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Commerce, Justice, Science, and Re- Lated Agencies Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2011

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Commerce, Justice, Science, and Re- Lated Agencies Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2011 COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RE- LATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2011 THURSDAY, MAY 6, 2010 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met at 10:17 a.m., in room SD–192, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Barbara A. Mikulski (chairwoman) presiding. Present: Senators Mikulski, Leahy, Feinstein, Lautenberg, and Murkowski. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE ATTORNEY GENERAL STATEMENT OF HON. ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., ATTORNEY GENERAL OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BARBARA A. MIKULSKI Senator MIKULSKI. Good morning, everybody. This is the Commerce, Justice and Science Subcommittee on Ap- propriations and we will come to order. Today, we review the budg- et for the Department of Justice and take testimony from the very able Attorney General Eric Holder. After Mr. Holder completes his remarks and we have our questioning, we will also hear from the Inspector General Glenn Fine. As everyone knows, it is the practice now of this subcommittee at every hearing to listen to the Inspec- tor General. I want to note the fact that though Senator Shelby is not here, it is because the Banking Committee is deliberating the financial service reform on the floor. Because he is the ranking member, he is required to be there. With unanimous consent, we will put the Shelby statement into the record. [The statement follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR RICHARD C. SHELBY Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. And thank you, Attorney General Holder, for joining us to discuss the Department of Justice and its fiscal year 2011 budget re- quest. First, I want to recognize and extend my appreciation and support to the men and women of the Department of Justice who protect this country from crime and ter- rorism. We owe them all a debt of gratitude. The fiscal year 2011 budget request for the Department of Justice is $29 billion. This is a $1.5 billion, or 5 percent increase, over the fiscal year 2010 request. Via the Second Chance Act, the Department of Justice is requesting $140 million to edu- (1) 2 cate and mentor terrorists, pedophiles and career criminals—while requesting mini- mal funds for reducing the DNA backlog and tracking the monsters that abducted and sexually assaulted Adam Walsh, Elizabeth Smart, Dru Sjodin, Polly Klaas, Jes- sica Lunsford, and others like them. Minimal progress has been made in funding and implementing the Adam Walsh Act and a long term and efficient plan for reducing the DNA backlog by increasing public crime lab capacity is nonexistent. How can we look into the eyes of the parents of these children and tell them DOJ and the administration are prioritizing criminals’ re-entry into society over funding the Adam Walsh Act? In a perfect world flush with resources I would be supportive of funding the Sec- ond Chance Act, but the very idea of taking money from victims and law enforce- ment officers to educate and comfort terrorists, pedophiles, and career criminals is once again, an abomination. General Holder, on March 6 of this year, President Obama appeared on the 1,000th episode of America’s Most Wanted and told John Walsh, ‘‘We’re going to do everything in our power, as long as I’m in the White House and as long as I’m the father of two girls, to make sure that we’re providing the States the support they need to make this happen.’’ The President went on to tell Mr. Walsh that the White House had increased the number of Deputy U.S. Marshals dedicated to Adam Walsh cases from 300 to 400, increased AWA funding by 23 percent, and how important it is for the administra- tion to build up the Marshals Service as it was something we want to do in our Federal budget. I regret to say that the President misinformed John Walsh. In reality, the Mar- shals Service will have a total of 177 operational and support personnel solely dedi- cated to Adam Walsh Act enforcement in fiscal year 2010, which is the most they’ve ever had. This subcommittee, not the White House, added the 105 dedicated per- sonnel that the president credited himself with. In addition to the 177 personnel, 237 Marshals Service investigators support Walsh Act implementation on a collateral basis. This means Walsh activities are only a portion of their many duties as they are also responsible for protecting judges, tracking down non-sex crime fugitives, and transporting prisoners. In my 6 years of being on this subcommittee, the administration has never requested an in- crease for the Marshals Service purely dedicated to this mission. In 2008, Senator Mikulski and I included the first ever funding of $17 million for Adam Walsh enforcement in a war supplemental funding bill. In 2009, we increased this funding by another $5 million. In 2010, the President simply requested funding to keep Deputy Marshals on board, with no increase. We said that is not good enough, and provided a $27.5 million increase above the President’s extremely mod- est request of $15 million in 2010. The President has not requested an increase for Adam Walsh Act enforcement, but instead is taking credit where the Congress saw the need and provided the resources. I would hope that the White House would cor- rect the record and take the initiative to provide more funding for the Marshals Service to protect children from predators, instead of taking credit for the job Con- gress has done. I would suspect Mr. Walsh hasn’t heard a word from anyone in the administration since the President used him for lip service and airtime. One issue it seems that both the Department and the subcommittee agree on is the importance of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and their continuing leadership in combating the exploitation of children. DOJ con- tinues to support NCMEC thru the Missing Children grants we have appropriated and, by all accounts, there continues to be a strong and unique partnership serving the interests of our most innocent victims of crime. I am concerned, however, that the administration’s budget reduces the Missing Children’s account—the pool from which NCMEC and other child safety nonprofits must compete—by $10 million. I hope we can work together to increase that level of funding to insure that NCMEC receives the continued support it needs and that we are able to also help others in this area. We should be growing the pie for helping organizations that combat miss- ing and exploited children rather than shrinking it. The President also told John Walsh he wanted to provide support to State and local officials for DNA testing because they are strapped for some of the basic re- sources. Saying, ‘‘that we’re going to get support, bipartisan support from Congress on this issue, because it’s so important to every family across America and there are just too many horror stories reminding us that we’re not doing enough.’’ Mr. Attorney General, I would first start this initiative by having senior program managers at the National Institute of Justice who are responsible for DNA solicita- tions and being accessible to State and local crime labs to show up for work more than 3 days a week. I would also direct NIJ to stop writing grant solicitations cater- 3 ing to their for-profit DNA vendor friends that have had carte blanche access to NIJ for too long. DOJ should be more diligent in ensuring that components serving State and local law enforcement agencies have representatives that are accessible and ac- countable to the State and local labs they are entrusted to support. Our Government forensic labs need to continue to build their capacity to ade- quately serve the justice system, and have used NIJ funding to make great strides in decreasing backlogs. I know that in my State, the Alabama Department of Foren- sic Sciences has continued to make it a focus of theirs to build capacity in an effort to ensure backlogs don’t recur once they’re addressed—and they have been very suc- cessful. They have erased the backlogs in drug chemistry and toxicology analyses, and consistently reduced the DNA backlog, even as they have expanded their serv- ices. By building their capacity, Government labs can process cases efficiently, ex- pand their services, and start to test evidence from unsolved petty and property crimes, as ours has in Alabama. Recently in my hometown of Tuscaloosa, a cold case violent sexual predator was identified almost 20 years later as a rapist of a University of Alabama graduate stu- dent. This case would never have been solved without DNA and a dedicated lab which focused on building their capacity to efficiently analyze unsolved cold cases. The long term solution to forensic backlogs is building capacity for Government labs and not in the continual outsourcing to private companies who incite victims and victims groups and mislead law enforcement agencies, for the sake of a profit. The perceived atmosphere of cronyism with private vender labs at NIJ is retalia- tory and do as I say. If State and local crime labs disagree with NIJ on DNA policy, they should not be fearful of retaliatory actions by NIJ because they expressed their expert opinions. I have expressed this sentiment before to you and the previous ad- ministration about this unethical behavior yet no concrete actions to address this injustice have occurred. The culture of NIJ succumbing to influence and policy sug- gestions by for-profit labs began almost a decade ago with NIJ employees wanting to graduate into the private sector to double and triple their salaries.
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