WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Chris Wright clashed with House Democrats on Wednesday over Energy Department funding freezes and steep cuts proposed by the Trump administration.
The White House’s preliminary 2026 budget requested $45.1 billion for the Energy Department, a 9 percent decrease from the previous fiscal year. The administration’s proposal would cut funding for electric vehicles, batteries, some nuclear initiatives and toxic-waste cleanup programs.
Additionally, the budget proposal sought to cancel more than $15 billion in green energy and climate-change research programs authorized by the bipartisan 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
“My priorities for the department are clear: to unleash a golden era of American energy dominance, strengthen our national security and lead the world in innovation,” Wright told Congress in a hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. “The Department of Energy will advance these critical missions while cutting red tape, increasing efficiency, unleashing innovation and ensuring we are better stewards of taxpayer dollars.”
Democratic lawmakers pressed Wright for answers on why billions of dollars in promised grants and contracts had been frozen, and why Energy Department staff were being let go.
“Since January, the Department of Energy has suspended critical energy programs, canceled executed awards and contracts authorized by this Congress, and severely reduced staffing,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio.
But Wright testified that the Energy Department had not frozen any funding.
“We have not frozen funding. We don’t have a single unpaid invoice at our department. Not one,” Wright said, adding that fewer than 1,000 employees had left the agency, primarily through voluntary retirements. He described the agency as “in flux” while he looks to “restructure” it.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., pushed back on Wright’s claim that the department had not withheld any funding, citing a list compiled by the Appropriations Committee showing more than $67 billion in withheld funds.
“This is in clear defiance of both congressional intent and multiple court orders,” Wasserman Schultz said, urging Wright to release the funds.
Wright rejected the figure as “incorrect” and offered to follow up with her privately.
After exiting the hearing, Wasserman Schultz said the secretary was evading accountability.
“He doesn’t want to answer uncomfortable, difficult questions,” she said. “If he can illuminate me and show me that the programs that we know are frozen have not been and the funds have been distributed, then I will certainly be relieved. But that’s not what the recipients are telling us.”
Some Republican congressmen were also skeptical about the agency’s budget cuts to energy projects.
“I do have some concerns candidly with the proposed reduction to the nuclear energy budget,” subcommittee Chair Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., said to Wright.
Rep. Frank Mrvan, D-Ind., warned the cuts could threaten clean energy jobs in the Midwest, pointing to a hydrogen hub project in Indiana that he said would create 12,000 jobs and modernize steel distribution. This was one of two hydrogen hubs that received commitments of $2.2 billion in 2024. The funding for these projects is now in flux.
Mrvan asked Wright for an update on the project. Wright responded that the hubs were still under review, comparing the process to how “any business would look at investments.” He said he hoped the review would be completed before the end of the summer.
“I want to make sure the secretary understands how deadly serious I am about the approval of the hydrogen hub,” Mrvan said after the hearing. “Real people’s lives are being impacted.”