releases: https://salazar.house.gov/media/press-releases/salazars-passport-wait-time-reduction-bill-clears-house-foreign-affairs
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
This data as json
| url | title | date | year | month | party | chamber | state | member_name | bioguide_id | domain | scraper | source | date_source | text | has_text | collected_at | updated_at |
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| https://salazar.house.gov/media/press-releases/salazars-passport-wait-time-reduction-bill-clears-house-foreign-affairs | Salazar’s Passport Wait Time Reduction Bill Clears House Foreign Affairs Committee | 2023-12-14 | 2023 | 2023-12 | Republican | House | FL | Maria Elvira Salazar | S000168 | salazar.house.gov | salazar | https://salazar.house.gov/media/press-releases | scraper | WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) announced that her and Congressman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) bill H.R. 6610, the Passport System Reform and Backlog Prevention Act, passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee markup process with unanimous support. This will revolutionize passport processing and improve services for Americans when they need to travel abroad. “Passport processing wait times have been a nightmare for my constituents. It has been almost four years since the start of the pandemic,” said Rep. Salazar. “There is no excuse for forcing the American people to wait more than three months for a passport. Our legislation cleans up this mess at the State Department and puts this critical government service back on track.” H.R. 6610 deploys numerous tools to address the problems that create passport backlogs while bolstering the State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs’ processing capabilities to streamline the application and processing experience for American travelers. Specifically, the Passport Issuance and Backlog Elimination Act will: Set a service standard of processing passport applications in 30 days after receipt of documents and creating a user-friendly experience; Provide surge hiring authorities to solve current and future backlogs; Mandate the expansion of the Online Passport Renewal system to accommodate first-time adult passport applications; Mandate a text and email notification system for application status and passport applications; Accelerate the passport renewal process by increasing use of software in passport adjudication; Require a top-to-bottom review of the passport issuance system by the Government Accountability Office; Accelerate the adoption of commercially available technology solutions by increasing the Bureau’s collaboration with the private sector; and Increase congressional oversight over State Department modernization efforts “The collapse of the passport system represents a signature failure that upended and inconvenienced tens of millions of Americans who have the right to expect far more of their government,” said Rep. Issa. “This transformative approach will not only address many of the problems that led to the backlog but also deliver modernizations that are overdue and will set the system right for decades to come.” The bill text can be found here. ### | 1 | 2026-03-30T01:40:41Z | 2026-04-08T01:14:16Z |