Lawmakers roast Capitol Police over budget shortfalls

The Capitol Police was pounded by members of the Legislative Branch subcommittee on Appropriations on Wednesday over a recent $5.5 million budget shortfall, with appropriators threatening to strip the department of its budget authority.

It’s inexcusable that we are still experiencing the ridiculous financial mismanagement that occurs within the Capitol Police,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the chairwoman of the subcommittee, at the hearing.

“Is it time to just take the budget function away from the Capitol Police, not have it continue to be handled internally and give it back to a legislative branch agency?”

Wasserman Schultz acknowledged that Capitol Police, which last week attributed the budget mishap to “human error”, were not budget policy experts. But, she said, perhaps that was more reason to not entrust the department with budgetary matters, as she alluded to the previous budgetary problems the department has faced, such as the exceedingly high overtime payments that it racked up in 2003. 

“Repeated human error tells me that there’s a systemic problem in that organization that seems to me to indicate that it is not something that they can continue to be able to be responsible for,” she said.