Paying Attorneys of Indigent Defendants in the District of Columbia
Floor Speech
Paying Attorneys of Indigent Defendants in the District of Columbia
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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I especially thank him for his alacrity and the expert way in which he has carried this bill quickly to and through the process.
Mr. Speaker, this is a no-cost bill. Indeed, the appropriations for an increase in the amounts paid to these attorneys has been appropriated.
This is another of those District of Columbia anomalies. The courts of the District of Columbia operate through payments from the appropriations of the Congress of the United States and the judges are Title I attorneys. Therefore, District of Columbia judges may not use the funds that have been appropriated to raise the hourly rate of these attorneys, who are essential to the functioning, particularly of the criminal justice system, but also of the civil justice system, in the District of Columbia. They supplement the Public Defender Service of the District of Columbia.
These attorneys have not had their hourly rates raised since 2002, when they were set at $65 per hour. They have requested $80 per hour. They are being granted $80 an hour, this in spite of the fact that the rate of inflation has been between 3 and 4 percent a year. They, of course, had in mind that they went some years where their rates did not keep up with the rates of other attorneys who serve Federal courts. Of course, they recognize that we are not going to raise their rates every year, but this is what the Congress is willing to do at this time.
It does seem to me that the last thing we want to do is to slow down in particular criminal justice processing in the District of Columbia, particularly where there are already funds from the Appropriations Committee available, and when the failure to spend them only comes from a jurisdictional technicality, where we and we alone can indeed authorize the spending of these funds.
What H.R. 5551 does is simply accomplish this authorization. I am very, very grateful to Chairman Davis for bringing this bill forward so quickly.
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