Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act of 2009

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I rise with serious concerns with H.R. 1722, the Telework Improvement Act. This began as a bipartisan bill, and if our one opportunity, a motion to recommit, is passed, it will have an opportunity to end as a bipartisan bill. There is no

question in my mind that telework is the future. It, in fact, is the present. Virtually every Member of Congress has remote access. Virtually every Member of Congress and many of their staff carry BlackBerrys and use other tools so that we can work here and around the world. It would be just about impossible for a Member of Congress and their key staff to bounce back and forth between their far-away districts, here on the Hill, and various meetings if we didn't have the ability to be portable in our information access. So we are not here to talk about telework as though it is a bad thing, because it can be an extremely effective tool.

We do have concerns. One of our specific concerns in the underlying legislation is, at a time in which we're borrowing nearly 40 percent of the operating cash of our government--put in another way, once you get past entitlements, everything we spend is borrowed--it would seem ridiculous that something that can save money, that is argued to save money, in fact, is not required to be at least neutral in its expenditure. This bill is expected to cost millions of dollars per year and, like most government estimates, is likely to cost far more than that if it's expanded to its logical conclusion.

So, Madam Speaker, it is my hope that as we begin offering what we were not allowed to offer under the rule, which would be any amendments that would curtail the millions of dollars in costs over 5 years or to deal with the reality that if you're going to claim that you can save the construction of office buildings, you should be required to show that you are saving it. If you claim that you are going to be more efficient by not having a commute time, you should at least be required to show it. Additionally, we are very concerned that recent discoveries have shown that there are vulnerabilities which have not been properly cared for in this bill. The bill authorizes it but does not require it.

I am, however, pleased that in a number of areas, the majority has made improvements and has taken many suggestions. The committee did work, as you would expect us to, in favor of the efficiency and effectiveness of the Federal workforce in getting this bill as far as we could go. It is my sincere hope that one and only one opportunity to further amend would be accepted and that this will be a broadly bipartisan bill at the end.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), one of the cosponsors of the bill.

(Mr. WOLF asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wittman).

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

The chairman and the majority leader both make good points, and I would like to address them for just a moment. The chairman, who I have had a good working relationship with, made the point that this passed out of committee without anything left unresolved. And to a certain extent I would agree with him. Except of course we didn't have a score on this. We never do. We didn't know what this bill was going to cost. And when we discovered that this was going to cost millions of dollars every year, we made it clear before the last round of a request for a vote that we would have to find an offset or we would have to modify the bill to ensure that it would not cause the taxpayers to look at this as simply a perk for government.

Because ultimately we can talk about morale, but the Federal workforce makes on the average $60,000 more than their private-sector counterparts. So morale should already be good in an organization the size of the government that has added a quarter of a million new workers since we went into a recession.

There is no question that telework can justify this if it's done properly. Our amendment is going to seek, our one motion to recommit-- we weren't allowed any amendments--to try to at least trim around the edges to have our Members be able to go home and say of course we supported telework, but we made sure there were some safeguards of the American people's money.

The amendments that we tried to offer to what was known in advance to be a closed rule, a please do not suggest, create a process problem that I hope, Mr. Speaker, that you will be sensitive, along with the American people, to. Our committee has 40 or so members. That's roughly one-tenth of the Congress. So 9 out of 10 Members of the House never get an opportunity to be there. As a matter of fact, including the Delegates, it works out just exactly as 10 percent. So 400 people didn't have input when we were working this through committee.

Some may have noticed the bill, but as the majority leader said, he has been working on this for 20 years. Who would have thought it would come to the floor now? So can we as a body deny the process of 400 people, 400 voters, if you will, or representatives of voters, including yourself, Mr. Speaker? How can we deny you the ability to look at something when it's going to become a bill on the floor and offer constructive amendments?

The process of the Rules Committee is supposed to deal with germaneness. It's supposed to deal with whether or not your amendment is properly written, whether it seeks to amend a portion of the bill allowed to be amended. That's not the way it is here in the House right now. We had amendments perfectly allowable, and they simply were ruled out because you could. So we will use our one opportunity, our motion to recommit. We trust that we have written it properly, and that it will be found to be in order. And we trust that both sides will see that it is modest, it's moderate, it's intended simply to deal with cost and other concerns in the bill.

There is no killer in this bill. There's nothing the American people would not be happy with in this bill the way it is. And there is nothing they will be unhappy with if the motion to recommit passes. We structured it that way. We would like to have something that started off as bipartisan end as bipartisan.

Mr. Speaker, I truly believe we are going to have that opportunity. I would hope that everyone in this body will view it that way, look at it carefully, come to the same conclusion, and we will leave here today on a bipartisan basis.

I reserve the balance of my time.

If the gentleman would yield, that's correct.

I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman. It's pay and benefits.

At $175,000, one Congressman to another, yes. The typical American making $35,000 or $40,000 understands we make a lot more.

In pay and benefits.

Even though it's not germane to today, I'll be glad to make that available to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I note the gentlelady acts as though already everybody teleworks. It's very clear that the people who were able to telework, that, quote, saved us $30 million during that snowstorm, were the people who have redundant activities, for the most part, people who had a duplicate computer, duplicate capacity. That costs money. That is an item that we simply want to make sure is cost justified.

You know, many people on the other side of the aisle, including the next speaker, have talked about the private sector. Well, I, for one, came from the private sector, and I very much understand that we do a cost benefit.

The previous speaker talked about insurance salesmen. You don't care where they are. That's right. An insurance salesman is usually a commission person. It's somebody who's very accountable for their pay because it's earned and justified against revenue. More importantly, even their package of perks is figured into that.

So, in the private sector, if somebody costs, if you will, $190,000 dollars--or as the average Federal worker costs, nonuniformed, $119,000 per worker versus $59,000 in the private sector--in the private sector they know what their sales or revenues or profits are relative to that cost. In the public sector, we don't.

All we're seeking to do, all we're talking about here today is we want telework to be used and rolled out extensively where it can be at least revenue or cost-neutral relative to alternatives of bringing people in. That's all we're asking for. We believe it's reasonable.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself just 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, my good friend from Virginia was accurate in almost everything he said, but the one part that I'd like to correct is we don't need more time. We had sufficient time, once the scoring was in, to figure out what needed to be changed among the various hundred or so Republicans who were not on the committee, and we offered them. And the gentleman from Virginia is not on the Rules Committee so he's not part of that hidden hand that simply doesn't allow any dissent or any amendments or any corrections once a decision has been made by the majority. So, you know, I appreciate the fact he has been good to work with and that he is not somebody who would have limited that, and we would be happy to share all of our amendments if we had a chance of having them ruled in.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

As I begin, my staff is bringing over to the chairman a copy of something I am going to include in the Record from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Department of Commerce. The chairman may recognize the Department of Commerce is part of the administration and part of government.

Their assessment in 2008--and it has only become greater--is that we have as Federal workers against average--this is not against average of job per job but just against the working stiff, whatever they do in the outside world versus the working stiff in government, $29,169.63 of additional wages. What makes the huge difference the American people don't always see is that in the private sector, a typical benefit package is about $9,881. Well, a civilian Federal Government employee has a benefit package on the average worth about $40,784 or $30,900 more.

So, Mr. Speaker, we do have the Department of Commerce currently, during the Obama administration, telling us very clearly--not that engineer versus engineer. I appreciate the way

you can match up various jobs, but the Federal workforce is a highly skilled and highly paid workforce, and we should understand that if we are going to have telework go greater and greater--and I approve of it doing it--we have two reasons to do it.

One is continuity of government, and sometimes continuity of government can cost more. It can be for redundant computers, redundant centers and so on, no question at all. But often it is, and as it is justified in this bill by many of the people speaking on it on both sides of the aisle, it is also about avoiding traffic, avoiding building new buildings, avoiding heating and air conditioning, avoiding costs. All the minority would like to make sure is that this expansion meets one of those requirements or the other. If it is necessity and it costs more, fine. Of course you can have redundant facilities; but if it is intended to be cost savings, let's make sure it's cost savings.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, although we have 12 minutes left on our side in debate, I don't intend to use it. I also don't intend to continue to have the American people hear haggling on the House floor about how much one side gets paid or another. For that reason, I will today post at republicans.oversight.house.gov the Department of Commerce report in sufficient detail for people to realize that $60,072.97 is roughly the additional amount in pay and benefits that Federal employees receive than the average private sector.

But the interesting thing about the Federal workforce versus the gentleman who was talking about commuting from Bridgeport and other parts in his State, is they are not laid off. They are not suffering. As a matter of fact, they have been net-hired. The growth that has occurred over the last 2 years has been in government. The pay increases have been in government. The benefit increases have been in government.

Now, we are not talking about telework as a benefit, although some speakers have talked about family time because you can telework and so on. We are talking about telework for one of two reasons that are justified, and Republicans will today, I hope, vote for the motion to recommit and then vote for final passage, because it either is part of the job of government, the sustainability, the continuity of government, and we want to make sure we use telework in order to advance that, or remote access, if you will, or it saves the taxpayers dollars.

If someone doesn't drive for an hour and they work an hour more remotely, that is a good thing. But if we are simply improving quality of life, having redundant computers at a cost of several thousand dollars plus several more thousand dollars in maintenance and overhead and renewal and software support, Mr. Speaker, we are not doing what the American people expect us to do.

The American people expect us to start being safeguarders of their precious money, which isn't even current but the money we are going to have to take from them in the future to pay back what we are borrowing today.

If we don't start counting the pennies, the nickles and the dollars and make sure they are well spent, then it is very clear we will never get to any kind of an affordable government, a balanced budget, and there will be an inevitably that the United States will look too much like Greece and not enough like the country that we were so proud of this past Fourth of July.

We have a great tradition, a tradition of small government and large private sector. Mr. Speaker, I want to make sure that our government works more efficiently so we can have a smaller government that meets the basic requirements, not that we simply expand government with one after another programs.

With that, I fully expect that we will make this bill better, that we will continue to work on telework being to the advantage of the American taxpayer and not simply an additional item to be spent.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

I am, in its present form.

Mr. Speaker, this is a straightforward motion. It is a motion that, if passed, will cause the Republicans to vote for this, if not unanimously, virtually unanimously. If we take out the $30 million in cost by insisting that there be reasonable offsets, then we will in fact have fixed one of the problems that was unnecessary in the bill. Additionally, as was so well read by our Clerk just a moment ago, it is very, very clear that there are some small areas but meaningful areas. We do not want the American people to believe that telecommuters are downloading pornography full time the way $200,000-plus executives at SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, were doing.

Now, I wanted to include in the motion to recommit that if you're found downloading while telecommuting, you'd be fired, but it turns out, Mr. Speaker, the rules of the House prevent me from offering that. I am not allowed under the rules to insist on behalf of the American people that somebody be terminated if they've downloaded endless pornography while telecommuting. So instead we have simply said in the motion to recommit that if they're found downloading pornography, they can no longer telecommute.

Likewise, on a number of other areas we feel that the American people should know that there is accountability. Accountability as to the Presidential Records Act. Mr. Speaker, as you know, the Presidential Records Act is extremely important. That if somebody is working offsite, we want to ensure that they do not use a Gmail account or in some other way go off system and have that lost for the rest of eternity. It is too important and it is too uniform a law to not make sure it is included in this Act. Additionally, the question of official business.

Now, often motions to recommit include poison pills. This is not one. We wanted to make sure that if there's a union contract in which there's union negotiation or other time allotted--official time--that it not be done clandestinely around telecommuting. The fact is that if a union leader who is also a Federal employee has a right to have so much time spent doing that, this would not stop them, but it would make it very clear that you can't simply be working out of your house and use that as collective bargaining time or other work that would not be manageable.

It's very clear that we were limited in this. This does not fix everything, Mr. Speaker. This does not fix everything I'd like to fix, but it simply makes the bill revenue neutral and in a couple of important areas assures the American people that their taxpayer dollars are not being misused while someone is telecommuting.

With that, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1509, I call up the bill (H.R. 1722) to improve teleworking in executive agencies by developing a telework program that allows employees to telework at least 20 percent of the hours worked in every 2 administrative workweeks, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Madam Speaker, as chairman of the House subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Federal workforce, postal service, and the District of Columbia, I'm pleased to offer H.R. 1722 for consideration. This legislation seeks to improve and expand access to telework for Federal employees in the executive branch.

The bipartisan measure before us today was introduced by Congressman John Sarbanes of Maryland, along with myself and Representatives Frank Wolf, Gerry Connolly of Virginia, Jim Moran of Virginia, Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, and Danny Davis of Illinois back in March 2009. The bill was then amended and ordered reported favorably by our subcommittee on March 24, and again shortly thereafter by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee on April 14, 2010.

Madam Speaker, despite the evolving nature of the way the Federal Government conducts its affairs, telework, which allows an employee to regularly perform work from a remote location other than their usual workplace, continues to be underutilized by Federal agencies. Experience has consistently demonstrated that the private and public sector employers who utilize telework experience increased productivity and retention rates. More specifically, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Defense Information Systems Agency have successfully used telework programs, which shows potentially how telework can transform and enhance agencies' customer service offerings for our citizens and do so with greater efficiency and lower costs.

H.R. 1722 provides for improvements to increase the number of Federal employees that participate in telework programs by requiring agencies to develop comprehensive telework policies within 1 year that allow authorized employees to telework and by directing the Office of Personnel Management to develop regulations on overall telework policies and to annually evaluate agency telework programs.

H.R. 1722 also seeks to elevate the importance of incorporating telework into the continuity of operations planning for our Federal agencies. For example, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry estimated that the use of telework reduced the estimated cost of lost productivity during the recent snowstorms this past winter in the District of Columbia by approximately $30 million per day.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote in favor of moving telework forward by passing H.R. 1722, the Telework Improvement Act. This legislation has long enjoyed bipartisan support in the Oversight Committee and in the House over several Congresses and will help ensure the government operates more efficiently and effectively as a modern-day employer.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for his remarks.

General Leave

For the record, Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks with respect to H.R. 1722.

I would now like to yield 5 minutes to the lead sponsor of this measure, Mr. Sarbanes of Maryland.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Towns), the full committee chairman, energetic and wise chairman of the Oversight Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia for his thoughtful comments.

At this time I yield 1 minute to our distinguished majority leader, Mr. Hoyer.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to ask for a clarification, did the gentleman say that the Federal employees make an average of $60,000 more than their counterparts?

Sixty thousand dollars more.

The typical Federal employee makes $60,000 more?

If the gentleman would produce some type of--that fact's not

in evidence at all. I'm sure that we have kids that are working for $30,000, $40,000 a year. How are they making $60,000 more than their counterparts?

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 5 minutes to the gentlelady, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, from the District of Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, I do want to note that we do have one study here that I think is probably the most extensive one done on comparing private sector jobs to Federal jobs, and that is by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they compared occupation to occupation. They took an engineer in private sector versus an engineer working for the Federal Government, and they have reported that Federal employees are paid 22 percent less than their private sector counterparts.

At this point, I yield 5 minutes to an energetic and diligent member of our subcommittee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), who has been a long-time advocate on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the sheet, but I do want to note this does not compare job-to-job, nor does it indicate that there is anything close to a $60,000 delta between the private and the public employee.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Sires), who also has been an energetic worker on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes).

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I again would like to express my strong support for the passage of H.R. 1722, the Telework Improvements Act of 2010. I would like to thank Mr. Sarbanes, our lead sponsor on this measure which is before us today, which promotes good and common sense governance policy which will ensure a more efficient, responsive Federal government, especially in times of national security and weather-related emergencies.

Moreover, H.R. 1722 will allow executive branch agencies to act more like other 21st century employers, particularly private sector employers, which for years have utilized and reaped the benefits of telework in terms of increased job productivity as well as employee moral.

I want to paraphrase the words of my Republican colleague, Mr. Wolf of Virginia, who said that the vote for saving money and the vote for cutting costs here is a ``yes'' vote on this measure.

With that, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of H.R. 1722.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I object.

I reserve a point of order.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to claim time in opposition to the motion.

No.

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of points here that I would like to make at the outset, and I appreciate the spirit in which the gentleman has offered these amendments.

Many of the concerns that the gentleman has raised in his motion to recommit have been addressed in the bill.

I would like to begin by saying that right now, with respect to tax delinquency and enforcing the tax laws against Federal employees, we have greater protections right now in place against those Federal employees than exist against any other employee in America today. We have the ability to remove them from their jobs. We have the ability to garnish their wages. We have the ability to demand of them compliance with the tax law that is much more difficult to implement against the average private sector employee. So I do not think that the measures here and the ``seriously delinquent'' category that does not exist under the IRS Tax Code well serves the underlying purpose of this bill.

I do want to say that prohibiting collective bargaining activity while teleworking is also a question of possible violation with other statutes that I believe may be infringed upon by this motion. So I would be very, very concerned about--obviously we were given this motion about a minute ago--well, a couple of minutes ago, so I'm not so sure how that would affect Taft-Hartley collective bargaining rights. But it would appear that they would do a carve-out here for those workers who are teleworking and yet unable to exercise the rights that otherwise might exist in those employees. So I am very, very concerned about that.

I understand the restrictions. Further, the amended version of H.R. 1722 already incorporates language to restrict allowing employees to telework based on previous disciplinary issues that might have been presented.

With respect to the concern raised by my friend and colleague with respect to accessing pornographic sites, I should note that history has shown us that those who rail against weaknesses of the human spirit are usually the very people who succumb to those very weaknesses. But we would certainly agree that that is inappropriate behavior and it should be punished. I tend to think that that is a point of agreement, but I think it's just a matter of how to implement that prohibition.

There is also a difficulty at the heart of this, which is that the gentleman's motion to reconsider requires us to demonstrate a savings now at this level. Here's the problem: We are not in an Appropriations Committee. We have not appropriated any money for this. We don't have the ability to do that. This is authorization. So how are we supposed to know where the break point on savings might be when we don't know, in this forum, how much money might be spent?

Those are structural flaws, I think, in the bill that prevent us from accepting the amendment at this time. However, I understand that some Members may see one or two of these issues as decisive on their behalf, and I would understand and respect the Members' rights to vote as they might on this measure. But because of the issues that I have raised-- one, because it creates a level of impossibility for us to demonstrate savings when we don't know how much money is going to be used in implementing this measure. That will be decided by the appropriators. And, as well, we realize that to set this up, in order to establish the teleworking protocols, there will be an expenditure to begin with, but the savings will result at a later time. So I urge my colleagues to vote against this.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the instructions of the House in the motion to recommit, I report the bill, H.R. 1722, back to the House with an amendment.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend and colleague from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch) for his outstanding leadership on this and so many other issues on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. I also thank the ranking member, Mr. Issa, for his friendship and his leadership on our committee as well.

I particularly want to thank my colleague from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) who's been a long-time leader in telework, and my colleague and friend from Maryland (Mr. Sarbanes) for his leadership on this legislation. Without that leadership, we wouldn't be here today and relief wouldn't be on the way to our Federal workforce and hard-pressed commuters in the national capital region.

Mr. Speaker, before I came to Congress, I represented a major jurisdiction in the national capital region, Fairfax County, for 14 years, the last five being its chairman; and I, like Mr. Issa, came from the private sector. I spent the last 20 years of my career before coming here working for a number of information technology companies, and I saw firsthand the value of telework in the private sector.

One of the major employers in my district, for example, is AT&T. I went and visited a major facility they have in my district. Thirty- three percent of their workforce teleworks regularly, 33 percent; and their estimated cost savings in terms of reduced absenteeism is $2,000 per employee. So, if we took that kind of statistic and superimposed it

on the Federal workforce, we would obviously save a lot more than whatever the implementation costs of this bill might be.

I believe, like my colleagues who have spoken before, this is critical. This is critical for Federal operations. Every Federal agency now needs to have a continuity of operations plan in place; and in the national capital region, tragically, that is underscored.

Frank Wolf, my colleague from Virginia, talked about 9/11. He was here in Congress while I was a supervisor in Fairfax County. My office was in the fire station, Fire Station 30 in Merrifield, and my men and women in that fire station were backup to the Arlington Fire Department at the Pentagon the day it was attacked, the second worst terrorist attack in American history. And I saw what they went through, and I know what happened to this region that day. A continuity of operations plan, if we needed a reminder, a tragic reminder, of how critical that is to our national security, 9/11 was it.

Subsequently, we've had lots of natural events here in the national capital region that have further reminded us of how important it is that the largest single employer in our region, the Federal Government, have a vigorous telework program in place because, without that, there is no continuity of operations plan of any meaning.

So for national security reasons and in service to the taxpayers we serve through the Federal agencies, we must have a vigorous telework program in place.

In the national capital region, if we could reach 20 percent of our daily commuters of 2.5 million people teleworking at least 1 day a week, we could take 4 to 6 percent of the cars off the road every day, improving air quality, improving congestion, and improving productivity. The Federal Government being the largest employer has a special responsibility. I mentioned AT&T has 33 percent teleworking in its workforce. The average in the Federal Government ranges from 6 to 10 percent, far below what the private sector is, in fact, doing. We can and must do better. The Federal workforce lends itself to telework in some ways that are unique to the Federal workforce, and we know the benefits.

We've heard some arguments here that only 10 percent of the Congress sits in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and, therefore, we need more time to make sure that we can examine this legislation and its costs. I will argue there are no net costs to this bill. I would argue that this bill has been scored before in many incarnations, in legislation that was before the previous Congress and voted on, in legislation in the other body. So it's not like we didn't know, and we know that the productivity gains and savings are considerable but more than wipe out any potential implementation costs. Whatever costs there are can and will be absorbed by the implementing Federal agencies, and we know that. That ought not to be an excuse for inaction.

This is something that can bring us together on a bipartisan basis. I do find it a little ironic, however, to hear about the need to come together and maybe we can use the motion to recommit to do that when our side of the aisle has not seen the motion to recommit, and obviously we can't buy something in the hopes that it's going to do something positive, and I would urge my colleagues to share the motion to recommit so that perhaps we can come to common ground on that.

But at the end of the day, this legislation is critical to the future workforce of the Federal Government and, frankly, for the national security of the national capital region.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to thank him for his work in shepherding this through the process of bringing it to the House floor.

Madam Speaker, I am delighted that we are going to be voting today on the Telework Improvements Act of 2010, a bill that I introduced some time ago with bipartisan cosponsorship. And I want to acknowledge Congresswoman Norton, who is here, Congressman Davis, Congressman Connolly, Jim Moran of Virginia, and other cosponsors.

I do also want to salute the fact that we had bipartisan support for this from the outset--Congressman Wittman, Shelley Moore Capito and, of course, Frank Wolf, who has really been a leader on this issue from the get-go. He was working on telework before I even came to Congress and understood what a valuable contribution telework could make to our Federal workforce and its productivity.

What this bill will do is expand the Federal telework policy, which was begun in a nascent way. There was just a survey done that indicated about 10 percent of the Federal workforce is now teleworking at least 1 day a week, but it can take that up to the next level by establishing a policy across our Federal agencies that promote telework and make it clear to employees how they can go about taking advantage of that opportunity. It would instruct the Office of Personnel Management to develop telework regulations, a uniform governmentwide telework policy for Federal employees. And that's important because, if you look at the different agencies, some of them have been very successful in pushing telework forward. Others have not been as attentive to it.

What this is going to do is it's going to establish an expectation to cut across our Federal workforce and encourage this opportunity. Critical to that is to designate a telework managing officer within each agency who takes responsibility, who has accountability for making sure that the telework policy is being distributed broadly within that agency, is helping to evaluate it, make sure that it's working properly.

There will be greater access provided, as a result of this bill, to telework training and education to more employees and supervisors. And the Office of Personnel Management is also going to make sure, in cooperation with the Government Accountability Office, that there's a periodic evaluation conducted so that we can see how this telework policy is advancing forward.

So these are some of the key elements of the bill that is on the floor today. I'm appreciative that Congressman Issa recognizes the inherent value of pursuing telework. And as I said, we did have bipartisan support at every step along the way.

Why is it important to do teleworking? I would say this is a win times five when you look at. First of all, it's going to help the Federal workforce recruit better out in the market. The private sector is doing this, and they're recruiting people, using this as an opportunity for more flexible work arrangements. The Federal workforce should be doing the same thing.

It will help to improve productivity and morale among the workforce. Those agencies that have taken full advantage of teleworking have shown that productivity has been enhanced within their agency.

And, frankly, it leads to more of a culture of looking at performance and delivery of important functions in the workplace, so that you're seeing that productivity rise, not just among those who are teleworking, but across an entire agency where teleworking is being implemented in a meaningful way.

At one point in the evolution of this legislation, we actually were going to attach it to an energy bill because it will have the effect of reducing the carbon footprint of the Federal Government. People won't need to be in their cars as much going back and forth to work if they can take advantage of teleworking opportunities to some extent. So that's a third win here.

A fourth win, very important, is the continuity of operations. We've seen situations where the Federal Government may be forced to shut down. If you've got telework in place, you can continue to run the operations of these agencies, even in that situation. And the best example of this we had this past winter was when we had a snowstorm that shut down the Federal Government, except 30 percent of the work force was able to engage in their operations.

I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for yielding, but I particularly thank him for his leadership on many issues in our subcommittee, not the least of which is this issue which he has shepherded to the floor so rapidly. And I certainly want to thank Mr. Sarbanes, add my kudos to those he's already heard from the leadership, what he has shown when he was a member of our subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, this bill does nothing more than give us a presumption in favor of teleworking, and I believe that's the most important thing the bill does. You have heard we have been doing something called teleworking for decades, but that was whatever agency chose to move forward, whatever employees chose to participate.

I can't imagine what the ranking member is talking about when he says millions of dollars this is going to cost the Federal Government. Mr. Wolf, from his side, essentially rebutted that by getting up and talking about how much money it saved and citing examples.

Let me cite an example of something that is almost intuitive. I had occasion to speak to a practitioner, small practitioner, and he was glowing about how his practice has, in fact, developed and expanded. He didn't have to have an office anymore. He has a tiny hole on Tenth Street, and he's got about 15 lawyers working out of their homes.

In a real sense, the Federal Government is behind. There is no case to be made that when you allow people to work at home, you somehow are costing the government more money. Perhaps it costs a few dollars in administrative costs, transaction costs to set up the system, but anybody from the private sector hearing a Federal official get up and say, ``Oh, we're going to teleworking and boy is that going to cost us an arm and a leg'' will scratch his head and say, ``What is he talking about? Don't they know this is one of the first and most important things the private sector has done, invested money in doing, precisely to save money?'' They look at the bottom line. That's the conclusion they reached long before today.

When I speak of the presumption in favor of telework, notice that an agency has a 20 percent goal every 2 weeks of doing telework. We wouldn't have set that goal if they were already doing it. And the fact that you have to do it gives us a some uniformity across the government, and with the appropriate exceptions allows many, many workers, many, many employees to buy into what has now become essentially a workforce practice everywhere with a workforce as large as ours.

The bill, it's very careful. Managers are going to have to be trained. Many are old-school managers. They do not know perhaps as well do I feel instinctively as at home with employees under their supervision who telework. They're going to have to learn how it's done. And importantly, teleworking, as opposed to coming in, does not affect your job performance evaluation. So people are not going to have to think, if I'm in the boss's face for 8 or 9 hours a day, I've got to do better than this mother who is at home and producing as much work as I do.

Continuitive operations has been talked about here.

Post 9/11, the closest thing we have even had to continuity of operations is the kind of teleworking that goes on anyway in the Federal Government. Everybody in the Federal Government at certain levels does teleworking. They take their work home. Employees have been voting with their feet. Managers have been allowing them to vote with their feet and take the work home.

The flexibility, we cannot say enough about the flexibility. We're in an era where fathers and mothers feel responsibility for their children and where, because they are adept at technology, they are able to get as much done and more done. They're doing it at home rather than spending what in this region could easily be an hour or so back and forth each way.

Everybody teleworked in the snowstorm. There weren't a lot of people just sitting at home. We are doing it anyway. We are just not doing it systematically. We are doing it episodically. Doing it that way, we are, in fact, wasting money. Let's, in fact, save money by making sure that as many as are capable are doing what they can given the new technology.