Segment 2 Of 2     Previous Hearing Segment(1)

SPEAKERS       CONTENTS       INSERTS    Tables

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    Mr. SERRANO. What I am wondering, Mr. Chairman I know we are faced with on this Committee, perhaps more than any other committee—but a lot of folks will say, hey, don't spend more than $1.50 this year if we don't reach a point where they break the request down and come up with a few things where they say, ''Look, this is what we think we need in order to do everything we think should be done, but if we don't take care of these 3 or 4 items, we are going to have a major problem here soon.''

    Certainly they have singled out one here which is a major problem. I am wondering if that will allow us, allow you the ability to go to some folks and say we have some pending crises here. They may say, okay, or they may even see it as something that needs to be done. I am just wondering if that is an approach we should look at in the near future.

    Mr. WALSH. If I might respond, obviously the case of the Botanic Garden, that was clearly the case. It was dangerous. It had to be closed because of the danger, because of the OSHA violations, the ADA violations, and the imminence of danger forced us—allowed us to get it done. But I would suspect that if you only gave us projects like the Longworth roof and the Cannon garage decks which have big holes in them, I am sure you have seen them, probably their concern is those are the only ones. Our problem is that we are going to have to justify whatever we do, whether it is imminent danger or just makes good sense to fix it.

    [A question from Chairman Walsh and response follow:]

    Question. Wouldn't it be reasonable to give us a request for all needed roofing at Longworth, rather than 3 (or more) projects and in separate years?

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    Response. The Ways and Means and Cafeteria roofs are on lower floors of the building and are not associated with the Sixth and Seventh Floor roofs, therefore, there is no advantage to doing the replacements at the same time. Administratively and logistically it is probably easier to do this work in separate years.

SECURITY

    Mr. SERRANO. You mentioned security. Security to me always has two meanings. It is the ongoing security and the special needs, new problems security. What are you talking about?

    Mr. HANTMAN. We could demonstrate that if you would like, the perimeter security plan. Basically it was developed through the Capitol Police Board, with outside consultants taking a look at what we need to do to protect the Capitol building itself.

    Right now the walls, the planters that are stuck on our walkways are falling apart. They don't represent a very real barrier to anybody who truly wanted to get through them. The concept is to come up with a system of bollards, which are those metal elements that we see at the White House protecting the gates over there to prevent trucks, and cars from crashing through and coming through the Capitol.

    We try to give as big a standoff distance as we can to the Capitol, given the state of terrorism that we have seen in the last number of years, and attacks on the government. This is the people's House. It is extremely open. Clearly people can walk into the building any time they want to. We had Greenpeace just last year drive up and drop a load of coal on the front lawn, so to speak, and they weren't stopped by the barriers and our procedures at that point in time. Gratefully—
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    Mr. SERRANO. Greenpeace?

    Mr. HANTMAN. Gratefully it was only Greenpeace.

    Mr. SERRANO. And they are a peaceful group.

    Mr. HANTMAN. So it is a comprehensive program which we will be presenting again at the Capitol Police Board meeting this afternoon, again in totality, to protect the entire perimeter of Capitol Square. There is a subset of that, some $3 million or so for protection and elimination of the jersey barriers around the Senate office buildings as part of that $20 million project. Again, that is in my mind a unique project.

ADA IMPROVEMENTS

    Mr. SERRANO. Before Mr. Hoyer had to leave for another commitment, he left a question. You mentioned in your prepared statement that over the last year some part of the $18 million is being used for ADA improvements. How would you assess the Capitol complex plan with the ADA? What priorities do you identify to accomplish full compliance?

    Mr. HANTMAN. In our budget we have some $500,000 right now at the Capitol to replace the wooden ramps both at the House side and the Senate side, the north and south sides of the Capitol, to deal with more permanent access for the ADA. They are unsightly, they are falling apart.

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    Within the Capitol building itself, we are approaching several areas that need to be more ADA-compliant, for instance, the door, the south door on the House side. The north door on the Senate side is currently under construction. We should be starting fairly soon to do the southern door as well, to make it more accessible for ADA, there we have revolving doors, that are not ADA accessible at this point in time.

    There is kind of a double edge on that, as well. Not only are we talking about ADA accessibility, but we are talking about security and means of egress sensitivities here. We currently get 20 to 25,000 visitors a day coming through here, along with existing staff and people who come for meetings and all kinds of events. The means of egress, some of them are not compliant with door swing direction, with the door panic hardware, all of these things. So at the same time we address the ADA criteria, we need to address some of those issues as well.

    Clearly there are areas where we have multiple levels throughout the Capitol which are fairly awkward. We have ramps going up those levels at this point in time. We just, over the recess, put in a ramp in the Senate Chamber to match the ramp in the House Chamber, so that its accessibility would be full over there. We have much to do and we are making progress.

HUMAN RESOURCES

    Mr. SERRANO. There was an article in Roll Call in September entitled ''The Architect's Office Still Fighting Abuses.'' It reported that before you took over, employees of the Architect's Office considered it one of the last bastions of favoritism and discrimination on the Hill. You were described as making some improvements, meeting with every employee, and bringing women into management.
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    Could you just bring us up to date on what new information there is about employee morale, and what would a follow-up article say?

    Mr. HANTMAN. It might be helpful, Congressman, to ask Hector Suarez to talk a little bit about the Human Resources Department and the efforts we have made to make sure that we are no longer considered the last plantation. Hector?

    Mr. SUAREZ. On my arriving here last year, sir, basically my assessment was that the whole system in terms of human resources programs and systems was very antiquated. I have often described them as probably reflecting something that I was responsible for in the 1960s, in terms of developing responsive programs and processes not only for employment but for job classification, for accountability and discipline processes, you name it. They all are in need of renovations, upgrades, however you want to put it, in terms of bringing them up to be reflective of what is a modern HR system.

    That is reflective of the work that we have in Human Resources, in terms of needing to do almost similar to what we are doing with the building. There are systems that really should have been revamped so that we are more responsive in terms of meeting wage issues and concerns as well as management concerns in delivering the processes, whether it be recruitment to bring someone on board as well as processing the retirement paperwork. All are areas that we prioritize in terms of addressing systematically and bringing them up to what would be reflective of a modern HR system.

    Mr. HANTMAN. We specifically also initiated a wide range of new training programs. Many of our managers, our supervisors were basically promoted out of the ranks with no managerial experience. Every one of our managers is going through a training program to talk about how they should appropriately deal with those who report to them, to be sensitive to those needs, to recognize that we don't need to beat somebody on the head to get a job done but you need to work with them, set realistic goals and monitor them and give feedback that is constructive.
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    All of those issues are ongoing right now. We are in transition, Congressman, at this point in time, no doubt about that. We have not reached a panacea. We have had a big hole to begin to dig ourselves out of and we are working on several fronts to do that.

    Mr. SERRANO. But, specifically, what are some of the problems in that hole that you had to dig yourself out of?

    Mr. HANTMAN. Clearly there had been favoritism in terms of promotions, in terms of people not really giving other folks a fair chance to apply for jobs, some of which were never posted. We had a situation where the organization was basically demoralized because there had been a two-year search process for the new architect, during which time Bill Ensign, the acting architect, had not been able to make any changes in policy.

    There is also an issue that we have many jurisdictions within this agency. Bob Miley here represents the House office buildings. Amita Poole represents the Capitol. We have a superintendent of the Senate office buildings, a superintendent of the Library buildings and grounds, of the Supreme Court, a superintendent of the power plant, superintendent of the grounds. All of these superintendents pretty much did their own thing. We are trying to standardize processes and procedures.

    Here we now have AFSCME Local 26 representing cleaning, custodial people, representing janitorial staff, laborers in the House office buildings, in the Senate office buildings, in the Capitol. They need to be treated the same way, have fair understandable job descriptions, job scopes of work. We need to be able to have people understand what their normal hours are. Hours were different on the House side than on the Senate side by half an hour. We need to standardize this and make it one agency, where people on the House side, if they want to apply to a position on the Senate side, can do so, a level 2 on the House side is a level 2 on the Senate side.
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    All of these things need to be made more fair and equitable and Mr. Suarez has his hands full in doing that.

    Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you. Vic, do you want to proceed or do you want to go up and vote? We have got a couple of votes. Why don't you go ahead? When there is a couple of minutes left, we will go vote.

APPOINTMENT OF THE ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL

    Mr. FAZIO. Good. Alan, let me just say it has been a year and a day, as you say in your statement. I have not really had a chance to talk with you much. I was, as you remember, involved in the selection process.

    I know this is kind of an easy one, but I would be interested in your thoughts in addition. If you had it to do over again, would you apply for this job?

    Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Walsh makes budget decisions based on how you feel about us.

    Mr. HANTMAN. Congressman, absolutely. People ask me how I am doing and I say it is a magnificent challenge. There are stressful issues related to this job. I was just talking to Stuart last week as we were preparing our budget hearing over here and recognizing the fact that this is a very difficult decision-making time for all of us.
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    I said, ''You know something? It is really worth all the effort, all of the time that we are investing in this, all of the research we are doing in what our agency wants to be, how it wants to go into the future, how we want to be fair to our employees.'' It is a magnificent challenge. I truly welcome the next 9 years.

OVERSIGHT OF THE HOUSE AND SENATE

    Mr. FAZIO. I know you have touched on some things, I am sure, in part of your response, but what really was most unanticipated? What have you been most surprised by in the sense of what you discovered here when you showed up, put your pencils in the desk?

    Mr. HANTMAN. In all honesty, Congressman, I thought I would have problems with Democrats and Republicans. I have problems with the House and the Senate. There is a different approach to some things in terms of oversight, in terms of how the House and the Senate interface. I was just not aware of that—I am very politically naive, quite frankly. My goal over here is to be totally bicameral, to be fair to everybody, to make sure that the House and the Senate get equal treatment from everybody in my agency. I am digging myself out of the hole because I think both the Senate and the House don't believe that that is being done.

    It is interesting, as I mentioned to Chairman Walsh the other week, we had folks in from Australia who have a bicameral system, folks in from England say exactly the same thing, the House of Commons thinks the House of Lords is getting better treatment. It is really balancing that. But we did have the Irish minister in yesterday. We found out that the House of Commons over there clearly is over the Senate. So he said, ''We have no problem over there. We know who we have to deal with.''
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    Mr. WALSH. No pretense at all.

    Mr. HANTMAN. No pretense at all.

    Mr. FAZIO. We are continually working to try to bring that about here.

    Mr. WALSH. You can help us with that.

    Mr. HANTMAN. Okay.

    Mr. FAZIO. So it was the conflict between the two institutions that both vie for your attention, vie for uniqueness of treatment, and in effect want to run their own part of your show. You might have discovered that in the Capitol Police as well.

    Mr. HANTMAN. It is interesting. As you know, I sit on the Capitol Police Board along with the Sergeant at Arms of the House and the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate. We have established very good working relationships.

    I have also found that the CAO, who is new on the job, and also the Secretary of the Senate, Gary Sisco, are very open to talking about how things have worked and how we can improve them, how we can eliminate overlapping responsibilities. We are in full discussion with these people about how to save taxpayer dollars and bring functions and procedures down to the point where we are doing as good a job as we can without saying ''It is my territory.''
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    Mr. FAZIO. We have been working on these problems for as long as I have been here, as long as Mr. Lombard has been here, but I don't think we will ever quite get rid of them because there is a certain amount of inertia on the part of not only the elected officials who have an interest and have a propensity to micromanage, but also the people they appoint to run these operations, who think it is their task to look out for the Senate or the House.

    You talk to members of the police force here, they will want to be assigned to one or the other for one reason or another because there is a different culture. It is an incredible, I guess I won't call it what I think it is, but it is a problem that goes back a long way and is not easily gotten rid of because Members come and go. Even Architects come and go. But these folks are here 30, 40 years. They are not about to change, because in fact they have got too much going the way it is, or perceive at least that they do. So good luck to you in this regard.

    Mr. HANTMAN. Perhaps, Mr. Congressman, because again I am somewhat politically naive, coming in here my philosophy has to be, as I said in response to Chairman Walsh's comment before, that if I have any kind of integrity, I am going to tell you what the issues are and we have to work it out together. I am going to tell you what the problems are, what I think should be done, and we will see where it comes out, even though I might get beaten about the head a bit in the process.

CAPITOL VISITORS CENTER

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    Mr. FAZIO. I don't want to talk about the security issue now because we are going to talk about it this afternoon, but I am always concerned about how we proceed on security, one, in light of the uniqueness of being a public building, among all the other things we are, and I think you are sensitive to that, I am sure, but also because we seem to have built our security plans around, at least in part, the visitors center.

    I would be interested in hearing more later on about what are common elements of a short-term security augmentation versus the ultimate that might relate to limiting public entrance into the building complex, that sort of thing.

    Mr. HANTMAN. The perimeter security system and the visitors center basically are stand-alone projects, but they are easily integrated if in fact we ever get funding for the visitors center. We can explain that this afternoon.

    Mr. FAZIO. I see the visitors center and essentially the backlog that has grown over the years, you refer to a balloon payment, I think it is due, has been due, but how you get to pay it down is another question. These are separate issues. They need to be taken up separately.

    Mr. Walsh very adroitly dealt with the problem of the Botanic Garden by taking an opportunity to do it when it didn't become a bone in the throat of this committee, and its bill and the total cost so rigorously adhered to. I think to a great extent—and I can say this, having been here a while—we simply have always found the capital outlay portion of your budget one of the few variables we could work with. If you look at the totality of this bill, it is mostly people.
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    Mr. HANTMAN. That is correct.

    [A question from Chairman Walsh and response follow:]

    Question. We will be reviewing the grounds security plan with the Capitol Police Board. But can you tell us how it relates to the Visitor's Center project?

    Response. The Capitol Square Perimeter Security Plan has been developed with the Capitol Visitor's Center (CVC) as an integral yet separately implementable part of the overall security improvement program. Of the schemes analyzed, the scheme approved by the Capitol Police Board provides the maximum security for the ''open'' environment of the Capitol Grounds while fully anticipating and integrating the future CVC into the infrastructure without wasting resources. This is accomplished by providing ''temporary'' security elements in the area of the future CVC construction. This is primarily focused around the East Capitol Street entrance to Capitol Square. All other areas of the Capitol Grounds covered by the Capitol Square Perimeter Security Plan will become permanent elements of the physical security systems. The key contribution to improved security the CVC provides is the remote screening and processing of the ever increasing volume of visitors to the U.S. Capitol.

CYCLICAL REINVESTMENT

    Mr. FAZIO. You have a large component here, 63 percent or whatever, but you have the largest share of annual discretion in your capital outlay. Everybody else here has, oh, maybe some business equipment purchases or maybe a communications expenditure, but there isn't really any big issue that gets in the way of paying people the benefits and the things that they need to retain and attract good people.
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    This is the one variable. There is no way we have ever been able to adhere to the big picture restrictions on what we could do, passed down by not only our leadership but by the perception of what the members can accommodate, other than to move your capital outlay, and mostly down. I really don't have an answer for it. I know exactly what the chairman is struggling with.

    The only thing I have been able to think of, and I don't know whether we could do it or not, would be to have full scale hearings in the Public Works subcommittees to try to move an authorization which again would require the House and Senate to agree on what its common concerns would be and then try to make a separate distinction, almost, working down the backlog here of deferred maintenance projects that need to be stepped up to that are going to be more than partially costly.

    Mr. WALSH. Vic, could I interrupt for a second? We have got 45 seconds to vote.

    Mr. FAZIO. We better go.

    Mr. WALSH. You can finish your thought, then we will come back.

    Mr. FAZIO. What I would like to say is, at least your effort to come up with a rationale for cyclical reinvestment is good, and frankly it hasn't been done before. We need to talk some more about it when we get back, because it gives us a benchmark to work from which frankly we have never had, except, ''Gosh, we need to do all this stuff,'' which isn't helpful to Mr. Lombard as he tries to sort out what needs to be done.
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    [Recess.]

    Mr. WALSH. May we begin? As you were saying——

    Mr. FAZIO. Just to conclude, I really think the only way we are going to, in effect, do what we tried to do at the Library with the arrearage problem is to make an outlay specifically for that purpose. Frankly we have not solved that problem, either, but at least we attempted to attack it as part of the overall budget.

    I don't think the committee, regardless of what party is in control, certainly in this House—maybe the Senate is a little different, in that the Members seem to delegate responsibility to a few people and look the other way, unlike the House which sees this as a measure of their frugality—unless we are able to somehow get a separate funding bill through and almost separate it from the base of this bill on a one-time, let's get it done but at the same time continue to do the cyclical reinvestment. Unless we take some approach like that, this problem will just keep moving without end, hopefully without any serious problem, we wouldn't want anyone getting egg on their face, like the dome falling. But it seems to me we are really up against the reality that this is not an area that this committee alone is going to be able to handle, even with a surplus in the sense that maybe we have gotten a little bit of running room. I don't know.

    Mr. HANTMAN. I respect that. That is one of the reasons, again, no matter how rational or irrational it was, I took the security project and said, this is a separate issue, this is nothing that is involved with our day-to-day reinvestment.
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    Mr. FAZIO. What is the total cost of that going to be?

    Mr. HANTMAN. $20 million.

    Mr. FAZIO. Over what period?

    Mr. HANTMAN. Basically it is a 30-month design-construction period. Again, you have to book it in one year, which is part of the problem, so how do you phase that is the problem.

HUMAN RESOURCES PROBLEMS

    Mr. FAZIO. We will talk about that later.

    The people problem which Mr. Serrano mentioned is something that probably has been overlooked for many years. You seem to have an attitude that you want to grapple with it, in fact know you have to. What kind of resources do you have to deal with the human resources problem that you have, discrimination, favoritism, whatever?

    Mr. HANTMAN. We have an executive committee that meets regularly to talk about all of the issues and the restructuring that we need to do. Clearly you have met Hector Suarez, who is the lead person.

    Mr. FAZIO. Hector is new to your agency?
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    Mr. HANTMAN. How many months is it?

    Mr. SUAREZ. Not quite a year yet.

    Mr. HANTMAN. I am an old guy on the block compared to Hector.

    Mr. FAZIO. Compare, if you would, ostensibly what was in place to deal with these issues as compares to now.

    Mr. HANTMAN. The HR department was totally dysfunctional. The last director had left two years before. An assistant was in place who was not a happy camper. She left as well. Clearly because of the lack of leadership in the department, we lost some very good people, I understand there had been good people in the department, so we have been rebuilding. Hector has brought in several people through the recruitment process that can deal with issues relative to those that the Compliance Board is asking us to deal with in the Architect's Compliance Act and the Human Resources Act.

    Mr. FAZIO. What is your background, Hector? What have you done in this field?

    Mr. SUAREZ. I have about 24 years experience in HR, sir, both in operations and policy. I have been a director of human resources for two offices. I have also been a director of HR policy at the national level.

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    Mr. FAZIO. Which agencies were those, sir?

    Mr. SUAREZ. EPA. Which was the last agency I worked with.

    Mr. FAZIO. You have always been in the Federal structure?

    Mr. SUAREZ. Yes.

    Mr. FAZIO. The people you have working for you, what are their backgrounds?

    Mr. SUAREZ. The backgrounds, of the staff that I inherited was that of a very traditional staff in terms of people that are specialists in staffing and the hiring of people, people that are specialists in position classification which is how we set pay, people in the training office, and people who deal with employee and labor relations, all traditionally set operations.

    What was missing, in terms of how we carried out our business, was compliance with changes in new laws and regulations and changes in HR methodology, in terms of how business should be done. We were, in staffing and recruiting, for instance, we were approaching it with methodologies that have changed over the years.

    The same thing goes with how we looked at and evaluated jobs in terms of job classification. We need to be more proactive in terms of explaining to an employee how the job is graded. The basis for finding out how a job was graded was somewhat secretive, and there should be nothing secretive about how a person's job and salary are set. We need to be taking the time to explain the process. That type of customer service mentality in terms of making sure that when we are proposing an action, or when an employee makes a request for information, that they clearly understand the hows and the whys.
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    We have a lot of rules and regulations that we were experts in, but in order for us to be effective, the people that we serve, the employees, and the managers need to understand the processes and the procedures just as well as we understand them so that it makes sense, and does not appear to be covered by sense of secrecy.

    Mr. FAZIO. My impression is there was a certain amount of patronage at one time at the agency and there was a good deal of nepotism, perhaps even more than patronage. If you knew the right person, you might get hired at the beginning of your working years and be there another 40, as long as that pecking order remained in place, in those little shops behind the doors. In some shops they were black people, in some shops they were white people, and rarely would there be any integration. Is that all accurate, what I have to say?

    Mr. HANTMAN. My understanding is yes.

    Mr. FAZIO. I got that impression, not from this table but from just hanging around here 20 years and occasionally looking in those doors and talking to those people. How is that changing?

    Mr. HANTMAN. I think part of my information gathering, as I mentioned, there were three components to it. One of them was intraagency. I met one-on-one with every manager in the organization, probably about 40 different interviews. I also met in groups ranging from 12 to 200 people, every other member of the agency.

    And I brought along with me Art McIntye, who is our Inspector General, to deal with the issues of fraud, waste and abuse, and Kathy Gause, who is the head of our EEO policy, so we can talk about what is right, what is wrong, what complaints might have been bottled up. We invited people to give their feelings about what the agency was all about, where they think it can go, and I talked privately with employees where necessary. So to get a pulse of the agency and what people were all about, I spent a significant amount of time doing that.
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    One of the reasons that we initiated as widespread a training program as we have is because clearly a lot of training in basic management techniques is necessary for a lot of folks in the organization, to recognize that we are dealing with human beings here, that we need to work with people, make them glad they are coming to work so we can get a full day's work out of them, that they are happy doing it and they see perhaps some opportunity for upward mobility as well.

    Mr. FAZIO. How open are we to hiring beyond neighborhoods around Washington where people tended to come from?

    Mr. SUAREZ. All of our jobs——

    Mr. FAZIO. We preceded car pools. More often pickup truck pools.

    Mr. SUAREZ. We had had a practice where jobs traditionally were filled within a given jurisdiction. One of the things that Mr. Hantman changed was deciding that we should advertise vacancies so that employees on the whole campus may be considered, so that employees in the Senate could apply and be considered for positions in the House.

    Mr. FAZIO. Moves people around.

    Mr. SUAREZ. Absolutely.

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    Mr. FAZIO. What about at the entry level?

    Mr. SUAREZ. At entry level we are opening vacancies to all sources.

    Mr. FAZIO. Do you have an outreach program——

    Mr. SUAREZ. Fledgling, sir. Not anywhere close to what we would like to have, but we are beginning to go in that direction. That is one way we see of addressing diversity which is one of our goals. This specifically is an issue that is addressed in our strategic planning process. We want to proactively take steps to make sure that we reach out more than we have in the past.

EMPLOYEE UNION

    Mr. FAZIO. What percentage of the people are within AFSCME? What is the number?

    Mr. HANTMAN. We have roughly 2,000 people in the agency. Approximately 600 employees are represented by AFSCME.

    Mr. FAZIO. They are concentrated in what bargaining unit?

    Mr. HANTMAN. Basically it is custodial and laborers.

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    Mr. FAZIO. Are any of the other elements considering or have they considered organizing?

    Mr. HANTMAN. Is Margaret here? Can you speak to that?

    Ms. COX. Yes, I can address that.

    Mr. HANTMAN. Our labor counsel, Margaret Cox.

    Ms. COX. There was an effort by AFSCME, Council 26, to attempt to organize nearly all the trade craft employees, all the skilled tradespeople, as well as the Senate restaurant employees. They abandoned that effort in favor of organizing only a unit of laborers and custodians. It doesn't mean they won't resume that effort but right now I am not aware of any petition that is pending.

    Mr. FAZIO. But the Senate restaurant people are now gone, right? Don't we have a contractual relationship?

    Ms. COX. No, they are our employees.

    Mr. HANTMAN. We have a buyout program right now. Lynne Theiss who is in charge of the restaurants is here. We have 191 people. We just had a buyout program in which 23 people took advantage of the early out buyout programs. The Senate Restaurants got whatever multiplier of their salary. They are still in-house but they are now in the black as opposed to in the red. That is just this year.
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    Mr. FAZIO. Were those people replaced or was it a decision they were overstaffed?

    Mr. HANTMAN. They were overstaffed at that point.

    Mr. FAZIO. But there has never been a move to contract the Senate dining room. It continues to be subsidized?

    Ms. THEISS. That is correct.

    Mr. FAZIO. Which is one of the differences between the House and the Senate, of the kind that we talk about here.

    Ms. THEISS. That is correct.

    Mr. FAZIO. The skilled trades, are they more logically represented by, say, electricians unions or laborers unions or some other building trade union, carpenters?

    Ms. COX. Many of them are members of those types of labor organizations. However, in terms of representing the public sector employees which our employees would be, more likely AFSCME or some other public sector union will organize them. So in their own professional trade unions such as electricians, plumbers and pipefitters, our employees may very well be privately members of those unions, but in terms of collectively bargaining with this agency, most likely it will be a Federal sector union that will attempt to organize them, if any at all.
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    Mr. HANTMAN. We also have in our construction management division employees that are hired directly from union halls.

    Mr. FAZIO. You have some people who are permanently on building trades, and others come and go depending on the work you have to do?

    Mr. HANTMAN. That is correct.

    Mr. FAZIO. When you do the contracting. When they have a private contractor, it could be union or nonunion. That is not an issue as far as you are concerned?

    Mr. HANTMAN. Right.

    Mr. FAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I don't want to take any more time. I am looking forward to this hearing this afternoon, I hope I can be there, on the security issue. I think really this is a conversation we have to have among ourselves about how to deal with this problem. We understand. It is just very, very intractable.

    Mr. WALSH. I appreciate that. I also appreciate the questions that my two colleagues made regarding human resources in your office. I would associate myself with those questions. I think your responses were constructive. Obviously you are only as good as the people that you have. If they all feel they have an opportunity to succeed and grow and move ahead, it is going to make it a better place to work and a better work product ultimately. Thank you for asking those questions.
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    We have another hearing at 1 o'clock, which gives us an hour and 10 minutes. I would like to ask just a couple of more questions if I may, and I am not sure, I will try to keep my questions and hopefully your answers to about 5 minutes. And Mr. Serrano and Mr. Fazio, if they would like to do the same, then we will just submit the rest of the questions for the record.

CAPITOL DOME PROJECT

    The dome project, this is obviously hugely symbolic of everything that we do here, so it is a very important case. The questions are basically, there were a couple of studies done, commissioned by the prior Architect. They submitted what they estimated the costs would be for this project. They were in the neighborhood of $3 million. We provided $1.5 million last year for a request that estimated a total cost of $3 million. As we were preparing for markup, we were notified that project costs could go up to $5 or $6 million. Now we are looking at an estimate of $26.5 million. That is before the structural analysis of the dome ironworks are complete.

    First of all, are the people who gave us the initial project costs that did the studies, are they doing these follow-up studies?

    Mr. HANTMAN. No, they are not. We have outside estimating firms looking at that, retained specifically under the architectural firm.

    Mr. WALSH. So the people who gave us an estimate of $2 to $3 million are no longer part of this project?
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    Mr. HANTMAN. The design architects are still part of the project. The issue of this marker, if you will, there is no doubt about it, the magnitude of the project has increased, the complexity of the project has increased. But that $3 million was just totally off base.

    Mr. WALSH. So the people who gave us that totally off-base estimate are no longer part of this project?

    Mr. HANTMAN. They are no longer part of the estimating part of the project.

    Mr. WALSH. Are they in any way a part of this project?

    Mr. HANTMAN. They are doing inspection of the plates and recommendations in terms of how we should be treating it.

    Mr. WALSH. How can we have any confidence in their work?

    Mr. HANTMAN. We don't have any confidence in their cost estimating ability, there is no doubt about that. In terms of their capability to recommend functions and features of what needs to be done on the project, how the project needs to progress, they have excellent credentials.

    Where the $3 million came from and what their rationale was, I can't speak for it, but the reality is when the dome was last painted in 1959, 1960, it was a $1.4 million project. If we escalated just that scope of work to today, we would be over $10 million. So the $3 million had no basis in reality even in terms of what they did. That is without the environmental protection concerns that we need because we have a lead-based paint that we have to remove in accordance with EPA criteria. So they totally missed the boat on that one.
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    Mr. WALSH. I guess I would be concerned that even though they may not be the people that are making the cost projections, the cost projections will be a function of the analysis that they provide, will it not?

    Mr. HANTMAN. What we have done is we have brought in another firm called Thornton Thomasetti, internationally known structural engineers and also experts in waterproofing, things of that nature, to work directly with them and to give us their second opinion. We are going through a belt-and-suspenders approach. These are the people who are doing the structural analysis of the dome as well.

    The first firm, Hoffman Associates, had been involved in this project for 7 or 8 years, since the inception of it. They have a database of background information that is valuable to us. Rather than re-creating the wheel, what we are doing is keeping their database, having them follow up on that information and taking out of their hands basically the estimating and we are double-checking and giving it to other people as well.

    I share your concerns. They were significantly reamed out for even beginning to suggest a project number like this without adequate facts. Clearly they had not opened up the railings at the upper level of the tholos that we talked about. We have samples of the rust and the things like that that we found up there which you may not need to see at this point. That was just an off the top of the head type of thing. It was just a number in the dark and it had no relevance.

    Clearly, while we are talking about projects, we often need, before you are authorized to do studies, we need to come up with some kind of number because there is a budget process going on. We have such numbers in the budget right now. For instance, we are doing a study on the Senate Chamber which was authorized through funds last year. We are about to recommend to the Speaker that we do a similar study in the House Chamber.
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    Sitting there at the State of the Union and looking at occupancy and how things are, clearly we have electrical, mechanical, structural, we have security issues all to look at. We need to put together a task force from the Speaker's Office, from the Sergeant at Arms Office, from the Clerk, from everybody impacted, sit down and bring in outside experts and take a look at what needs to be done to upgrade that. If the Speaker authorizes that, we would go ahead.

    We have in our budget right now a request for $300,000 in fiscal 1999 to do just that. But because we have a 5-year budget, we have in a subsequent year a number of $15 million. That is the first time we are hearing a number for the House Chamber. Is that number right? What basis was that number made on? The last time the House Chamber was done was in 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952. It was totally stripped out. The Walter scheme was totally, basically destroyed, and we have a 1950 solution in our Chamber right now. The number that was spent at that point in time was $4.2 million for the House and the Senate.

    Mr. PREGNALL. They were combined.

    Mr. WALSH. That is interesting.

    Mr. HANTMAN. Something like that. You escalate those numbers to today, and you come up to roughly $28.5 million for the two Chambers, which is why we have in our budget $15 million for the Senate Chamber, $15 million for the House, based on what was done last time. That is the only benchmark we have, but we had to put a number in our budget. The $3 million number just had no basis in reality. But we need to have these markers, if you will, of something coming down the pike.
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    Could the House Chamber project be $10 million? Yes. Could it be $20 million? If we phase it over multiple years and we have real security issues we have to factor in, and we have to go back to the central plant, it could be. We have $15 million in there as a marker, if you will. In my mind the only thing I can say for that $3 million, it was a marker, but it was totally off-base because this project could be well in excess of $30 million.

    Mr. WALSH. There are a lot of questions we will submit, due to the shortness of time, I will have to do that.

    [Questions from Chairman Walsh and responses follow:]

SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL

    For Capitol grounds, $5.3 million is requested for the operating budget and $21.3 million for the capitol budget

    Question: Why is the fee for solid waste disposal going up from $348,000 (1997) to an estimated $600,000?

    Response. There is no requested increase in this account for fiscal year 1999. The allotment base has been at $600,000 since fiscal year 1995. The annual costs in this time period have reached over $500,000 per year. Fiscal year 1997 actual payments totaled $374,461. Because final invoices had not been received as of September 30, 1997, the actual cost increased slightly over the $348,000 reflected as fiscal year 1997 obligations in the budget. The balance was returned to the U.S. Treasury.
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    The decrease in annual costs can be attributed to two factors. First, there has been an unusually low number of construction projects underway that would cause a decrease in the amount of refuse for disposal. However, we have received funding for many new projects in fiscal year 1998. Once the projects are underway it is expected that the amount of refuse will again increase. The second factor that has affected this account is the success of the recycling program in the Capitol Complex. This program has reduced the amount of trash that was formerly removed under this contract.

    If it appears that the costs will continue at a lower rate than the allotment when the new projects are underway, we will propose a decrease to the base allotment of this account.

LONGWORTH BUILDING ELEVATORS

    Question. What is the status of the Longworth elevator project?

    Response. The contract was awarded to Grunley Construction Company on May 16, 1996, in the amount of $6,369,000. As awarded, the contract completion date was July 1998, with an interim completion date of May 1997, when the seating area of the cafeteria was to be reopened. This project will construct four (4) elevators in the west tower and two (2) in the east tower bringing the total count of elevators to fifteen.

    Work on site started in May 1996, with the closing of the cafeteria so that the contractor could start his excavation work for the foundations for the new elevator towers. Currently, the work of the contract is approximately seventy percent (70%) complete. On September 4, 1997, the Contractor completed the first phase of the project by turning over the construction side of the Longworth's cafeteria for use by the building's occupants and the public. The erection of the structural steel framing and the pouring of the concrete floor slabs for the east and west towers has been completed and the contractor is proceeding with installation of the exterior insulated finish system (EIFS). The work in the building's sub-basement is well underway with the electrical and mechanical systems being roughed in.
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    The current scheduled completion date of October 1998 is three months later than the original contract completion date. A non-compensable time extension was issued to the contractor. Various unforseen conditions encountered during excavation and demolition, such as old foundations in the areas to be excavated and asbestos covered piping in walls to be demolished, along with a very constricted job-site precluded the contractor from making the progress that they originally anticipated.

    Question. When will they be ready for use? Will they be fully automatic when they are?

    Response. Based on the latest update of the contractor's schedule, the elevators should be available for use in October 1998. They will be fully automatic, with the capability to be run by an operator. One (1) elevator in each bank will be available for Member's Only service. Like the recently renovated elevators in the building, the new elevators will have a ''state of the art'' controller. These new elevators will have an audio capability, similar to the elevators in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. This capability will allow for the programming of audio messages to be played at specific instances. For example, a message could be developed to advise the public that the car had gone into Member's Only service, that the original car calls will be canceled and the riders should exit the elevator at the next stop.

EAST PLANT CHILLER

    Question. For the power plant, you are requesting an additional $4 million to continue the East Plant chiller project. We did provide design funds last year. But we do not want to get into another deal where we start funding a project while you have not completed the design and construction documents. This is a trend we want to stop. When will the design be completed and when will the necessary engineering be ready for firm cost estimates?
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    Response. The design of the replacement of the East Refrigeration Plant has been underway for more than a year refining the schematic design options previously identified by our consultants. We have had a continuous dialog with the key American equipment manufacturers in an effort to prepare the bid documents in a manner consistent with the current equipment and control technologies. We fully intend to have the completed design and construction documents prepared with the first phase of a three phase replacement program ready for bid in the first quarter of FY1999 and will continue in an organized systematic manner through FY2001 until complete.

COGENERATION FACILITY

    Question. We also see funding for a cogeneration facility. Explain why that is needed?

    Response. Funding is requested to support the development of a cogeneration facility. Based on other similar projects developed under similar criteria, development costs range from 5–10% of the total development costs. With a total value of this facility estimated at $100 million, the funding requested for FY1999 represent the first installment of these anticipated development costs. The developmental funds will be used to pay for the engineering, architectural, financial, and legal consultants required to fully represent the Governments interests during the development, construction and commissioning phases of this project. A report is currently under preparation that will fully define this process, provide the anticipated schedule and estimated costs for each phase of the project development based on the Government/private partnership model previously presented to the Committee.
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    Question: How would a private firm want to get involved in this project?

    Response. With the deregulation of the electrical industry and the changes imposed by the changing market place, there has developed a strong private sector industry that specializes in the design, construction and operation of this type of facility. The staff of the AOC has had discussion with various private firms focused in this business sector as well as representatives of the International District Energy Associations and consultants working in this field that have confirmed the strong viability of the concept. The process of development would be similar to that used to develop the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building. A Request for Proposals (RFP) would be developed, technical and financial proposals solicited and evaluated. Upon completion of this process, a recommendation will be made by an independent review board of experts from the private sector and other organizations with relevant experience. This recommendation will be forwarded to the Committees of jurisdiction for authorization and approval prior to entering into a contractual relationship with the private sector ''partner''.

    Question: Shouldn't we wait until we decide such a capacity is needed and until we have a good idea of private sector interest?

    Response. It is our considered judgement, based on the recommendation of the Blue Ribbon Panel assembled to review the operations of the Capitol Power Plant and other specialists consulted, that the development process for the cogeneration facility should begin as soon as possible. Recent conversations with industry representatives have indicated that NOX emission levels could be reduced from the current level of 0.4 to 0.15 as early as 2003. At the 0.15 level, coal could no longer be used as a fuel source without extensive modifications to the plant and its operations. Based on projected load requirements, security issues related to backup power, pending environmental regulatory changes, and the opportunities that the deregulation of the electrical industry present, the timing could not be better to begin this process. It is anticipated that the RFP, proposals in response to the RFP, both the technical and economic evaluation of the selected designer/developer teams and finally the submission to and review and approval of the Congressional committees of jurisdiction, will take between 18–24 months. All this must be completed prior to beginning construction which could last as long as 36 months. Therefore, the facility would not be available until 2004 at the earliest.
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CULPEPER FACILITY

    Question: The budget requests $16.1 million for Library buildings and grounds. Have you completed your estimate of the cost of renovating the Culpeper facility for the Library's audio-visual center?

    Last year, the Library indicated that this would cost in the neighborhood of $2–$3 million. However, we had heard that AOC estimates were as much as 10 times that amount. Can you shed any light on that?

    Response. The AOC has not prepared an estimate related to Culpeper. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation is committing $10 million to the project, $4.5 million of which will be available for due diligence analysis, closing costs, master planning and Phase I renovation. The master plan will produce a cost estimate around the end of April, 1998. The $4.5 million is not the expected total cost of the project. Until this estimate is prepared, the Library relies on their Abacus report for total cost data.

OFF-SITE STORAGE FACILITY

    Question. What is the status of the off-site storage construction at Fort Meade? When will it be ready for occupancy?

    Response. Drawings are nearing completion. Bidding is expected to start in April. Occupancy is slated for the end of summer 1999. The current drawings reflect a significant re-engineering effort to bring costs in line.
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    Question. We want to watch the cost of this project carefully. Since there will be additional modules to be built, this one will set the model for future projects. This building is supposed to be virtually identical to the storage towers constructed at Harvard and the University of Texas. Alan, please look into what those facilities cost to build. They were constructed at reasonable cost and both institutions were very helpful in providing information to us on their projects.

    It may be tempting to goldplate these projects, but that will just drive up the cost. Please tell your staff and contractors to avoid that.

    (For the record, provide comparative cost data for the LOC facility and for the Harvard and Texas facilities.)

    Response. The Texas facility is quite different from the Harvard model. Our intention was to design a facility similar to Harvard's recognizing that Harvard made, in their estimation, certain errors in judgment. An attempt was made to reflect Harvard's new decision at the schematic design phase of our project. At that time, we included fire protection systems and a larger processing area, both at Harvard's recommendation.

    The Harvard design holds 2.1 million volumes, which is the anticipated capacity of the current LOC design. The only basic difference between the facilities is the temperature/humidity requirements of the LOC vs Harvard. The LOC made a decision early on to store their collections at 50/35% RH which is significantly more difficult to obtain. The Harvard system for book storage (temp/humidity) is currently under review. They are considering using LOC criteria for their next book storage module. Their 4,000 sq. ft. film storage module operates at the LOC conditions. Those conditions have contributed to the cost of our project to the degree that the AOC has had to create cost savings to keep the budget in-line. Again, this is the only significant difference between Harvard and LOC design requirements. The last Harvard book module cost $270.00/sq. ft. in 1996 dollars. This module did not include a processing/office area. Additionally, the Harvard site had already been developed for previous modules: site utilities, storm water management, paving, etc., were not an issue with the 1996 module. Obviously, our cost per sq. ft. will be higher due to these essential differences.
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    Mr. WALSH. My experience in City Council before I came here is, any time we did a renovation project of a school or an older building, you can almost always escalate the costs—once you got in and you opened things up, you found problems—by 50 percent. So conceivably this $26 million project could be a $40 million project.

    Mr. HANTMAN. It is always dangerous to put a number out there for anything, because when you open up the patient is the only time you know you need the repairs. We opened up the tholos level, the railing up at the upper level, and if you want to spend the time, we could go through a full discussion of that.

    There is a railing around the base of the dome also that was worked on in 1959 and 1960. That was 40 years ago. That might need total replacement, too, and that appears nowhere. We haven't even done a test case of what exists around there at this point in time. In fact, I am asking my people to come up with a recommendation for a second string of tests so we can better understand the magnitude of this moving target project.

    Mr. SERRANO. It is on the outside?

    Mr. HANTMAN. Some work was done on that, Congressman, in 1959 and 1960. That was 40 years ago. When we opened it up at the tholos level, if you can point to the railing up at the top, that is where the dome tours basically take people.

    We took apart one of those railings. We have pieces here, Mr. Congressman, showing the rust. We have a can full of rust we found, and we just opened up the top of it.
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    Mr. SERRANO. That is a piece of the dome, so to speak?

    Mr. HANTMAN. That is a piece of the railing at the dome. We have bags of bolts that have rusted right out and they were not holding anything in place.

    Mr. SERRANO. This is rust?

    Mr. HANTMAN. It is rust.

    Mr. SERRANO. Looks like good coffee to me.

    Mr. HANTMAN. There are bolts over there that were holding nothing on because the clamps were no longer on the other end of the bolts.

    Mr. FAZIO. This is why I refuse to go up there. It is not that I don't have the energy anymore.

    Mr. HANTMAN. Chairman Walsh's comment is a good one. We do not know the scope of the project yet, which is why it is dangerous to even talk $26.5 million. I am sure it could go over $30 million. Could it hit $40 million? Maybe. I don't know. I don't know the scope, which is why we need to do the exploratory first phase, to remove the paint in the inner section there between the inner dome and the outer dome. That will enable us to take a look at one side of the plates, before we put up scaffolding and clean the outside, to see if there are more cracks in the plates and cracks in the structure.
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    Mr. SERRANO. That dome was originally brought over in pieces, right?

    Mr. HANTMAN. It was actually fabricated in different places. I think Rochester, New York, and Baltimore, Maryland, were two locations. Several different places we found these, which is another problem because the composition of the cast iron is different for each area, so when you start doing repairs——

    Mr. WALSH. Typical congressional method.

    Mr. HANTMAN. It is a quagmire, and it is difficult to come to you and say, we need money to study this and we don't know where the upside is yet, but that is the reality.

    Mr. FAZIO. We had a similar problem on the front of the Capitol. We weren't sure what the restoration would amount to until we got in there, and how much were we off in the estimate.

    Mr. LOMBARD. It was an estimate of $73 million for the extension, and the rehabilitation, I think the appropriation was $49 million, and the cost was maybe $25 million, somewhere in there.

    Mr. FAZIO. It was cheaper than we originally estimated on the premise that we really wanted, some of us, to expand it. But the bottom line is, you didn't know until you got in there, so Mr. White opted for a higher number so as not to be blamed for low-balling.
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    Mr. HANTMAN. We are looking in the range of $16 million just to do the contained removal of lead-based paints inside and outside the dome and repaint the dome. That is without any of the metal repairs or any possible structural addition.

    Mr. FAZIO. It makes no sense to do that unless you do all of it.

SHOWER FACILITIES

    Mr. WALSH. Let's see. Okay, just a couple other items. These are just some questions to get into the record before we break off. Last year we asked for a study of shower facilities available for use by the staff, House staff. That was prompted by an interest raised by Congressman Blumenauer. What is the status?

    Mr. MILEY. Mr. Chairman, we have conducted a survey of the facilities that we presently have in the House complex, and, at the present time, we have two male and two female showers at the Ford Building, and we have two newly renovated male and two newly renovated female showers in the O'Neill Building, in addition to a facility at the Capitol, where we have two male facilities and one female facility.

    The only building we are really lacking adequate facilities in is the Rayburn Building where we have one unisex shower located in the lower G2 southwest corner of the garage. We feel that we can add two new shower facilities, two showers for the women and two for the men, in the subbasement of the Rayburn Building on the C Street side by taking two existing restrooms, male and female restrooms, close to that entrance, expand those and add the showers.
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    We have prepared some conceptual drawings. It will involve encroaching on somebody else's space, so we are in the process of developing a formal drawing to transmit to the House Office Building Commission for their approval. Once that is done, we feel it is probably something that can be accomplished with in-house personnel.

WASTE RECYCLING

    Mr. WALSH. All right. Thank you, Bob.

    Lastly, concerns about the recycling program were raised. We had some conflicting statistics concerning the program and reports that the priority was flagging. Can you give us an update on the recycling program?

    Mr. MILEY. Yes, sir. Over the past 9 months, we have been very actively promoting the participation in the recycling program by soliciting every Member's office, and as of now we have been in contact with every Member's office, provided them with information on the program, and provided adequate containers for participation in the program.

    Mr. WALSH. Proper labeling on the containers and so forth.

    Mr. MILEY. Yes, we have provided proper labeling.

    As of August, we were able to bring on board a recycling coordinator, Ms. Pat Dollar, who is an exceptionally well qualified individual and has a lot of experience in recycling. She has been able to make some——
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    Mr. WALSH. Let me cut to the chase, because we are running out of time.

    Mr. MILEY. We are on the road to recovery. As of the first quarter of this fiscal year, we will be receiving credit from the recycling contractor, monies will go to the Government for recycling, which is the first time in a couple years that has happened.

    Mr. HANTMAN. 80 percent activity.

    Mr. MILEY. As far as participation, over 80 percent of the offices at this time are participating. We have a pilot right now in two or three offices. We intend to make some recommendations to this committee and to the House Oversight Committee for permanent changes to the program, making it more user friendly.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much.

    [Questions from Chairman Walsh and responses follow:]

    Question. You will remember the concerns raised last year about the recycling program. We had some conflicting statistics concerning this program and some reports that the priority was flagging. We particularly want to know the degree of participation and how we stack up against other agencies and organizations. Can you give us an update on the recycling program?
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    Response. During FY1997, 2,226 tons of paper were recycled, thus diverting it from landfills. At an estimated rate of $77 per ton, we avoided $171,402 in landfill costs. Because this recycled paper was contaminated beyond allowable limits, the Government did not receive any compensation for the material.

    In an effort to generate interest in the program and improve upon the quality of the program, the following actions have been taken:

    1. Every Member's office has been contacted and been provided with information brochures about the program, necessary containers supplied to the participating offices and appropriate labels applied to containers. In addition to Members' offices, most of the Committees and other support staff offices have also been contacted.

    2. In August 1997, a recycling coordinator was hired who brings to the job many years of experience in this field and a high degree of enthusiasm in improving the Office Waste Recycling Program in the House Office Buildings.

    3. Custodial workers and laborers are currently being instructed in proper recycling methods.

    4. The recycling coordinator is closely monitoring the materials being shipped out for recycling and training supervisors in proper documentation, to ensure we are given proper credit for materials recycled.

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    5. As a result of contract changes, minor adjustments in the collection methods for newsprint, high grade paper and corrugated containers have been made, allowing the Government to receive a better compensation rate for the materials.

    As a result of the above actions, we estimate that during the first four months of this fiscal year (FY1998), 576 tons of paper have been recovered for recycling, resulting in the Government receiving approximately $10,500 in compensation, in addition to the landfill cost avoidance.

    At the present time, approximately 80% of the offices are participating in the program. Per capita recyclables generated compared with four Executive Branch agencies are as follows:

Table 7



    At the present time, we are piloting some minor changes to the program which we feel will make recycling more ''user friendly,'' Upon completion of the pilot in the next few weeks, we will be submitting some recommended changes to the program to this committee as well as the House Oversight Committee. These anticipated changes will not require any budget increases.

    Question. Has this program been sufficiently staffed? Are we doing everything possible to make the House recycling program a success?

    Response. At the present time, we are recruiting for an additional recycling coordinator to assist with the planning, coordination, promotion, monitoring, survey, analysis and implementation of the program. The task of fully implementing the Office Waste Recycling Program and improving upon the program requires a great deal of program development, training of Congressional Staff, planning, analysis, and reporting capabilities, in addition to continuous hands-on application of the above skills. There exists both an analytical component as well as a marketing aspect to the recycling program which requires personnel to be capable of handling the more mundane aspects of the job, while also being able to provide detailed analysis and evaluation for long term strategic planning of the program. The additional recycling coordinator will fulfill the remaining needs of the program and help to make the program even more successful.
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REPROGRAMMINGS

    Question. For the record, insert all reprogramming actions or other documents that required Committee approval.

    Response. The following information is provided for the record.
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Do you either of you gentlemen have a question to finish up with?

    All right. Thank you very much. And I am sure we will all have questions to submit and the dialogue will continue. We have a huge, huge challenge here for this budget.

    Mr. HANTMAN. Thank you.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1998.

U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

WITNESSES

JAMES F. HINCHMAN, ACTING COMPTROLLER GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES

BRIAN P. CROWLEY, ASSISTANT COMPTROLLER GENERAL FOR PLANNING AND REPORTING
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JOAN M. DODARO, ASSISTANT COMPTROLLER GENERAL FOR OPERATIONS

RICHARD L. BROWN, CONTROLLER

    Mr. WALSH. We are ready to begin. We will begin with the General Accounting Office budget. The budget request is $369.7 million, and 3,325 full-time equivalent positions. The funding includes $2 million that will be derived from offsetting collections.

    We have the acting Comptroller General, James F. Hinchman—welcome—and several members of his staff are with us also today. We will give Mr. Hinchman a chance to introduce them in a second. Since the expiration of Chuck Bowsher's 15-year term in 1996, Mr. Hinchman has acted in that capacity. Jim is the principal Assistant Comptroller General and former General Counsel of GAO. As such, he has appeared before this committee on numerous occasions.

    And we welcome you here today. Before you begin, please feel free to introduce your staff. We have your prepared statement and you can proceed and summarize.

    Mr. HINCHMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    First, let me introduce Joan Dodaro on my immediate right. She is the Assistant Comptroller General for Operations and the Chief Operating Officer; and beyond her is Dick Brown, our Controller, who, I think, is well known to this committee. Also here today is Brian Crowley, our Assistant Comptroller General for Planning and Reporting and the third member of the senior management team of our agency.
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    As you said, I have a prepared statement which I request be put in the record.

    Mr. WALSH. Without objection.

    Mr. HINCHMAN. I would like to summarize it very briefly and make only two points.

    First, we are accountable to this committee for our use of the resources you give us, and I want to say a word about our spending plans for this year. We now have in place a spending plan that reflects the plan we described to you a year ago. Most importantly, we have instituted a new hiring program, for the first time in 5 years, that will allow us to begin replacing staff when they leave, as well as fill in the gaps in our skills and resources that have resulted from our downsizing and hiring freeze of the last few years.

    We have launched a major effort to upgrade our information technology infrastructure. That upgrade will allow us to bring the agency into compliance with requirements for the year 2000 and, at the same time, respond to growing demands for increased speed and capacity in our system. I think that those two steps, along with the other things we are doing, will take us a long way toward the goal we described to you a year ago, namely, stabilizing the agency and normalizing its operations. I think the results of those efforts are apparent in our performance.

    Our performance report, as it is set out in our annual report that was just released, shows our products total 1,300 in 1997, which is up slightly from the previous year. We testified 182 times before the Congress, which is up one from the preceding year. We have about $20 billion in identifiable benefits to the government arising from our work; a significant increase over the prior year, and our processes are looking better, too.
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    The average time to do a job and the average cost of a job went down. Our timeliness in responding to congressional requests is up significantly. Overall, my report to you about the status of the agency is a positive one.

    We are stabilizing the agency, normalizing its operations, and I think we are continuing to meet our responsibilities to the Congress. That is the first point I want to make.

FISCAL YEAR 1999 BUDGET REQUEST

    The second is a brief word about our fiscal year 1999 request. Essentially, this request proposes that we continue on this path to stabilize the agency and achieve a staffing level of 3,450. To do that, we are seeking a 6.5 percent increase in our appropriation. That increase goes for only three things. The largest part of it goes for our mandatory and price level increases and for staff. There is also about $1.4 million to pay a portion of the information technology modernization cost that will be dealing with the year 2000 problem. And the third part is to increase our staff by about another hundred in pursuit of a staff level of about 3,450. We know that resources are limited. We have worked very hard to hold down our costs and to improve our efficiency and productivity.

    The request we made for this year is, I think, a responsible one and reflects the resources that we need if we are going to continue to improve the quality and level of our service to the Congress and meet our responsibilities as an arm of this institution.

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    Mr. Chairman, those are the two points I really needed to make, and we would, of course, be happy to answer any questions you have about this request.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you. And we do note that even with a lower FTE level of the past 5 years, your key performance measures are all significantly up. Financial benefits are up, product output is up, timeliness is improved; job durations are down, job cost is down. That is one trend, obviously.

    The other trend, which is of a little more concern, is your budget, 369.7 million is up by 28 million. This comes after 25 percent downsizing in previous recent years. Last year we increased your budget by 8.5 million. This is a $28 million increase, which would give you almost a $37 million increase, $36.7 million increase, in 2 years. That is up 11 percent. So where we have 25 percent downsize, we are back up 11 percent after this budget; so it seems like downsizing is a thing of the past.

    Would you care to comment on that?

    Mr. HINCHMAN. We have been proposing for several years that we stabilize the agency at 3,450, which represents, about a one-third decline in the size of our staff, from about the 5,300 level that we were at several years ago. Much of the funding increases we received over these 2 years have been absorbed by mandatory cost increases.

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    For example, in this year's request, about $12.6 million of the increase that we are seeking is for mandatory and price level increases, the largest part of that for the cost of staff. About 80 percent of our budget goes to pay staff.

    As I described, $1.4 million is an increase to help fund our information technology modernization. That total modernization is going to cost us about $6 million a year for several years. We are absorbing most of that within our operating budget, as I said. We are asking for about $1.4 million for 1999, to help fund that.

    [A question from Chairman Walsh and response follow:]

    Question. You are asking for an additional $1 million for technology modernization. The Committee has always supported these efforts at GAO. Why are these funds needed?

    Response. We have requested an additional $1.4 million for technology modernization, primarily to continue efforts to replace outdated hardware and related software upgrades and to fund Year 2000 corrections. The hardware and software replacements/upgrades are for GAO's existing information and communications infrastructure and are needed to support the new workstation and network platform to which the agency is migrating. A very small amount will be used to fund developmental efforts for GAO systems involving mission tracking and audit work.

STAFFING AND PERFORMANCE

    Then there is no question that—the increase of another hundred FTE in our staff costs about $8 million, and there is no question that it does take money to do that. Our current staffing level is below 3,450, and we are working slowly toward that level. I think that, obviously, what we tried to do each year is look at available resources and move toward the 3,450 level.
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    Mr. WALSH. You have very strong advocacy in the House and in the Senate, and I think we all witnessed that last year in your budget. Interestingly, though, as you were forced to downsize, your productivity and all the indicators increased. So will we see a change in that trend as we add back employees?

    Mr. HINCHMAN. I hope that we can continue to improve those numbers. I attribute our ability to maintain productivity through the downsizing principally to two things. First was a reengineering of our job process to make it more efficient which also accounts for the process improvements that the committee sees in timeliness and in the length and cost of jobs. The second is information technology, and there is a trade-off between staff and technology in doing the work that we do, and I hope that we can continue to do better.

    Mr. WALSH. You mentioned a commitment of 3,450 FTEs. In your experience with this committee and the prior subcommittees, did someone give you that commitment of 3,450?

    Mr. HINCHMAN. I do not believe I used the word ''commitment,'' and if I did, I apologize for that. I think I described it as a goal that we have tried to articulate as what we believe is a responsible level for our agency to point toward, and what we would then expect to maintain for a period of time. That does represent about a one-third reduction from the 5,300 level we were operating with prior to the downsizing.

    [A question from Chairman Walsh and response follow:]

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    Question. Have you added staff since the 1998 appropriation was enacted? How many net FTEs do you plan to add this year? Your budget is predicated on an FTE goal of 3,450 FTEs. Where does that target come from? (Document for the record.) In what specific areas do you plan to allocate the 100 FTEs?

    Response. In fiscal year 1998, GAO received $346.9 million, which supports 3,225 FTEs. GAO plans to hire 250 staff and anticipates losing about 150 staff, netting about 100 additional staff, during the year. Despite the planned addition of these staff, GAO estimates using 116 less FTEs than it used in fiscal year 1997. This lower FTE usage is the result of an extraordinarily high attrition rate experienced in fiscal year 1997. As of January 31, 1998, GAO had hired 35 staff and lost 61 staff since the beginning of fiscal year 1998. Recruitment will occur throughout the agency, primarily in our accounting and information management; resources, community, and economic development; general government; and health program areas.

    In response to the congressionally mandated 25-percent funding reduction, GAO developed a goal of and downsized to about 3,500 staff, equivalent to 3,450 FTEs, at the beginning of fiscal year 1997. GAO believes this staffing level is essential for it to fully support the Congress in its oversight of federal programs. GAO presented this staffing goal to the Appropriations Committees during its fiscal years 1997 and 1998 appropriations hearings. Although never formally approved by the Congress, references to the goal can be found in fiscal years 1997 and 1998 budget hearing transcripts and Senate committee reports. Specifically, the goal is discussed in FY 1997 Appropriations Hearing transcript, House of Representatives: pages 636–637, and 660; FY 1998 Appropriations Hearing transcript, House of Representatives: pages 335–336, 337, and 379–380; FY 1997 Appropriations Hearing transcript, Senate: pages 1–3, 9–11, and 18–20; FY 1998 Appropriations Hearing transcript, Senate: pages 126, 130–131, and 133; Report S104–323, Legislative Branch Appropriations, 1997, page 42; and Report S105–47, Legislative Branch Appropriations, 1998, page 45. GAO's fiscal year 1999 budget request of $369.7 million, which supports 3,325 FTEs, is intended to move it closer toward the staffing goal.
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    [Questions from Mr. Cunningham and responses follow:]

    Question. How has the distribution and availability of your work product over the Internet, and you ability to perform a great deal of research over the Internet, changed the nature of your organization and your work product?

    Response. The Internet provides GAO an additional resource to inform the public about its products, conduct research, gather data, and communicate with researchers, scientists, academics, etc. The availability of the World Wide Web has led to a dramatic increase in the availability of our reports to congressional staff, journalists, academics, and the public at large. At the present time, about 200,000 GAO products are accessed each month over the web, a figure that has been growing each month. GAO has inaugurated a ''list serve'' to notify anyone who is interested in the availability of GAO products. This listing is sent by Internet e-mail at the close of each business day to subscribers. GAO began this service about 2 years ago by posting a notice on its home page. Today, more than 8,500 individuals worldwide subscribe to it.

    The Internet provides GAO staff easy access to vast, unique information and network resources. Available resources include access to electronic journals, newsletters, books, and library catalogues; access to numerous databanks and databases, such as census data; access to hundreds of public domain software packages; and access to various supercomputers that may be available to public users. GAO staff often find the Internet to be the only vehicle for obtaining documents relating to the National Performance Review issue area or for specialized data needed to conduct agency audits.

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    Question. How has it affected your budget, and how is it likely to continue affecting your budget?

    Response. GAO's cost to use the Internet for fiscal year 1997 was about $63,000. This is relatively inexpensive given the benefits of using the Internet to both conduct research and distribute reports. Since GAO reports are available on the web, we have reduced the number of hardcopy reports printed and distributed. Traditionally, GAO has not attempted to survey the reasons an individual orders a specific copy of a GAO report. With the availability of reports on the web, there is some indication that individuals may be ordering hard copies of GAO reports because they have found a report on the web and do not want to take the trouble to either download it or read it ''on-line.'' If this is the case, the web may be driving demand for printed copies of GAO products.

    GAO is conducting a study of its distribution system, partly due to the way the web has changed GAO report distribution. One of the questions GAO hopes to answer is how much impact the web is having on distribution costs and whether there are alternatives to the present practice of allowing anyone to order a single printed copy of any report produced by GAO.

USE OF OUTSIDE CONTRACTORS

    Mr. WALSH. When you went through the reinvention of your role, did you use more outside contractors to help you attain your goals?

    Mr. HINCHMAN. We have been using outside contractors more than has historically been the case for our agency. We used about $4.8 million worth of outside contractor assistance to do audit and evaluation work during 1997. That number has been about that level for the last few years.
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    Mr. WALSH. Do you anticipate increasing your use of contractors?

    Mr. HINCHMAN. We continue to look for ways to use contractors effectively. We have found that they are particularly important in obtaining specialized skills, which are hard to retain in our staff at our current staffing level. It has not been our experience that they are less expensive than the use of the other staff.

    Mr. WALSH. Is the quality of work different?

    Mr. HINCHMAN. Particularly within areas of specialization, such as actuarial services, it is the only way to get that expertise. Where the work calls for intimate knowledge of the operations of the government, such as particular or specific agencies of the government, sometimes our staff start from a more experienced point than outside contractors.

BUILDING RENOVATION PROJECT

    Mr. WALSH. My last question regards your building renovation project. We understand you have negotiated an agreement with the Army Corps to finance the balance of the building renovation program. Could you outline that for the committee?

    Mr. HINCHMAN. Yes, sir.

    Our subcommittee in the other body, last year asked us to see if we could find a way to complete the renovation of our building without charging it against our appropriation. Because of our downsizing, we can afford, with some realignment of our own staff, to give up one floor of our building, and we have done that. We have a tentative agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers, that they will take over the third floor of our building.
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    Under the tentative agreement, the Corps would use funds available to complete the asbestos removal and renovation of our building, and we would then, in effect, repay them for that investment through adjustments in the rent they pay over some period of time. The result would be that there would be no charge against a legislative branch appropriation directly associated with completion of that renovation. That agreement is tentative; there are some details that have to be worked out, but I believe we will be able to resolve them.

    Mr. WALSH. Will the billing rate be paid for real estate and construction issues?

    Mr. HINCHMAN. We will calculate a rent based on the market rate, and there would be adjustments to that in the early years for investments made in the renovation, yes.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you.

    [A question from Chairman Walsh and response follow:]

    Question. For the record, insert all reprogramming requests and dispositions.

    Response. The information follows:
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

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    Mr. Serrano.

    Mr. SERRANO. After listening to you ask those exciting questions, I really don't have any questions.

    Mr. WALSH. Good, I will try to keep them exactly the same. That way we will be briefer.

    Fine, I guess we are finished with questions. Thank you very much.

    Mr. SERRANO. Thank you.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1998.

JOINT COMMITTEE ON TAXATION

WITNESSES

HON. BILL ARCHER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS, AND VICE CHAIRMAN, JOINT COMMITTEE ON TAXATION

MARY M. SCHMITT, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF—LAW, JOINT COMMITTEE ON TAXATION

BERNARD A. SCHMITT, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF—REVENUE ANALYSIS, JOINT COMMITTEE ON TAXATION

    Mr. WALSH. We now entertain the Joint Committee on Taxation.
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    Welcome, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. ARCHER. If I might have both of the Schmitts, Mary and Bernie Schmitt, join me here at the table. We had our chief of staff, Ken Kies, I think you know, leave us on the last day of last month, and we are awaiting the new Chief of Staff to come in; and Chairman Roth announced yesterday that that would be Lindy Paull, from the Senate Finance Committee staff, so—she has not yet come in, so we have to appear before you without a Chief of Staff right now. But we are well served by Mary and Bernie, who have been over at the Joint Committee for a number of years and are really mainstays in seeing that the Joint Committee serves us.

    Thank you for letting us come today. I have a relatively short oral statement, and Senator Roth and I have agreed on a longer written statement, and without objection, I would like that to be entered in the record.

    Mr. WALSH. Without objection.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

Mr. Archer's Opening Statement

    Mr. ARCHER. For 1999, the request of the Joint Committee on Taxation is one that I will be mentioning to you and which is covered in detail in my written statement.
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    The request for 1999 is $6 million and change—namely, $18,000. It is a net increase of $202,500 over the 1998 appropriation, but it is still—and I need to point this out—$1,000 less than the fiscal year 1995 appropriations, so we are going into 1999, 4 years later, with a request that is $1,000 less than what was appropriated for the Joint Committee in 1995.

    The increase that is requested over last year is attributed solely to projected cost of living increases, plus a 1 percent merit increase for personnel expenses. In the last Congress, we asked the Joint Committee staff to assume additional responsibilities, and I have told you about that in the past, and so some of this is going to be a reiteration; but in addition to the traditional role of the Joint Committee staff in the development, drafting, and estimating of proposed revenue legislation and the review of large income tax refund cases, the Joint Committee staff is now responsible for determining the unfunded mandates contained in revenue legislation and identifying, beginning in 1997, a limited tax benefit subject to the line item veto, and that entails quite a considerable bit of work, to be able to do the investigatory work and determine whether any provision that is in a tax bill is limited to 100 taxable entities or less. And I think you can imagine that there is a lot of work that has to go into that.

    I would say parenthetically that I believe it would be good for the Congress to review the line item veto law relative to the Tax Code and put it in a more workable form.

    During 1997, Joint Committee staff responded to over 2,000 requests for revenue estimates from Members of Congress, and those seem to go up all the time. All of us have a special provision that we want to urge to change the Tax Code, and we of course need to get a revenue estimate.
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    Mr. WALSH. Two thousand last year?

    Mr. ARCHER. In 1997, yes, which I think was last year if my memory serves me right.

    Mr. WALSH. Yes, I think so.

    Mr. ARCHER. And during 1998, the Joint Committee staff expects to receive at least 1,500 requests for revenue estimates.

MACROECONOMIC ANALYSIS

    In addition, the Joint Committee staff during 1998 will continue to pursue the feasibility of incorporating macroeconomic effects into the estimates of major tax legislation; and if you want to pursue that, I will be glad to expand on that, because that is a very ambitious goal. The Joint Committee in the past has done the specific analysis of estimates that the tax provision itself would bring about, but they have had to overlay that on CBO baseline estimates relative to the macro conditions, and the macro conditions have never been changed. So it doesn't matter how massive the tax change is, the Joint Committee figures in behavioral response, and then they figure in just exactly what impact that will have on the revenues of the Federal Government.

    But in any significant tax change, there is going to be a macroeconomic effect, too, on economic growth and on job creation, et cetera, which has feedback revenue through the normal income tax that is levied against those operations, and none of that is ever figured into these estimates now because of the disconnect between the Joint Committee and CBO. And CBO—and I don't want to get too complicated, but CBO has a baseline that they don't change when the tax proposal is put before them, it just stays the same, as if the tax change is not going to have any impact at all.
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    So we are now beefing up, and that brings me to the important thing for the Joint Committee. We are beefing up their computer capability so they will be able ultimately to figure in these macroeconomic changes, and that is a significant undertaking.

    Mr. WALSH. Is that an art or a science?

    Mr. ARCHER. Probably a little of both, wouldn't you say?

    Mr. SCHMITT. That is right. That is one of the problems. It is not a straight science; there is an art involved and the computer models are not at the level throughout the country they might be at.

    Mr. WALSH. I think it is obvious changes in the tax law change behavior both of individuals and corporations, so there is something dynamic to what the results are, but quantifying that must be pretty tough.

    Mr. ARCHER. Well, it is. Clearly, Mr. Chairman, it is very difficult, and when we get up to the capacity to do something like that, it should be done in a very conservative way, to where we can be sure that we are not overestimating the macroeconomic effects.

    But all economists—as you have said, all economists will agree, any significant change in tax law is going to bring about a macroeconomic change. They disagree as to the magnitude, but to totally ignore it does not lead us to correct estimates, and we are always pursuing accuracy in estimating. That is my goal. I don't want a fair advantage or a distortion, because I happen to believe in the proposal. I want accuracy; to know when we make a decision that we can rely on the results.
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    We believe that the amount requested is a minimum amount necessary to finance the operations of the Joint Committee in 1999. It provides essential services, really, that aren't duplicated by any other congressional or executive branch office, and I frankly believe—and I think you know how tight I am on spending taxpayers' money—that if we don't get this requested funding that we in effect will jeopardize the ability of the Joint Committee to provide the necessary services. And again, parenthetically, I hope one day to not have to be in here asking for any increases, because when we abolish the income tax and go to a specific tax on sales, we will not have to worry about all of these things. All of these estimates that are requested and everything else by members will disappear, so maybe you can look forward to that day, too.

NATIONAL SALES TAX

    Mr. WALSH. If I could interrupt for a second, my wife called me yesterday and there is a national campaign, as you know, on the national sales tax, and she has been hearing some of the commercials and you have to hear the things three or four times before they start to sink in. And she said just what you suggested, I will give you an opportunity to comment on this, this is not within the realm of our subcommittee, but it is interesting. But she said—and we talked about tax changes changing behavior, she said, if you went to a sales tax of 23 percent, for example, that will hurt the economy, won't it? This is what she is saying, because the cost of everything is going to go up 23 percent. Do you have any idea what the impact on—and it is a very consumer-based economy—what the impact would be?

    Mr. ARCHER. Do you want to get into that issue now? I would be more than happy to address it.
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    Mr. WALSH. We have a couple of minutes.

    Mr. ARCHER. Number one, for the first time in my lifetime, every worker will have their entire paycheck, will be totally unreduced by even—in the proposal that you are talking about, which is being advertised now—and I am speaking only about that proposal, only to that proposal.

    Mr. WALSH. That is what I am speaking of, too.

    Mr. ARCHER. Because they abolish payroll tax as well as income tax, so every worker will have their entire paycheck, undiluted and undiminished to spend, and that is going to give them more spendable income on average than the amount of the tax, so it just depends. You and I have the discretion. When you want to pay your taxes, it is not automatically taken out of your pay without any control on your part. You have the money to buy, would you still buy; and the economic analyses in studies that have been done show that it will actually increase consumption, but it will also increase savings. You will get a win-win situation, because the economy will grow so much. The projections are that in the first year, the economy will be 13 percent higher.

    Mr. WALSH. Thirteen percent, that is GDP?

    Mr. ARCHER. GDP will be 13 percent higher, and that drifts down to where, over the long term, it would be between 9 and 10 percent higher than it would otherwise be with the income tax.
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    Mr. WALSH. Nine or 10 percent higher than it would have been? Not GDP?

    Mr. ARCHER. Not growth each year, but 9 percent above what it otherwise would have been.

    Mr. WALSH. The first year would be 13 percent higher?

    Mr. ARCHER. That is correct.

    Mr. WALSH. Okay. I misunderstood you.

    Mr. ARCHER. That is 13 percent growth in the first year.

    Mr. WALSH. As opposed to the current 3.8 we had in 1997.

    Mr. ARCHER. Correct. It will massively improve the economy for everybody for a variety of reasons. Number one, you will eliminate an enormous amount of unnecessary compliance costs and instead of the economy spending the money on that, it will be spending it on production of wealth; that is number one. You have about a $250 billion compliance cost annually in the current income tax code, and most all of that will disappear, and that will be an enormous saving to the economy.

    Interest rates will go down by as much as 200 basis points and that will reduce the cost of operation of every entity in the country. It will reduce the price of homes. If you have $100,000 home over a 30-year mortgage, it cuts your mortgage payments down $37,000, so it will, in effect, reduce the price of your home over 30 years by $37,000.
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    It will open up export opportunities, the likes of which we haven't seen, because the imbedded cost of income tax will no longer be in the price of our products sold overseas, which means our products will sell for 20 percent less than they do today, on average. It will vary, industry by industry, but on average, 20 percent less. And incoming foreign products will be forced to pay the tax which—they don't pay any income tax, and they will then start to pay a fair share of our cost of government.

    So the combination of a 20 percent tax that can be legitimately and, under WTO rules, put on incoming imports, and the reduction of the price of our exports will make America into the most unbelievable exporting country you can ever imagine; and factories will begin to mushroom in the U.S. again, for export, the likes of which we haven't seen since World War II. I mean, these are all of the things that will generate the benefit to workers.

    But, in addition—on the question that your wife asked, in addition, not only will you have your whole paycheck to where you can afford more than what the tax is, but within a relatively short period of time, the embedded cost of income tax will be removed from the price of the products and the price of the products will go down.

    Mr. WALSH. What about—the obvious question that springs to mind is, what about people who are either on public assistance or some sort of fixed rate income base that is not going to experience that 23 percent?

    Mr. ARCHER. Number one, there would need to be a credit rebate or waiver system for low-income people to be sure they are not disadvantaged by the new tax in the short term, but in the long term, it will be a win-win deal for them because as they get their rebate or credit or waiver and prices go down, they are going to be even better off. And so it is a win-win deal for America.
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    But your wife asked a very good question.

    Mr. WALSH. She always does, and now I can say I have a very good answer.

    Mr. ARCHER. I have not personally embraced the proposal being advertised out there because I am not sure you want to bite off—eliminate the payroll tax in one fell swoop, that is a big bite to take compared to the current system. But in any event, it will certainly, certainly reduce the burden on this subcommittee that you chair because all of the compliance costs that have to go in, all of what Mary and Bernie have to do over there at the Joint Committee will be cut back dramatically.

    Let me also, if I may, if you will indulge me, make a suggestion to you as to where you can save some money that will more than pay for the increase that is requested by the Joint Committee, so that you will net out in a far better position than you are today. It has been called to my attention that CRS duplicates much of what the Joint Committee does with the computer model that is very expensive over at CRS. That is totally unnecessary, completely unnecessary to add that duplication over at CRS. And I would suggest that your committee take a very long look at the money that is being appropriated for CRS in an overall sense, not just on the tax issue side, and do an investigation and see how much of the work they do over there is the result of requests from Members of Congress and how much is gratuitous on their part that nobody has ever asked for and that hardly anybody ever benefits from.

    Mr. WALSH. We will be happy to do that. I think it is a good suggestion, and we will do it. Let me ask you, that brings me to the real question I want to ask you, regarding the Joint Committee, and it was what we heard a lot about last year as we went through the budget. That was the question raised about providing revenue estimates to non-Ways and Means or Finance Committee Members.
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    You mentioned that there were 2,000 requests. Have you included in your full testimony any extensive statistics regarding the numbers of requests you received from non-Finance, Ways and Means committee members?

REVENUE ESTIMATES

    Mr. ARCHER. I am going to let Bernie or Mary speak to that.

    Mr. SCHMITT. We have attached attachment D which gives a summary of the 104th and 105th Congresses, and if you look at it, you will see that for last year, out of a little over 2,100 requests from Members of Congress, we were able to respond to about 66 percent overall, and that was only slightly more to Ways and Means and Finance members than it was to the noncommittee members. So we felt we did a very good job.

    Mr. WALSH. The percentage of responses to member or non member requests was about the same?

    Mr. SCHMITT. Pretty consistent when we tabulated it. I think we have done a pretty equitable and nonpartisan job.

    Now, if you look at this, you may see a slight discrepancy, if you can look on the 105th Congress columns, you will see that if you divide the numbers of replies by the numbers of requests, you get a slightly smaller percentage than shown on the table. This is because the percentages were derived after adding to the numbers of formal replies shown here the numbers of replies in forms other than formal written replies, that is, replies given orally or provided in tables.
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    Mr. Chairman, this attachment relates to revenue estimate requests and the Joint Committee staff does provide other services to non-Tax Committee members. We worked on, I believe, eight tax treaty pamphlets for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last year. We provided testimony to one of the House Banking subcommittees on HUD programs, we did an energy study for Senator Murkowski and his committee, and we also spent an extensive amount of time working with the D.C. subcommittees in the House and Senate on the D.C. legislation last year. So in addition to the revenue estimates that we provide to the non-Tax committees, we do provide other services as well.

    Mr. WALSH. As you know, there was some criticism. Do you feel it was unjustified then, given the statistics that you have?

    Mr. ARCHER. It depends, Mr. Chairman, on how you look at it. If you look at it on the basis that we have not been given the resources we requested to have greater capability to respond, I think it is unfair; but if we came to you and said, in order to respond to 90 percent of all the requests, and I guess we never get totally to 100, or 95 percent, it is going to take ''X'' amount of additional resources, the question is whether you would give them or not. Because I can tell you, the hours are never too long for these people at the Joint Committee, they are there, they are there when other people are sleeping and they are there before other people wake up, and I believe it is an unfair complaint.

    Based on the resources, I think to get two-thirds of the requests answered, considering how much they are increasing and how much more complex the determination is becoming as the code becomes more complex, the criticisms are unfair. But if I am a member that asks for an estimate, I want it, and I want it now, so I am going to think it is not fair if I don't get it.
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    Does that answer your question?

    Mr. WALSH. Yes, it does. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. Serrano.

WORK OF JCT THIS YEAR

    Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is interesting, your mentioning CRS and for us to take a look at it in favor, perhaps, of your committee. If you recall, that was one of the problems last year, the perception, if you recall, during the whole battle we had, where the bill was held up for a couple reasons. One of them was the Loretta Sanchez issue, which got taken care of today. It is kind of dramatic, because we are dealing today with both issues; today we might be able to solve them all and have the bill on the floor next week.

    But another of the issues was, in fact, that your committee was acting in some partisan way, whereas CRS doesn't get accused of that for the most part. A lot of it had to do, watching the leadership on my side complain, had to do with the director who is no longer there, so I think this is a great opportunity, perhaps, to sort of begin anew.

    I also understand that last year, one of the complaints was the request for new staff positions, and I know that this year, that is not the case any longer, so that should also be put aside. One observation on my part is that your committee, Mr. Chairman, suffered somewhat from what this committee suffers from. A lot of other issues on how people are getting along with each other on both sides of the aisle come to play on your committee, just like on this one.
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    Now, you already mentioned, and we did discuss your tax proposal, but one of my questions was, how would the work of the committee be affected by your vision of what proposals will come before us this year. We hear everything from we have 15 days in session this year so there will be budget, appropriations, and then wrap up and send everybody home.

    Mr. ARCHER. That sounds a wee bit overly optimistic.

    Mr. SERRANO. It is not too bad; actually, it would probably work to everybody's favor. But I am not one of those who believes we harm the Nation when we are in session.

    Do you foresee other proposals reaching us?

    Mr. ARCHER. I really don't know.

    Mr. SERRANO. And how would that affect your committee?

    Mr. ARCHER. I think it is too early to speculate on what we may or may not do this year, because a lot of it relates to the budget and how the budget works out. Without getting into detail on that, we can't turn a crank on tax legislation until we find out what the budget document is going to permit us to do. So that limits my ability to speculate.

    But I also would like to divide, if I may, for you, the Joint Committee and the Ways and Means Committee, which are, of course, two separate entities; and today we are really only talking about the Joint Committee's budget. And I know perception is important in the lives we lead, but I think the Joint Committee, whether we have had a Republican Majority or a Democrat Majority in the House and the Senate, has operated professionally. And Mary and Bernie have been there through both different majorities, and they haven't changed, they haven't changed from their professional approach to doing a job and doing it as accurately as possible.
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    So the Joint Committee, I think, if you talk to Charlie Rangel or his staff on the Ways and Means Committee, would tell you they are very responsive to his requests, just as much as they are to Republican requests. And the one wonderful thing about them is, over the years, they never breach a confidence, there are no leaks and they do not breach a confidence; and even though I am Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, I never ask them because I think it would be inappropriate, but they would not tell me what the Democrats are working with them on. There is no way that I am ever privy to that, and I shouldn't be; and they do an incredibly professional job in serving, on a nonpartisan basis, the Democrats and the Republicans in the House, and the Democrats and the Republicans in the Senate, so they have got a really tremendous responsibility that is virtually unique on Capitol Hill.

OVERLAPPING FUNCTIONS

    Mr. SERRANO. One last question, one of the issues which speaks to the CRS situation, but in reverse. Members of the subcommittee have been asking whether functions of various legislative branch agencies and offices overlap. So it should be fair to ask if there have been any problems with overlapping between, say, the Joint Economic Committee or CBO or any other, and if so, how so.

    Mr. ARCHER. I don't think there is a problem in my—and I can let Bernie and Mary speak to this, but in my view, I don't think there is a problem overlapping with CBO, but I do have a problem with the disconnect I mentioned earlier, between the inflexible baseline and then the overlay of the tax estimates on something, as if it is not going to change. And in some way or another, we have to bring those two together, and that is why we are now moving toward gearing up the Joint Committee to do for tax purposes a macroeconomic impact study. We are not there yet, and I don't know how many years it is going to take us to get there; it is way off. But I don't think there is any overlap.
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    I think, relative to CRS, there is, because CRS has built a computer capability relative to taxes, but they have no official function. In the end, whether we like it or not—and I have argued with Bernie over the years about certain estimates that I didn't think were right, but in the end, the official estimates they put out are what determine our activities budgetwise in the Congress, and we have to comply with that, and the law requires that we comply.

    So what CRS is doing is just like something else that is orbiting around the system, but really is not a part of it.

    Mr. SERRANO. I have no further questions.

    You know, you noticed I did not join in in asking any of the questions when he was asking about this tax plan, but sometime I want to ask if that is on top of the 8-point-whatever tax I pay in New York State, or does that tax do away with that?

    Mr. WALSH. State income tax has gone down the last 3 years in a row.

    Mr. ARCHER. But I would simply say it would merely replace whatever the Federal tax burden is and whatever Federal tax burden there is is on top of whatever your state tax burden is.

    Mr. SERRANO. Thank you.
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    Mr. ARCHER. Thank you
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1998.

U.S. CAPITOL POLICE

WITNESSES

HON. WILSON LIVINGOOD, SERGEANT AT ARMS, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND CHAIRMAN, U.S. CAPITOL POLICE BOARD

HON. GREGORY S. CASEY, SERGEANT AT ARMS, U.S. SENATE, AND MEMBER, U.S. CAPITOL POLICE BOARD

ALAN M. HANTMAN, AIA, ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL, AND MEMBER, U.S. CAPITOL POLICE BOARD

GARY L. ABRECHT, CHIEF, U.S. CAPITOL POLICE

    Mr. WALSH. We will now take up the U.S. Capitol Police budget, which will be presented by the Capitol Police Board. The members of the board are accompanied by Chief Gary Abrecht and members of his staff.

    Welcome, Chief.

    It is good to have the Chairman of the Capitol Police Board with us today, House Sergeant at Arms, Bill Livingood.
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    Welcome, Bill.

    We also have Senate Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper, the Honorable Gregory S. Casey.

    Welcome.

    Another board member. We welcome both of you to visit with the committee.

    The third board member is Architect of the Capitol, Mr. Alan Hantman, whom we also welcome back again today.

    Before we proceed, let me state the budget request submitted to the committee. Members will find the details beginning on page 301 of Part I, and on page 115 of the subcommittee print.

    Overall request is for $84.5 million, of which $76.1 million is for salaries, $8.4 million is for general expenses. These funds would support 1,257 employees, an increase of two.

    We have your statement, Bill; please summarize. And I am not sure who you want to proceed first.

    Go ahead.
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MR. LIVINGOOD'S OPENING STATEMENT

    Mr. LIVINGOOD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Serrano, Mr. Cunningham. I am pleased to appear before you to present the fiscal year 1999 budget request for the U.S. Capitol Police.

    As this budget request shows, we have reached an interesting point in the professional development of the U.S. Capitol Police. More than at any time in the past, the Capitol Police is undergoing a period of change in order to meet the increasing demands of its mission. Not only must we guard against new threats to the safety and security of the Capitol complex, but the manner in which we meet these threats is evolving.

    In the past, we considered a proper response to new security threats—the proper way to answer that was to add more police officers to the department. That was the case following the 1954 shooting in the House gallery and the 1971 and 1983 bombings in the Senate wing of the Capitol.

    Today, as we prepare to enter the new century, this next century, the U.S. Capitol Police Board feels the most and the more effective and efficient manner of better securing the Capitol complex rests with the increased use of technology and with training. While the safety and security of the congressional community and visiting public will always primarily rely on highly qualified and highly trained police officers, the application of state-of-the-art security technology can certainly be used to augment the officer in the field.

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    To this end, we have included five new components in the general expenses of the appropriation that are key to setting this initiative in motion: the hazardous materials program, information security systems, life cycle replacement of physical security systems, physical security annual maintenance, and the new physical security systems installations. Each is considered to be integral to the overall risk management efforts of the U.S. Capitol Police because they are needed to detect, deter, or mitigate the effects of security threats.

    Increased operational and administrative demands placed on the department translate into increased demands on our personnel; therefore, it is essential that we provide our officers and support staff with the level of training they need to keep pace with the changing nature of their jobs. The requested level of funding for tuition expenses will be used to provide outside professional instruction to our personnel on topics ranging from labor-management instruction, or labor-management relations, to chemical and biological attack response.

    With regard to personnel issues, it has been a longstanding goal of the U.S. Capitol Police Board to ensure that the men and women of the U.S. Capitol Police maintain pay parity with their counterparts in other law enforcement agencies. Therefore, the U.S. Capitol Police, fiscal year 1999 budget submission, once again, includes a request to fund pay initiatives, which provide for holiday pay, Sunday premium pay and shift differential.

    Because police departments need to be staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, this type of differential pay is considered standard and customary in law enforcement agencies. Therefore, in order to fairly compensate our personnel, who are required to work throughout the night on Saturdays and holidays, the U.S. Capitol Police Board feels that it is imperative that the initiative be fully funded.
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    Finally, Mr. Chairman, I would like to state the support of the Capitol Police Board for the funding, which is included in the Architect's budget submission. Several facilities currently used by the U.S. Capitol Police can no longer adequately support the mission of the department. The current condition of some of these facilities creates life, safety and working condition concerns for our personnel. Others such as the Off-Site Delivery Center and the Vehicle Maintenance Facility have simply outlived their usefulness and are in need of significant repair and expansion or relocation to another site.

    This is especially true of the Off-Site Delivery Center due to the increased level of its use, which is anticipated when we begin screening House deliveries. In addition, our training facilities are woefully inadequate. The entire primary training facility of the U.S. Capitol Police consists of three converted offices in the Ford office building. It is simply impossible to support the training needs of a 1,300-member department with a mission as diverse and important as the Capitol Police in three classrooms in an office building.

    In response to these concerns, the Architect has requested an appropriation to commission a comprehensive study of the facilities requirements of the department. Known as the Capitol Complex Integrated Security Facilities Program, this study will serve as a blueprint on how best to address these facilities concerns. In the interim, the Architect is requesting funding to address the immediate repair and Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations concerns. In view of these pressing issues, the board is requesting full funding for all of the Architect's budget requests affecting the U.S. Capitol Police facilities.

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    Over the course of the last year, we have met and heard the concerns of the committees of jurisdiction regarding how to best protect against the threats on security concerns we face today. This budget submission reflects a reasonable, measured and prudent approach to ensuring the safety and security of the U.S. Congress, the Capitol complex and the visiting public and the viability of the U.S. Capitol Police. We will continue to work with you and the authorizing committees as we address various issues concerning risk management, security and law enforcement.

    In closing, I would like to commend the men and women of the U.S. Capitol Police. Regardless of the challenge, they continually perform their duties in a diligent and professional manner. The responsibilities which rest on the shoulders of our personnel are daunting. Each day, they must ensure the safety and security of the congressional community and thousands of constituents by protecting them from crime and acts of violence. In doing so, they allow the national legislative process to proceed unhindered. However, in order to remain viable, the level of support the U.S. Capitol Police receives must be commensurate with the level and quality of service expected by the Congress and the public. This budget request is intended to meet that goal. A detailed budget for the Capitol Police has been submitted to the committee. I will be pleased to answer any questions that you may have.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Mr. Casey, would you like to make a statement?

Mr. CASEY'S OPENING STATEMENT
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    Mr. CASEY. Yes, I would. First, thank you for allowing me to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to come and represent the men and women of the U.S. Capitol Police force. I think you have a copy of my prepared text, so I will, indeed, be as brief as I can.

    I, first, want to point out that I believe the United States Capitol Police has become a premier law enforcement agency in this country. It is now involved in a number of national security-related activities that were once considered beyond the scope of the Capitol Police Board. Indeed, in all respects, the U.S. Capitol Police is a full partner in the law enforcement community and the intelligence community. It speaks highly of the people and the management of the United States Capitol Police.

    In the last couple of years, we have done some things that I think qualify as extraordinary, things that you probably didn't see, which, again, speaks highly of how they have been implemented. As I stated in the letter to each of you, when I passed the gavel of Capitol Police Board chairmanship to my friend, Mr. Livingood, here, maybe my biggest challenge and one of our biggest challenges is to make sure the management processes of this department are as rigorous and as current and up to date as our security implementation plan is. Our effort in that regard remains one of self-evaluation of those areas where we already know we can make improvement in order to make this department more efficient and more cost-effective.

    There are several remaining systems such as the time and attendance, inventory control and personnel management, which are antiquated and are not yet widely compliant. We have an obligation to get those fixed. For the second year in a row, Mr. Chairman, we have included in the police budget funds to cover the police department's telecommunications and computer expenses.
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    For the last several years, the expenses for both of these have been accommodated and absorbed into the budget of the Senate Sergeant at Arms. Hopefully, we are changing the way the Senate Sergeant at Arms does business so that resources and assets are allocated on a project-by-project basis upon an approved project plan. In this particular case, there is no such thing for the Capitol Police computers and telephones. Customers who are submitting private plans to the Senate Sergeant at Arms are also going to have to come up with some dollars to implement that plan.

    As I said last year, it seems to make good sense that if this is a critical function to the Capitol Police, which of course, obviously computers and telecommunications is, it should be something that they have control over and they currently do not. I would like to also support Bill Livingood's comments with regard to the department's pay initiatives. In the simplest of terms, we ask our police force to do a lot. And this police force meets every one of those expectations.

    The requested provisions of night differential, holiday and Sunday premium pay are nothing more than equity and comparability with counterparts in Federal agencies. I also want to share the police board's concerns for the functionality and suitability of several of our facilities. I think Bill mentioned all of those. A top-notch law enforcement agency like we have deserves better.

    We also need to complete the K–9 facility which I would like to add houses the Nation's number one dog team. The Architect of the Capitol, Mr. Hantman, a welcome addition to the police board, has been extremely valuable in helping us scope out some of these facilities issues. We will be talking about that later, to include finishing the K–9 facility.
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    Lastly, is the issue of perimeter security plan. I know Alan talked a great deal about that so I won't belabor the point. We must implement an upgrade to the perimeter security plan. No action is not a viable option. We have looked at various options and we have settled on the one that we have provided to the Senate Rules Committee and we talked with Mr. Thomas about it. This option, we believe, is the most cost-effective and best at-risk management. It is a fully integrated plan that when it is up and running and fully implemented, we believe, meets the needs both of cost and security. Mr. Chairman, I think that will conclude my statement.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much. Are there any statements either from the Architect or from Chief Abrecht at this time?

    Mr. HANTMAN. I submitted my statement for the record. My remarks will generally follow the flow of that statement.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you. Chief.

Chief Abrecht's Opening Statement

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    Chief ABRECHT. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to come and testify on behalf of the 1999 budget for the department. In the past year, the Capitol Police has made significant progress in a number of areas, particularly in the area of critical incident management. Most notably, we are continuing to enhance our ability to respond to and mitigate the effects of a chemical and biological attack, one of the more serious terrorism issues that is currently confronting all of us. We have conducted detection and response training for our personnel and have acquired quite a bit of specialized equipment.

    During the last State of the Union, we mustered a rather substantial amount of equipment and personnel and resources from other agencies in order to be prepared for such an incident during that event, which fortunately, obviously, did not occur. These are massive and very complicated issues we are devoting an immense amount of time to.

    While there is still much work to be done, I am confident that the Capitol Police is taking a proactive role in addressing this form of terrorism. We have also taken great strides in addressing more general life safety issues. We have developed the Capitol Buildings Emergency Preparedness Program and distributed emergency evacuation brochures to every office within the Capitol complex. These brochures, which comply with OSHA requirements, will ensure that every staff member will know how to safely evacuate in case of an emergency within their building.

    An important part of our preparedness effort is the formation of the Critical Incident Command Group. This group brings together the United States Capitol Police, the House and Senate Sergeant at Arms, the Architect of the Capitol and the Office of the Attending Physician to coordinate the response to an emergency situation. This entire process was tested in December when we conducted the first ever evacuation drill of the United States Capitol in conjunction with the D.C. Fire Department and the Emergency Medical Service. Such drills are beneficial to the staff, who can familiarize themselves with evacuation routes and assembly areas, and also serve as a test of our response and command capabilities. We intend to continue to hold these drills.
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    We have learned quite a lot from the particular one we held in December about such simple things as hose couplings on fire trucks not matching the fittings inside these buildings. Things that you don't know unless you actually drill on it. The fact that there is little or no water pressure in the fire hydrants out on the plaza, and a few other things like that we found out were really quite fascinating, and are now being addressed because we had this drill. We are going to continue to hold them in other buildings around here.

    I am also pleased to report that the repair and upgrade of physical security systems within the Capitol complex is proceeding smoothly. This effort is part of a three-phase 5-year plan to modernize the alarms, cameras and security equipment we utilize to protect the Capitol buildings and the congressional community. Once this plan is fully implemented, all of our security systems will be state of the art and fully integrated, thus allowing for improved police operations and response to alarms in offices and committees.

    Clearly the mission and responsibilities of the Capitol Police are expanding and evolving. Therefore, this year's general expense budget, as Mr. Livingood alluded to, contains several items which reflect the increasing level of Capitol Police responsibilities. The first such item is the hazardous materials program, which incorporates our chemical and biological response initiative. This initiative requires very specialized equipment, which is needed to detect and mitigate the effects of such an attack. As this program develops, the equipment which will be purchased with the appropriation will be integral to maintaining our risk-management efforts.

    The second item concerns the information security systems. In order to provide for the protection of national security information, the Capitol Police conducts operations to ensure that the complex operates free from the threat of surreptitious and clandestine listening devices and monitoring systems. The equipment we currently use to perform this function is in need of replacement. Therefore, the funds requested for information security will allow us to purchase the technological equipment needed to perform this critical function.
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    Finally, we have requested funding for the Physical Security Systems Program. As a result of the support and leadership of this committee, funding was provided to implement the three-phase plan, which will vastly improve our physical security systems. However, as this system is installed, it is time now to begin to put all of this equipment and all of our physical security equipment on a life cycle replacement basis.

    One of the problems that the Congress has had over many, many years is that we have operated in this arena on a crisis basis. We bought X-ray machines and physical security equipment as a result of bombings in 1971 and 1983. We made these one-time purchases and no one thought that ultimately this equipment wears out and has to be replaced. Then, when you buy it in large blocks like that, after 10 years or so it all dies and then you have nothing. Then there is a big need to replace it all.

    We need to put this entire system on a life cycle replacement basis so that every year we buy two or three X-ray machines, every year we replace four or five video cameras, every year we replace a small percentage of this equipment as it ages in a systematic fashion so that we will continue to be at the highest level of technology.

    This year, we have also requested an increase in the funding level for our fleet vehicles. In the past few years, we have had to divert money from this account to fund protective operations. In doing so, we repeatedly had to extend the useful life of several of our vehicles. In order to ensure that our fleet is safe, modern and able to meet the demands of police work, these vehicles need to be replaced. This requested increase will allow us to make a number of vehicle purchases that have been repeatedly delayed.
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    I also join the members of the board in requesting your favorable consideration of the Architect's request to fund the Capitol Complex Integrated Security Facilities Program. This study will provide a means to prepare a comprehensive plan to address several very serious facilities problems that we face. I have an immediate concern, however, about the current condition of the K–9 training facility, which continues to need additional work, the Rayburn firing range, which is a relatively small item, which is in my budget for a new backstop for that range to keep bullets from exiting the firing range into the garage which would be an unfortunate situation.

    Mr. SERRANO. You mean where I park?

    Chief ABRECHT. Yes, sir. I don't know whether you park on the G–1 level. The backstop is in need of replacement. I assure you there is no immediate concern that a bullet is going to exit.

    Mr. WALSH. Remember when you asked this morning about what absolutely had to be done? I think that is one of those.

    Chief ABRECHT. The last time we took the backstop down there was some real concern that it was deteriorating to the point that it could at some point allow a bullet to pass and that is clearly a serious issue, and the Off-Site Delivery Center, which has already been mentioned, which is really in very dire straits and in need of some substantial replacement or upgrade.

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    Once again, this year's budget, as both Sergeants at Arms have mentioned, contains a request to provide our personnel with shift differential, holiday pay and Sunday premium pay. Since police departments must operate adequately 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, this type of compensation is routine in law enforcement agencies throughout the United States. It is also provided, interestingly enough to most of the legislative branch service organizations, which have 24-hour operations, such as the Library of Congress, the General Accounting Office, and the Architect of the Capitol.

    An Architect of the Capitol employee who works on a holiday gets paid holiday pay to do that. A Capitol Police officer does not. A Library of Congress police officer who has to work on the holiday gets paid holiday pay. If he works late at night, he gets paid shift differential. If he works on a Sunday, he gets Sunday premium pay. The Capitol Police officer does not. It is a straight-up issue of equity as far as I can see. It is routine in law enforcement, it is routine in legislative branch service entities. We are the only ones who are not so included.

    I just think it is a simple matter of fairness and equity with a standard in the law enforcement community and, frankly, a standard on Capitol Hill for people who work late at night on the holidays. When my officer is here Christmas Day doing that for no additional compensation, I just don't think that is fair. I don't think many people would think so, either.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Bah humbug.

    Chief ABRECHT. May I quote you to the officer, sir?

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    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. No, no, no, no.

    Chief ABRECHT. I didn't think so. I didn't think you meant it.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Just seemed like the thing to say at the time.

    Mr. WALSH. The reporter is writing.

    Chief ABRECHT. We have also included amounts for reimbursing the Senate Sergeant at Arms for computer and telecommunications services in our budget again this year. Mr. Casey has addressed this issue. Frankly, I guess I feel a little like the old maxim ''when the elephants fight, the grass gets hurt.'' Obviously, the House and the Senate have a disagreement as to how telecommunications and computers should be funded for the Capitol Police. The thing that scares me to death is that this ball is going to be bounced back and forth and it is going to fall between two chairs here and I am going to end up with no computer services and no radios. You don't run a police department for more than a couple of days before it all collapses if you don't have computers and radio systems. The Senate Sergeant at Arms has funded that in the past. It just needs to be funded somewhere. I would urge the committee, when this comes to conference, that somehow this issue get resolved in some fashion, because that is obviously a tremendous concern to us.

    Finally if I could close on a cheerful note, and that is just to thank the committee for their prodding and support of our unified payroll initiative over the years. As you recall, last year we reported that we had successfully transferred the House payroll to the National Finance Center. That is working extremely well. Everybody got paid on time, 100 percent of the officers were paid on time. It has virtually eliminated some of the problems we have had with people complaining about their overtime not being received in a timely manner and so forth.
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    A month from now, on March 1, we will be moving the Senate payroll down to the National Finance Center, after which we will have a unified payroll system for the Capitol Police. That has been a goal that we have had and this committee has frankly prodded us on over the years. I really am grateful that that was made to come to pass largely by the support and really the initiative of the committee. I thank you for that.

    I am proud of the level and quality of service the men and women of the United States Capitol Police provide on a daily basis. Securing the Capitol complex is a daunting task. With the support of the Congress, we have faced and overcome many challenges in the past. Many of the items included in this budget request provide a glimpse of future risk management challenges and concerns and give insight into how we are preparing to address them. As this budget submission shows, we intend to build upon past operational and administrative accomplishments, undertake new initiatives in the most cost-efficient and effective manner possible. I thank you.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you, Chief. Thank you all not only for providing testimony today, but for the leadership that you provide to really a truly professional organization. I think you are all a credit to police work and the level of professionalism, I think, is recognized everywhere.

    I may have said this before, but I think when I was first elected to Congress, I was reading one of the local newspapers. It quoted a Member of Congress. They asked him, he had left and gone home, they asked him what he missed most about Washington. He said the Capitol Police. I thought that was pretty high praise.
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    I think all the Members certainly feel the same way. We feel very strongly and warmly about the Capitol Police and the service that they provide and the security that they provide for us and our families in times of crisis. Let me just on behalf of the subcommittee thank you for the service that your men and women provide us.

    Chief ABRECHT. Thank you, sir.

FTE INCREASE

    Mr. WALSH. We will get to the security measures at the end of this period of the hearing. Let me just ask a few questions about the budget for staffing, and then I will hand it over to Mr. Serrano. Last year, the bill funded 1,255 FTEs. This year you are requesting just two additional, one for public relations, one for labor management. Can you explain why those two new positions are needed?

    Chief ABRECHT. Absolutely, sir. We requested the one FTE to serve in the Public Information Office. Currently, the office is staffed by one sergeant, who is responsible for managing the entire public information and public relations effort for the department. At the direction of the Capitol Police Board, the department is undertaking a comprehensive crime prevention effort, which will address the safety and security needs of the House and Senate offices within the Capitol complex as well as State and district offices around the country. There is a significant need for——

    Mr. WALSH. That is handled by public relations?
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    Chief ABRECHT. Yes, in terms of providing information about——

    Mr. LIVINGOOD. We didn't have a place to put it. That is where we decided to put it.

    Chief ABRECHT. We provide crime prevention information brochures. There is a significant need for the program, but it will greatly increase the load of the Public Information Office beyond the capability of just one person to handle it. So we envision getting him a civilian assistant who will help him prepare this information and material to be distributed.

    Mr. WALSH. What grade level would that be?

    Chief ABRECHT. A relatively low-grade person. We would call it a clerk, I think it was graded as clerk 2 which is HS–5. The other position is a labor relations director. You remember the Congressional Accountability Act allowed our officers to unionize. They have done so. We are currently in the process of negotiating a labor contract. To do that, we are using an outside consultant at the present time and frankly dividing up all of the work of grievances and all of that among various people on the command staff. We need a professional, permanent labor management relations staff to deal with managing this new contract once we get it and handling all the grievances and all the work that is going to be generated by that.

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POLICE PARITY PAY REQUEST

    Mr. WALSH. That seems a reasonable request, given that you haven't had to deal with an organized collective bargaining unit before. The budget also requests the parity items, $2,441,000. Do you know—maybe staff can help with this—does that require legislative authority? Before we can appropriate those funds for parity, does that require the House Oversight Committee to act on that change?

    Chief ABRECHT. You will recall that last year in the budget, the committee established a process in the administrative provisions for setting the rates of pay for the Capitol Police, a unified pay scale which is set by the Capitol Police Board and is then subject to the review of the two committees of jurisdiction, the authorizing committees. If this initiative is funded, it would be our intention to, the Capitol Police Board's intention to modify those rates of basic pay and submit that to the committee, and it would be subject to the committee's approval.

    Mr. WALSH. So the appropriation would come first?

    Chief ABRECHT. We would need the funding before we could even ask.

    Mr. WALSH. Do you have any plan to go to the oversight committees, the authorizing committees and ask for this authority?

    Chief ABRECHT. There has been discussion already at the staff level and we do intend to proceed with that.
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    Mr. WALSH. That would certainly help our position if you had that authority, then it would make it much easier and it actually would provide a little tension on us to do that, if it was authorized. What is the $269,000 base adjustment?

    Chief ABRECHT. That is, I believe, essentially a misnomer. It is the annual step increases that everybody up to a certain period of time, until you reach 17 years as an officer, you get a step increase every year, assuming your service is satisfactory, of course, and I believe that is what that is.

    Mr. WALSH. I do have some other questions I will submit for the record?

    [Questions from Chariman Walsh and responses follow:]

    Question: The general expense budget is $5.3 million. The largest increases are $1,007,000 for computer services and $2.3 million for capitol assets. What computer services are needed?

    Response: There are several issues surrounding the FY 99 request for computer services. The first issue is that the USCP has been supported for computer services in the past by the Office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms. At the direction of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, the USCP has included this cost in its own budget for fiscal year 1999, while the Office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms has omitted this item from their own budget request.

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    The FY 99 request for USCP computer services totals $1,007,000. Of this amount, 207,000 is for maintenance and service contracts currently in effect through the Office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms. The remaining $800,000 is for systems replacement in the USCP.

    The systems referred to include the Inventory Control System, Time and Attendance, Personnel Administration, Injury System, Congressional Employee Locator System, Report Writing System and the Expense Control System (accounting). The migration of the House and Senate payrolls to the NFC will be completed in March, 1998. In addition, meetings are currently on-going for a planned cross-servicing arrangement with the General Accounting Office for the accounting system. Timelines are being developed consistent with a planned effective date of October 1, 1998.

    The remaining systems are currently reside on an antiquated platform on the Senate Computer Center's mainframe computer which is no longer supported by the vendor. Further, these systems are not Year 2000 compliant, and due to their antiquated state, there are no plans to make them compliant. Even today, we are beginning to experience some problems in our applications which track leave categories and longevity dates. In summary, these systems are inadequate, are no longer supported by the vendor, are not Year 2000 compliant, and will not be supported by the Office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms in the future.

    The funds requested for the above systems replacement are to cover costs of developing specifications, vendor analyses, systems and applications development, testing, training, licensing fees, reporting systems, maintenance and systems integration. Finally, an interface will need to be developed to integrate data from the legacy systems to the new systems.

    Question: There is a study of police management and financial systems being conducted. Shouldn't we wait for that study before funding additional computer expenditures?
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    Response: This management review is currently in the planning stages. Given the current state of our systems and the timing of the Year 2000 issue, there is a universal consensus that new systems will be required. Regardless of the specific recommendations of the management review, funding will be needed as soon as possible to resolve the current situation.

    Question: Explain the $2.3 million for capital assets. Specifically, what physical security equipment and systems need replaced?

    Response: Of the $2.3 million increase for capital assets, $1,663,000 is for a life-cycle replacement schedule for physical security equipment and systems. The no-year funding provided to date is dedicated to replacing existing systems that are failing and obsolete. The funding does not allow for the wholesale replacement of all security systems. Additionally, there is no funding identified for new security systems and equipment requests, or the upgrade of security systems on a periodic basis on projected equipment life-cycles.

    The request for fiscal year 1999 puts into place a process and annual budget to allow for the continued replacement of older equipment, to procure new systems for new requirements, and establish an orderly security equipment upgrade. It prevents the need for wholesale replacement of security systems through no-year funding by establishing a fully funded physical security program.

    Of the remaining $637,000, an increase in vehicle replacements is requested in the amount of $362,000. This amount will allow for the USCP to ''catch up'' with its original schedule of replacements. In the past two fiscal years, funds for this object class were necessarily diverted to cover the costs of protective services.
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    Finally, $266,000 is requested to purchase weapons, training equipment, thermal imagers, night sights and miscellaneous equipment.

    Question: Give us a list for the subcommittee to review.

    Response: The list follows:

Table 8


    Lastly congratulations on moving that payroll, combining it, moving it to the National Finance Center. On March 1 the Senate side will be on, too?

    Chief ABRECHT. Yes, all set to go. We have not encountered any obstacles that we haven't been able to overcome.

    Mr. WALSH. Great. Thank you very much.

    Mr. Serrano.

    Mr. SERRANO. Thank you very much. Thank you all for being here. Before I ask a couple of questions, let me echo the Chairman's words. It is really quite a job you guys do, all your men and women. It is good to feel that you are safe. I wish you would just ask them not to stand up at attention when I walk into the building.

    Chief ABRECHT. I am glad to hear they are doing so, sir.

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    Mr. SERRANO. I always wonder if they see someone behind me that they are reacting to, but I think it is for me.

    Chief ABRECHT. It is supposed to be for everybody, not just you.

STATUS OF LABOR/MANAGEMENT NEGOTIATIONS

    Mr. SERRANO. How is the issue, you already touched on it, but the issue of unionizing the force coming along? I see there was an article in The Hill that referred to some comments that you supposedly made, Chief, having come from a unionized background, where you say you were opposed to unionizing the Capitol Police. I just want to know what was the reason behind that.

    Chief ABRECHT. We tried so hard to convince The Hill that that was not, in fact, the case and that I never said that. It was just one of those ongoing, we all love journalists, I guess. I have never had any opposition there. It is a fairly complicated issue. It is now past because the Office of Compliance has ruled on it. There was a provision in the Accountability Act for a determination to be made whether the Capitol Police was a national security organization exempt from unionization.

    We did take the position that this was a national security organization. We continue to feel that it is, that protection of the first branch of government is a national security function. And so we did, indeed, ask to be exempted simply because we felt that was our responsibility as the managers of the enterprise to bring forth that position. Once the Office of Compliance ruled that only parts of the department were excluded and they did, indeed, exclude fairly substantial parts of the department.
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    Our Dignitary Protection Division, our technical security people were excluded and a number of other groups were excluded on national security grounds. Once that decision was made, we have moved forward in a good faith fashion. I meet regularly with the Executive Vice President of the Union and the ground rule negotiations are about complete. We expect to negotiate in a fully cooperative mode and have been doing so so far. I don't believe if you asked the union they would say that we are not being cooperative in every way.

    Mr. SERRANO. Obviously, you don't have to do too much work here on this committee to convince us. We get quoted in the same sense. Trust me, you are on safe grounds here with this group, which brings me to a question. On one hand, I am very much for unions across the Nation, but on the other hand I certainly wouldn't want a walkout during a major crisis. I guess that has been dealt with.

    Chief ABRECHT. They are under the Federal Labor Relations Act and no strike is permitted.

    Mr. SERRANO. There have been some concerns, Chief, if not public, then private among some people, as to the makeup of the force, the involvement of women in the force, the involvement of ethnic minorities and racial minorities in the force. What can you tell us about that issue?

    Chief ABRECHT. The force is relatively well representative of most minorities. It is about 30 percent African-American, which is a little bit more than the statistical standard for the Washington metropolitan area. Women are doing extremely well. We do have some trouble recruiting women. We don't get as many women as we would like to have. But it is certainly not for lack of effort.
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    The good news for women is that they are doing very well once they get on the department. They tend to get promoted at a higher rate than men do. I don't believe that we are having a major problem.

    One of the problems we face is recruiting Hispanics, which is a problem very common to law enforcement, to the point that a sort of sheep stealing that goes on among police departments, where they take Hispanic officers from each other because all police departments in the Washington metropolitan area, at least the ones I am familiar with, have real difficulty recruiting Hispanic officers. That is probably the area where we have, in terms of ethnic minority, that is the area we have the greatest difficulty.

    Mr. SERRANO. How does the pay and benefit package compare to area local law enforcement agencies?

    Chief ABRECHT. On base pay, the clean base pay, we are in fairly good shape. We are right about the same as the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service, which is one of the agencies we compared ourselves with; and the Park Police. The Metropolitan Police Department, we are a little bit ahead of, about the same. We are sort of in the middle of the pack in terms of all the major law enforcement agencies in the area.

    You heard me mention earlier where we fall behind is things like on the shift differential, the holiday pay and Sunday premium pay, which we do not have parity on. One other area when you become very senior, many of the agencies around here, if you have got more than 15 years on, you are doing a little better than our people. But for the bulk of our force, the base pay is fairly even. Because of differential, the total compensation does fall behind for many of the officers.
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    Mr. SERRANO. I have no further questions right now. I will wait for the other part. Well, just one other question. Whose department was it that put that button, I guess I am allowed to mention the button, in my office?

    Chief ABRECHT. That would be our Physical Security Division.

    Mr. LIVINGOOD. Your Capitol Police.

    Chief ABRECHT. That is us.

    Mr. SERRANO. Did my staff, while I was not there, decide where it should be, because it is behind me? You want to see me? Hold on a second.

    Mr. LIVINGOOD. We will fix it tomorrow. We will take care of the problem. It will be changed tomorrow.

    Mr. CASEY. You want them to send the firing range crew up there as well?

    Chief ABRECHT. It was probably someone on your staff. We will get it corrected.

    Mr. SERRANO. Thank you.

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    Mr. WALSH. Mr. Cunningham.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I would just like to add a thanks. I know when I talk to law enforcement all around the country, I tell them they have to model themselves after three different forces; one, the San Diego police department, the San Diego County sheriff's department and the Capitol Police.

    Chief ABRECHT. Thank you, sir.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. The professionalism, even the camaraderie, professionally, is first rate. You have to bend these guys to make them call you by your first name. They won't do it then probably unless they are off duty. The guys do a fantastic job. I appreciate it.

    Chief ABRECHT. Thank you, sir.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I want to know how many Irishmen are on your force.

    Chief ABRECHT. Quite a number. Quite frankly, I don't keep statistics on it.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. As a matter of fact, Vito Fossella from New York was elected. His wife is named Mary Pat. She's Irish, and I got them an Irish flag for their kid, their new kid, to break it in.
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    I have got no real questions other than to thank you for the service that you offer to us.

    Mr. WALSH. Mr. Latham.

    Mr. LATHAM. First of all, I want to associate myself with your remarks in your opening, Mr. Chairman, and congratulate you on a great force.

    Chief ABRECHT. Thank you, sir.

REQUEST FOR GENERAL EXPENSES

    Mr. LATHAM. I see in the request, general expenses at $8,361,000, which represented an increase of $5,262,000.

    Mr. WALSH. Excuse me. I didn't recognize Mr. Wamp. I did not realize that Mr. Wamp was still at the table. I apologize.

    Mr. LATHAM. You are next.

    It says the increasing focus on the ability of the department to respond to threats, keep pace with technological advances and ensure that personnel receive adequate training. What additional threats? This is a tremendous increase obviously in that general account. What are you talking about specifically?
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    Chief ABRECHT. This is really in three areas. The bulk of it is the computer systems which we talked about a little earlier which is one of these issues where it is currently in the Senate or at one time was in the Senate, was the sole provider of computer and radio services for the department.

    Mr. LATHAM. How much is that?

    Chief ABRECHT. It is $2 million, if I remember. Roughly, 1.4.

    Mr. LATHAM. What is it?

    Mr. LIVINGOOD. $1.4 million.

    Chief ABRECHT. The physical security systems is a large block of it. Putting the physical security systems on a life-cycle replacement basis. That is all of the alarm systems. I talked about that.

    Mr. LATHAM. Metal detectors?

    Chief ABRECHT. Metal detectors, X-ray machines, CCTV cameras, all of the buttons in the offices.

    Mr. LATHAM. I don't think I have a button. You have got one in the back, but I don't think I have a button.
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    Chief ABRECHT. We can take care of that as well. Every office will have multiple buttons.

    Mr. LATHAM. Or my staff hasn't told me where it is.

    Chief ABRECHT. They are still being installed.

    Mr. LATHAM. The Republicans have them in front.

    Chief ABRECHT. That is another very large chunk, $1.6 million of it. We have asked for a substantial increase in our protective travel budget to meet actual experience. We have always hoped that the amount of that that is required would go down. It doesn't seem to. So we have had to reprogram other money to do that, as I mentioned, which is why our fleet is in bad shape. So we have asked for a substantial increase there to actually bring it up to what it has actually been costing us. I mentioned the vehicle replacement. That is about $300,000 for all of our vehicle replacements. That is the bulk of it. I can go into greater detail.

    Mr. LATHAM. I notice there is another couple of million. Are there additional threats that we haven't anticipated before that you are trying to prepare for?

    Chief ABRECHT. The chemical and biological warfare or terrorism issue scares us to death. The ability to cause mass mayhem through that vehicle in a situation like this where the building is wide open, where people can come in is just very hard to prepare for. We are doing quite a lot in that regard, but there are no really good answers to it. We are doing what we can to make it—to prepare—to detect and mitigate that kind of a situation.
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    Mr. LATHAM. That is a problem that we have in a free society. The only way to prepare yourself or to totally eliminate it is to shut the place down and I don't think that is an option here.

    That is all the questions I have, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you, Tom. Mr. Wamp.

    Mr. WAMP. One short follow-up to that, because that is my major concern as well. You talked about the preparations that were made before last week's State of the Union address. Had that level of preparation taken place in a previous State of the Union address?

    Chief ABRECHT. No, we were only about halfway as prepared.

    Mr. WAMP. The shower tents and all that, that is the first time we had done that?

    Chief ABRECHT. That was the first time we had it fully set up.

    Mr. WAMP. I know some of this may come up later, but whatever we can talk about now, do you think that the Members of the House and the Senate themselves have had enough preparation, training or discussion about what they should do? If not, I want to speak as a Member, that needs to be done as soon as possible, Mr. Livingood.

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    Mr. LIVINGOOD. Some of that I think I would like to discuss in the closed hearing. I would not like to discuss that on the record, if I may, Mr. Chairman. We would be happy to answer that.

    Mr. WALSH. Is that all your questions?

    Mr. WAMP. I will yield back until that time.

    Mr. WALSH. Unless there are any other questions, let me just make a point. Mr. Serrano asked some questions about the diversity of the organization. Obviously, you are attaining high goals, doing your best to include the entire society.

    The next time you come, perhaps who you bring with you could be more reflective of the overall police force. It might help your case, too.

    [A question from Chairman Walsh and response follow:]

    Question: For the record, please supply all reprogramming requests made last year and the disposition of each by the appropriations Committees.

    Response: The information follows.
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    With that, I had some verbiage here that I can read. We will now take up the perimeter security plan. By order of the committee, we will now go into executive session.
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    Mr. WAMP. Mr. Chairman, just looking at the Speaker speaking, it may be a good time——

    Mr. WALSH. Maybe he is wrapping up?

    Mr. WAMP. He may be wrapping up, closing debate on this bill. In case you want to take a break and come back.

    Mr. SERRANO. I can read lips. He is announcing your ascension to chairing the Ways and Means Committee.

    Mr. WALSH. In either case, maybe we should wait a minute.

    Mr. SERRANO. He just said ''Zack.''

    Mr. WAMP. It looks to me like we are fixing to vote.

    Mr. WALSH. We have been advised by staff that there will be a vote fairly soon on an amendment that the Speaker is speaking on. Then there will be a vote on final passage right after that. Why don't we go ahead and clear the room and begin and then we will just come back after the vote is called.

    Only members and staff and Capitol Police Board and Capitol Police personnel may remain in the room. The clerk will clear the room. At this time I would ask anyone who is not in that description I just provided to leave the room.
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    [Where upon the Committee convened in executive session to conclude the hearing.]
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1998.

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE

WITNESSES

JUNE E. O'NEILL, DIRECTOR

JAMES L. BLUM, DEPUTY DIRECTOR

GAIL DEL BALZO, GENERAL COUNSEL

POLLY E. HODGES, BUDGET AND FINANCE OFFICER

DAVID M. DELQUADRO, PERSONNEL OFFICER

MARK G. DESAUTELS, ASSISTANT FOR PUBLIC INFORMATION

DANIEL F. ZIMMERMAN, CHIEF, INFORMATION RESOURCE MANAGEMENT UNIT

    Mr. WALSH. The subcommittee will come to order.

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    It is 10:00 a.m. We have an abbreviated schedule today, so we would ask all the witnesses and all the Members to be as concise as possible so that we can get everything covered, and we have a lot to cover.

    We will now take up the 1999 budget request of the Congressional Budget Office. We have Dr. June O'Neill, the CBO director. Dr. O'Neill, welcome. Dr. O'Neill was appointed as the fourth director on March 1st, 1995. We also have Mr. James Blum, deputy director. We welcome you both.

    Before we proceed, let me indicate the budget request. CBO is requesting $25.9 million for fiscal year 1999. No staffing increases are requested. Dr. O'Neill, I would like to have you proceed. If you would like to introduce your staff at this time, please feel free, and continue with your statement.

    Ms. O'NEILL. Yes, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure for us to be here today.

    I would like to introduce the staff. Starting at this end is our general counsel, Gail Del Balzo; Mark Desautels, who handles information requests from the press; Dan Zimmerman, who heads our computer services unit; Polly Hodges, who is our budget chief; and Dave Delquadro, who is our personnel director.

    Mr. WALSH. Welcome to you all.

    Ms. O'NEILL. I will try to be brief in summarizing our request and submit my formal statement for the record.
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    Mr. WALSH. Without objection.

    Ms. O'NEILL. I also have with me copies of a report that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), released today, which details CBO's activities in 1997, as well as copies of our recently released annual report on the budget and the economy.

NEW CBO PRODUCTS

    I would like to point out a couple of significant additions that we have made this year in our repertoire of products, with which we try to keep the public informed about what is happening with the budget. One of those additions is the launching of CBO's Web site in September. We are making all of our work products available on the Web; that includes testimonies and cost estimates in addition to our standard reports and products such as that.

    I would also like to point out that we are now putting out a monthly budget review. With that budget review, we hope to keep the Congress and the public abreast of what is happening from month to month with respect to the current fiscal year. Although projecting in advance what will happen in the current fiscal year has not proved to be easy—and certainly our 1997 estimate was off the mark, as was everyone else's—with the monthly report we can keep the public informed about what is happening so that there will not be any surprises. The monthly budget review will also be on our Web site.

CBO'S BUDGET REQUEST

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    Our budget request for fiscal year 1999 is, as you said, $25,938,000, and that amount allows for an increase of 4.6 percent, or $1.1 million, over our fiscal year 1998 appropriation. Personnel costs, which account for 85 percent of the total CBO budget, are driving our request. Nearly 96 percent of the $1,466,000 in cost increases facing CBO in fiscal year 1999 are increases associated with pay and benefits. CBO has reduced other parts of its budget to absorb more than 20 percent of the increases; that was done primarily by cutting spending for automated data processing (ADP) equipment by $305,000—about a 13 percent cut.

CONCERNS ABOUT STAFF RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION

    Our requested funds are for a staff ceiling of 232 full-time-equivalent positions, and we are not asking for any additional positions. Although CBO should be able to maintain its current workload with the funds requested here, the agency confronts several uncertainties in fiscal year 1999. Principal among our concerns is our ability to offer the salaries and benefits needed to remain competitive in today's tight labor market. The current job market compels CBO and other employers to worry about both the recruitment of new workers and the retention of current employees. CBO's staff, includes economists and other quantitatively skilled professionals, all of whom are in particularly high demand. Newly minted economists now command, we have found, surprisingly high salaries. Recruitment has become a time-consuming and frequently frustrating process, as more and more often we lose qualified people to employers who can sometimes pay as much as 50 percent more in compensation.

    The difficulty of attracting new staff has added to pressure to retain our experienced workers, which is one reason CBO's merit pay request for fiscal year 1999 is so critical. Another factor is CBO's reputation for high-quality analysis and budget work, which has made our experienced analysts very interesting to other employers. In the past few months, for example, CBO has lost three of its managers to more senior and higher-paying positions.
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    We are not suggesting that because of our turnover rates we deserve extraordinary consideration. However, we operate under something of a disadvantage, compared with other Federal employers that can provide locality pay raises and give lump-sum bonuses to attract and retain exceptional workers. To remain competitive, we believe we need the budget we have requested.

UPCOMING COSTS FOR RELOCATING ADP SYSTEMS

    A further concern for CBO is the uncertain costs associated with the relocation of important ADP systems. Currently, CBO relies on the mainframe computer of House Information Resources, or HIR, to run our budget database applications. However, the HIR mainframe is slated to be retired, and CBO, along with other users, will have to make other arrangements.

    HIR and its mainframe computer have provided excellent service, and CBO's challenge is to duplicate, as closely as possible with the new vendor, the services it currently receives from HIR. We do not yet have a firm estimate of how much it will cost to evaluate our options for moving CBO's systems or to prepare for the transition. Both types of costs are likely to occur in fiscal year 1999. Our request includes $100,000 for those purposes, although that could prove to be a conservative estimate.

A PRUDENT BUDGET REQUEST

    In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, CBO is keenly aware of the Congress's intention to balance the budget and downsize the Federal Government, including the legislative branch. In response, CBO's recent budget requests have been quite modest, with requested increases usually less than the projected rate of inflation. Our present proposal represents our best estimate of the amount necessary to maintain our budget at the current-services level. It is a prudent budget, we believe, in which we absorb over 20 percent of our mandatory pay and benefit increases through reductions elsewhere. However, I think that our requested increase of 4.6 percent is necessary if we are to continue to serve the Congress in the manner it has come to expect.
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    Thank you.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much for your testimony.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. We do note the budget, $25.9 million, the request for an increase, 4.6 percent, is $1.1 million. The pay and price level increases are projected at $1.5 million, so we recognize that you have found some savings within your own department to pay for those, most notably in administrative data processing and that is to be commended. We appreciate that effort. That is an effort we don't have to make now, and you practice what you preach, which is nice to see.

    Just sort of a curiosity. We note you did a study on marriage in 1997. Are you now involving yourself in social issues?

THE INCOME TAX SYSTEM'S MARRIAGE PENALTY

    Ms. O'NEILL. That study was about the marriage penalty, and actually marriage bonuses as well, because the individual income tax system generates both. It is a complicated issue. In an income tax system like ours with progressive rates, it is difficult—in fact, it is impossible—to levy the same tax on couples with the same income and at the same time eliminate any effect of marriage on a couple's tax liability.
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    The history of tax legislation shows a tension: we have gone back and forth with larger and smaller marriage penalties. Recently the problem has grown more conspicuous with the increase in the number of two-earner couples, because the closer together the two spouses' earnings are to each other, the larger the marriage penalty. On the other hand, a one-earner couple will most likely get a marriage bonus, so there is also political tension.

    Mr. WALSH. Anything we can do to alleviate tension within marriages, we should try to do that. Speaking with 23 years of experience, one less tension in a marriage would be appreciated.

    I really don't have any in-depth questions on the budget, but I do want to satisfy my own curiosity as I did on that one. This issue of Asia and the financial crisis in Asia, and its impact on our economy, and the revenue estimates that we have been presented within the budget, balanced budget agreement, do you anticipate that what is happening in Asia and the slowdown in their growth and its impact on the slowdown on our growth of GDP and exports, do you think it will affect those revenue estimates this year and next and the next? Have you factored that in?

HOW THE ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS AFFECTED CBO PROJECTIONS

    Ms. O'NEILL. We have factored in the effect that we believe will occur as a result of the Asian crisis, although that calculation was done in the face of considerable uncertainty. We anticipated that growth would be lowered by about half a percentage point as a consequence of the currency problems in Asia. Since we put our latest forecasts to bed, the situation in Asia has been very fluid. At first, it seemed to get worse; now, it seems to have stabilized, so I do not see any reason for us to doubt what we initially projected. But there is a lot of uncertainty here because something could trigger a contagious effect—an Asian flu situation, one might say—in which confidence is shaken in countries like Brazil and elsewhere around the world.
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    Mr. WALSH. So does it affect the assumptions that were made in the long-term balanced budget agreement? Will you have to——

CHANGES IN CBO'S BASELINE ASSUMPTIONS

    Ms. O'NEILL. A direct answer is that the assumptions we had in the balanced budget agreement have changed, although the Asian financial crisis was not a major factor in that change. In actuality, the shift in our assumptions was in the other direction, largely because 1997 turned out to be so much better than we had thought. We underestimated revenues for 1997 by $72 million; the Office of Management and Budget underestimated them by $75 million.

    Mr. WALSH. But there is no tension there.

    Ms. O'NEILL. Everybody was wrong together, including the private forecasters.

    Mr. WALSH. We like you to be wrong that way, rather than conservative estimates.

    Ms. O'NEILL. That is exactly what happened. Moreover, along with the revenue change in 1997 was an improvement in the economic outlook. So although Asia was a question mark, it was not enough to make our projections more negative on balance because everything else was more optimistic. In fact, before we knew about the Asian crisis, we had anticipated that there would be some slowdown generated by the Federal Reserve because of the rapid economic growth and the beginning of escalating inflation.
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    [Questions from Chairman Walsh and responses follow:]

    Question. Why does the CBO need a ''collections management'' system? That sounds like something the Library of Congress would use.

    Answer. This new, integrated library software will be used for the acquisition, cataloging, circulation, serials management, and inventory control of the publications that CBO needs to support its analytical work. It is the type of system all libraries use to manage their collection, whatever size or type.

    Question. We should take advantage of other agency capabilities when possible. Did you ask the Library if they could help you out with such a system?

    Answer. CBO has contacted other legislative branch libraries including those at the Congressional Research Service, GAO, the House, and the Senate. We have also discussed available systems, and their experiences using them, with executive branch and judiciary branch libraries.

    Question. Where did you find the funds to allocate to the ADP project? Include a table showing the details of these funds movements.

    Answer. The estimated reprogramming cost of $340,000 would be paid for through lower agency retirement contributions (about $100,000) and lower personnel costs resulting from turnover in senior management positions.
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    The $100,000 savings in fiscal year 1998 retirement contributions derives from a 1.5 percentage-point reduction in agency contributions for employees covered under the Federal Employees' Retirement System (FERS) offset by a 1.51 percentage-point increase in contributions for employees covered by the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS).

    The remaining cost savings ($240,000) would be temporary. They would be derived from lower fiscal year 1998 salary and related expenditures as CBO seeks to hire several managers. We are also actively recruiting for newly minted economists at the master's and Ph.D. levels. But some positions—such as those at a more senior level requiring individuals with specific work experience—will probably not be filled until after the senior managers are replaced.

Table 9

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much. Mr. Serrano.

    Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman—thank you for joining us today. I have some questions I would like to submit for the record.

    Mr. WALSH. Without objection.

    Mr. SERRANO. The CBO is one of those agencies we deal with all year long, and, unlike other agencies that come before us once a year and we ask them a million questions, this is not something that we have to do. My main question was also on the Asian crisis, so I will submit these for the record and ask you very briefly to comment.
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    In your statement, you refer to facing relocation of important data processing systems, at an unknown cost, as H.I.R. moves to eliminate its mainframe computer by 2000, and I would like to know how you are setting that up.

    Ms. O'NEILL. Jim, would you like to answer that?

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW MAINFRAME SERVICES VENDOR

    Mr. BLUM. The mainframe computer that House Information Resources operates, and whose services we buy, holds our main budget database. A decision has been made to retire the mainframe because the number of applications—particularly those used by the House—is too small to justify having a large mainframe. The decision has been made to migrate those House systems, such as the legislative information system, to another place. We are hoping that CBO's work can just go along with that migration, but there is considerable uncertainty about the exact timing of the move, what vendor will be providing the mainframe services, and what the move will cost us. A possible vendor, for example, might be the Government Printing Office, which has apparently expressed some interest in this matter.

    Mr. SERRANO. Okay. I just am hopeful, also, as you are, that it is a smooth transition, and I am hoping that other people get involved in making sure it is a smooth transition.

    I can tell you just at my Rayburn office level, every time we have one change, any change, for the better supposedly, in our system, it seems like 15 things we did in the last year sort of disappear from our system and we have to re-invent them. And we can survive that, but——
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    Mr. BLUM. That would be a bigger problem for us, obviously.

    [Questions from Mr. Serrano and responses follow:]
    Question. CBO has been criticized for ''missing'' the increase in revenues that has been driven by the strong economy. How do you respond to that criticism?

    Answer. CBO and the Administration both underestimated revenues last year. We missed three factors that all worked to make revenues grow faster than expected, and each contributed about one-third of the unexpected revenues. First, wages and profits grew faster than forecast. Second, capital gains realizations grew by 45 percent between 1995 and 1996—much faster than expected. Third, incomes were taxed at higher rates than expected because incomes of high-income taxpayers, whose rates are higher than average, grew faster than the incomes of other taxpayers. Because all of these factors are uncertain, our forecasts are subject to error, but we hope that in most years, errors in one aspect of the forecast will offset errors in the others.

    We have made every effort to learn from last year's estimating mistakes, yet it seems inevitable, given the perils of projecting, that large errors will occur from time to time. However, we are taking steps to provide an early-warning mechanism that will signal when actual receipts and outlays are deviating from our estimates for the current fiscal year. In that regard, we are making public our analysis of the Daily and Monthly Treasury Statements, which appears in our Monthly Budget Review report.

    Question. You urge caution about the long-term outlook for the federal budget and name the ''Asian crisis'' as one potential factor. Please discuss CBO's views on the range of impact on the U.S. economy and the federal budget of the ''Asian crisis''.
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    Answer. There is a great deal of uncertainty about the Asian crisis, but the consensus estimate of its effect on the U.S. economy is that it will slow growth by about one-half of one percentage point for the next two years, dampen inflation, worsen profits, and lower U.S. interest rates slightly below what they otherwise would have been. Some estimates of the effect on U.S. growth have been as high as 1 percentage point. Given the recent stabilization of most of the countries involved in the crisis, virtually no analysts believe that the effect is likely to be larger than that.

    The federal budget will be affected by the Asian crisis. In its baseline, CBO built in an effect on growth of one-half of one percentage point. If, in fact, growth is reduced by a full percentage point but all other aspects of the economic forecast are accurate, then the deficit will be greater by about $5 billion in 1998 and $15 billion in 1999. Conversely, if the crisis turns out to have a minimal effect on growth, deficits for 1998 and 1999 will be smaller by the same amounts. The effects of the Asian crisis on inflation, interest rates, and profits could also be different from what CBO has assumed. Such changes might cause the deficit to differ from the CBO baseline by more or less than the effects on growth alone would indicate.

    The slower growth occurs because the slower pace of economic activity in Asia and the higher value of the U.S. dollar will reduce demand for U.S.-produced goods and make foreign goods more competitive. Those effects will slow the growth of U.S. export industries and import-competing industries, and the trade deficit will increase over the next two years. Investment in the United States will be supported by financial inflows from abroad and subsequent lower interest rates, but the negative effect on the trade balance is likely to be much larger than the positive effect on investment.
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    Inflation will be held down by the fall in the prices of imported goods. Import prices in general have been falling for over a year, and the Asian crisis will cause further declines in 1998.

    Profits have already been adversely affected, with some banks reporting lower profits for the fourth quarter of 1997 because of the Asian crisis. Although the Asian crisis accounts for only part of the slowing, profit growth this year is expected to slow to about 3 percent, compared with 9 percent in 1997.

    The prospect of reduced Asian demand and lower import prices has dampened U.S. interest rates slightly. Before the Asian crisis developed, it was generally thought that the Federal Reserve would have to raise rates in order to slow growth, which at 3.8 percent for 1997 threatened to cause higher inflation, given the high rate of resource use in the United States. The Asian crisis has reduced the likelihood of monetary tightening, and interest rates have eased.

    Question. The retirement of the baby boom generation is another cause for caution on the long-term budget outlook. What range of options does CBO recommend to Congress on Social Security and Medicare?

    Answer. A chapter in CBO's March 1997 report, Long-Term Budgetary Pressures and Policy Options, examined a wide range of long-term approaches that would reduce the growth in spending on Social Security and Medicare. CBO will publish a revision of that report in the next few months.

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Social Security

    To prevent Social Security spending from growing faster than the economy when the baby-boom generation retires, policy makers would have to substantially curtail the commitments made under current law. CBO's report examined three main ways of doing that. First, the initial benefits of future Social Security recipients could be reduced below the levels that current law would provide. Across-the-board cuts in initial benefits that were announced well before they took effect could produce substantial savings while still preserving the basic benefit structure of the Social Security system. In principle, workers could offset the cut in their future Social Security benefits by either working longer or saving more. However, some people would not be able to make the necessary adjustments and could therefore have much lower income when they stopped working.

    Second, the age at which a worker would become eligible for full retirement benefits—the ''normal retirement age''—could be raised to reflect increases in life expectancy. Under legislation enacted in 1983, the normal retirement age is already scheduled to increase from 65 to 67. Some proposals would speed up the transition to age 67 and then further increase the age to keep up with future gains in life expectancy. Raising the age at which a worker would become eligible for full benefits is, for most purposes, equivalent to cutting initial benefits, with similar advantages and disadvantages.

    Third, future annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) could be reduced. Current law indexes the basic Social Security benefit by the increase in the consumer price index (CPI), beginning when a worker becomes eligible for benefits. Many analysts feel that the CPI overstates increases in the cost of living, although the magnitude of the overstatement and what should be done about it are subject to much debate. Unlike across-the board reductions in benefits and increases in the normal retirement age, substantial changes in COLAs would eventually reduce benefits the most for the oldest beneficiaries and for those who initially became eligible for Social Security on the basis of disability.
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Medicare

    Three fundamental approaches can be used to slow the growth in federal Medicare spending. The Congress could reduce the number of people eligible for benefits, collect more of the costs from beneficiaries, or restructure Medicare to reduce total health care costs per beneficiary.

    One way to reduce the number of people eligible for benefits would be to increase the age of eligibility. That approach would reduce federal spending for Medicare compared with current law, but spending would continue to grow as a percentage of GDP. Further, that approach would do little to reduce total health care costs, and it would lengthen the period of time during which people who opted for early retirement under Social Security might have difficulty getting private insurance coverage.

    Under the second approach, premiums collected from beneficiaries could be increased to cover a larger share of Medicare's total costs for both Part A and B. Premiums paid by enrollees cover only about 10 percent of costs now. This option could keep net Medicare spending as a share of GDP from rising, but that result would be accomplished by shifting costs to beneficiaries rather than by constraining the growth in total health care costs. Without any changes to improve the efficiency of the Medicare program, premiums would consume an ever-larger share of an enrollee's income.

    A third approach to slow the growth of federal spending for Medicare would be to restructure the program, giving patients and providers greater incentives to make cost-effective choices. One way to do that would be to set up a system of competing health care plans and limit growth in the amount Medicare would contribute toward the premiums charged by the various plans. In such a restructured system, Medicare's fee-for-service sector could be just one of a number of plans competing for enrollees on the same basis as all other plans. Because enrollees would be responsible for any excess premium amounts and would receive rebates for plans costing less than Medicare's contribution, they would have financial incentives to be prudent purchasers of health plans. Also, because plans would be at risk for any costs above their predetermined premium collections, they would have financial incentives to operate efficiently. Control of federal Medicare spending would be ensured because the financial risks from higher growth in health care costs would be shifted to health plans and enrollees. Although the federal subsidy per enrollee would be smaller than it would be under current law, competition among plans and providers might spur efficiency and increase real health benefits for each dollar spent.
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    However, the effects of the last approach on total costs for a basic benefit package—and therefore on the costs that beneficiaries would bear—are uncertain. If the incentives established to encourage more cost-conscious behavior (and so reduce annual growth in the cost per enrollee) were not sufficient to match the annual growth in the federal defined contribution, premiums for enrollees would steadily increase. In practice, the effects would probably differ among various enrollee groups. Some basic plans would probably keep their costs low enough to avoid having to charge supplemental premiums. However, the access to providers and quality of services available in those plans might limit their appeal primarily to low-income enrollees. Higher-income enrollees might gravitate instead to plans that charged supplemental premiums and provided better access and quality.

    Mr. SERRANO. Thank you.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you, Mr. Serrano. Mr. Fazio.

    Mr. FAZIO. Good morning.

    First of all, good to see you all. I appreciate the continuity I see in the top ranks of the CBO, which are people like Jim. How many different directors have you worked with?

    Mr. BLUM. June is the fourth.

    Mr. FAZIO. From the beginning?
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    Mr. BLUM. From the beginning.

    Mr. FAZIO. The fact you are still here is an incredible testament.

    Mr. BLUM. I don't know how to read that. Maybe I couldn't find a better job elsewhere.

    Mr. FAZIO. You have been acting out a lot and we appreciate the continuity you have helped provide.

    Let me ask about your Web site. I hear from my staff, and I would like to take credit, but I can't, it is a great resource, and that it is particularly helpful. I assume it is also to people outside the institution who are using it.

CBO'S NEW WEB SITE

    Ms. O'NEILL. We have had 100,000 visitors to the site since September, I believe.

    Mr. FAZIO. Do we know who the people are?

    Mr. BLUM. I think they are from all over.

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    Mr. FAZIO. The financial community?

    Mr. BLUM. Yes, from the financial community in New York City and from universities. We also have a number of people from overseas who are dialing up the site because it is available internationally as well. It turns out to be a very efficient way of transmitting our publications and making them available to all interested parties.

    Mr. FAZIO. Do you have any other plans for further development of it? I see people in the second row are shaking their heads. Maybe we can hear directly to what some of those things are.

CBO'S COST ESTIMATES ON THE WEB

    Mr. BLUM. We are putting all of our bill cost estimates on the site, and, as I am sure you realize, over the course of the year that is a very large number, ranging from perhaps 500 to 700 estimates.

    As a result, we are working to design a means whereby a person can easily access the particular cost estimate for the piece of legislation of interest. That change will require some additional work.

USING INTERNET TECHNOLOGIES FOR ADMINISTRATION

    We are also interested in applying the Internet technology to our own administrative operations, which could provide us with some internal efficiencies. Processing forms electronically rather than on paper, for example, could make things more efficient and speed up our internal administrative procedures.
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    Mr. FAZIO. Is that directly linked to even quicker analysis cost, something that all of us wait breathlessly for?

    Mr. BLUM. The computer certainly has, over the years, enabled us to do much quicker estimates.

    Mr. FAZIO. Boilerplate.

    Mr. BLUM. Exactly. We have been able to turn around cost estimates with increasing speed over the years, so the computer technology has given a great boost to our productivity.

    Mr. FAZIO. And you will have even more.

    Mr. BLUM. Even more, yes.

INCREASED ''TRANSPARENCY'' FOR CBO'S COST ESTIMATES

    Ms. O'NEILL. We have also been trying to provide as much information as possible about the way we do our estimates so that it does not appear as though there is some sort of mystery.

    Mr. FAZIO. It floats up out of the ink well.

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    Ms. O'NEILL. Our cost estimates contain more and more information about the methods used to produce them.

    Mr. FAZIO. Which ultimately leads to more criticism.

    Ms. O'NEILL. That is one downside. But we also get a lot of visits from members of parliaments in other countries who are interested in budgeting, and they all marvel at the products that CBO puts out. They tend to wish that they had that much information to help them do their work.

    Mr. FAZIO. But your view is increased transparency is good for the process, you make adjustments to it. Do you take into consideration your critics comments? Do you factor these in for further analysis?

    Mr. BLUM. We believe in making public all of the critical assumptions that underlie our estimates of all kinds, so that we are not a black box where people just dip into the inkwell, as you suggested, and pull out a number. A lot of research and analysis goes into our estimates, and we like to provide the basis for those numbers. Then if you or other parties question some of the assumptions and ask what the result would be with some alternative assumption, we will be able to reply to you.

    Mr. FAZIO. I think that is particularly important, because I am firmly in the camp of those who want CBO to be less political, rather than more so, and be more generally agreed by economies across the spectrum to be fair in a way in which they go about making their difficult decisions. The more we understand how you come to them, the more we can argue those premises and hopefully eliminate a lot of, you know, unfortunate debate that does occasionally go on. I mean, the more we can put in the camp of ideologies, some of these debates, it may be for the better, and take it for what it is worth.
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METHODS FOR DEVELOPING BILL COST ESTIMATES

    Ms. O'NEILL. I and all the staff at CBO take our nonpartisan nature very seriously, and we do the estimates as objectively as we possibly can. If somebody came forward with information that showed we had made an error, of course we would not ignore it.

    Mr. FAZIO. Right.

    Ms. O'NEILL. We would take it into account.

    Mr. FAZIO. Some of this is error occasionally.

    Ms. O'NEILL. Well, especially when it comes to economic methodologies. As you know, we combine many sources and our final estimates are often a judgment call, but we stay abreast of economic and other literature, and we are usually pretty much where the consensus is.

    Mr. FAZIO. Just to conclude, I think openness is our greatest protection against people making assumptions that there is a bias at CBO. It ought to be obvious when there is one, and it ought to be part of the debate within the economics field, otherwise it ought to be clear.

    And I also want to say, for the record, Mr. Chairman, I think any effort to remove Ms. O'Neill before the end of her term would be a totally inappropriate, unfortunate decision, totally apart from who she is or how I might evaluate her task. I think the decision has been always to allow the director of this agency to serve for the time to which he or she is appointed, because we don't want to allow the impression, even, let alone the reality, that decisions that are made, tough calls that get made, particularly about economic philosophy or some of those that underlie the premises upon which this analysis is based, have contributed to her appointment or her removal. I think it would be an undermining of the original law that created CBO if we take that approach. I hope it will not be something that rumors we read about in local newspapers or follow through on, you know, I hope it is all conjecture and not really somebody's agenda. I think it is far more than a partisan issue, I think it is an institutional issue, and that is the reason I raise it here.
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    My view is we continue to struggle and make this entity what we intended it to be, and we ought not let the various winds that blow back and forth here politically, philosophically, and ideologically on a partisan basis ever interfere with the selection process, or, particularly, anyone's ability to fill out their term because we are not happy with some judgment call they made. I hope I don't speak just for myself. I hope I speak for a bipartisan group of Members, but I am certainly going to be making my views very clear if it comes to the need to do that.

    Mr. WALSH. Mr. Hoyer.

    Mr. HOYER. Thank you.

    I want to associate myself with Vic's remarks. One of the directions that we chose to take, in the 103rd and even the 102nd Congress, and which were accelerated, at least rhetorically in the 104th Congress, was the professionalization and depolitization of the Congress' ministerial tasks, that is, tasks which are performed not in terms of making policy but providing information upon which policy may be based.

    I think Congressman Fazio is absolutely correct, this is an institutional issue, not a partisan issue of either side, and if we are committed to that, which I think we are, and I think there is bipartisan support for that effort, then I would share Vic's great concern. Although I haven't talked to the Chairman about it, the Chairman is very concerned about institutional integrity, that we not see politically-motivated decisions made because of answers received that are maybe intellectually and academically defensible but which are not politically desirable. I think that would be a real undermining of the integrity of the CBO and the integrity of the offices we have set up to provide us with the best possible information we can have on which to base policy decisions. You don't need to comment on that, obviously.
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    Let me ask you a question. It will not come as a surprise to you that I continue to be interested, along with my colleagues, on the competitiveness of the Federal Government in the personnel marketplace. You indicated that in some instances, particularly with young economists, your phrase was newly minted——

    Ms. O'NEILL. The trouble is at both ends of the employee spectrum. We have trouble hiring new economists as well as retaining our experienced staff, because other employers——

    Mr. HOYER. The question I want to ask is, do you have people here who have the competitive figures, i.e., to hire a young, bright, able economist, out of Wharton or one of the better schools around the country, what do you have to pay?

    Ms. O'NEILL. Let me ask Dave Delquadro, our personnel director.

    Mr. HOYER. Let me put it this way, what do we pay and what does the private sector pay?

EMPLOYEE COMPENSATION AT CBO AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS

    Mr. DELQUADRO. Our biggest competitor is the Federal Reserve Board in terms of bringing a lot to the table on the salary and fringe benefit sides. The Fed is currently offering its new Ph.D. economists between $71,000 and $72,000 in annual salary, plus a very generous benefit package. The Urban Institute and CBO are around the $59,000–$61,000 market range, and we are not sure how that is going to work. I mean, frankly, last year——
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    Mr. HOYER. It is about an 18 percent disparity, and if you factor in benefits, probably closer to 24, 25 percent.

    Mr. DELQUADRO. That is about right, sir.

    Mr. HOYER. Let's say the 10- to 15- to 20-year experience level, you indicated in your testimony there may be as much as a 50 percent disparity.

    Ms. O'NEILL. This has been our experience over the past year in some of the instances in which we have lost someone, and I can think of a number of cases.

    Mr. HOYER. Can you give me, without mentioning individuals, some salaries?

    Ms. O'NEILL. One, a newly minted Ph.D. economist, was offered $85,000 and took a job with a private consulting firm, and I think that amount was plus——

    Mr. DELQUADRO. We are not sure what the benefit package was.

    Ms. O'NEILL. It was a lot. One university offered, and the person accepted, something around $80,000 for essentially a 9-month job, which is——

    Mr. HOYER. These are newly minted people?
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    Ms. O'NEILL. Yes.

    Mr. HOYER. My question was when we talk about pay and adjustment of pay, we talk about recruiting and retention. Recruiting is what private sectors are starting new people out of college or 1, 2, 3, 4 years of experience. Retention is when we have somebody 15 years into our system, trained into our system, obviously more valuable to our system. Do you have examples of comparable differences?

DIFFICULTIES IN RETAINING HIGHLY QUALIFIED STAFF

    Ms. O'NEILL. The differences can be quite large for experienced managers because of the ceilings that we face here. There is the director's salary, which is capped at $125,900.

    Mr. BLUM. It is an Executive Level 3 position.

    Ms. O'NEILL. We are in a situation in which the assistant directors at CBO are coming very close to the director's salary. You know, we cannot really compete in markets in which sophisticated financial people who have considerable knowledge of, for example, defense weapons can be offered amounts that far exceed what we are allowed to pay.

    Mr. HOYER. First of all, your assistant directors are making what?

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    Mr. BLUM. $121,000 per year.

    Mr. HOYER. What would be a comparable private sector salary?

    Ms. O'NEILL. It varies. I think everybody knows that Mr. Kies was recently lured away from the Joint Committee on Taxation with the offer of a very, very high salary.

    Mr. HOYER. At half a million, or $750,000.

    Ms. O'NEILL. We have had people who have left CBO and are now earning twice, maybe even three times, as much as their CBO salary.

    Mr. HOYER. Therefore, I presume a 3.1 percent adjustment, particularly when that is proposed for absorption; secondly, locality pay is to be a component of that 3.1 percent, as opposed to an add-on. I presume that will further erode your competitive status as it relates to your salary structure.

    Ms. O'NEILL. Yes, it will.

    Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I make that point only because governmentwide we are going to have to deal with that, but Mr. Kies' analogy, I think, probably is not exact because Mr. Kies, as many Members of Congress know, is getting paid for more than his skills, he is getting paid for who he knows, and so on.

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    Ms. O'NEILL. That is a fair point.

    Mr. HOYER. But the fact is, Mr. Chairman, we are having trouble on the Hill recruiting and retaining people. Now we get young people because of their desire to have experience here, but we train them, they get them up to speed and they get really good and then they can get 50 percent or 100 percent more in the private sector, and while we will never compete with that, I really do believe that, particularly now with the balanced budget, the 3.1 percent that has been proposed is inadequate for us to even close the gap that exists. That gap will grow and our competitive position is eroding.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you for your comments.

OTHER RECRUITMENT INCENTIVES

    Since you addressed some of those comments to me, I agree that we need to pay a decent wage for a decent day's work, but we are a not-for-profit organization, and many individuals do come to government, altruism brings them here, sometimes the training they get brings them here, sometimes ambition brings them here, and then they can use that learning to move on to the private sector, and we certainly encourage our staff to do that because they are not going to get rich working for government. That is not why any of us came here. But we do need to pay a good wage for a good day's work.

    Ms. O'NEILL. That is certainly true of staff at CBO who work because of their intrinsic interest and because they are able to do work that is relevant for policymaking.
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    Mr. WALSH. We are glad altruism is alive and well. Mr. Cunningham.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Thank you.

    I know there was conversation in the background, and I am on different committees and I haven't really focused on what colleagues are talking about down here. But I would tell them, if I am going to a target and a pilot makes an error, enough to get them killed or taken prisoner, I am not going to let the person fly again. And if they demonstrated bad judgment, I am probably going to demote that individual to a lesser grade or at least pull their wings. I don't know the circumstances behind the CBO's gross mis-estimates in budgets and revenue. But I guarantee you my decision is not going to be partisan, you know me better than that. I am hard and I can be tough, but I am going to look at this, not in a partisan way, but to see if, in fact, the CBO failed to observe some common sense values. For example, there is the area of dynamic scoring. I don't know about you, but if I get more money in my pocket, I am going to spend more and it is going to change the economy. That is just common sense. And you have to take a look at those kind of things when you are making evaluations and estimates of the budget and the economy.

    I was working toward a doctorate degree in this field before I came here, so I understand a little bit about the terminology and what is involved in it. But it is incorrect to suggest that concern over the quality of budget and economic analysis is partisan. I think we need to take a look at where you have somebody doing a good job, you reward them, or if they are not, you fire them, and that is going to be my position.
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    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. WALSH. Are there any other questions?

    [Questions from Mr. Cunningham and responses follow:]

    Question. You explained in your testimony some justification for CBO's gross overestimation of the budget deficit in the current fiscal year, and for its underestimation of revenues in the current fiscal year. As you know, these estimates have substantial policy implications for lawmakers across the political spectrum; for those who see a budget surplus as a justification for cutting taxes, and for those who see it as justifying spending increases. Fundamentally, if CBO is and was so far off in its estimates, why was that so, and what should be done about it? By what standard should the CBO be held accountable?

    Answer. Estimating errors, even large ones, can never be eliminated because the revenues and outlays that comprise the federal budget are affected by a myriad of economic and other factors, both here and abroad, that are difficult—if not impossible—to predict exactly. With total revenues and outlays each approaching $1.7 trillion, small percentage deviations from the amounts in CBO's projections can easily swing budgetary outcomes by tens of billions of dollars. For example, if the revenue and outlay estimates were both off by as little as 1 percent in opposite directions, the estimate of the deficit or surplus would be off by $30 billion to $40 billion. Over the past decade, the difference between actual results and CBO's January estimate of revenues and outlays has averaged about 2 percent for each.
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    One standard by which CBO can be held accountable is how our estimates compare with those of others in the budget-estimating business. By that standard, I believe that CBO has a very good track record. All budget estimators, including the Office of Management and Budget and private-sector analysts, were surprised by the turn of events in fiscal year 1997. For example, the President's budget transmitted to the Congress in February of last year estimated a $126 billion deficit for fiscal year 1997, $2 billion higher than CBO's $124 billion estimate. Yet the final deficit was only $22 billion. Most private forecasters were similarly off the mark: for instance, at the beginning of the year, DRI projected a deficit of $127 billion, Goldman and Sachs, $135 billion, Macroeconomic Associates, $117 billion, and Morgan Stanley, $145 billion.

    As described in my prepared statement, several major factors contributed to the lower-than-estimated deficit in 1997. First, the economy performed better than expected, raising the level of taxable income as measured by the government's national income and product accounts. Second, large profits led to large bonuses, while a soaring stock market further expanded the tax base through increased realizations of capital gains and increased exercising of stock options. Moreover, a growing share of income was earned by people at the top of the income ladder, who are taxed at higher rates. Those factors, some of which were unusual and unpredictable (such as the stock market, bonuses, and stock options) led to revenues that were $72 billion higher than CBO estimated a year ago in January, accounting for 70 percent of the total deficit-estimating error. A smaller overestimate of outlays in a variety of entitlement programs accounted for the remainder. Unfortunately, the estimating errors in outlays reinforced rather than offset the errors in revenues.

    We have made every effort to learn from last year's estimating mistakes, yet it seems inevitable, given the perils of projecting, that large errors will occur from time to time. The uncertainty involved in economic and budget forecasting is a point that we have particularly emphasized this year in our latest budget projections.
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    As a result of our estimating errors in 1997, we have taken steps to provide the Congress with an early-warning mechanism that will signal when actual receipts and outlays are deviating from our estimates for the current fiscal year. We routinely review monthly and even daily Treasury statements of receipts and outlays to monitor actual tax collections and expenditures. We are now making public the results of our reviews in a Monthly Budget Review report, and this report, as well as our published reports and analyses, is posted on our Web site.

    Question. Explain the CBO's perspective on the matter of ''dynamic scoring''—that is, the assumption that budget estimates reflecting changes in taxation or government spending should take into account the impact of those changes on economic behavior.

    Answer. The term ''dynamic scoring'' has several interpretations. Many people mistakenly believe that estimates prepared for the Congress of the budgetary effects of spending or tax proposals do not take into account the changes in behavior that could result from passage of those measures. In fact, all Congressionally mandated budget estimates, whether the spending estimates required of CBO or the estimates of receipts prepared by the Joint Committee on Taxation, employ the same basic estimating conventions. Such conventions incorporate assumptions about how changes in taxation or government spending might change individual behavior in response to new economic incentives.

    Those behavioral and other estimating assumptions cover a wide variety of microeconomic effects and reflect the best available research and estimating methodology. For example, the estimate for a proposal to subsidize health insurance for early retirees would include the additional costs associated with the likely increase in the number of early retirees that would result. Similarly, the estimate for a proposal to increase the excise tax on tobacco products would take into account the resulting decrease in the consumption of cigarettes.
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    In most instances the estimating conventions employed in producing bill cost estimates are not controversial. Questions may arise, however, in two types of situations. First, estimators sometimes disagree about the magnitude of microeconomic responses, such as the extent to which consumption would be reduced by an increase in excise taxes. Second, some proposed legislation could give rise to macroeconomic effects, which are not included in routine cost estimates. That is, a major tax or spending measure might affect saving, investment, or work effort and thereby affect the potential growth rate of the economy. In that sense, it is sometimes argued that the assumptions used for budget estimates are not dynamic enough.

    Although it may appear desirable to estimate the effect of proposed legislation on the macro economy, in practice it is impractical to do so, particularly for routine bill cost estimates. However, as discussed below, CBO has prepared analytical studies of the macroeconomic effects of major legislative proposals.

    Estimates of macroeconomic effects are not routinely provided for all bill cost estimates for the following reasons. First, in instances in which research bearing on the topic is available, the extent of disagreement among economists on the magnitude of macroeconomic effects is frequently so large that no point estimate could be meaningfully treated as a consensus. In other cases, little or no research may be available on which to base an estimate. Furthermore, we often lack sufficient time and resources to produce the complex estimates required. Finally, long-run changes in macroeconomic variables could be invisibly small in the five- or 10-year period used for budget estimates, even if they were likely to be significant in later years. In consequence, the routine incorporation of macroeconomic effects into budget estimates would be subject to considerable uncertainty and possibly endless controversy.
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    Nevertheless, the Congressional Budget Office has provided information about the possible macroeconomic effects of major legislation in a number of analytical studies. Those studies were feasible because an extensive economics literature was available for reference and sufficient time and resources were available for proper analysis. Moreover, unlike bill cost estimates, a study allows for a range of results. For example, CBO included an analysis of the macroeconomic effects of the 1997 budget reconciliation package in its update of the economic and budget outlook published last September. Last year CBO also published a study of the possible economic effects of comprehensive tax reform. In addition, the budget resolution for fiscal year 1998 incorporated assumptions made by CBO on the macroeconomic effects of balancing the budget. This produced a so-called fiscal dividend that reduced the magnitude of the policy changes needed to reach budgetary balance.

    Question. How has the Internet changed how you research and distribute information, and has it affected your management and budget? Why or why not?

    Answer. Use of the Internet is a critical element in much of CBO's work. As an example, Internet use has been essential to the timely preparation of federal private-sector mandate estimates. Using the Internet improves our analysts' ability to monitor bills, follow the relevant issues, and complete cost estimates in a timely manner.

    The following are some examples of the types of documents and information CBO obtains from the Internet:

  Copies of bills, public laws, hearing transcripts, Committee reports, and the Congressional Record.
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  Scheduling information for Congressional hearings, Committee markups, and floor action.

  Academic papers, government reports, information from the Library of Congress, and Congressional Research Service issue briefs, reports, and public policy literature abstracts.

  Information and data from federal agencies, trade associations, interest groups, research institutions, and nonprofit organizations.

  U.S. Code and the Code of Federal Regulations.

  Industry glossaries and telephone directories.

  Current news from many sources.

    A CBO web site was launched in September 1997 in response to requests for additional access to our information. Our first priority for posting on our site is all currently produced general work products. As time and resources permit, we are also including certain CBO publications issued before last September as well as expanding the type of file format available to include spreadsheets where appropriate. Although the response to our Web site has been quite positive so far and we have received nearly 100,000 requests for information since September, it is not yet clear whether the demand for printed copies of our publications will drop.

    The growing use of the Internet as both a source of and distribution tool for information has primarily affected our budget through the purchase of the hardware, telecommunications services, software, and web development expertise needed to establish and maintain our link to the network. We are also beginning to explore the value of a CBO Intranet as an electronic means of standardizing and sharing management and administrative information and functions across the organization.
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    Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, before you close, I just want to make sure that you accept as a unanimous position from this side, not just from my senior colleagues, our desire that the original vision of having this agency be known as a bipartisan and nonpartisan office remains that way, and that that is a very serious concern on our side. I want to make sure I am on the record as being part of their comments.

    [A question from Chairman Walsh and response follow:]

    Question. For the record, please supply all reprogrammings requested last year, and their disposition.

    Answer. CBO made no requests to reprogram funds in fiscal year 1997.

    Mr. WALSH. Your comments are certainly accepted and now part of the record. I think we all agree for the need that this office be nonpartisan. I don't think we need to spend a lot of time talking about conjecture in the press with regard to the director's position. We need to stick to the budget here and let the conjecture fall to someone else. But thank you very much for your testimony today.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1998.

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WITNESSES

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MICHAEL F. DiMARIO, PUBLIC PRINTER

ROBERT T. MANSKER, DEPUTY PUBLIC PRINTER

FRANCIS (FRAN) J. BUCKLEY, JR., SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS

WILLIAM M. GUY, BUDGET OFFICER

    Mr. WALSH. All right. We will now consider the fiscal year 1999 budget from the Government Printing Office. We would like to welcome Mr. Michael DiMario, Public Printer.

    The 1999 budget request totals $114.2 million. That would be an increase of $3.5 million over the amount available for the current year.

    There are two appropriation accounts involved: The Congressional Printing and Binding appropriation and the Superintendent of Documents program. In addition, under the government corporation statutes, the appropriation bill authorizes the appropriation—or the operation of the GPO revolving fund, which finances all printing which flows through GPO. This includes executive and judicial branch printing and printing by GPO from commercial sources for those branches of government.

    Before proceeding, I am going to ask you to begin. I am going to leave the room for a brief time, and Congressman Cunningham is going to take the gavel, and I will return as quickly as I can. Would you like to introduce your staff and include biographies of those who are new to the subcommittee. We have your prepared statement, and once you introduce your staff, you can feel free to summarize.
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Introduction of Witnesses

    Mr. DIMARIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    With me, to my right, at the extreme right, is my deputy, Bob Mansker, and to his left is Francis Buckley, Superintendent of Documents. Immediately on my right is William Guy, who is the Budget Officer.

    Mr. Mansker spent many years as a staff member here at the House and is quite familiar with Congressional operations and later served at the Joint Committee on Printing.

    [The information follows:]

ROBERT T. MANSKER

    Robert T. Mansker was appointed Deputy Public Printer of the United States effective September 23, 1997. Mansker came to this position from the Joint Committee on Printing where he served as Minority Staff Director since the beginning of 1997. From 1995 to 1997, he served as the Joint Committee's Deputy Director for the minority.

    A native of Texas, Mansker earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Texas. He holds a master's degree in personnel management/government and a doctorate in business administration/government and higher education, both from Texas A&M University. He was an associate professor of business administration and visiting lecturer at Texas A&M, where among other subjects he taught business law, personnel management, and labor relations.
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    Mansker has been active in government since the early 1960's. He served as administrative assistant to several members of the Texas House of Representatives. In 1979 he became press secretary to Congressman Martin Frost, a position he held for 14 years before becoming Staff Director for the House Administration Committee's Appeals Panel of the Office of Fair Employment Practices. In 1993, Frost appointed him Staff Director of the Accounts Subcommittee, Committee on House Administration. Congressman Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland named Mansker to the Joint Committee on Printing in 1995.

    The 56-year-old Mansker has been active in numerous organizations including the Lions Club International and the Elks Lodge. He has served as president of both the Tiber Island Cooperative Homes, Inc., of Washington, DC, and the Association of House Democratic Press Assistants.

    Mr. Buckley has been very active in the library community, as librarian at the Detroit Public Library, where he was associate director for many years, and later on as Director at the Shaker Heights Public Library in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He has come to us from that position, so we are delighted to have him with us. He has been very active with the American Library Association over the years and has testified many times before Congress on the issue of depository libraries, and we consider him to be a real asset coming on board, as we do with Mr. Mansker. So I am delighted to have these additions to the staff.

    [The information follows:]

FRANCIS J. BUCKLEY, JR.
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    Francis J. Buckley, Jr., was appointed Superintendent of Documents effective December 1, 1997. Buckley came to this position from the Shaker Heights Public Library in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where he served as Director since 1994. From 1966 to 1994, he was with the Detroit Public Library where he rose from reference librarian and documents specialist to associate director for public services, with a two-year break for service in the Army, including duty in Vietnam. Buckley earned his bachelor's degree and his master's degree in library science from the University of Michigan. He is a member of the Beta Phi Mu International Library Science Honor Society.

    Buckley has been an active member of the American Library Association (ALA) since 1974, serving several terms on the ALA Council and chairing a number of important ALA committees, including the Government Documents Round Table, the Ad Hoc Committee to Form a Coalition on Government Information, and the Lippincott Award Jury. He has served on the ALA's Legislation Committee and chaired its Subcommittee on Government Information. He has served on the ALA's Coordinating Committee on Access to Information and the Special Committee on Freedom and Equality of Access to Information. Buckley has also been active in the Special Libraries Association, the Michigan Library Association, the Government Documents Round Table of Michigan, the Michigan Library Consortium, the Southeast Michigan League of Libraries, and the Ohio Library Council. He was on the board of trustees of the Cleveland Area Metropolitan Library System, and served on the board of trustees of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC).

    For the past 20 years, Buckley has written and spoken extensively on the importance of public access to Government information. In the late 1970's, he was a member of the Ad Hoc Advisory Committee on the Revision of Title 44, U.S.C., the law controlling the dissemination of Federal publications. He was a member and chair of the Depository Library Council to the Public Printer, which provides advice on GPO's Federal Depository Library Program. He chaired the Inter-Association Working Group on Government Information Policy, representing the ALA and other national library associations, which was formed to recommend and review proposed changes to Federal laws on information dissemination that are currently under consideration.
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    Buckley also has an active record of civic involvement. He served on the Literacy Advisory Committee of the Detroit Head Start Program, and was on the board of directors of the Detroit Literacy Coalition. He also served on the Research Committee of the United Community Services of Metropolitan Detroit, in addition to local community development and historic preservation organizations.

    We also have other staff members in the audience.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM [presiding]. Welcome to all of you.

PUBLIC PRINTER STATEMENT

    Mr. DIMARIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    For fiscal year 1999, we are requesting a total of $114.2 million for those programs that require appropriations directly to GPO. The request includes $84 million for the Congressional Printing and Binding Appropriation and $30.2 million for the Salaries and Expenses Appropriation of the Superintendent of Documents. This is an increase of $3.5 million, or about 3.1 percent, over the level of funding approved for fiscal year 1998, including the onetime transfer of approximately $11 million from our revolving fund to the Congressional Printing and Binding Appropriation.

    The Congressional Printing and Binding Appropriation is critical to the maintenance and operation of our in-plant capacity, which is structured to serve the information product needs of the legislative process in Congress. This appropriation covers the costs of congressional printing, such as the Congressional Record, bills, reports, hearings, and other products. Each year a substantial volume of this work is requisitioned by the Members, committees, and other offices of Congress. This appropriation also covers database preparation for congressional publications disseminated online via GPO Access, our Internet information service.
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    The majority of the Superintendent of Documents' Salaries and Expenses Appropriation is for the Depository Library Program. While some of the funding for this program is for salaries and benefits, most is for producing and disseminating publications to depository libraries, including publications in CD–ROM and online formats.

    This appropriation also provides the majority of the funding for the operation of GPO Access. I am pleased to report to this Subcommittee that the successful operation of GPO Access has required less funding than was originally projected by the Congressional Budget Office, while performance has far exceeded the original expectations of the legislation. Our recent Biennial Report to Congress on the status of GPO Access discusses the financial performance of this information system.

    Our budget submission and my prepared statement detail our request. We are requesting one change to our legislation, and that is the deletion of the statutory limitation on our full-time equivalent employment, or FTEs.

    We have reduced employment by more than 25 percent since early 1993. This reduction was accomplished primarily through attrition. We successfully lowered our costs while preventing interruptions in service to Congress, Federal agencies, and the public. However, some critical areas, including those that serve Congress, are now fully reduced and cannot withstand further reductions without impairing performance and service provision.

    GPO is now at its lowest employment level in this century. Allowing us to manage our FTE resources within the constraints of available funding, rather than under a statutory limit, will give us the flexibility we need to continue providing essential services, especially during periods of peak workload demands.
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    Mr. Chairman, this concludes my opening statement and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Do you want to go ahead? Is there anyone else, anyone else going to testify?

    Mr. DIMARIO. That is it.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. You say your level is at the lowest. What is your level? I missed that in there.

    Mr. DIMARIO. Our actual employment is at 3,512 at the moment.

DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTIONS

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. All of us get your documents back at the Cloakroom there. And I have often wondered, how many of them were actually returned? Are there too many of them printed, or not enough? I know they sit back there in a pile and I never know what happens to them after that. Are they used? Are they stored?

    Mr. DIMARIO. I can't speak to how they are used. When we deliver them to the Hill, they are for the Hill's use.
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    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. You have a certain number.

    Mr. DIMARIO. Yes, sir.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Because I didn't know if anyone had ever taken a look that they were being overprinted or underprinted.

    Mr. DIMARIO. There has been a substantial reduction in the amount of printing that is being produced for the Congress, and I think that is an important point. Our congressional workload has declined. In fiscal year 1995, we had 757,000 original pages of all categories of congressional publications that we outputted, and in 1997, we outputted 611,000 pages, and that is a reduction of 19 percent. So, there is a clear decrease, and I think to a large measure it is because of action by this Subcommittee with respect to the House. The House has had a substantial reduction in the amount of Congressional Record copies that we produce.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. One of the things we did is cut off the number of Congressional Record copies printed. We can't send so many copies to our constituents. How much does that save; do you know?

    Mr. DIMARIO. I believe that reduction in terms of the constituent copies saved about $1.2 million.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. That is quite a bit. Maybe we hand carried it to our constituents.
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    Mr. DIMARIO. There were some 5,466 copies that were cut.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. When you say you have the lowest level also, of the increase, how much is that as pay and salary?

    Mr. DIMARIO. The bulk of the increase is in fact, for salaries and benefits. Very little of the increase is associated with anything else, so I would say for all intents and purposes, the $2.3 million increase is in the salaries.

    [Questions from Mr. Cunningham and responses follow:]

    Question. Describe the extent to which your computer systems are Year 2000 compliant, and your plan for achieving compliance.

    Response. We have completed the assessment phase of our Year 2000 program efforts. A total of 107 systems were reviewed and 56 mission critical systems were identified to be replaced (9) or repaired (23). To date approximately 18% of the systems being repaired have been completed and tested, with a January 1999 target date for the completion for the remaining systems. We are currently reviewing the various efforts for acquiring the replacement systems and will be formalizing the milestones and implementation schedules for each individual project. Contingency plans will be developed for any project with a targeted implementation date beyond March 31, 1999. The recently established GPO Year 2000 Program Management Office will be monitoring our ongoing Year 2000 efforts to assure the timely completion of year 2000 compliance for all of our mission critical systems.
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    Question. What percentage of agencies' printing is performed through GPO? If this percentage or market share is declining, why is that so? Notwithstanding the requirements imposed by Title 44, what justification is there for the continued existence of an agency that seeks to monopolize public printing duties when there is a vibrant and competitive local market for printing services, and when agencies already develop and manage contracts for many other services, including some of their core responsibilities?

    Response. We estimate that about half of executive branch printing is not performed through GPO. The amount of printing not coming through GPO is because agencies are authorized by law or by the JCP to perform their own printing, the increased use of electronics, and to some extent failure to comply with Title 44. Some agencies, such as the national security agencies, are exempt from the requirement to use GPO. The JCP has authorized approximately 150 plants Government-wide to do work in-house, and agencies operate a large number of duplicating centers, accounting for much of the work not coming through GPO. To an extent, electronic formats are replacing print products, further reducing the amount of printing coming through GPO.

    Some agencies have emphasized decentralization of responsibilities irrespective of cost and without adequate attention to preserving the benefits of economies of scale and public policy goals furthered by GPO programs. This has led to work being withdrawn from GPO, where it would be procured from the private sector, and instead produced in expanded agency in-house facilities. Agencies have also attempted to procure work themselves, at higher cost to the taxpayer. When agencies perform these operations which are required by law to be performed by GPO, taxpayers pay more and citizen access to Government publications is impaired. DOD's Defense Automated Printing Services (DAPS) and NASA have developed unnecessary in-house capability and GSA and NTIS have increased marketing of their in-house production services, all at the expense of GPO's printing procurement program, which is run in partnership with the private sector printing industry.
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    GPO is not a monopoly but provides central management and oversight to a system of informing the nation that is fundamental to our Government, and we do it efficiently, economically, and effectively and in such a way as to ensure comprehensive and equitable access to government information. We contract out 75% of all work, utilizing a nationwide network of about 10,000 private sector printers to achieve lowest competitive price. Decentralization of this function by allowing each agency to procure its own printing would be tremendously costly to taxpayers: by some estimates, a decentralized system of printing could end up costing twice as much as the current system. The centrally managed system in GPO takes maximum advantage of economies of scale and specialization, achieves greatest degree of competition to ensure lowest cost to taxpayers, and ensures that the publications get into the depository library and sales programs for use by the public.

    Question. Why did the Department of Defense elect to perform more of its printing functions through its own agency, rather than through the GPO?

    Response. For many years DOD was authorized by the JCP to operate various in-house printing capabilities to provide for its immediate administrative needs. However, following the consolidation of these capabilities in the early 1990's (into a service now known as the Defense Automated Printing Service, or DAPS), it now appears that DOD has an excessive internal production capability. In order to keep this excessive internal production capability utilized, DAPS apparently is retaining for in-house production a large amount of printing that formerly was sent to GPO for procurement from the private sector. In our view, it is costing the taxpayer more to have DOD printing done this way.

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    Last year, Congress passed P.L. 105–85 to address the higher costs created by the way DOD handles its printing. This law permits DOD agencies to use GPO rather than DAPS for the procurement of printing. It also prohibits DAPS from imposing a surcharge on ''any printing and duplicating service for the Department of Defense that is procured from a source outside of the Department.'' Most DOD components have expressed the view to GPO that they would prefer to deal directly with GPO on commercial procurement, as provided by P.L. 105–85. However, it is not clear to us that DOD has implemented this law in accordance with congressional intent. There are indications that DAPS is still imposing a surcharge or ''processing fee'' on DOD printing orders. In addition, just recently DAPS initiated action to cancel three viable and less costly GPO contracts in favor of doing the work in-house on newly acquired equipment.

    Question. Describe in additional detail your testimony that the Department of Defense is late paying its bills.

    Response. Prior to FY 1992, GPO accepted requisitions from and issued invoices directly to ordering DOD components. At the end of FY 1992, GPO's accounts receivable from DOD were about $32 million and unpaid invoices over 60 days old amounted to about $9 million, or 28 percent of the total. Ever since the Defense Printing Service (known today as DAPS) was established in 1993, the overall volume of printing and publishing performed by GPO for DOD has been consistently decreasing. It dropped from $267.7 million in FY 1991 to $156.6 million in FY 1997, but total receivables and delinquencies have increased. As of the close of business on December 31, 1997, total DOD receivables reached $52.7 million with unpaid invoices over 60 days amounting to $24.3 million, or 46 percent.

    GPO has made several changes to its accounting system to assist DOD in improving its payment record, but none for the agreed to initiatives has been fully implemented by DAPS. In May 1997, the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)/Chief Financial Officer issued a memorandum requiring customers of DAPS to pay for their printing orders by credit card beginning in July 1997. GPO's accounting staff has attempted to work out arrangements where DAPS would pay GPO via credit card. As of February 1998, DAPS official have agreed to use credit cards on a pilot basis for two locations to pay GPO. However, that decision will not impact the current amount of past due payments.
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    In order to resolve the payment problems, DOD's existing policy should be revised so that DOD customers can deal directly with GPO should they desire to do so, in accordance with P.L. 105–85. GPO can accept payments via VISA IMPAC credit cards and we have developed a new deposit account system that will perform the accounting for DOD and streamline DOD's billing and payment processes. Currently, there are more than 200 DOD procurement offices using GPO deposit accounts to pay for the notices they publish in the Commerce Business Daily. Use of deposit accounts virtually eliminates the need for GPO to produce invoices. If DOD printing customers were allowed to deal directly with GPO, they would have more purchasing power because they would avoid having to pay the DAPS surcharge for what is essentially a duplicate billing activity. We are convinced that this change in DOD policy will resolve the billing and collection problems between both agencies.

    Question. Again, notwithstanding the requirements of Title 44, what justification exists for the GPO to post documents on the Internet, rather than having agencies do it themselves or manage contracts for such a service?

    Response. Agencies are not required to post documents on GPO's Internet site, called GPO Access (at www.access.gpo.gov). We are authorized by law to do this for agencies. Agencies come to GPO because we save them money and achieve maximum public visibility through our online system. Many agencies have asked us to put up their GILS records and other files. Our system is the only Government-wide system featuring documents from all three branches of Government. Ours is one of the few to assure authenticity of documents through PDF formatting. Ours is one of the few to assure permanent public access. The Government has saved millions by creating Internet access through GPO since we simply converted printing databases that were already electronic. These printing databases also form the basis of other Internet services, like THOMAS. Our system is used by the public to retrieve more than 8.5 million documents per month.
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    The law also requires us to ''operate an electronic storage facility for Federal electronic information to which online access is made available.'' Following this mandate, GPO now makes over 70 databases and other applications available to the public through the Internet without charge. We have served a number of agencies by developing and making available through GPO Access electronic products and services on a reimbursable basis. These ''sponsored'' Federal electronic information products include GAO Reports and Comptroller General Decisions, Government Information Locator Service (GILS) databases for 29 Federal agencies, and 12 Federal agency Web sites. In addition, GPO Access links users to thousands of Government information products made available on other sites. The service has received numerous awards from both the public and the private sectors.

    Question. Taking all federal subsidies into account, describe how GPO's costs, prices, quality and turnaround compare with comparable services available in the private sector.

    Response. The costs, prices, quality, turnaround, and related services for the 75% of our work that is procured come straight out of the private sector. GPO's prices for procured work are the competitive market prices plus a nominal surcharge. This surcharge covers a broad range of GPO contracting, payment and billing, and related services. Printing industry sources have estimated that the cost of these services would at least double if provided individually by the agencies. GPO focuses in-plant operations on core products where we provide high levels of service, expertise, control, dependability and schedule flexibility to meet the changing needs of Congress. It is difficult to establish the comparability of these services with private sector offerings. Most observers have agreed that GPO in-plant resources are unique in the industry. The prices of publications offered through GPO's documents sales operation are overall less expensive than those of comparable publications in the private sector.
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    Question. By what standard is the GPO holding itself accountable?

    Response. In addition to compliance with applicable Federal laws and regulations, GPO is held accountable to a number of standards. Our financial statements are audited regularly by the General Accounting Office (GAO), and we have consistently received clean opinions. The GAO is currently conducting a management audit of GPO at the request of Congress, as it has periodically in the past, and we are cooperating fully. We have a statutory Inspector General assisted by an Audits and Investigations staff, and our other functions, from the Office of the General Counsel to Personnel, to Procurement and other operations, are accountable to professional criteria established for the respective operations. We have established several key performance measures in our operations related to timeliness, quality, overtime utilization, and related measures, and we establish and monitor goals for meeting these requirements. We hold ourselves accountable on the basis of the service provided to our customers.

    Question. Outside witnesses have testified in support of Congress printing and distributing additional copies of the bound Congressional Record and the U.S. Congressional Serial Set. As I understand it, the Serial Set is printed usually some eight years after the Congress is completed. Furthermore, it duplicates the bound Congressional Record and other documents distributed under the FDLP. Describe for me the usual schedule for printing and distributing the Serial Set, including quantities, and printing and distribution costs, and to what extent the Serial Set duplicates documents already distributed to federal depository libraries.

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    Response. The U.S. Congressional Serial Set, a permanent record of the Senate and the House of Representatives, has been produced since 1813 in bound, numbered editions. It consists of all House and Senate Documents (including Senate Treaty Documents) and Reports (including Senate Executive Reports) for an entire Congress. The Serial Set does not duplicate the bound Congressional Record, which is a separate publication altogether.

    Approximately 55–65 bound volumes per session make up a Serial Set, depending on the Congress. These volumes are collated and bound beginning about 3–4 years after the end of the session, because it often takes that long for all of the Reports to be released by the committees and printed. The Serial Set is not intended to be immediately available, but is devised as an orderly means of preservation of the large number of numbered documents and reports issued by the Congress in individual paper format at the time they are filed.

    The bound volumes are made up from additional copies of the ''slip'' Reports and Documents which were printed with the initial runs, and then put into storage at GPO pending binding. The slip versions are available to depository libraries at the time of initial production, and may be selected in either paper or microfiche format. Timely receipt of the slip Reports and Documents is essential to depository libraries that must respond to users' inquiries about current activities in Congress. However, depositories value the bound Serial Set very highly, both as an historical resource and because it ensures them of having a complete set of all of the Reports and Documents in their collections, thus allowing the libraries to provide permanent access to the work of Congress to their users. From the perspective of the legal and research communities, the Serial Set volumes are important historical resources, particularly for the compilation of legislative histories needed to determine legislative intent in interpreting Federal statutes.
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    All volumes through the 104th Congress, 1st Session, are currently in GPO's bindery. At this time, the bindery is working on the Serial Set for the 103rd Congress, 1st Session. Staff shortages have contributed to the current status of progress in eliminating the backlog on Serial Set binding work. The total binding count for the bound Serial Set through the 104th Congress has been running about 450 copies per volume and approximately 125 volumes per Congress. However, effective with the 105th Congress, the number will be reduced to approximately 105 copies per volume, at a cost of about $440,000 per session of Congress.

    Question. The availability of information electronically via the Internet, and also on CD–ROM, has brought tremendous amounts of useful data within reach of the average citizen—information that historically took a long time to compile, publish on paper, and make accessible. CD–ROMs are also very inexpensive to produce and to reproduce. However, testimony also described how data on CD–ROMs deteriorates. Is it not possible to simply reproduce existing CD–ROMs on a scheduled basis, to ensure data integrity over time?

    Response. Since there is no known medium or software environment currently available that assures the permanent accessibility of electronic publications, the task for librarians and other collection managers is to assure that electronic collections are compatible with currently available hardware/software configurations. Consequently, data migration should be an essential part of every library's electronic collection management plan. GPO's plan for the Federal Depository Library Program electronic collection will include a process for migrating electronic publications to maintain their utility throughout the Depository system. This process will incorporate checks for degradation of physical media and for loss of software compatibility. Concern for software utility will extend beyond the operating system issue to include checks for the utility of any search-and-retrieval software included on the CD–ROM, as well as the possible need to refresh the data conveyed on the disc to ensure continued compatibility with current computing environments.
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    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Do you have anything?

TRANSITION TO ELECTRONIC DOCUMEMTS

    Mr. SERRANO. Sure.

    Mr. SERRANO. Just very briefly, thank you for coming before us. I know that a couple years ago this committee asked that you conduct a study on moving into the electronic age, and I know throughout libraries in the Nation, people are moving in that direction, but there are some problems with it. Yesterday or the day before, we had Library of Congress folks tell us here that CD–ROM is a transitional technology. Could you just in general terms tell us how that is going, where are you heading, what problems are you running into, and what do you see for the future?

    Mr. DIMARIO. In general, the transition is going quite well. As you are aware, in setting up our transition plan, we involved the various elements of government, committees of Congress, and the library community. Initially this Subcommittee wanted us to have a 2-year transition to a fully electronic Depository Library Program. After consultation with people in the library community, and with the agencies of government, we recommended that it be a 5- to 7-year transition, which we felt was more feasible. That transition is actually taking place quite well.

    In terms of permanency of documents, we see that as a major issue. We are entering into partnership agreements with a variety of outside activities. As an example, the University of Illinois at Chicago has entered into an agreement with us and with the State Department, and they act to manage a portion of what we are now dealing with as a collection. The whole electronic activity within the depository program, is being viewed as a collection and we are entering into these agreements. We have entered into a number of others.
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    There is the sense in the community that we have to keep an eye on posterity and long-term retention. There is a problem out there with electronic products. CD–ROMs are transitional, as you point out. No one knows what the ultimate technology will be. That means for certain kinds of documents you will have to replicate them from time to time into new technology, whereas in paper we are pretty well assured of the permanency of the document, so long as it is put on permanent paper. So we have identified certain documents within our plan that we called core products that we believe need to be retained in paper. We do produce those in paper to the extent that the agency's requisition is done that way. So we are working with the agencies. We are working with the National Archives. It is a lengthy answer to your question.

    Mr. SERRANO. One of the things to keep in mind as you move ahead—I mean, you have two responsibilities. One is to get this done and to do what government does, and the other thing is that a lot of your information goes out to the public. And, you know, I represent a district in the Bronx that is called the poorest or sometimes the second poorest district in the Nation. That manifests itself in different ways. One is the lack of computers at home, low use of e-mail and Web pages, few computers in the classrooms and in libraries. So on one hand, I use this technology on a daily basis, but on the other hand, I am terrified that as we try to give out information to all communities, it won't get to all because certain communities got left behind in this age of technology.

    Now I know the solution—send more computers into the schools and homes—but that is not going to happen for now. So I need for all of you, as you move ahead, to keep that in mind, how we need to compensate for that.
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    Mr. DIMARIO. We share your concerns, and one reason I appointed Mr. Buckley is to make him a spokesman for public access, and with his background, coming out of the Detroit Public Library, I am certain he has some of the experience, in terms of the users, that you would share.

    Mr. SERRANO. I am sure Detroit was a problem, right, the Tale of Two Cities, in terms of the computer world.

    Mr. BUCKLEY. That is why the depository program, which makes the information available in every congressional district is effective, because it is providing an avenue for people to have access, no matter their economic status. We have people of low economic status accessing that government information in Detroit and people of very high economic status accessing the same thing in the Shaker Heights Library because we have the equipment and people who can assist them in finding the information they want.

    Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. I have no further questions.

    Mr. WALSH [presiding]. Mr. Fazio.

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

    Mr. FAZIO. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

    It is good to see you all. Last year we were concerned about how you were working with the interface, with the Clerk's document management system. Could you give us a little update as to how that project is proceeding, the level of consultation, what sort of recommendations you have made, whether or not they are being looked at seriously?
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    Mr. DIMARIO. At the request of the Chairman of this Subcommittee last year, I immediately, after the hearing, had a meeting with the Clerk of the House, and with the Acting Chief Administrative Officer at the time. We sat down and found that their interest was different from ours, they expressed that they were different, and we agreed to work together.

    What we were doing was really an external kind of work. We were going to be serving the public by continuing to provide an external interface while they were working to develop a better House information system, and so we agreed, generally, to work together. We have continued that. Our people have been participating in an ongoing study with the House and the Senate on Standard Generalized Markup Language, or SGML, because everyone has agreed to move to an SGML-based system and to work towards the systems that work together.

    We think that participation has certainly allowed us a voice. We are still concerned about what our role will be in the future. That has not been defined absolutely, and we still have some concerns. Some of the studies, as we have seen them, seem to have expressed the view that our SGML-based system is more advanced than everyone else's, and for that reason it may not be appropriate for uses on the Hill. We just hope that there is not short-sightedness in that view, and that when products are produced on the Hill, they need to be readily available so we can put them up and make them available to the public on our GPO Access system. So we are still concerned about that, and it is an ongoing study, but we hope that resolves itself well.

    Mr. FAZIO. In the general area of legislative information systems, are you getting consulted; are you part of the process?
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    Mr. DIMARIO. We do have people who we send up to participate in the process. In terms of being consulted, some of our people have expressed the view that they are simply called upon to tell them what we are doing, but they are really not in the deliberative process. And that has come back to me on several occasions, that we are participants, but we are not full participants.

    Mr. FAZIO. In other words, your concerns, your viewpoints aren't necessarily adhered to or given credence; you are simply asked to talk about what you are doing?

    Mr. DIMARIO. Exactly.

    Mr. FAZIO. Which is an informational point, but there seems to continue to be competition.

    Mr. DIMARIO. There seems to be, yes.

    Mr. FAZIO. I think this is an area this committee needs to continue to look at. Perhaps we can do it, for all the parties involved.

BOUND CONGRESSIONAL RECORD

    Mr. FAZIO. There has been a lot of concern, perhaps it would be less for Mr. Buckley, on the part of the depository libraries when this committee directed reductions in the bound Congressional Record, the congressional series sets. What sort of feedback are we getting from those decisions? You mention in your testimony that you surveyed the depository libraries to get some information back. How are they responding?
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    Mr. DIMARIO. Basically with respect to the bound Record, we have had input both directly to GPO and I believe to the Joint Committee on Printing that there was still a desire for paper products out there, though we have been able to reduce the number of paper products dramatically. Through the Joint Committee's efforts, they sat down and went through the distribution lists that were being made, and came up with a reduction that would have us produce about 200 sets a year. That would allow distribution to the regional libraries and to each State that does not have a regional. It would also allow us to continue paper products in international exchange and provide certain products to certain offices on the Hill where the need for permanency is greater. That would also allow us to have a substantial reduction in the expenditure for the bound Record. But in order to accomplish this, we still are requesting that we be authorized to spend about $213,000 more than the $100,000 that was previously allowed to us. That is part of our request in here. We do have that money, but we would ask for permission to spend it.

    Mr. FAZIO. You think it has generally been a success but you thought we were a little restrictive on the funds available, so working with the Joint Committee on Printing, you think you have found the right level?

    Mr. DIMARIO. I think so. Moreover, we are moving toward production of the bound Record in a different way, so we end up doing it as an on-demand product. We are moving to produce it on the Docutech. We asked the Joint Committee to authorize the acquisition of a second Docutech. They have done so. We are in the process of acquiring that now and it is for the express purpose of producing the bound Record. We could produce it as a much more economical document. So we think that is part of the savings.
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DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE PRINTING

    Mr. FAZIO. Can you give us an update as to our ongoing battle with DOD on their efforts to take work directly to the Defense Printing Service that might otherwise have been performed by GPO? What kind of impact is that having on your income flow, your cash flow?

    Mr. DIMARIO. That battle is ongoing. The decision coming out from the Justice Department in terms of an opinion at the Office of Legal Counsel essentially said that the current provisions of title 44 are not binding on the executive branch with respect to mandating that they have to come through GPO. We are in disagreement on that particular provision.

    The executive branch, especially in the Department of Defense, has continued a progression away from us. Our current problem with the Department of Defense seems to be more along the lines of not paying us for work that we are doing. They owe us a substantial amount of money. We outline that in the statement. That sum of money has grown substantially since the Defense Printing Service took over for the Department of Defense as a central manager, whereas before when each of the agencies came directly to us, we always had some lag time in payments, simply because of the way the system works, over 60-day, over 90-day kinds of things, but that has grown very substantially. We are concerned because it affects our cash flow. It impacts the revolving fund on a regular basis.

    Mr. FAZIO. Have you included in your submission to us what the arrearagement is at this point, how far behind they are, what the amount is?
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    Mr. DIMARIO. I think it is in there.

    Mr. GUY. They owe us a total of about $50 million, half of which is over 60 days as of December 31.

    Mr. FAZIO. Duke, are you on that Defense Subcommittee?

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Yes.

    Mr. FAZIO. This is an area where maybe you should spend some time with Mr. Cunningham. Maybe he could help us resolve these issues between the subcommittees. Thank you very much.

    Mr. WALSH. Mr. Hoyer, I know, has to leave fairly quickly. Why don't you go ahead with your questions so you can get through?

    [Questions from Chairman Walsh and responses follow:]

    Question. Congressional printing has decreased over the past three years, has it not? By how much?

    Response. The number of original pages of all publications decreased from 757,000 in FY 95 to 611,000 in FY 97, a reduction of about 19 percent. Also, the number of copies printed of congressional publications has generally declined, largely as a result of efforts by this committee to reduce distributions. The number of copy/pages printed declined from 1.9 billion in FY 95 to 1.3 billion on FY 97.
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    Question. You are down to printing 9,160 copies of the Congressional Record each day. How far has that dropped?

    Response. It has dropped from 16,935 in 1995 to 9,160 today, a reduction of about 7,775, or about 46%

    Question. About 4,970 of those copies are charged to the Congressional printing appropriation. How far has that dropped?

    Response. This number has dropped by about 6,549 copies from 1995, going from 11,519 to 4,970, a reduction of about 57%.

    Question. House Members no longer are able to charge this appropriation for sending copies to constituents. How much has this saved?

    Response. About 5,466 copies have been cut, saving about $1.2 million per year.

    Question. Senators are still able to send to their constituents. How many are they allowed to send? How many are actually sent? At what cost?

    Response. Senators are authorized to distribute 37 each to public agencies or institutions, or a total 3,700. They are actually distributing about 1,995 in total. The cost is about $400,000 per year.
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    Question. The cost of Congressional details (at $43 per hour) is $1.8 million. How much of that is for details to the House and how much for the Senate?

    Response. The appropriation request for Congressional printing includes $400,000 for details to the House and $1.4 million for details to the Senate.

    Question. The House reimburses the GPO for details to House committees. Does the Senate do the same? How much is charged to this appropriation for details to House and Senate committees?

    Response. Beginning in FY 95, House committees reimburse GPO for the cost of details, which amounted to about $1 million last year. Therefore, nothing is included in the Congressional Printing and Binding Appropriation for GPO details to House committees. For details to Senate committees, $1.4 millions included in the Congressional Printing and Binding Appropriation.

    Question. In FY 1997, there was a charge of $18,838,000 for ''by-law'' printing. Explain this ''by-law'' distribution. Why is it charged to Congressional printing?

    Response. This category is used for printing and related services for the use of the Congress generally, rather than for a specific committee. Examples are the Congressional Directory and bills. This is not the By Law Distribution Program under the Superintendent of Documents, which pays for the cost of distributing certain publications at no charge to the recipient.
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    Question. Why is there a charge to the Speaker for the daily Congressional Record? That seems like the charge for all copies sent to the House for its daily business. Should that billing be changed to a more appropriate account?

    Response. This cost is for the entire House and is not solely related to the Speaker. The same billing address has been used since 1966 and is charged to the Congressional Printing and Binding Appropriation. A broader title, House of Representatives, has been used in the past and is more descriptive. We are changing the title of this account.

    Question. For several years, GPO added a surcharge to this appropriation which drew down any surpluses that had accumulated due to reductions in Congressional printing. Was there a drawdown last year? Do you plan one against the 1998 appropriation?

    Response. The billing rates used during FY 97 were too low to recover total costs because the volume was below estimates. At the end of the year, it was necessary to charge an additional $6 million to the Congressional Printing and Binding appropriation in order to fully recover costs strictly associated with Congressional work. We do not anticipate any such adjustments in FY 98. Rates are intended to recover cost and adjustments are only made if necessary to achieve that result.

    Question. Since there is no comparable surcharge against executive agencies, we charged a comparable amount against the revolving fund assets in the 1998 appropriation bill. That allowed us to reduce the actual appropriation by $11 million. So although your budget is up only $3.5 million, you are really requesting an increase of $14.5 million in appropriations funding. The reason for these surcharges is that you are not recovering costs. What are you doing to alleviate that situation?
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    Response. We will adjust rates to reflect cost more frequently, up or down as necessary. We are also taking action aimed at reducing costs and increasing efficiency through attrition, reassignment, training, capital investment, and process improvement. In order to avoid any unnecessary depletion of the revolving fund, it may be advisable to amend the FY 98 language requiring the transfer of $11 million from the revolving fund to the Congressional printing appropriation to authorize the transfer to the extent necessary, not to exceed $11 million.

    Question. One of the solutions GPO seems to be applying to increasing financial losses caused by reductions in demand for printed products is to raise prices. Doesn't that just drive more customers away?

    Response. Cost is always a concern. However, GPO focuses in-plant operations on core products where we provide high levels of service, expertise, control, dependability and schedule flexibility to meet the changing needs of Congress. Also, it is good economics for the Government to utilize plant capacity that may be available at GPO.

    Question. How much has the workload declined over the past 3–5 years? Where have you reduced costs to compensate for this reduction?

    Response. Plant workload, measured in chargeable hours, declined by about 37% from FY 93 to FY 97. Total Plant costs declined by about 15%, but this percentage decline in costs would be much greater if adjusted for inflation to reflect reduced real purchasing power. Total Plant expenses declined from $215.4 million in FY 93 to $183.6 million in FY 97. We have reduced staffing, closed five Regional Printing Offices, and reduced warehouse and industrial space requirements. We are investing in more productive technology, such as computer-to-plate systems. We are facilitating the use of standardized electronic formats, expanding print-on-demand services, providing improved online services and improved CD–ROM products. Staffing in the plant decreased by about 26 percent from FY 93 to FY 97.
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    Question. Does your 1999 request assume another rate increase for congressional printing? How much?

    Response. Yes, rate increases in the 1999 request total $3.9 million, or 4.8%. This is partially offset by volume decreases on $1.6 million, or 1.9%.

    Question. Outline the history of rate increases for the past 4–5 years. How does that compare with plant losses? How does that compare with staffing reduction?

    Response. Outline of rate increases:

    Rates were frozen from December 1990 to January 1996.

    FY 96–Rates were increased by an average of about 10 percent.

    FY 97–Rates were increased by an average of about 13 percent.

    FY 98–Rates were increased by an average of about 5 percent.

    Since 1996, rates have increased by about 28 percent, which really covers an 8-year period. Cumulative losses over the past five years total $49.3 million, inclusive of net income reported on a preliminary basis for FY 97. All of these losses were funded by retained earnings in the revolving fund. There has been no deficiency. Over the past five years, total GPO staffing declined by about 25 percent.
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    Question. Mr. Buckley, we have been told there will be legislation that will be enacted to bring your authority up to date. The revision of Title 44 includes some large changes to the depository library program. Can you outline these for us?

    Response. Following hearings on Title 44 revision in the spring of 1997, and at the request of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, we submitted draft legislative language that would, among other things, modernize the depository library program. Our draft bill would: Create new definitions of ''government information'' to specifically include electronic formats and prevent restrictions on public access to public domain information; Set up a system of electronic public access to government information coordinated by the Superintendent of Documents; Combat fugitive documents by broadening the kinds of information going into the depository library program, including eliminating the exemption on ''cooperative publications; Modernize language covering statutory designations of depositories, inspection requirements, and cataloging and locator services; and Provide for permanent public access to electronic information.

    Other parts of our draft bill would transfer administrative responsibilities of the Joint Committee on Printing to the Public Printer to remedy any issue about separation of powers, would modernize and streamline GPO's procurement and sales authorities, and would eliminate certain outdated provisions of the law.

    Apart from our draft bill, the only other legislative proposal we have seen is draft language to revise chapter 19 of Title 44, governing the depository library program, which has been advanced by the Inter-Association Working Group on Government Information Policy (IAWG). The IAWG is composed of representatives of the various associations in the library community. We have had discussions with them about the language they have proposed and at the current time we are seeking to work with them to produce language on which we can jointly agree. Otherwise, as of the date of the hearing before this Subcommittee, we have not seen any other legislative proposals to revise Title 44.
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    Question. Are you supportive of these changes?

    Response. As a general rule, we are supportive of legislative changes that will modernize the depository program and improve public access to Government information. However, we cannot state support for proposals to revise Title 44, other than the draft language we have submitted to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, until we have had the opportunity to study specific proposed legislative language.

    Question. Mr. DiMario, what is your position on the amendments to Title 44 currently under discussion?

    Response: We are supportive of the language we submitted to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. We can take no position on any other legislative proposals to revise Title 44 until we see them and have the opportunity to study them.

    Question. Is there any indication that the authorizing committees will take up this matter?

    Response. We have heard statements that Title 44 reform will be taken up in this session of Congress. However, we are not aware that any bill has been introduced nor do we have knowledge that any draft bill may be approaching introduction. Given the importance of public access to Government information and the potential costs and budget impact that may be involved in any reform of Title 44, we hope there will be hearings on any Title 44 reform legislation.

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CAPACITY

    Mr. HOYER. Thank you very much. I will submit the balance of my questions that I don't get an opportunity to ask.

    Mr. DiMario, with the downsizing you have been undergoing, are you able to maintain basic capacity to produce the Congressional Record?

    Mr. DIMARIO. We are at the moment but we are really afraid of the future. Part of our ability to maintain the downsizing has been only because Congress has been producing less work.

    Mr. WALSH. Less paper.

    Mr. DIMARIO. Less paper. Less paper coming through us, yes.

    Mr. WALSH. Excuse me for interrupting.

    Mr. DIMARIO. The number of days that Congress is in session, the number of issues of the Congressional Record. Those all have an impact on the amount of work we do.

    Mr. SERRANO. You are touching on dangerous, sensitive subjects.

    Mr. DIMARIO. The point is that we have shrunk our production department down to roughly 1,330 employees. That is a dramatic reduction in the production area. These are the folks who produce the congressional products. I am afraid that if we do any more shrinking in there, we are going to be in a serious problem.
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    We talked about the bound Congressional Record and delays in it, why it takes so long to get these products done. Currently, all the printing on the bound Record is completed through 1995 in terms of press work, except for certain index products. But they are backed up in the bindery. We don't have adequate numbers of people in the bindery to complete the work and get it out the door. We are doing our best to change that schedule and moving towards the additional Docutech equipment will certainly help us along. But we definitely cannot take an additional cut in our staff.

    Mr. HOYER. You indicate in the last paragraph of your statement about asking for the statutory limit on FTEs to be lifted, not to ask for more money, but would you explain how you try to manage and what objectives you are going to try to reach?

    Mr. DIMARIO. We are continuing to do cost cutting internally within GPO. If the statutory ceiling is lifted, we will continue to try to reduce staff in GPO. We may end up with more balance. We may be able to hire in areas that we need to hire in. Whereas the statutory ceiling will not allow us to do overhires at times when we need them. If we have excess work, we may want, as an example, to be able to hire more people on a temporary basis to bring them in to accomplish that work, if that is possible.

    Mr. HOYER. So that one solution might be to do an exemption for temporaries from the cap? That would help?

    Mr. DIMARIO. That would help a great deal.

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    Mr. HOYER. It is not where you want to get to but——

    Mr. DIMARIO. That would help a great deal. But the cap itself is an impediment. We certainly are continuing to reduce employment.

    As I indicated, with the number of people who are actually onboard today, we are not trying to just deal with that statutory cap as a level to maintain. We are continuing to try to reduce and to manage the cost downward.

RATES

    Mr. HOYER. When Congress doesn't order the amount of work that you anticipate, how does that affect your rates?

    Mr. DIMARIO. In order to recover our costs, with fixed costs, we still have to raise the rates. That is the only way we can get that money back that we are expending. Congress appropriates the money, but we need to be able to reach that appropriation, and the way we have to do it is to raise the rates on products. We will raise rates, and we are doing that. We raise them, we lower them, depending on how much money we need. But that is in order to reach the appropriation that you are giving us.

    Mr. HOYER. In other words, in order to maintain the service for Congress, you have got to maintain the ability to perform the service?

    Mr. DIMARIO. Yes, sir.
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    Mr. HOYER. But if Congress doesn't make it a high demand, your per-document cost obviously goes up?

    Mr. DIMARIO. Right. If Congress did not work at all, and assuming all of our people were still employed, we would still expend all of that money internally. But we could not get it out of the appropriation that we had.

    Mr. HOYER. The answer would be to reduce those costs by eliminating personnel and then you would not have the capacity to respond to Congress' needs?

    Mr. DIMARIO. That is right.

    Mr. HOYER. Am I correct that historically Congress has not paid its full bill? I don't mean by not paying but not being billed for the cost?

    Mr. DIMARIO. That was true between 1990 and 1996. We had our rates frozen. Since 1996, we have been adjusting our rates and have incrementally increased the rates so that currently we are covering more. What we need to do is continue to adjust those rates on a periodic basis.

    Mr. HOYER. Are you recovering what you would as a business if you were operating as a business? Are you pricing your product to Congress as you would price it for a business, cost plus profit? Obviously take profit out because you are subsidized so that is your profit, in effect.
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    Mr. DIMARIO. We are pricing the products—Bill might speak to this better than I. We are pricing our products to Congress based on our costs. It is a pure cost recovery system. Our rates are designed to recover our full costs. They are not designed to do anything else. It is the only way we get to reach the money that is appropriated.

    Mr. GUY. It is a cost-based system. I am not sure how analagous it is to a private sector firm working for profit, which may have some additional marketing type issues, as well as supply and demand considerations, which may impact price setting, but by law we are on a cost-reimbursement basis.

    Mr. HOYER. The last question, and I will submit the balance for the record, I have got quite a few questions, including about the revolving fund, we have had testimony in the House Oversight Committee on that. I know you have had testimony on it here. It is a pretty complicated operation. Do you have any recommendations on a way to improve this so that it could be better understood?

    Mr. DIMARIO. My recommendation has been over a substantial period of time to put us on a salaries and expense appropriation, similar to our Superintendent of Documents. Give us the appropriation that Congress is giving us and expect that we will perform the work that Congress sends us within that appropriation. If we, for whatever reason, find that we cannot do the work within that appropriation, then we have to come back to you and ask for a supplemental and we would have to identify the reasons why. But right now you are giving us the money based on our estimates of what the work will be, and you appropriate the money but then if we guess wrong, if the work doesn't materialize, then we have difficulty funding ourselves. So we need to be able to close that gap some way. My only solution is a salaries and expense appropriation, like every other agency.
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    [Questions from Mr. Hoyer and responses follow:]

    Question: This year Congress is making you fund part of Congressional printing out of your resolving fund rather than appropriating the money to you. Can your revolving fund take on that additional burden? Could you do this on a continuing basis?

    Response. Our assessment is that the fund can take on the additional burden for FY 98 only. This is based on the assumption that no unforeseen financial requirements arise, such as major operating losses, unplanned major repairs and maintenance, extraordinary work requirements, or deterioration in the prompt payment of customers bills. The fund is not capable of permanently subsidizing the cost of customer requirements on a continuing basis because the fund would become insolvent. The fund is designed to provide temporary financing of customer work requirements pending reimbursement. In the long run, the fund depends on revenue from customers to reimburse costs incurred. In addition, the fund must have sufficient cash flow to finance necessary capital expenditures. The $11 million transfer will significantly reduce resources that would otherwise have been available for these purposes.

    Question. What are the demands on your revolving fund for improvements to your equipment and buildings? For example, how are you going to fund bringing your computers into compliance with year 2000 requirements?

    Response. Capital expenditures for major building repairs and maintenance, information systems, and production equipment will be a considerable drain on the revolving fund. GPO buildings are old and require substantial maintenance. These services are not provided by the Architect of the Capital, but are financed by GPO. Over the next two years, necessary capital investments include about $6 million for replacement of air conditioning equipment. Elevator, roof, and electrical systems need repair, which will cost additional millions of dollars over the next few years. Information systems also account for major capital investment requirements. This year we will be implementing an information processing system for the Superintendent of Documents, at a cost of about $10 million. We will replace the mainframe computer with an enterprise server that will be year 2000 compliant, at a cost of about $1.8 million. Other significant expenditures will be required to bring all GPO computers and software into compliance with year 2000 requirements. Production equipment requirements include $1.6 million for computer-to-plate systems and $3.6 million for a passport printing and binding line.
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    Question. Two years ago Congress declined to directly fund your request for building improvements for air conditioning and elevators and other items. Are these systems still in need of repair? How will you fund the improvements?

    Response. In FY 96, GPO requested an appropriation of $15.4 million for renovation of building structures and building systems, including air-conditioning, electrical and elevator systems. These systems are still in need of repair. These improvements will have to be funded through the revolving fund, unless a direct appropriation is made to GPO for these purposes. In 1971, 1972, and 1974 Congress appropriated a total of $12.9 million for GPO air conditioning and electrical systems. These systems currently need to be replaced or repaired.

    Question. Your statement says you are having difficulty recovering payments from DOD. How is this affecting your cash position, your ability to pay your bills?

    Response. The DOD slow payment problem is having a serious effect on GPO's cash balance. GPO pays printing contractors for performing DOD work, but DOD is not reimbursing GPO in a timely manner. This seriously reduces revolving fund cash.

    Question. You are currently being audited by Booz-Allen & Hamilton, under contract with the GAO. How much is that audit costing? Who pays for it?

    Response. The cost of the study is not finally determined, but $1.5 million has been authorized for this purpose. GAO has transferred $1.5 million from the GPO revolving fund into GAO's appropriation account to pay for this study.
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    Question. Your statement says you are having difficulty recovering overpayments to the Labor Department for the Workers Compensation Program. Can this committee help with this?

    Response. Any assistance from the committee would be greatly appreciated. We were advised by the GAO Office of General Counsel, in a letter to the Public Printer, dated September 23, 1997, to consider advising the Joint Committee on Printing and the appropriate subcommittees of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees of this dilemma, and seeking the transfer of funds to the GPO revolving fund from OWCP's current or expired accounts.

    Question. Your statement says the increased cost of congressional printing is attributable in part to wage increases. Are the wages covered by a contract? Did the Joint Committee on Printing approve the contract?

    Response. Yes, the increased wages are part of collective bargaining agreements approved by the Joint Committee on Printing.

    Question. When Congress requires you to provide a particular function, like your office of the Inspector General, which is required by law, how is that function paid for? Do we pay for it through your rates for printing?

    Response. Yes, all such mandatory functions to be performed by GPO represent costs for which direct appropriations are not provided. Therefore, the cost of providing these services must be recovered as additional overhead through the rates charged for printing and related services.
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    Question. Just 2 years ago the JCP directed you to recover costs of work you produce, including congressional printing. Before then, how long did you go without any increase in rates? How did this affect your finances?

    Response. We went from 1990 to 1996 without any increase in hourly rates. During that period of time, the revolving fund lost $61.3 million, which was funded by reducing retained earnings.

    Question. Your appropriation for congressional printing has been declining in purchasing power over the years—twenty years ago it was the equivalent of $200 million per year, according to your budget submission. How have you accommodated this decline in purchasing power?

    Response. This decline in purchasing power has been accommodated by the implementation of productivity enhancing technology utilizing electronic photocomposition, digitized information, improved data processing and communications networks. This has increased the productivity of the workforce and allowed us to greatly reduce the staffing level while providing new and enhanced services.

    [Questions from Mr. Latham and responses follow:]

    Question. How much does it cost GPO to print hard copies of the Federal Register and the Congressional Record that are delivered daily to Members' offices?

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    Response. The cost of printing all of the copies of the Federal Register which are delivered to Senators and Representatives offices is estimated to be about $679,000 annually. The cost of printing all of the copies of the Congressional Record which are delivered to Senators and Representatives offices is estimated to be about $440,000 annually.

    Question. Is there an option to not receive these copies? Isn't this exact information available on the Internet?

    Response. The Members have the option to not receive these copies. The same information is placed on the Internet by GPO at the same time we go to press with these publications.

    Mr. WALSH. If I could interrupt at this point, we are out of time on the clock, and we have not yet voted. We are going to have to adjourn the meeting. Thank you very much for your testimony.

    The hearing is adjourned.

    Question. For the record, insert all reprogramming documents submitted to and received from the Committee.

    Response. The information follows:
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1998.
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JOINT COMMITTEE ON PRINTING

WITNESS

HON. BOB NEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO

    Mr. WALSH. The subcommittee hearing will come to order.

    I would like to welcome my colleague, Mr. Hoyer, to the table, and also our former colleague, Mr. Orton. Good to have you with us this morning. Congressman Bob Ney will be here representing Chairman Senator Warner and Vice-Chairman Bill Thomas of the Joint Committee on Printing.

    We will now take up the Joint Committee on Printing. The budget request is $804,000, the same amount that was appropriated in the 1998 bill, so there was no increase. The budget is for a staff of 11 FTEs. We would like to welcome Mr. Ney. We also have Mr. Eric Peterson, the committee Staff Director. Welcome, Mr. Peterson.

    Mr. Chairman, is there anyone else you would like to introduce at this time?

    Mr. NEY. No. I just wanted to say I am here on behalf of Senator John Warner, Chairman of the Joint Committee on Printing, who is traveling in the Middle East with Secretary of Defense Cohen, and has been understandably and unavoidably extended. The Chairman requests his testimony be submitted and included in the record.
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    Mr. WALSH. Without objection.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. NEY. Also, if you would allow me to introduce Eric Peterson, the Joint Committee on Printing Staff Director, he will be available to answer questions. He actually knows a lot more than I do.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. WALSH. We will place the statement in the record.

    Are there any questions of the witness, Mr. Hoyer?

    Mr. HOYER. I don't have any questions of Mr. Ney. I want to say that I serve on the House Oversight Committee with Mr. Ney, and he is a distinguished member and I enjoy working with him. Obviously, the Joint Committee on Printing, Mr. Chairman, has historically been critically important to the Congress in overseeing and ensuring the provision of documents to the Congress in a timely fashion, and overseeing how this historic agency is operating.

    Obviously there are going to be a lot of issues, coming up, perhaps not to be implemented this year, but in years ahead, dealing with Title 44. That really has not been an item for discussion and I don't think it would be particularly useful to pursue it at this point.
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    Suffice it to say that on our side we see a continuing role for the Joint Committee on Printing. Obviously, the budget is not going to be an issue from what I see here. They ask for last year's appropriation.

    I will submit some questions, Mr. Chairman, for the record, so we can have the answers, which I think will be useful. I also look forward to sitting down with our Staff Director and perhaps discussing with him some of his thoughts and my concerns.

    As you may know, Mr. Chairman, I am the Democratic member on the Joint Committee representing the House, so I have a particular interest in this and will be pursuing it. But I don't think at this point in time I will do so, because there are no budget questions.

    Mr. WALSH. I will do the same. I will have some questions that I will submit for the record, and we will ask you to respond back on those as promptly as possible so we can proceed with considering the joint committee's budget. But it would seem that coming in at the same level as last year, that the budget at least won't be an issue. Thank you very much.

    [Questions from Chairman Walsh and reponses follow:]

    Question. Your request is for a level budget. But your statement implies that the revision of Title 44 will affect the future of the Joint Committee. Can you clarify that for us?

    Response. Revisions to Title 44 envision the elimination of the Joint Committee on Printing as the means to solving the separation of powers issue currently impeding the Government Printing Office's ability to effectively serve the printing and printing procurement needs of Executive and Judicial branch agencies.
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    If enacted as currently proposed, the Title 44 revisions would take effect January 1, 1999.

    Question. How will this Title 44 revision help the Federal Printing Program?

    Response. The proposal will benefit the Federal Printing Program by:

  1). Resolving the conflict between the branches of the Federal Government which hampers efficient production and thwarts permanent access to the Federal Government's publications;

  2). Guaranteeing the right of the public to access publications produced by the Federal Government;

  3). Promoting public availability of Government information in the electronic age through a Federal publications access program that provides no-fee availability of all formats;

  4). Facilitating production and public access to Government publications by the establishment of mechanisms that assure the efficient and economical production of publications and an effective and equitable system of dissemination.

    Question. The GPO continues to lose money on the in-house workload. We also understand that now they are beginning to lose on the procurement program. Their solution cannot be to raise prices to bring in more revenue because the agencies will just shop elsewhere for their printing needs. Do you see any solution to this problem?
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    Response. The management analysis of the Government Printing Office currently being executed through the General Accounting Office and its contractor Booz-Allen & Hamilton will undoubtedly contain a number of very realistic and implementable recommendations to address this problem. There are basically, however, three fundamental issues at play. The first is that by law, the Public Printer is required to recover his costs. Therefore, the question must be asked, what are the costs of completing the in-house workload, and are they being fully recovered. GPO's year-end FY '97 financial statement suggests that the agency came very close to fully recovering its costs.

    Another of the fundamental issues is whether there is a more economical way of completing the in-house workload. To address that issue it is necessary to examine the nature of that workload, the time frames in which it is expected to be completed, and the quality of the raw material which must be processed in order to produce the end product.

    Presently, the overwhelming majority of GPO's in-house workload is Congressional printing and binding. This includes the Congressional Record and Index, bills, resolutions, calendars, and committee hearings and reports. This workload ebbs and flows depending on whether Congress is in session, and how busy the Congress is. In many respects, GPO is like a fire department which is required to maintain a certain level of capability whether there is a fire or not. GPO is expected to maintain a workforce and equipment to respond to the peak demands of Congress, even when Congress is not making peak demands. Perhaps there are more economical printing processes which GPO could employ to provide the same products. As technology evolves and is employed more widely on the Hill and at GPO, some of these more economical processes will become more practical to use.
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    The final issue is whether there is some of the in-house workload which can be more economically produced by outsourcing. Committee reports, committee hearings, and a number of other publications currently produced in-house might well be produced more economically by outside printers, but those savings must be balanced against the costs of maintaining a certain in-house capability to meet Congress's peak demand. Here again, technology and the recommendations of the GAO management analysis may provide answers to this question.

    Ultimately, all of these considerations come down to recognizing that the Government Printing Office is a service provider, and as such, it must continue to develop and improve its ''doing business'' processes, and, despite those improvements, if Congress still feels it's too expensive, then Congress may have to change its expectations.

    Question. Would it make sense for the House and Senate to do their own printing with internal DocuTech machines or by direct outsourcing? Does your legislation get into that at all? Response. Clearly there are Congressional printing needs that can and are addressed with internal processes or through direct outsourcing. But at this time, and with present technology, it is difficult to envision the production of Congress's most important publication, the Congressional Record, being produced either internally by either or both Houses, or being outsourced.

    The revisions to Title 44 under consideration do direct the General Accounting Office to undertake a study of the feasibility of other legislative branch agencies outsourcing more of their printing needs. Based on this study, the Congress may wish to direct a similar study for itself.
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    Question. The Appropriations Committees are the largest Congressional customers of GPO. The plant has been supporting the work of our Committee and subcommittees since the 1800's. We are a little concerned because we have not been briefed on this new legislation. I hope that is in the works because we want to be helpful. But I am sure you understand our reserving opinion until we learn more about the proposal.

    Response. I appreciate the Chairman's concern, and wish to assure him that when the proposal is ready, and members of the Senate Rules Committee give the green light, the language will be offered for review and comment.

    In my capacity as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, I look forward to working with the Chairman and his Committee on this proposal.

    [Questions from Mr. Cunningham and responses follows:]

    Question. Have you discussed the specific language of your proposed Title 44 revision with the Public Printer? If not, when do you plan to?

    Response. The Committee staff has verbally outlined the various versions of Title 44 reform with the Public Printer as well as requested and received written proposals from the Public Printer.

    Out of deference to Senator Ford, however, the actual language of these proposals has not been provided the Public Printer for his review and comment. Rest assured, however, the Public Printer will be given such an opportunity before the proposal is formally introduced.
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    Question. And how is electronic publishing regulated in regards to making it accessible to the American public?

    Response. The proposal deals with electronic publishing in the same manner it deals with ink on paper. Agencies have an affirmative responsibility to notify the Superintendent of Government publications and make their image files available. If agencies do not, then they bear the cost of meeting the Superintendent's requirements.

    Question. You state that you are working toward the day when there will be no Joint Committee on Printing. I assume that oversight of the Government Printing Office will then fall to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and the House Committee on House Oversight. . . . The Joint Committee on Printing was established in 1846 to assure that there is uniformity and standardization of printing between the House and Senate. . . . Without the ''referring'' of the JCP, who will meet this need for uniformity for the Congressional Record? Who will determine competing demands? Who will track down fugitive documents? Who will assure Agency compliance with the law?

    Response. The oversight of Congressional printing will become the responsibility of the House Committee on Oversight and the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. The Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate will continue to have administrative responsibility to ensure timely and cost effective processing of material to be published on behalf of Congress. The Public Printer will be required to do all that is necessary to remedy neglect, daily, duplication or waste in public printing, and the Superintendent of Government Publications will be responsible for ensuring permanent public access to the Government's publications.
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    Question. When the GPO was here, they raised the issue of delays in payment by the Department of Defense, which the GPO says is in arrears by as much as $52 million. What is the JCP doing to help GPO collect these funds?

    Response. While GPO has not formally raised this issue with the Joint Committee, or requested the Committee's assistance, the Joint Committee has taken the initiative of having discussions with the Department of Defense and GPO's Comptroller. The Committee understands from both parties that this arrears is attributable to one Defense Department installation, and that a mechanism is being installed to remedy this matter in the very near future.

    [Questions from Mr. Serrano and responses follow:]

    Question. Senator Warner, I am very interested in your stating that the proposal for Title 44 reform will be unveiled soon. This would be a major accomplishment. Who has been involved in the drafting of this proposal?

    Response. The staff of the Senate Rules Committee has consulted thus far with the Public Printer, the Superintendent of Documents, staff of the Office of Management and Budget, and representatives of the following organizations: American Library Association, American Law Libraries Association, Government Documents Roundtable, Information Industry Association, Printing Industries of America, National Archives, Library of Congress, Secretary of the Senate, Clerk of the House, and the Administrative Office of the Courts.

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    The Committee also has held six hearings during the course of 1996 and 1997, during which it received input from the following individuals and organizations:

    The Honorable Michael F. DiMario, Public Printer, Government Printing Office; Mr. George E. Lord, Chairman, Joint Council of Unions, Government Printing Office; Mr. William J. Boarman, President, Printing, Publishing and Media Workers Sector of Communications Workers of America; The Honorable Royce C. Lamberth, United States District Judge for the District of Columbia; The Honorable Sally Katzen, Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget; Mr. Richard Shiffrin, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice; Mr. Francis J. Buckley, Director, Shaker Heights Public Library; Mr. Ronald G. Dunn, President, Information Industry Association; Mr. Henry J. Gioia, Office of the Director of Administration and Management, Office of the Secretary of Defense; Mr. Gary R. Bachula, Deputy Under Secretary for Technology Administration, Department of Commerce; Governor John W. Carlin, Archivist of the United States; Ms. Joan Lippincott, Interim Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information; Mr. Wayne P. Kelley, Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office; Mr. Daniel P. O'Mahony, Government Documents Coordinator, Brown University Library; Dr. Betty J. Turock, President, American Library Association; Dr. Christine D. Vernon, Yorktown, Virginia; Dr. William A. Wulf, Professor of Computer Science, University of Virginia; Dr. Dennis Galletta, Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh; Mr. Robert Smith, Executive Director, Interactive Services Association; The Honorable Jeanne Hurley Simon, Chairperson, U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Sciences; Dr. Lewis Bellardo, Deputy Archivist of the United States; Mr. Benjamin Cooper, Vice President, Government Affairs, Printing Industries of America; Mr. William A. Gindlesberger, President, ABC/Bids Plus; Mr. Robert G. Claitor, President, Claitor's Law Books and Publishing Division, Inc.; Mr. Eric Massant, Director, Government and Industry Affairs, LEXIS–NEXIS and Congressional Information Service, Inc.; Mr. Christopher Schroeder, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice; Mr. Roy Francis, Chairman, Advisory Council to the Public Printer, Interagency Council on Printing and Publication Services. Department of the Interior; and Mr. Donald R. Johnson, Director, National Technical Information Service, Department of Commerce.
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    Out of deference to the wishes of the Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Rules Committee, Senator Ford, public circulation of various iterations of Title 44 reform has been limited, as have discussions with our colleagues in the House.

    Question. Can you share with us the major themes and principles of this legislation?

    Response. The purposes of this bill are to:

  1). Resolve the conflict between the branches of the Federal Government which hampers efficient production and thwarts permanent access to the Federal Government's publications;

  2). Guarantee the right of the public to access publications produced by the Federal Government;

  3). Promote public availability of Government information in the electronic age through a Federal publications access program that provides no-fee availability of all formats; and

  4). Facilitate production and public access to Government publications by the establishment of mechanisms that assure the efficient and economical production of publications and an effective and equitable system of dissemination.

    Question. Do you have estimates of the costs and benefits of your Title 44 reform legislation? What impact will it have on the specific appropriations for Congressional Printing and Binding? On the Salaries and Expenses of the Superintendent of Documents?
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    Response. At this point, with the proposal still in flux, it is difficult to give the Committee a realistic estimate. At a minimum, the cost of operations for the Joint Committee on Printing will be eliminated. Additionally, there will be greater accountability on the part of both the Congress and the Government Printing Office with regard to the amount of Congressional printing and binding work being done and its cost. As a result, Congress may alter its expectations and demands, and as a result produce additional cost savings.

    [Questions from Mr. Hoyer and responses follow:]

    Question. In the proposed legislation, what mechanism is in place for enforcement of Title 44?

    Response. There are several affirmative enforcement mechanisms contained in the latest version of Title 44 reform. In the case of non-compliance there also are several remedial actions including cost recovery, which both the Superintendent of Government Publications and/or the Public Printer may take.

    Question. Does the Senate Rules and Administration Committee plan to hold public hearings on Title 44 revision?

    Response. Yes, the Senate Rules Committee intends to hold a hearing on whatever proposal is introduced this Spring.

    Question. Many studies conducted by the GPO, the GAO and the former Office of Technology Assessment have said the GPO's centralized printing procurement program is the most cost effective way for the Government to procure printing. Would your planned revision of Title 44 decentralize Federal printing? If so, what is your estimate of costs to the taxpayers?
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    Response. The current proposal envisions a centralized mechanism for posting print procurement opportunities—regardless of whether the procurement is performed through GPO, or the agency seek the procurement directly. This mechanism will be maintained by the Government Printing Office.

    Under current Title 44, as well as the revisions under consideration, the Public Printer has and will continue to have the ability to delegate to individual agencies the authority to procure their printing needs directly, provided the agencies meet certain qualifications.

    Given the evolutions in technology, and the budgetary pressures imposed on agencies by Congress, it is increasingly difficult to rely on past studies as justification for future decisions in this area. But, the revisions currently under review do not authorize other agencies to duplicate the services of GPO.

    Mr. PETERSON. Thank you.

    Mr. NEY. Thank you.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1998.

PUBLIC WITNESSES

MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

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WITNESSES

HON. EARL BLUMENAUER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON

HON. CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND

HON. DAVID E. PRICE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA

    Mr. WALSH. Next, we have scheduled Members to testify, and I would like to recognize our colleague who represents the Third District of Oregon, Earl Blumenauer. Welcome back. And I understand Connie Morella wants to come in and discuss the same issue. Why don't you begin and perhaps she will make it. If not we will hear from her when she comes.

    Mr. BLUMENAUER. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I appreciate your courtesy.

    For the last 3 years, traffic in the Washington metropolitan area has been second only to Los Angeles in terms of congestion. Local governments are taking the initiative in calling on local employers to join the fight against traffic.

    The successful program in my District in Portland, Oregon, has helped make it the only area in the country where transit ridership is rising faster than vehicle miles traveled. Successful transportation systems improve the quality of life, improving air quality, decreasing congestion, and increasing the time people spend doing something other than simply sitting in traffic.
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    In 1993 the Federal Employees Clean Air Incentives Act permanently authorized Federal agencies, including the House and the Senate, to offer the same incentive to their employees. When this idea was originally considered, House offices did not have the needed flexibility in their budgets to support such a program. As a result of the fiscal year 1997 legislative branch appropriations bill, office accounts have been restructured to allow the type of independent spending decisions that we are proposing here today.

    It is past time to return to the unfinished business of implementing a transit pass program for our employees. More than 31,000 Federal employees currently receive transportation benefits, and frankly, I am embarrassed as a Member of the House that our employees of the Architect of the Capitol and the Senate have been able to successfully operate a transit pass program for more than 4 years, while we have not.

    I have introduced a resolution that has the support of over 130 bipartisan cosponsors that would direct the House Oversight Committee to issue rules and administer a program to establish that House offices in D.C. or the local districts can participate in mass transit programs if the individual Members chooses.

    The Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area Transit Authority supports the House participation and is ready to assist in implementing this program. No additional revenue is needed to approve the program since employee passes can be funded from existing office budgets. I have met with all 15 different agencies, subagencies within the House, with their administrators, and we have verified that they all support the program and they can handle it within existing budgets.
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    I am here today to urge this subcommittee to include language in the legislative branch appropriations bill to designate that a small portion of the funds appropriated for the House Oversight Committee be used to issue rules and administer a transit pass program for participating House offices. It will cost less than $30,000 to set the thing up, and over time it will cost less.

    I would suggest respectfully that this would be dwarfed by the savings. We have, I think, 160 people right now in the House who help administer our parking program, who patrol these lots. If we can have even a minuscule reduction, it would pay for itself many times over.

    We are asking employers across the country to step forward in the fight for reduced congestion and improved air quality. I would hope that the House would join and be part of this program.

    I appreciate your courtesy.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much, Mr. Blumenauer, for your testimony. I know you came in last year and spoke with us about this. I think there is some sympathy on the subcommittee for your request.

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    The law that would provide for this is fairly clear. It says, ''With respect to the House of Representatives, it must be carried by the House Administration Committee of the House of Representatives. With respect to the Senate, it must be carried by the Committee on Rules Administration of the Senate.'' We really cannot appropriate the funds without the authorization of the House Oversight Committee. Basically, it was the same problem we had last year.

    Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, your description of the situation. What I'm looking for would be language that would help move this thing along.

    I have been visiting around the Capitol. I don't find anybody who can find a reason why we don't allow Members the ability to provide this benefit for their employees who could use it. What we are looking for is a little assistance in getting the momentum, because it seems to me this ought to be something that is close to a no-brainer, and anything we could get in terms of providing some momentum, I think, would be useful.

    Mr. WALSH. Basically, what you are asking us to do is put some authorization language in the appropriations bill, and we do that on occasion, but we do get in trouble on it on occasion. I think we would really like to see some direction from the oversight committee. I yield to my colleague, the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Hoyer.

    Mr. HOYER. I just wanted to say, I understand what you are saying in terms of the statute. I want to assure Mr. Blumenauer that I will make sure that we bring this to the attention of Mr. Gejdenson and Mr. Thomas on the House Oversight Committee, on which I serve, because Mr. Blumenauer is absolutely correct. He is one of the national leaders on the issue of urban planning, of transportation, of the environmental context of urban-suburban areas.
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    I think this proposal, on which I have joined, so I am not totally objective, makes a lot of sense. I appreciate the Chairman's observation, and he is correct. I will make sure this gets attention by the House Oversight Committee and, hopefully, adoption.

    Mr. WALSH. I would like to welcome to the table our Ranking Minority Member, Mr. Serrano, and Mr. Wamp of Tennessee, welcome.

    Do you have any questions, Mr. Serrano?

    Mr. SERRANO. Just a comment. We do support what you are trying to do here. I am on your resolution. We will work closely with Mr. Hoyer to make sure that this happens.

    Now, let me just ask you one thing. You mentioned $30,000. That was $30,000 for the whole House to begin the program, or per office?

    Mr. BLUMENAUER. Our analysis was that in working with the various administrative agencies from the House, that it would be something on the order of $27,000 to set up the program, to allow it to go forward. That is all the expenditure that is needed. Every House office that I visited, and I visited all 15, from the Chaplain to the Sergeant at Arms, to the Clerk, they all, first of all, think they have employees that would use and welcome it, and they all had money within their budgets to be able to accomplish it. But it was just setting the program up, promulgating the rules, administratively, and it would be less than $30,000.
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    Mr. SERRANO. Thank you.

    Mr. WALSH. Mr. Wamp.

    Mr. WAMP. Mr. Chairman, I, too, just want to commend Congressman Blumenauer not just for what he is trying to do here in Washington, but what he does across the country. He came to my home city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, recognized as a national expert on urban planning and mass transit. He has the problem that sometimes you are not recognized really as the prophet you really are, and our whole country is so automobile-driven, and has been for a century now, that we have made some tactical mistakes.

    As a result, we have got some real serious problems with urban sprawl across the country. Mass transit is a solution, but we are fighting two industries, and I will tell you, we know it in the Southeast, and we recognize these problems.

    I just want to commend him for what he is doing, and want to encourage him along. I know it is an uphill struggle the whole way, and I don't have the solutions for here in Washington, but I appreciate you coming, and I hope you keep the pressure on until we start changing our culture and our mind set in this country, and try to preserve as many greenfield sites as we can, and embrace the notions that I experienced in Europe when I was 12 years old, and saw mass transit meeting a lot of needs in that society, which frankly here was squeezed out years ago. Thank you, I commend you, and we need to try to find a way to work with you.

    Mr. WALSH. Lastly, Mr. Blumenauer, let me just again thank you for your testimony. In testimony last year, you had another suggestion that we did take up on. We put in report language that urged the Architect to undertake a study of the feasibility of installing adequate shower and locker facilities for the needs of House employees. Bob Miley did a study and determined that there were showers for two males and two females in the Ford Building, two newly renovated male and female showers at the O'Neill Building, in addition to a facility in the Capitol, but they are now undertaking to make additional showers for men and two for women in the Rayburn Building on the C Street side.
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    So your recommendation was very—I think a very good recommendation, very caring and concerned about staff, and we responded.

    Mr. BLUMENAUER. You did, indeed, and we have had some terrific meetings with the Architect. It seems to me they are even going to be able to do some other items. Your action on the subcommittee was really the difference. I really appreciate your consideration.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you. You are welcome any time.

    I see Congresswoman Morella has joined us. She is welcome to the witness table to give us her thoughts and suggestions on transit.

    Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Members of the subcommittee. I appreciate your accommodating my schedule, too. I know Mr. Blumenauer, who is the sponsor of the legislation that I am supporting, already testified. I thank you for your allowing me to express my support of House Resolution 37. As traffic in the Washington metropolitan area increases, I think it is really past time for the House of Representatives to join the Senate and 139 Federal Agencies in helping to reduce congestion by offering transit passes to our employees.

    Specifically, I urge this subcommittee to include language in the legislative branch appropriations bill to ensure that a portion of the funds appropriated for the House Oversight Committee is used to issue rules and administer a transit pass program.

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    Under Congressman Blumenauer's resolution, the House Oversight Committee would give all House offices the option—not a mandate—to offer transit benefits to employees. These transit passes would come from existing funds, and therefore would not require additional appropriations. Only employees in participating offices who do not hold a House parking permit would be eligible.

    Several members of my staff, those who work in the Rayburn Building and those who work in my Rockville district office, have told me they would stop driving and use Metro if they had a transit pass. The frustrations of traffic congestion have become a way of life for my constituents in Montgomery County, Maryland, including many who commute to Capitol Hill.

    A study by the Washington Board of Trade which ranked the Washington metropolitan area second in the Nation in traffic congestion and first in wasted time and gasoline. The average commute time in the District of Columbia area is 30 percent higher than the national average. Near-future projections show that D.C. area commuters may spend 100 more hours yearly getting to and from work than they do now. I know my own commute to the Hill has become much more onerous over the last 11 years that I have served here.

    Last month, Montgomery County, Maryland, launched a Smart Moves 2000 campaign to mobilize businesses in my district against traffic gridlock. More than 80 businesses joined the county in hosting a Commuting Solutions Summit, which featured three workshops that addressed alternative solutions to the traditional commute. Employers were encouraged to offer their employees benefit incentives—such as $65 a month per employee for public transit, preferred parking for car pools, compressed work schedules, and increased flex time—in order to encourage alternative transportation, such as Metrorail, buses, the MARC trains, walking, and biking.
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    The goal of this new public-private partnership campaign is to enlist 2,000 county businesses to promote alternative commuting solutions by the year 2000 for the more than half million daily commuters in Montgomery County. I would recommend such a camapign for other areas throughout the Nation. The workshop indeed helped businesses learn to accommodate their employees and make them more productive, increase morale, and get congestion off the road, or at least substantially diminish it.

    The Washington Metropolitan Congressional Delegation has asked the Department of Transportation to convene a summit in May of this year to address the problem of Washington metropolitan traffic congestion. The objective of the conference will be to share new ideas and build a consensus around solutions that would work in our region.

    House Resolution 37, which would offer transit benefits to more than 7,000 House employees, offers a commuting solution that most likely will be endorsed by summit participants.

    Mr. Chairman, and members of this very important subcommittee, I want to urge you to ensure that the House Oversight Committee takes steps to provide House employees a commuting solution. I think it is important for people in our districts to see that we are in the lead. Thank you.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

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    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much. Are there any questions of the witness?

    Mr. SERRANO. No. I have no questions, just that we are very supportive of the idea. We are just trying to see if we get support from the other committees.

    Mr. WALSH. Mr. Cunningham.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Congresswoman, the ideas, I think, of flex time, parking pools, bike lanes—and this gentleman here rides his bike in on days when the weather is nice—those are all good to cut down on the traffic. But placing upon the Federal Government this burden seems at odds when I am trying to cut the size of the Federal Government spending. I know when I was in the Pentagon, I had to change my lifestyle to make it to work on time and leave early in the morning to miss the traffic.

    But for us to go ahead and put dollars into a transit pass system for more Federal employees raises some concerns with me. I am going to have to take a look at that portion of it. But the other ideas, I think, are good.

    Mrs. MORELLA. You know, Congressman Cunningham, I would agree with you, except this does not require additional appropriations. This would mean that for instance, from my congressional office budget, I could allow—it is an option—my employees the opportunity to take Metro and use a transit pass. This would also help keep cars off the road. I would be reducing traffic, and therefore, making my staff and other commuters happier. They would use Metro, the system that we are going to appropriate $50 million to complete; 103 miles this year.
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    This is something that the Federal Agencies already can do. They can give a $65 a month transit pass to their employees. So it seems to me that the Congress, which must comply with the Accountability Act that ensures we live under the laws we create, should be doing the same thing.

    Mr. WALSH. As we understand it, I think we would need some direction from the House Oversight Committee, the authorizing committee, before we could appropriate funds. As we said to Mr. Blumenauer, I believe there is some sensitivity for the issue on the subcommittee, but we do need some direction from them first.

    Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Chairman, you might consider putting it into bill language, the report language, perhaps to send the message to the House Oversight Committee that the Congress should do all we can to relieve congestion.

    Mr. WALSH. We will give that consideration.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I do like your Irish colors this morning.

    Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you.

    [The committee has received the following information:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Our colleague, Mr. Price, from North Carolina is here. Mr. Shays is not, but I'm sure you can introduce us to the topic and we will wait to see if he shows up. Welcome.
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    Mr. PRICE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Serrano, Mr. Cunningham. Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before you today. I am here on behalf of Congressman Chris Shays and myself. Mr. Shays is chairing a Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee hearing this morning. He may not be able to be here. So I will go ahead and begin our joint statement in hopes that he can join us shortly.

    As you may know, Mr. Shays and I and several other cosponsors have introduced legislation which would give the public limited Internet access to the Congressional Research Service products. Our bill, H.R. 3131, is the companion to legislation sponsored in the other body by Senators John McCain and Lauch Faircloth. We have submitted a copy of H.R. 3131, access via the Internet, for inclusion in your record.

    Simply put, we believe the American people ought to have access to the research their tax dollars pay for, the same research that Members of Congress rely on to make critical policy decisions. To this end we recommend that the subcommittee provide an initial appropriation of $100,000 in your fiscal year 1999 bill to bring the public on line with CRS.

    In our offices, as you know, we already handle a substantial volume of constituent requests for various CRS issue briefs and reports and we routinely send out CRS publications to assist constituents in trying to make sense of policy debates on Capitol Hill.

    Over the last several years, Congress has made a concerted effort to increase public access to what goes on here. We permit cameras in the House and Senate, even in our hearing rooms, to record our debates. The Thomas Web Page now lets constituents look up votes and check the status of bills and read the actual text of legislation and amendments.
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    Yesterday alone Thomas was accessed 371,610 times. What is not readily available, however, is unbiased analysis of legislation or the history of legislative efforts to address policy matters. We think the people paying for CRS research ought to have greater access to it.

    Mr. Chairman, we understand CRS appeared before you last week and raised some concerns about giving the public Internet access to their publications. We are trying to schedule a meeting so we can resolve some of these concerns. But in general, we are confident they can be resolved. We believe we have put together a narrowly drawn bill that would permit only appropriate public access to CRS research at minimal cost to the taxpayer.

    Our legislation would give the public Internet access to the same CRS documents that congressional staff may access via the Internet: issue briefs, appropriations analysis and some CRS reports. It would not give the public carte blanche to all CRS research or to confidential reports, nor would it permit direct public access to CRS. It would give the Director of CRS discretion in determining whether future reports are suitable for public distribution.

    Government shouldn't be a mystery to the people who are footing the bill. Lets remove one more barrier to giving the average American access to the halls of Congress.

    Mr. Chairman, I also have a chart showing Thomas usage over the last 30 days. I would like to submit that for the record.

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    Mr. WALSH. Yes.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. PRICE. Thank you very much.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much for your testimony. I think this is an important question. Certainly, we have—Congress has made an effort to support the digitization of information and making it electronically available to the public, as is witnessed by the number of hits Thomas is getting now. There is a tremendous need and desire for information, and I think we would all agree that the public should have access to information, and we are trying to provide the resources to do that.

    There are some very interesting questions on the use of CRS, its role vis-a-vis the Congress and its role vis-a-vis the public. I think we can have that discussion, certainly.

    There are some very strong feelings among Members, and certainly within the CRS, that current law would preclude us from doing that. CRS may have to be changed in authorization in order to allow us to do this, in order to allow us to fund it. I am not sure the question has been resolved by the Congress yet.

    Mr. PRICE. That may be. CRS has raised some issues about their protected constitutional status, about copyright issues and liability issues. I would just stress that what we are talking about here is a difference only of degree and not of kind in terms of the kind of access the public already has. All of us send out daily CRS issue briefs, and we give that to constituents when they request it of us without these issues being raised.
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    What we are talking about is adapting this function to new technology and disseminating this material on a much wider basis. I believe the issues could be easily resolved that CRS has raised and we are eager, of course, to work with them and with you in figuring out just what that would require.

    Mr. WALSH. Right. Thank you.

    Any questions?

    Mr. SERRANO. Just a comment. You know, I understand where you want to go, and I am very supportive of that, but I just wanted to let you know that on both sides of the aisle there is concern that has been brought up here, and especially about the content of some of the information that we get. It is a very fine line that we walk here.

    On one hand, I have no problems with the public knowing everything. But does the public have a need or right to know about a memo that is handwritten to me by a staff member? I see CRS' role at times in the same way. I ask them opinions, many times I ask them quite many opinions on the relationship between Puerto Rico and the U.S. leading towards the possibility of a bill on the floor to deal with the issue of Puerto Rico's political future. That issue on the island and in my community and other communities is an extremely hot issue.

    I don't know that CRS, if they knew everything they put out would be public, would not be weighing what kind of statements they are making, because they know they would be dropping like a bomb somewhere on one side or the other. So I am afraid that in this particular case, and I could be convinced otherwise, allowing the public in on everything they advise us on would make them rethink a hundred times the kinds of statements they make. That is one thing.
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    Secondly, what they give us is sort of a one, two, three, four, five steps prior to a final decision. The public sees us on C-SPAN making the final decision. They see us in committee asking questions leading to the final decision. But they really don't see our thought processes and how we get to the statements we make on the floor.

    CRS is an integral part at times of how we get through that thought process and to the floor, so I am concerned about what would be available, who would make it available, at what point, and what kind of work CRS would continue to do if they knew that everything that they put out possibly could be put out to the public.

    Mr. PRICE. Let me just stress that that is not our proposal. We are not proposing that everything be available to the public. We are certainly not suggesting that personal or confidential reports of the sort you described would be available. As a precaution, we would give the Director of CRS the final say, even in terms of the other products of CRS.

    What we are talking about is the kind of issue briefs, the kinds of histories of legislative efforts to deal with problems, the kinds of appropriations analyses that you and I send out every day to constituents who request them. That is what we are talking about.

    We are simply talking about adapting a function that we already perform, that CRS already performs, to the Internet and to the new technology. In no way do we desire to compromise the kind of confidential relationship that you describe, or political sensitivity. We are well aware of that. We, I believe, write sufficient safeguards into this bill.

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    Mr. WALSH. Thank you, sir.

    Mr. Cunningham.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I talked to staff and I thought, you know, it sounds like a pretty good idea, but listening to CRS, if you work out some of those problems, I think most of us would support the kind of work that you want to do. It is much like the sunshine bill we came up with, where people ought to have access to come in and see our hearings, that they are open to the public and we can film them and those kinds of things. So I think that openess is good. I do have a little concern, too, because I know each of us sometimes when we are actually for a bill in the end, as the process goes on, our language through the process may oppose the bill, just so that we can get changes so we can support it in the end. That can be taken out of context a lot of times. Those would be little concerns that I would have.

    I think that because people that read a report may not always understand the process we go through. Otherwise, I think it is probably a pretty good idea. If you can work it out with CRS, I would like to take a look at it.

    Mr. PRICE. We certainly intend to do that. We are open to suggestions as to how we might achieve our purposes.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Any time we can open up this place, it is good.

    Mr. PRICE. I think so, too. Of course, there is widespread availability now where we have already adapted in many ways, with C–SPAN and with, of course, the widespread availability of committee prints, and of CRS reports. The Thomas innovation is a huge step forward. I believe this follows logically upon that. I think the kinds of protections for CRS' confidential role and for their constitutional role as an adviser to the Congress—I am confident those protections can be provided.
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    Mr. WALSH. Thank you.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. PRICE. Thank you very much.

    Mr. SERRANO. Thank you.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1998.

Outside Witnesses

WITNESS

PATRICIA WAND, UNIVERSITY LIBRARIAN, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

    Mr. WALSH. Since we don't have any other Members here yet, we will go with the outside witnesses, and first would be Patricia Wand, representing the American Library Association, American Association of Law Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries. It is quite a portfolio.

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    Welcome.

    Ms. WAND. Thank you. I am Patricia Wand, University Librarian at American University. If I may digress for one moment, I would like to congratulate you on being one of the few returned Peace Corps volunteers who has been elected to Congress.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you.

    Ms. WAND. I, too, am a returned Peace Corps volunteer and I am not surprised to see you leading a committee like this.

    Mr. WALSH. We are everywhere.

    Ms. WAND. It is a wonderful group to be among.

    Mr. WALSH. It sure is.

    Ms. WAND. We have all been sensitized to many of the issues that this subcommittee, for example, faces with the information dissemination with the oversight of——

    Mr. WALSH. That is true. Where did you serve?

    Ms. WAND. In Colombia, 1963 to 1965.

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    Mr. WALSH. That is where I thought I would go. Since my major was in history, South American history, primarily, and I spoke Spanish and they sent me to Nepal.

    Ms. WAND. So now you have loyalties in two continents.

    Mr. WALSH. It is good to have an RPCV with us this morning.

    Mr. SERRANO. I was born in Puerto Rico and the Army sent me to Alaska.

    Ms. WAND. You have adjusted to two climates.

    I am appearing today on behalf of the Nation's leading library associations, and I certainly appreciate the opportunity to speak to this subcommittee that has a long history of support for the Library of Congress. I would like, first, to speak about the Library of Congress requests in the budget.

    Since the beginning of this decade, we have witnessed an extraordinary occurrence with the development of the World Wide Web and the adoption of the Internet by millions of individuals across the globe. Here in the United States, the growing acceptance of these media signal a fundamental shift in the way we communicate, educate, and, indeed, go about the democratic process.

    Libraries have and will continue to play a pivotal role in creating and maintaining long-term access to these communication channels and to the content that flows through them. We engage in these efforts to ensure that all sectors benefit from their resources, and that, importantly, the content is available for the future generations as well as the current generations. That is a real concern, the preservation of information in electronic formats.
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    The Library of Congress, with other libraries across the country, invests in new technologies to promote access to a diverse array of information resources to the public. Managing the transformation from primarily print collections to a print and electronic-based environment requires continued and sustained investments in acquisitions, technology and human resources.

    I thank you personally, this subcommittee, on behalf of my library colleagues, for the continued financial support you have given to the Library of Congress. Your support has enabled it to leverage all of its resources, public and private, to develop the fine technologically advanced programs it has initiated. One of the most outstanding examples of this is the National Digital Library, to which the Library of Congress has lent absolutely essential leadership.

    The Library of Congress fiscal year 1999 budget request of $369.3 million positions the Library to realize the benefits of the digital environment, while it attempts to maintain the traditional programs and services upon which we all depend. We enthusiastically support the Library's request for the fiscal year 1999 funding for the automation projects, including new computer work stations and equipment, computer security, preparing for the year 2000 improvements, and more. These requests individually and collectively will permit the Library to move ahead in a more effective and efficient manner.

    Of particular interest to our association members are several other programs, such as the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, a critically important service to the Nation. We support the minimum request to purchase 56,000 cassette book machines, and to add an additional 5,000 cassette book machines in order to meet the increasing demands.
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    The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped last year delivered 23 million items to people who need access to information. We urge your full support for the Law Library's fiscal year 1999 budget request of $6.7 million. Since 1992, the Law Library has lost 10 FTE positions, and this request would replace eight of those for badly needed reference and research service. In addition, the requests include $340,201 to support the Law Library's automation projects, such as the Global Legal Information Network. The American Folklife Center and its archive of folk culture undertakes an important role in preserving and presenting American folklife. We strongly endorse the permanent reauthorization of the American Folklife Center. This would permit the Library and the Folklife Center to establish priorities for collections and to increase their fund-raising activities.

    For several years, the Library of Congress has been engaged in evaluating a host of security issues around its collection, the facilities, and importantly, for staff and visitors as well. We support the Library's request for approximately $2.5 million to improve its security systems. We also support the security requests for the Library that are included in the Architect of the Capitol budget request.

    In closing, Mr. Chairman, as we approach the millennium, we should work to ensure that the public benefits from our Nation's cultural resources, as well as for the global information resources that the Library acquires. Funding to assist the Library in strengthening its infrastructure is a key step in meeting this important goal.

    Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. The library associations look forward to working with this subcommittee. We very much appreciate your continuing support for the Library and its programs.
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    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much for your very thoughtful testimony. This subcommittee has traditionally been a very strong supporter of the Library of Congress and rightly so. It is our most valuable information resource, and we will do our best to make sure it is funded properly and that we provide the resources for them to meet their needs and goals.

    Are there any questions of the witness, Mr. Serrano?

    Mr. SERRANO. No, just reinforcing your statement, Mr. Chairman, both sides are committed to doing the right thing here. We are very happy that you have come to join us in support of those requests, because I certainly believe in them and I know the Chairman does. We are doing the best we can to make sure we are doing our part.

    Ms. WAND. We certainly acknowledge and appreciate them. The programs of the Library of Congress are essential to the libraries of this Nation today and, of course, in the future, as well, and the dilemma that the Library of Congress faces is one very similar to that we all face, which is this very important dual track of information storage and retrieval. We are maintaining the print collections at the same time that we are adding on, overlayering, if you will, the electronic resources. It is a very expensive proposition, as you know.

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    Mr. WALSH. It is, but essential.

    Ms. WAND. Essential.

    Mr. WALSH. Mr. Wamp?

    Mr. WAMP. No, thank you.

    Mr. WALSH. Mr. Cunningham has just joined us. Would you like to ask any questions of the witness, Mr. Cunningham?

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. No. I will pass. I have seen the questions that you had. We had another meeting this morning.

    Mr. WALSH. I understand. Everyone is busy this time of year with hearings. I have three different hearings right now.

    Okay. Thank you very, very much for your testimony. We appreciate your advocacy for libraries.

    Ms. WAND. All right. I would like to take another few minutes and talk about the Government Printing Office.

    Mr. WALSH. Okay.

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    Ms. WAND. Our associations also support the FY—the public printer's fiscal year 1999 request of $30.2 million for the Superintendent of Documents' salary and expenses appropriation. Users of government information and librarians in the Nation's 1,368 depository libraries thank you for funding the Federal Depository Library Program. This is a unique program that is one of the most effective, efficient, and successful partnerships between the Federal Government and the American public.

    Your constituents have equitable, efficient, and no-fee access to Federal Government information created by their tax dollars, and they increasingly, as well, rely upon the GOP Access program for its services and access to electronic information. We commend the Government Printing Office for its continued commitment to develop GPO Access.

    Currently, GPO Access has 70 databases from all three branches of government. Usage of GPO Access has grown exponentially since we met with this committee last year. For example, in less than 2 years, on-line searches have increased nearly 1,200 percent, and retrievals of information; that is, actual documents downloaded by the public, have increased 319 percent. If we look at a snapshot of October of 1995 and October of 1997, usage of GOP access increased tenfold.

    In addition, we applaud new programs that the GOP Printing Office is pursuing to make it easier for the public to locate, find, and use electronic information and to ensure that it will be permanently available for ongoing and future use.

    We fully support the three-way partnerships initiated by the Superintendent of Documents in which a library enters into a formal agreement to provide permanent public access to specific electronic collections. This is absolutely essential, that we look to permanent public access of electronic information. Without moving in these directions, important electronic information will continue to be lost daily as files appear and disappear from agency web sites and computer services.
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    The success of GPO Access cannot be measured without acknowledging the substantial cost that depository libraries expend in order to provide your constituents with access to government information in both print and electronic formats. These costs include providing highly-trained staff, adequate space, necessary additional materials, costly equipment, and Internet connections.

    For example, in 1997, California State Library spent over $800,000 just for the Government Publications Section, and that is to support their participation in the Federal Depository Library Program.

    We reiterate the concerns we expressed before this subcommittee last year about limiting the distribution of print titles of core historical materials, such as the bound Congressional Record and the bound U.S. Congressional Serial Set.

    Relying solely on electronic versions at this time do not meet necessary preservation standards. The American Library Association and the American Association of Law Libraries have formally expressed concern over the impact of this decision on permanent public access to the record of this Congress.

    Mr. Chairman, I ask that an article appearing in the February 16th issue of the U.S. News and World Report—the article is titled ''Whoops, There Goes Another CD–ROM''—be added as an attachment to our long statement. This timely article expresses our vital concern about relying on electronic formats for such historically important documents as the Congressional Record and the Congressional Serial Set.
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    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    The article, in fact, states, and I quote, ''Future generations will be fortunate if they get a chance to view the records of the current Congress.'' An accompanying chart in the article documents that acid-free paper has a storage life of 500 years, that has been tested, as compared to CD–ROMs that have an unreliable and drastically shorter life of 5 to 50 years.

    Truly, gentlemen, this is a time when we cannot afford to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. We must preserve the records of Congress for our future generations. If we don't do it in acid-free paper at this point, we have no other alternative that measures up to that in terms of the record.

    As Congress geared up to revise Title 44 a year ago, ALA established an interassociation working group on government information policy that includes representatives from our library organizations. The working group has developed a legislative proposal that would extend the definition of government information explicitly to electronic resources. It would close some loopholes in the law. It would provide incentives for agencies to participate in the program, and it would ensure the preservation and permanent access of electronic government information.

    As discussions to amend Title 44 continue, it is imperative that the Superintendent of Documents' salaries and expenses appropriation be fully funded in order to continue the steady and significant progress made to move the Federal Depository Library Program to a more electronic program.
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    Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today and to speak on behalf of the library associations and Federal Depository Library Program.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you. I think you would be interested to know that we are about to reprogram an additional $79,000 to the Government Printing Office at Mr. DiMario's request for additional bound copies of the Congressional Record.

    Ms. WAND. Wonderful. Do you know whether this will mean that all the depository libraries will be able to receive their copies as they have historically, up until 4 years ago?

    Mr. WALSH. Staff advises me that this would cover the regional libraries, and that the Government Printing Office would then take a look at resources that they have within their current budgets to see if they can help the other libraries.

    Ms. WAND. That is the best news I have heard in a long time.

    Mr. WALSH. Good. Are there any other questions?

    Mr. Cunningham.

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    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. There was something that disturbed me that I was not aware of; I didn't realize that a CD–ROM was only good from 5 to 50 years. I have done a lot of lithographs and I know that the acid-free paper does last, but also ink goes away, so we sign those things in graphite, in pencil, instead of pen.

    Is there permanent ink that does not go away after a certain period of time, so we have those documented? Because I know the value of electronic equipment just for space, but is there any research into looking into saving those things electronically? You could take your Law Library and you could burn it and we could start over and be much better, I think. I'm kidding.

    Ms. WAND. There is research going on in this issue. But the conclusion at this point in time is that preserving on acid-free paper is the most reliable long-term storage media.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Do they use pen or pencil?

    Ms. WAND. Print.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. We have a Federal depository in California State University-San Marcos in my district, and they are just getting it started. They are ecstatic about it. They had a group of people come in and see the different offerings that we have.

    But just besides the Library here, one of the focuses in education that we had that was a bipartisan bill, called the 21st Century Classrooms Act, where we encourage private enterprise invest in computers and they give them to the schools. In some cases the schools were having to throw them away because they didn't have the upgraded software and they couldn't use the computer. So we have a corporation called Detweiler Foundation that receives the computer from industry, so they get an expanded tax write off for the business. So the business buys a new computer. Detweiler takes the newly donated computer, they then use prison labor and military brig labor to upgrade it so they learn a skill, and then it goes to the school. We are going to try and do the same thing with our public high schools and public libraries, so people have more access.
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    In the welfare bill there is not enough money for training for people, so where do they go? It is the libraries. That is one of the areas that we want work in and to help as much as we can, not just here in Washington, D.C. But I think it is fantastic, what you are doing.

    Ms. WAND. Thank you. It sounds like you have a wonderful model program going that might be emulated in other places.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. The Detweiler Computers for Schools program is in 21 States now and they are expanding. The President signed it, Bill Archer in the Committee on Ways and Means put it through, so we have a tax break for it. We had offsets for it. It is really doing well.

    Ms. WAND. Congratulations.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. One last comment. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman.

    I worked on the special education bill when I was Chairman in education. I visited down, not even in my district, but in San Diego in an area where they have special education children and physically handicapped working. There is a gentleman there that was totally nonsighted, but uses a voice-activated computer. I would like to see more of that. I know it is expensive, but I would like to see more of that software and technology to come into it, because I have a lady named Holly Caudill who was paralyzed in a car accident when she was 18. She works full-time, but all of her income goes just to take care of her physical needs, and something like this, with the technology, really helps those people. They don't want to be on welfare; they want to work, but we need to help them. So anything you can do in this particular area for the physically handicapped——
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    Ms. WAND. Adaptive technology is phenomenal.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much.

     

WITNESS

JANET S. ZAGORIN, CHAIRMAN, STANDING COMMITTEE ON THE LAW LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION

    Mr. WALSH. Next is Janet S. Zagorin, Chair of the Standing Committee on the Law Library of Congress, the American Bar Association. Welcome.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Strike my comment about burning the Law Library.

    Ms. ZAGORIN. Thank you. I brought my lawyer.

    Mr. WALSH. The horse has left the proverbial barn on that one.

    Ms. ZAGORIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also have the privilege of being accompanied by former Congressman Orton, who is a member of my committee of the ABA.

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    Mr. WALSH. Glad to have you back with us.

    Ms. ZAGORIN. On behalf of the ABA, I really want to thank you for letting us speak. I don't want to reiterate my testimony. I would ask that you would put it into the record.

    Mr. WALSH. We have your testimony and we will put it in the record. If you would summarize, it would be terrific.

    Ms. ZAGORIN. As you know, the ABA has established this committee because we wanted to support the Law Library, not for the private bar, but because we think it is an essential institution of the United States for the citizenry, not just of the United States, but in today's world for the global world.

    I don't think there is any institution in the United States that at this moment in time is more important in terms of expressing the United States' commitment to the rule of law. If you come to the Law Library, if you work with the Law Library as it serves Congress or any of our citizens, our scholars, our students, you know what a role model it has been for other jurisdictions in the world, particularly in the emerging markets, who look to us for our jurisprudence to be an example as to how to draft their laws, and what democracy really looks like.

    If you look at it just on that level, we at the ABA think it is an incredibly cost-effective way of expressing democracy to the world. It also says something about our openness. We have had a lot of comments this morning about the openness of the United States and what is available. Congress is looked on with awe. If you travel around the world, in Latin America, in Asia, in the former Soviet Union, they see the fact that our Nation supports a Law Library, that our laws are available on the Internet, also any citizen of the world can access our materials going all the way back, and we hope way into the future. It is much more effective almost than anything else that I can think of. I would really hope that we would not ignore that point when we are thinking about appropriations.
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    Now, our budget has been flat in the Law Library and the Library of Congress, and we understand the need for keeping track of the budget and cutting the budget. We think it has been cut as much as possible, and what our goal is, what my goal is, in talking to you this morning is to make another point. That is that there are two industries in the United States that we think are the preeminent exports to the surrounding world and that is our technology and information.

    The Law Library is certainly involved in both of those. The access to information that we think is provided, you have already heard other Members of the House talk about access through the Internet. We think that the ability to provide those resources on line through the Internet, through a variety of technological innovations—we have agreements with NASA, the World Bank, the United Nations. If they loan money, they have to use the Law Library of Congress as global information network. We are helping, right now, 20 countries around the world put their statutes on line.

    We think you will be able to cut money in other areas of the government and in other areas where there has been duplication. But as to the Web site, there are hundreds of—we are linking to the private sector as well as government sites around the world, and we think that the Library of Congress helps businesses in the United States become more competitive because they have access to that information.

    It has already been stated, but I think it is worth stating again. If you look at our newly remodeled Law Library, very close to the Capitol, the treasures of the Law Library, you are able to see from the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, with Franklin's notes in the margin, to Jefferson, to the civil rights laws to the immigration laws. Those are the treasures of the United States. We really think that the Law Library has got to be preserved so that as we go into the next century we will have those treasures for our citizens.
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    There is just the cost of conversion to technology, and we have to maintain our reference collection as the preeminent law collection in the world. Thank you again for the comments that you have already made about the Library, but we really hope that you will seriously consider this. We need to maintain the Library in its present condition.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much for your testimony. It is very straightforward and clear, and important. We agree with you on the importance of maintaining all of our libraries and in particular our law libraries. This nation is founded upon law. I think we among nations live by the rule of law, although we all have our questions about certain laws. That is very normal. But we are only as good as those laws, too. So I think you will have that commitment from the subcommittee to continue that support.

    Mr. Serrano.

    Mr. SERRANO. Sign me up.

    Ms. ZAGORIN. I am.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I have a practical question. I was dean of a college out in California, and one of the problems when they had to get the accreditation for the law school at the university, was that they had to have a complete law library at the university, which is, you know, $1 or $2 million. They were having trouble with that cost.
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    Is there any look by the ABA in working with accreditation of schools to where, in this electronic age, we may diminish the requirement for each school to have that monumental paper law library? I know there was one of the historically black universities that was having problems with accreditation because they didn't have enough of a library. The avability of electronic documents would enhance that library, without demanding great costs. I don't know if there is any move afoot to work with the availability of electronic law collections, rather the paper ones.

    Ms. ZAGORIN. Congressman, I don't serve on the ABA's accreditation committee, but I would be happy to look into it for you. I do think that in the ABA as a whole and in the law library profession as a whole, there certainly is a movement now towards making sure that people have access to the information. Access is different than actually having all of it.

    I can't really answer that question in, I think, a credible manner, but I will certainly find out for you.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. If you have access, say, to a book that has a certain law in it, and you have 100 percent access to it via the Internet, why do you have a requirement to force the university to have that monumental library, which prevents them from getting accreditation? It would be a good thing to look at, and I think it would be helpful.

    Ms. ZAGORIN. The ABA does have a link to the Library of Congress' and the Law Library of Congress' web site. In fact, the ABA, in fact, provides one of its publications to that Web site, so if you log on through LC, you can get that.
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    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Maybe some of that $2 billion in the tobacco settlement that lawyers reaped could go to the library.

    Mr. WALSH. The two lawyers in my family will not comment on that.

    Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Did they get any tobacco?

    Mr. WALSH. No, they don't smoke.

    Thank you very much for your testimony.

    Ms. ZAGORIN. Thank you very much for your time.

    [The committee has received the following information:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

WITNESSES

JOEL STERN, AFSCME, LOCAL 2477

CHRISTINE SCHOLLENBERGER, AFSCME LOCAL 2910

DENNIS M. ROTH, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION
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    Mr. WALSH. Our next witnesses—actually we have three. We would like them all to come to the table at the same time if they would, in a panel. Those are the representatives of the bargaining units, members of organized labor, Joel Stern, AFSCME Local 2477, the Library of Congress; Christine Schollenberger, AFSCME Local 2910, Library of Congress; and Dennis Roth, Congressional Research Employees Association, Congressional Research Service.

    Welcome. We will proceed, and I think we will wait until there are about 2 minutes left on the vote and we will go up to vote, come back, and I will finish hearing your testimony and complete the questions.

    Mr. Stern is first on my list. Would you like to proceed?

    Mr. STERN. Thank you for having us, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you for your patience, by the way.

    Mr. STERN. It is a pleasure. I am Joel Stern, President of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Local 2477. My organization represents approximately 1,400 nonprofessional bargaining members in the Library of Congress.

    I am here today to give my support to the Library's budget and also to bring up a few points of difference of emphasis than what you probably heard from the Library's testimony last week. I think that the advantage to you listening to us today is that we can give you a behind-the-scenes look at some of the things that happen at the Library. The thing I want to address first, and I am going to ad lib, and you have our testimony so I will just summarize——
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    Mr. WALSH. Please feel free to summarize. We have it in the record.

    Mr. STERN. I think the Library has the strong point we gave you last week about succession planning in the Library. We have an aging work force. The average age is in the forties. We have a large number of people who have been in service for 30 or more years. A big problem that is going to be coming up in the Library in the coming years is to replace the talents and skills of the people who will be retiring and leaving the Library.

    Unfortunately, at this point, and as I have emphasized to you last year, the Library has no career development program. We feel this is a tremendous waste of existing resources in the Library and there would be particularly a much more efficient use of resources if there was such a thing.

    Once again, I will just stress that I think the Library should be training people who are already on the staff in the lower levels and bringing them up to higher levels, including people at the lower levels from the outside and bringing them in. There is a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge and skill that exists among some of the lower grades in the Library, and they could easily be brought up to speed on some of the more sophisticated tasks that need to be done.

    Secondly, in my bargaining unit we are non-professionals. We discover there are 180 employees who are on stand-alone dead-end jobs. They are going nowhere. They are mainly in lower grades. Many of them are African-Americans. We feel not only that this points to a possible discriminatory practice, but also these people's talents are being waved. If they were put into career programs, if they were reclassified so they could progress up a career ladder, they could be much more useful to the Library and also it would increase morale.
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    Last year, I brought to your attention that we have a large number of employees who are classified as deck attendants. They have to reapply for their jobs every 2 years. We discussed this last year. We have been in discussions with Library management about this in the last year. They seem to have—they are aware of this problem and I think they are going to rectify it, but they have not done so yet so I would bring that to your attention, bringing that up.

    The Library had developed in the last couple of years an internal university, which was meant to be a unified training program to the library. Unfortunately, we don't feel that the internal university is bringing out the potential that it really should. They have not centralized training in the library. There is not the kind of coordination there should be. We think you should be aware of that in terms of holding them to their promise to do that.

    Then one last thing regarding the training and talent nurturing category. Facilitative leadership is something that has been a strong topic of discussion in the last year, ever since General Scott came on board as the Deputy Librarian of Congress. He has been pushing that almost to the exclusion of all the other things. We see it as a fairly innocuous, possibly positive technique. That is not the be-all and end-all, and we think there should be a little bit of emphasis on things other than just facilitative leadership training.

    Moving on to another category, security, we second the Library's security concerns. There will be no Library of Congress if there are no collections, and those have to be maintained. We do feel that there is some emphasis on chalking up security measures that you have taken, and getting a good performance evaluation on the part of managers, without necessarily doing things that are efficient and necessary to be done.
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    That includes things like locking doors in employee areas, which you can say you have locked a door, but it doesn't necessarily provide any good purpose. We think there is a lot of frenetic activity about security, and there ought to be more concentration on what really works and what doesn't.

    Another security concern is that a number of employees have been assaulted outside the Library of Congress. There is crime on Capitol Hill, which I am sure you are aware of. We feel the Library is not providing the kind of security for employees, and as well, for Congressmen and their staff members around the buildings.

    I am aware of approximately seven employees in the last 2 years who have been assaulted, actually on the same block as the Library of Congress buildings. There needs to be more attention to physical security around the buildings. That would be lighting, posting more police on the beats around the buildings, things of that nature.

    Finally, in the security area, we understand that the Inspector General has had the security function and investigation function transferred out of his office, and we feel that compromises the independence of investigations in the Library of Congress. I believe and my organization believes that the Inspector General should have an independent investigative apparatus.

    Moving to automation, we fully support the Library's integrated library system. We can't say anything but positive comments about that. Without the integrated library system the Library will become a dinosaur, as I said last year. We thank you for providing the funds for that and we hope that you will be able to continue to do so.
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    On the other hand, the National Digital Library, which a number of witnesses have spoken about, we believe is not quite as important an initiative. It has a lot of public appeal. The World Wide Web is a big thing, and it is important for us, of course, to have a Web site out there. But just because you get a million hits on a Web site doesn't mean that people are actually getting important information. In fact, you can have the same person hitting the Web site 10 times. What does that do to your figures?

    It is also impossible to put the resources in the Library of Congress, all of them—there is a vast diversity of things in the collection—onto the World Wide Web. Therefore we feel that the initiative should be continued, but the emphasis should be on providing support for the backbone services that the Library has always presented to the public; that is, traditional librarianship, making the hard copy pieces of the Library's collection available to the public.

    I would like to move on to second what Congressman Blumenauer and Congresswoman Morella were both saying about Metro fare subsidies. We are also members of the legislative branch, and we also feel a Metro fare subsidy would be beneficial to our employees, as well as helping to cut down on traffic congestion in the Washington area. We also have very limited parking for our employees, so it would be an added benefit.

    Last year, we reported to you that the Library was beginning to discuss alternative discipline, to cut down the high rate of disciplinary actions that were taken in the Library in the last few years. I would like to report that this is underway and we are optimistic about where that initiative is going.
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    In the last couple of years, there has been some controversy about the Library's photoduplication service. A couple of years ago, there was an initiative to contract that out. It was found it was not efficient to contract out photo duplication service. However, we feel that at this point the Library lacks the initiative to make the photo duplication service what it should be.

    We have approximately 100 employees who work there. We feel that the photoduplication service can be really a cutting edge branch of the Library in terms of getting a pictorial and other resources of the Library available to the public. It should be working really like a private sector stock agency. If anything, the Library is probably the finest stock agency in the world, and we certainly support efforts to make it more—make that material more available to the public.

    I have a list here of positions in photoduplication which the division itself would like to fill, but which for some reason are meeting a stone wall and are not getting filled. I can develop that further if you are interested.

    Finally, I would just like to make a comment about the Library's constant reorganization. I think since the Library of Congress has come under Dr. Billington—I think he came in 1987—the Library has been in a constant state of reorganization, and a lot of employees are wondering when is this going to end, when are we going to settle down and be able to get down to our jobs. It causes a good deal of demoralization, and we feel that particularly for nonprofessional employees, there is not a whole lot in it except a merry-go-round of changing seats and organizational roles.
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    That concludes my testimony.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much. You have covered a lot of ground. Why don't we take our break now, and then we will return to the other witnesses. We will be right back.

    [Recess.]

    Mr. WALSH. All right. We will continue. It is 10:20.

    Christine Schollenberger.

    Ms. SCHOLLENBERGER. I am the President of AFSCME Local 2910. I am here today with Saul Schniderman, who stepped out, who is our Chief Steward in the Copyright Office; and Mr. Kent Dunlap, who is our Chief Negotiator, and he is in the General Counsel's Office of the Copyright Office. In my other life I was a cataloguer for many years.

    Our organization represents the librarians who work in reference, cataloguers, acquisitions. We also represent the automation people, computer specialists. We represent attorneys in the Copyright Office and Law Library. We represent the nurses in the Copyright Office. We represent, I would say, someone probably in every field.
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    Our members are generally GS–7 to GS–15, as long as they are nonsupervisory. We have a very talented bargaining unit, and I get a lot of help in doing my job.

    Once again, we want to thank you for your willingness to support the programs for the Library of Congress. This past year was notable for us in that after going through 4 years, we finally concluded bargaining a new contract. Unless I missed something, however, nowhere did I notice in the Librarian's testimony the other day that he addressed the subject of labor relations.

    With that, I want to bring to everyone's attention that the bargaining of a new contract is not an end, the bargaining of a new contract is a beginning. It is up to the parties to get together to bring that contract to life and make it live and breathe. Then it truly becomes a document where the sides can work together.

    I do not have as dismal perhaps a view of facilitative leadership as some of my colleagues do. We have had a lot of training. I appreciate the effort General Scott has brought forward to try to introduce something and train something that everybody has been doing, and it is a little bit like a labor contract.

    If people know what the rules are to meet and for decision-making, maybe we can finally get on course where management and labor can work together to solve some big problems, rather than running around with a Band-Aid approach or putting out brush fires all day. If we share the same lingo and the same skills, maybe we can accomplish this.

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    I can assure you, however, we still have to file grievances. We still file our unfair labor practices, but I think that is the nature of the relationship.

    I was very interested in your interest and concern in the arrearage at the Library. Of course, we are very interested in that, too. With the ILS looming over us, we are concerned, how are we going to do the everyday work? I was having a discussion with one of our colleagues who is an archivist, and it was very interesting. She said that all institutions are going to have arrearages. They just don't like to admit it.

    The best option that we have in a situation like that is a manageable arrearage, which an archivist would probably define in an average organization as maybe a year's amount of work in an area. The Library of Congress is much larger.

    The other thing she pointed out which I wanted to share with you is that we are now collecting the papers and records of 20th Century people in organizations. Quite simply, paper became accessible and paper became cheap. People started to use paper, and one of the reasons that things have grown is that the collections are voluminous in nature. There is a lot of paper. But we look forward to working on that task.

    When you asked the Librarian if he had a wish list, as far as I interpreted it, I was very proud of him because he definitely gave the right answer. We need more people and we need funding for people. Winston Tabb is the Associate Librarian and I know he has 31 positions, give or take, which I know are important for the succession planning, and some are crucial for us to continue to do our jobs.

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    However, while we need these new positions, I would echo Mr. Stern's concern that we need better utilization from people within. We need more promotion opportunities and leadership opportunities for the people who are working there. My bargaining unit is not going to be real happy if you go out and hire some people who are at a higher grade and bring them in, and you expect us to pass on our expertise. That does not make for a happy mix in the workplace.

    In addition, I think we need continued flexibility. A lot of the work that was done on the arrearage was done quite simply at night, a lot was done on Saturday. It was done in allowing employees to have flexible work schedules. These became conditions of employment. I think we have to keep that in mind and make this a real condition. We can no longer pay people that much. Sometimes you have to give some more things. I think flexibility in the workplace is important, especially for so many of our employees who don't necessarily work with the public.

    I think you will note that our printed testimony virtually supports the Library entirely except for two exceptions, one of which is the proposed security plan. I think it speaks for itself. I would like to zero in, however, and play piggyback on Joel, that with the passage of the District of Columbia Police Coordination Act of 1997, this enlarges the potential jurisdiction of the Library of Congress police, and I understand what this does further. It allows relationships to develop between say the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police.

    With the closing of the doors at the Library, okay, this is something that has been crucial, because there is no longer a police presence. Say over on the avenue next where you are walking, there used to be a door open and people would walk out into that neighborhood. There would be a police presence there, because there would be police at the doors. That is no longer there. We have requested the Library to look into this, and they have been silent on the issue. I echo the fact that I understand at least seven people have been mugged in that area in the last year.
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    The second exception that I have is with providing any additional funding for the GLIN project in the Law Library. Again, I believe our testimony speaks for itself. We support the finding 100 percent for the additional reference positions and technical support.

    Our people have been working 60-hour weeks. They have someone there at night when you are in session. They have been working on a very, very small staff with rotations, and they have had a lot of overtime. We are 100 percent behind that. We do have some questions about the GLIN project at this time. Again, I think our testimony speaks for itself.

    Thank you again for this opportunity and I am here to answer any additional questions.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much.

    Next, Mr. Roth, CRS.

    Mr. ROTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I should also declare my RPCV status. I think we talked about this last year.

    Mr. WALSH. Yes, we did.

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    Mr. ROTH. I was in the Philippines from 1968 to 1970.

    Mr. WALSH. I was in the Philippines on the way to Nepal. We were in Sinaloa, the International Rights Institute in Laguna Province. We were there in July, I think, July of 1970 on our way to Nepal.

    Mr. ROTH. I was just leaving the country in July, so maybe in Manila we saw each other. Planes were coming and going.

    Mr. WALSH. Good to have you with us.

    Mr. ROTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Serrano. My name is Dennis Roth. I am President of the Congressional Research Employees Association at the Library of Congress, representing over 400 members and over 600 bargaining unit employees. Along with me today are our two Vice Presidents, Angela Smith, our Vice President for Training and Liaison, and Mr. Jonathan Contrubis, Vice President for Policy and Dispute Settlement.

    We are proud that we are able to maintain our membership rate of between 65 and 70 percent. As you know, in the Federal sector it is a voluntary joining. It is not mandatory, and to keep that rate is pretty good.

    I, too, will try to summarize my testimony, since you already have the written document. I guess our major concern is that even after years of the Library being told to do better in terms of its overall management, which I call the internal infrastructure, it still does not seem to function very well.
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    We know that Congress does not like to micromanage any of its agencies. We are not asking you to micromanage. But I think we are asking you to maybe make it do what it does better. We are not under GPRA, so we don't look at what we are doing and how well we are doing it. When the unions try to do this, when we get things to negotiate, we say, this program is geared to deal with this problem and hopes to come up with this solution. We ask, can you tell us, give us the data, how much money have you spent, who has participated in it, and what has been the results? We can't get those kinds of data. So we get frustrated in trying to come up with different programs, better programs, or support the program that is already on the books. It is very frustrating. It really prolongs our negotiations.

    Also, we have extreme difficulty in bringing the Library into the 19th Century, let alone the 20th Century in terms of labor relations. It is still the old adversarial relationship when we sit down at the table. There is a new form of bargaining that has been tried, interest-based bargaining. I have participated in it many times. I have been an advocate of it. We have asked the Library to try it. We even had people from the Department of Defense, who are really pushing it, come and give some training. But to date, we can't do it, so we are engaged in this type of collective bargaining that takes longer than it should. It gets acrimonious, and it is just not a good way of doing business.

    Yet, I think the unions are told, well, we can't get anything done in the Library because we have to negotiate with the unions. It is not the union's desire to make things take as long as they do. It is the form, and then we also have problems in getting responses. As I note in my testimony, we are in master contract negotiations right now. We gave the Library proposals on a new performance evaluation system for our staff for staff recognition and for upward mobility last June. They still haven't been able to come back with a counterproposal on those issues.
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    We strongly believe that it is because they are not putting the time into it that would be required. If we were serious about labor relations, we could probably take a month, maybe 6 weeks off face to face and probably wrap this whole thing up. Instead, we are into the beginning of year 3 now with our negotiations. We meet twice a week 3 hours at a time. To deal with a contract that has over 50 articles in it, you could imagine what progress you will make in such short time frames. This is not at our behalf. We wanted to meet 3 days a week full-time, but the best we can get out of management was the twice a week, 3 hours at a time.

    In our analysis of the Library, we have identified four interrelated problems that hinder us from moving forward. First, there is a stronger resistance to change unless they have come up with it. If staff come up with the ideas, it is ''why,'' and they find ways of not doing it. If there is a roadblock—if you want to do something, you say, okay, that is a roadblock, how can we get around it.

    When we deal with something in the Library that is a roadblock, they say we can't go any further, come back with something totally different. It is a totally sort of negative approach to these types of issues. There is an inability to come to closure quickly on most issues.

    I mentioned the issue of our master contract. We are also trying to do an affirmative employment program. We gave the Library a counterproposal late last year and we are still trying to wait for, again, a response. When it gets back, I don't know where it goes when it gets to management's level, but it seems to churn somewhere on the sixth floor of the Library forever and a day. We ask directly what is going on, but it just doesn't happen.
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    I already mentioned that the Library has not and cannot determine if the human resource programs and policies it employs accomplish what they are set out to accomplish. For another example, in the affirmative action employment program we have a tuition support element of this. The whole concept is to give people training so they can make job transitions into new areas. We asked for data on this. It is probably the highest funded part of the affirmative employment program. Yet, nobody knows if it was successful. In our counterproposal we tried to have something that would demonstrate and make it more successful.

    Fourth, the Library often fails to conduct long-run planning before it implements various programs. I notice in the Librarian's plan—I think he talked about this Library of Congress strategic plan. This is a sixth floor plan. This is nothing that the staff have been really briefed in. We have not had general meetings, and the staff—this is just something to put perhaps under the bird cages, if we had any in the Library, because they have not taken the effort to convince us or to work with us on where we want to go over the next 10 years. It is frustrating for us and it must be frustrating for them, because you can't move in unison towards a common goal.

    The point of facilitative leadership is to bring decision-making down to the lowest level possible; i.e., empowerment of staff. In CRS we have not seen the bringing down of that level to empowerment. If we are going to spend all this money on training for these various issues, then it should become a modus operandi and not another buzz word that, who knows, 10 years there from now there may be a new thing.

    We have been through consultative management. We have been through diversity, through partners in change. It is not for lack of trying, it is just that the leadership at the top is not making it happen. The staff do want to see change. They do want to get the empowerment, but we are not moving in that direction.
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    Let me now move more directly to address the CRS budget. We do strongly support his request for the mandatories, the succession initiative, with certain modifications, and the funding of price level increases. We need full-funded mandatory personnel costs just to maintain the staff that we already have.

    As I walk through the divisions, because I strongly believe in shop floor management, I talk to the people who are working for you, the Congress, and many are getting burnt out. We are told to work smarter and harder, but I think we are working as smart as we can, and now the drums just get faster and faster, because there is not enough staff to do everything which you are asking us to do.

    For this reason, we differ with the Director's decision to fill a lot of the high-level management positions, particularly those assistant chief positions in our research divisions. We need the analysts, the technicians, the clerical help to answer the requests directly to you first. We have in the past and we can in the future fill these management positions by rotating our own staff into it on a temporary basis. We don't lose as much. With the money that we have, we really need to fill positions that directly respond to the Congress.

    We also have, I think for an organization of our nature, too many people in a supervisory and management position. I did a calculation this week based on our phone book that just came out, which is sort of our organizational chart. We have a ratio of 4.7 employees to every manager. So that is five employees per one manager or supervisor. That is not across all—each division is a little different. Some are much better, but obviously some are pretty poor if we come up with an average for the total service——
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    Mr. WALSH. That is at CRS?

    Mr. ROTH. Yes. We think that needs to be dealt with. We need more direct service people to the Congress.

    We also think we need to recruit better. CRS for a long time has been managed by white males, even though there has been a large effort to go out and recruit people to fill positions otherwise. They have been sending out two of the top level people in the organization, the Deputy Director and the Associate Director for Research and Technology, to do a lot of the recruiting. Yet, when we talk to the Director about why is it that we can't get people into senior level positions of a more diversified background for race and sex, he tells us that the people that are being recruited don't make it into the interview panel. They do get them to apply for positions, but when they are rated, they don't make it into the panel for those people who can be considered for the positions.

    So something is wrong here. This is the other case where they need to go back and say, we need to stop this type of recruiting and figure out what it is that doesn't allow us to capture these people where they really need to be, so we can deal with some of our problems in diversity.

    Regarding the succession initiative, based on what I told you earlier, we support it wholeheartedly. However, as Joel had talked about, the difference between the CRS—we also want some internal upward mobility. We have staff in other positions who have gone on and gotten degrees, or who could receive training. That could be a good start for this succession initiative. We don't need to just search on the outside all the time for employees.
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    Therefore, we would ask you to maybe put some training money into the succession initiative and just not money to search for the outside.

    Mr. WALSH. Mr. Roth, I would ask you if you could wrap up. Both of us have other committee meetings we have to get to.

    Mr. ROTH. The last issue I would like to talk about would be about information technology. As we are moving in this direction, technology is a tool or a means towards an end and not an end in itself. We need to get technology that allows us to use what is out there in terms of what is developing, but at the same time not be a hindrance to us.

    I mentioned in my testimony that CD–ROM seems to be the direction, and you heard this morning about how important CD–ROMs are. Yet, we have very few CD–ROM machines in the analytical divisions. In fact, one division has one machine for 40 analysts.

    To deal with this, we also need people to help with the way we catalog and do all our information. This means people who used to deal with manila files now have to deal with electronic files, so this takes training to bring these people into the new way of doing business. We want you to feel that we can give you the best service we can, but if we just go through an electronic search and get hits—I talk to my colleagues in the Foreign Affairs Division, and when they want to talk about anything with arms in it, they get all these biology hits. Then you have to weed through it all the time. You need somebody there to do the sifting, so when you get what you ask for, you are getting it. That way we can do better for you.

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    We are short-staffed already. Imagine the frustration. We want to see what is out there to give you the best information, and then we have to weed through all this information to figure out what that information is, there. It is not an efficient way of doing business.

    That concludes the concerns I would like to raise for you.

    [The information follows:]
    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much for your testimony. Obviously, you have your fellow employees' needs in mind in your testimony. I think you have represented them very well.

    I just want to reassure you all that we are also very concerned about security and safety of employees. We want people to feel—not only to feel safe, but to be safe. This subcommittee also funds the Capitol Hill Police budget and we want to make sure that they have the resources that they need so that people not only feel safe, but indeed are safe. That is of critical importance.

    You mentioned a number of collective bargaining issues that we really won't interfere with or involve ourselves with. I would think if the library came to us and asked us to help them with an issue or two, they would probably advise us to not micromanage. But we would urge both parties, the Library and the units, to bargain in good faith to try to resolve some of these longstanding issues.
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    Certainly, this issue that Mr. Stern raised regarding employees having to recertify every 2 years is an issue that maybe we can do a little research on and try to clarify why that is. Maybe it is something we asked them to do. If it is, then we can probably clear that up. I don't know. But we would be glad to take a look at that.

    Mr. STERN. I appreciate that. Thank you.

    Mr. WALSH. Sort of the operational issues, we will just do our best, given finite resources, to fund them. I know if they have proper funding, it will be easier to meet the needs that you folks have, and your colleagues. We will do our best. That is all I can tell you.

    Mr. ROTH. If I might just add to it, you said on Mr. Stern's concern about these 2-year employees, if you recall, in 1994 there was a death at the Lincoln Memorial of an employee who was in a similar circumstance.

    OPM changed its regulations to deal with a lot of those problems. The Library, not being an executive branch agency, did not adopt those. So we are currently in master contract trying to bring those into the Library, but you may want to look at that in terms of solving a lot of the problems that we are facing.

    Mr. WALSH. We will take a look.

    Mr. Serrano.
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    Mr. SERRANO. Very briefly to echo your comments, it is in our best interests that the folks who work at the Library get fair treatment and have security, good security. There are some things that we are concerned about. In fact, I would appreciate it if you, Mr. Roth, would write to me and to the committee and let us know more about the whole issue of how people don't make it onto the panel. I was very interested in that.

    From you, Mr. Stern, the whole issue—you mentioned training. I know we spoke about different trainings. I would like for you later on—because we have this terrible conflict today of seven meetings at the same time that we all have to be at, and Mr. Walsh is Vice Chairman on another committee that he has to be at——

    Mr. WALSH. We have Secretary Glickman's decision on dairy policy that is going to dramatically affect my farmers, so I have to go.

    Mr. SERRANO [continuing]. And we have the Loretta Sanchez case on the floor right now, so I can tell you, that is exciting. But I would like for you to let the committee know in writing later what training you were referring to. You just said there is no training, and that is kind of a scary thought.

    Mr. STERN. I will be glad to.

    Mr. WALSH. Thank you all very much.

    The subcommittee hearing is completed, and let me just thank staff. This is the end of our hearing process in the first go-around. I want to thank Ed Lombard and Tom Martin, our staff, Art Jutton, Johanna Kenny, Lucy Hand and Mr. Serrano's staff. Everybody worked very, very closely together. Thank you.
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    Mr. SERRANO. Thank you.

    [CLERK'S NOTE.—House Report 105–254, the Conference Report accompanying H.R. 2209, Making Appropriations for the Legislative Branch for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 1998, and for Other Purposes, directed ''the Comptroller General of the United States, the Public Printer, the Capitol Police Board, the Clerk of the House, the Secretary of the Senate, and the Librarian of Congress, as well as the Senate Sergeant at Arms and the Architect of the Capitol to report to their respective Committees on Appropriations on a plan that would incorporate alternative fuel vehicles into their fleets consistent with their needs and requirements of the Energy Policy Act of 1992.'' The reports submitted to the House Appropriations Committee follow:]

    "The Official Committee record contains additional material here."