Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 4755) making appropriations for the Legislative Branch for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2005, and for other purposes.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise today to present the Legislative branch appropriation bill for fiscal year 2005 to the House for consideration, and I want to start by thanking not just the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), my ranking member, but I wanted to say thanks to all the subcommittee staff who have worked hard to make this bill possible: Liz Dawson, who is our Chief Clerk; Chuck Turner, our Staff Assistant; Kathy Rohan; Celia Alvarado; Tom Forhan; Tim Aiken; Bill Johnson; Heather McNatt; and Jennifer Hing.

I wanted to say to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), the ranking member, that I have enjoyed working with him and working with all the subcommittee members. We have put together I think a good bill. We have had a number of amendments, some committee debate on it, and I think the product is a better bill because of that.

It is a bipartisan bill and somewhat noncontroversial. I am not aware of any angst that Members have; although I know everybody would improve it here or there, given the opportunity.

This bill actually funds the House of Representatives and all the various support agencies, including the Capitol Hill Police, the Architect of the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the Government Printing Office and the General Accounting Office.

The bill is $2.7 billion, which does not include the Senate items; and traditionally we do not fill in the blanks for the Senate. They do not fill in the blanks for us.

The bill came in below the budget request and is basically flat, meaning that the size of it is about the same as what it was last year. It does, however, provide for the current staffing levels. It includes cost of living increases and other increases here and there for inflationary reasons. There are no deductions in force, and yet we have kept new initiatives off it and tried to defer funding on certain projects.

Overall, the bill started out with a request level of $3.1 billion, and we were able to work that down to the $2.7 billion,

My colleagues may also recall that the fiscal year 2004 bill was brought to the floor with a decrease from the 2003 levels. So the Subcommittee on Legislative of the Committee on Appropriations has done its best to practice fiscal restraint and try to keep the President's goal in mind of a 1 percent increase for nondefense and homeland security discretionary spending, and we are actually below that.

There are a number of important things in this bill, but what I might do is I see some Members are here to speak on it. At this point, I see the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), the ranking member, is here; and I will give him an opportunity to speak.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I wanted to say, Mr. Chairman, that we have a lot of good things in this bill. We had some good subcommittee-and committee-level debates and a number of amendments. One such amendment actually encourages Members of Congress to lease or use hybrid fuel-efficiency cars. This amendment was debated and offered by the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp) and successfully put on it. He is here, and he is going to address that.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to respond to my friend from California a little bit.

Number one, this, as we all know, is an appropriation bill; and the proper place to deal with a franking issue, of course, would be on an authorizing bill. I hope that our friend is taking his concerns to the proper committee, which would be the Committee on House Administration.

But I also wanted to say, in the spirit of good government, what I would like to see is Members of Congress and the institution going out into America, into the States a little bit more. As I understand it, talking to some committee chairmen, they actually use this franking privilege in their field hearings.

I sit on the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies. I used to be on the Committee on Agriculture. What is more important than our food policy out there? If we had the Committee on Agriculture going out and talking about the dairy program or the peanut program or whatever, sending out letters to people to say, come to this congressional hearing that is going to be in your neighborhood, come raise Cain with your Congressman, I think that would be a good thing.

Certainly the Committee on Ways and Means, the taxing committee, my folks down in the little briar patch that I represent would love to go out and, frankly, raise hell with everybody that writes our tax policy.

Then there is the Committee on Energy and Commerce. They control telecommunications. We passed several years ago the slamming bill. That is something that I know has affected a lot of people. If there was an opportunity for the common, everyday citizen to go to a field hearing and raise Cain about how slamming was done on their phone service, I think that would be a healthy thing.

I am not sure that a $25,000 limit would be good enough to have people come, but I think what we need is more sunshine and more public input. That is why I am hesitant to accept the $25,000 limit just on face value because I know that these notices are important. But I also know, Mr. Chairman, that the committees who use these have them signed off by the minority and the majority party and so there is a system of fairness.

Again, in terms of fiscal restraint, I want to congratulate the gentleman from California for getting an endorsement from the National Taxpayers Union, but I also want to say that this bill, we are very happy to say, is flat funding, if not a little less than last year. So we are with him at least on that angle.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. LaHood), who has come up through the ranks as a former staffer and worked very hard and continues to work hard on staff quality of life. One of the issues that we are facing, we lose lots of staff here on Capitol Hill. The gentleman from Illinois has worked tirelessly to protect the quality of life for somebody who works here.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), another distinguished member of the subcommittee who is also a former staffer, as the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. LaHood) said, and has worked on not just the issue of quality of life for staffers and the gym but also one that has to do with our security around here, the Capitol Hill police, the use of horses, among other things.

Mr. Chairman, I want to say to my friend from California, I understand he has a motion to recommit, and we will debate it a little bit more then, but I certainly think there is a lot to say about it. Again, one of our things is that the Committee on House Administration needs to be doing the authorizing on that.

Mr. Chairman, this bill does have a lot of good things in it. It includes one thing that I did not mention, that we are asking the Architect of the Capitol to contract out the management of the Capitol power plant as a private entity. We are doing that in the spirit of how can we lead the way to continue to make the Capitol a little more efficient.

We are also asking for a review of the legislative branch agencies. Some of the heads of these agencies are appointed by the President. Some have a 10-year term. Some have a 14-year term. Some have the approval of the Senate. Some have the approval of the Senate and the House. We just think that it is time to review some of these things. They have a different retirement program.

There are a lot of proposals out there. The Capitol Hill Police Chief, for example, for whom I have a lot of respect, has suggested that we build a wall around the U.S. Capitol. The gentleman from California (Mr. Farr), among others, has made sure that we have language in our bill to say that we do not want a wall around the U.S. Capitol compound. We want people to be able to get in here.

We have taken a look at everything under our jurisdiction in a very serious way and just asked the questions, can we do it better? I will submit many of the changes that we have recommended for the record.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to certainly thank the gentleman from New Jersey for bringing this up, as he has spoken to me many times about it. However, I am unable to support it at this time, but I wanted to compliment him. I understand in his district there is a popular bumper sticker that says: ``My congressman is a rocket scientist,'' and I think probably the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) and maybe the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Burns), who is our one member of the Fulbright Scholarship Alumni Association, have some of the greatest intellectual capacity of this body.

However, some background in terms of the Office of Technology Assessment. In 1995 on a bipartisan level, we eliminated it, and the belief at that time was that there were other committees that we could turn to to get technology studies and technology assessment. Some of these, for example, are the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. All of them have hundreds of people who are technically educated. And then in addition to that, there are 3,273 people at the General Accounting Office and 729 at the Congressional Research Service. We have not suffered because of the loss of technology assessment. It is perhaps true that we could rearrange some of the food on the plate and make sure that it does not get shuffled to the back burner; but if my colleagues think about it, Mr. Chairman, we actually have thousands of people out there

doing studies, and we just need to make sure that this does not fall through the cracks.

As a result of eliminating the Office of Technology Assessment, we have saved $274 million, which is serious money in tight budget times, and that is money that we can put into many other worthy causes; and, of course, that is what the debate is all about.

In terms of the specifics of the Holt amendment, it reduces the Architect's office $15 million and the printing office another $15 million; and the problem with that is in terms of the Architect, we are actually almost 13 percent below their budget request. If we did cut them an additional $15 million, it would be a 19 percent reduction, which would result in the RIF, or the reduction in force, of about 67 people, and this comes from the Architect's office; and it would slow down a number of the projects that they are working on. And goodness knows, one of the projects that we want to get finished as a committee is the Capitol Visitors Center. We want to get that done as quickly as possible. A reduction of 67 people could hurt making those deadlines.

In terms of the printing office, we have reduced this account by about 2 percent below last year's level. If we accept the Holt amendment, it would result in an additional cut of 17 percent. And these are things that have to be done anyhow, Congressional Records, bills, resolutions, amendments, hearing volumes and reports and so forth; and that is what the printing office does with that.

So with those words, Mr. Chairman, I urge Members to reject the Holt amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I want to say to my friend from Colorado that, as he knows, I always appreciate his ``let's go at it one more time and try to find some more money to reduce,'' and I have in the past supported a number of the Hefley amendments. This one, however, I find myself on the opposite side of and have to oppose.

The reason I have to oppose this, Mr. Chairman, is that we on the House control the House side. The Senate controls the Senate side. If we were to accept the Hefley amendment, this would tie one of our hands behind our back in terms of a level playing field with the Senate. This would result in a $10 million cut to the House.

One of the problems that we have as House Members is we often lose our staff to the Senate because they see bigger responsibility, bigger title, but most importantly, bigger salary, and we have to keep our salary levels up in order to maintain good people on the House side. That alone makes me say I think we have to hold off on this.

There are other reductions that would come from this bill, I think approximately $27 million total, so another $17 million would come out of the Architect and the Library of Congress and so forth. But we have already cut those from their requests, in many cases from their last year's funding level, and I am not sure we could get another $17 million out of there. If we could go back and find it, though, I would certainly support the Hefley amendment, but at this point we are not able to do so.

I want to point out one example. We are trying to privatize the power plant, which we think it would be a good thing in terms of streamlining the Office of the Architect. Things like that we are doing in the spirit of fiscal restraint, and we are going to continue on that pathway. But, unfortunately, at this time we have to reject his amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) has, in fact, been fair. We have worked out an appropriations bill that we can both live with. So this should not take an inordinate amount of time.

Mr. Chairman, as my colleagues know, there is some disagreement over the rule, and the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) I know will be addressing a consideration of the rule, but that was not a matter that was left open to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) or myself. It was an amendment that might have been added.

The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) has an amendment that he would at least like to talk about, and I think it has considerable merit, but there are a lot of things that had considerable merit that are not included within this bill.

We had a very tight, tough 302(b) allocation; and it was felt that the Congress itself has to lead by example. Our original requests were not realistic. They would have increased spending in this appropriations bill by more than 14 percent above last year's spending level; and some of the major parts of this campus, the Capitol Police, the Architect of the Capitol, et cetera, had increases that were over 30 percent this year over last year. So they were not granted.

What we have before us is basically a flat bill. It is actually a .1 percent cut below last year's level. It is probably unprecedented. Maybe somebody is going to find an appropriation bill that was actually cut below the prior year, but I am skeptical that there is such a thing. I think all of us would have liked more money for a number of components of this bill, but it is responsible, and, as far as I am concerned, it is a fair bill. It covers in full, mandatory cost increases without resorting to any layoffs or RIFs.

In terms of percentages, the Office of the Attending Physician, who does a great job, Dr. Eisold and his colleagues are terrific and often called for in crisis situations, they receive a 13.7 percent increase, well justified, but the Open World Leadership Program, which I also think is well-justified, fared the worst with a 50 percent cut.

Hopefully, we will be able to restore some of that money in conference.

Now, somewhere in between those two ends of the spectrum, all the other legislative branch agencies, the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Compliance, Government Printing Office, our own Members' Representational Allowance, they will receive considerably less than was requested, but certainly enough to carry out their primary responsibilities and missions.

The Capitol Police will be given approximately a 6 percent increase and additional flexibility to use unobligated funds from last year to cover most of their new equipment needs.

I am disappointed that this bill, though, does impose such a stiff cut to the Open World Leadership program, because it promotes democracy by bringing foreign leaders from Russia and other countries that were satellites of the Soviet Union to study our democratic institutions, something that is very much needed. And when we consider the relative costs if we do not get democracy embedded in those countries, it is substantially greater, obviously.

I am also troubled the public printer will lack the funds to modernize the functions of the Government Printing Office. But I am pleased that, despite the overall freeze, the chairman agreed, and I think we had the consensus of our subcommittee, that we should finally establish a staff fitness center. So I trust that the staff is going to be very pleased with that, and it is something that a number of us have been wanting to see go forward.

The Congress, of course, is the institution that is at the heart of this great Republic's democracy. A $2.75 billion budget is less than .15 percent of the proposed total Federal budget. It is a small price to pay for a legislative body that represents the world's greatest democracy.

So while the bill is fair, we do fall far short of what we may need to do in the future to provide for this institution's needs, the people who work here, and the people who visit here. If we attempt to continue such a tight budget in future years, and I am afraid that the same justification is going to apply, with large looming deficits for the next decade, then this institution will truly suffer.

The flat funding we have in this budget will not be sustainable. It will trigger reductions in force, it will compromise security, it will render our now current computer information systems obsolete and ineffective, and it will undermine improvements in productivity and efficiency that will subsequently drive up future maintenance costs. Popular initiatives, like digitizing the Library of Congress' collections and sharing its wealth of literary material with the public, simply will not happen.

We cannot balance the budget by freezing the legislative branch's budget. In fact, we cannot even balance the budget by freezing all of discretionary spending. So we do have some fundamental differences about our Nation's priorities, but those fall outside the scope of this committee. I am not going to dwell on them.

This year's appropriation bills mark the beginning of what in the past has been an abstract budget debate, but we are now getting into the real consequences of a budget resolution that I think is insufficient, and we are going to have to address those 302(b) allocations in the future.

Again, specifically, the legislative branch appropriation bill is a fair bill. I think it is reasonable and sustainable, at least for this year.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I will be the last speaker before we move to amendments, unless the gentleman from Georgia would like to offer some concluding remarks.

Again, I will summarize what I said earlier. It is a fair bill. I thank the gentleman from Georgia very much. I want to thank Liz Dawson of the majority staff. The Democratic staff person has been Tom Forhan, who has done an excellent job, and Tim Aiken, my legislative director.

I have got a whole list here, and I ought to mention them. Chuck Turner deserves mentioning, Kathy Rohan, Clelia Alvarado, and I have already mentioned the others, and Heather McNatt. I thank them.

Again, I want to say a word about something that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) mentioned, this business of the mounted police on the Capitol. I wholly agree with the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the chairman. I do not think this is a necessary adjunct to our Capitol Police. I think it is a strange and illogical addition, in fact, and particularly when I learned that the Capitol Police have to spend what must be a good hour driving down to the BLM property on Gunston Road. I was involved with the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) in setting that aside for the Bureau of Land Management. I am very much familiar with it. But I never imagined it would be housing horses that had to be deployed on the Capitol grounds. So they pick up the horses. They schlep the poor horses all the way back to the Capitol for a few hours, I guess, galloping around, and then they schlep them all the way back to this BLM property down in Lorton, Virginia, down Route 1. It is congested; so it is bumper to bumper. That is almost inhumane in itself, but it is certainly inefficient and a strange use of our resources. I am glad that that was eliminated.

There are a number of things that we chose not to fund, but I think in subsequent years are probably going to have to be funded. As I said, I know a .1 percent cut in the legislative branch appropriations bill is not reasonable in the long term, although we can clearly get along with it this year.

I do hope we will restore the Open World Leadership program in conference. We do have dental and vision benefits for the people who work here in the legislative branch, and that is an appropriate thing to do, and it is largely consistent with what we do with the executive branch. The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) is going to have an amendment with regard to science and technology. We do need a resource to avail ourselves of when it comes to scientific and technological issues which change every day, and we really do need a good deal of expertise to assist us in that. But he is going to have an amendment to address that issue.

With that, I think we can go on to the amendments, and I suspect shortly we will have a full complement of House Members to be able to vote.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I do rise in opposition to the amendment as well, although I share the very deep respect and warm regard for the author of the amendment.

I concede that 1 percent is not a whole lot of money in the scheme of

things, but the fact is that your own chairman has very skillfully already cut the spending in this bill.

As was said, this bill is already $395 million below what was requested, so I think we want to acknowledge and almost reward the committees when they do cut below last year's level. Imagine, it is below last year's appropriation level, and the fact is that it is as low as we can go, because if it goes any more, even a 1 percent cut will trigger reductions in our workforce.

We are also told it would compromise our plans to upgrade security, and it would slow down or cancel investments to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the legislative branch's operations.

It is based on two assumptions, which I think we are going to find are not entirely the case. One is that the large budget deficits in growth in Federal spending is the exclusive result of discretionary spending increases. That is not the case. And, two, that there is enough waste, fraud and abuse that a 1 percent cut could actually improve government efficiency. I think we are going to find that is not the case as well.

The fact is that discretionary spending is the one portion of the Federal budget that has grown the least and is subject to the greatest level of scrutiny and control by the Congress through our appropriations bills.

I have to say, we ought to be boasting about the fact that we have the most honest and professional public employee workforce in the world. I am proud of the people who toil long hours to serve our needs and ensure that this body operates efficiently and effectively. Any waste, fraud and abuse that exists is far more likely to be the result of conflicting, outdated or inconsistent Federal policies.

I cannot understand why we are spending taxpayer money on many other things that I would like us to look at, such as national roads and national forests. We encourage timber harvests and then cover the costs of the building of roads that do not necessarily have to be built and that cost the taxpayer a great deal of money. We have enormous agricultural support subsidies to any number of industries. In fact, there will be a number of programs in the next appropriations bill that we will consider, the agriculture bill, that we ought to look at, entitlement programs. But I do not think a 1 percent across-the-board cut to the workforce in the legislative branch is warranted at this time. I urge Members to reject the amendment.

I thank the gentleman from Virginia for yielding me this time, Mr. Chairman.

I rise to deal with one aspect of this bill, and that is that it does not impose, as I would like it to, a $25,000 limit on the amount of postage spent by any one committee in any one year. That would be $50,000 a Congress or $25,000 as an annual limit.

After all, in the 107th Congress, encompassing 2002 and 2001, the average amount spent by the highest-spending committee was $6,807. In fact, in looking at the entire history of this House, I cannot find an example where any committee prior to the 108th Congress ever needed to spend more than $10,000 on postage.

A $25,000 limit seems like it provides plenty of room, particularly for a country that faces the kinds of fiscal problems that we face. And yet, why would I even think it necessary in a House where no committee had until the 108th Congress spent even $10,000 on postage, why would I think it necessary to come to this floor to seek a $25,000 annual limit? The reason is that

one committee, and this could be the opening of Pandora's box, decided in the 108th Congress to engage in a program of mass mailings in selected Members' districts.

That committee, in the 107th Congress, spent an average of $2,483, that is less than $2,500 on postage. But in the 108th Congress, they came before the Committee on House Administration and asked for $250,000 for postage for 1 year, and in fact asked for $.5 million on postage for the 2 years making up the 108th Congress.

So think of this. This is a 4,445 percent increase over what that same committee had requested for the prior Congress. But if that does not bother the fiscal conservatives in this room, reflect that it was a 9,968 percent increase over what that committee actually spent in the prior Congress.

Now, in fact, the Committee on House Administration did not provide for this one authorizing committee to have $.5 million for postage, but they did provide $50,000 for 2003 and another $50,000 for 2004. And this committee in fact spent $49,587 on postage just in one invoice in December 2003. And, in fact, in order to have something to mail for $49,000 in postage, they spent $40,000 printing the material that was mailed, just to send out material into a very few Members' districts.

Now, the affected Members did not, to my knowledge, have any objection to the contents. But mark my words, this is the beginning. If we pass this legislative approps bill with no limits, then this one authorizing committee may come and ask for $.5 million on postage for the 109th Congress. They may ask for $2 million or $3 million in postage. Other committees may get in on the deal, and then we may have a circumstance where the Chair of each committee has a multi-million dollar postage slush fund to do mailings in the different Members' districts.

Now, how is this different for the Member communications that we are all aware of? Because we all mail into our own districts newsletters, et cetera. Well, first, each Member gets a limited MRA. In contrast, the amount that could be provided under this leg approps bill for a single committee to do mass mailings is unlimited.

Secondly, and I think this is the most important difference, every mailing says published and mailed and printed at government expense, so that the recipients of the mailing can hold the author accountable. If I am sending out useless mailings to my constituents, they can circle that line and remember it when the ballot box is in play.

In contrast, if a Chair mails into my district or mails into another Member's district, and the recipients of that mailing think that it is useless, that it is highly political, that it is propaganda, that it is on a subject they are not interested in, what recourse do they have?

I guess they could pick up and move to the district of the Chair who sent out the mailing. But assuming they are unwilling to move from one part of the country to the other, they have no recourse. So once we have Chairs sending out mailings, these mailings have no check on them. There is no accountability, and there is no way for the recipients to register their belief that the mailing is useless.

In addition, MRA funds are distributed equally to Members regardless of their political party. But if we see $.5 million appropriated by this bill allocated to a particular chairman to do mass mailings into Members' districts, that will be entirely money for one party and zero for Members of the other party.

Now, I want to stress my proposal here is bipartisan. In fact, it is designed to affect Democratic chairmen. That is to say, it affects the 2005 fiscal year, when I hope and expect Democratic Chairs will be the ones that will be able to do these mass mailings. But I do not care whether it is Democrats or Republicans. We should not have mass mailings going out by Chairs. That is why I would like to enter into the Record a letter from the National Taxpayers Union and another from Citizens Against Government Waste.

Each of them says that we ought to limit to $25,000 a year as a first step the amount spent on postage by any committee. This marks the first time that any legislative proposal of mine has been formally endorsed by the National Taxpayers Union and by Citizens Against Government Waste.

I know that people will want to come to this floor and reflexively vote against any motion to recommit, at least members of the majority, but your vote determines whether you endorse opening Pandora's box to unlimited mailings.

National Taxpayers Union,

Alexandria, VA, July 12, 2004.

Hon. Brad Sherman,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Congressman Sherman: On behalf of the 350,000-member

National Taxpayers Union (NTU), I am responding to your

request for NTU's views on a proposal to limit each

Committee's expenditure on postage to the sum of no more than

$25,000 per year.

Even as overall postage and printing expenditures have

declined from the $100 million-plus levels once seen in

Congress 15 years ago, franking remains a source of fiscal

and political interest to NTU. The already-generous limits

governing the use of postage by House Members' personal

offices were lifted in 1999, while new computer technologies

have allowed lawmakers to maximize the impact of their

mailings in ways that were not feasible as recently as ten

years ago. Today, it is still possible for an incumbent House

Member to spend as much on franking in a year as a challenger

spends on his or her entire campaign. Rules regarding the

content and proximity of mailings to elections only modestly

offset this tremendous political advantage.

During our 15-year campaign on behalf of franking reform,

NTU has focused on Member offices because they are the

primary source of unsolicited mass mailings and associated

expenditures. We were thus surprised to learn of a single

Committee's FY 2005 postage request for $250,000 in the

Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill.

NTU is greatly concerned over the prospect of any Committee

in Congress receiving postage fundings in these amounts, as

it would mark a significant expansion of the franking

privilege that had traditionally been utilized in large part

by Member offices. Such concern is irrespective of the

immediate policy issue at hand or the parties involved. If

the House sets a budget precedent now, taxpayers will very

shortly face the unwelcome prospect of tens of millions in

additional franking expenditures in future Congresses.

Equally, important Americans would be forced to contend with

a new set of issues affecting the balance of the political

process.

Years of efforts from groups like NTU and reformers within

Congress have yielded an improved, yet imperfect, franking

disclosure process. Despite instances of poor recordkeeping,

inadequate disclosure, and overly-permissive rules, today

constituents at least have limited access to basic franking

information--giving them a chance to hold House Members

politically accountable for the unsolicited mass mailings

they send into their districts at taxpayer expense. Allowing

such a practice at the Committee level, where ties between

Members and constituents are less direct, would undermine

even this limited progress.

It is especially galling that Congress would even consider

an additional taxpayer-financed expansion of the franking

privilege under the current fiscal and political

circumstances. Amidst FY 2005 budget deficit estimates

approaching $400 billion, and a campaign finance law that

further hamstrings political challengers, allowing such a

huge postage funding request for any Committee will further

reinforce Congress's reputation as an institution incapable

of self-restraint.

Given the historical patterns of Committee expenditures, a

$25,000 annual limit on postage for each Committee is more

than adequate for any legitimate communication needs.

Seemingly minor budget requests such as the one before

Congress now can have major consequences for taxpayers in the

not-too-distant future. For this reason alone, the House of

Representatives can and should restrict Committee postage

expenditures--and a $25,000 annual limit is a reasonable

first step.

Please feel free to contact me should you have an

additional questions regarding our position.

Sincerely,

Pete Sepp,

Vice President for Communications.

Mr. Chairman, just to quickly respond to the gentleman from Georgia who argues that these mass mailings by committees are justified.

If we do not have a limit, they will grow. What was a $500,000 request this time may be a $1 million request or a $2 million request for the 109th Congress. Never before the 108th Congress has any committee ever needed more than $10,000.

The idea of having a field hearing as a reason to mail out a districtwide mailing, or several districtwide mailings, is relatively absurd. If the field hearing is really of interest, the press will publicize that field hearing; and people will come if they are interested. A field hearing has never in the history of this House up until this Congress been used as an excuse for mass propaganda into a Member's district; and if the gentleman thinks it should be, that is a revolutionary change. It is not one I would like to see in the 109th Congress.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today to announce that I am going to vote for H.R. 4755, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2005, for one simple reason: It provides enough resources for the legislative branch agencies to fulfill their responsibilities to the American people during the coming fiscal year.

First, I would like to thank Subcommittee Chairman Kingston and especially Ranking member Moran for all of their hard work on this legislation. Mr. Moran and Tim Aiken of his staff, as well as Tom Forhan of Mr. Obey's staff, worked closely with my staff and me on a number of issues in this bill and this cooperation is much appreciated.

In the aggregate, the bill holds legislative branch spending, excluding the Senate items that are not before us, at $2.4 million below the level of new budget authority provided for fiscal 2004. Despite holding at last year's spending level, the Committee on Appropriations has managed to fund the agencies' mandatory increases, including an expected 3.5 percent Federal wage adjustment, and avoid requiring agencies to lay off employees. The Committee was also able to achieve significant savings, year-on-year, because it has benefited from non-recurring items from last year, deferred new capital projects and delayed others. This is appropriate, since our Federal budget deficit has reached mammoth proportions in just 4 years' time. It is hard for me to imagine that when I first came to this House, in January 1999, the Federal budget was in surplus. Today, our Federal deficit has reached massive proportions, eclipsing those considered horrendous in 1990 when the first President Bush was in office. The legislative branch must expect to participate in efforts to reduce that deficit, and this bill strikes an appropriate balance in this regard.

While I will support the bill, I want to highlight several matters of interest to me as the ranking minority member of the Committee on House Administration, which has authorizing jurisdiction over several accounts funded in the measure, and others.

First, I join with the Appropriations Committee in commending the staff of the numerous entities who helped to make last month's state funeral for President Reagan an occasion of which the entire legislative branch could be proud. Without the tireless efforts of countless individuals in the office of the Architect of the Capitol, the Capitol Police, the Government Printing Office, the Capitol Guide Service, the Attending Physician's Office, as well as the House and Senate leadership, committees, and others, Americans could not have paid proper respects to their former President. On behalf of my constituents in Connecticut, I wish to thank all of the dedicated legislative branch employees who made that funeral possible.

I also thank the Appropriations Committee for its report language encouraging legislative agencies with respect to their employees' use of the transit-subsidy program. Wherever we can encourage Federal employees in the Washington area, and elsewhere, to use mass transit, we can not only clean the air, reduce traffic congestion, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, I believe we can make our employees more productive. The program works here in the House and elsewhere, and I am pleased the Appropriations Committee expressed its continuing support.

At total funding of $1.1 billion, including the House office buildings, the bill provides sufficient funds for the people's House. I am delighted that the Appropriations Committee has found $3 million to establish a new in-house fitness facility for staff, made a reality through the efforts of the gentlemen from Illinois (Mr. LaHood) and Virginia (Mr. Moran), both of whom are devoted to the health and welfare of all our dedicated employees. I am also pleased that the Committee eliminated the prohibition on exploring options for developing a supplemental vision and dental benefit for Members and employees. Many House staff have expressed interest in the availability of such benefits, for which they would pay.

I appreciate the work of the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), who recently discovered that the chief administrative officer was improperly making prepayments for certain Web-related services, Federal law generally prohibits pre-payments for Federal services, and the CAO has moved swiftly to address the problem in his Finance Office.

Finally, I hope the sense-of-the-House language included by the Committee at the behest of the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), encouraging the use of hybrid and alternative-fueled vehicles wherever possible, will indeed spur the use of these cutting-edge technologies so important to our Nation's future.

This bill provides adequate funds for the Capitol Police for the coming year, and eliminates funding for its new mounted unit. Mounted patrols may make sense for the U.S. Park Police, which must operate in the many thousands of forested acres of Rock Creek Park in northwest Washington. But in my judgment, horses, though perhaps harkening back to the ``Charge of the Light Brigade,'' make little sense in the comparatively small, confined, clean and manicured urban park that is the Capitol grounds, given the animals' unavoidable by-products. I also agree with the Committee, which included language prohibiting the study or construction of a fence around the Capitol grounds at this time. The people's House must not, even symbolically, erect a barrier between itself and the people we represent.

I am glad this bill authorizes the Office of Compliance to institute a student-loan repayment program. Similar programs, including those established recently in the House and Senate, are designed to help agencies attract and retain qualified employees, and the Compliance Office's needs for talented staff are no different.

The Library of Congress will receive adequate funding overall under the bill, enabling it to continue fulfilling its important missions. I appreciate the Committee's decision to provide level funding of $14.8 million for the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA. I hope the relevant committees will take whatever action may be required in order to reauthorize the National Film Preservation Board and the National Film Preservation Foundation, so this important work can continue unabated. The pending bill does not include the $500,000 provided for these activities last year, because the authorizations have expired. There is ample time to reauthorize it before this bill becomes law.

I am pleased that the Committee also provided adequate funding for the coming year for the Government Printing Office, which has faced financial trouble. Our House Administration Committee convened an oversight hearing on April 28. We heard from the new Public Printer, Bruce James, who has exciting ideas for how GPO, which has made great strides in the last decade, can continue moving forward in the electronic age. Labor witnesses expressed concerns about Mr. James's plans, and about spending at the agency, which must run like a business and generally earn its keep. I hope the differing views expressed by Mr. James and labor at our hearing, and thereafter, reflect a misunderstanding of each other's goals for the agency in these challenging times.

Finally, the Appropriations Committee report includes several far- reaching assignments for the General Accounting Office, directing that agency to examine every legislative branch agency in search of savings and efficiencies, including by ``outsourcing'' of agency functions where appropriate. While I am willing to consider every reasonable way to save the public money in these times of massive Federal budget deficits caused largely by the policies of the present Administration, ``outsourcing'' is hardly reasonable if the term means transferring the performing of inherently governmental functions overseas. I trust the Committee does not mean to suggest, for example, that government printing should be performed overseas.

I thank the Appropriations Committee for its work, and look forward to working with the Committee on these and other matters in the months remaining in this session.

Mr. Speaker, we need to defeat this rule so that I can offer an amendment to simply say that no committee in any year can spend more than $25,000 on just postage. That would be $50,000 a Congress. Why would such a limit be needed? Why is the $25,000 limit needed? After all, in the year 2002, the average committee spent only $2,104 on postage. The largest amount spent by any committee during the 107th Congress on an annualized basis was $6,807.

I know the gentlewoman from New York cited the amounts requested by committees. They requested a bit more than these figures. But when we look at what they actually spent, no committee needed to spend in the average year more than $6,807 in the 107th Congress.

But a new phenomenon has arisen. The Committee on Resources has decided it needs more resources. In the 107th Congress it spent $2,483 per year on postage. For the 108th Congress they requested a quarter million dollars per year for postage; $500,000, half a million dollars, for the whole 108th Congress.

Think of this from a fiscal responsibility standpoint. That is a 4,445 percent increase over what they requested before. Maybe that is not too bad. After all, 4,445 percent increase in the cost of a government agency, no fiscally responsible person would object to that. But do not compare it to what they requested last Congress. Compare it to what they actually spent. Then it is a 9,968 percent increase. Maybe somebody with some fiscal conservatism would be concerned about that, a committee which in the last Congress spent $2,483 on postage now wants to spend $250,000 on postage.

We do not know what they are spending all this money for. It is hard to get the information. But we do know that last quarter, just in 3 months, the committee spent $49,587 on postage, and when they spend money on postage, they inevitably have to spend money on printing, and, yes, they spent $40,732 on printing.

What did they use the money for? Not to carry on committee business in the sense of telling the press what the committee is doing, writing to experts to see if they can gather information. This is not individually sent-out letters, no. These were mass mailings into individual Members' districts, $250,000 per year. What kind of mailings went out? Here is an example that was referred to by the gentlewoman from New York. We will see that this mailing went out to Arizona. Our information is that it went it to the gentleman from Arizona's (Mr. Renzi) district, who happens to be one of the most targeted Members in the entire Congress by one political party. It praises three Members of the Arizona delegation for cosponsoring a bill, and if we read it very carefully, it attacks or implicitly criticizes a fourth Member of the Arizona delegation for not cosponsoring this bill. I might add it is a terrible bill, but the mailing praises those who cosponsor it. Our information is that it went just to the gentleman from Arizona's (Mr. Renzi) district; so the fact that it implicitly criticizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva) is not of great significance unless he has statewide ambitions I am unaware of.

In any case, what does this mailing do? It lauds a Member. Some of these mailings are going out in violation or possible violation of the blackout period. So we are used to not sending out mailings 90 days before an election. Apparently the committee chairmen can. This mailing seems rather benign in that it lauds a Member, and it does so only on one issue.

Mark my words: If we do not draw the line now, the next piece will be a hit piece, and it will not be limited to one issue. It will not even be limited to a committee's jurisdiction. It will be an attack piece sent out a day or a week before an election.

How is this all different from the Member communications that we are aware of? Because many of us send mail to our constituents. First, a Member gets a limited Members' representational allowance. We are responsible to our districts, to the recipients of that mail. If the mail is informative, then I can tell my constituents we sent them informative mail that came out of our budget, which we could otherwise have used to hire personnel. But a committee chairman is not responsible to the people who receive the mailing, so they could look at it and say this is wildly uninformative. It is a terrible waste of money. It says it was paid for at taxpayer expense. I do not like it, but it does not matter because my Member did not send it. It comes out of the budget of some Washington committee.

Second, the MRA funds are at least distributed relatively equally by party. Each Member gets their own account. This $500,000 went solely to one political party. And it is not just $500,000. If we do not draw the line now, it will be 5 million, it will be 25 million. It will not be one committee; it will be every committee.

Members also know what information their constituents need to receive. Committee chairmen, with all due respect to the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), I do not think he is an expert at what information people in the gentleman from Arizona's (Mr. Renzi) district need to hear. Then we are going to be told that these are to announce field hearings. I might add this piece of mail has nothing to do with any field hearing. But we could have a rule that we have these slush funds, but only if we are announcing a field hearing.

A field hearing should be a field hearing, not an excuse for propaganda, not a district-wide town hall on behalf of an endangered Member or a targeted Member.

Finally, I know here in Washington that our targeted watchdog groups publish lists. They criticize those who spend money on postage and printing. They wonder whether that is a good use of government resources.

Well, wait a minute. None of these groups caught this. They will attack a Member for spending $100,000 on postage. How about $250,000 on postage?

We need to do something about it, and we need to do something about it today. If you vote for this rule, you are voting for giant political slush funds, not just of half a million dollars, but for as large as they are done by whichever party controls this House. You cannot say you are going to deal with it tomorrow if you vote against dealing with it today. Vote against the rule.