By Daniel Wiessner

June 4 (Reuters) - The top officials at the National Labor Relations Board warned members of Congress on Thursday that a proposal to drastically reduce the agency’s budget would lead to "disastrous cuts" as the board grapples with a massive backlog of cases.

NLRB Chair James Murphy and General Counsel Crystal Carey, who are appointees of President Donald Trump, told a Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives committee that a House bill proposing a $94 million cut in board spending would further stretch the agency's already depleted resources.

The House spending bill unveiled earlier on Thursday earmarks $200 million for the labor board for the fiscal year that begins in October, down from $294 million approved last year and far below the $285 million requested by the White House.

"$200 million would require a disastrous cut in agency operations,” said Murphy, who was a lawyer at the board for nearly 50 years until 2021.

The five-member board lost a quorum of at least three members last year when Trump, a Republican, took the unprecedented step of firing Democratic Member Gwynne Wilcox, and it could not decide hundreds of pending cases for nearly a year.

Meanwhile, about 16,000 labor complaints have piled up in recent years at short-staffed regional offices now run by Carey. On Thursday, she outlined progress her office had made in managing the backlog but said that only about 100 cases could be cleared each month on top of the new ones coming in.

“If we remain at the same staffing levels, it will be years before we clear the backlog,” she said.

DEMOCRATS QUESTION AMAZON DEAL

Democrats on the House panel including Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rep. John Mannion of New York separately pressed Carey about her involvement in a recent settlement between the NLRB and Amazon, which Carey had earlier represented as a partner at labor law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.

Amazon had been accused of parting ways with a contractor so it would not have to bargain with a union representing its drivers. The settlement, which is opposed by the union, has widely been seen as a victory for Amazon because it does not require the company to concede that it had an obligation to bargain.

“We are to believe that Amazon, which donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration, got the most favorable possible outcome and no one made a call? Sounds like a huge coincidence,” Omar said to Carey.

Carey said that any obligation she had under NLRB ethics rules to recuse herself from matters involving Amazon expired in December, a month before she was sworn in as general counsel. She also urged Omar to read an administrative law judge's decision that approved the settlement with Amazon.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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