During a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) spoke about the hiring levels at the FTC during the Biden administration.
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00:00Thank you. Chair now recognizes the distinguished gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Womack.
00:04Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Mr. Chairman, welcome. You're a breath of fresh air. I got to say that.
00:12In my words, in my strong opinion, in the last administration was more agenda driven.
00:23And in listening to your testimony this morning, and then in our private conversation, you seem to have the view that your job is like that of an umpire, of a referee,
00:39to make sure that you are holding the people and the institutions that are subject to your purview accountable.
00:54And again, my words, certainly not yours.
00:58And so it's from that standpoint that I think you're on the right course of getting the FTC back to the nuts and bolts,
01:10the blocking and tackling, if you will, of what the commission was set up for.
01:14I do have a question about budget, though.
01:17When we had our conversation, and these are appropriators up here, so it's our job to fund the discretionary side of government,
01:24and yours is part of that, we don't have clarity right now, and we need clarity.
01:31My assumption is, and I want to be clear, that it's just an assumption that there will be many agencies
01:39that will be facing some budget adjustments, some cuts, if you will.
01:45And where is the FTC right now with regard to the prospect of having to settle for less
01:54and be able to continue to function as a reputable institution within the government?
01:59The agency that I inherited, even at current funding levels, was in a very difficult position.
02:06The previous administration had hired employees at levels far beyond what we could afford.
02:13Would you call it bloated?
02:14It was bloated.
02:16It was like a two-year hiring spree that got us to levels that we couldn't sustain.
02:21And so it was important to me, coming in as chairman, to sort of make the difficult decisions necessary
02:27to restore fiscal health to the agency.
02:31And so as the president has, consistent with what he ran on in the 2024 election,
02:38oriented the government towards efficiency and being no larger than necessary
02:42to carry out its critical missions for the American people, we were already well underway
02:47on getting the agency down to a size consistent with what this body had appropriated us.
02:53And so we were sort of ready to go on that front, consistent with the president's agenda as well.
02:59We've been conducting a thorough review of our contracting.
03:02We've already reduced contract spend for this fiscal year by more than $6 million.
03:05So we are positioning, we also, as I discussed earlier, are undertaking steps that we are very optimistic about
03:13that will, over the course of the next several years, shrink the amount of money we have to pay
03:18outside vendors to house our data in some of our big and important investigations and litigations.
03:23So we are well on our way to being prepared for whatever budget this committee decides to appropriate for the FTC.
03:31You know, that runs counter to what a lot of agency heads would suggest.
03:35They need more money.
03:37They need more people.
03:38They need more resources.
03:40It sounds to me like that you feel like you can, the FTC can do its job.
03:47And that's a testament to the FTC staff.
03:49I would put the FTC staff up against the staff of any agency, civilian or federal, in the federal government.
03:55And whatever this committee decides to appropriate to the commission, American consumers will be protected by our staff.
04:03In the president's executive order, agency heads, in consultation with the FTC chair and the U.S. attorney general,
04:11complete a review of all agency regulations under their rulemaking authority
04:15and determine which rules create anti-competitive barriers.
04:20How do you plan to execute antitrust enforcement in recognition of this particular executive order?
04:27President Trump has put out a bunch of amazing executive orders.
04:31I'm not sure I'm as excited about any of them as I am on this one.
04:34So when we talk about competition in America, we generally think about monopolies and consolidation
04:39and price fixing, which is appropriate.
04:42But one of the biggest obstacles to competition, particularly to small and medium-sized businesses, is regulation.
04:49And, you know, I worked on the Hill.
04:51I've seen it in action.
04:52I've worked in state government.
04:54I've seen it in action.
04:55Big businesses will often come into the government and propose regulations that they can comply with quite easily,
05:00but that make it very difficult for competitors to rise and challenge them.
05:04And the president's executive order tells us, look through the entire code of federal regulations,
05:10find regulations that are barriers to entry that raise rival's costs and get them out of there.
05:15So we put out an RFI to the public.
05:17We said if you, especially small businesses, if you are aware of regulations that benefit your competitors
05:23but make it harder for you to compete, tell us.
05:25We will review them.
05:26We will make recommendations to the president.
05:28We also sent letters to every agency head in the federal government asking them to do the same thing.
05:32We will have economists and lawyers at both the Department of Justice and the FTC reviewing these regulations
05:37as they are identified to us.
05:39And I'm very excited when we eventually send the list to OMB and the president on our recommendations for de-scoping and deletion.
05:45Yeah, one final comment, because I may not be around for, if we have a second round of questions,
05:49and I want to be able to say this in regard to what you just discussed,
05:52and that is I'm sure hopeful that among those things that are considered in this context
05:59is Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act, because that is, and Ms. Glusekamp-Perez and I both agree
06:08that this small business side of the equation is where the jobs are created
06:12and where we need to be creating emphasis as far as the FTC goes,
06:17but that's one that is very punitive to, you know, to our banking community.
06:23So I applaud you for the work that you're doing.
06:27Keep it up, and we look forward to getting your budget.