Date: 2014-05-01
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

when she was chair of this subcommittee in anticipation of the renovation of the historic Cannon House Office Building. Might I say. it is one of the really tremendous contributions that my friend and colleague has made. and I hope it stays inside of our operating procedure for many years to come. It was a wise decision. Also included is $16 million for the lease cost of a portion of the Thomas P. ONeill. Jr. Federal Office Building in preparation of the Cannon renewal project. The bill includes $595 million for the operations of the Library of Congress. This is an increase of $16 million above the fiscal year 2014 enacted level and $1.9 million above the requested level. The amount will allow the Library to continue at current operations. Established by Congress in 1800. the Library of Congress is one of the largest libraries in the world. with a collection of more than 130 million print. audio. and video items in 460 lan guages. It is imperative adequate funding is provided to maintain acquisitions. preservation. the administration of U.S. copyright laws by the U.S. Copyright Office for research and analysis of policy issues for the Congress by the Congressional Research Service. and the administration of a national program to provide reading material to the blind and physically handicapped. The bill before you accomplishes all of that. It is important to note $5.5 million of the funding is provided for the Deacidification Program. which is $1 million over the Librarys request. And $8.2 million is for the Teaching with Primary Sources Program. at $1 million over the request. to be used for competitive opportunities for developing online interactive and apps for classroom use on Congress and civic participation. It is $1.2 million above the request for the Copyright Office to reduce the claims and processing time for copyright registrations and to conduct business analyses for the process engineering of the documentation recordation function. The bill includes $122.6 million for the Government Printing Office. This is an increase of $3.3 million above the fiscal year 2014 enacted level and $6.3 million below the requested level. Funds have been included for continuation of development and infrastructure costs associated with the Federal digital system and the system replacement for upgrading the extensible markup language. The bill includes $519.6 million for the Government Accountability Office. This is an increase of $14.2 million above the fiscal year 2014 enacted level and $5.5 million below the requested level. Language is included to establish a Center for Audit Excellence to build global institutional auditing capacity and promote good governance. This center is to be operated on a feebased basis. Finally. the bill includes $3.42 million for the Open World Leadership Trust Fund. This is $2.58 million below the fiscal year 2014 enacted level and $4.58 million below the requested level. As a sign of support for Ukraine. the committee has reduced the program by 43 percent. This represents the programs percentage of participants from Russia. It is important to stress that Open Worlds program does not just focus on work with Russia. Ukraine has the next largest group of participants. closely followed by other nations in the surrounding region. Therefore. we encourage the center to do more in Ukraine and with other participating countries in the surrounding region. I would like to thank my good friend. the ranking member. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. for her role throughout the process. We have worked well together in a bipartisan manner. It has truly been a team effort. Also. I extend my appreciation to all members of the subcommittee in their efforts in helping bring this measure to the floor. I also want to thank the truly excellent staff that has nursed me through this. Let me just add. parenthetically. that we had a pretty unusual situation in that. because of some early retirements and the loss of our dear friend. Bill Young. we had a lot of reshuffling to do on our committee. On our side. that meant we only had one carryover member. and that was the vice chairman. Mr. HARRIS from Maryland. who was indispensable and extraordinarily helpful to the rest of us. Again. without a capable staff and without. frankly. a wonderful working partner in my ranking member. we would have had a much more difficult time. Frankly. I dont think anybody in this institution knows this bill and this process better than Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. She has been my friend. I was once on her committee as a very junior member when she chaired it. and I learned a lot from her then. I learned a lot more from her this time. I look forward to the debate. and with that. I reserve the balance of my time.