Budget Hearing – John C. Stennis Center for Public Service, Office of Congressional Workplace Rights and Congressional Office for International Leadership
House Subcommittee on Legislative Branch
2025-04-29
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Source: Congress.gov
Participants
Transcript
The subcommittee will come to order. The subject of today's hearing is the fiscal year 2026 request for the Stennis Center for Public Service, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, and Congressional Office for International Leadership. I'd like to thank Ranking Member Espaillat, committee members, and our agency executive directors for being here this morning. While our smaller agencies do not traditionally testify every budget cycle, we wanted to invite you back to provide an introduction to the work you do and the work you and your teams do for the new members of our subcommittee. The Stennis Center for Public Service, while being the oldest of the three agencies here today, continues to submit a flat funding request for $430,000 for fiscal year 2026. The Office of Congressional Workplace Rights requests $8.6 million, an increase of nearly 5.5 percent. And finally, the Congressional Office for International Leadership's fiscal year 2026 request is $7.2 million, a 20 percent increase. I look forward to your testimony, and I now yield to Ranking Member Espiat, Mr. Espiat, for his opening remarks.
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Unknown (SPEAKER_00)
Mr. Thank you, Chairman Balladeo, Ms. Sargis, Dr. Pugh, and Mr. Crane. Thank you all for testifying today. on behalf of your respective agencies. Your agencies continue to play a vital role in advancing workplace rights and providing future leaders with tools, the tools that are required, really, to develop and support democracy across the world. As the first Dominican American to serve in Congress, I understand and continue to be encouraged by the international outreach of COIL to share accountable governance and citizenship Now, more than ever, I believe that it is vital to maintain our connection with global partners to exchange best practices. As General Maddox once told the current president, if we don't spend money on countries across the world, we're going to need to buy more bullets. And so we don't want to buy more bullets. We want to make sure that we encourage democracy across the world. And the Stennis Center also has been instrumental in connecting new generations to the public service workplace.
Good morning, Chairman Faladeo, Ranking Member Espaillat, and members of the subcommittee. I am Brian Pugh, the executive director of the Stennis Center for Public Service Training and Development, and I am honored to speak to you today about the Stennis Center's 430,000 appropriations request that funds our congressional programs. The Stennis Center was established in 1988 with the statutory mission to, one, promote public service to young people and to get them interested in a career in public service. Two, to provide training and professional development opportunities to state and local elected officials and their staff. And three, to provide training and professional development opportunities to congressional staff. We are overseen by a board of trustees that are requested by law to be appointed by House and Senate leadership. Our programs that meet the third prong of our mission are known as our congressional programs. Because the Stennis Center's requests for expenses related to these programs, I will focus on discussing those. The congressional programs consist of the following. The Stennis Congressional Staff Fellows Program, Emerging Leaders Program, and the Stennis Program for Congressional Interns. The Senate Center is requesting level funding, which is $430,000. The Senate Center strives to present the highest quality programs for congressional staff at the lowest possible cost. The Center has been operating on the same funding level for multiple years now. The appropriations request for FY26 is essential to enable the standard center to continue to provide training and development opportunities to congressional staff as mandated by its authorizing legislation. Without the appropriation, the highly successful congressional programs will be severely reduced, if not eliminated. As I noted, the Senate Center is requesting level funding. The Senate Center has been able to keep level funding despite increased costs because of two main strategies. The first strategy has been to consistently evaluate ways that we can save money without substantially impacting the quality of the programs.
The money saved can then be used in other ways that improve our programs or offset rising costs. One of my proudest cost-saving measures has been our recent move to the Library of Congress. At the beginning of the 25 fiscal year, the Standing Center moved from a leased space in a private office building to the Adams Building at the Library of Congress. If you factor in the savings from services such as utilities and parking, the total yearly saving is almost $50,000, which is equivalent to 11.5% of our budget request. However, this is not the only benefit to moving to the library. Because it is so much larger than the Stennis Center, the library can potentially provide us with services that would otherwise cost us more if we were to contract out on an ad hoc basis. These conversations are currently ongoing. While our move to the library is most noteworthy, is the most noteworthy example of cost savings, I would like to provide a couple examples of how we have adjusted our programs to save costs while maintaining their high quality.
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