House lawmakers are planning on a double-digit spending hike on Capitol expenses next year and also stripping the building of more statues they deem racist, according to a new draft funding measure.
Statues of Charles Aycock, John C. Calhoun, James Paul Clarke, and Roger B. Taney would be removed from the building under a $4.8 billion fiscal 2022 legislative branch spending bill House Democrats released Wednesday.
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The bill also includes language that would, for the first time, legalize the employment of “Dreamers” in Capitol Hill offices.
“A strong and well-functioning legislative branch is essential to our democracy, and this bill makes important investments to strengthen Congress as an institution,” Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro said. “With work authorization for Dreamers and more funding for Congressional offices and paid internships, we will be able to recruit and retain a talented and diverse workforce to help Congress deliver for the people.”
The bill would hike Capitol spending on the House side by $582 billion, a 13.8% increase over last year.
Democrats said the additional money is needed for a variety of new needs, including additional security measures in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and funding a more diverse workforce.
The bill would bolster funding by 21% for congressional offices. Lawmakers said the money was aimed at increasing paid internships “to support more interns from working and middle-class families” and to pay for “allowing Dreamers to work in the legislative branch.”
Dreamers, who arrived here illegally as children, are allowed to work in the United States under an Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but the legislative branch had been excluded from it.
Democrats inserted a similar provision in last year’s spending bill that would allow hiring Dreamers in congressional offices, but it was blocked in negotiations with the GOP-led Senate.
Now, Democrats control the majority in the upper chamber, and it’s more likely the language will survive final negotiations on a legislative branch spending measure.
The House legislation includes a key nonspending provision addressing the dozens of historic statues on display in the Capitol.
Democrats have been determined to rid the building of any statue that memorializes a former member of the Confederacy or those who embraced white supremacy.
“The bill recognizes the need to confront the crisis of systemic racism,” Democrats said, announcing the legislation.
Aycock was a prominent Democrat and North Carolina governor from 1901-1905. He promoted white supremacy and keeping black people suppressed and disenfranchised.
Clarke, another Democrat, was the former governor of Arkansas and a senator from 1903 until 1916 and was also a white supremacist.
Arkansas officials have already taken steps to replace the Clarke statue in the Capitol as well as another statue of Uriah Milton Rose. The figures will be replaced with statues of musician Johnny Cash and Daisy Lee Gatson Bates, who was a member of the Little Rock Nine.
Calhoun’s likeness can be spotted in several locations in the Capitol. He’s memorialized in a marble bust and a portrait in the Senate, as well as a statue designed by South Carolina that stands in the lower level of the Capitol.
Calhoun was a senator and embraced white supremacy and slavery.
A bust of Taney, the nation’s fifth chief Supreme Court justice, is located in the Senate, inside the Old Supreme Court Chamber. Taney authored the 1857 Dred Scott decision that declared black people were not citizens.
The House bill will have to be merged with a Senate version, which means GOP agreement will be required to meet the 60-vote legislative threshold.
Typically, the two chambers do not interfere with each others’ spending requests, but the statue removal and Dreamers provisions could draw some GOP opposition.
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Republicans have argued it is up to the states to decide the fate of the two Capitol statues each is allowed to commission for display inside the building.
In 2020, a Virginia Commission voted to remove the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the Capitol. It will be replaced with a statue of Virginia civil rights icon Barbara Johns Powell.
