Jamie Shimek, lead staffer on the appropriations panel that writes the first draft of the Department of Energy’s budget every year, will leave Congress and return to the national labs network, lawmakers said during recent budget debates.
“She will be my newest constituent,” Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) said Tuesday during the House Appropriations committee’s markup of the 2023 energy and water development appropriations act that will set DOE’s budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
Newhouse represents Washington state’s fourth congressional district, within which are the Department of Energy’s sprawling Hanford Site and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where Shimek worked for about a year-and-a-half before joining the House Appropriations Committee in 2017.
On June 21, during the Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee’s markup of the 2023 DOE budget bill, Kaptur said Shimek was “going back to Washington [state] to work at one of our national labs” after about five years with the committee.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Shimek began her career in federal policy in Sen. Patty Murray’s (D-Wash.) office in 2002. Shimek spent about a decade in Murray’s office before spending about another three as DOE’s Senate liaison and then moving on to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
