After telling House lawmakers that the F.B.I. needed more resources, Kash Patel told senators that he agreed with a proposal to slash more than $500 million from the agency.
Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, told senators on Thursday that he backed a White House proposal to cut his agency’s budget by about half a billion dollars, an about-face a day after requesting additional money.
On Wednesday, Mr. Patel, testifying before a House appropriations panel about the Trump administration’s budget plan, said that the F.B.I. needed “more than what has been proposed.” Less than 24 hours later, he told senators the agency would “make and agree with this budget as it stands.”
The Trump administration proposal would amount to a decrease of roughly 5 percent in the F.B.I. budget.
Asked by lawmakers on Thursday to explain the apparent change of heart, Mr. Patel said that he had been “simply asking for more funds because I can do more with more money.”
Mr. Patel’s turnabout is likely to do little to assuage Republicans in Congress who were already concerned about the budget plan. His admission a day earlier signaled a rare break with the White House, and public disagreements between agencies and the administration over budget requests tend to be uncommon.
The hearings also highlighted how dysfunctional the federal budget process has become over the past decade, as Congress has repeatedly overcome short-lived crises by passing measures intended merely to keep the government open. That dynamic has made White House budget proposals increasingly irrelevant.