[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 1 (Wednesday, January 3, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E6-E7]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO MARK MIODUSKI

                                 ______
                                 

                           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.

[[Page E7]]

  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.

                          ____________________