Lowey statement on 2017 Legislative Branch Appropriations bill

Thank you, Chairman Graves, Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz, and Chairman Rogers for your work on this bill.

Today we consider funding for the operations of our nation’s legislative branch. This is our fourth bill to reach subcommittee markup, yet the House has not passed a budget, and it’s almost certain we never will.

We know why. The right-wing is threatening to renege on the bipartisan budget agreement, and rejects as insufficiently radical, a Republican budget resolution that would devastate good-paying jobs, end the Medicare guarantee, and increase poverty. The majority’s continued dysfunction jeopardizes this Committee’s ability to meet the challenges we face. 

The bill before us, without Senate items, amounts to $3.480 billion, a $72 million increase above the FY 16 level.  Initially an adequate bill that included modest increases for the first time in years, this bill is now clearly partisan, and meant to appease the most extreme members of the Republican Party.  It didn’t have to be this way.  At the last minute, the Majority inserted language that would force the Library of Congress to use the term “illegal alien” in its subject headings for searches rather than the Library’s preferred “noncitizens” or “unauthorized immigration.”

To be clear, the Library was never removing the term “illegal alien,” only making revisions to terms to bring search items up to date and help researchers locate a wider variety of materials. Republicans are needlessly politicizing a change meant only to help provide the most up-to-date, thorough, relevant information.

This additional language is sadly nothing new for this Subcommittee. In the past few years the Majority has spent over $6 million on a partisan, political Benghazi investigation, $2.3 million defending the Defense of Marriage Act, and is now spending hundreds of thousands more for legal action against the Administration on the Affordable Care Act and Guantanamo Bay. Partisan politics should be the last thing on our agenda when we have so many urgent challenges before us.

Chief among them is responding to the Zika virus, yet Congress continues to dither while the emergency gets more serious by the day. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  has confirmed that Zika is a cause of microcephaly and other brain defects in infants. I beg the majority to heed the words of Republican Senator Marco Rubio: “I hope that opposition to the fund request will change because I can tell you once these cases start popping up in other states around the country, people are going to have to explain to their constituents why we stood by and did nothing.”

Mr. Chairman, we must work together to improve the bill before us today. Thank you.