Hemphill v. McMahon, No. 1:22-cv-01391-BAH (D.D.C. Apr. 13, 2026), ECF No. 54.
22 Rebecca Carballo, 'Profoundly cruel': Errors upend student loan forgiveness program, Politico (Aug. 16, 2026), https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/16/path-student-loan-forgivenesslonger-01038742; Adam S. Minsky, Student Loan Forgiveness Credit Gets Erased Overnight, Prompting Panic, Forbes (Aug. 7, 2026), https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2026/08/07/student-loan-forgiveness-credit-getserased-overnight-prompting-panic/.
23 Exec. Order No. 14,242, Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities, 90 Fed. Reg. 13,679 (Mar. 25, 2025).
* * *
Instead of equipping the government to run the $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio with resources more closely resembling Wells Fargo, the Trump Administration made drastic cuts to FSA, which went from 1,446 employees when Trump took office in January 2025 to only 861 employees two months later.24
The Trump Administration's cuts went beyond gutting the FSA offices that oversee school participation and loan servicing oversight. They also gutted the Student Loan Ombudsman's office, which is now buried under a backlog of more than 27,000 unresolved borrower complaints while the Department moves to replace its call centers with AI chatbots.25
The student loan system is in chaos, and students and families are paying the price.
Congress has the authority, and the responsibility, to demand answers and accountability.
Student Defense stands ready to work with this Committee toward those ends, and I thank you again for the opportunity to testify today.
* * *
24 U.S. Dep't of Educ., Off. of Inspector Gen., supra note 18, at 16.
25 Letter from Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator, to Linda McMahon, U.S. Sec'y of Educ. (Aug. 7, 2025), https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/ed-secretary-mcmahon-revealsmassive-backlog-of-unresolved-complaints-from-students-and-borrowers-warren-presses-formore-answers-on-trumps-attacks-on-public-education; Letter from Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator, Charles E. Schumer, U.S. Senator & Mazie K. Hirono, U.S. Senator, to Linda McMahon, Sec'y, U.S. Dep't of Educ. (April 1, 2025), https://www.warren.senate.gov/wpcontent/uploads/media/doc/letter_to_ed_re_doge_ai_chatbot.pdf.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2026.09.14_student_defense_written_testimony.pdf
* * *
Chairman Owens, Ranking Member Adams, and Members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to testify today and discuss the critical issues facing our nation's students.
My name is Aaron Ament, and I am the President of the National ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development released the following written testimony by Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Who Gets the Scholarship? How the Global Shift in College Sports Affects Americans": * * * Chairman Owens, Ranking Member Adams, and Members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to testify today and discuss the critical issues facing our nation's students. My name is Aaron Ament, and I am the President of the NationalStudent Legal Defense Network ("Student Defense"), a non-partisan, non-profit organization that works to advance students' rights to educational opportunity and to ensure that higher education provides a launching point for economic mobility.
I am here today to discuss the many struggles facing tens of millions of student loan borrowers, and how the crisis is worsening during the Trump Administration.
Rising costs of college. Over the past three decades, the average tuition and fees at public four-year colleges have roughly doubled after adjusting for inflation, and tuition at private four-year colleges has climbed nearly as sharply (up about 74%).1 A major driver of that long-term increase at public universities has been state disinvestment. Particularly in the years following the 2008 recession, state legislatures cut funding for public colleges and universities, and institutions shifted more of the cost burden onto students through higher tuition.2 At the same time, the Pell Grant, relied on by over 7 million students in 2024-2025, has not grown in step with these increases.3
In the 1970s, the maximum Pell Grant covered more than three-quarters of the cost of attendance at a public four-year college, whereas today it covers only about a quarter of that cost--eroding one of the primary tools designed to keep college affordable.4
* * *
1 Jennifer Ma et al., Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025, College Bd. 12 (Nov. 2025), https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/Trends-in-College-Pricing-and-Student-Aid-2025final_1.pdf.
2 Kelsey Kunkle & Rachel Burns, State Higher Education Finance: FY 2024, State Higher Educ. Exec. Officers Ass'n (2025), at 8-12, https://shef.sheeo.org/wpcontent/uploads/2025/05/SHEEO_SHEF_FY24_Report.pdf.
3 Ma et al., supra note 1, at 3.
4 Nat'l Ass'n of Student Fin. Aid Adm'rs, Issue Brief: Doubling the Maximum Pell Grant (July 31, 2026), https://www.nasfaa.org/issue_brief_double_pell; Cassandria Dortch, Cong. Rsch. Serv., R45418, Federal Pell Grant Program of the Higher Education Act: Primer (Nov. 6, 2024), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45418.
* * *
In the for-profit college sector, attendance costs at four-year programs in the 2024-2025 school year were more than double in-state tuition at public institutions, as investors and private equity backers pressured schools to increase profit margins, with little incentive to keep tuition low.5
Students are taking on debt they cannot afford to repay. As college tuition rises, students and families are forced to borrow at extremely high rates. Students and parents borrowed $102.6 billion (federal + nonfederal) in 2024-2025 alone, of which $88.7 billion was federal loans.6 Too often, these loans are used to attend programs with low graduation rates and poor outcomes.
Previous administrations attempted to implement Gainful Employment regulations aimed at ensuring that for-profit and career-oriented programs would only be eligible to participate in the Title IV federal student loan program if their graduates earned enough on average to repay their debts. However, the Trump Administration chose not to implement any version of the previous Gainful Employment rules, and H.R. 1 established a new accountability framework with an extremely low baseline, merely ensuring college graduates earn more than the average high school graduate or GED holder in their area.7 Student loan defaults are a growing problem. The post-pandemic return to repayment has led approximately 9 million borrowers--with about $220 billion in federal student loans--into default, representing around 13% of the total $1.64 trillion federally managed portfolio as of March 2026./8 Combined with borrowers who are seriously delinquent, that number could approach 13 million by the end of the year.9 Yet the Trump Administration-- at a time when affordability is more critical than ever--is poised to restart involuntary collections, including the seizure of tax refunds and social security benefits, and the garnishment of wages.10 These aggressive collection techniques on people who already cannot afford their student loan payments will only deepen financial hardship across the country, and will be felt disproportionately by borrowers of color and their families.11
* * *
5 Nat'l Ctr. for Educ. Stat., U.S. Dep't of Educ., Table 10: Average Costs Associated with Attendance for Full-Time, First-Time Degree/Certificate-Seeking Undergraduates at Title IV Institutions Operating on an Academic Year Calendar, and Percentage Change, by Level of Institution, Type of Cost, Control of Institution, Residency, and Student Housing: United States, Academic Years 2022- 23 and 2024-25, Integrated Postsecondary Educ. Data Sys. (IPEDS), Winter 2024-25 (Provisional Data), https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/search/viewtable?tableId=36538.
6 Ma et al., supra note 1 at 7.
7 See 20 U.S.C. Sec. 1087d(c)(2)-(3) (2025); 91 Fed. Reg. 40136 (July 1, 2026).
8 Fed. Student Aid, U.S. Dep't of Educ., GENERAL-26-38, Federal Student Aid Posts Updated Reports to FSA Data Center (June 23, 2026), https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledgecenter/library/electronic-announcements/2026-06-23/federal-student-aid-posts-updated-reportsfsa-data-center.
9 Suzanne Blake, Student Loan Update: Nearly 13 Million at Risk of Default This Year, Newsweek (July 7, 2026), https://www.newsweek.com/student-loan-update-nearly-13-million-at-risk-ofdefault-this-year-12168756.
10 Robert Farrington, Wage Garnishment On Defaulted Student Loans Restarts This Fall, The College Investor (May 28, 2026), https://thecollegeinvestor.com/80311/wage-garnishment-on-defaulted student-loans-restarts-this-fall/; see also Press Release, U.S. Dep't of Educ., U.S. Department of Education Delays Involuntary Collections Amid Ongoing Student Loan Repayment Improvements (Jan. 16, 2026), https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-educationdelays-involuntary-collections-amid-ongoing-student-loan-repayment-improvements (explaining, as of January 2026, that involuntary collections would be paused in order to implement H.R. 1 and give defaulted borrowers time to evaluate repayment options).
* * *
Default and delinquency are especially prevalent for students who attend for-profit colleges. According to the Federal Reserve, 35% of borrowers with outstanding student loans who attended for-profit institutions were behind on their payments, compared to 16% of those who attended public institutions and 15% who attended private not-for-profit institutions.12 Moreover, while for-profit schools enroll just 8% of all postsecondary students, they accounted for 30% of all federal student loan defaults prior to the COVID-19 pandemic-related payment pause.13
Repayment chaos and confusion. The combination of the massive Reduction in Force (RIF) at the Department of Education and the botched implementation of H.R. 1 has created chaos in the student loan system. Around 7 million student loan borrowers are about to be kicked off the SAVE Plan; unless they select a new plan by September 29, 2026, they will be automatically enrolled in the most expensive option available.14 H.R. 1's elimination of the SAVE plan and its replacement with new, less generous repayment plans will disproportionately harm borrowers of color, who are more likely than other borrowers to lose the $0 monthly payments and income protections available under prior repayment plans.15 And due to massive cuts at the Department, borrowers have been left largely on their own to figure out how to enroll in a new repayment plan that is most beneficial to them. Federal watchdogs found that the Department's reduced staffing has left it unable to properly oversee loan servicers, with four of five servicers not meeting the Department's standards for keeping accurate records.16 And the GAO recently published findings that Federal Student Aid (FSA) stopped assessing servicers on accuracy and call quality in February 2025, citing the staff reduction as the reason for the change.17
* * *
11 See, e.g., Ama Takyi-Laryea, Phillip Oliff & Regan Fitzgerald, The Student Loan Default Divide: Racial Inequities Play a Role, The Pew Charitable Trusts (Dec. 10, 2024, updated Apr. 4, 2025), https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2024/12/the-student-loan-default-divideracial-inequities-play-a-role.
12 Bd. of Governors of the Fed. Reserve Sys., Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2024: Higher Education and Student Loans (May 2025), https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in2024-higher-education-and-student-loans.htm.
13 Letter from Richard J. Durbin, U.S. Senator, to Illinois School Counselors (Apr. 17, 2026), https://www.durbin.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_forprofit_college_warning_letter_counselor_2026_final.pdf.
14 Robert Farrington, SAVE Plan Borrowers Now Getting 90-Day Notices: What They Say And What To Do, The College Investor (July 1, 2026), https://thecollegeinvestor.com/83642/save-plan-borrowersnow-getting-90-day-notices/.
15 Victoria Jackson, Raising the Cost of Borrowing, Reducing Access: How the One Big Beautiful Bill Reshapes Financial Aid and Repayment, The Education Trust (Nov. 2025), https://edtrust.org/wpcontent/uploads/2025/11/OBBBA-Student-Loan-Repayment.pdf. (explaining how H.R. 1 "will do lasting harm to the American higher education system and will hit low- and middle-income students and students of color the hardest"); Junlei Chen & Jesus Villero, Biden's SAVE Plan - Distributional Impact Analysis, PENN WHARTON BUDGET MODEL (Sept. 25, 2024), https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/p/2024-09-25-bidens-save-plan-distributional-impactanalysis/ (finding that approximately 43% of the total benefits from the now-eliminated SAVE plan accrued to Black borrowers with outstanding debt, despite being a much smaller share of the overall borrower population). See generally Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau, Insights from the 2023- 2024 Student Loan Borrower Survey 3 (Nov. 13, 2024), https://www.consumerfinance.gov/dataresearch/research-reports/insights-from-the-2023-2024-student-loan-borrowersurvey/https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_Insights-from-the-2023-2024Student-Loan-Borrower-Survey_Report.pdf ("63 percent of borrowers reported ever having difficulty making their student loan payments and 37 percent have missed at least one payment, with significantly higher rates for Black and Hispanic borrowers, Pell Grant recipients, and for those with less than a four-year degree.").
* * *
Lack of school oversight and relief for defrauded students. According to the OIG, 32 of the 72 suboffices at FSA were left with no employees following the RIF. This included several offices with nobody left to perform their statutorily required functions, such as overseeing loan guaranty agencies and servicers participating in the Title IV Federal Student Loan Program, and the office tasked with program eligibility, certification, and financial analysis of schools participating in Title IV.18 This leaves virtually no federal oversight of colleges that are misleading and defrauding student loan borrowers.19
At the same time, the Department has failed to provide debt relief to thousands of student loan borrowers who were defrauded by predatory colleges, many of whom were promised loan discharges years ago but are still waiting for relief, their lives on hold and negative impacts on their credit reports continuing.
* * *
16 U.S. Gov't Accountability Off, GAO-26-108534, Federal Student Loans: Education Needs to Address Gaps in Servicer Oversight 7 (March 5, 2026), https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26108534; Adam Minsky, Student Loan Giant Accused Of 'Stunning Error' As Senators Open Investigation, Forbes (Aug. 27, 2026), https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2026/08/27/student-loan-giant-accused-of-stunningerror-as-senators-open-investigation/.
17 U.S. Gov't Accountability Off., supra note 16.
18 U.S. Dep't of Educ., Off. of Inspector Gen., Rep. No. ED-OIG/F25DC0245, Review of U.S. Department of Education Changes in Staffing and Operations 16-17 (June 22, 2026), https://oig.ed.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2026-06/FY26%20F25DC0245%20%286.22.26%29v100_508_SECURED.pdf.
19 See, e.g., Declaration of Chris Miller, NAACP v. United States, No. 8:25-cv-00965-JRR (D. Md. July 1, 2025), ECF No. 61-88.
* * *
Similarly, in August 2022 the Department announced that it had approved borrower-defense relief for approximately 79,000 borrowers who attended Westwood College, based on widespread misconduct by the school, including substantial misrepresentations to students about the value of Westwood programs and the employment outcomes they could expect.20 Four years later, approximately 12,000 of these borrowers still have not received the promised relief.21 We stand ready to work with this Committee to ensure that longstanding, promised relief is finally delivered to these borrowers.
Administrative chaos with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. Millions of teachers, firefighters, nurses, and members of our military are facing new barriers caused by the chaos at FSA as they pursue Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). This includes what appear to be many thousands of people who--over the last month--were stunned to discover qualifying PSLF payments wiped from their accounts with no explanation.22
Borrowers in contact with Student Defense have since started to receive a "Qualifying Payment Reduction Notice" indicating that past PSLF credits are being permanently changed to "non-qualifying." The Department has not explained what it is doing, leading to widespread panic and confusion. Is the Department permanently deleting previously awarded PSLF credits? If so, what is the basis for these deletions, how are these determinations being made, is the process ongoing, and how many borrowers are impacted? Congress should demand answers.
* * *
Each of these problems is made worse by the turmoil and disorder at what remains of the Department of Education and FSA. On March 20, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order directing Secretary McMahon to close the Department.23 The Order itself acknowledged that FSA was grossly understaffed, noting that although Wells Fargo and FSA manage a similarly sized loan portfolio, Wells Fargo has over 200,000 employees while FSA had fewer than 1,500.
* * *
20 Stacy Cowley, Government Will Cancel $1.5 Billion in Loans for Westwood College Students, N.Y. Times (Aug. 30, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/business/debt-relief-for-profitwestwood-college.html.
21 Joint Status Report, Hemphill v. McMahon, No. 1:22-cv-01391-BAH (D.D.C. Apr. 13, 2026), ECF No. 54.
22 Rebecca Carballo, 'Profoundly cruel': Errors upend student loan forgiveness program, Politico (Aug. 16, 2026), https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/16/path-student-loan-forgivenesslonger-01038742; Adam S. Minsky, Student Loan Forgiveness Credit Gets Erased Overnight, Prompting Panic, Forbes (Aug. 7, 2026), https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2026/08/07/student-loan-forgiveness-credit-getserased-overnight-prompting-panic/.
23 Exec. Order No. 14,242, Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities, 90 Fed. Reg. 13,679 (Mar. 25, 2025).
* * *
Instead of equipping the government to run the $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio with resources more closely resembling Wells Fargo, the Trump Administration made drastic cuts to FSA, which went from 1,446 employees when Trump took office in January 2025 to only 861 employees two months later.24
The Trump Administration's cuts went beyond gutting the FSA offices that oversee school participation and loan servicing oversight. They also gutted the Student Loan Ombudsman's office, which is now buried under a backlog of more than 27,000 unresolved borrower complaints while the Department moves to replace its call centers with AI chatbots.25
The student loan system is in chaos, and students and families are paying the price.
Congress has the authority, and the responsibility, to demand answers and accountability.
Student Defense stands ready to work with this Committee toward those ends, and I thank you again for the opportunity to testify today.
* * *
24 U.S. Dep't of Educ., Off. of Inspector Gen., supra note 18, at 16.
25 Letter from Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator, to Linda McMahon, U.S. Sec'y of Educ. (Aug. 7, 2025), https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/ed-secretary-mcmahon-revealsmassive-backlog-of-unresolved-complaints-from-students-and-borrowers-warren-presses-formore-answers-on-trumps-attacks-on-public-education; Letter from Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator, Charles E. Schumer, U.S. Senator & Mazie K. Hirono, U.S. Senator, to Linda McMahon, Sec'y, U.S. Dep't of Educ. (April 1, 2025), https://www.warren.senate.gov/wpcontent/uploads/media/doc/letter_to_ed_re_doge_ai_chatbot.pdf.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2026.09.14_student_defense_written_testimony.pdf
House Education & Workforce Subcommittee Chairman Allen Issues Opening Statement at Hearing on Union Politics
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- Rep. Rick Allen, R-Georgia, chairman of the House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions released the following opening statement from a Sept. 15, 2026, hearing entitled "Out of Touch: When Union Politics Leave Workers Behind":
* * *
We are here today to examine whether union leaders are truly representing the workers who pay their dues or advancing political agendas that many rank-and-file members do not share. This is a simple question with serious consequences for America's workers.
We will hear from today's witnesses whether ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- Rep. Rick Allen, R-Georgia, chairman of the House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions released the following opening statement from a Sept. 15, 2026, hearing entitled "Out of Touch: When Union Politics Leave Workers Behind": * * * We are here today to examine whether union leaders are truly representing the workers who pay their dues or advancing political agendas that many rank-and-file members do not share. This is a simple question with serious consequences for America's workers. We will hear from today's witnesses whetherworkers are getting the transparency and accountability they deserve and about the growing disparity between many members' political views and the political activity of union leadership.
Major unions overwhelmingly back Democrat candidates and progressive causes, while many union households voted for President Trump. At the same time, these unions have called for President Trump's impeachment and organized opposition to administration policies ranging from border security to foreign policy.
Unions endorse candidates who belong to the Democratic Socialists of America, an organization that calls for abolishing the Senate and the Supreme Court, defunding the police, and establishing universal rent control. While workers have a constitutional right to hold these views, many do not. The question is whether union leaders are using members' money to advance political positions their members may not support. In fact, I believe many workers would be shocked to know where their union dues are really going.
Union dues fund more than politics. According to unions' own LM-2 filings, dues also pay for union leaders' trips to resorts, sporting events, golf courses, and theme parks to the tune of millions of dollars each year. Many union headquarters staff and officers receive six-figure salaries, with some leaders earning as much as five times the average wages of the workers they represent.
The information we have about union spending is based on their own filings with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Labor. This is how we know that union PACs spend more than 90 percent of their political expenditures on Democrat politicians and causes.
Workers who choose to be represented by unions should have representatives who understand their membership and are willing to put aside their personal political preferences when speaking on behalf of those workers. Based on the written testimony from our witnesses, many American workers are not getting the union representation they want. We must hold these union leaders accountable for forgetting who they represent--not their own interests, but the interests of millions of American workers.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/opening_statement_for_rep_allen_9.15.pdf
* * *
We are here today to examine whether union leaders are truly representing the workers who pay their dues or advancing political agendas that many rank-and-file members do not share. This is a simple question with serious consequences for America's workers.
We will hear from today's witnesses whether ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- Rep. Rick Allen, R-Georgia, chairman of the House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions released the following opening statement from a Sept. 15, 2026, hearing entitled "Out of Touch: When Union Politics Leave Workers Behind": * * * We are here today to examine whether union leaders are truly representing the workers who pay their dues or advancing political agendas that many rank-and-file members do not share. This is a simple question with serious consequences for America's workers. We will hear from today's witnesses whetherworkers are getting the transparency and accountability they deserve and about the growing disparity between many members' political views and the political activity of union leadership.
Major unions overwhelmingly back Democrat candidates and progressive causes, while many union households voted for President Trump. At the same time, these unions have called for President Trump's impeachment and organized opposition to administration policies ranging from border security to foreign policy.
Unions endorse candidates who belong to the Democratic Socialists of America, an organization that calls for abolishing the Senate and the Supreme Court, defunding the police, and establishing universal rent control. While workers have a constitutional right to hold these views, many do not. The question is whether union leaders are using members' money to advance political positions their members may not support. In fact, I believe many workers would be shocked to know where their union dues are really going.
Union dues fund more than politics. According to unions' own LM-2 filings, dues also pay for union leaders' trips to resorts, sporting events, golf courses, and theme parks to the tune of millions of dollars each year. Many union headquarters staff and officers receive six-figure salaries, with some leaders earning as much as five times the average wages of the workers they represent.
The information we have about union spending is based on their own filings with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Labor. This is how we know that union PACs spend more than 90 percent of their political expenditures on Democrat politicians and causes.
Workers who choose to be represented by unions should have representatives who understand their membership and are willing to put aside their personal political preferences when speaking on behalf of those workers. Based on the written testimony from our witnesses, many American workers are not getting the union representation they want. We must hold these union leaders accountable for forgetting who they represent--not their own interests, but the interests of millions of American workers.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/opening_statement_for_rep_allen_9.15.pdf
George Washington University Associate Professor Dean Testifies Before House Education & Workforce Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions released the following written testimony by Adam Dean, associate professor of political science at George Washington University, from a Sept. 15, 2026, hearing entitled "Out of Touch: When Union Politics Leave Workers Behind":
* * *
Thank you, Subcommittee Chair Allen, Subcommittee Ranking Member DeSaulnier, and Members of the Subcommittee. I am honored to join you today to share some of my research on labor unions. I am an associate professor in the Department of Political Science ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions released the following written testimony by Adam Dean, associate professor of political science at George Washington University, from a Sept. 15, 2026, hearing entitled "Out of Touch: When Union Politics Leave Workers Behind": * * * Thank you, Subcommittee Chair Allen, Subcommittee Ranking Member DeSaulnier, and Members of the Subcommittee. I am honored to join you today to share some of my research on labor unions. I am an associate professor in the Department of Political Scienceat George Washington University, where I have taught since 2017. I have researched labor unions for fifteen years and have published two peer-reviewed books and fifteen academic articles.1 Today, I hope to explain how labor unions not only provide benefits for the workers that they represent, but also protect the broader working class, our nation's public health, and our democracy.
I would like to start small with the benefits of unions for union members, and then gradually zoom out to discuss how unions provide broader benefits for society at large.
First, labor unions make sure that the workers they represent share in the benefits of economic growth. Although economic theory predicts that workers' wages will automatically rise with productivity, in the real world we see wage growth lagging far behind productivity growth./2 As Adam Smith explained, this happens because workers have far less bargaining power than their employers, who can hold out in wage negotiations much longer than workers can./3 My research shows that unions can help solve this problem. I examined workers in 28 industries across 117 countries and found that wages are more likely to rise along with productivity when workers have strong unions and well-protected labor rights./4 Related research finds that labor rights and unions are associated with lower levels of income inequality in countries around the world, including here in the United States./5
Second, labor unions often fight for policies that protect non-union workers, too. One recent example comes from California, where the United Farm Workers helped to win the nation's first state-level outdoor heat standard./6 California's law grants outdoor workers the rights to water, rest, and shade on hot days. My research compared deaths in California to neighboring states without heat standards and found that California's law was associated with a 33-51% reduction in heat-related deaths among outdoor workers./7 These benefits extend to all outdoor workers in California, not just the 2% of agricultural workers represented by the United Farm Workers./8 The AFL-CIO and unions such as AFSCME, United Steelworkers, and the Teamsters are currently fighting for the extension of such heat protections across the United States, which my research suggests would save between 1,000 and 1,500 lives each year./9 Moreover, my research finds that these simple, life-saving heat protections were inexpensive and had no negative economic impact on California's agriculture and construction industries./10
* * *
1 Dean, A. 2016. From Conflict to Coalition: Profit-Sharing Institutions and the Political Economy of Trade. Cambridge University Press; Dean, A. 2022. Opening Up By Cracking Down: Labor Repression and Trade Liberalization in Democratic Developing Countries. Cambridge University Press.
2 Mishel, L. and Bivens, J., 2021. Identifying the policy levers generating wage suppression and wage inequality. Economic Policy Institute, May 13.
3 Smith, A. 1776/2012. The Wealth of Nations. Wordsworth Editions. Book I, Chapter 8.
4 Dean, A., 2015. Power over profits: The political economy of workers and wages. Politics & Society, 43(3), pp.333-360.
5 Kerrissey, J., 2015. Collective labor rights and income inequality. American Sociological Review, 80(3), pp.626653; Farber, H.S., Herbst, D., Kuziemko, I. and Naidu, S., 2021. Unions and inequality over the twentieth century: New evidence from survey data. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 136(3), pp.1325-1385.
6 Salladay, R. and Vogel, N. 2005. Gov. Orders Shade, Water for Workers Sickened by Heat, Los Angeles Times, August 3.
7 Dean, A. and McCallum, J.K., 2025. California's Heat Standard And Heat-Related Deaths Among Outdoor Workers. Health Affairs, 44(12), pp.1490-1496.
8 Lee, K. and Michelena, L. 2023. Can the United Farm Workers Rise Again? New York Times, March 11.
* * *
Third, labor unions often fight for policies that improve public health for everyone. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, unionized nursing homes were safer places for elderly residents as well as workers. My research found that unionized nursing homes in New York had 30% lower mortality rates during the first months of the pandemic./11 Why? Because unions fought for personal protective equipment and infection control policies that protected workers and lowered transmission between residents and nursing home workers; around the United
States, unionized nursing homes had 7% lower worker infection rates./12 As unionized healthcare workers often said during the pandemic - "if we get sick, you get sick."/13
Last, I'd like to share some results from a new book I am writing about today's crises of economic inequality and democratic erosion./14 I've studied every democratic transition over the past 75 years to better understand why some democracies have survived longer than others. What I found is that labor unions and the protection of labor rights are crucial. In short, there are two common trajectories that democracies have followed. In some cases, labor unions helped to lead their country's original struggle for democracy. When they did so, the transition to democracy was quickly followed by improved labor rights in new constitutions and legislation. Those labor rights led to stronger unions, higher levels of income equality, and a lower probability of a democratic collapse back into authoritarianism. Where unions did not help to lead the struggle for democracy - often because repression left them too weak to do so - the transition to democracy completely failed to increase labor rights. Continuing the labor repression from the past, these countries went on to have weaker unions, higher levels of income inequality, and a much higher chance of democratic collapse. In short, labor rights and strong labor unions are at the heart of economic equality and sustainable democracy around the world.
Given the broad benefits that labor unions provide, it is no surprise that 71% of Americans now approve of labor unions./15 A recent poll found that support for unions is even higher among Americans younger than 30 years old - 88% of whom view unions favorably./16 And many workers who are not currently union members would like to join a union; a 2023 survey found that 43% of employed, nonunion workers would vote to join a union if given the opportunity./17 Despite such high levels of public support for unions, only 6% of American workers in the private sector are currently members of a union./18 What explains this large gap? According to Columbia University law professor Kate Andrias, the problem is that American labor law is failing to protect workers' right to join a union: "weak enforcement mechanisms, slight penalties, and lengthy delays - all of which are routinely exploited by employers resisting unionization fail to protect workers' ability to organize and bargain collectively with their employers."/19 Legislation such as the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would increase penalties for employers that violate labor law and thereby increase the ability of workers to organize and join unions./20
* * *
9 Dean, A. and McCallum, J.K. 2026. Extreme Heat is Killing America's Workers. Groundwork Collaborative.
10 Dean, A. and McCallum, J.K. 2026. California's Heat Standard Did Not Harm Construction and Agriculture. Center for Labor and a Just Economy, working paper.
11 Dean, A., Venkataramani, A. and Kimmel, S.D., 2020. Mortality rates from COVID-19 are lower in unionized nursing homes. Health Affairs, 39(11), pp.1993-2001.
12 Dean, A., McCallum, J.K., Kimmel, S.D. and Venkataramani, A.S., 2022. Resident Mortality And Worker Infection Rates From COVID-19 Lower In Union Than Nonunion US Nursing Homes, 2020-21. Health Affairs, 41(5), pp.751-759.
13 Goulding S.C., 2020. Caregivers demand PPE and better pay in protest in Kindred Hospital Westminster. Orange County Register, July 22, 2020.
14 Dean, A. No Struggle, No Progress: Labor's Fight for Political and Economic Democracy. Manuscript in progress.
15 Saad, L. 2026. Record-High 47% Want Unions to Have More Influence. Gallup News. September 1, 2026.
16 The State of Labor Unions Polling, GBAO. August 25, 2023.
* * *
Thank you for the opportunity to share my expertise with the subcommittee. I'll be happy to answer any questions.
* * *
17 Ahlquist, J., Grumbach, J. and Kochan, T., 2024. The rise of the union curious. Economic Policy Institute.
18 Bauer, L. and Cole, T. 2026. Six facts about union density in the United States. Brookings.
19 Andrias, K., 2016. The new labor law. Yale LJ, 126, p.2.
20 Levin, A. and Puckett, C., 2022. Labor law reform at a critical juncture: The case for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. Harv. J. on Legis., 59, p.1.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/dean_testimony.pdf
* * *
Thank you, Subcommittee Chair Allen, Subcommittee Ranking Member DeSaulnier, and Members of the Subcommittee. I am honored to join you today to share some of my research on labor unions. I am an associate professor in the Department of Political Science ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions released the following written testimony by Adam Dean, associate professor of political science at George Washington University, from a Sept. 15, 2026, hearing entitled "Out of Touch: When Union Politics Leave Workers Behind": * * * Thank you, Subcommittee Chair Allen, Subcommittee Ranking Member DeSaulnier, and Members of the Subcommittee. I am honored to join you today to share some of my research on labor unions. I am an associate professor in the Department of Political Scienceat George Washington University, where I have taught since 2017. I have researched labor unions for fifteen years and have published two peer-reviewed books and fifteen academic articles.1 Today, I hope to explain how labor unions not only provide benefits for the workers that they represent, but also protect the broader working class, our nation's public health, and our democracy.
I would like to start small with the benefits of unions for union members, and then gradually zoom out to discuss how unions provide broader benefits for society at large.
First, labor unions make sure that the workers they represent share in the benefits of economic growth. Although economic theory predicts that workers' wages will automatically rise with productivity, in the real world we see wage growth lagging far behind productivity growth./2 As Adam Smith explained, this happens because workers have far less bargaining power than their employers, who can hold out in wage negotiations much longer than workers can./3 My research shows that unions can help solve this problem. I examined workers in 28 industries across 117 countries and found that wages are more likely to rise along with productivity when workers have strong unions and well-protected labor rights./4 Related research finds that labor rights and unions are associated with lower levels of income inequality in countries around the world, including here in the United States./5
Second, labor unions often fight for policies that protect non-union workers, too. One recent example comes from California, where the United Farm Workers helped to win the nation's first state-level outdoor heat standard./6 California's law grants outdoor workers the rights to water, rest, and shade on hot days. My research compared deaths in California to neighboring states without heat standards and found that California's law was associated with a 33-51% reduction in heat-related deaths among outdoor workers./7 These benefits extend to all outdoor workers in California, not just the 2% of agricultural workers represented by the United Farm Workers./8 The AFL-CIO and unions such as AFSCME, United Steelworkers, and the Teamsters are currently fighting for the extension of such heat protections across the United States, which my research suggests would save between 1,000 and 1,500 lives each year./9 Moreover, my research finds that these simple, life-saving heat protections were inexpensive and had no negative economic impact on California's agriculture and construction industries./10
* * *
1 Dean, A. 2016. From Conflict to Coalition: Profit-Sharing Institutions and the Political Economy of Trade. Cambridge University Press; Dean, A. 2022. Opening Up By Cracking Down: Labor Repression and Trade Liberalization in Democratic Developing Countries. Cambridge University Press.
2 Mishel, L. and Bivens, J., 2021. Identifying the policy levers generating wage suppression and wage inequality. Economic Policy Institute, May 13.
3 Smith, A. 1776/2012. The Wealth of Nations. Wordsworth Editions. Book I, Chapter 8.
4 Dean, A., 2015. Power over profits: The political economy of workers and wages. Politics & Society, 43(3), pp.333-360.
5 Kerrissey, J., 2015. Collective labor rights and income inequality. American Sociological Review, 80(3), pp.626653; Farber, H.S., Herbst, D., Kuziemko, I. and Naidu, S., 2021. Unions and inequality over the twentieth century: New evidence from survey data. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 136(3), pp.1325-1385.
6 Salladay, R. and Vogel, N. 2005. Gov. Orders Shade, Water for Workers Sickened by Heat, Los Angeles Times, August 3.
7 Dean, A. and McCallum, J.K., 2025. California's Heat Standard And Heat-Related Deaths Among Outdoor Workers. Health Affairs, 44(12), pp.1490-1496.
8 Lee, K. and Michelena, L. 2023. Can the United Farm Workers Rise Again? New York Times, March 11.
* * *
Third, labor unions often fight for policies that improve public health for everyone. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, unionized nursing homes were safer places for elderly residents as well as workers. My research found that unionized nursing homes in New York had 30% lower mortality rates during the first months of the pandemic./11 Why? Because unions fought for personal protective equipment and infection control policies that protected workers and lowered transmission between residents and nursing home workers; around the United
States, unionized nursing homes had 7% lower worker infection rates./12 As unionized healthcare workers often said during the pandemic - "if we get sick, you get sick."/13
Last, I'd like to share some results from a new book I am writing about today's crises of economic inequality and democratic erosion./14 I've studied every democratic transition over the past 75 years to better understand why some democracies have survived longer than others. What I found is that labor unions and the protection of labor rights are crucial. In short, there are two common trajectories that democracies have followed. In some cases, labor unions helped to lead their country's original struggle for democracy. When they did so, the transition to democracy was quickly followed by improved labor rights in new constitutions and legislation. Those labor rights led to stronger unions, higher levels of income equality, and a lower probability of a democratic collapse back into authoritarianism. Where unions did not help to lead the struggle for democracy - often because repression left them too weak to do so - the transition to democracy completely failed to increase labor rights. Continuing the labor repression from the past, these countries went on to have weaker unions, higher levels of income inequality, and a much higher chance of democratic collapse. In short, labor rights and strong labor unions are at the heart of economic equality and sustainable democracy around the world.
Given the broad benefits that labor unions provide, it is no surprise that 71% of Americans now approve of labor unions./15 A recent poll found that support for unions is even higher among Americans younger than 30 years old - 88% of whom view unions favorably./16 And many workers who are not currently union members would like to join a union; a 2023 survey found that 43% of employed, nonunion workers would vote to join a union if given the opportunity./17 Despite such high levels of public support for unions, only 6% of American workers in the private sector are currently members of a union./18 What explains this large gap? According to Columbia University law professor Kate Andrias, the problem is that American labor law is failing to protect workers' right to join a union: "weak enforcement mechanisms, slight penalties, and lengthy delays - all of which are routinely exploited by employers resisting unionization fail to protect workers' ability to organize and bargain collectively with their employers."/19 Legislation such as the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would increase penalties for employers that violate labor law and thereby increase the ability of workers to organize and join unions./20
* * *
9 Dean, A. and McCallum, J.K. 2026. Extreme Heat is Killing America's Workers. Groundwork Collaborative.
10 Dean, A. and McCallum, J.K. 2026. California's Heat Standard Did Not Harm Construction and Agriculture. Center for Labor and a Just Economy, working paper.
11 Dean, A., Venkataramani, A. and Kimmel, S.D., 2020. Mortality rates from COVID-19 are lower in unionized nursing homes. Health Affairs, 39(11), pp.1993-2001.
12 Dean, A., McCallum, J.K., Kimmel, S.D. and Venkataramani, A.S., 2022. Resident Mortality And Worker Infection Rates From COVID-19 Lower In Union Than Nonunion US Nursing Homes, 2020-21. Health Affairs, 41(5), pp.751-759.
13 Goulding S.C., 2020. Caregivers demand PPE and better pay in protest in Kindred Hospital Westminster. Orange County Register, July 22, 2020.
14 Dean, A. No Struggle, No Progress: Labor's Fight for Political and Economic Democracy. Manuscript in progress.
15 Saad, L. 2026. Record-High 47% Want Unions to Have More Influence. Gallup News. September 1, 2026.
16 The State of Labor Unions Polling, GBAO. August 25, 2023.
* * *
Thank you for the opportunity to share my expertise with the subcommittee. I'll be happy to answer any questions.
* * *
17 Ahlquist, J., Grumbach, J. and Kochan, T., 2024. The rise of the union curious. Economic Policy Institute.
18 Bauer, L. and Cole, T. 2026. Six facts about union density in the United States. Brookings.
19 Andrias, K., 2016. The new labor law. Yale LJ, 126, p.2.
20 Levin, A. and Puckett, C., 2022. Labor law reform at a critical juncture: The case for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. Harv. J. on Legis., 59, p.1.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/dean_testimony.pdf
Congressional Research Service Analyst Fiorentino Testifies Before House Appropriations Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 -- The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government released the following testimony by Dominick A. Fiorentino, analyst in government organization and management for the Congressional Research Service, from a Sept. 15, 2026, oversight hearing on the Economy Act:
* * *
Chairman Joyce, Ranking Member Hoyer, Members of the Committee. My name is Dominick Fiorentino, and I am an Analyst in Government Organization and Management for the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Thank you on behalf of CRS for this opportunity to discuss the Economy ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 -- The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government released the following testimony by Dominick A. Fiorentino, analyst in government organization and management for the Congressional Research Service, from a Sept. 15, 2026, oversight hearing on the Economy Act: * * * Chairman Joyce, Ranking Member Hoyer, Members of the Committee. My name is Dominick Fiorentino, and I am an Analyst in Government Organization and Management for the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Thank you on behalf of CRS for this opportunity to discuss the EconomyAct.
As requested, this statement provides an overview of the Economy Act, including its legislative history, conditions on its use, current documentation and reporting requirements, and potential issues for congressional consideration.
The Economy Act of 1932, as amended, authorizes federal agencies (the requesting agency) to place an order for goods or services provided directly from other agencies (the servicing agency) or use the contracts or contracting operations of other agencies. The Economy Act applies in certain contexts when there is no other more specific statutory authority available to the servicing agency to provide interagency work or goods,1 such as the General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) or Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) programs,2 information technology government-wide acquisition contracts (GWACs),3 or statutorily authorized revolving funds.4 Transactions subject to the Economy Act are types of expenditure transfers "between appropriation and fund accounts, which represent payments, repayments, or receipts for goods or services furnished or to be furnished."5
Legislative History of the Economy Act
Prior to 1932, there was no government-wide statutory authority for federal agencies to provide work, services, or materials to other federal agencies on a reimbursable basis. A 1920 statute provided government-wide authority for requesting agencies to transfer appropriations in advance of performance "for direct expenditure" by the servicing agency.6 Additionally, there were some agency-specific statutes authorizing interagency transactions, such as a 1926 provision directing agencies ordering goods or services from the Navy to pay the actual cost of the order to the Navy's working fund.7
In 1930, legislation to provide more general interagency transaction authority was introduced8 and later reintroduced in 1932 as part of a larger legislative measure to reduce government spending during the Great Depression.9 This legislation from 1932 amended the 1920 statute with the intent that broader interagency authority might enable agencies to save money by relying on existing contracts between other agencies and private companies when procuring goods or services and generate economies of scale by reducing redundant activities of various government agencies.10
* * *
1 48 C.F.R. Sec.17.502-2(b).
2 40 U.S.C. Sec.501.
3 40 U.S.C. Sec.11302(e).
4 The Government Accountability Office (GAO) defines revolving fund as "a fund established by Congress to finance a cycle of businesslike operations through amounts received by the fund." See GAO, Glossary of Terms Used in the Federal Budget Process, GAO-05-734SP, September 2005, p. 88, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-05-734sp (hereinafter GAO, Glossary, GAO-05-734SP).
5 See GAO, Glossary, GAO-05-734SP, p. 95.
6 An Act Making appropriations for fortifications and other works of defense, for the armament thereof, and for the procurement of heavy ordnance for trial and service, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1921, and for other purposes (P.L. 66-214; 41 Stat. 613 (1920)).
7 An Act making appropriations for the Navy Department and the naval service for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1927, and for other purposes (P.L. 69-264; 44 Stat. 591, 605 (1926)).
8 A Bill Authorizing any executive department or independent establishment to do work for any other executive department or independent establishment and prescribing the method of payment therefore (H.R. 10199, 71st Cong., 2nd sess. (1930)).
9 A Bill To effect economies in the National Government (H.R. 11597, 72nd Cong., 1st sess. (1932)).
* * *
The House Select Committee on Economy reported favorably on the bill:
It frequently happens that one department may need certain services which it cannot advantageously perform for itself. Where such services can be furnished by another department at a less cost [sic] or more conveniently, the department needing such services should have the privilege of calling upon any department of the Government that is equipped to provide such services.11
The provision, under the title "Interdepartmental Work," became law on June 30, 1932, as Section 601 of the Legislative Branch Appropriation Act for 1933, which became popularly known as the "Economy Act."12
Subsequent Developments: 1942 to 2008
The Economy Act originally applied only to direct or unassisted acquisition,13 authorizing agency heads to use other agencies' existing contracts to obtain goods or services whenever doing so was more convenient and cheaper than contracting out. The act was amended in 1942 to allow other agencies to perform contracting services, also known as indirect or assisted acquisition,14 for certain defense-related agencies.15 A later amendment, in 1982, authorized any agency to perform contracting services for any other agency.16
In the early 1990s, alleged misuse of the Economy Act resulted in a report by the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs that investigated contract off-loading, defined by the report as when one agency (the "requesting agency") buys goods or services under a contract entered and administered by another agency (the "contracting agency").17
The report noted that the Economy Act authorizes such off-loads, and when used appropriately, an offload could result in government savings. However, in the subcommittee's view, inadequate guidance in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) on an off-load's appropriate use had resulted in agencies using off-loads "to avoid competition, to circumvent limitations on spending expiring funds, and to avoid audits and contract oversight."18 To limit these perceived abuses, the report recommended FAR changes to limit the use of off-loading.19
* * *
10 For example, see House debate, Congressional Record, vol. 75, part 8 (April 30, 1932), p. 9348.
11 U.S. Congress, House Select Committee on Economy, To Effect Economies in the National Government, report to accompany H.R. 11597, 72nd Cong., 1st sess., H.Rept. 72-1126, April 25, 1932, p. 15.
12 Legislative Branch Appropriation Act for 1933 (P.L. 72-212, Sec.601; 47 Stat. 417 (1932), codified, as amended, at 31 U.S.C. Sec.Sec.1535, 1536).
13 The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) defines direct acquisition as "a type of interagency acquisition where a requesting agency places an order directly against a servicing agency's indefinite-delivery contract. The servicing agency manages the indefinite-delivery contract but does not participate in the placement or administration of an order." See 48 C.F.R. Sec.2.101.
14 The FAR defines assisted acquisition as "a type of interagency acquisition where a servicing agency performs acquisition activities on a requesting agency's behalf, such as awarding and administering a contract, task order, or delivery order." See 48 C.F.R. Sec.2.101.
15 An Act to Amend Section 7(a) of the Act of May 21, 1920 (P.L. 77-670; 56 Stat. 661 (1942)). The defense-related agencies included the War, Navy, and Treasury Departments; Civil Aeronautics Administration; and Maritime Commission. The Economy Act was itself an amendment to the act of May 21, 1920, which is why the 1942 statute references amendments to the 1920 act.
16 An Act to Amend the Economy Act to Provide That All Departments and Agencies May Obtain Materials or Services from Other Agencies by Contract, and for Other Purposes (P.L. 97-332; 96 Stat. 1622 (1982)).
17 U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Off-Loading: The Abuse of Inter-Agency Contracting to Avoid Competition and Oversight Requirements, committee print, prepared by the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, 103rd Cong., 2nd sess., S. Prt. 103-61, p. 1 (hereinafter Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Off-Loading, S. Prt. 103-61).
* * *
Congress passed Section 844 of the FY1994 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for military procurements (enacted into law shortly before the subcommittee report's publication)20 and Section 1074 of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 for nonmilitary procurements.21 Both of these provisions required the FAR to be updated to
* permit interagency contracting only if the servicing agency (1) has an existing contract for the good or service, (2) is better qualified to enter into or administer the contracts, or (3) is authorized by law to provide the good or service;
* require authorized agency officials to approve such purchases in advance, and
* prohibit agency payments exceeding actual or estimated costs.
Finally, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) had for several years identified the management of interagency contracting as a high-risk area involving the Department of Defense.21F 22 Section 865 of the
FY2009 NDAA required that the FAR be updated to require that all interagency acquisitions include a written agreement "assigning responsibility for the administration and management of the contract."23
Additionally, the law required the Office of Management and Budget to submit a report to Congress "on interagency acquisitions, including their frequency of use, management controls, cost-effectiveness, and savings generated."24
The 1993, 1994, and 2008 statutory requirements for interagency acquisitions are currently implemented in Part 17.5 of the FAR.25 The Economy Act, as currently amended, is codified at Title 31, Sections 1535 and 1536, of the United States Code.26
Economy Act Requirements and Conditions
According to GAO, the Economy Act applies to agencies in each of the three branches of the federal government.27 It authorizes intra-agency as well as interagency transactions, as the statute states that "the head of an agency or major organizational unit within an agency may place an order with a major organizational unit within the same agency or another agency."28 An agency's ability to enter into interagency transactions using the Economy Act is subject to the following conditions.
* * *
18 Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Off-Loading, S. Prt. 103-61, p. 1.
19 Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Off-Loading, S. Prt. 103-61, pp. 44-46.
20 National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 (P.L. 103-160, Sec.844; 107 Stat. 1547 (1993)).
21 Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 (P.L. 103-355, Sec.1074; 108 Stat. 3271 (1994)).
22 For example, see GAO, DOD's High-Risk Areas: Actions Needed to Reduce Vulnerabilities and Improve Business Outcomes, GAO-09-460T, March 12, 2009, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-09-460t.pdf.
23 Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 (P.L. 110-417, Sec.865(b); 112 Stat. 4550 (2008)).
24 P.L. 110-417, Sec.865(a); 112 Stat. 4550 (2008). For the Office and Management and Budget (OMB) report to Congress, see OMB, Report of Congress on Interagency Acquisitions, August 26, 2010, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb/procurement/reports/IA_Report_2010-08-24.pdf.
25 48 C.F.R. Sec.17.5.
26 31 U.S.C. Sec.Sec.1535, 1536.
27 GAO, Principles of Federal Appropriations Law, 3rd ed., vol. III, GAO-08-978SP, September 2008, p. 12-31.
28 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(a).
* * *
* The requesting agency or organizational unit must have funds available.29 This refers to both the amount of funds appropriated to an agency as well as the purpose for which they are available.30 The Economy Act does not permit an agency to use another agency to circumvent any legal limitations on the use of its appropriated funds.31
* The head of the requesting agency or organizational unit must determine that the order is in the best interests of the United States.32
* The servicing agency must be able to provide the goods or services requested.33 This generally does not require that the servicing agency have the goods or services on hand, as the agency may procure additional supplies or add personnel provided that the services or goods rendered are within the scope of the agency's normal activities.34
* The head of the requesting agency or organizational unit must determine that the goods or services cannot be provided as conveniently or cheaply by a private contractor.35
Under the Economy Act, the agencies involved in an interagency transaction may decide to use one of two types of authorized forms of payment: advance or reimbursement.36 Advance payment is often based on cost estimates. As a result, after the servicing agency's actual cost of providing a good or service is known, the advanced amounts must be adjusted to ensure payment to the servicing agency of actual costs only.37 The Economy Act requires prompt payment by the requesting agency.38
Written Agreements
Orders placed under the Economy Act obligate an appropriation of the requesting agency.39 While the Economy Act itself does not expressly require that the requesting and servicing agencies enter into a written agreement, GAO has derived such a requirement from "common sense and the recording statute."40 For Economy Act transactions, this written agreement usually takes the form of an interagency agreement (IAA). GAO guidance recommends that IAAs contain the legal authority for the agreement, terms and conditions of performance, the cost of performance, mode of payment, any special requirements, and approvals by appropriate officials.41 Department of Treasury policies and procedures require that agencies use for their IAAs Treasury Form 7600A and Treasury Form 7600B, entered electronically via the government-wide G-Invoicing system.42 Agencies may have additional policies and procedures about the use and documentation of IAAs.43
* * *
29 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(a)(1).
30 31 U.S.C. Sec.1301. This is referred to as the Purpose Statute.
31 GAO, Principles of Federal Appropriations Law, 3rd ed., vol. III, p. 12-26.
32 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(a)(2).
33 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(a)(3).
34 GAO, Principles of Federal Appropriations Law, 3rd ed., vol. III, p. 12-27.
35 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(a)(4).
36 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(b) and 31 U.S.C. Sec.1536(a).
37 GAO, Principles of Federal Appropriations Law, 3rd ed., vol. III, p. 12-34.
38 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(b).
39 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(d).
40 GAO, Principles of Federal Appropriations Law, 3rd ed., vol. III, p. 12-30. Codified at 31 U.S.C. Sec.1501(a), the recording statute requires an agency to record an obligation against available appropriations when supported by "a binding agreement" between two agencies.
41 GAO, Policy and Procedures Manual for Guidance of Federal Agencies, Title 7, Sec.2.4-C.2(e), May 1993, p. 7.2-11.
* * *
Federal Acquisition Regulation Requirements
Economy Act agreements are subject to the FAR when the transaction results in one agency using another agency's procurement contract to acquire goods or services. If the agreement "does not result in a contract or an order, then the FAR does not apply."44 The FAR requires that each Economy Act order be supported by a determination and findings (D&F) document. The D&F must
(i) State that use of an interagency acquisition is in the best interest of the Government;
(ii) State that the supplies or services cannot be obtained as conveniently or economically by contracting directly with a private source; and
(iii) Include a statement that at least one of the following circumstances applies:
(A) The acquisition will appropriately be made under an existing contract of the servicing agency, entered into before placement of the order, to meet the requirements of the servicing agency for the same or similar supplies or services.
(B) The servicing agency has the capability or expertise to enter into a contract for such supplies or services that is not available within the requesting agency.
(C) The servicing agency is specifically authorized by law or regulation to purchase such supplies or services on behalf of other agencies.45
For each transaction, the D&F is maintained in the contract file,46 but these documents are not made publicly available as a matter of course. For assisted acquisitions, "the servicing agency and the requesting agency shall also both sign a written interagency agreement that establishes the general terms and conditions governing the relationship between the parties, including roles and responsibilities for acquisition planning, contract execution, and administration and management of the contract(s) or order(s)."47
Reporting Requirements
While the Economy Act provides agencies with the flexibility to enter into agreements with other agencies to engage in a wide variety of activities, the lack of uniform reporting requirements may make congressional oversight over agency activities challenging. There is no government-wide data on agency use of the Economy Act, nor is there a government-wide requirement that agencies report on their use of the Economy Act to Congress. Agencies document their use of the Economy Act via IAAs and on D&Fs when the interagency acquisition is subject to the FAR, but this documentation is internal to the agency.
* * *
42 Department of the Treasury (Treasury), Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), Treasury Financial Manual, Chapter 4700, Appendix 8, https://tfx.treasury.gov/media/51/download?inline. Per Treasury, "G-Invoicing is the long-term solution for federal entities to manage their intra-governmental (IGT) Buy/Sell transactions." See Treasury, BFS, "Intra-governmental Transactions (IGT)," https://fiscal.treasury.gov/accounting/intragov.
43 For example, see Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, "Interagency and Intra-Departmental Agreements Where the Service Is the Buyer," October 31, 2023, https://www.fws.gov/policy-library/260fw10.
44 48 C.F.R. Sec.17.502-2(a).
45 48 C.F.R. Sec.17.502-2(c)(1).
46 48 C.F.R. Sec.4.803.
47 48 C.F.R. Sec.17-502-1(a)(1)(i).
* * *
There are agency-specific congressional reporting requirements related to Economy Act transactions. For example, beginning in FY2013, Economy Act reimbursements in all agencies funded by the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agency Appropriations Act (Agriculture Appropriations Act) were made subject to the same restrictions as transfers and reprogramming of funds absent advance congressional notification.48 This provision has been included in each subsequent Agriculture Appropriations Act.49 Specifically, unless both the House and Senate Committees on Appropriation are notified at least 30 days in advance, agencies funded by the bill are prohibited from obligating funds though reimbursements authorized by the Economy Act, if the obligation (1) creates new programs; (2) eliminates a program, project, or activity; (3) increases funds or personnel by any means for any project or activity for which funds have been denied or restricted; (4) relocates an office or employees; (5) reorganizes offices, programs, or activities; or (6) contracts out or privatizes any functions or activities presently performed by Federal employees.50
Agency Uses of the Economy Act
Apart from the general conditions described previously, the Economy Act does not expressly define the variety of "goods and services" that it authorizes one agency to order from another. Given the absence of a general reporting requirement, there are no authoritative data sources on how agencies use the Economy Act. Examples of categories of work that agencies have performed under the Economy Act are described below.
* Interagency acquisitions are procedures by which an agency needing supplies or services obtains them from another agency by an assisted acquisition or a direct acquisition.51 For example, the Defense Assisted Acquisition Cell (DA2) was established during the COVID-19 pandemic and used the Economy Act to provide acquisition assistance on behalf of and in coordination with interagency partners, such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.52
* Agencies share expertise across the government by detailing personnel. For example, GSA's digital services teams provided technical experts, software engineers, and data scientists to other agencies and used Economy Act authorities to charge partner agencies for services rendered.53
* Agencies use the statute to manage property. For example, the Maritime Administration (MARAD) leveraged the Department of the Navy's ship recycling expertise, using the Economy Act to fund the Navy's cost of disposing of MARAD vessels.54
* Shared services are business functions that are provided for consumption by multiple organizations within or between federal agencies. Agencies use Economy Act authorities to make certain services available to other agencies (e.g., financial management or human services) on a fee-for-service basis. OMB Memorandum M-19-16, Centralized Mission Support Capabilities for the Federal Government,55 established a process to designate that specific agencies form Quality Management Support Offices (QSMOs) for select mission support functions.56
* * *
48 Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013 (P.L. 113-6, Division A, Title VII, Sec.726; 127 Stat. 229 (2013)). For more information about restrictions on reprogramming absent congressional notification, see CRS Report R47600, Transfer and Reprogramming of Appropriations: An Overview, by Taylor N. Riccard and Dominick A. Fiorentino.
49 For the most recent version, see Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act, 2026 (P.L. 119-37, Division B, Title VII, Sec.716; 139 Stat. 544 (2025)).
50 P.L. 119-37, Division B, Title VII, Sec.716; 139 Stat. 544 (2025).
51 48 C.F.R. Sec.2.101.
52 Department of Defense, "Defense Assisted Acquisition Cell (DA2)," https://www.acq.osd.mil/asda/jrac/da2/index.html.
53 CRS Report R47722, Overview of the General Services Administration: Acquisition Services and Real Property Management, by Dominick A. Fiorentino and Garrett Hatch.
54 U.S. Department of Transportation, Maritime Administration, Report to Congress on the Progress of the Vessel Disposal Program, January 2007, https://www.maritime.dot.gov/sites/marad.dot.gov/files/docs/aboutus/foia/4151/january2007reporttocongress.pdf.
* * *
* Agencies have performed certain services on behalf of other agencies. For example, in 2025, the Department of Education entered into an IAA with the Department of Labor (DOL) that cited the Economy Act as well as other statutory authorities. Under the IAA, the Employment and Training Administration within DOL is to perform certain activities "in coordination with and subject to the supervision of the Department of Education."57
Issues for Congress
Given the limited visibility over agency use of the Economy Act, Congress may consider options that would limit the use of these transactions in certain circumstances or create new reporting or transparency requirements. Congress may consider the following options.
* Like the aforementioned reporting requirements in the Agriculture Appropriations Act, Congress could institute a requirement making all Economy Act transactions subject to the same limitations and notification requirements as a reprogramming or transfer of funds.
* Congress may consider limiting the use of Economy Act transactions above a certain threshold (either expressed as a dollar amount or as a percentage of the requesting agency's appropriation) unless the agency provides advance notification to Congress.
* Congress may consider requiring agencies to provide all IAAs to Congress. Alternatively, if providing all IAAs would be too burdensome on agencies or result in too many reports for Congress to feasibly review, Congress may consider requiring that only IAAs obligating funds above a certain threshold be provided.
* Congress may consider requiring the establishment of a database, either publicly accessible or accessible to Congress, that captures all Economy Act transactions, along with certain summary-level data about each transaction.
Alternatively, restricting agency use of the Economy Act could result in service disruptions, and implementing new reporting requirements could be burdensome for agencies, for Congress, or for both.
For this reason, Congress may choose to retain current agency flexibilities and existing reporting requirements.
* * *
55 OMB, Centralized Mission Support Capabilities for the Federal Government, Memorandum M-19-16, April 26, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/M-19-16.pdf.
56 General Services Administration, Unified Shared Services Management, "Quality Service Management Offices (QSMOs)," https://ussm.gsa.gov/qsmo/.
57 Department of Education, "Interagency Agreement Between the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Labor Relating to the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE)," September 30, 2025, https://www.ed.gov/media/document/ed-and-dol-interagency-agreement-elementary-and-secondary-education-partnershipupdated-050126-113000.pdf. This interagency agreement contains a February 23, 2026, addendum that amended some of its terms.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AP/AP23/20260915/119540/HHRG-119-AP23-Wstate-FiorentinoD-20260915.pdf
* * *
Chairman Joyce, Ranking Member Hoyer, Members of the Committee. My name is Dominick Fiorentino, and I am an Analyst in Government Organization and Management for the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Thank you on behalf of CRS for this opportunity to discuss the Economy ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 -- The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government released the following testimony by Dominick A. Fiorentino, analyst in government organization and management for the Congressional Research Service, from a Sept. 15, 2026, oversight hearing on the Economy Act: * * * Chairman Joyce, Ranking Member Hoyer, Members of the Committee. My name is Dominick Fiorentino, and I am an Analyst in Government Organization and Management for the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Thank you on behalf of CRS for this opportunity to discuss the EconomyAct.
As requested, this statement provides an overview of the Economy Act, including its legislative history, conditions on its use, current documentation and reporting requirements, and potential issues for congressional consideration.
The Economy Act of 1932, as amended, authorizes federal agencies (the requesting agency) to place an order for goods or services provided directly from other agencies (the servicing agency) or use the contracts or contracting operations of other agencies. The Economy Act applies in certain contexts when there is no other more specific statutory authority available to the servicing agency to provide interagency work or goods,1 such as the General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) or Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) programs,2 information technology government-wide acquisition contracts (GWACs),3 or statutorily authorized revolving funds.4 Transactions subject to the Economy Act are types of expenditure transfers "between appropriation and fund accounts, which represent payments, repayments, or receipts for goods or services furnished or to be furnished."5
Legislative History of the Economy Act
Prior to 1932, there was no government-wide statutory authority for federal agencies to provide work, services, or materials to other federal agencies on a reimbursable basis. A 1920 statute provided government-wide authority for requesting agencies to transfer appropriations in advance of performance "for direct expenditure" by the servicing agency.6 Additionally, there were some agency-specific statutes authorizing interagency transactions, such as a 1926 provision directing agencies ordering goods or services from the Navy to pay the actual cost of the order to the Navy's working fund.7
In 1930, legislation to provide more general interagency transaction authority was introduced8 and later reintroduced in 1932 as part of a larger legislative measure to reduce government spending during the Great Depression.9 This legislation from 1932 amended the 1920 statute with the intent that broader interagency authority might enable agencies to save money by relying on existing contracts between other agencies and private companies when procuring goods or services and generate economies of scale by reducing redundant activities of various government agencies.10
* * *
1 48 C.F.R. Sec.17.502-2(b).
2 40 U.S.C. Sec.501.
3 40 U.S.C. Sec.11302(e).
4 The Government Accountability Office (GAO) defines revolving fund as "a fund established by Congress to finance a cycle of businesslike operations through amounts received by the fund." See GAO, Glossary of Terms Used in the Federal Budget Process, GAO-05-734SP, September 2005, p. 88, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-05-734sp (hereinafter GAO, Glossary, GAO-05-734SP).
5 See GAO, Glossary, GAO-05-734SP, p. 95.
6 An Act Making appropriations for fortifications and other works of defense, for the armament thereof, and for the procurement of heavy ordnance for trial and service, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1921, and for other purposes (P.L. 66-214; 41 Stat. 613 (1920)).
7 An Act making appropriations for the Navy Department and the naval service for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1927, and for other purposes (P.L. 69-264; 44 Stat. 591, 605 (1926)).
8 A Bill Authorizing any executive department or independent establishment to do work for any other executive department or independent establishment and prescribing the method of payment therefore (H.R. 10199, 71st Cong., 2nd sess. (1930)).
9 A Bill To effect economies in the National Government (H.R. 11597, 72nd Cong., 1st sess. (1932)).
* * *
The House Select Committee on Economy reported favorably on the bill:
It frequently happens that one department may need certain services which it cannot advantageously perform for itself. Where such services can be furnished by another department at a less cost [sic] or more conveniently, the department needing such services should have the privilege of calling upon any department of the Government that is equipped to provide such services.11
The provision, under the title "Interdepartmental Work," became law on June 30, 1932, as Section 601 of the Legislative Branch Appropriation Act for 1933, which became popularly known as the "Economy Act."12
Subsequent Developments: 1942 to 2008
The Economy Act originally applied only to direct or unassisted acquisition,13 authorizing agency heads to use other agencies' existing contracts to obtain goods or services whenever doing so was more convenient and cheaper than contracting out. The act was amended in 1942 to allow other agencies to perform contracting services, also known as indirect or assisted acquisition,14 for certain defense-related agencies.15 A later amendment, in 1982, authorized any agency to perform contracting services for any other agency.16
In the early 1990s, alleged misuse of the Economy Act resulted in a report by the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs that investigated contract off-loading, defined by the report as when one agency (the "requesting agency") buys goods or services under a contract entered and administered by another agency (the "contracting agency").17
The report noted that the Economy Act authorizes such off-loads, and when used appropriately, an offload could result in government savings. However, in the subcommittee's view, inadequate guidance in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) on an off-load's appropriate use had resulted in agencies using off-loads "to avoid competition, to circumvent limitations on spending expiring funds, and to avoid audits and contract oversight."18 To limit these perceived abuses, the report recommended FAR changes to limit the use of off-loading.19
* * *
10 For example, see House debate, Congressional Record, vol. 75, part 8 (April 30, 1932), p. 9348.
11 U.S. Congress, House Select Committee on Economy, To Effect Economies in the National Government, report to accompany H.R. 11597, 72nd Cong., 1st sess., H.Rept. 72-1126, April 25, 1932, p. 15.
12 Legislative Branch Appropriation Act for 1933 (P.L. 72-212, Sec.601; 47 Stat. 417 (1932), codified, as amended, at 31 U.S.C. Sec.Sec.1535, 1536).
13 The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) defines direct acquisition as "a type of interagency acquisition where a requesting agency places an order directly against a servicing agency's indefinite-delivery contract. The servicing agency manages the indefinite-delivery contract but does not participate in the placement or administration of an order." See 48 C.F.R. Sec.2.101.
14 The FAR defines assisted acquisition as "a type of interagency acquisition where a servicing agency performs acquisition activities on a requesting agency's behalf, such as awarding and administering a contract, task order, or delivery order." See 48 C.F.R. Sec.2.101.
15 An Act to Amend Section 7(a) of the Act of May 21, 1920 (P.L. 77-670; 56 Stat. 661 (1942)). The defense-related agencies included the War, Navy, and Treasury Departments; Civil Aeronautics Administration; and Maritime Commission. The Economy Act was itself an amendment to the act of May 21, 1920, which is why the 1942 statute references amendments to the 1920 act.
16 An Act to Amend the Economy Act to Provide That All Departments and Agencies May Obtain Materials or Services from Other Agencies by Contract, and for Other Purposes (P.L. 97-332; 96 Stat. 1622 (1982)).
17 U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Off-Loading: The Abuse of Inter-Agency Contracting to Avoid Competition and Oversight Requirements, committee print, prepared by the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, 103rd Cong., 2nd sess., S. Prt. 103-61, p. 1 (hereinafter Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Off-Loading, S. Prt. 103-61).
* * *
Congress passed Section 844 of the FY1994 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for military procurements (enacted into law shortly before the subcommittee report's publication)20 and Section 1074 of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 for nonmilitary procurements.21 Both of these provisions required the FAR to be updated to
* permit interagency contracting only if the servicing agency (1) has an existing contract for the good or service, (2) is better qualified to enter into or administer the contracts, or (3) is authorized by law to provide the good or service;
* require authorized agency officials to approve such purchases in advance, and
* prohibit agency payments exceeding actual or estimated costs.
Finally, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) had for several years identified the management of interagency contracting as a high-risk area involving the Department of Defense.21F 22 Section 865 of the
FY2009 NDAA required that the FAR be updated to require that all interagency acquisitions include a written agreement "assigning responsibility for the administration and management of the contract."23
Additionally, the law required the Office of Management and Budget to submit a report to Congress "on interagency acquisitions, including their frequency of use, management controls, cost-effectiveness, and savings generated."24
The 1993, 1994, and 2008 statutory requirements for interagency acquisitions are currently implemented in Part 17.5 of the FAR.25 The Economy Act, as currently amended, is codified at Title 31, Sections 1535 and 1536, of the United States Code.26
Economy Act Requirements and Conditions
According to GAO, the Economy Act applies to agencies in each of the three branches of the federal government.27 It authorizes intra-agency as well as interagency transactions, as the statute states that "the head of an agency or major organizational unit within an agency may place an order with a major organizational unit within the same agency or another agency."28 An agency's ability to enter into interagency transactions using the Economy Act is subject to the following conditions.
* * *
18 Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Off-Loading, S. Prt. 103-61, p. 1.
19 Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Off-Loading, S. Prt. 103-61, pp. 44-46.
20 National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 (P.L. 103-160, Sec.844; 107 Stat. 1547 (1993)).
21 Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 (P.L. 103-355, Sec.1074; 108 Stat. 3271 (1994)).
22 For example, see GAO, DOD's High-Risk Areas: Actions Needed to Reduce Vulnerabilities and Improve Business Outcomes, GAO-09-460T, March 12, 2009, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-09-460t.pdf.
23 Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 (P.L. 110-417, Sec.865(b); 112 Stat. 4550 (2008)).
24 P.L. 110-417, Sec.865(a); 112 Stat. 4550 (2008). For the Office and Management and Budget (OMB) report to Congress, see OMB, Report of Congress on Interagency Acquisitions, August 26, 2010, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb/procurement/reports/IA_Report_2010-08-24.pdf.
25 48 C.F.R. Sec.17.5.
26 31 U.S.C. Sec.Sec.1535, 1536.
27 GAO, Principles of Federal Appropriations Law, 3rd ed., vol. III, GAO-08-978SP, September 2008, p. 12-31.
28 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(a).
* * *
* The requesting agency or organizational unit must have funds available.29 This refers to both the amount of funds appropriated to an agency as well as the purpose for which they are available.30 The Economy Act does not permit an agency to use another agency to circumvent any legal limitations on the use of its appropriated funds.31
* The head of the requesting agency or organizational unit must determine that the order is in the best interests of the United States.32
* The servicing agency must be able to provide the goods or services requested.33 This generally does not require that the servicing agency have the goods or services on hand, as the agency may procure additional supplies or add personnel provided that the services or goods rendered are within the scope of the agency's normal activities.34
* The head of the requesting agency or organizational unit must determine that the goods or services cannot be provided as conveniently or cheaply by a private contractor.35
Under the Economy Act, the agencies involved in an interagency transaction may decide to use one of two types of authorized forms of payment: advance or reimbursement.36 Advance payment is often based on cost estimates. As a result, after the servicing agency's actual cost of providing a good or service is known, the advanced amounts must be adjusted to ensure payment to the servicing agency of actual costs only.37 The Economy Act requires prompt payment by the requesting agency.38
Written Agreements
Orders placed under the Economy Act obligate an appropriation of the requesting agency.39 While the Economy Act itself does not expressly require that the requesting and servicing agencies enter into a written agreement, GAO has derived such a requirement from "common sense and the recording statute."40 For Economy Act transactions, this written agreement usually takes the form of an interagency agreement (IAA). GAO guidance recommends that IAAs contain the legal authority for the agreement, terms and conditions of performance, the cost of performance, mode of payment, any special requirements, and approvals by appropriate officials.41 Department of Treasury policies and procedures require that agencies use for their IAAs Treasury Form 7600A and Treasury Form 7600B, entered electronically via the government-wide G-Invoicing system.42 Agencies may have additional policies and procedures about the use and documentation of IAAs.43
* * *
29 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(a)(1).
30 31 U.S.C. Sec.1301. This is referred to as the Purpose Statute.
31 GAO, Principles of Federal Appropriations Law, 3rd ed., vol. III, p. 12-26.
32 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(a)(2).
33 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(a)(3).
34 GAO, Principles of Federal Appropriations Law, 3rd ed., vol. III, p. 12-27.
35 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(a)(4).
36 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(b) and 31 U.S.C. Sec.1536(a).
37 GAO, Principles of Federal Appropriations Law, 3rd ed., vol. III, p. 12-34.
38 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(b).
39 31 U.S.C. Sec.1535(d).
40 GAO, Principles of Federal Appropriations Law, 3rd ed., vol. III, p. 12-30. Codified at 31 U.S.C. Sec.1501(a), the recording statute requires an agency to record an obligation against available appropriations when supported by "a binding agreement" between two agencies.
41 GAO, Policy and Procedures Manual for Guidance of Federal Agencies, Title 7, Sec.2.4-C.2(e), May 1993, p. 7.2-11.
* * *
Federal Acquisition Regulation Requirements
Economy Act agreements are subject to the FAR when the transaction results in one agency using another agency's procurement contract to acquire goods or services. If the agreement "does not result in a contract or an order, then the FAR does not apply."44 The FAR requires that each Economy Act order be supported by a determination and findings (D&F) document. The D&F must
(i) State that use of an interagency acquisition is in the best interest of the Government;
(ii) State that the supplies or services cannot be obtained as conveniently or economically by contracting directly with a private source; and
(iii) Include a statement that at least one of the following circumstances applies:
(A) The acquisition will appropriately be made under an existing contract of the servicing agency, entered into before placement of the order, to meet the requirements of the servicing agency for the same or similar supplies or services.
(B) The servicing agency has the capability or expertise to enter into a contract for such supplies or services that is not available within the requesting agency.
(C) The servicing agency is specifically authorized by law or regulation to purchase such supplies or services on behalf of other agencies.45
For each transaction, the D&F is maintained in the contract file,46 but these documents are not made publicly available as a matter of course. For assisted acquisitions, "the servicing agency and the requesting agency shall also both sign a written interagency agreement that establishes the general terms and conditions governing the relationship between the parties, including roles and responsibilities for acquisition planning, contract execution, and administration and management of the contract(s) or order(s)."47
Reporting Requirements
While the Economy Act provides agencies with the flexibility to enter into agreements with other agencies to engage in a wide variety of activities, the lack of uniform reporting requirements may make congressional oversight over agency activities challenging. There is no government-wide data on agency use of the Economy Act, nor is there a government-wide requirement that agencies report on their use of the Economy Act to Congress. Agencies document their use of the Economy Act via IAAs and on D&Fs when the interagency acquisition is subject to the FAR, but this documentation is internal to the agency.
* * *
42 Department of the Treasury (Treasury), Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), Treasury Financial Manual, Chapter 4700, Appendix 8, https://tfx.treasury.gov/media/51/download?inline. Per Treasury, "G-Invoicing is the long-term solution for federal entities to manage their intra-governmental (IGT) Buy/Sell transactions." See Treasury, BFS, "Intra-governmental Transactions (IGT)," https://fiscal.treasury.gov/accounting/intragov.
43 For example, see Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, "Interagency and Intra-Departmental Agreements Where the Service Is the Buyer," October 31, 2023, https://www.fws.gov/policy-library/260fw10.
44 48 C.F.R. Sec.17.502-2(a).
45 48 C.F.R. Sec.17.502-2(c)(1).
46 48 C.F.R. Sec.4.803.
47 48 C.F.R. Sec.17-502-1(a)(1)(i).
* * *
There are agency-specific congressional reporting requirements related to Economy Act transactions. For example, beginning in FY2013, Economy Act reimbursements in all agencies funded by the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agency Appropriations Act (Agriculture Appropriations Act) were made subject to the same restrictions as transfers and reprogramming of funds absent advance congressional notification.48 This provision has been included in each subsequent Agriculture Appropriations Act.49 Specifically, unless both the House and Senate Committees on Appropriation are notified at least 30 days in advance, agencies funded by the bill are prohibited from obligating funds though reimbursements authorized by the Economy Act, if the obligation (1) creates new programs; (2) eliminates a program, project, or activity; (3) increases funds or personnel by any means for any project or activity for which funds have been denied or restricted; (4) relocates an office or employees; (5) reorganizes offices, programs, or activities; or (6) contracts out or privatizes any functions or activities presently performed by Federal employees.50
Agency Uses of the Economy Act
Apart from the general conditions described previously, the Economy Act does not expressly define the variety of "goods and services" that it authorizes one agency to order from another. Given the absence of a general reporting requirement, there are no authoritative data sources on how agencies use the Economy Act. Examples of categories of work that agencies have performed under the Economy Act are described below.
* Interagency acquisitions are procedures by which an agency needing supplies or services obtains them from another agency by an assisted acquisition or a direct acquisition.51 For example, the Defense Assisted Acquisition Cell (DA2) was established during the COVID-19 pandemic and used the Economy Act to provide acquisition assistance on behalf of and in coordination with interagency partners, such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.52
* Agencies share expertise across the government by detailing personnel. For example, GSA's digital services teams provided technical experts, software engineers, and data scientists to other agencies and used Economy Act authorities to charge partner agencies for services rendered.53
* Agencies use the statute to manage property. For example, the Maritime Administration (MARAD) leveraged the Department of the Navy's ship recycling expertise, using the Economy Act to fund the Navy's cost of disposing of MARAD vessels.54
* Shared services are business functions that are provided for consumption by multiple organizations within or between federal agencies. Agencies use Economy Act authorities to make certain services available to other agencies (e.g., financial management or human services) on a fee-for-service basis. OMB Memorandum M-19-16, Centralized Mission Support Capabilities for the Federal Government,55 established a process to designate that specific agencies form Quality Management Support Offices (QSMOs) for select mission support functions.56
* * *
48 Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013 (P.L. 113-6, Division A, Title VII, Sec.726; 127 Stat. 229 (2013)). For more information about restrictions on reprogramming absent congressional notification, see CRS Report R47600, Transfer and Reprogramming of Appropriations: An Overview, by Taylor N. Riccard and Dominick A. Fiorentino.
49 For the most recent version, see Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act, 2026 (P.L. 119-37, Division B, Title VII, Sec.716; 139 Stat. 544 (2025)).
50 P.L. 119-37, Division B, Title VII, Sec.716; 139 Stat. 544 (2025).
51 48 C.F.R. Sec.2.101.
52 Department of Defense, "Defense Assisted Acquisition Cell (DA2)," https://www.acq.osd.mil/asda/jrac/da2/index.html.
53 CRS Report R47722, Overview of the General Services Administration: Acquisition Services and Real Property Management, by Dominick A. Fiorentino and Garrett Hatch.
54 U.S. Department of Transportation, Maritime Administration, Report to Congress on the Progress of the Vessel Disposal Program, January 2007, https://www.maritime.dot.gov/sites/marad.dot.gov/files/docs/aboutus/foia/4151/january2007reporttocongress.pdf.
* * *
* Agencies have performed certain services on behalf of other agencies. For example, in 2025, the Department of Education entered into an IAA with the Department of Labor (DOL) that cited the Economy Act as well as other statutory authorities. Under the IAA, the Employment and Training Administration within DOL is to perform certain activities "in coordination with and subject to the supervision of the Department of Education."57
Issues for Congress
Given the limited visibility over agency use of the Economy Act, Congress may consider options that would limit the use of these transactions in certain circumstances or create new reporting or transparency requirements. Congress may consider the following options.
* Like the aforementioned reporting requirements in the Agriculture Appropriations Act, Congress could institute a requirement making all Economy Act transactions subject to the same limitations and notification requirements as a reprogramming or transfer of funds.
* Congress may consider limiting the use of Economy Act transactions above a certain threshold (either expressed as a dollar amount or as a percentage of the requesting agency's appropriation) unless the agency provides advance notification to Congress.
* Congress may consider requiring agencies to provide all IAAs to Congress. Alternatively, if providing all IAAs would be too burdensome on agencies or result in too many reports for Congress to feasibly review, Congress may consider requiring that only IAAs obligating funds above a certain threshold be provided.
* Congress may consider requiring the establishment of a database, either publicly accessible or accessible to Congress, that captures all Economy Act transactions, along with certain summary-level data about each transaction.
Alternatively, restricting agency use of the Economy Act could result in service disruptions, and implementing new reporting requirements could be burdensome for agencies, for Congress, or for both.
For this reason, Congress may choose to retain current agency flexibilities and existing reporting requirements.
* * *
55 OMB, Centralized Mission Support Capabilities for the Federal Government, Memorandum M-19-16, April 26, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/M-19-16.pdf.
56 General Services Administration, Unified Shared Services Management, "Quality Service Management Offices (QSMOs)," https://ussm.gsa.gov/qsmo/.
57 Department of Education, "Interagency Agreement Between the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Labor Relating to the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE)," September 30, 2025, https://www.ed.gov/media/document/ed-and-dol-interagency-agreement-elementary-and-secondary-education-partnershipupdated-050126-113000.pdf. This interagency agreement contains a February 23, 2026, addendum that amended some of its terms.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AP/AP23/20260915/119540/HHRG-119-AP23-Wstate-FiorentinoD-20260915.pdf
Americans for Prosperity Employment Policy Fellow Bannan Testifies Before House Education & Workforce Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections released the following testimony by Austen Bannan, employment policy fellow at Americans for Prosperity, from a Sept. 2, 2026, hearing entitled "Less Red Tape, More Opportunity: Unleashing American Workers and Job Creators":
* * *
Chairman Mackenzie, Ranking Member Omar, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am Austen Bannan, Employment Policy Fellow at Americans for Prosperity.
AFP is the premier grassroots organization advancing policy to ensure every ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections released the following testimony by Austen Bannan, employment policy fellow at Americans for Prosperity, from a Sept. 2, 2026, hearing entitled "Less Red Tape, More Opportunity: Unleashing American Workers and Job Creators": * * * Chairman Mackenzie, Ranking Member Omar, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am Austen Bannan, Employment Policy Fellow at Americans for Prosperity. AFP is the premier grassroots organization advancing policy to ensure everyAmerican can pursue their version of the American dream. Across every state, millions of AFP grassroots supporters champion policies that will bring greater freedom and opportunity to their families and neighbors, and I work on their behalf every day to bring federal and state reforms to fruition. In my space, that means empowering workers with choice and opportunity to succeed in the 21st century. It means ensuring that Americans are free to chase opportunity instead of government permission.
Take for instance Marylin Costic, a Pennsylvanian who has worked for four decades as an independent contractor in the retail cosmetics industry. When her family relocated for her husband's job, she had to leave her own medical lab technician job but found self-employment as a new pathway. This allowed her to earn income while raising three children and taking care of her parents when they were sick.1 AFP has worked hard to ensure states across the nation like Pennsylvania reject anti-worker employment tests like California has that are intended to cut off flexible work pathways and have led to reduced employment for self-employed workers and beyond.2
The National Labor Relations Act3 turns 91 this year while the Fair Labor Standards Act4 turns 88.
Both were written for an economy where Americans often worked their full careers at one or very few employers, in fixed shifts, and in one career pathway. They were also enacted in an era where 1 in 3 workers were in manufacturing jobs, which supports less than 1 in 10 workers today.5 The labor laws of that era didn't account for a labor market in which more than 70 million Americans now earn some or all of their income as self-employed workers such as independent contractors.6
Nor did they anticipate an era of rapid technology growth where Americans change jobs dozens of times including even their career pathways several times.
In my 2025 Institute for the American Worker report, How to Empower Workers,7
I highlight how the skills required for success today often quickly shift as the knowledge economy grows and adapts to AI while traditional blue-collar jobs also become increasingly technical and even automated. Some leaders think a return to more government interventions in the private economy and adversarial collective bargaining will protect jobs, but the reality is that as more businesses compete for workers and consumers, American workers both need and want more flexibility to thrive in this dynamic landscape.
In other words, creating ample opportunity for workers to choose how they work is one of the most critical ways to protect workers and American families in our economy. The efforts by some leaders to double down on more top-down laws and regulations that eliminate worker choice and contract freedom undermines both workers and businesses across American communities.
Since President Trump took office, however, the Trump administration has shown a strong commitment to removing harmful and even unlawful labor regulations. The hearing today is a great opportunity to highlight regulatory reforms already underway as well as some of the future actions federal agencies and Congress can take to maximize opportunity for American families in the 21st century and beyond. Policies that allow workers to chase opportunity instead of government permission.
I'm going to highlight a few of the modern developments impacting American workers and businesses today including a shifting regulatory landscape.
The Supreme Court's 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo,8 which ended a long-time precedent of courts automatically deferring to agency decisions around ambiguous statutes, is an important part of the regulatory reforms we are seeing. President Trump addressed Loper Bright directly in his first days back in office. His Executive Order 14192,/9 issued eleven days into his second term, directed every agency to identify 10 existing regulations for repeal for every new one it wanted to issue. Then, an April 2025 memorandum10 instructed agencies to move quickly against rules that Loper Bright and a related line of Supreme Court decisions had exposed as resting on thin statutory ground - including ones highlighted in the hearing today that undermine worker empowerment and economic growth.
Americans for Prosperity Foundation's Recasting Regulations Tracker helps to highlight how much regulatory reform is now occurring: As of late August 2026, there have been more than 1,800 regulatory actions across 57 federal agencies since Loper Bright, more than 140 of which invoke Loper Bright by name, and more than a dozen of those at the Department of Labor (DOL) specifically.11
Examples of DOL actions include:
Independent contractor classification. On February 27, 2026, DOL proposed largely restoring the commonsense test it first adopted in 2021, which focuses on two key factors of the longstanding economic realities test: the degree of control a business exercises over the work and the worker's own opportunity for profit or loss.12 When finalized, that proposed rule will replace a 2024 Biden Administration rule that asked businesses to weigh six factors - control, investment, permanence of the relationship, skill and initiative, opportunity for profit or loss, and whether the work is "integral" to the business - with no factor carrying more weight than others under what DOL called a "totality-of-circumstances" test. This, in addition to new subfactors and guidance for the six factors13 left workers and businesses in a cloud of uncertainty.
DOL within the proposed rule provides a telling example. A home-based contractor who sets her own hours, turns down work freely, and negotiates with several clients at once clearly satisfies the core factors of control and profit-or-loss that courts and DOL determinations have particularly relied upon. However, under the six-factor rule, her classification could still turn on whether her work was deemed "integral" to a client's business, or whether her modest investment looked small next to that client's -- factors with no bearing on whether she's actually working for herself.
Restoring focus on the two primary factors that actually distinguish independence from employment will improve compliance and end a practice of treating self-employment pathways like they are a problem. This is exactly what workers want: A Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey from the Biden era found that less than 1 in 10 independent contractors would prefer a traditional job if given the choice.14
Joint employer status. On April 22, 2026, the Department proposed restoring the same kind of clarity to joint employer determinations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, citing Loper Bright directly in explaining how much weight its own guidance should carry with courts.15 The proposal largely revives the sensible 2020 framework, weighing evidence of direct control being exerted by businesses rather than treating unused and theoretical control -- as subjectively determined by DOL -- as a way to force small businesses into legal liability with and control by larger businesses. That clarity matters enormously to the more than 820,000 franchise businesses employing nearly 9 million workers nationwide,16 along with countless small businesses that operate as vendors and contractors to larger companies, all of whom have spent recent years navigating standards shifting back and forth across presidential administrations.
Union transparency. In the spirt of the highly bipartisan 1959 Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), or Landrum-Griffin Act, that created reporting and other requirements for unions to curb corruption and anti-democratic actions, the Trump administration published a final rule on June 1, 2026 to update reporting requirements for unions.17 This includes having the largest unions (over $40 million in annual revenues) file LM-2 "long forms" with additional reporting requirements such as highlighting foreign transactions and requiring unions to itemize more individual and aggregated receipts. On the other hand, smaller unions now have simplified reporting requirements. The Trump administration has highlighted how the changes are compatible with Loper Bright, and the reporting requirements will help ensure that current union members have a better understand of how union leaders spend the tens of billions of dollars in revenue they acquire out of workers' paychecks.
Overtime rules. In May 2026, DOL formally ended defense of the Biden Administration's 2024 overtime rule, which a federal court found unlawful shortly after the Loper Bright ruling for functionally eliminating the FLSA's duties test through an oversized salary increase.18 Instead, the 2019 salary threshold from the first Trump administration is in place, restoring more certainty to overtime rules.19
Those actions are only part of a much broader effort. In its most recent Unified Agenda, DOL proposed nearly 150 regulatory actions,20 and in July 2025 alone it began a process to rewrite or repeal 63 workplace rules it judged obsolete or beyond what Congress had actually authorized.21
Pro-Worker Reforms for Congress
As the Trump administration continues to pursue regulatory reform, Congress also has opportunities to advance reforms that make good policies permanent and drive even bigger reforms. Examples include:
H.R. 1319, the Modern Worker Empowerment Act,22 would enact essentially the same control-and-opportunity test DOL has proposed, applying it to both FLSA and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) as administered by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
H.R. 1320, the Modern Worker Security Act,23 creates a safe harbor law for businesses that want to offer independent contractors portable benefits, from health coverage to retirement contributions, without providing benefits being used as a reason to categorize independent workers as employees against their will. Recently, 11 states have enacted related voluntary portable benefits laws in bipartisan fashion,24 providing Congress a blueprint in working together to bring transformative access to affordable health care and other benefits to tens of millions of Americans.
This legislation is an example of what is possible for Congress to act on right away.
H.R. 4366, the Save Local Business Act,25 would enact a law similar to the DOL's proposed joint employer rule, giving the franchise and contracting small business entrepreneurs I mentioned a standard that remains settled regardless of who is president in the future. This joint employer standard would still provide agency oversight for evidence of actual control of workers by multiple businesses, but it would remove subjective, theoretical, and unutilized interpretations of control by agencies that threaten the livelihoods of millions of Americans including small business entrepreneurs.
H.R. 2870, the Working Families Flexibility Act,26 sponsored by this Subcommittee's own Representative Miller, would give private-sector workers a choice that federal employees have had for decades: choosing whether overtime they work earns them one and a half times their pay or time and a half paid leave to use for future time off.
Best yet, the Employee Rights Act, H.R. 4154,27 contains a full set of pro worker reforms advancing small business entrepreneurship, self-employment pathways, democratic rights for workers surrounding union policies, and more. The Employee Rights Act would unleash opportunity for workers that have been held back for far too long by dated labor law regimes.
While significant regulatory reforms are already in effect and being advanced by DOL and other agencies in the Trump administration, the next two plus years provide opportunity for additional regulatory reforms to advance. For instance, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) 2024 walkaround rule,28 which lets union leaders or other unqualified personnel interfere with safety inspection processes to advance unrelated agendas such as forcing union representation, could be withdrawn.
The deregulatory efforts by the Trump administration to improve economic opportunity while at the same time even reduce agency overreach long term have already created momentum.
Combined with some of the legislative reforms I have highlighted, American workers would be able to genuinely chase opportunity instead of permission.
* * *
Notes
1 How independent contracting regulations could hurt Pennsylvania workers. (Nov 2020)
2 Liya Palagashvili, "Getting Worker Classification Right: Evidence, Tradeoffs, and the Future of Independent Work," public interest comment, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, April 28, 2026.
3 National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 29 U.S.C. Sec.Sec. 151-169.
4 Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 29 U.S.C. Sec.Sec. 201-219.
5 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Employment by Major Industry Sector," accessed August 2026; Chelsea Follett, "The Changing Nature of Work," HumanProgress, accessed August 2026 (sources used for this comparison in Austen Bannan, How To Empower Workers (Institute for the American Worker, 2025), 1 nn.1-2).
6 Carry, "How Many Freelancers Are in the US? [Statistics for 2026]," citing MBO Partners, "State of Independence 2025," accessed August 2026.
7 Austen Bannan, How To Empower Workers (Institute for the American Worker, 2025).
8 Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).
9 Exec. Order No. 14192, "Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation," 90 Fed. Reg. 9065 (Feb. 6, 2025).
10 Presidential Memorandum, "Directing the Repeal of Unlawful Regulations" (Apr. 9, 2025), discussed in "Agencies to Use Good Cause Exception to Repeal Illegal Regulations," Snell & Wilmer, May 1, 2025.
11 Americans for Prosperity Foundation, "Recasting Regulations Tracker," accessed late August 2026 (figures current as of access date; the tracker updates daily from the Federal Register).
12 U.S. Department of Labor, "Employee or Independent Contractor Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Family and Medical Leave Act, and Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act," 91 Fed. Reg. 9932 (proposed Feb. 27, 2026).
13 U.S. Department of Labor, "Employee or Independent Contractor Classification Under the Fair Labor Standards Act," 89 Fed. Reg. 1638 (Jan. 10, 2024), as discussed at U.S. Department of Labor, "Misclassification: Rulemaking," accessed August 2026.
14 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangements" news release, accessed August 2026 (cited on this point in Bannan, How To Empower Workers, 13 n.86).
15 U.S. Department of Labor, "Joint Employer Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Family and Medical Leave Act, and Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act," 91 Fed. Reg. 21878 (proposed Apr. 23, 2026) (citing Loper Bright, 603 U.S. at 388, on the weight due the Department's interpretive guidance).
16 International Franchise Association, "New Data Shows Franchising Continues to Exceed Growth Expectations," February 2024 (cited on this point in Bannan, How To Empower Workers, 9 n.55).
17 U.S. Department of Labor, "Labor Organization Annual Financial Reports," 91 Fed. Reg. 32556 (final rule June 1, 2026; effective July 1, 2026).
18 State of Texas v. U.S. Department of Labor, No. 4:24-CV-499-SDJ (E.D. Tex. Nov. 15, 2024).
19 CUPA-HR, "DOL Ends Defense of Biden Overtime Rule in Court," May 5, 2026; see also Ogletree Deakins, "Trump Administration Rescinds 2024 DOL White Collar Overtime Expansion," May 14, 2026 (formal rescission effective May 15, 2026).
20 EHS Today, "Administration Issues Regulatory Agenda," September 5, 2025.
21 U.S. Department of Labor, "Secretary Chavez-DeRemer Unveils Aggressive Deregulatory Efforts in Push to Put the American Worker First," news release, July 1, 2025; Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "Deregulatory Rulemaking," accessed August 2026.
22 H.R. 1319, Modern Worker Empowerment Act, 119th Cong. (2025).
23 H.R. 1320, Modern Worker Security Act, 119th Cong. (2025).
24 Mercatus Center at George Mason University, "Empowering American Workers," Portable Benefits Policy Hub, accessed August 2026 (state-by-state count of enacted and pending portable benefits legislation, updated on a rolling basis).
25 H.R. 4366, Save Local Business Act, 119th Cong. (2025).
26 H.R. 2870, Working Families Flexibility Act, 119th Cong. (2025).
27 H.R. 4154, Employee Rights Act, 119th Cong. (2025).
28 Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "Worker Walkaround Representative Designation Process," 89 Fed. Reg. 22558 (Apr. 1, 2024).
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/bannan_testimony.pdf
* * *
Chairman Mackenzie, Ranking Member Omar, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am Austen Bannan, Employment Policy Fellow at Americans for Prosperity.
AFP is the premier grassroots organization advancing policy to ensure every ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections released the following testimony by Austen Bannan, employment policy fellow at Americans for Prosperity, from a Sept. 2, 2026, hearing entitled "Less Red Tape, More Opportunity: Unleashing American Workers and Job Creators": * * * Chairman Mackenzie, Ranking Member Omar, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am Austen Bannan, Employment Policy Fellow at Americans for Prosperity. AFP is the premier grassroots organization advancing policy to ensure everyAmerican can pursue their version of the American dream. Across every state, millions of AFP grassroots supporters champion policies that will bring greater freedom and opportunity to their families and neighbors, and I work on their behalf every day to bring federal and state reforms to fruition. In my space, that means empowering workers with choice and opportunity to succeed in the 21st century. It means ensuring that Americans are free to chase opportunity instead of government permission.
Take for instance Marylin Costic, a Pennsylvanian who has worked for four decades as an independent contractor in the retail cosmetics industry. When her family relocated for her husband's job, she had to leave her own medical lab technician job but found self-employment as a new pathway. This allowed her to earn income while raising three children and taking care of her parents when they were sick.1 AFP has worked hard to ensure states across the nation like Pennsylvania reject anti-worker employment tests like California has that are intended to cut off flexible work pathways and have led to reduced employment for self-employed workers and beyond.2
The National Labor Relations Act3 turns 91 this year while the Fair Labor Standards Act4 turns 88.
Both were written for an economy where Americans often worked their full careers at one or very few employers, in fixed shifts, and in one career pathway. They were also enacted in an era where 1 in 3 workers were in manufacturing jobs, which supports less than 1 in 10 workers today.5 The labor laws of that era didn't account for a labor market in which more than 70 million Americans now earn some or all of their income as self-employed workers such as independent contractors.6
Nor did they anticipate an era of rapid technology growth where Americans change jobs dozens of times including even their career pathways several times.
In my 2025 Institute for the American Worker report, How to Empower Workers,7
I highlight how the skills required for success today often quickly shift as the knowledge economy grows and adapts to AI while traditional blue-collar jobs also become increasingly technical and even automated. Some leaders think a return to more government interventions in the private economy and adversarial collective bargaining will protect jobs, but the reality is that as more businesses compete for workers and consumers, American workers both need and want more flexibility to thrive in this dynamic landscape.
In other words, creating ample opportunity for workers to choose how they work is one of the most critical ways to protect workers and American families in our economy. The efforts by some leaders to double down on more top-down laws and regulations that eliminate worker choice and contract freedom undermines both workers and businesses across American communities.
Since President Trump took office, however, the Trump administration has shown a strong commitment to removing harmful and even unlawful labor regulations. The hearing today is a great opportunity to highlight regulatory reforms already underway as well as some of the future actions federal agencies and Congress can take to maximize opportunity for American families in the 21st century and beyond. Policies that allow workers to chase opportunity instead of government permission.
I'm going to highlight a few of the modern developments impacting American workers and businesses today including a shifting regulatory landscape.
The Supreme Court's 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo,8 which ended a long-time precedent of courts automatically deferring to agency decisions around ambiguous statutes, is an important part of the regulatory reforms we are seeing. President Trump addressed Loper Bright directly in his first days back in office. His Executive Order 14192,/9 issued eleven days into his second term, directed every agency to identify 10 existing regulations for repeal for every new one it wanted to issue. Then, an April 2025 memorandum10 instructed agencies to move quickly against rules that Loper Bright and a related line of Supreme Court decisions had exposed as resting on thin statutory ground - including ones highlighted in the hearing today that undermine worker empowerment and economic growth.
Americans for Prosperity Foundation's Recasting Regulations Tracker helps to highlight how much regulatory reform is now occurring: As of late August 2026, there have been more than 1,800 regulatory actions across 57 federal agencies since Loper Bright, more than 140 of which invoke Loper Bright by name, and more than a dozen of those at the Department of Labor (DOL) specifically.11
Examples of DOL actions include:
Independent contractor classification. On February 27, 2026, DOL proposed largely restoring the commonsense test it first adopted in 2021, which focuses on two key factors of the longstanding economic realities test: the degree of control a business exercises over the work and the worker's own opportunity for profit or loss.12 When finalized, that proposed rule will replace a 2024 Biden Administration rule that asked businesses to weigh six factors - control, investment, permanence of the relationship, skill and initiative, opportunity for profit or loss, and whether the work is "integral" to the business - with no factor carrying more weight than others under what DOL called a "totality-of-circumstances" test. This, in addition to new subfactors and guidance for the six factors13 left workers and businesses in a cloud of uncertainty.
DOL within the proposed rule provides a telling example. A home-based contractor who sets her own hours, turns down work freely, and negotiates with several clients at once clearly satisfies the core factors of control and profit-or-loss that courts and DOL determinations have particularly relied upon. However, under the six-factor rule, her classification could still turn on whether her work was deemed "integral" to a client's business, or whether her modest investment looked small next to that client's -- factors with no bearing on whether she's actually working for herself.
Restoring focus on the two primary factors that actually distinguish independence from employment will improve compliance and end a practice of treating self-employment pathways like they are a problem. This is exactly what workers want: A Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey from the Biden era found that less than 1 in 10 independent contractors would prefer a traditional job if given the choice.14
Joint employer status. On April 22, 2026, the Department proposed restoring the same kind of clarity to joint employer determinations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, citing Loper Bright directly in explaining how much weight its own guidance should carry with courts.15 The proposal largely revives the sensible 2020 framework, weighing evidence of direct control being exerted by businesses rather than treating unused and theoretical control -- as subjectively determined by DOL -- as a way to force small businesses into legal liability with and control by larger businesses. That clarity matters enormously to the more than 820,000 franchise businesses employing nearly 9 million workers nationwide,16 along with countless small businesses that operate as vendors and contractors to larger companies, all of whom have spent recent years navigating standards shifting back and forth across presidential administrations.
Union transparency. In the spirt of the highly bipartisan 1959 Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), or Landrum-Griffin Act, that created reporting and other requirements for unions to curb corruption and anti-democratic actions, the Trump administration published a final rule on June 1, 2026 to update reporting requirements for unions.17 This includes having the largest unions (over $40 million in annual revenues) file LM-2 "long forms" with additional reporting requirements such as highlighting foreign transactions and requiring unions to itemize more individual and aggregated receipts. On the other hand, smaller unions now have simplified reporting requirements. The Trump administration has highlighted how the changes are compatible with Loper Bright, and the reporting requirements will help ensure that current union members have a better understand of how union leaders spend the tens of billions of dollars in revenue they acquire out of workers' paychecks.
Overtime rules. In May 2026, DOL formally ended defense of the Biden Administration's 2024 overtime rule, which a federal court found unlawful shortly after the Loper Bright ruling for functionally eliminating the FLSA's duties test through an oversized salary increase.18 Instead, the 2019 salary threshold from the first Trump administration is in place, restoring more certainty to overtime rules.19
Those actions are only part of a much broader effort. In its most recent Unified Agenda, DOL proposed nearly 150 regulatory actions,20 and in July 2025 alone it began a process to rewrite or repeal 63 workplace rules it judged obsolete or beyond what Congress had actually authorized.21
Pro-Worker Reforms for Congress
As the Trump administration continues to pursue regulatory reform, Congress also has opportunities to advance reforms that make good policies permanent and drive even bigger reforms. Examples include:
H.R. 1319, the Modern Worker Empowerment Act,22 would enact essentially the same control-and-opportunity test DOL has proposed, applying it to both FLSA and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) as administered by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
H.R. 1320, the Modern Worker Security Act,23 creates a safe harbor law for businesses that want to offer independent contractors portable benefits, from health coverage to retirement contributions, without providing benefits being used as a reason to categorize independent workers as employees against their will. Recently, 11 states have enacted related voluntary portable benefits laws in bipartisan fashion,24 providing Congress a blueprint in working together to bring transformative access to affordable health care and other benefits to tens of millions of Americans.
This legislation is an example of what is possible for Congress to act on right away.
H.R. 4366, the Save Local Business Act,25 would enact a law similar to the DOL's proposed joint employer rule, giving the franchise and contracting small business entrepreneurs I mentioned a standard that remains settled regardless of who is president in the future. This joint employer standard would still provide agency oversight for evidence of actual control of workers by multiple businesses, but it would remove subjective, theoretical, and unutilized interpretations of control by agencies that threaten the livelihoods of millions of Americans including small business entrepreneurs.
H.R. 2870, the Working Families Flexibility Act,26 sponsored by this Subcommittee's own Representative Miller, would give private-sector workers a choice that federal employees have had for decades: choosing whether overtime they work earns them one and a half times their pay or time and a half paid leave to use for future time off.
Best yet, the Employee Rights Act, H.R. 4154,27 contains a full set of pro worker reforms advancing small business entrepreneurship, self-employment pathways, democratic rights for workers surrounding union policies, and more. The Employee Rights Act would unleash opportunity for workers that have been held back for far too long by dated labor law regimes.
While significant regulatory reforms are already in effect and being advanced by DOL and other agencies in the Trump administration, the next two plus years provide opportunity for additional regulatory reforms to advance. For instance, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) 2024 walkaround rule,28 which lets union leaders or other unqualified personnel interfere with safety inspection processes to advance unrelated agendas such as forcing union representation, could be withdrawn.
The deregulatory efforts by the Trump administration to improve economic opportunity while at the same time even reduce agency overreach long term have already created momentum.
Combined with some of the legislative reforms I have highlighted, American workers would be able to genuinely chase opportunity instead of permission.
* * *
Notes
1 How independent contracting regulations could hurt Pennsylvania workers. (Nov 2020)
2 Liya Palagashvili, "Getting Worker Classification Right: Evidence, Tradeoffs, and the Future of Independent Work," public interest comment, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, April 28, 2026.
3 National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 29 U.S.C. Sec.Sec. 151-169.
4 Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 29 U.S.C. Sec.Sec. 201-219.
5 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Employment by Major Industry Sector," accessed August 2026; Chelsea Follett, "The Changing Nature of Work," HumanProgress, accessed August 2026 (sources used for this comparison in Austen Bannan, How To Empower Workers (Institute for the American Worker, 2025), 1 nn.1-2).
6 Carry, "How Many Freelancers Are in the US? [Statistics for 2026]," citing MBO Partners, "State of Independence 2025," accessed August 2026.
7 Austen Bannan, How To Empower Workers (Institute for the American Worker, 2025).
8 Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).
9 Exec. Order No. 14192, "Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation," 90 Fed. Reg. 9065 (Feb. 6, 2025).
10 Presidential Memorandum, "Directing the Repeal of Unlawful Regulations" (Apr. 9, 2025), discussed in "Agencies to Use Good Cause Exception to Repeal Illegal Regulations," Snell & Wilmer, May 1, 2025.
11 Americans for Prosperity Foundation, "Recasting Regulations Tracker," accessed late August 2026 (figures current as of access date; the tracker updates daily from the Federal Register).
12 U.S. Department of Labor, "Employee or Independent Contractor Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Family and Medical Leave Act, and Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act," 91 Fed. Reg. 9932 (proposed Feb. 27, 2026).
13 U.S. Department of Labor, "Employee or Independent Contractor Classification Under the Fair Labor Standards Act," 89 Fed. Reg. 1638 (Jan. 10, 2024), as discussed at U.S. Department of Labor, "Misclassification: Rulemaking," accessed August 2026.
14 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangements" news release, accessed August 2026 (cited on this point in Bannan, How To Empower Workers, 13 n.86).
15 U.S. Department of Labor, "Joint Employer Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Family and Medical Leave Act, and Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act," 91 Fed. Reg. 21878 (proposed Apr. 23, 2026) (citing Loper Bright, 603 U.S. at 388, on the weight due the Department's interpretive guidance).
16 International Franchise Association, "New Data Shows Franchising Continues to Exceed Growth Expectations," February 2024 (cited on this point in Bannan, How To Empower Workers, 9 n.55).
17 U.S. Department of Labor, "Labor Organization Annual Financial Reports," 91 Fed. Reg. 32556 (final rule June 1, 2026; effective July 1, 2026).
18 State of Texas v. U.S. Department of Labor, No. 4:24-CV-499-SDJ (E.D. Tex. Nov. 15, 2024).
19 CUPA-HR, "DOL Ends Defense of Biden Overtime Rule in Court," May 5, 2026; see also Ogletree Deakins, "Trump Administration Rescinds 2024 DOL White Collar Overtime Expansion," May 14, 2026 (formal rescission effective May 15, 2026).
20 EHS Today, "Administration Issues Regulatory Agenda," September 5, 2025.
21 U.S. Department of Labor, "Secretary Chavez-DeRemer Unveils Aggressive Deregulatory Efforts in Push to Put the American Worker First," news release, July 1, 2025; Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "Deregulatory Rulemaking," accessed August 2026.
22 H.R. 1319, Modern Worker Empowerment Act, 119th Cong. (2025).
23 H.R. 1320, Modern Worker Security Act, 119th Cong. (2025).
24 Mercatus Center at George Mason University, "Empowering American Workers," Portable Benefits Policy Hub, accessed August 2026 (state-by-state count of enacted and pending portable benefits legislation, updated on a rolling basis).
25 H.R. 4366, Save Local Business Act, 119th Cong. (2025).
26 H.R. 2870, Working Families Flexibility Act, 119th Cong. (2025).
27 H.R. 4154, Employee Rights Act, 119th Cong. (2025).
28 Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "Worker Walkaround Representative Designation Process," 89 Fed. Reg. 22558 (Apr. 1, 2024).
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/bannan_testimony.pdf
AFL-CIO Safety & Health Director Reindel Testifies Before House Education & Workforce Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections released the following testimony by AFL-CIO Safety and Health Director Rebecca L. Reindel from a Sept. 2, 2026, hearing entitled "Less Red Tape, More Opportunity: Unleashing American Workers and Job Creators":
* * *
Chairman Mackenzie, Ranking Member Omar and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify on behalf of the AFL-CIO about protecting worker health and safety.
The AFL-CIO is the federation of 65 national labor unions in the U.S., representing 15 million working people ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections released the following testimony by AFL-CIO Safety and Health Director Rebecca L. Reindel from a Sept. 2, 2026, hearing entitled "Less Red Tape, More Opportunity: Unleashing American Workers and Job Creators": * * * Chairman Mackenzie, Ranking Member Omar and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify on behalf of the AFL-CIO about protecting worker health and safety. The AFL-CIO is the federation of 65 national labor unions in the U.S., representing 15 million working peopleacross a wide variety of industries--including construction, education, emergency response, manufacturing, health care, transportation, utilities, retail and service, entertainment, athletics, and others--in private and public sectors and in stationary and mobile workplaces. Our members and millions of other workers across the country face life-altering working conditions every day they show up to work.
"Deregulatory" Deception
The use of "deregulation" and "less red tape" as a public frame for the Trump administration's regulatory agenda is a bait and switch--not actually about fewer rules to promote growth and innovation, but intended to distract from shifting costs and rigging the economy for the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else, regardless of the number of rules./1
These are efforts to eliminate regulations that have been grounded in science and real-world evidence, based on public and expert input from all corners and have been effective and achievable for decades.
These efforts focus on job creation and productivity to remove employers' responsibilities to maintain a safe and fair workplace, which harms worker health, economic security and wellbeing.
The "deregulatory" and "red tape" labels focus on the costs borne by industry due to the government, obscuring the more important power dynamic of the costs borne by working people and consumers due to industry practices that are avoidable./2
In this way, the deregulatory narrative on costs to industry neglects the critical benefits of the regulation's impacts on working people and the costs to working people in the absence of the regulation.
* * *
1 Coalition for Sensible Safeguards. Avoiding the Deregulatory Trap: It's not about fewer rules. It's about rigging the system for the wealthy and powerful. April 20, 2026. Available at: sensiblesafeguards.org/wpcontent/uploads/Myth-of-Deregulation-Report.pdf.
2 Ibid.
* * *
Regulation spurs innovation. Lookback reviews of Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) regulation, for instance, show that safety and health standards forced innovative industry technologies and practices that also resulted in more cost-effective compliance for businesses-- and these regulations saved hundreds to thousands of workers from dying and becoming seriously injured on the job./3
"Deregulatory" efforts are also giving more power to large corporations under the guise of small business flexibility. So, cutting red tape in the name of small business is deceiving as it is actually large corporations that are increasingly benefiting. For years, multi-million and multibillion-dollar corporations have routinely captured federal contracts set aside for small businesses. The Government Accountability Office, the U.S. Small Business Administration's (SBA) Office of Inspector General, the Center for Progressive Reform and other organizations have repeatedly highlighted significant gaps in the SBA oversight of its lending and contracting programs. Because of these weak controls, large corporations, foreign-owned entities, and ineligible firms have successfully accessed billions of dollars in federal funding and set-aside contracts originally intended exclusively for independent operators and small businesses.
A new proposal by the Trump administration aims to permit billion-dollar businesses to qualify as 'small' businesses./4
This move could give large corporations access to government contracts, loans and other assistance that is set aside for small businesses, which could create more competition for contracts and result in fewer opportunities for subcontracts by actual small businesses. Wrongly classifying large corporations as small businesses could result in serious regulatory consequences that were once limited to small businesses, such as creating additional regulatory burdens on agencies and allowing large corporations to preview regulations before they are proposed.
Larger employers are now also benefiting from size-based and quick-fix penalty reductions when they violate the law and are issued OSHA citations--a discount that used to only be available to small employers. This change was due to a policy change by the Trump administration in July 2025./5
* * *
3 See OSHA.gov/laws-regs/lookback.
4 See FederalRegister.gov/documents/2026/08/20/2026-17042/small-business-size-standards.
5 See OSHA.gov/news/newsreleases/osha-national-news-release/20250714.
* * *
Unions support strong regulatory systems because they save lives, spur innovation, increase economic fairness, uphold democracy and create a pathway for social progress--leveling the playing field so that the economy grows equitably. Dismantling regulations and undermining these systems unleashes a cascade of uncontrollable problems.
Attacks on Working People Cost Lives and Cost Taxpayers
Work is definitively a social determinant of health. The underlying causes of injuries and illnesses that businesses fail to prevent in the workplace create health and economic pressures on workers and consumers, and their families and communities. People spend most of their time working and the work environment directly shapes physical, mental, and economic wellbeing across a person's life. Physical and psychosocial hazards at work dictate how people are able to spend their free time, and work-related chronic health conditions place a physical and financial strain on individuals and their families. Family members often must stop working to become caretakers instead of contributors to the local and global economy.
Work is a significant source and cost of the burden of disease. Globally, 2.9 million deaths--2.6 million from disease alone--and 180 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) are attributable to work./6
This burden has increased 25-45% in the last five years alone and represents an economic loss equal to nearly 6% of global GDP from occupational cancers, respiratory and skin diseases and others; psychosocial factors are increasing this loss. In high-income and American regions, work-related malignant neoplasms (cancers) and long-latency illnesses constitute the largest share of fatal work-related health outcomes.
The impact on the workforce, our communities and systems is enormous. Social protection systems such as workers compensation benefits cover only a fraction--in some estimates, one-fifth--of the actual costs of a workplace injury or illness, including lost wages, medical expenses and rehabilitation. The shifting burden onto social security, disability, health care and other systems cannot fully compensate or make workers whole./7
Regulatory systems prevent disease by raising the floor for businesses that cut corners to make labor cheaper, faster and more disposable. Yet, occupational health protections and workers' rights are a primary target of a new wave of deregulatory efforts.
Since July 2025, the Department of Labor has published more than 60 "deregulatory" proposals that seek to weaken protections for people at work through standards and regulations. These changes do not fix duplicative, redundant, or outdated standards, but will increase worker injuries, illnesses and fatalities that will shift the burden onto taxpayers. Below are several key examples.
* * *
6 Hamalainen, P., Takala, J., Nygard, C. H., & Neupane, S. (2024). Global-, regional- and country-level estimates of the work-related burden of diseases and accidents in 2019. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 50(1), 48-52.
7 See publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/workers-rights/workplace-injury-illness-costs-beingfoisted-on-workers-government-oshas-michaels-says/.
* * *
Eliminating worker safety protections for "obvious" hazards and "inherently risky" occupations: The Trump administration has issued proposed rules that would remove employees from OSHA protections altogether if they hold "inherently risky" occupations or work with "obvious" hazards. In its establishment of OSHA in 1970, Congress assigned OSHA the authority to enforce specific standards and its general duty clause to ensure employers maintain a safe workplace. Congress specifically gave OSHA the "general duty clause" to ensure that employers could not ignore a hazard just because it did not have a dedicated standard. If these are finalized, workers would not be protected by the government when their employer does not address preventable dangers on the job.
Weakening respirator requirements that protect against chemicals and infectious diseases: Another proposal would eliminate mandatory medical evaluations for workers when they are required to respirators for a job, and 16 other proposals would weaken respirator-related requirements on employers to give them more discretion about which workers need to wear respirators, weaken training requirements, weaken HEPA/filter requirements and/or weaken medical evaluation requirements. These proposals dismiss science, industrial hygiene expertise, medical advice and evidence from the shop floor. Respirators can pose serious health risks if they are used without properly ensuring that workers can safely wear them while performing their job. Relaxing requirements for specific kinds of respirators, even against chemicals such as asbestos and lead, puts workers in danger of significant disease and death.
Construction, manufacturing and public sector workers:
Another proposal would rescind an existing standard that requires adequate lighting in construction areas, aisles, stairs, ramps, runways, corridors, offices, shops, and storage areas.
Another would rescind employer requirements to use the longstanding color scheme to mark physical hazards in the workplace: red for danger and stop, and yellow for caution. Another proposes to eliminate the deadline indefinitely for employers to modernize ladder safety and personal fall arrest systems by 2036, a deadline they have already had a full decade to meet in order to protect their workers from preventable, fatal fall hazards.
A miner's right to breathe is more important than a corporation's profit margin:
The White House recently cleared a new proposal to roll back silica protections for miners, at the same time research shows that one third of all underground coal miners in central Appalachia suffer from incurable Black Lung disease--a 50 year high. Our government is rolling back silica protections for mineworkers and prioritizing efforts to shield manufacturers of dangerous engineered stone products from liability, rather than protect the workers harmed by them.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration has also proposed to remove the requirement for agency approval of mine operator safety plans before companies send workers underground to begin work.
Other protections at work:
Deregulatory efforts at other agencies that target worker health and safety are increasing line speeds in poultry and pork processing plants that cause severe injuries, weakening of rules that prevent chemical plant explosions and worker input into safety plans, weakening safety protections for workers at U.S. Department of Energy sites, eliminating industry requirements that minimize radiation exposure across industries and undermining expert support for developing worker safety standards by decimating the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Other deregulatory efforts from the Department of Labor are removing domestic workers from minimum wage and overtime laws, weakening child labor standards, creating steep financial barriers for immigrant workers to be legally employed, making it easier to misclassify workers under employment schemes and targeting labor unions.
Ultimately, initiatives aimed at "deregulation" and "cutting red tape" are too simplistic and are dangerous. They fail to account for the original reasons those rules were established; fail to justify changes with evidence or ignore data outright; increase risk to workers and liability for employers; create exercises that are costly for taxpayers; and perform duplicative work already completed by agencies years ago.
More Worker Protections are Needed, Not Fewer
July 2026 was the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous United States./8
More than 2,600 workers died from heat exposure in the past five years alone./9
Construction and manufacturing workers, teachers, letter carriers and other workers who are building, operating and repairing our schools, hospitals, and VA facilities, and delivering our mail and preparing our food, are doing it in the hottest conditions ever recorded. Yet, the Trump administration has refused to act on a comprehensive heat standard that would have guaranteed workers basic water, shade, and rest breaks from their employers; instead, they have weakened OSHA's existing heat enforcement program and have announced plans for a potential heat standard that would give employers more flexibility.
* * *
8 See NCEI.NOAA.gov/news/national-climate-202607.
9 AFL-CIO. Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect. April 27, 2026. AFLCIO.org/dotj-2026.
* * *
Under the Trump administration, the weakening of standards and laws has been coupled with rhetoric centered on the need for more employer assistance, rather than enforcement with citations and rather than making the agency more accessible to workers. OSHA has many tools, including compliance assistance for employers, but deterrence is a critical tool for employers who may want to cut corners that result in workers paying the price. The promulgation and enforcement of strong standards have always been cornerstones of the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Mine Safety and Health Act.
Resource capacity for these agencies has severely declined and were particularly slashed last year. Over the past 35 years, the number of OSHA staff have decreased 26%, number of inspectors per workers decreased 71%, the agency budget decreased 10% and the amount OSHA has to protect the health and safety of each worker it is responsible for decreased 41%./10
When there are fewer resources, the solution is not to weaken the laws, but to find better ways to enforce and remind employers of the law so that deterrence covers more ground.
Even as a small agency with massive responsibility, OSHA has been tremendously effective since its inception 55 years ago. Workplace deaths have decreased dramatically while the workforce has grown 44% and the number of establishments covered by the agency has increased 85%./11
A substantial body of empirical evidence has found that OSHA inspections with penalties result in substantially and persistently reduced rates of serious injuries./12,13
That effectiveness has not changed. Compared with the previous two years, in FY 2024, federal OSHA had 13% fewer worker fatalities to investigate--notably 20% fewer from falls and nearly 70% fewer from trench collapses--due to targeted enforcement programs./14
Just because a business is small in employment size doesn't mean that it is safe. Small businesses can be very dangerous workplaces. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the highest workplace fatality rates (per 100,000 workers) occur in industries that have a high proportion of small establishments, including construction (9.2), mining (13.8), transportation (12.2) and agriculture (20.9)./15
Small businesses also have resources to assist them in complying with the law and are provided "discounts" when they violate the law. For example, OSHA's onsite consultation program has been free to small businesses for years; it is separate from enforcement and carried out by the states under a federal OSHA grant program. Also, OSHA has historically provided a 70% penalty reduction for small employers (10 employees or fewer) and 60% penalty reduction for medium sized employers (11 to 25 employees). Due to a revised policy by the Trump administration in July 2025, that number increased to 70% for all employers with 25 or fewer employees and 30% for all employers with 26 to 100 employees./16
* * *
10 AFL-CIO. Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect. April 27, 2026. AFLCIO.org/dotj-2026.
11 Ibid.
12 Levine, D. I., Toffel, M. W., & Johnson, M. S. (2012). Randomized government safety inspections reduce worker injuries with no detectable job loss. Science, 336(6083), 907-911.
13 Mendeloff, J. (2012). A new estimate of the impact of OSHA inspections on manufacturing injuries. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 55(11), 1034-1043.
14 See DOL.gov/newsroom/releases/osha/osha20241104-0.
15 See BLS.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf and AFL-CIO. Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect. April 27, 2026. AFLCIO.org/dotj-2026.
* * *
We all want safe workplaces. Regulation is the cost of doing business; working people's lives must not be. I urge the subcommittee and the Congress to ensure agencies promulgate strong regulations and implement and oversee strong enforcement programs so that workers have the opportunity to return to their families unharmed at the end of their shift and are paid and treated fairly for the labor they provide, so that bad actors are held accountable when they do not meet strong minimum standards and do not undercut scrupulous employers. Workers should not have to sacrifice their lives for a paycheck.
* * *
16 See OSHA.gov/news/newsreleases/osha-national-news-release/20250714.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/reindel_testimony.pdf
* * *
Chairman Mackenzie, Ranking Member Omar and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify on behalf of the AFL-CIO about protecting worker health and safety.
The AFL-CIO is the federation of 65 national labor unions in the U.S., representing 15 million working people ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections released the following testimony by AFL-CIO Safety and Health Director Rebecca L. Reindel from a Sept. 2, 2026, hearing entitled "Less Red Tape, More Opportunity: Unleashing American Workers and Job Creators": * * * Chairman Mackenzie, Ranking Member Omar and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify on behalf of the AFL-CIO about protecting worker health and safety. The AFL-CIO is the federation of 65 national labor unions in the U.S., representing 15 million working peopleacross a wide variety of industries--including construction, education, emergency response, manufacturing, health care, transportation, utilities, retail and service, entertainment, athletics, and others--in private and public sectors and in stationary and mobile workplaces. Our members and millions of other workers across the country face life-altering working conditions every day they show up to work.
"Deregulatory" Deception
The use of "deregulation" and "less red tape" as a public frame for the Trump administration's regulatory agenda is a bait and switch--not actually about fewer rules to promote growth and innovation, but intended to distract from shifting costs and rigging the economy for the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else, regardless of the number of rules./1
These are efforts to eliminate regulations that have been grounded in science and real-world evidence, based on public and expert input from all corners and have been effective and achievable for decades.
These efforts focus on job creation and productivity to remove employers' responsibilities to maintain a safe and fair workplace, which harms worker health, economic security and wellbeing.
The "deregulatory" and "red tape" labels focus on the costs borne by industry due to the government, obscuring the more important power dynamic of the costs borne by working people and consumers due to industry practices that are avoidable./2
In this way, the deregulatory narrative on costs to industry neglects the critical benefits of the regulation's impacts on working people and the costs to working people in the absence of the regulation.
* * *
1 Coalition for Sensible Safeguards. Avoiding the Deregulatory Trap: It's not about fewer rules. It's about rigging the system for the wealthy and powerful. April 20, 2026. Available at: sensiblesafeguards.org/wpcontent/uploads/Myth-of-Deregulation-Report.pdf.
2 Ibid.
* * *
Regulation spurs innovation. Lookback reviews of Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) regulation, for instance, show that safety and health standards forced innovative industry technologies and practices that also resulted in more cost-effective compliance for businesses-- and these regulations saved hundreds to thousands of workers from dying and becoming seriously injured on the job./3
"Deregulatory" efforts are also giving more power to large corporations under the guise of small business flexibility. So, cutting red tape in the name of small business is deceiving as it is actually large corporations that are increasingly benefiting. For years, multi-million and multibillion-dollar corporations have routinely captured federal contracts set aside for small businesses. The Government Accountability Office, the U.S. Small Business Administration's (SBA) Office of Inspector General, the Center for Progressive Reform and other organizations have repeatedly highlighted significant gaps in the SBA oversight of its lending and contracting programs. Because of these weak controls, large corporations, foreign-owned entities, and ineligible firms have successfully accessed billions of dollars in federal funding and set-aside contracts originally intended exclusively for independent operators and small businesses.
A new proposal by the Trump administration aims to permit billion-dollar businesses to qualify as 'small' businesses./4
This move could give large corporations access to government contracts, loans and other assistance that is set aside for small businesses, which could create more competition for contracts and result in fewer opportunities for subcontracts by actual small businesses. Wrongly classifying large corporations as small businesses could result in serious regulatory consequences that were once limited to small businesses, such as creating additional regulatory burdens on agencies and allowing large corporations to preview regulations before they are proposed.
Larger employers are now also benefiting from size-based and quick-fix penalty reductions when they violate the law and are issued OSHA citations--a discount that used to only be available to small employers. This change was due to a policy change by the Trump administration in July 2025./5
* * *
3 See OSHA.gov/laws-regs/lookback.
4 See FederalRegister.gov/documents/2026/08/20/2026-17042/small-business-size-standards.
5 See OSHA.gov/news/newsreleases/osha-national-news-release/20250714.
* * *
Unions support strong regulatory systems because they save lives, spur innovation, increase economic fairness, uphold democracy and create a pathway for social progress--leveling the playing field so that the economy grows equitably. Dismantling regulations and undermining these systems unleashes a cascade of uncontrollable problems.
Attacks on Working People Cost Lives and Cost Taxpayers
Work is definitively a social determinant of health. The underlying causes of injuries and illnesses that businesses fail to prevent in the workplace create health and economic pressures on workers and consumers, and their families and communities. People spend most of their time working and the work environment directly shapes physical, mental, and economic wellbeing across a person's life. Physical and psychosocial hazards at work dictate how people are able to spend their free time, and work-related chronic health conditions place a physical and financial strain on individuals and their families. Family members often must stop working to become caretakers instead of contributors to the local and global economy.
Work is a significant source and cost of the burden of disease. Globally, 2.9 million deaths--2.6 million from disease alone--and 180 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) are attributable to work./6
This burden has increased 25-45% in the last five years alone and represents an economic loss equal to nearly 6% of global GDP from occupational cancers, respiratory and skin diseases and others; psychosocial factors are increasing this loss. In high-income and American regions, work-related malignant neoplasms (cancers) and long-latency illnesses constitute the largest share of fatal work-related health outcomes.
The impact on the workforce, our communities and systems is enormous. Social protection systems such as workers compensation benefits cover only a fraction--in some estimates, one-fifth--of the actual costs of a workplace injury or illness, including lost wages, medical expenses and rehabilitation. The shifting burden onto social security, disability, health care and other systems cannot fully compensate or make workers whole./7
Regulatory systems prevent disease by raising the floor for businesses that cut corners to make labor cheaper, faster and more disposable. Yet, occupational health protections and workers' rights are a primary target of a new wave of deregulatory efforts.
Since July 2025, the Department of Labor has published more than 60 "deregulatory" proposals that seek to weaken protections for people at work through standards and regulations. These changes do not fix duplicative, redundant, or outdated standards, but will increase worker injuries, illnesses and fatalities that will shift the burden onto taxpayers. Below are several key examples.
* * *
6 Hamalainen, P., Takala, J., Nygard, C. H., & Neupane, S. (2024). Global-, regional- and country-level estimates of the work-related burden of diseases and accidents in 2019. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 50(1), 48-52.
7 See publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/workers-rights/workplace-injury-illness-costs-beingfoisted-on-workers-government-oshas-michaels-says/.
* * *
Eliminating worker safety protections for "obvious" hazards and "inherently risky" occupations: The Trump administration has issued proposed rules that would remove employees from OSHA protections altogether if they hold "inherently risky" occupations or work with "obvious" hazards. In its establishment of OSHA in 1970, Congress assigned OSHA the authority to enforce specific standards and its general duty clause to ensure employers maintain a safe workplace. Congress specifically gave OSHA the "general duty clause" to ensure that employers could not ignore a hazard just because it did not have a dedicated standard. If these are finalized, workers would not be protected by the government when their employer does not address preventable dangers on the job.
Weakening respirator requirements that protect against chemicals and infectious diseases: Another proposal would eliminate mandatory medical evaluations for workers when they are required to respirators for a job, and 16 other proposals would weaken respirator-related requirements on employers to give them more discretion about which workers need to wear respirators, weaken training requirements, weaken HEPA/filter requirements and/or weaken medical evaluation requirements. These proposals dismiss science, industrial hygiene expertise, medical advice and evidence from the shop floor. Respirators can pose serious health risks if they are used without properly ensuring that workers can safely wear them while performing their job. Relaxing requirements for specific kinds of respirators, even against chemicals such as asbestos and lead, puts workers in danger of significant disease and death.
Construction, manufacturing and public sector workers:
Another proposal would rescind an existing standard that requires adequate lighting in construction areas, aisles, stairs, ramps, runways, corridors, offices, shops, and storage areas.
Another would rescind employer requirements to use the longstanding color scheme to mark physical hazards in the workplace: red for danger and stop, and yellow for caution. Another proposes to eliminate the deadline indefinitely for employers to modernize ladder safety and personal fall arrest systems by 2036, a deadline they have already had a full decade to meet in order to protect their workers from preventable, fatal fall hazards.
A miner's right to breathe is more important than a corporation's profit margin:
The White House recently cleared a new proposal to roll back silica protections for miners, at the same time research shows that one third of all underground coal miners in central Appalachia suffer from incurable Black Lung disease--a 50 year high. Our government is rolling back silica protections for mineworkers and prioritizing efforts to shield manufacturers of dangerous engineered stone products from liability, rather than protect the workers harmed by them.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration has also proposed to remove the requirement for agency approval of mine operator safety plans before companies send workers underground to begin work.
Other protections at work:
Deregulatory efforts at other agencies that target worker health and safety are increasing line speeds in poultry and pork processing plants that cause severe injuries, weakening of rules that prevent chemical plant explosions and worker input into safety plans, weakening safety protections for workers at U.S. Department of Energy sites, eliminating industry requirements that minimize radiation exposure across industries and undermining expert support for developing worker safety standards by decimating the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Other deregulatory efforts from the Department of Labor are removing domestic workers from minimum wage and overtime laws, weakening child labor standards, creating steep financial barriers for immigrant workers to be legally employed, making it easier to misclassify workers under employment schemes and targeting labor unions.
Ultimately, initiatives aimed at "deregulation" and "cutting red tape" are too simplistic and are dangerous. They fail to account for the original reasons those rules were established; fail to justify changes with evidence or ignore data outright; increase risk to workers and liability for employers; create exercises that are costly for taxpayers; and perform duplicative work already completed by agencies years ago.
More Worker Protections are Needed, Not Fewer
July 2026 was the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous United States./8
More than 2,600 workers died from heat exposure in the past five years alone./9
Construction and manufacturing workers, teachers, letter carriers and other workers who are building, operating and repairing our schools, hospitals, and VA facilities, and delivering our mail and preparing our food, are doing it in the hottest conditions ever recorded. Yet, the Trump administration has refused to act on a comprehensive heat standard that would have guaranteed workers basic water, shade, and rest breaks from their employers; instead, they have weakened OSHA's existing heat enforcement program and have announced plans for a potential heat standard that would give employers more flexibility.
* * *
8 See NCEI.NOAA.gov/news/national-climate-202607.
9 AFL-CIO. Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect. April 27, 2026. AFLCIO.org/dotj-2026.
* * *
Under the Trump administration, the weakening of standards and laws has been coupled with rhetoric centered on the need for more employer assistance, rather than enforcement with citations and rather than making the agency more accessible to workers. OSHA has many tools, including compliance assistance for employers, but deterrence is a critical tool for employers who may want to cut corners that result in workers paying the price. The promulgation and enforcement of strong standards have always been cornerstones of the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Mine Safety and Health Act.
Resource capacity for these agencies has severely declined and were particularly slashed last year. Over the past 35 years, the number of OSHA staff have decreased 26%, number of inspectors per workers decreased 71%, the agency budget decreased 10% and the amount OSHA has to protect the health and safety of each worker it is responsible for decreased 41%./10
When there are fewer resources, the solution is not to weaken the laws, but to find better ways to enforce and remind employers of the law so that deterrence covers more ground.
Even as a small agency with massive responsibility, OSHA has been tremendously effective since its inception 55 years ago. Workplace deaths have decreased dramatically while the workforce has grown 44% and the number of establishments covered by the agency has increased 85%./11
A substantial body of empirical evidence has found that OSHA inspections with penalties result in substantially and persistently reduced rates of serious injuries./12,13
That effectiveness has not changed. Compared with the previous two years, in FY 2024, federal OSHA had 13% fewer worker fatalities to investigate--notably 20% fewer from falls and nearly 70% fewer from trench collapses--due to targeted enforcement programs./14
Just because a business is small in employment size doesn't mean that it is safe. Small businesses can be very dangerous workplaces. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the highest workplace fatality rates (per 100,000 workers) occur in industries that have a high proportion of small establishments, including construction (9.2), mining (13.8), transportation (12.2) and agriculture (20.9)./15
Small businesses also have resources to assist them in complying with the law and are provided "discounts" when they violate the law. For example, OSHA's onsite consultation program has been free to small businesses for years; it is separate from enforcement and carried out by the states under a federal OSHA grant program. Also, OSHA has historically provided a 70% penalty reduction for small employers (10 employees or fewer) and 60% penalty reduction for medium sized employers (11 to 25 employees). Due to a revised policy by the Trump administration in July 2025, that number increased to 70% for all employers with 25 or fewer employees and 30% for all employers with 26 to 100 employees./16
* * *
10 AFL-CIO. Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect. April 27, 2026. AFLCIO.org/dotj-2026.
11 Ibid.
12 Levine, D. I., Toffel, M. W., & Johnson, M. S. (2012). Randomized government safety inspections reduce worker injuries with no detectable job loss. Science, 336(6083), 907-911.
13 Mendeloff, J. (2012). A new estimate of the impact of OSHA inspections on manufacturing injuries. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 55(11), 1034-1043.
14 See DOL.gov/newsroom/releases/osha/osha20241104-0.
15 See BLS.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf and AFL-CIO. Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect. April 27, 2026. AFLCIO.org/dotj-2026.
* * *
We all want safe workplaces. Regulation is the cost of doing business; working people's lives must not be. I urge the subcommittee and the Congress to ensure agencies promulgate strong regulations and implement and oversee strong enforcement programs so that workers have the opportunity to return to their families unharmed at the end of their shift and are paid and treated fairly for the labor they provide, so that bad actors are held accountable when they do not meet strong minimum standards and do not undercut scrupulous employers. Workers should not have to sacrifice their lives for a paycheck.
* * *
16 See OSHA.gov/news/newsreleases/osha-national-news-release/20250714.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/reindel_testimony.pdf