To direct the Librarian of Congress to promote the more cost-effective, efficient, and expanded availability of the Annotated Constitution and pocket-part supplements by replacing the hardbound versions with digital versions.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 7592) to direct the Librarian of Congress to promote the more cost-effective, efficient, and expanded availability of the Annotated Constitution and pocket-part supplements by replacing the hardbound versions with digital versions.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill, H.R. 7592.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 7592. Today, Congress will save taxpayers $5 million. Yes, you heard me correctly: Congress will save taxpayer dollars today.

While our Nation is running $32 trillion in debt, and we have a long way to go to get our country back on track, this is a good policy. It will save taxpayers money.

We do this by getting rid of the statutory requirement to print hardbound copies of the Constitution Annotated, or CONAN, as it is better known today.

An easily accessible and up-to-date online version of it already exists and is already used by millions of Americans. Continuing to print hardbound copies not only wastes taxpayer dollars, but it also wastes the time of CRS staff, who could better support the more pressing work of Congress.

It is a positive step in modernizing Congress. At the beginning of the 118th Congress, the Committee on House Administration took the important step of working to modernize how Congress works. The Modernization Subcommittee is led by Chairwoman Stephanie Bice and Ranking Member Derek Kilmer. The subcommittee is bringing good ideas to life by focusing on what we can do to make Congress a more effective and efficient institution.

I have argued that the work of modernizing Congress extends to Congress' support agencies. They need to work in a way that reflects how today's Congress works.

The CONAN print requirement reflects how Congress worked 50 years ago, before the internet even existed. Today, the rules don't make much sense.

We do ourselves a disservice when we require CRS to do work that is no longer necessary, no longer meets our needs. The more Congress can do to optimize tremendous resources like CRS, the better off Congress is, and H.R. 7592 moves us toward that goal.

I recognize Modernization Subcommittee Chairwoman Stephanie Bice, who, along with subcommittee Ranking Member Derek Kilmer, Representative Carey, and Representative Morelle, introduced this measure and worked on a bipartisan basis to bring it to the floor today.

I also recognize Chairwoman Bice for demonstrating that subcommittees have an important role to play in the legislative process. This was the first time in 31 years that a subcommittee of the House Administration Committee held a markup.

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the hard work that went into this important measure, and I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 7592. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Oklahoma (Mrs. Bice) to speak on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I again thank the gentlewoman from Oklahoma (Mrs. Bice), the Modernization Subcommittee chairwoman, for her leadership on this measure that will save taxpayer dollars.

I also recognize, once again, the subcommittee ranking member Mr. Kilmer as well as Mr. Carey and Mr. Morelle. I urge all of my colleagues who want to save taxpayers $5 million to vote in support of H.R. 7592. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to stand before you today to speak about two bills that have come from the Modernization Subcommittee, which encompass the select committee's mission to make Congress work better for the American people. Each of these bills addresses a problem or challenge we identified through the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress.

I thank our subcommittee chair, Stephanie Bice, and our subcommittee colleagues, Joe Morelle and Mike Carey, for their bipartisan partnership on these bills, too, as well as our full committee chairman, Bryan Steil.

As many of you know, the Congressional Research Service, or CRS, mission is to provide timely, objective, and authoritative research and analysis to Congress, its Members, committees, and staff.

The policy proposals we put forth are better for CRS' involvement and support of us. That is why our subcommittee took it very seriously when CRS' interim director, Robert Newlen, approached us about a few challenges CRS was having and ways we could help.

In the select committee, we recommended congressional committees consider the authorities for congressional support agencies and identify those that need updating. H.R. 7592 and our next bill, H.R. 7593, are perfect examples of this.

Under existing law, the Library of Congress is required to produce hardbound copies of the Constitution

with annotations, also referred to as CONAN.

You actually have to be as strong as Conan to lift this. My mother tells me that at birth, I was 6 pounds, 8 ounces. This is 8 pounds, 14 ounces, so it is larger than small Derek Kilmer.

The task of printing this behemoth has fallen to CRS, and the most recent CONAN print cost $1 million per year to print, not to mention the considerable staff time and attention spent formatting, printing, and distributing said books.

The law requiring printed CONAN copies predated widespread internet access. Since 2019, the Library of Congress and CRS have made this same information available online, free of cost, with the added benefit of real-time updates that just aren't possible with printed books.

This bill simply replaces the requirement for the Library of Congress and CRS to prepare hardbound versions of the CONAN and replaces it with a requirement to prepare digital versions and publish them online instead, as they already have been doing.

Through this bill, the American people can receive better and more up-to-date information online. We can save taxpayer dollars and valuable CRS staff capacity. We can eliminate the 8 pounds and 14 ounces of print. I personally would like to eliminate 8 pounds and 14 ounces after the weight I have gained over the August recess.

I think this is a commonsense bill, and I thank my colleague, Chairwoman Bice, for her leadership on this.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I don't have any additional speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, as was mentioned by my colleague Mr. Kilmer, this is the Constitution Annotated, or CONAN, as it is better known today. Its origins date back to 1797 when Congress passed legislation requiring that every Member of Congress be provided a copy of the Constitution.

These copies were then expanded to include Supreme Court case citations so that Members could see which clauses of the Constitution the Court used to decide those cases.

As the number of citations grew, Members became frustrated with the new format. The hundreds of citations listed under each clause of the Constitution were useless to most of them because they had no idea what the cases were about and what questions were before the Court.

In 1921, Congress passed a resolution requiring reprints of the Constitution to include explanatory language that would make sense of all the case citations throughout. This requirement made the reprints much more useful to the Members, and the format created then is one that is still used today.

Initially, CONAN was printed every 10 years or so, but by 1970, Members began to complain that it was outdated almost as soon as it was printed. They addressed this by passing a resolution requiring that a paperbound supplement to CONAN be printed every 2 years, in addition to printing the hardbound version of the CONAN every 10.

Since 1972, that is what we have done: Print a hardbound version of CONAN every 10 years and a paperbound supplement every 2.

CONAN obviously has a rich history dating back over two centuries. The Constitution provides the framework for our government, and understanding that framework and how the Supreme Court has applied it to its decisions over the years is as essential today as it was over 200 years ago.

Nothing about H.R. 7592 erases or changes this important history. In fact, the legislative history of CONAN makes it clear that Congress has consistently prioritized up-to-date interpretation and analysis of court cases, and this resolution honors that longstanding tradition.

Today, people rely on digital sources for the most up-to-date information. This is true whether we are talking about breaking news, airfares, restaurant reviews, or Supreme Court case citations.

CONAN is a case in point. According to the GPO, the number of print copies of CONAN requested in 2012 by the House, Senate, and Joint Committee on Printing was just over 1,000. Ten years later, in 2022, the number of requested copies dropped to just 659.

It is no coincidence that this drop in requests for the hardbound version of CONAN coincides with the 2019 launch of a digital version of