March 10, 2025 (Washington, D.C.) – Congressman Don Beyer (D-VA) today announced that he will oppose the Republican appropriations bill scheduled for a vote in the House later this week. The partisan measure cuts funding for veterans’ medical benefits, evicts 32,000 households from their homes, and cuts funding for critical medical research, while failing to incorporate guardrails to ensure money is not shut off, only spent in Republican districts, or repurposed. The bill was introduced against a backdrop of a Musk-Trump Administration impounding federal funds previously appropriated by Congress, while conducting a political purge of the federal workforce, both in obvious violation of law.

Beyer said:

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk just spent seven weeks recklessly and illegally shutting down federal agencies, mass firing federal workers, and freezing congressionally mandated funding. The status quo for my district today is massive job losses with impending economic chaos for the entire region. The damage to my constituents is already far worse than that caused by the longest government shutdown in American history – which was also inflicted on them by Donald Trump.

“On Saturday, when I organized an event with local governments to offer support to federal workers and contractors with financial and career counseling, mental health resources, and food assistance, over a thousand people came. The need, desperation, and pain in that room were palpable.

“Speaker Johnson now proposes that Congress enact partisan legislation to perpetuate this disastrous status quo. Johnson calls the Republican bill ‘clean,’ despite changes to cut veterans’ medical care and medical research; but the entire premise of the legislation is that it would appropriate funds with the expectation that Trump and Musk will immediately cancel huge swathes of that funding and continue their illegal destruction of the federal government. Anyone who refers to that arrangement as ‘clean’ should have their head examined, it is a fundamentally dishonest approach to legislating. Allowing Elon and company to continue looting the federal government is as dirty as it gets.

“This is not a funding bill, it is a defunding bill, and I will vote against it.”