During a House Appropriations Committee hearing before the congressional recess, Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) discussed the need for lactation rooms near the House floor.
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00:00Now I'd like to recognize Mr. Moore for his five minutes.
00:05Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for being here today.
00:08Appreciate it.
00:10So as we work to do a better job to support families across the country,
00:15I also believe that it's important this committee needs to do more
00:19to make the capital complex more friendly for expected members and staff,
00:25as well as for those with young kids.
00:27Speaker Johnson just announced his intention to find ways to allow new moms
00:33to have access to lactation rooms close to the House floor,
00:36which is an effort that I certainly fully support.
00:40Mr. Austin, can you tell me about the existing status of the lactation rooms
00:45on campus for expected mothers?
00:48How many do we have compared to how many the Senate has?
00:52What additional resources would your office need to expand access
00:57if there is a need for more spaces?
01:01Sir, thank you for the question.
01:03The overall status is we have 17 lactation suites across the campus entirely.
01:08Each one of those suites varies to have as low as one seat to as many as eight suites,
01:12so they vary about three to four per suite would be the average associated with that.
01:17There is one suite in each one of the House office buildings,
01:20as well as two inside the Capitol.
01:22In the House office buildings, there's 27 seats total,
01:24and in the Capitol, there's a total of six seats in the Capitol building for lactation rooms.
01:29I would have to get back to you as far as how that compares to the Senate,
01:32but again, there are ones across the campus.
01:35We are working with the Office of the Attending Physician
01:37for what are the requirements for additional ones.
01:40There was a study that was funded in previous years that was executed in FY24
01:45to look at the needs of lactation rooms across the campus,
01:49as well as if there's any modifications to the existing lactation rooms that need to be made.
01:53We expect to get those results this year,
01:55and we will look to work with your committee if we need additional funding
01:58to make any modifications or additions.
02:01And then specifically the ones that would be off the House floor,
02:06is that in process currently?
02:09Well, there are two in the Capitol building itself.
02:13I can't speak to you right now exactly how close they are to the House floor itself,
02:18but pretty much anything was in about a two-minute walk from the House floor
02:21to any spot inside the Capitol,
02:23at least the level we're talking about, which are the lower levels.
02:26Okay, and then how about reserved parking spots near entrances
02:30and elevators available for expectant mothers?
02:33Is that something you all are working on as well?
02:35Unfortunately, I'd have to defer to the House Sergeant at Arms
02:38because they control parking on the House side of campus
02:39and the allocation of parking spots.
02:42And then are there additional opportunities that this committee should consider funding
02:46to make the complex more family-friendly for members or staffs or visitors
02:50that we're currently not contemplating?
02:52We do work with the Office of Correctional Accessibility Services
02:56for some of the requests to the previous question.
02:59We are looking to make it more ADA as well as family-friendly.
03:02We have, if you look in the Capitol Visitor Center,
03:04all the family changing rooms, the single-stall restrooms
03:07and things of that nature that are available.
03:10But unfortunately, because of the historic nature of the campus,
03:12when they weren't quite as focused on those accessibility issues,
03:15we do have some work to do in the rest of campus.
03:18And that's always that balance between the historic nature of the buildings
03:21versus the modern requirements to facilitate access.
03:25All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
03:28Appreciate that. Now I recognize Mr. Strong for his five minutes.
03:32Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
03:33Ranking Member, I want to begin by thanking each of the witnesses
03:35and their staff for being here,
03:37your hard dedication and work for the U.S. House of Representatives.
03:41All of your efforts are critical to ensuring the smooth operation
03:45of our historic institutions
03:47and safeguarding America's, Americans' history for future generations.
03:52Mr. Austin, could you please provide us with a status update
03:56on the Cannon House Office Building renewal project
03:59and its projected completion?
04:02And are there penalties, if not completed, on time?
04:06Sir, thank you for the question.
04:08So I know Cannon has been a long road to get to where we are today.
04:11We spoke earlier about it being a 10-year project.
04:12The good news on that is that all the hard hats and major construction
04:15will be off campus by the end of this calendar year.
04:18So you've already seen some of that demobilization that's happening
04:21with the removal of some of the scaffolding in the courtyard of Cannon,
04:24as well as the retrograde of some of the equipment
04:26that's been stored there essentially since the beginning of this project.
04:30So there will still be some punch list items,
04:36maybe some warranty items that might be happening at the end of this year.
04:38But we believe that the project will be complete by the end of this calendar year.
04:43As far as your second point, as far as penalties,
04:46that is written into the contract.
04:48We have not had to exercise that to this date,
04:50but we are actively working with the contractor
04:52and are willing and ready to enforce liquidated damages if needed.
04:57We have elevators and escalators that are frequently out of service.
05:02Does this service, do we have a service contract or is this handled in-house?
05:08How are elevators and escalators handled in our facilities?
05:13The answer to the question, sir, is it's both.
05:15We have a dedicated elevator and a vertical conveyance team
05:20that works on escalators and elevators that work throughout the house side
05:23and the Capitol as well as the Senate side.
05:25For repairs that require more technical expertise and more equipment,
05:28we do have a service contract with several contractors,
05:31and we're working to expand that to have additional CLINs on the contract
05:35so it can be utilized by different jurisdictions.
05:38Overall, as of today, I'm happy to say on the house side,
05:4184 of the 85 elevators on the house side are fully operational.
05:44There's one down in the forward right now.
05:46And I know every escalator and elevator when it goes out
05:48is an impact to the staff, and it's very visible.
05:51But we are working with the support of Congress to get proactive
05:55with our maintenance on these elevators.
05:57We're looking for a 20-year round-robin project
05:59to replace every elevator over the next 20 years.
06:02We have new ones, obviously, with Cannon that came with a different mechanical system
06:05that will be as part of that, but those are the new ones.
06:08But we do are also funded for a system that will provide real-time monitoring
06:13of those elevators so that we don't have to wait for the phone call
06:16when one of those goes out.
06:17Yeah.
06:17Well, I can tell you the escalators don't work like they ought to work in here.
06:21And I think that we need to put a special focus on it.
06:23Coming to this committee meeting, I took about 27 steps up an escalator
06:27that hadn't worked for a while, and it needs to be addressed.
06:30I'm not sure who's over escalators and elevators,
06:33but in my two years in Congress, I will tell you,
06:36we need to put a better focus on it.
06:39Mr. Alston, security is clearly a priority in your fiscal year 2026 request.
06:44Can you provide more details on how the requested funds will support
06:48both the United States Capitol Police and the House Senate Sergeant-at-Arms,
06:52particularly in terms of infrastructure and upgrades on system replacements?
06:58So this is probably a longer response I could give you in this forum, sir,
07:03and I'd be happy to work with your staff and provide specifics to it,
07:07especially ones that probably aren't best discussed in an open forum.
07:09We are continuing the door replacement program, as I alluded to earlier.
07:14There's additional conduit being put in for more security cameras,
07:16and we're looking for opportunities for additional lighting on the Capitol campus,
07:20especially on the south side of campus,
07:21for some of those spaces that require more active monitoring.
07:25And the biggest one, of course, is going to be the House Screening Facility,
07:28which will go on on the south side of the Capitol building,
07:30and we'll be doing pedestrian screening, and that project will begin later this year,
07:34and will be complete before FY29.
07:37When construction is completed in Cannon,
07:40do you anticipate any other doors being opened for ingress and egress for staff?
07:46Outside of the ones that have been closed for construction, not at this time,
07:50but I can take that question to U.S. Capitol Police
07:52and see if they have any requests to open those.
07:54There's certainly capability to do so,
07:55but some of that goes towards the availability of officers
07:58to man those screening checkpoints and the magnetometers and things of that nature.
08:02The doors closest to public transportation are obviously the ones that are utilized the most,
08:08and especially when it was 8 degrees,
08:11I do know that that right there was a situation that we saw
08:14and hope that that will be corrected whenever, you know, the construction completed.
08:19Switching to you, Dr. Hayden,
08:22your fiscal year 2026 budget lists three new requests
08:25alongside the resubmission of three fiscal years 2025 requests.
08:30How does the library plan to balance funding and resources for these requests
08:35to make sure both sets are successfully implemented?
08:44As I mentioned earlier, with the three new requests,
08:52they, in fact, do not require FTEs,
08:58and so we will be able to use contractual services
09:02that are needed to fulfill what we are trying to accomplish,
09:08and with the re-requests,
09:11we reduced the number of staff that would be required,
09:15and we looked at those re-requests very carefully
09:19to make sure that we adjusted for the current economic conditions.
09:28The library's staffing levels have retained largely unchanged since fiscal year 2015,
09:33yet the scope of programs and services has grown significantly.
09:37Dr. Hayden, how do you ensure this expansion does not overextend staff
09:42or compromise the library's core mission,
09:45particularly its service to Congress and the American people?
09:49As you just heard,
09:52and we're very pleased to have the new director of CRS here,
09:56because that is our primary mission,
09:58and so the focus has been on making sure
10:02that as that level has been reduced since the 1990s,
10:09which was the library's highest level of staffing,
10:12that we carefully looked at workflows,
10:16we looked at how we could make sure
10:19that there's talent that's coming in,
10:21but also retaining a very high level
10:25of staff expertise and experience.
10:28So we have to balance those two.
10:30Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
10:31I yield back.