Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. AMODEI. 4364, and that I may include tabular material on the same.
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Mr. AMODEI. Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 756, I call up the bill (H.R. 4364) making appropriations for the Legislative Branch for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Mr. AMODEI. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The legislative branch bill is what we do to ourselves. We don't need the President's budget. This is what the House, in its wisdom, does for spending with respect to the House accounts and also some accounts we share with the Senate--Capitol Police, Congressional Budget Office, other agencies like that.
As we look at what we are doing here in the context of this appropriations season, the amount of money that is spent on this represents about a 4.7 percent cut from the previous budget year for purposes of the legislative branch. It gets a little bit less when you add the Senate in, but the House has done its job in terms of leading by example.
Now, you may say, how have you done your job? Let me tell you this: What we have done with respect to Members' office budgets, committee budgets, and some of the support functions--for instance, in the Library of Congress, the Congressional Budget Office, and the General Accountability Office--we have left those accounts at or near what their previous levels were.
Some of them enjoy modest increases, but if you care about constituent services, if you care about doing a good job of being able to hold the Senate's feet to the fire, the White House's feet to the fire, or the people on the other side of the aisle's feet to the fire, you need resources to do that.
The time has never been more important than it is now for us to be able to do our jobs in a way that is appropriate for the challenges that confront our country.
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Mr. AMODEI. Mr. Speaker, I was remiss in not saying thank you, so I will follow the lead of my esteemed ranking member and thank him and his staff as well as my staff for the way we were able to conduct the committee's business. Even though we disagreed on many things, we weren't disagreeable about it, which, some days, is quite a unique thing in this business. My hat is off to them, and my thank-you is on the record for the help from everybody on both sides.
I will cover a couple of areas in the spirit that the committee worked. My colleague has mentioned the DACA program, which is, frankly, something that, while we may have some disagreements on it, overall, we may agree on more than we disagree. However, as the clerk indicated, this is the Legislative Branch appropriations bill. When we are talking about issues that deal with immigration or the DACA program or anything else, that is the appropriate jurisdiction, in most cases, of the Judiciary Committee.
Therefore, the folks standing up on either side of you, Mr. Speaker, from the Parliamentarian's Office go through that drill and figure out the appropriate jurisdiction for this bill. We came to the conclusion that it wasn't. It doesn't mean that we disagree on a lot of that stuff, but nonetheless, you can't do that in the Legislative Branch bill, so we didn't.
On the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, I am not going to go through what happened in that office over the last few years. I will just say this: It was created by a rule in a previous Congress.
In exercising our appropriate oversight authority in seeing how that money was spent, I will just say that there was a sincere belief that that was not what was intended. When we talk about retreats, gift cards for employees, office bling, and multiple other things, it is not that the mission isn't important. It is, which is why the mission was preserved and moved under the supervision of the Chief Administrative Officer for the House, and an appropriate budget to do that work is fine.
There was part of a reorganization, which now puts them under a different office that is a subset of the Chief Administrative Officer for the House. However, to continue on in a largely unsupervised, autonomous role, where the use of funds was not impressive, the committee thought that it was appropriate to maintain the mission but change the structure for more supervision.
Also, when we talk about staff security, my colleague, the ranking member, is absolutely right. It is a concern for everybody. What the committee has done was say that we don't want to just throw a bunch of money at it and say go do good things with security. We wanted to have a plan.
I will tell you this: Each office can designate one of their district offices for planning. My colleague's district is in the Big Apple downtown. Mine is a long way away from there. One size doesn't fit all, so we wanted to be a little thoughtful about that. That is why we deferred from just going in whole hog.
You need to know that the Office of the Sergeant at Arms will now provide cybersecurity. This was done after the committee adjourned. It will now provide cybersecurity support to offices that ask for it.
By the way, my figures indicate there are 364 Members who have availed themselves of some form of funding through the Office of the Sergeant at Arms for security for those offices.
I look forward to continuing that when we get plans that are appropriate for the settings that those district offices are in so we can make a rational, well-based, intelligent decision on how to spend that money.
Mr. Speaker, while we may not be in agreement over the amounts we are spending on each one, I don't know if there is a lot of disagreement on the mission. It is just how much emphasis it gets and how we use taxpayer dollars in a responsible manner to go ahead and pursue those goals.
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Mr. AMODEI. Mr. Speaker, I guess since we are going to stay on it for a minute, I will go ahead and stay on it.
Nobody is opposed to diversity or inclusion. Here are some of the reasons why this office was focused on. This bill that you have before you, Mr. Speaker, is consistent with administrative restructuring to streamline human resources activities consistent with the House Committee on Administration. Bringing the best person for the job in any agency or office under this bill is what we are trying to encourage.
There are currently multiple staff support offices focused on human resources that can be reorganized and streamlined into one. The Chief Administrative Office is consumer focused and is best suited to create a House-wide office of talent and development. That is a new office that is created under this bill, which, by the way, has the mission of the old ODI.
ODI was created under House rules as its own office but will be moving to the reproposed CAO to become a part of the new office of talent and development. By this restructuring, we expect to increase accessibility to resources provided to House staff by creating a one- stop shop while also saving millions by streamlining duplicative efforts. Not only will the reorganization make activities more efficient, but it will help with oversight.
Now, let's talk about the Capitol Police for a minute. Yes, there were cuts in the requested budget for Capitol Police, but let's talk about uniformed personnel. Let's talk about the Intelligence Division. Let's talk about what the Capitol Police do to protect our campus and our operations. By the way, that is leadership details, as well.
When we talk about all those functions, all of their uniformed officer positions have been fully funded. I will say that again: fully funded. Now, it takes a while to recruit, vet, and train a Capitol Police officer. It is not one of those things where you throw the switch and say we need 500 or 600 more so that we are at our full complement of around 2,200.
It takes a while to train them in the academy before we turn them loose on the job. For the ones you see that they are fully trained, fully vetted, and ready to go, that takes time. It is not a budget function. They were fully funded for that.
We also maintain their intelligence functions, and we also maintain their protective detail functions. There were cuts to the Capitol Police budget, but not in those areas. I will also point out that some of the cuts were in funds that they weren't able to spend in this cycle anyhow.
As we are looking for savings to do the best job in terms of budget responsibility, we also wanted to recognize the reality that if you can't spend it in this cycle, let's not keep it in this cycle.
Mr. Speaker, I will indicate that those were not things that were in a MAGA rush to do this, that, or the other sort of thing. It was trying to be responsible with the legislative branch allocation that we have, which, by the way, is four-tenths of 1 percent of all spending. That doesn't mean that because it is that, we don't care about it. It means we need to do our part, too.
Similarly, the part that you didn't hear is that MRAs were kept the same so Members can keep doing their thing. Committee accounts on both sides were kept the same so Members could keep doing the committees' work on both sides of the aisle. Frankly, in the context that we live in, we think it was the responsible way to lead by example.
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Mr. AMODEI. Mr. Speaker, can I inquire as to how much time is remaining on either side?
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Mr. AMODEI. Mr. Speaker, there have been a few areas covered, and so I will try to be brief. I yield myself the balance of my time.
I want to thank my colleague from New York for his collegiality and professionalism in the way that we have gone through this process this year and I look forward to working with him in the future.
Architect of the Capitol, their top ten projects were funded. I know there has been some discussion about it. We didn't pick them. We asked them to pick them, and so they did.
In these times, when we are running deficits that are in the t neighborhood, not the b neighborhood, I don't think it is inappropriate to say we probably ought to look at some of the largest areas that we spend money on. When you look at the leg branch allocation, that pie chart, the biggest slice of the pie in the whole thing, other than running our offices and our committees and paying our employee benefits, is Architect of the Capitol.
Give us your ten top priorities. I don't think that is partisan. I think that is responsible fiscal management. You can keep moving forward, but it is not like we don't have to eventually pay those bills.
The Sergeant at Arms office, as I have indicated--and I won't spend a lot of time on it--is there and funded under this bill for cybersecurity and for one district office. If you have multiple ones, that doesn't make you a bad person. It just means you have to submit a plan, and we have to talk about how we deal with one district versus another based upon the realities on the ground of making that district office secure.
Maybe it is a panic button. Maybe there is something else depending on that. I don't think it is irresponsible for Americans to expect the people who are responsible for spending their money to ask that we ask a few questions before we just say, Go do what you think you need to, and we will figure out a way to pay for it. That won't work.
They want to make an exception for the House of Representatives that isn't there for most other folks. We are not going to do it. We need to deal with DACA comprehensively, and we should, and I will be there at the first meeting, the middle meeting, and the last meeting to deal with them.
As a matter of fact, in previous Congresses, I have supported some DACA measures, which, quite frankly, weren't in compliance with what some people think a good Republican ought to be doing or whatever, but it was trying to solve a problem. It does not solve the DACA problem by carving out a tiny exception for Congress to be able to pretend like the rules on DACA shouldn't apply to us just like they do everybody else, so that is why we are at where we are at.
Finally, I hadn't wanted to do this, but since this is an appropriations subcommittee and we talk about money and we are worried about the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, let me tell you why it was decided to move it. It spent $15,000 on a staff retreat at the Salamander, a luxury resort in Middleburg, Virginia; spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on customized swag, including windbreakers; spent tens of thousands of dollars on partisan diversity events we talked about not being partisan for Black History Month, Women's History Month, as well as $25,000 for racial equity group training.
The office went over a year without a director as House Democrats failed to fill the position and even put one of their own staffers down there temporarily in an acting capacity while still serving as the assigned oversight staffer for House admin Democrats, a clear conflict of interest.
It used taxpayer dollars to give away gift cards to staff for attending their programming; spending that is not allowed in any other context, committee or personal office budgets, and which could raise ethics questions. It is not like somebody wanted to be mean to somebody because they had a political disagreement. This is fiscal irresponsibility and needs to be addressed.
I will finish with this: We addressed the oversight problem, which appropriations does, but kept the mission intact in the Chief Administrative Officer.
With that, I would hope that Members would see their way clear to support this bill as a logical step for leading by example, but not basically handicapping us.
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