FBI director Kash Patel testifies before a U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday, May 8, 2025. (Photo from U.S. Senate webcast)
WASHINGTON — The case of the missing Federal Bureau of Investigation budget request was on full display Thursday, when senators repeatedly asked the law enforcement agency’s director what resources he needed Congress to provide in the upcoming fiscal year.
FBI Director Kash Patel did not disclose a dollar amount, an unusual development at a hearing at which an agency head traditionally discusses a budget request in detail with lawmakers who hold the purse strings.
The Senate Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science Subcommittee hearing came one day after Patel testified before a House panel that he needs more money from Congress than was asked for in the Trump administration’s budget request.
Patel’s written statement to the House subcommittee said the FBI’s total request was $10.1 billion, but during that hearing he told appropriators the agency needed at least $11.2 billion.
Patel rejecting the Trump administration’s official budget request in support of his own proposal to Congress was significant in that Cabinet secretaries almost always stick to the official request, at least during public hearings.
“The skinny budget is a proposal, and I’m working through the appropriations process to explain why we need more than what has been proposed,” Patel said during the House hearing Wednesday.
Never mind
Less than 24 hours later, he reversed course during the Senate hearing, saying his comments were misconstrued.
“President Trump has set new priorities and a focus on federal law enforcement. I’m here today in full support of the president’s budget, which reprioritizes and enhances our mission of law enforcement and national security,” Patel said in his opening statement. “We’re fighting for a fully funded FBI because we want a fully effective FBI.”
What that dollar amount might be was unclear, though.
During an exchange with Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the full Appropriations Committee, about what exactly the FBI needs in terms of funding, Patel said: “I’m not asking you for anything at this time.”
Murray responded by asking if he believed the FBI could “operate without a budget.” Patel responded that he “never said that.”
Republicans and Democrats on the Senate panel repeatedly brought up that the Trump administration’s “skinny” budget proposal, released last week, doesn’t actually include a total funding level for the FBI. It only has one paragraph calling for lawmakers to cut funding by $545 million.
Patel testified during the two-hour Senate hearing that he had identified most of the accounts that could lose funding, though he wasn’t prepared to share that information with the committee or give a timeline when he would.
Patel also declined to tell lawmakers when the FBI would send Congress its spending plan for the current fiscal year, which is required by law and past due.
“I don’t have a timeline on that,” Patel said.
Kansas senator pleads with Patel for details
Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran, the subcommittee’s chairman, said he was holding the hearing to get the ball rolling on the upcoming appropriations process and encouraged Patel to get the committee more details.
“We wanted to get every piece of information we could as early as we could, even though the budgetary process and now the appropriations process is disjointed and things are lacking,” Moran said.
Moran said that he was “concerned by the scale of the cut, especially as I know full well it comes on the heels of two years where the FBI’s budget was essentially held flat, forcing it to absorb hundreds of millions of dollars in unavoidable inflationary increases.”
Patel declined to say if he would testify before the committee again after the Trump administration releases its full budget request, which should include considerably more detail and is expected to come out sometime later this year, though the White House hasn’t said when.
The House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees that fund the FBI will write the bill over the summer and will likely negotiate final bipartisan, bicameral bills this fall.
That bill is one of a dozen that provide funding for many of the departments and agencies that make up the federal government, including Agriculture, Energy, Defense, Health and Human Services. Homeland Security, Interior, State, and many more.
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