Welcome to the First Branch Forecast, your weekly look into the Legislative branch and government transparency. (Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.)

TOP LINE

The security supplemental funding bill could reach $2 billion, according to Billy House, and is intended to strengthen security at the Capitol and enhance member protection. To place this number in context: combined funding in FY 2021 for the Capitol Police and the Architect of the Capitol was $1.2 billion; total funding for the entire Legislative branch was slightly over $5 billion; and the AOC & USCP asked for more than a 20% increase in funding this year — and already said their requests will significantly increase in light of the Honoré report.

•There are likely billions in “deferred” or otherwise necessary maintenance in the Capitol complex, so an infusion of billions in multi-year funds would be welcome if it addresses these unmet needs. By contrast, throwing money at the Capitol police, unless we first reform its management and oversight structures, likely would squander those funds. Members are terrified about their personal security, but giving money to an incompetently-managed security force without fixing it will only promote the illusion of security.

• We are gravely concerned that the carrying costs for the new personnel — the Honoré report recommends 854 new full-time employees (FTEs) and the AOC wants nearly 100 FTEs — would simply crush Congress’s budget. The Legislative branch is the lowest funded of the 12 appropriations subcommittees — the next smallest subcommittee is 5x larger — and all those costs must be borne somewhere. The last 25 years of growth in USCP & AOC budgets has come at the expense of Congress’s policymaking capabilities, including personal offices, committees, GAO, CRS, and the like. If not addressed, the current trend would result in beautiful, well-protected buildings filled with no one experienced enough to do the policymaking work.

• How to fix this? There are three big options that we can see. First, we can increase the amount of funding for the Legislative branch. We naively called for a 10% increase in Leg branch funding, but self-evidently we need much more than that. In addition, there should be a firewall that separates funds for policymaking against those for protecting the campus. A second option is to draw funding for the USCP and the AOC for other sources — such as defense discretionary spending (050) — which would be logical because a big portion of the Capitol’s post-9/11 expenses are defense related and this would provide a huge new pot of funding, and are where a few hundred million dollars wouldn’t be missed. A third option is to have the other appropriations subcommittees provide funding for components in the Legislative branch that serve the rest of the government, such as the GAO. (We already have the Judiciary kicking in for the Capitol power plant, so there is precedent.) In this schema, you could imagine a pro-rata assessment of the other 11 appropriations subcommittees to cover GAO’s funding, which would free up obligations from the tiny Leg branch budget.

The outer layer of the Capitol fencing is coming down, according to acting House Sergeant-at-Arms Timothy P. Blodgett. The inner layer around “capitol square” will remain. For how long? Good question. Last month, we led a coalition letter opposing permanent fencing.

The Capitol Police’s misconduct report for 2020 is one page long and raises more questions than it answers, according to Emmanuel Felton. His article draws from our report: from what we can tell, more than 40% of charges against USCP employees were substantiated by department investigations. The report from the USCP is virtually worthless as is, and raises more questions and answers. We note that most people don’t know how to file a complaint concerning the USCP. This is one of many areas where the USCP needs more transparency. Our recs for immediate next steps are here.

Congress’s embrace of technology during the pandemic was crucial for its continuity, according to me and POPVOX’s Marci Harris. Even more importantly, Congress must continue to innovate.

Hearings. We note in particular House Oversight’s hearing on DC statehood on Monday; House Rules & House Foreign Affairs hearings Tuesday on War Powers; Wednesday’s Senate Rules Committee hearing on S.1, the democracy reform bill that mirrors H.R. 1; and the first meeting of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress on Thursday.

Appropriations deadlines. Now that the House has started to release guidance on its deadlines for Members and the public to submit their testimony, we have begun to track it here.

Solidarity. Asian Americans continue to suffer attacks and mistreatment on the basis of race. Our country has a long history of otherization of Asian Americans, and only now is that fact starting to break through into mainstream consciousness. For example, we need only look to the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese Internment Camps. We stand in solidarity.

Welcome to the First Branch Forecast, your weekly look into the Legislative branch and government transparency. (Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.)

TOP LINE

It’s been a year since we wrote to every Member of Congress on how Capitol Hill should respond to COVID. If I were to grade the response, I’d likely give the House of Representatives a B+, the Senate a D-, and varying grades for the support agencies. The House, after a significant delay, changed its rules: implemented proxy voting on the House floor, remote proceedings in committees, modernized some of its procedures, and implemented inconsistent measures to protect staff. Meanwhile, the Senate failed to change its rules, implemented hybrid proceedings in its committees that didn’t address absences, and staff protections vary by the office. At least 71 lawmakers, or roughly 10 percent of Congress, has tested positive for COVID-19, and an unknown number of staff. We think the House should implement fully remote floor proceedings that do not rely on proxy voting, and the new Senate leadership — which previously committed to a better approach — should do the best it can to make changes over likely obstruction. For more on what’s happened, see continuityofcongress.org.

Approps season continues as the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights presents its budget to the House Leg branch appropriations subcommittee Thursday at 10. We are curious about whether Congress will implement the legislative recommendations they made in their once-a-Congress report and have some questions about staff unionization. Below we have recaps of last week’s many, many hearings.

It’s sunshine week, which started yesterday and focuses on government transparency. There are lots of events on the calendar. We note that HSGAC will be marking up the Congressional Budget Justification Transparency Act on Tuesday at 9:30, a bill we support, and we expect more opengov news as the week goes on. Video is now available on what increased transparency could look like in the Legislative and Judicial branches, discussed at the recent FOIA Advisory Committee meeting. And there’s a new civil society letter in support of court transparency.

Welcome, Ginger McCall. We’re pleased to announce that Ginger McCall is joining us as our first-ever Legal Director. She is an expert on FOIA, transparency, privacy, and much more. Ginger recently was the Deputy Associate Chief Counsel for Information Law at FEMA and before that was the first-ever Oregon Public Records Advocate. Prior to that she served as an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor at the Department of Labor, Associate Director of Electronic Privacy Information Center, and Federal Policy Manager at Sunlight. Her email is ginger@demandprogress.org. Don’t miss her on Thursday as she moderates an Open Government Summit panel focused on transparency in Washington, D.C.

Bipartisan? House Democrats increasingly are unwilling to co-sponsor legislation with Republicans who voted against certifying the Electoral College results, Leigh Ann Caldwell reports. Supporting insurrection, in their view, is a bridge too far. We have a lot to say about this — for and against bipartianship — but we’ll save that hot take for another time.

Welcome to the First Branch Forecast, your weekly look into the Legislative branch and government transparency. (Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.)

TOP LINE

Officials tasked with keeping the Capitol safe and open testified before Congress last week — see the video & written testimony from the HSGAC/Senate Rules hearing with all the former security leaders and from the House Leg branch Approps hearings into the Capitol Police/ SAA (written testimony) and employee health and wellness + Capitol physical damage (written testimony). I shared my thoughts with the Bulwark on the testimony by the former security chiefs. We have more analysis below.

RE: the Jan. 6 insurrection, this upcoming week will feature a joint HSGAC/Rules hearing on Wednesday at 10 into the Executive branch response, with witnesses from DOD, DHS, and the FBI. At the exact same time, the Capitol Police will return to House Leg branch Approps to testify in support of their budget request for FY 2022. The House’s proceedings will go beyond Jan. 6 and may delve into all operations of the USCP. You can find last year’s USCP Budget Justification here (on page 225) and here is our primer on the agency. Don’t forget there’s a supplemental security funding bill that will emerge at some point — no hearings or markup into that so far — our recs for that bill are here.

H. Leg branch Approps budget hearings also are scheduled for this week —- this is where the Legislative branch support agencies sing for their money. On the schedule: the Open World Leadership Center and CBO are testifying Tuesday at 10 & 2, the Capitol Police and the Library of Congress are testifying Wednesday at 10 and 12:30, and the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights is testifying Thursday at 10.

• The Office of Congressional Workplace Right’s biannual report to Congress was just released and contains a half-dozen recommendations to update the Congressional Accountability Act. They include providing whistleblower protections to the Legislative branch, providing subpoena authority to aid in tracking safety and health investigations, requiring records be kept of of workplace injuries, adopting federal workplace record-keeping requirements, and approving the Board’s FMLA and Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) Regulations when they are resubmitted, and more. (An easier-to-read version is available on their website.)

• As a reminder, we keep track of Leg branch approps bills & documents here and also track requests and requirements put into the Leg branch approps bill. (See the graphics far below.) Also, full disclosure, we routinely request bill text and report language regarding Leg branch agencies — see, e.g., last year’s requests. A final note: these hearings can move around at the last moment, so double-check docs.house.gov.

The $5 Billion question: how much money will be available for the Legislative branch? We know Congress and its support offices are significantly underfunded, which is why we and a bipartisan coalition called for a 10% increase in Leg branch funding. One historical problem is that even as funding for Congress has lagged behind the rest of government, 2/3s of any new funding has gone to the Capitol Police and the Architect of the Capitol. We expect Congress will dump a ton of money into the Capitol Police via the supplemental to address decades of mismanagement, even though the USCP has a huge budget and has always gotten its giant requests, which likely will further undermine non-USCP congressional ops in the out-years. Watch leadership + the budget committees as they determine the top line defense vs non-defense spending numbers, and see how the new Approps chairs divide that money among the 12 approps subcommittees.