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“TRIBUTE TO MARK MIODUSKI” mentioning the Department of Interior was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E6-E7 on Jan. 3, 2001.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO MARK MIODUSKI
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HON. DAVID R. OBEY
of wisconsin
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, January 3, 2001
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, there are many people in this institution who work tirelessly and often thanklessly in order to improve the lives of the people we serve. Those who benefit from their work will never recognize their faces or know their names and day after day and year after year they produce a better country. Today, I rise to pay special tribute to one of them. I offer my most sincere gratitude to Mark Mioduski who has recently left the minority staff of the House Appropriations Committee after fourteen years of distinguished service to the federal government.
For the past five years, Mark Mioduski has been my right-hand man on the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Bill. He has applied a unique blend of technical know how from both budgetary and parliamentary standpoints, creativity and high energy to staffing this important bill. As many people know, the Labor, HHS bill is one of the most difficult appropriations bills to manage and is usually one of the last appropriations bills to pass. Mark has been instrumental in helping to navigate and negotiate numerous high profile and tricky issues affecting the Department of Labor, including funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the recently published ergonomics regulation. In fact, Mark has lived and breathed the ergonomics issue over the last five years and knows the issue better than virtually anyone else on Capitol Hill. In addition, Mark has made significant contributions to a wide range of health and education issues, including working to expand funding for health care access, for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health, for AIDS and emerging infectious diseases, for Low-Income Energy Assistance, for Head Start, for the Social Services Block Grant, and for Pell Grants for disadvantaged students. The Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Education also owe him a debt of gratitude for his detailed attention to their programs and appropriations requests.
Mark has spent most of his career in public service. He began his federal service after being selected to participate in the Presidential Management Intern Program, which is designed to attract the best and brightest to the federal government. He then spent four years with the Interior Department as a senior budget analyst before joining the staff of the House Appropriations Committee. For the last decade he has worked on the Appropriations Committee and, he has been of great assistance to many members and their staffs. I am sure a good many of you saw him as he wore a path to and from the Capitol often carrying his signature workbag which was passed down to him by his father.
Mr. Speaker, I have greatly appreciated the job that Mark has done with humility and good humor over the years. Mark has been not only an outstanding public servant, but also he is an outstanding human being. He cares a great deal about the well being of this country and the people in it who rely on those of us in government to help make this a better place for everyone, especially the most vulnerable among us. Not many of those Americans know his name or know the countless hours he has devoted to his job, but he can leave this institution knowing that many, many Americans and their families have been benefitted from his efforts.
He, like all of us, has been a public servant and he has measured up to the meaning of that term in the fullest possible measure. America's health care system with all its shortcomings provides more help for more deserving Americans because he has worked here. The National Institutes of Health are stronger and the research it oversees is better because he has worked here. Public health programs, not just in this country, but abroad provide more protection to millions of children and adults because he has worked here. Worker protection programs are better able to improve the safety and health of workers, and working families throughout this country have been able to take advantage of additional training and education to improve their livelihood because he has worked here.
Mark's dedication to the Appropriations Committee and to his work has resulted in many long hours. There were weeks on end when I am sure that Mark did not see much of his family. Mark's departure is a great loss for me as well as the Committee, but I hope that he will be able to spend more time with his wife Lori Whitehand and his two young sons, Ryan and Eric. I wish him the very best in his new endeavors and much success in this new chapter of his career.
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