News

Democrats from the National Capital Region today announced that they have secured the removal of the Holman Rule from H. Res. 6, the Rules package for the 116th Congress. The Holman Rule allows restrictions on federal offices and programs, including the reduction of individual salaries, to be added to must-pass appropriations legislation. Majority Leader-elect Steny Hoyer, Reps. Gerry Connolly, Don Beyer, Anthony Brown, Jamie Raskin, Reps.-elect Jennifer Wexton and David Trone, and Congresswoman... Read more

Congressmen Don Beyer and Gerry Connolly today wrote to the Administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA) seeking fixes to problems identified by a General Accountability Office investigative report into asbestos in federal buildings. The report found that the GSA has failed to abide by its own tracking and recording guidelines, including the operation of a tracking database called IRIS, which tracks asbestos surveys in GSA-owned buildings constructed prior to 1998. The Representati... Read more

Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Vice Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, joined Representatives Don Beyer (D-VA) and Rob Wittman (R-VA) in introducing the Federal Employee Retroactive Pay Fairness Act. This legislation would guarantee back pay to furloughed federal employees during a potential shutdown. The bill currently has 66 bipartisan cosponsors. “Federal employees shouldn’t be held hostage by the President for a wall we were promised Mexico would pay f... Read more

Today, Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a bipartisan, bicameral letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney requesting a compliance report on the Trump administration’s implementation of the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2016 (FATAA; PL 114-191). Connolly was joined by FATAA co-authors Judge Ted Poe (R-TX) and Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Marco Rubio (R-FL). Representatives Adam Smith (D-WA... Read more

Today, Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Congressman Steve Chabot (R-OH) introduced the bipartisan Global Health Security Act, which reaffirms the United States’ commitment to promoting global health security. The legislation is cosponsored by House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-NY), and Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Ami Bera (D-CA), and Ann Wagner (R-MO). The Global Health Security Act seeks to ad... Read more

Griffin Connolly The second-highest ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is calling for a public hearing on the Trump administration’s reported wasteful spending on border security. The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security found that a staffing plan green-lighted by the president has been marred by wasted resources and overlapping responsibilities among employees and contractors. In one case, the government paid outside consulting firm Acc... Read more

Nicole Ogrysko Customs and Border Protection has issued Accenture Federal Services, the vendor the agency hired to help CBP recruit border patrol agents and officers more quickly, a partial stop work order. The agency coordinated with Accenture and has asked the vendor to “reduce emphasis on some elements of the contract to allow more emphasis on others,” a CBP spokeswoman wrote in an email to Federal News Network. Specifically, the agency asked Accenture to stop work on applicant processing, b... Read more

Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Vice Ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released the following statement on today’s Huffington Post report that the Trump administration spent $14 million to recruit two border agents. “While President Trump threatens a holiday shutdown for a wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for, we find out his Administration spent $14 million to hire two border agents. Congress gave him money for border security and he is wasting it. Th... Read more

Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), former Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, released the following statement on Chairman Sharon Bulova’s announcement that she will not seek re-election: “I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with Sharon Bulova for more than 20 years and she is a true community treasure. Under her leadership, she turned the idea of the Virginia Railway Express into a reality. As Chairman, she guided the County through the worst of the Great Recession, ... Read more

Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Vice Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released the following statement requesting an emergency hearing into reports of election fraud in the race for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District: “This is an appropriate end to the 115th Congress. While the Republican majority is once again chasing conspiracies, real election fraud is playing out right before us in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District. We should see ev... Read more