Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 2006 Through 2009

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE APPROPRIATIONS AUTHORIZATION ACT, FISCAL YEARS 2006 THROUGH 2009 -- (House of Representatives - September 28, 2005)

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Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. Mr. Chairman, I have been on the Committee on the Judiciary for 11 years, and I have concerns that the committee is not fulfilling completely its responsibility. There have been no oversight hearings in the full committee of either the FBI or the Bureau of Prisons in the whole 11 years I served. The last general oversight hearing on the FBI was at the subcommittee level in 1997.

The lack of committee oversight has created real problems in the way the FBI fails to conduct its business properly. Last February, in an appropriations subcommittee, we found out that the FBI had invested about $170 million on its Virtual Case File computer system and they admitted that $104 million of that spending was a loss to taxpayers. Then in March, the whole projects was scrapped and we learned from news reports that the new Sentinel system will cost an additional $792 million.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General tells us in the July report that the FBI's backlog of untranslated FISA material continues to grow. This means that material that is vital to our national defense is not getting looked at in a timely manner. It often gets discarded before it is looked at, and that is unacceptable.

Earlier this year, I worked with many of my colleagues to introduce the Violence Against Women Act, which is in this bill. My bill would have included provisions that established grant programs to protect child victims of domestic violence, grant programs for housing needs, to protect immigrants who are victims of domestic violence and to protect victims of domestic violence on tribal lands. Not all of these measures made it into the bill, and I am hopeful in conference those provisions that were left out can be added in.

I want to mention one issue which has recently come to my attention, which is the issue of tribal victims of domestic violence who are not receiving VAWA's protections. I was going to offer an amendment today to allow the Attorney General to appoint prosecutors designated by tribal governments as special assistant U.S. Attorneys to bring VAWA prosecutions in Federal Court. However, when I looked into it, it turns out the Attorney General already has this authority through his general authority to appoint special prosecutors. So I would like to urge the Attorney General to address this issue and to use his authority to make sure that perpetrators of domestic violence on tribal lands do not escape prosecution.

We do not always need to change the law, we just need accomplishment and accountability in the administration, and I hope we can use our oversight authority to make sure we have the kind of accomplishment and accountability in the FBI that we are currently lacking.

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