Recognizing Diana Meredith for Her Service to the House Budget Committee

Floor Speech

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Mr. YARMUTH. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor Diana Meredith, staff director of the House Budget Committee. Diana is retiring after more than 25 years of dedicated service to Congress and the Executive branch, including 20 years on the House Budget Committee.

A native of Washington state, Diana worked as a newspaper reporter in Seattle and the Napa Valley for several years. In 1997, she came to Washington, D.C. to work for the Senate Budget Committee, led at the time by U.S. Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine. In 1998, Diana moved to the White House Office of Management and Budget (0MB) to serve as a program examiner for Social Security and fiscal issues, analyzing Social Security reform proposals and negotiating and resolving policy disagreements among agencies and White House offices.

After five years at 0MB, Diana joined the Democratic Staff of the House Budget Committee in 2003, under Rep. John Spratt, Jr. of South Carolina. Diana went on to serve as a budget analyst on the House Budget Committee for 14 years. She advised House leadership and committees on budget-related matters--developing recommendations, messaging guidance, and overall strategy for key Congressional legislative deliberations. Diana played a particularly important role in the development and passage of the historic Affordable Care Act (ACA) and in pushing back against harmful proposals to restructure Medicare and other crucial social programs.

In 2017, Diana became Deputy Staff Director of the House Budget Committee, where she assisted in the negotiation and passage of a number of highly consequential pieces of legislation. Her legacy includes the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, which ended the threat of annual discretionary sequesters from the Budget Control Act, the 2021 concurrent budget resolution that paved the way for the American Rescue Plan, and the historic American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which helped our nation rapidly recover from the COVID pandemic, with record- breaking job creation and broad-based economic growth.

Diana became Budget Staff Director in 2021, an enormously consequential year for President Biden, Congressional Democrats, and the American people. Diana led the Committee in enacting the framework for what would become the Inflation Reduction Act--landmark reconciliation legislation that has lowered the cost of prescription drugs for millions of seniors, expanded health insurance subsidies to help families access affordable, high-quality care, and provided the largest investment in U.S. history to combat climate.

Diana is a deeply caring public servant. She is uniquely adept at navigating complex budgetary issues and negotiations, while never losing sight of the reason we do this work: to help the American people. And Diana never missed an opportunity to reflect on and celebrate her staff's victories, big or small. The Budget Committee and our entire country has benefited from Diana's expertise, her extensive knowledge of the budget process, her mentorship of staff, and her unwavering dedication to America's working families.

I want to thank Diana for her advice, dedication, and leadership. I wish her all the best in her much deserved retirement.

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