James Moran: “Mr. Speaker, this is a good conference agreement. I want to express my appreciation to the chairman of the committee…”

“Mr. Speaker, this is a good conference agreement. I want to express my appreciation to the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor), the members of the Subcommittee on Legislative, who worked closely to craft a good bill and a good final conference agreement. It largely reflects the same legislative branch appropriations bill that got 380 votes in the House earlier this year. Our objectives have always been to provide the legislative branch with the resources and the guidance that it requires to carry out its mission, even in these most trying of circumstances. The legislative body is the Federal essence of our democratic process, and all of the components of the legislative branch are well treated in this conference agreement. It prioritizes our capital improvement program, confronting, not deferring, personnel issues, such as an aging work force and retention challenges, and I do not mean the Members, I am referring to many of the staff up here on the Hill, and funding several new technology projects that will allow us to perform our work more efficiently, to make this work more readily available to the public and to preserve it for posterity.”