The Office of Interparliamentary Affairs is an office of the United States House of Representatives that is responsible for working with "parliamentarians, officers, or employees of foreign legislative bodies" to organize official visits to the House of Representatives.
Created in 2003 by the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2004, the Office is headed by the a Director, appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. The serves for as long as they are sanctioned by the Speaker, and, with the approval of the Speaker, the may appoint other employees necessary to carry out the functions of the Office. Appointed by the Speaker of the House the head of Interparliamentary affairs is Kay King.
Specific duties of the Office include:
- To receive and respond to inquiries from foreign parliamentarians or foreign legislative bodies regarding official visits to the House of Representatives.
- To coordinate official visits to the House of Representatives by parliamentarians, officers, or employees of foreign legislative bodies.
- To coordinate with the House Sergeant-at-Arms, the Clerk, and other officers of the House of Representatives in providing services for delegations of Members on official visits to foreign nations.
- To carry out other activities to—
- discharge and coordinate the activities and responsibilities of the House of Representatives in connection with participation in various interparliamentary exchanges and organizations;
- facilitate the interchange and reception in the United States of members of foreign legislative bodies and permanent officials of foreign governments; and
- enable the House to host meetings with senior government officials and other dignitaries in order to discuss matters relevant to United States relations with other nations.
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, house, office and/or affairs:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“It is a curious thing to be a woman in the Caribbean after you have been a woman in these United States.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism.”
—Thomas Nagel (b. 1938)
“What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male?”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as to object to live one’s life with due thought for the morrow because no man can be sure he will alive an hour hence.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)