Lowey Opening Statement at Subcommittee Markup of 2014 Legislative Branch Appropriations Act

July 10, 2013
Press Release
Lowey Opening Statement at Subcommittee Markup of 2014 Legislative Branch Appropriations Act

While that is not so bad compared to other bills such as Transportation and Housing and Energy and Water, this bill keeps the status quo with which Members have been dissatisfied - long lines for your visitors, furloughs and pay cuts for staff, and the inability to effectively communicate with our constituents.

Mr. Chairman, today we consider the smallest of the appropriations bills, which funds the legislative branch. Without Senate items, the bill is $3.2 billion, or 3.2% below the FY 2013 enacted level.

While that is not so bad compared to other bills such as Transportation and Housing and Energy and Water, this bill keeps the status quo with which Members have been dissatisfied - long lines for your visitors, furloughs and pay cuts for staff, and the inability to effectively communicate with our constituents. If you think it takes a long time to get a bill scored by the Congressional Budget Office or to get a report written by the Government Accountability Office, this bill will not fix those problems.

This bill, which conforms largely to sequester, amplifies the slow demise of expertise, work ethic, and comity in this great institution. The bill keeps the Congressional Research Service, the Office of Compliance, and the Congressional Budget Office at the sequestered level. These nonpolitical agencies are the backbone of a functional Congress, and we cannot do our job without those agencies operating at full capacity.

The Senate Allocation is $226 million more than the House's allocation for the Legislative Branch bill. It should concern all of my House colleagues that the Senate will adequately fund its operations while we are cutting our nose to spite our face in the House.

Before closing, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for what is not in this bill funding for the defense of the Defense of Marriage Act. If we could only get back the $2.3 million for the lawyers hired by Republican leadership to defend that unconstitutional law, we could fill some of the holes I outlined above. This subcommittee has a responsibility to rise above partisan politics to serve as stewards of this branch of government. The payment of outside counsel for DOMA interrupted that long-standing bipartisanship, and I hope we can avoid such partisan gambits in the future.

I also thank our distinguished Ranking Member, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. We are delighted you have returned to this subcommittee. I look forward to working with you both to improve this bill to support the legislative branch.

113th Congress