[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS
FOR 2024
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
___________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON LEGISLATIVE BRANCH
MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada, Chairman
ANDREW S. CLYDE, Georgia ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
C. SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida
NOTE: Under committee rules, Ms. Granger, as chairwoman of the full
committee, and Ms. DeLauro, as ranking minority member of the full
committee, are authorized to sit as members of all subcommittees.
Michelle Reinshuttle and Jacquelynn Ripke
Subcommittee Staff
___________
PART 1
FISCAL YEAR 2024 LEGISLATIVE BRANCH
APPROPRIATIONS REQUESTS
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
52-984 WASHINGTON : 2023
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
----------
KAY GRANGER, Texas, Chairwoman
HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas
KEN CALVERT, California
TOM COLE, Oklahoma
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas
CHARLES J. ``CHUCK'' FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee
DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio
ANDY HARRIS, Maryland
MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada
CHRIS STEWART, Utah
DAVID G. VALADAO, California
DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington
JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan
JOHN H. RUTHERFORD, Florida
BEN CLINE, Virginia
GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
MIKE GARCIA, California
ASHLEY HINSON, Iowa
TONY GONZALES, Texas
JULIA LETLOW, Louisiana
MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
MICHAEL GUEST, Mississippi
RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana
ANDREW S. CLYDE, Georgia
JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
JERRY L. CARL, Alabama
STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
C. SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida
JAKE ELLZEY, Texas
JUAN CISCOMANI, Arizona
ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia
BARBARA LEE, California
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
C. A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
DEREK KILMER, Washington
MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania
GRACE MENG, New York
MARK POCAN, Wisconsin
PETE AGUILAR, California
LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
NORMA J. TORRES, California
ED CASE, Hawaii
ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
JOSH HARDER, California
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
DAVID J. TRONE, Maryland
LAUREN UNDERWOOD, Illinois
SUSIE LEE, Nevada
JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York
Anne Marie Chotvacs, Clerk and Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
March 8, 2023
Congressional Budget Office
Page
Philip Swagel, Director, Congressional Budget Office............. 1
March 8, 2023
Office of Congressional Workplace Rights
Patrick N. Findlay, Executive Director, Office of Congressional
Workplace Rights............................................... 19
Answers to submitted questions............................... 31
March 9, 2023
Government Publishing Office
Hon. Hugh, Halpern, Director, Congressional Publishing Office.... 75
Answers to submitted questions............................... 89
March 23, 2023
Government Accountability Office
Hon. Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General, U.S. Government
Accountability Office.......................................... 109
Answers to submitted questions............................... 120
March 23, 2023
Library of Congress
Dr. Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress.......................... 123
Accompanied by: Mary Mazanec, Director, Congressional Research
Service; Maria Strong, Associate Register of Copyrights and
Director of Policy and Internal Affairs, U.S. Copyright Office
Answers to submitted questions............................... 133
Submitted Statements
Matthew Berry, General Counsel, Office of the General Counsel,
U.S. House of Representatives.................................. 181
E. Wade Ballou, Jr., Legislative Counsel, Office of the
Legislative Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives............. 184
Sesha Joi Moon, Director, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, U.S.
House of Representatives....................................... 189
Joseph C. Picolla, Inspector General, Office of the Inspector
General, U.S. House of Representatives......................... 195
Ralph Seep, Law Revision Counsel, Office of the Law Revision
Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives......................... 200
March 24, 2023
Members' Day
Hon. Derek Kilmer, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Washington..................................................... 153
March 28, 2023
House of Representatives
Hon. Cheryl L. Johnson, Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives..... 163
Hon. William McFarland, Acting Sergeant at Arms, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 165
Hon. Catherine Szpindor, Chief Administrative Officer, U.S. House
of
Representatives................................................ 166
March 29, 2023
Architect of the Capitol
Chere Rexroat, Acting Architect of the Capitol and Chief Engineer 207
March 29, 2023
U.S. Capitol Police
J. Thomas Manger, Chief, U.S. Capitol Police..................... 214
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2024
----------
Wednesday, March 8, 2023.
CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE
WITNESS
PHILLIP L. SWAGEL, DIRECTOR, CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE
Mr. Amodei. Good morning. This is the time and date noticed
for the hearing of the subcommittee.
The subcommittee will come to order.
I will reserve on opening remarks.
Welcome, everybody. The subject of today's hearing is
fiscal year 2024 request for the Congressional Budget Office.
Mr. Espaillat from New York, Mr. Ranking Member, would you
like to do some opening remarks?
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Dr. Swagel, thank you for being here before our
subcommittee, and we appreciate your time here to discuss the
fiscal year 2024 budget and the request of the Congressional
Budget Office.
I want to begin by reflecting the important role that your
office plays, and we look so much forward to working with you
to make sure that you are stronger--a stronger instrument of
democracy and oversight for our committee and our Congress. So
thank you for being here.
Mr. Swagel. Thank you.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member.
Mr. Swagel, you know, as--when we spoke earlier, your
agency has really got a pretty simple job. No matter what your
conclusions are, both sides are equally unhappy with you, and
so knowing--acknowledging that history and what an easy job you
have, the floor is yours.
All members have gotten the materials that you submitted to
them. I understand that you have been circulating amongst those
folks to meet beforehand. And so, with that, the floor is yours
for whatever remarks you deem fit in justifying your budget
request.
Mr. Swagel. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Amodei, and
thank you, Ranking Member Espaillat, and thank you, members of
the subcommittee.
Thanks for the opportunity to present CBO's budget request.
And I will speak just for a few minutes, and I will look to
connect the funding request to our mission. That is the purpose
of my testimony.
So I am here to request an appropriation of $70.8 million
for fiscal year 2024. That amount is an increase of $7.5
million, or 12 percent, from the amount provided in 2023.
Now, I recognize that is a large request. Twelve percent is
a big increase. A big part of that reflects inflation and
paying for deferred information technology costs from 2023,
from last year, or our current fiscal year.
Our request supports CBO's mission to provide nonpartisan
analysis to the Congress that is timely, rigorous, and
transparent. And we will carry out our mission with integrity.
So CBO is here to support you. The resources provided
connect directly to our mission, and that is what I want to
explain. So we support the Appropriations Committee and the
authorizing committees as legislation is developed when it is
on the floor, when it is being considered in a committee, in a
markup.
When the legislation heads to a vote, the CBO staff--and
many of my colleagues are here with me today--we analyze
amendments in real time, and sometimes hundreds where, for a
bill like the NDAA, there is thousands of amendments, and we
analyze them in real time so that the Congress can consider the
legislation and understand the fiscal effects.
We worked for months to produce the updated budget and
economic projections that incorporated last year's legislation
and development, such as the high inflation and the Fed's
response to it. And I know I am speaking to House Members later
today about that. So we work to provide you with timely and
accurate projections, cost estimates, and other information.
Now, I know we can do better. We can do better in terms of
our responsiveness and our transparency, and the money I have
requested is to help us do that. So about two-thirds of the
increase is for personnel costs. And so that would cover the
salaries and benefits for 11 new staff and then fully fund the
staff we hired at various times last year.
So these new people would let us do more in the areas in
which the Congress has focused and the areas in which I know we
can do better, in which we fell short. So defense and homeland
security--I have told that to several of you--energy,
infrastructure, and climate, health policy, income security,
and immigration, and in our long-term analysis to provide more
and better information on the long-term fiscal situation.
Now, having said that, most of the request would cover
inflation and then the performance-based salary increases for
the people we already have. Now, about $2.8 million of the
increase that I have requested would be for nonpersonnel costs,
and that is a big increase over last year so a 57-percent
increase over last year, over 2023. And that is because, in
2023, the--our allocation was constraining, and we deferred
computing services and information technology, things like
that.
And, again, I will just say we are here to support you, and
so, if there are--when the appropriations bills are considered,
the 12 annual appropriations bills, we will support you. We
will do provision-by-provision estimates. If there are
supplementals, we will support you on that. We will support the
authorizing committees. I hesitate to say----
Mr. Quigley. How much?
Mr. Swagel. Well, the chairs and ranking members of the
authorizing committees, I should say. And then, if there are
continuing resolutions--you know, I know no one wants that, but
we would support you on that as well.
And we do hundreds of cost estimates, dozens of reports,
thousands of technical assistance requests as legislation is
developed. This year, I am committed for us to return to our
historical benchmark, which is providing cost estimates before
legislation is considered on the floor.
It was difficult the last 2 years because so much of the
work of the House went forward on the suspension calendar. And
legislation was developed outside of the committee process, so
it just made it more difficult for us.
But that is my goal, is to get back to our benchmark. And
so that is it. That is why I am requesting the increase of $7.5
million, to be responsive and to focus on the areas in which we
need to do better and which Congress wants us to do more.
So let me stop and, again, thank you for your support, and
I am here to answer questions.
Mr. Amodei. Great. Thank you.
You know, it just occurred to me that--so we can ask you to
do analyses for the leg branch bill, and I know you guys call
them the way you see them, but you can basically say: Nobody
else in leg branch needs anything, and, actually, we are the
only ones that are worthy, right? Your analysis could
theoretically say that?
Mr. Swagel. Ah, so we have set it up to make sure we don't.
So, within CBO----
Mr. Amodei. Okay. Let me ask you one more time, slowly.
Mr. Swagel. Yeah, exactly. I am a little slow this morning.
Mr. Amodei. I withdraw the question.
Mr. Ranking Member, questions?
Mr. Swagel. I need the caffeinated water, so----
Mr. Espaillat. To follow up on the chairman, this is going
to be quite bipartisan----
Mr. Swagel. Yeah.
Mr. Espaillat [continuing]. But--oh, thank you.
I know that your outfit has a very distinct reputation for
being deliberate and professional and so, like, nonpartisan.
But sometimes, you know, we would like it to be a little
quicker, right? And of course doing that may require additional
funding. And you are asking for an increase in the--in your
budget, or--have testified to your wishes of expediting
matters, you know, in a way that it becomes a real tool for our
process, right----
Mr. Swagel. Uh-huh.
Mr. Espaillat [continuing]. So that the analysis that you
will make are an important tool to the wise and educated
decisions that we must make as a subcommittee, as a committee
and Congress.
And so--what do you feel could impact you accomplishing
this goal if you don't get the increase or, in fact, if you get
a budget cut? What would happen----
Mr. Swagel. Yeah. What would happen?
Mr. Espaillat [continuing]. If you get a budget cut vis-a-
vis your wishes, your goals and objectives?
Mr. Swagel. And I will talk about that. As I said, the
increase--the new people is targeted, and so I know from both
Chambers that we fell behind on national defense, on--you know,
legislation for national security and homeland security. And I
have heard that from many Members. And I know it. I think we do
a good job, but the volume has increased. We need more people.
I was going to hire those two people this year, and I had
to cancel that hiring. So, if we are flat funded, I am
certainly not going to let go of any people in national
security, and we will shrink--we would have to shrink. We do
that through attrition. And then I have to rebalance people
internally.
So I--you know, I am certainly not--you know, I am not
telling you I would, like, shut down the agency or anything
like that. We would do--we would focus our resources on the
Congress' priorities. It would just put us further behind.
Mr. Espaillat. Okay. And the Legislative Branch
Appropriations bill is the key legislation for ensuring that
our country has a strong and secure Congress, and I am
committed to protecting these investments. I am sure the chair
is as well. If CBO were to receive a cut in funding, let's say
back to your 2022 level of $61 million, what effect would that
have on CBO's ability to support Members, like specifically,
Members and staff, which are the--pretty much the terrain where
we rely on our support system, right?
Mr. Swagel. Yeah. It--so we would shrink, and that would
affect what we do for Members. And that is an area where I know
we already fell--fall short and fell short. And this is where
Mr. Quigley said--and he is exactly right--that, you know, we
focus on the chairs and ranking members of the authorizing
committees. We do as much as we can for others.
The last 2 years were especially hard because the--we had
both the authorizing committees and the leadership in both
Chambers, in some sense running parallel processes. And that
just left us less time to focus on Members outside of that.
And we would just fall--we would fall even shorter on that.
I mean, I think we do as best we can, but we don't always do as
much as we would like, and we would get further behind.
Mr. Espaillat. Just for the record, I am very concerned
about Mr. Quigley and Congresswoman Wexton, and we want to make
sure they get all the help they can get.
Mr. Quigley. Thank you.
Mr. Espaillat. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member.
Just real quick, before we go to Mr. Franklin, you said
that the allocation for the last cycle was constraining. Could
you expand upon what constraining is?
Mr. Swagel. So we--as I said, we canceled our hiring, or we
canceled our hiring of new economists, and the--but we
interviewed people, and then did not proceed to the next round.
And so we interviewed people in energy, environment, climate.
So we were going to hire two climate economists that--in the
Senate, the focus of the Budget Committee is on climate. And so
that--you know, that is just--it is awkward.
I canceled hiring people in national security for the same
reason. We deferred certain information technology purchases
and basically hardware. There was some we had to do. Some
cybersecurity purchases, we had to do, and we couldn't defer.
And so that--that is the sort of constraining in which it was.
Mr. Amodei. Okay. And so members--so members know, you are
going to be called on in the order in which you arrived at the
committee meeting. I don't think I need to explain more than
that, other than to say the floor is Mr. Franklin's from
Florida.
Mr. Franklin. All right.
Mr. Amodei. Please proceed.
Mr. Franklin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Dr. Swagel, thank you for the time that you spent
getting me up to speed. As a new guy, there is a lot to learn
here, and I certainly appreciate everything you all are doing.
As we look at the budget and try to figure out where we
might be able to realize savings, it is tough when everything
is in personnel, over 90 percent.
Mr. Swagel. Yeah.
Mr. Franklin. Were you--so--and I think you got--you shed a
little more light on a question I had. The inability in the
last cycle was just you weren't able to find the people? I
mean, the money was there. You had the budget for it, but it
just--you didn't get the right people at the time, or why were
those hires not made?
Mr. Swagel. No. It was the money wasn't there. So we had--
--
Mr. Franklin. Money. Okay.
Mr. Swagel. You know, we had the people. You know, Amazon
shut down their economics hiring this year. They are the
largest--the last couple years, they have been the largest
single recruiter of Ph.D. economists. So this was a buyer's
market for us in economics Ph.D.'s, and we had to stay out of
it.
Mr. Franklin. Okay. So--I lost my question in there. But we
talk about regular order now, and as a first-termer last time,
it sounded like, you know, fairy tales and pixie dust and
unicorns, this mythological regular order. Now that we are
getting back to that, how much do you foresee that impacting
your ability to deliver? Will you be able to do--if the number
of requests ramp up as we are anticipating, are you going to be
able to keep pace with that?
Mr. Swagel. That--that is what I am hoping--not hoping,
right? Hopes aren't the plan. That is my commitment, is that
the return to regular order will let us take the additional
resources freed up not having reconciliation and, you know, all
the energy that went to that, and provide a service to, you
know, a broader array of Members, you know, not just the
rankers and committee chairs and the leadership.
And that is what we need to do, and more cost estimates,
more technical assistance because I know Members have, right,
legislation, and it is not always a committee chair; it is just
rank-and-file members.
Mr. Franklin. Right.
Mr. Swagel. And that is--getting back to regular order will
let us do that.
Mr. Franklin. Okay. And, looking at your--going back to
2019, it looks like pay and benefits, which, again, is the
driver of your budget are up about 38 percent over--going back
to 2019.
Mr. Swagel. Yeah.
Mr. Franklin. At 290 FTEs, with your request this time,
what did that look like as far as number of personnel 5 years
ago? How much in just bodies has the staff grown?
Mr. Swagel. It has grown by a lot, right? So, 5 years ago,
it was 255. That was in 2019. And now I am hoping to go up to
290.
So it is a considerable increase. It was before my time as
Director, and the agency grew in the wake--essentially in the
wake of the repeal and replace debate over the ACA in 2017 that
the agency--we were just behind, and so we--you know, we were
not in position to support the Congress in considering that
legislation. And that--as I understand it, that was the impetus
to say, okay, we need to do better; we need more people. And
that is the last couple of years has gone from there.
Mr. Franklin. So you are at about 278 or so now? You are
looking to add about a dozen?
Mr. Swagel. Yeah.
Mr. Franklin. Are those all filled, your current 278
positions?
Mr. Swagel. Not all. I mean, we have a--you know, there is
always some turnover.
Mr. Franklin. Sure.
Mr. Swagel. We have a couple of management positions open,
a couple of economists who have kind of come and gone, some
support--you know, like IT technical--IT support, and even
that--so there is always some turnover, but we are close. We
are close to that.
Mr. Franklin. I guess--and what I was looking for there is
this--you know, having been involved with organizations before,
some--you know, there is always going to be turnover. You are
not always going to have everything filled, but I am just
looking for are--is there a continuous, you know, gapping of
positions that are carried from year to year? But it sounds
like you are running pretty lean and everything is pretty full,
and if it is not full, then you are out looking for the
replacement.
Mr. Swagel. That is right. I mean, one thing we are doing
now, which, as you asked the question, I realized I should
mention, is, looking ahead, we are leaving positions open for
longer. And that is part of our adjustment just because, you
know, I recognize the possibility of flat funding for the next
year.
You know, I am requesting a lot. It could be, like, a zero.
And there, I really need to keep vacancies open and--just to
maintain that flexibility in case--you know, in case the
funding environment is different than--you know, different than
what I might hope for.
Mr. Franklin. Okay. All right.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Quigley.
Mr. Quigley. Thank you Chair.
Let me make something a little clear with what you had said
before on the question from the ranking member.
If you had a 25 percent budget cut, is this just attrition
to get you to get through this, or would you actually at that
point have to lay people off?
Mr. Swagel. We would end up laying people off. So flat
funding, we will handle with attrition. The--my colleagues here
from the Office of Financial Management--Mark Smith is the--
oversees that group. Yeah, that would--25 percent cut would--we
would end up not handling that with attrition.
Mr. Quigley. And roughly what numbers are we talking about?
Mr. Swagel. You know, I--I am not sure--we have--one thing
we have done over the last year or two is we have moved to
lower cost staff. We are hiring younger--you know, younger
people--you know, kids right out of college, and they are less
expensive. So I suspect we do some of that, some more of that.
We would shrink. I am not sure how many, but it wouldn't be one
or two. It would be more than one or two.
Mr. Quigley. Sure. Now, an issue that has gone before this
subcommittee before--and you talked about it with modernization
of Congress, and that is the issue, the difficulty of getting
timely data from Federal agencies.
And feel free to name names and point fingers and blame.
Is there anything else we can do to help on that front
procedurally, statutorily, growling, showing up at their place?
Mr. Swagel. So we have two issues. And what--one we have
requested, a statutory change regarding student loans. You
know, just the legislation from a few years ago will help
parents of college students by the FAFSA, the application they
fill out, that will automatically have their tax data filled in
rather than them having to fill it in themselves. There is
privacy concerns, but that was what the legislation is meant to
do.
That legislation means we no longer will have access to the
student loan data. And it is just because it becomes Federal
tax information, and we have access to some, but that would be
off limits to us. So I have--we are requesting a statutory
change basically to let us keep getting that information. And
we use that--we are evaluating President Biden's--you know, his
various student loan proposals, and that is the sort of
information we--you know, we rely on there.
I will just mention one other, and that is on rescissions.
So, when--there are two pieces of legislation of the previous 2
years involve rescissions, the infrastructure bill and the guns
and mental health bill, and those were funded in part by
rescinding unused balances. To get that data, we have to get it
from the executive branch. They publish the information, but
there is a 2-month lag.
Mr. Quigley. Which part of the executive branch?
Mr. Swagel. You know, the Treasury and OMB do a finger-
pointing exercise.
Mr. Quigley. Yeah.
Mr. Swagel. But it is really--I mean, OMB--well, anyway,
one of the two. Treasury has a database. OMB has a database.
They each--they talk to each other, so they--and just--if the
administration doesn't want to rescind something, one--one
reaction--it is just human nature--is they hesitate to provide
us with the dollars. Presumably they start spending the money
faster, but that is something where we feel like we should be
entitled to the information, and it is just--it is for you to
decide what to do. We are just trying to inform you. And that
is----
Mr. Quigley. No, I agree.
Mr. Swagel. That is the----
Mr. Quigley. Very good. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Ms. Wexton.
Ms. Wexton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Dr. Swagel, so nice to see you again. It really is. I
really enjoyed our chat yesterday. And, actually--actually,
after we got off the Zoom, my legislative assistant and I were
talking about it. We were both saying that we were struck by
the same thing, which is that you love your job so much. You
really do. It is wonderful to see. You love economics. You love
your job, and you really are very dedicated to your staff.
Mr. Swagel. Thank you.
Ms. Wexton. So it doesn't surprise me that those 278 staff
positions are almost all full. I am glad to hear that. And you
guys do an amazing amount of work for $70.8 million. You guys
are amazing for that.
I think that you guys--give us more bang for our buck than
just any other congressional office, any other office that we
have here. So keep it up. Keep it up.
A couple questions for you based on stuff that you said in
this earlier testimony. You said that--some part of this
increase was to fully fund staff that you had already hired
over the last couple years?
Mr. Swagel. Yeah.
Ms. Wexton. Were they hired as contractors or something, or
why aren't they fully funded already?
Mr. Swagel. Ah. So, if we hired someone last fiscal year,
the current fiscal year, we might have hired them in the middle
of the year, and so say we only had to fund them for 6 months
of the year. But then, next year, we will need to fund them for
12 months.
Ms. Wexton. Okay.
Mr. Swagel. So that is why--that is why part of the
increase is to fully fund the people we already have on board.
Ms. Wexton. But they were already counted as an FTE on your
budget----
Mr. Swagel. That is right.
Ms. Wexton. And this information with the tax information
and the FAFSA, as a parent of a couple of kids who are--one who
is in college and one that is about to go to college, I am
curious about that because, if it says ``tax information,'' you
no longer get access to it. Is that correct?
Mr. Swagel. That is correct. That is soon--Department of
Education is in the process of setting up that connection to
the--you know, the Federal tax information. Once they get that
operational, we will lose access to it.
Ms. Wexton. Is there a way to silo it so that you wouldn't
be able to see it so that you can still get information for the
FAFSA or the student loans without getting information from the
FAFSA?
Mr. Swagel. It would be challenging--I mean, in principle,
we could ask the Department of Education to do the analysis for
us. But I think that would be not desirable because, without
casting aspersions, their calculations might be different than
what we do. That is the challenge.
Ms. Wexton. There is no other way for you to do it----
Mr. Swagel. No.
Ms. Wexton [continuing]. Other than to have access to the
entire database, right?
Mr. Swagel. Now, we--well, it is just that--I will say it
is just the student loan database that we get now. So now--so,
today, we get student loan information that doesn't include
parents' incomes.
Is that right? I should--I need to think about that. Okay.
I need to go back on that.
So, right now, we get the information that parents put on
the FAFSA.
Ms. Wexton. Right.
Mr. Swagel. So that must be--their self-reported
information, but that is not Federal tax information because it
doesn't come from the IRS database.
Ms. Wexton. Okay.
Mr. Swagel. That is the difference, yeah.
And, actually, can I just say one more thing? We do get the
protected tax information already. We get that through the
Joint Committee on Taxation for the purpose of our baseline. So
we have the facilities already to protect that information. So
I am--essentially I am--and we work closely with the IRS to
make sure we safeguard it.
So what I am asking for is to let us keep having the
information in a sense that we already have, using the
protections that we already have in place.
Ms. Wexton. All right. Okay. I understand.
Another issue that we talked about, it was--things that you
would like to be able to do more of at the CBO that you are not
able to do with your current staffing levels. Now, are you able
to cross-train people so that they can cover different subject-
matter areas, or do they specialize in the one subject-matter
area throughout their entire time with you?
Mr. Swagel. It is more the latter, more the specialization,
and we are moving toward the cross-training, the more
flexibility.
Especially with our younger staff. So that is something we
will continue.
Ms. Wexton. And so one of the things that, I know on my
side of the aisle, people are interested in is childcare and
child well-being and things--investments in things like early
childhood education and healthcare.
Mr. Swagel. Uh-huh.
Ms. Wexton. Is that something that you are able to look at
to get a long-term view of now and see, what those investments
will do later on in those children's lives?
Mr. Swagel. That is something we are working on. And I know
there is considerable interest in that. And the issue is--you
know, as your----
Ms. Wexton. Your early investments now, will they pay off
later?
Mr. Swagel. Pay off later and outside the budget window.
Ms. Wexton. Right.
Mr. Swagel. And so we are working to quantify those
impacts. You know, and there is research that, if the child
has--if the mother of the child has healthcare, including when
the child is in utero, the child 20 years down the road has
better outcomes. And that has a fiscal impact, and we are
trying to quantify that and then accrue it forward into the
budget window.
Ms. Wexton. Thank you so much. I have no further questions.
I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
Mrs. Bice from Oklahoma, you are--got the floor.
Mrs. Bice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Dr. Swagel, for being here and our
conversation over Zoom a few days ago.
A couple questions I have. Do you know what the current
wait--average wait time is for a request to be responded to
from your office? Do you track that information?
Mr. Swagel. You know, it depends on who the request is
from. And that is--I hate to it say it, but it is true----
Mrs. Bice. So the freshmen here--well, I guess we are
sophomores, now, right? We are probably at the bottom of the
list?
Mr. Swagel. You know, it depends what you ask for. If you
ask for something that we have already answered, the wait will
be zero. If you ask for something complicated, the wait will be
infinity.
Mrs. Bice. Do you track that information, though, because I
feel like that would be helpful in sort of determining sort of
a baseline of how long it takes you to actually--your employees
to respond to requests, whatever that may be, because, in a
given year or given Congress, if you extrapolate that out, you
are going to have some that are zero timeframe and some that
are, you know, a month, right?
Mr. Swagel. Yeah, that is right. That is right. We don't
track that, and I will just tell you one of the challenges
there is a lot of our interactions with Member offices are
essentially technical assistance. A Member will have a piece of
legislation, and the legislation, it just needs more work. You
know, we sort--we say: We get what you want to do.
Say it is in healthcare, CMS. They could not implement the
language as written. And so we work with them--we work with the
Member office to say: Okay, well, let's accomplish your goal,
right?
We have no view.
And so there is sort of--there is a little bit of we don't
get to a finish line because we are helping Members make
progress, if that makes sense.
Mrs. Bice. But I think you could--I mean, this is what your
office does, is quantify data, right?
Mr. Swagel. Yeah.
Mrs. Bice. So I feel like this is a data point that we
could actually quantify so we can determine a baseline of how
many--you know, what is the average wait time so we can justify
the increase in head count, right?
Mr. Swagel. Uh-huh.
Mrs. Bice. To follow up on that, the--you mentioned in your
testimony earlier that there has been an increase in requests.
What is the percentage of increase that you all have seen?
Mr. Swagel. Ah. It is--so the--in the submission, we have
some data on cost estimates. And so, in the last Congress, just
the volume of legislation went up especially the shift to the
suspension calendar, and so that I can quantify that.
I can't quantify the requests. You know, so many of those
will come from the--you know, a staffer of a Member will call--
you know, will contact the staffer within CBO, and they will
just do that bilaterally, and you are right; we don't track
that.
Mrs. Bice. So are we--sort of follow up with, again, we
are--that is your whole sort of organization, is to quantify
information in some way. So it would be helpful if we knew
this. To justify the request that you have for the increase, I
think it would be helpful for us to know this.
Final question, if I may, Mr. Chairman: Is there--are there
any technology applications that CBO is looking at that would
help you expedite the deliverables to Members and staff?
Mr. Swagel. Ah, okay, and very good.
And then I will answer that, and then I have one thing that
we do quantify, which I can go back to.
So we are looking to improve our technology. One way we
have done it is shifting to the cloud, you know, both in our
data, which improves the security, and then shifting actually
our--you know, from desktop computers to the cloud. And so, you
know, our desktops will essentially become portals to a cloud-
based computing. It is just more secure. It is easier to access
remotely, and it is just--right--we don't have to keep buying
new hardware. So I think that--you know, that will help us,
that shift.
We are improving some of our modeling. I had--when we
talked, I had mentioned that we had a model that we are moving
out of Fortran into Python. So, from, you know, sort of----
Mrs. Bice. The fact that you said the words ``Fortran'' was
frightening to me, but yes.
Mr. Swagel. I learned Fortran in high school, so I am older
than I look.
Yes. So we are--so modernizing that will improve our
ability on Social Security modeling and other modeling. So we
are making those sorts of changes as well.
Actually, I am sorry. Mr. Chairman, could I just say one
more sentence here?
Mr. Amodei. As long as you don't use any more dirty words
like ``Fortran,'' please go ahead.
Mr. Swagel. The one thing we do quantify and where I know
we fell short last Congress is cost estimates of legislation
that go to a vote, you know, whether a markup in committee or
on the floor. And that, by statute, we are required to provide
those cost estimates.
And, just when legislation is developed outside of
committee or goes on suspension to the floor, we just sometimes
don't have the cost estimate ready. And, there, that is where
we fell short, and I know it, and that is--that is our
commitment for this Congress, is to get back to--it might not
be a hundred, but in the nineties.
Mrs. Bice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Mr. Clyde from Georgia, the floor is yours.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Director Swagel, thank you for being here today.
And I know that the CBO provides invaluable information for
Congress. In fact, I would say that the CBO analysis of bills
coming to the floor can indeed be a determining factor in
passage of the legislation as it provides insight into the
effects that a bill is likely to have on Federal spending,
revenue, and deficits.
In addition, CBO provides analysis of the economic outlook
of our Nation, routinely updating to account for new laws. Over
the past 2 years, Congress has passed several large spending
bills accounting for trillions more in Federal spending. The
average American can certainly understand the economic effects
this spending has had on inflation, and CBO reports confirm the
detriment that excess spending has on the economy.
So, in your opinion, do omnibus bills that have come to the
floor with a short timeframe, et cetera, do they create more
work for the CBO than, say, individual appropriation bills and
single-subject bills?
Mr. Swagel. They are challenging, yeah. I mean, the answer
is yes. I mean, it is a compressed timeframe, and I will give
you one example with the last omnibus. I will be fast, which
is, for the omnibus legislation, the healthcare provisions, we
were sort of up in the air. There are two paths. We actually
prepared two full cost estimates for those provisions, you
know, bigger and smaller, because we didn't know which way
the--you know, the legislation would go, and it was decided
very late in the process, you know, rather than sort of in a
committee process----
Mr. Clyde. Uh-huh.
Mr. Swagel [continuing]. And so that is the sort of--there
is extra effort. Look, we did it. It is our job.
Mr. Clyde. Right.
Mr. Swagel. But it--but the answer is yes.
Mr. Clyde. So, therefore, having regular order, having
single-subject bills, having 12 individual appropriations, all
right, is much better for the CBO and allows you to do your
work more effectively and more efficiently. Is that a correct
statement?
Mr. Swagel. That is right. And we will work--however the
Congress works, we will work----
Mr. Clyde. Right.
Mr. Swagel. But, for sure, that is correct.
Mr. Clyde. Okay. Great. Great.
Okay. According to your presentation on ``The Budget and
Economic Outlook 2023 to 2033,'' from February 16th of this
year, you stated the cumulative deficit over the next 10
years--next 10-year period is $3.1 trillion larger in CBO's
current baseline projections than it was in May of 2022
projections, so we are growing faster in debt.
Additionally, you wrote, Federal debt held by the public is
projected to increase in each year of the projection period and
reach 118 percent of GDP in 2033, higher than it has ever been.
In the two decades that follow, growing deficits are projected
to push Federal debts higher still to 195 percent of GDP in
2053.
You know, these figures are not only extremely concerning;
they are actually frightening to me. CBO projections clearly
illustrate the dangers of spending beyond our means. It is
imperative that we begin reducing deficit spending, and
realistically that means we must look for smart and targeted
ways to reduce annual appropriations levels while maintaining
the integrity of essential government services.
In your testimony, you cited technological improvements for
maintaining a hybrid working environment as part of the
justification for the fiscal year 2024 budget increase. And we
know that the remote working increases cybersecurity risks. And
you have acknowledged this, because a portion of your budget
justification references improvements to IT and cybersecurity,
specifically for a hybrid work environment.
So what percentage of CBO's workforce is currently hybrid,
and how many days a week are they working remotely?
Mr. Swagel. Ah, okay, and very good.
We have a couple of dozen employees--it is probably in
the--say, 20 who are fully remote. And so what we did is we
went position by position and said, what jobs in principle
could be remote if the person wants to?
So I will give you an example. We have an editing staff,
and they work with everyone, but it is generally by email and
by documents. And we said to the editors: If you want to be
remote, you can.
There is--several are in the office all the time. There is
a couple who wanted to be home--you know, kid--you know, kids
in high school; they want to be there when they get home,
things like that.
Most of the positions, so 250 people, are in the office.
Everyone is in the office Tuesday and Wednesday, so we have
told everyone: Those are core days.
Everyone is there.
Other people are there. I schedule Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So my meetings are 5 days a week,
and people come in. The other days, Monday, Thursday, Friday,
there is a mix. You know, Friday, I--the Ford Building is a
ghost town. Monday and Thursday, it is pretty busy. You know,
our floor.
Mr. Clyde. Okay. In last year's fiscal year--in the budget
request from last year for fiscal year 2023, the CBO hearing,
when asked about the effects or impairment of remote working,
you agreed that--and I quote--``being in person is definitely
better.'' Okay? So does CBO--does the CBO have a plan to return
to a full-time, in-office working environment for everyone?
Mr. Swagel. Yeah. No. I agree; it is better. I don't see
how we will get there to a 5-day-a-week. I think that would be
a real challenge for our ability to retain staff. And, you
know, there is some--it is a mix, right? For younger staff, the
ones we hire right out of college, being in person is a draw.
For the older staff, it is in the other direction. And so that
is why I just don't see us getting back to 5 days a week. I am
there 5 days a week. It is a benefit. So I just don't see us
getting there.
Mr. Clyde. But, yet, it is better being in person? I mean,
doesn't that kind of ring a bell, like, you know, the CBO isn't
working in person; they are not being as efficient as they
possibly can be?
Mr. Swagel. No. I--I agree with you. I am just weighing the
tradeoff. If I said to everyone, ``We are all coming back 5
days a week, even when, you know, Congress is out of session,''
whatever, I would lose staff. I mean, it is just--it is just a
reality. So I have to weigh that tradeoff.
Mr. Clyde. Okay. All right. Well, thank you.
And I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Any other questions from----
Okay. I have got a few, Dr. Swagel. Following up on Mr.
Clyde's last stuff, do you have any quantification where, you
know, you are here, you are not here? Is there any productivity
curve to measure that against? So, of those folks that are
there only on Monday or Tuesdays, do we have any----
Mr. Swagel. Ah.
Mr. Amodei. Do we have any database that says, ``Hey, by
the way, those people, whether they are doing X, Y, or Z, are
just as productive''? Do we have any fallback on that?
Mr. Swagel. Yeah.
Mr. Amodei. And I heard you when you said: Well, I think,
if we went to 5 days, that we would lose people.
I guess the question is: Are we losing productivity because
we are accommodating them? That, I think, is the bottom line.
Mr. Swagel. Yeah.
Mr. Amodei. So, if you could check into that and give us a
database on that.
And then the second thing is maybe to send a message to
some folks is, well, how many--not who--there is probably some
rules against who--how many do you--what would happen to your
workforce if you said, ``Hey, those--those oversight people
think you should be here''?
Mr. Swagel. Uh-huh.
Mr. Amodei. Try to quantify that.
Mr. Swagel. Okay.
Mr. Amodei. And then the last thing--and I meant to say
please if I didn't.
And then the last thing is: Part of the thing that the
people on this committee are going to have to do when we
recommend a bill to the whole committee is it is a value
judgment. Here is what we think Swagel's outfit ought to have
for money going forward.
And so, when we follow up on a little bit of what Mrs. Bice
was talking about, it would be helpful in terms of informing
that decision to know what the effect of--because you have
talked about procedures on the floor for this, that, and the
other sort of thing.
I know there is discussion--serious discussion about, hey,
open rules. Anybody who wants to have an amendment on the floor
gets to have one. What is the quantification on--and
historically this committee goes first, so you have got a
little bit of a Guinea pig. I mean, we won't historically have
as much fun as Defense or Interior or, you know, all the other
ones. But, nonetheless, if open rules is, hey, and by the way,
we want to know what--what Amodei's amendment is going to
happen--you know, in whatever the sense, or Espaillat or
whoever, it would be nice to have that--some idea in terms of
that is fine, but here is what happens to operations at these
levels.
Mr. Swagel. Okay.
Mr. Amodei. Okay?
Mr. Swagel. Okay.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
And Mr. LaTurner just showed up because he wanted to be the
anchorman on today's questioning, so the gentleman from Kansas
has the floor.
Mr. LaTurner. Happy to do it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Most lawmakers understand the value that a CBO report
provides when considering legislation and the potential fiscal
and economic impacts of certain bills. Your primary,
overarching justification for the $7.5 million increase from
fiscal year 2023 is that you will be able to fill the growing
demand that you forecast for the next year.
You said that CBO has historically been able to review and
provide cost estimates for bills ahead of floor consideration
about 90 percent of the time.
Mr. Swagel. Uh-huh.
Mr. LaTurner. What are some of the determiners of whether
or not you will be able to get that information out the door to
Congress?
Mr. Swagel. Uh-huh. There is two key factors.
One is the suspension calendar. So, in the House, if
legislation, right--if we haven't seen a bill and suddenly,
right, the--you know, it is--in the last Congress, it was Mr.
Hoyer's office--told us this is going on suspension, and it is
a challenge for--you know, post office, no problem, but, you
know, something more--something complicated, we haven't seen in
some committees that are just not used to working with us
that--you know, the healthcare committees--you know, they know
us. But someone, say, on the justice side might--just they
don't interact with us as much. They might not realize we need
to see it.
So suspension calendar. And then, outside of regular order,
the omnibus, the reconciliation bills, so heavily driven by
leadership, that is just difficult for us because we are
supporting the committee and the leadership, and we are just
sort of stretched--stretched thin.
And, you know, sometimes there will be different groups
within the Congress, and so, like, health, there will be four
different groups working on legislation, and we are sort of
stretched a bit thin. So it is that mix of things.
Mr. LaTurner. Sure. All right. Can you expand on the impact
that inflation has had on CBO's standard operating procedures
and how you worked within the 2023 levels?
Mr. Swagel. You know, thank you for asking. Inflation has
affected us, our wages. So last year--this was another
constraint of our allocation last year, is that I had to delay
the inflation adjustment for all the--most of the staff. Anyone
making--anyone at the low income, we held them--you know, we
protected them.
Anyone--most of our staff have master's and Ph.D.'s. They
are relatively highly paid. Each of them lost about $2,000 to
$3,000 because I couldn't give any inflation adjustment that
everyone else in the Congress got effectively because of--
because of the constraint that we had.
No? No. Okay. So I am--I could be wrong. Anyway--so that
was a direct effect. That was a constraint of--I guess I can
talk--I can talk for myself. That was, for our agency, that was
the constraint. So--and that is inflation, right? Inflation did
that. And that was a--I talked before about delaying some IT
and things like that. That was another delay. We delayed COLAs
for basically everyone with--anyone with a master's and Ph.D.,
which is like two-thirds of the staff.
Mr. LaTurner. Gotcha. Some of your nonpersonnel costs go
towards paying expert consultants.
Mr. Swagel. Yes, sir.
Mr. LaTurner. Particularly when input is needed in high-
demand areas like healthcare, immigration, how does CBO
determine when outside consultants are needed? And tell me
about the collaboration.
Mr. Swagel. Ah, okay. So we have two groups--two main
groups of outside advisers. One is economic advisers, and one
is health advisers. And those, the lists are on our website.
The meetings are open to staff--to Hill staff. They are not
open to the public, but we invite staff from the economic-
focused committees. So that is all done in public as well. And
we look to have a broad range of experts. We have people from
all the previous administrations, certainly going back to Bush
41, in these.
Once in a while, we have an expert on a particular area.
For the demographic report we did, we actually hired a
consultant to help us understand the impact of the Dobbs
decision, what that would do to fertility. And so that--there
is--having--there is an academic who had the research like
that.
And we consulted widely with people with very wide--you
know, very wide variety of views on Dobbs, but we did hire one
expert just because she was set up to do the--to help us with
the analysis.
Mr. LaTurner. Understood.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
Reminder to everybody. If we have got outstanding
information requests with Dr. Swagel's organization, let us
know. Faye, Michelle are here to help facilitate that so the
information gets exchanged, anything else like that, so we can
get on with drafting the committee bill in this area.
Mr. Clyde.
Mr. Clyde. Director Swagel, one final comment I would like
to make--and I think you would be--you will be happy to hear
this--is that, you know, the new Republican rules talk about
regular order. They talk about 12 appropriation bills. You
know, they talk about single-subject bills, okay? So I think
that will greatly improve your ability to deliver to Congress
what Congress needs in a timely fashion.
So I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of that.
Mr. Swagel. No, I----
Mr. Amodei. That should free up a lot of your time to deal
with open rules and thousands of amendments on the floor.
Mr. Swagel. We will support the Congress on whatever----
Mr. Amodei. With that----
Mr. Swagel. However the Congress works.
Mr. Amodei. With that, the meeting is adjourned. Thank you,
all.
Mr. Swagel. Thank you.
Wednesday, March 8, 2023.
OFFICE OF CONGRESSIONAL WORKPLACE RIGHTS
WITNESS
PATRICK N. FINDLAY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF CONGRESSIONAL
WORKPLACE RIGHTS
Mr. Amodei. The subcommittee will come to order.
I want to welcome everyone. The subject of today's hearing
is Fiscal Year 2024 Request for the Office of Congressional
Workplace Rights.
I want to thank my ranking member, Congressman Espaillat,
committee members, and Executive Director Patrick Findlay.
I have asked Mr. Findlay, as well as other folks--so we
know kind of what direction we are headed--to submit their
usual justifications in their opening statements, which will be
made part of the record. I have also asked him--said, hey, I am
pretty sure we are capable of reading that stuff and proceeding
accordingly, so feel free to summarize that. Anything that is
included in those written comments is obviously fair game.
And so we will go ahead and begin.
I am going to go ahead and reserve on an opening statement.
I don't think anybody came here with the expectation of hanging
on every word that I might say in an opening statement, so I
will save you that.
Mr. Ranking Member, the floor is yours for an opening
statement.
Mr. Espaillat. Well, thank you, first, Mr. Amodei, for
pronouncing my name right.
Mr. Amodei. I have been working on it.
Mr. Espaillat. I know that we share a certain complication
in that arena.
Mr. Amodei. That is true.
Mr. Espaillat. Maybe we can work bipartisanly in that way,
right?
Mr. Amodei. I can use all the help I can get. Thank you,
sir.
Mr. Espaillat. OK.
But this committee, as you know, has a long history of
bipartisan work, and I look forward to working with you in that
direction. As you know, the committee also impacts on aspects
of the operation of Congress, and without that we cannot serve
the people that we represent. So it is critical that we work
together as we address the issues that the subcommittee will
put forward as a priority.
And, Mr. Findlay, welcome, and we look forward to hearing
from you.
As you indicated in your budget request, the Office of
Congressional Workplace Rights is responsible for one major
program, administering the provisions of the Congressional
Accountability Act, CAA.
So we look forward to your presentation, and I look forward
to working with you.
Mr. Amodei. Great. Thank you, sir.
I should also add for purposes of the record that the
subject of today's hearing is the Fiscal Year 2024 Request for
the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights.
And, with that, Mr. Findlay, the floor is yours.
Mr. Findlay. Great. Good morning, Chairman, Ranking Member,
members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to
appear before you on behalf of the Office of Congressional
Workplace Rights to discuss our fiscal year 2024 budget
request.
I became Executive Director just this past November. It has
been an incredible privilege to work with our small but
dedicated staff to advance workplace rights, safety and health,
and accessibility in the congressional workplace.
As you know, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights
is the independent, nonpartisan office that administers the
Congressional Accountability Act, including all of the
employment- and accessibility-related statutes that apply to
Congress through the CAA. For example, through the CAA,
Congress has applied to itself parts of the Civil Rights Act of
1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Family and
Medical Leave Act, along with several other important statutory
provisions.
The OCWR performs many of the same functions for the
legislative branch as do multiple agencies within the executive
branch. That means that the OCWR operates in several distinct
but complementary mission spaces.
We operate in administrative dispute resolution, or ADR
program, to resolve CAA claims, including through hearings and
appeals. Our ADR program also offers voluntary confidential
mediation services to assist the parties in resolving claims on
their own.
We provide confidential advising services to covered
employees on a privileged and confidential basis to advise
employees about their rights and responsibilities under the
Congressional Accountability Act in light of their particular
circumstances.
We have a robust outreach, education, and training program
tailored to the unique needs of the legislative-branch
community.
Our Office of General Counsel investigates alleged
violations of laws governing hazard-free workplaces,
accessibility, and collective bargaining, and they prosecute
violations. OGC inspects more than 18 million square feet of
legislative-branch facilities and grounds to ensure safety and
accessibility.
Our board of directors proposes and, after congressional
approval, promulgates regulations to interpret and implement
the various statutes applied to the legislative branch through
the CAA.
We also administer the statutorily required biennial
Congressional Workplace Climate Survey.
With that brief background, I would like to turn to the
particulars of our fiscal year 2024 request for just less than
$8.55 million. I believe this request reflects our commitment
to operating efficiently and as a responsible steward of
taxpayers' money.
Funding at the requested level in fiscal year 2024 would
keep the OCWR at a steady state. It would not notably expand
our capabilities beyond our fiscal year 2023 levels but would
allow our currently authorized staff to continue succeeding in
our mission.
The OCWR relies on its people to accomplish our varied
mission. We don't have highly specialized, expensive equipment
or facilities or other capital-intensive things. As in the
past, our biggest line item for fiscal year 2024 remains
personnel costs.
Approximately 61 percent of our budget request, or $5.2
million, is for the costs associated with our current allotment
of 34 authorized full-time-equivalent employees. Though not
contemplating any additional staff, this dollar amount
represents an increase of 6.7 percent above the fiscal year
2023 enacted level.
The increase has two components: the standard CBO-generated
cost-of-living projection that all legislative-branch agencies
are to use; and an amount that would allow for merit and tenure
increases in salary to ensure our compensation is comparable to
the executive branch.
Our request for non-personnel costs and expenses makes up
approximately 39 percent of our request, or approximately $3.3
million. This amount represents an increase of 7.1 percent
above our fiscal year 2023 enacted amount. This increase covers
projected upticks in operational costs related to contract
services, including for projected increases in costs associated
with IT modernization and security.
As I discuss more in my written statement and as our budget
justification covers in even greater detail, a good deal of our
non-personnel costs are dictated by, for example, the number
and complexity of cases. Put another way, while we are
conscious of keeping costs down when possible, circumstances
outside of our control, including inflation, mean we cannot cut
our non-personnel costs indiscriminately or across the board
without a direct impact on our mission.
Because our requested budget is straightforward, efficient,
and crucial to the OCWR fulfilling the roles Congress set out
for us, I ask that you fund our office at the requested level.
Your support will allow us to continue our efforts to make
our legislative branch a model workplace--safe, accessible,
free from discrimination and harassment, and which offers equal
employment opportunity and treatment for all.
Thank you. I look forward to answering any questions that
you may have.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
Mr. Ranking Member, questions?
Mr. Espaillat. Yes.
My first question centers on the impact of the budget and
proposed budget cuts. And OCWR received a substantial increase
last year. With no new initiatives in 2024, what will happen to
the operations if you remain flat or even return to the fiscal
year 2022 level? And how do you see the decrease impacting the
employees and overall goals of the legislative branch?
Mr. Findlay. So, if we remain flat, that would put us at
about $8 million and about 500,000 less than we requested.
Because, as I mentioned, so many of our non-personnel costs
are fixed--our IT-related things that are essentially non-
negotiable; we have to have secure IT systems, that sort of
thing--it would almost certainly have to come out of our
personnel side.
And so that would mean, to get back to, say, 500,000, from
our projection, 200 to 300 of that could come from not giving
cost-of-living raises or any other merit increases, anything
like that, to our staff.
Some of it could be made up by leaving positions unfilled.
But I think, in light of the roles our folks play, most of our
staff play unique roles. We only have a couple of positions
that have multiple people doing a role. So, depending on who
were to leave, how we were to leave those spots open, it could
cause delays in inspecting premises.
So, if any of your staff call with a complaint and are
trying to get AOC to fix something and they are not, it might
take longer for our inspectors to get out there and be
responsive to that call.
If your folks call and need confidential advising and that
is a position that had to remain open if someone were to leave,
it could delay them getting that.
It couldn't prevent and be--just under the statute, we
would still have to appoint our hearing officers and process
all the cases, but it could cause--if our clerk staff were to
be diminished, it could cause delays in that arena.
So every part of our mission could be impacted depending on
how it particularly impacted our staff. And I don't think there
would be any way, if we were to go back or certainly even
farther back, to, say, 2021 levels, I don't think there is any
way we could maintain our current level of service. We would
have to delay training, we would have to--something would have
to give. And I think the impact would be pretty stark and,
obviously, not efficient and not ideal.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you for that answer.
As you know, last year, we passed a resolution guaranteeing
protections for staff who try to unionize. How has your office
supported these efforts? How many petitions have been filed,
elections conducted, or unions approved?
Mr. Findlay. So, as you alluded to, the House passed the
resolution last Congress to extend to House staff collective
bargaining rights. And, since then, 14 petitions have been
filed with our office asking for a collective bargaining unit
to be recognized.
Seven of them have gone through the process, at least as
far as our office is concerned, and have either completed their
collective bargaining or are in the middle of their collective
bargaining. They don't then have to come back to us once there
has been the election. And so they are off and running on their
own.
There are seven that are pending at different stages of the
process, some earlier than others--the conferencing, trying to
settle on what they are going to have as their bargaining unit.
Others are about to have an election. Others, you know, are at
various other spots.
So, as far as supporting that, of course, the act requires
us to run the elections, for instance, and so we hold the
elections. And recognizing that House staff are all over the
country, we have used an electronic elections system that I
think is a safe, secure, and efficient way to do it and allows
district staff to participate on equal footing with DC staff,
which is important and required by the act.
So, beyond that, we have our attorneys doing the normal
role that you would expect, whether it be House or any other
part of the legislative branch.
Mr. Espaillat. Are there any particular concerns regarding
this entire process?
Mr. Findlay. I don't think so. I think it has been
efficient, at least on our end, and I haven't heard any
complaints or problems with how we provided the role we are
obligated to provide.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member.
We will now go to Mr. Franklin.
Mr. Franklin. I thank the chairman.
Mr. Findlay, of the 34 full-time equivalents you have, are
those all filled at this time?
Mr. Findlay. They are not. We are at 29 filled right now. I
have one posted. I hope to post very soon two others. And then
I am looking to fill two more by the end of the fiscal year,
and if not early in the next fiscal year, this coming fiscal
year.
One of the FTEs actually is not a full-time person. It is
distributed among our five board members. So they, together,
are considered one of our FTEs.
Mr. Franklin. OK. When were you last at full strength?
Mr. Findlay. I don't know.
Mr. Franklin. Is it pretty typical to have vacancies?
Mr. Findlay. I know they kept some of the vacancies until I
was appointed so that I could, you know, have an impact or say
on who it is. I don't know how often--I would think it is
typical to have at least some vacancies.
But I don't like vacancies. I want to get them filled. You
know, we have work to do.
Mr. Franklin. So what happens to the budget and money if
you go through a year and you are funded at a certain FTE level
and those positions aren't filled? What happens to the money
that is allocated for those salaries?
Mr. Findlay. Well, of course, if we have money at the end
of, you know, the appropriated period, it would return to
Treasury.
Mr. Franklin. All right. Following up on the unionization
question, did that require you to add staff?
Mr. Findlay. Sort of. It required us to dedicate staff.
It was, well, sometime in the spring last year, I think,
after the initial approps that our folks asked for additional
funding, as Mr. Espaillat noted. And so, at one point back
then, about a dozen of our staff were spending some of their
time on the unionization matters.
But now that it is more routine and a system and a process
is in place and the computer systems are in place, it is less
than one FTE, of a line person. Then, of course, there is the
management review and that kind of thing. But at the line
level, it is taking up less than one FTE worth of----
Mr. Franklin. So it is mostly a collateral job, or it was,
for people----
Mr. Findlay. Yes, for the--exactly, the 12. Because that
covers training people, technical people, a clerk. It is sort
of all aspects of--other than--not--our health and safety
inspectors didn't have anything to do with it. But the folks
that you would expect certainly had something to do with it.
But now it is mostly one of our attorneys who is in the
process that the regs and the statute require, the interacting
with the employing office and with the declared union.
Mr. Franklin. OK. Very good.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Next we will hear from Congresswoman Wexton.
The floor is yours.
Ms. Wexton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Mr. Findlay, for coming before us today.
Director Findlay, I am kind of curious about the paid
family and medical leave policy that we have here in the
Capitol, because my understanding is that each employee gets up
to 12 weeks of paid family medical leave for the birth of a
child?
Mr. Findlay. Right.
Ms. Wexton. For parental leave. My apologies.
Mr. Findlay. For parental--right.
Ms. Wexton. Yes, parental leave.
So have you inquired about how many people are aware of
that? I mean, do you know what the uptake of it is?
Mr. Findlay. I don't. And I don't know that we would
necessarily know the uptake. I think that would have to come
from maybe CAO.
But it is a new--the House did pass regulations in the last
Congress to extend the paid parental leave to House employees.
And those, of course, are the regulations that our board
proposed. And then they became effective for the House
employees.
So it is a new requirement, a new opportunity for House
staff. I don't know what the uptake----
Ms. Wexton. OK.
Mr. Findlay. I do think, as you noted, it is important that
folks do realize they have that opportunity.
Ms. Wexton. Is your office doing anything to inform people
about that opportunity that they have?
Mr. Findlay. We are, through our outreach program, in both
training--it is now being mentioned as we update our trainings,
and there are other--newsletters, things like that, that we
have, working with the House to get that message out.
But that is a good point. The right isn't worth anything if
folks don't know they have it. And so I think that is crucial.
Ms. Wexton. And do offices have an affirmative duty to tell
their employees about it?
Mr. Findlay. I don't know. I don't think they have an
affirmative duty to tell their folks about the new paid
parental leave, but it absolutely needs to be part of the
overall training under the Congressional Accountability Act and
in the FMLA training that it is part of. Because, of course,
paid parental leave is part of the FMLA, as you noted.
Ms. Wexton. OK. Thank you.
A few months ago, OCWR released its biennial report to
Congress with several recommendations to modify the CAA. The
recommendations included protecting whistleblowers from
retaliation, requiring offices to maintain records of workplace
injuries and illnesses to help prevent workplace hazards, and
extending paid child bereavement leave to legislative-branch
employees.
Under the CAA, your board has to provide these
recommendations and to ensure that we are keeping pace with the
private sector--is that correct--as well as well as the
executive branch. Is that correct?
Mr. Findlay. That is exactly right.
Ms. Wexton. Right.
So let's talk a little bit about the recommendations to
extend the paid child bereavement leave to legislative-branch
employees.
I know that with the passage of the NDAA for fiscal year
2022, the executive-branch employees are entitled to 2 weeks of
bereavement leave for the death of a child. Is that correct?
Mr. Findlay. I think that is right. I would have to verify,
but I think that is right. That sounds right.
Ms. Wexton. OK. And, right now, legislative employees are
not allowed to have that--are not entitled to that benefit?
Mr. Findlay. They don't have that entitlement because it
has not been applied by the House yet.
Ms. Wexton. OK.
And if your recommendation is adopted, what, if any,
challenges do you expect with implementing the leave policy?
Mr. Findlay. I don't think there would be on our side. The
regulations have already been proposed.
Ms. Wexton. OK.
Mr. Findlay. I don't think there would be one on our side.
Ms. Wexton. I hope not. I mean, if a child dies, I mean, I
don't think that 2 weeks of paid leave is too much for somebody
to take, so hopefully we will do that. Hopefully we will do
that.
A question about the Congressional Climate Survey that came
out recently. And I know we don't have the results from it yet,
do we?
Mr. Findlay. We do. And so I should----
Ms. Wexton. It is raw data?
Mr. Findlay. The results for the House have gone over to
the Committee on House Administration. And, at the high level,
our folks who do the analysis were heartened, and I think
things are looking good for the House-side offices.
And so those results are in, over to CHA. As far as what
sort of granular level is made public or how it is made to
various offices is really up to CHA. But our folks were
heartened by what----
Ms. Wexton. Would you say that there was an improvement
over the previous Congressional Climate Survey?
Mr. Findlay. I think so. Now, keep in mind, we have only
done it twice. So there is not a span of year--at least OCWR's.
I know there are other surveys have gone on out there, but OCWR
has only done it twice. We are now formulating for the next
Congress, because, of course, it is a requirement every
Congress. So we are early in the process now, working with
folks to make it as effective and useful----
Ms. Wexton. And were there notable changes to the questions
that you asked, or were they very similar to the ones that you
asked in the previous survey?
Mr. Findlay. We try to keep the questions--I think there
have been changes to the questions year to year, but try to
keep them similar----
Ms. Wexton. Similar?
Mr. Findlay. It is always a--you want the questions, and
you want it to be comparable year to year, but you also want to
be responsive to events that might be happening or concerns
that come along.
But we do--and that is really where we are focused right
now, to keep the survey and make it as useful as possible to
you all.
Ms. Wexton. Mr. Chairman, I see that my time has expired.
May I ask one more quick question?
Mr. Amodei. You bet.
Ms. Wexton. Thank you.
Director Findlay, do you know what the response rate was to
the survey? And was it higher or lower than the previous year?
Mr. Findlay. I think it was about the same. I would have to
check. But it was about 10 percent, which, to me, sounded
terrible, but according to the statisticians and the folks that
really look at it, they thought it was meaningful and could
actually provide useful information. And so that surprised me.
But it was about 10 percent, and folks were happy with that.
Now, we will continue and in the next cycle try to get that
number up even higher, because of course----
Ms. Wexton. Based on the number of emails I saw in my inbox
about, you know, ``Answer your survey,'' ``Answer your
survey,'' Answer your survey,'' I know that you definitely beat
the bushes to get those responses in. So thank you very much.
I will yield back with that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
your indulgence.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
Also, in case members are wondering, you are being called
on in the order that you arrived. As a fairly junior member in
this process, I was always impressed when a senior-ranking
person would come in and bump me. So, on behalf of the little
ladies and gentlemen of the world, you are called on in the
order you arrived.
Which brings us to the gentleman from Illinois, Mr.
Quigley.
Mr. Quigley. I thank the chairman.
The ranking member asked you a question about if your
budget was flat, stable. But, given the reality, it is not
inconceivable that a budget could be proposed within this House
that is much starker, perhaps a 20- or 25-percent cut.
At that point in time, are you able to function and
complete the duties that you are assigned to?
Mr. Findlay. I don't think we could do all the duties. We
would have to delay things like training. We would have to sort
of see who--leaving positions unfilled, that sort of thing, and
having folks backfill for other responsibilities, which might
now be collateral, auxiliary responsibilities would become
their primary.
But it could slow down our training updates. In an effort
to keep our training relevant, useful, to keep folks out of hot
water, we regularly review and update those. I think that
process would be slowed or stopped.
It would certainly have an impact on our inspections. We
would have to--we would probably miss our target on
inspections.
The confidential advising is another area. Pretty much
every--because we are so people-driven, I mean--and, with less,
that things would have to go.
I wish there was, in looking through the budget, when I
pushed folks, ``We have however many thousands for Westlaw''
that kind of thing, the things that we could cut and save on
the margins like that are in the sort of single-digit
thousands.
If we were to have a 25-percent cut, it would cut our
staff, it would cut into the bone. And we would really have to
elevate, you know, which staff, you know, do what at that
point. But there is no doubt in my mind that we would be doing
less, which means things would slip.
Mr. Quigley. But, in terms of your core functions, you talk
about prioritizing. Who ultimately would make those decisions
on what you would still do and what you would not do?
Mr. Findlay. Well, some of it--processing claims, for
instance--we have to do under the act.
And so we would still appoint a preliminary hearing officer
every time a claim comes in. If it passes the preliminary
hearing officer stage and goes on to a full merits hearing--
now, there could be a motion to dismiss, all of that--we have
to appoint a merits hearing officer. If the parties request, we
have to facilitate mediation. And all of that is done through
contracting with our hearing officers and our mediators. And
that wouldn't be optional.
We have to promulgate the congressional survey. We have to
offer Congressional Accountability Act training. And so it is--
I think we would still be doing a lot of those things. We
wouldn't be doing it as well, and certainly on a delayed basis.
And it would really--as far as who would decide what we do,
I mean, that would be a conversation with you all and with the
Committee on House Administration to figure out exactly what
can give. But a lot of it can't give, because it is statutorily
required. And that is what worries me with a cut of that
magnitude.
Mr. Quigley. Does your training or advice include issues
related to whistleblowing?
Mr. Findlay. I think probably not the type of
whistleblowing you are thinking about.
Mr. Quigley. Well, what does it cover?
Mr. Findlay. Well, it--so our training covers a whole--
everything that is covered by the Congressional Accountability
Act. So whistleblowing, because someone raised an Americans
with Disability Act claim, for instance, would be covered.
But I think you are probably talking more general
whistleblowing: Somebody says, something in my office is not
right, there is corruption, there is--any of the more
traditional whistleblowing. And that is not covered currently
under the Congressional Accountability Act.
Mr. Quigley. But the elements that you describe in more
detail, someone can come and explain a situation that is
unsafe? Or what exactly would they be able to tell you that you
cover?
Mr. Findlay. Well, so, for instance, you know, if there is
a hazard in their workplace, they could certainly come to us,
and our inspectors would go out and take a look at it and cite
it or get it rectified.
In their personal--if they felt like they had been
discriminated against or weren't given their family medical
leave or something like that, that they would raise--they could
immediately file a claim, and our process would facilitate
that. And they could do it in paper, email, and online system.
We try to make it easy, especially recognizing folks in the
district offices.
But they also might not know what exactly their rights are
or what these circumstances mean to them with respect to our
office and the act. So they could call in or Zoom in or walk in
and talk to our confidential advisor, who could work with them
to understand what exactly their rights are.
And that is a position that was created in the Reform Act a
few years back that is pretty unique and provides that sort of
service for folks who you wouldn't expect are going to know
exactly what their rights are or what to do about it.
Mr. Quigley. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. The gentleman from Kansas, Mr. LaTurner, the
floor is yours.
Mr. LaTurner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
And thank you, Mr. Findlay, for being here with us today.
I want to talk about cybersecurity. So, as you know, the
GAO issued a report 3 years ago talking about the weakness in
the cybersecurity surrounding the transition from the legacy
system to the e-filing system.
How has your office improved cybersecurity management since
then?
Mr. Findlay. So I think it has been pretty significant.
We have brought in folks now and recently started a new
person who have that expertise.
We work with the Library of Congress, because they are our
sort of top-level--they are the ones who provide our internet
connection, for instance, and so most of our systems have to go
through them. So that has been a terrific relationship, with
their IT folks and our IT folks, to focus on security, because
security is so crucial to what we do in keeping things
confidential and within our system.
And so all of the GAO recommendations we have over the
years agreed to and have closed a whole slew of them, they have
to be--some of the GAO recommendations have to sort of be
processed in order. And so I think that was important, to make
sure our base-level systems were secure where they needed to
be, and then our online filing, all of the things, the sort of
second- and third-order, come into play.
We are currently working on additional policies in that
regard and work with GAO and give them updates on a rolling
basis. And so I would hope and expect we will have all of the
open recommendations closed before we get into fiscal year
2024.
Mr. LaTurner. How many remain?
Mr. Findlay. I would have been able to tell you if you
didn't ask me. I want to say five or six.
Mr. LaTurner. OK.
Mr. Findlay. And they are all related.
But my goal is to get those closed--yes, we can get you the
exact number. I have the exact number, I think, in our budget
justification. But rather than flip through it, I know we talk
about it there.
Mr. LaTurner. OK.
Mr. Findlay. But my goal is to get those closed. They have
been open a while. And I understand why they had to be open a
while; we wanted to do it right. But I want to be done with it
and get those closed--realizing, and as we tell GAO, that
doesn't mean the process is done. Our IT folks have to monitor
all the time, update all the time.
You know, that is another area that I would worry about if
we did have a significant cut, just because, of our non-
personnel costs, our IT budget is, I think as you would expect,
a huge chunk of our non-personnel costs.
Mr. LaTurner. Sure.
Mr. Findlay. And I don't want to scrimp there. That worries
me.
Mr. LaTurner. I want to talk about--switch subjects--the
confidential advising. So that is part of the justification for
the increase in your budget request.
There has been an increase of 60 percent in confidential
advising from fiscal year 2021 to fiscal year 2022. Over that
period, do you have data for how many legislative offices were
transitioning back to in-person work post-pandemic and if that
transition and the increase have a cause-and-effect
relationship? Or could you provide data for a larger timeframe
so we could look for a trend of increased request submissions?
Mr. Findlay. The confidential advisor only, you know, was
created in 2019 through the Reform Act, so we don't have data
before then. We do have data going all the way back then.
We don't have data, at least that we generate, with, you
know, who is back, how many staff are back full-time, and how
many staff are back in a more hybrid model.
We have seen an uptick since sort of a resume or back to
normal COVID stance. I think with more folks coming back, there
definitely has been an uptick in both the requests for
information--now, after the Reform Act, there was a huge uptick
because nobody knew what was--but since it settled down, there
has been an uptick, and we were at sort of a higher level now.
And we have also noticed that in cases. If you look at our
case numbers that we report, there was a spike. Part of that
was because of changes in the Congressional Accountability Act
back in 2018, 2019.
But I think we are expecting that number to sort of stay at
its new higher level. But I hate making predictions like that,
so we try not to.
Mr. LaTurner. Would you mind sending us or directing me to
all of the years of data that you have?
Mr. Findlay. Sure. I want to say it is page--it is 16 of
our budget justification that might have our----
Mr. LaTurner. I think we have it.
Mr. Findlay. You have it? OK, great.
Mr. LaTurner. Thank you very much.
I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Franklin. Thank you.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Clyde, the floor is yours.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Chairman. And congratulations on your
new role as chair of this committee too.
Mr. Amodei. Oh, the jury is still out on that. We will see
about that.
Mr. Clyde. As we discuss the budget request for the Office
of Congressional Workplace Rights, we must remember that
Congress, as defined and written the Constitution, plays a
vital role in the separation of powers and the oversight of
Federal agencies.
As we delve into the important work of this subcommittee,
it is essential to consider the size of our Federal Government.
There are approximately 2 million full-time Federal employees,
excluding Postal Service workers and Active Duty military.
However, it is worth noting that the estimated 10,500-plus
employees that work in Congress, including Members and staff,
make up only about 0.5 percent of the total Federal workforce.
This statistic highlights the importance of the
congressional support staff as a small but essential part of
our government. And, as such, it is imperative that we ensure
that the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights is
functioning efficiently and effectively.
With that in mind, I have some questions for you regarding
the management of OCWR. The first question is about GAO
recommendations.
Mr. Findlay, OCWR says it has adopted five GAO
recommendations, but GAO has made 11 recommendations to OCWR in
the reports on the key management practices and weaknesses in
cybersecurity management.
So, as you were talking with Mr. LaTurner and the number of
outstanding recommendations didn't come to mind, that would be
six, from what I see here.
And so what is the status of those six relating to IT
systems and weakness in cybersecurity management?
Mr. Findlay. So the status of the six--and that is right. A
number have been closed.
So the status of those six are: We are almost there. Some
of them require policy updates and procedures that our folks
are working on. We are close.
And I think GAO would agree with that. They have been, I
think, largely pleased with what we have provided to them. Of
course, have closed the majority of them when you include that
report and a couple of the others that have come up over the
years.
So, as far as the status, we are in the implementation--
really, more documentation stage, I think, at this point.
And my goal is to get those--I would love to have them
closed out this spring, but I think as we noted in our budget
justification, we definitely expect to have them closed before
we get into fiscal year 2024, realizing that some of that will
be out of our control. And, of course, how long it takes GAO to
analyze what we submit to them in our effort to get it closed,
you know, is out of our hands entirely.
But I hope in this fiscal year, not the next fiscal year,
to have what we think is the full package over to them of our
new policies, procedures, sort of the documentation, the
receipts, if you will, to show them that we are doing what they
recommended.
Mr. Clyde. Well, OK. Because that kind of conflicts with
the information I have here.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit for the record GAO
Report 20-199 and also the author of that report's email to my
office this week stating that ``GAO has received no evidence
that OCWR has addressed any of the five recommendations'' and
that the status remains open on their website.
[The report appears at the conclusion of the record.]
Mr. Clyde. So I am kind of confused here as to--you are
telling me that they are closed? You have some that are closed?
Mr. Findlay. No. Oh, there are certainly recommendations
that are closed.
Mr. Clyde. And implemented?
Mr. Findlay. Closed because they were implemented, of
course.
Mr. Clyde. All right.
Mr. Findlay. There are five or six that are--and it sounds
like it was six. I would have to go back and look.
Mr. Clyde. It is six.
Mr. Findlay. So six that remain open--do remain open.
We, in preparing our budget justification--because one of
the sections of the budget justification is how you are doing
on open GAO recommendations. So we reprinted them all there and
verified what GAO had on its website. And, at least as GAO
reported it, we agree entirely with--and so I don't know about
the email, but as reported on gao.gov, on their lookup for each
report we agree with how they have characterized our status on
each of them.
That said, I hope very soon to get them information that
would let them close the remaining handful of recommendations.
Mr. Clyde. OK. And you think that before the end of the
fiscal year?
Mr. Findlay. I hope sooner but our commitment and the
commitment of our IT folks and other folks who have to be
involved in all of this is that we will get that done.
Mr. Clyde. Because the report came out in February of 2020.
Mr. Findlay. Yes It has been a while, absolutely.
Mr. Clyde. It has been a long time.
Mr. Findlay. And I think, as I mentioned, and rightly so--
this isn't a criticism of GAO--but a number of the
recommendations had the--you had to follow the right order. A
had to go before B, which had to go before C.
And so we had to get them, some of them--and we are working
on all of them sort of simultaneously, but they are ordered.
And so the ones that have been closed obviously are now closed,
and we are on to the B's and C's. But it was going to take some
time, as I understand it. But we are close.
Mr. Clyde. Well, I look forward to seeing those closed.
Mr. Findlay. Me too. Thank you.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you.
And I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
We have a little bit of time. Does anybody have any other
questions?
OK. The record should reflect there was a negative
response.
Just so--Mr. Findlay, obviously, you are familiar with this
process. There is going to be some time now between drafting
the manager's amendment and the bill and stuff like that. So,
if there are any questions that members have, I encourage you
to get with either Faye or Michelle to make sure that Mr.
Espaillat and Ms. Wexton and Mr. Quigley, as well as the
members on our side, have the understandings they need so they
can participate fully in terms of communicating what they think
is important as a result of the hearing and going over the
budget so that everybody can have their say in drafting the
bill for committee markup or be fully prepared to continue
their advocacy at the full committee markup.
So I would ask that, if any members have concerns, that
they make sure that Faye or Michelle know those so that we can
make sure we have robust communications with ``we are still
waiting on this'' or ``we are still waiting on that''
If we are not of that opinion, then we will assume that
everybody has had their chances. I would encourage you, as you
have always done in the past, if a member wants a meeting or a
phone call or something like that, that that is a priority
since some of our deadlines are not negotiable in terms of
producing our work product.
So, since there are no further questions, I would like to
again thank you, Mr. Findlay, for being here today.
The members may submit additional questions for the record
in the process that you are familiar with.
And the subcommittee stands adjourned. Thank you.
[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Thursday, March 9, 2023.
FISCAL YEAR 2024 REQUEST FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING
OFFICE
WITNESS
HON. HUGH NATHANIAL HALPERN, DIRECTOR, UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
PUBLISHING OFFICE
Mr. Amodei. The subcommittee will come to order.
I am going to yield back the time for my opening remarks
since nobody seems to be missing them much.
The purpose, the subject of today's hearing is fiscal year
2024 budget request for the Government Printing Office, but I
am going to yield at this point in time to Mr. Espaillat for
any opening remarks you may have.
The floor is yours.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for your
collegiality.
And thank you, Mr. Halpern, for coming before us. Thank you
for appearing before our subcommittee today. We appreciate your
time here to discuss the fiscal year 2024 budget request for
the Government Printing Office.
And congratulations to the GPO for being named by Forbes
Magazine as one of America's best places to work 2 years in a
row, not 1 but 2 years in a row, and one of the Nation's best
employers for veterans.
So thank you for the work culture that you have maintained
in your outfit. And this is quite an accomplishment.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. The ranking member did mean to inquire before
we get into the guts of the budget if there are any openings at
that wonderful place to work for people who are maybe past
their prime and a government employee since----
Mr. Halpern. We are hiring, so----
Mr. Amodei. We will keep that in mind. I think there is a
rule about approving a budget that you are going to apply for a
job in, so we won't put anybody in that position.
We are going to go right into questions.
Mr. Clyde, since you made the mistake of getting here
first, you are the lead-off hitter. The floor is yours.
Mr. Clyde. Well, thank you, Chair.
Good morning----
Mr. Halpern. Good morning.
Mr. Clyde [continuing]. Mr. Halpern. I appreciate you being
here.
I noticed in the information that you have given us that
you said that you had a net positive income of $26.2 million in
fiscal year 2022, and it marked the first time in 5 years in
which GPO added employees.
So since you had a net positive income of $26.2 million,
and I believe you are asking for 132--is that correct, in the
appropriation?
Mr. Halpern. In appropriations.
Mr. Clyde [continuing]. In appropriations, does that mean
then that you are going to be asking for 106, or how does that
work?
Mr. Halpern. So let me explain GPO's business model. So we
operate very much as a commercial enterprise. We provide
printing and publishing services for all three branches of the
Federal Government.
Our appropriations request for fiscal year 2024 represents
only about 11 percent of our projected revenue for fiscal year
2024, which should be about $1.1 billion.
What we are requesting are funds for services that we are
going to render. So the bulk of that request is for Congress'
own publishing needs. So, if you think of it as--the technical
term is it is a deposit account.
So what happens, say, for fiscal year 2023, we have about
the same amount of money, about $83 million in that deposit
account. So, when you introduce a bill, the work that it takes
to produce that bill, publish it on GovInfo and produce the
paper copies all get billed back to that account.
The surplus that we get is reinvested in our capital needs.
So our single biggest product is one that isn't appropriated at
all, and that is the U.S. passport. So we print blank passport
books.
So, to the extent that we have a net positive income, we
are reinvesting that in our capital needs. So purchasing new
equipment for other areas that may not be appropriated as well
as trying to invest in our overhead and our other
infrastructure.
So our buildings are about a hundred years old here in DC,
so we need to keep those up. We have got--elevators are
actually a huge problem for us because it is not like having a
whole bunch of passenger elevators like you do here in the
Capitol or the office buildings. We have got fairly heavy-duty
freight elevators. So they have got to be able to carry a
forklift plus a 3-ton roll of paper. And those are showing
their age.
So, to the extent that we have a net positive in any given
year, that is going to get reinvested in some of those capital
needs so we don't have to come back to the Appropriations
Committee to ask for more money.
Mr. Clyde. Okay. So, when you receive revenue from your
customers, does that then go back into the general fund and
this is basically just a net request, or----
Mr. Halpern. It goes into--we have what is called the
Business Operations Revolving Fund that has a permanent
appropriation that we can then draw on. So that is where those
funds--when we bill a customer, that is where that money goes
and where we can draw from.
So, like I said, we operate very much like a commercial
enterprise. Most of our budget, we aren't coming back directly
to the Appropriations Committee to get that funded every year.
And, for instance, with respect to passports, we charge the
State Department--it depends on volume and month and their
order size and a lot of other things--anywhere between $24 and
$28 a book for the current generation passport.
In addition to that, the State Department will often fund
other capital investments we need to make in order to upgrade
our ability to produce those books for them.
So there are a lot of different sources that come into that
revolving fund. In addition to what we actually produce, we
have about a $400-million-a-year contracting operation where we
contract print and publishing services for other Federal
agencies. Department of Defense is a very large customer for
that. When your constituents get the ``Medicare and You''
booklet, that is done through our customer services contracting
operation.
So what we are asking for in terms of the appropriation are
really items largely specific to Congress. So it is Congress'
own printing and publishing needs.
The second category are sort of our public information
programs, programs we run on behalf of Congress. So that
includes the Federal Depository Library Program, where we
provide publications and access to materials for about 1,100
libraries nationwide, and support for GovInfo. GovInfo is the
world's only ISO-certified trusted digital repository, and that
is where all of this digital information resides and is
preserved and is accessible.
And then sort of the third category are special
appropriations to the revolving fund for priorities that
Congress has.
So one of the key priorities for us, I think for Congress,
and for the rest of our customers is upgrading the software
stack that we use to print. So, since the early 1980s, when you
go to Leg. Counsel and you say, ``produce a bill,'' and they
hit control-P, our software takes over on that process.
Unfortunately, the same software we wrote in 1982, 1983 is
still in use today. So that is a huge vulnerability for the
legislative branch. We have a replacement program that we have
been, frankly, pouring a lot of resources into. The good news
is we hit sort of that release 1.0 this past fall. It is in
testing with both House and Senate Leg. Counsel, and I am
hopeful that that will move to production in the summer or the
fall.
So those are sort of the three big categories of what we
are asking for in direct appropriations, and they are really
defined priorities that are Congress'.
Mr. Clyde. I have got one more question for you: In your
congressional publishing account, I notice it is pretty flat
from 2019 through 2022.
Mr. Halpern. Yes.
Mr. Clyde. And then it takes about a $4 million increase
there in 2023 and then projected also the same for 2024.
Is that because you are printing less and expense of----
Mr. Halpern. So congressional publishing covers a lot of
different activities. So the short answer is yes, we are
producing far less paper.
Mr. Clyde. Paper, right.
Mr. Halpern. But the work that goes in on the front end to
produce the Congressional Record every night, bills, reports,
enroll and engross measures, all of that is actually fairly
labor-intensive.
So, for instance, again, we will use the bill example. You
drop a bill into the hopper, whether that is electronically
through the e-Hopper or physically by going up to the floor.
After the clerk does her work with that, that comes over to
GPO's congressional desk and eventually to the proof room.
The proof room, we are going to have a proofreader who,
because paper is the media of record, will take the electronic
copy and compare the paper copy to it to make sure that they
are identical. Once we do that, it goes into what we call a
markup process to make sure that formatting and typography and
all of that kind of stuff is set.
And then, once all of those things are done, somebody
basically hits a button, and it goes a bunch of different
places. It will go to our new digital inkjet process for the
paper copies. It will go to GovInfo for electronic
availability, where it will also get picked up by Congress.gov
and other folks who use our data. And it will also go to the
Archives for them to archive in the future.
Mr. Clyde. Okay. Well, thank you. And just some good info
for you, the only bill that has ever made it to the House floor
of mine, actually made it through the Senate, it was only a
page and a half.
Mr. Halpern. There you go.
Mr. Clyde. That should help you out.
Mr. Halpern. That probably went to our digital print
center. So we didn't even need to put that on the big presses.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Well, with that, we probably want to recall
that whole thing and take another look if it went through that
fast. There must be a problem at GPO.
Questions from the ranking member, Mr. Espaillat. The floor
is yours.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you for your testimony. And, given today's climate
and plans to reduce government spending, what challenges would
GPO face if your budget remains flat for the fiscal year 2023
enacted levels or even reduced further to the fiscal year 2022
levels? What impacts will be directly felt by the GPO?
Mr. Halpern. So I think the most important thing for all of
you to know and remember is we get our work done. So we will
figure out a way to make sure that Congress gets taken care of.
But, with fewer resources, that means we have got to
refigure priorities. And we take those resources and we really
focus on what is our day-to-day work. So, with that respect, we
are going to make sure that things like bills, reports----
Mr. Espaillat. Passports, right?
Mr. Halpern. Passports, but passports are paid for
separately. State Department pays us for those. So, you know,
if the State Department gives us an order for--we are at 18
million for this year?--18 million passports, as those come off
the assembly line we send them a bill, and they essentially
send us a check.
Mr. Espaillat. So whatever level.
Mr. Halpern. Whatever level.
Mr. Espaillat. It will not impact that.
Mr. Halpern. This process is sort of separate from that
process.
With respect to Congress' work, because that is really the
bulk of what we are talking about, we would really focus on the
basics. So making sure that we are getting work out the door as
quickly as we can, given the resources we have. But that will
also mean that some of our initiatives, like some of the
modernization initiatives, some of the investments in
technology that we would otherwise make would get deferred.
So, for instance, the work on XPub, our next-generation
composition engine, this piece of software that is really key
to all of the work that the House and Senate do. That means
that we might not be able to deliver it feature-complete in
fiscal year 2027, as we are planning. It might go out to fiscal
year 2028 or fiscal year 2030.
It needs to be done. That is a huge vulnerability for the
legislative branch because we are operating on this decades-old
piece of software that--not to malign Microsoft, but every time
they come out with an update, it takes us a long time to make
sure that this old software will continue to work with modern
operating systems.
So we have really got to move to a new platform. But,
again, it is a little bit like going to Best Buy and you want
to buy the $500 TV with the $400 gift card. If you don't have
enough, you have got to make some tradeoff someplace. And it
may mean you are not buying that TV today, you might need to
wait another month or two, or it may mean that you buy a lower
cost TV.
And, you know, ultimately, if Congress decides that we
don't have the resources we are asking for, we will figure out
how to manage and get it done without them, but that will
necessarily mean some tradeoffs.
The other thing that I really want to flag for the
committee, my single biggest issue that I am facing near term
is the fact that about half of my workforce will be eligible to
retire in the next 4 years. That means one out of every two
proofreaders, press people, bookbinders, electricians,
carpenters, you name it, they are eligible to retire.
Mr. Espaillat. So what are you doing to recruit new talent?
Mr. Halpern. We are working really hard to try and do that.
So we are looking at two different angles there. First, we have
restarted our apprentice program, and we have restarted with
proofreaders in the proof room.
So our first class is eight folks. Next year, we hope to
expand the apprenticeship program to 20 folks across a variety
of different trades.
We are also looking at new innovative ways to try and
recruit and recruit qualified folks. We created a whole new
position where, particularly for our passport work, folks could
come in and have a 3-year on-the-job training program where, at
the end, they are a full journeyperson bookbinder.
And then we are also using the Recent Graduates Program to
try and get folks in more of our white-collar jobs. But
telework has actually been a huge incentive. It works for us
really, really well for our white-collar jobs, our knowledge
workers. And it has been a huge recruiting tool, and we have
been able to recruit all over the country because we have made
the investment in telework and remote work, and it works for
us.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member.
Mr. Franklin, the floor is yours.
Mr. Franklin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Halpern, thank you for being here. As a new member of
the committee, I enjoyed learning more about how your
organization works. It did feel like it has more of an
entrepreneurial, business-like spirit than a lot of the others
that we get reports on, but I wanted to touch a little bit
deeper on the workforce issue because we are hearing that
across the board. We are hearing it in the private sector.
There is a lot of, you know, brain drain that is coming with
the boomers all retiring out of the workforce.
With half of your folks leaving in the next 4 years, I am
concerned, because we get kind of conflicting messages, about
the impact of telework on the ability to transfer this
information to the next generation.
I get for older workers it is nice. You know your job
already. You don't have the hassle of the watercooler talk and
all the distractions all day. You can focus and get the job
done. But there is a great benefit of a lot of that to the
younger workers coming into the force.
Are you concerned that--and some of that knowledge work,
can you recruit and bring that knowledge in the door
immediately? Or, if it has to be transferred, how does that
happen if you have got folks who are not working with their
junior colleagues?
Mr. Halpern. So that is a great question. And a couple
things to keep in mind. So GPO is about 1,600 people, a little
less right at the moment, but we will probably hit close to
1,600 at some point during the year.
Two-thirds of those folks come to work every day. They run
a printing press. They are bookbinders. They can't do their
jobs at home. So the folks who are craftspeople who are working
in the different trades, they are coming to work every day, and
they are involved in the training of that next generation.
And, frankly, it is hard for us to attract folks to some of
these more traditional trades. Every time there is a local
firm, a local printing firm that is shutting its doors for
whatever reason, we are pouncing on those folks to try and
recruit them to come to GPO. And we think it is a great
opportunity for folks.
But trying to get that next generation in there also to
work alongside those folks, that is a challenge but not one
that is insurmountable. We are working with high schools, and
we are working with other folks to try and attract tradespeople
to come to GPO.
With respect to our knowledge workers, our white-collar
workforce, you are absolutely right that the in-office contact,
there isn't as much of that, and that is a potential deficit.
But that is one of the things we recognized when we put
together our strategic plan last year, was, one, in our broad
strategic imperative, we need to develop our workforce because
we have got to make sure that we have people to do these jobs
going into the future.
Part of that was figuring out knowledge transfer, and that
is both on the trade side, making sure that, you know, a
journeyperson, a journeyperson press person, for instance, can
train that next generation coming up.
But that is also true for our accountants, our IT folks,
our human capital folks. And all of those folks, even though
they are working remotely, it doesn't mean that knowledge
transfer isn't happening. It is just happening differently, and
it requires a different kind of management.
Where I think folks run into trouble with remote work and
telework is when they try and do that and manage the same way
they did when everybody was in-person.
And what I tell my executive team and what I expect them to
tell their next-line managers and their next-line supervisors
is that it requires a lot more work on the part of the manager.
You need to be communicating with folks a lot more than you
would otherwise because you don't have that sort of incidental
communication.
So far it works really well for us. We have seen
productivity go up. We have seen employee engagement go up. It
may not work in every workforce, but it works for us.
Mr. Franklin. Passports. So the State Department is
backlogged. We hear that from our caseworkers back home. Is GPO
part of that backlog at all, or are you caught up with the
demand State Department requires?
Mr. Halpern. So we are ahead of model, right? Yeah. So the
short answer is, is that--well, let me back up.
Last April, there was a change in the actual passport. The
blue what we call ePassport you probably have with the chip in
it, that was end of life. That was about 15 years old. We have
replaced that with what we call the next-generation passport.
And the way you can tell the difference between the two is
the identity page is made up of polycarbonate material. We
actually manufacture that material for the State Department. We
built facilities to do that, both here in DC and at our other
facility in Stennis, Mississippi.
The short answer is, we are supplying State Department with
the number of passports they have ordered. My guess is most of
the backlog is in the personalization process, and we have been
helping the State Department make sure that process can be more
efficient and, with the new equipment and new books, is working
well.
So I think they are trying to dig themselves out, both from
COVID and the change in product, but I have heard good things,
that they are starting to close that gap. But, as far as
delivering what State has asked for, we are current with them.
Mr. Franklin. Thank you.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Amodei. The gentlelady from Oklahoma is recognized. The
floor is yours Mrs. Bice.
Mrs. Bice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, really, you have answered a lot of the questions that
I had wanted to ask in regards to staffing issues as well as
the new passport structure.
The only other thing that maybe could be a little bit
expounded on is you have mentioned that you have one of the
best--you received the Forbes Award for Best Midsize Employer,
which is a pretty big accomplishment.
What are you doing for your employees that you feel like is
different that maybe others could learn from?
Mr. Halpern. So, when I came to GPO about 3\1/2\ years
ago--prior to coming to GPO, I was here. I was here for three
decades, far longer than my wife wanted me here.
But one of the cultural things that I experienced as a
member of the floor team and leading the floor team is we
communicated all the time. Everybody, whether it was me in the
Speaker's Office or my colleagues in the majority leader and
whip's office and even on the Democratic side, we were talking
all of the time.
And one of the things that I really felt strongly about
coming into this organization was being honest, open, and
transparent with everybody, both our oversight folks and
everybody else who works at this organization. And I started
day one with some really basic expectations for everybody that
eventually morphed into our agency values.
So we are honest. We are kind to one another, and we get
results. And those are really some of my three key items. And I
have really been trying to drive that culture throughout the
organization. I think we have been successful. We have also
been willing to try new things.
So, when COVID hit, we were very much like a lot of other
Federal agencies. And you were occasionally allowed to telework
one day a week, and, you know, we weren't quite counting mouse
clicks, but everybody sort of looked askance.
And I sort of approached it from the standpoint of I am
going to treat you like an adult until you give me a reason not
to, and I am far more concerned about your output and about
your productivity and getting the job done than I am about, you
know, fitting into some of these bureaucratic silos.
So that is the culture I have really tried to imbue. I am
actually backed up by a great team. Our executive team is
mostly career folks. Our deputy, Patty Collins, brings two
dozen years in the Army dealing with the needs of some of our
most elite folks. And she is a great teammate in terms of
helping deal with those day-to-day operations.
And I take a team approach to everything, and I think that
has shined through. And I am very, very flattered by the Forbes
recognition because that comes from our folks. The question is,
would you recommend where you work to a friend or a family
member? And being able to make that list means people are
happy, and that is a good thing.
Mrs. Bice. Can you tell me the FTE count for GPO?
Mr. Halpern. So we are just under 1,600. I think right at
the moment we are like 1,573, 1,574. Our total FTE count is
actually above 1,600. We just can't fill all of the jobs. But
we have everybody from cutting-edge software design folks to
bookbinders who practice an art that has been around for 1,500,
2,000 years. So it is a fantastic place, and I would invite all
of you to come visit. We would love to host.
Mrs. Bice. Fantastic.
That is the end of my questions, Mr. Chairman. I yield back
the balance of my time.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
Mr. Clyde, would you make sure that Mr. Franklin knows,
since you are the two Navy folks, that the Director has
indicated the key performance of a former Army officer in his
office. I don't want to put too fine a point on that, but,
nonetheless, I want to make sure it is in the record.
Mr. Clyde. Absolutely, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Amodei. Next we will go to the gentlelady from the Old
Dominion. Ms. Wexton, the floor is yours.
Ms. Wexton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you very much, Mr. Halpern, for joining us today.
It is good to see you.
So I think, just like Mrs. Bice, most of my questions have
already been answered by you. You have one other thing, one
other honor that I don't know whether you have gotten to yet,
which is that you are one of the best places to work for
veterans in 2022. Is that correct?
Mr. Halpern. That is.
Ms. Wexton. Yeah. So, in Virginia, we have the Virginia
Values Veterans Program. I don't know; do you participate in
that as a participating employer?
Mr. Halpern. I don't know that we--do we? I don't think so.
Ms. Wexton. How do you recruit veterans to come and work
for you?
Mr. Halpern. So, you know, through USAJobs is a great
resource for us, and I think we have just gotten a good
reputation as a great place for veterans.
One of the things that GPO offers that most of the Federal
Government doesn't offer is more of a trade or craft
environment. Now, I don't like the blue-collar/white-collar
labels but----
Ms. Wexton. You don't have to sit behind a desk all day.
Mr. Halpern. Right. You are working with your hands. We
have got--let's take our passport operation. You know, much of
that equipment we purchase but then have to heavily modify to
make sure that we are building the product that our customer at
the State Department wants.
And I think you can find folks who may have a little bit of
college education or no college education at all, and they came
out of the Army or the Navy. They may have come out of the
Navy.
Mr. Amodei. Doubtful.
Ms. Wexton. Let's say they came from the Navy.
Mr. Halpern. We actually have a couple of Marines who do
okay.
But, you know, you get that sort of hands-on----
Ms. Wexton. Right.
Mr. Halpern. Opportunity.
He is going to be angry with me, but I use my own son as an
example. My son enlisted in the Army straight out of high
school. The Army taught him what he needed to know. You know,
high school was--he was in high school during COVID, and it was
kind of a garbage fire like it was for everybody.
But he showed up at his job training, and they are like:
Okay, we are going to start with math, and we are going to
start with addition and subtraction.
Three weeks later, he was at trig. And then they started
with physics, and they moved on from there.
And he has gotten a great practical education there, one
that he can then--if he decides to go to college later, that is
great, but if he doesn't, he has got a great base to work from
in the future for a Federal employer like GPO or like a lot of
others.
So we are looking for really smart, really good people. And
I don't necessarily care which piece of paper they have. If
they can demonstrate a skill and they can demonstrate a
willingness to work, that is great; we want them.
Ms. Wexton. That is wonderful. And I think that it helps
because they have something tangible at the end of their
workday----
Mr. Halpern. Absolutely.
Ms. Wexton [continuing]. Which we don't always have in our
employment here. We don't have the same sense of accomplishment
that they get.
And so I would recommend that you take a look at Virginia's
V3 Program, because we have a lot of veterans coming out to
live in Virginia, who are nearby, so that would help.
Mr. Halpern. Awesome. We will take a look.
Ms. Wexton. Of those 1,500 to 1,600 employees, how many of
them live locally in the DC metro region?
Mr. Halpern. So I can get you the exact breakdown a little
later. We have got--obviously, the majority of folks who work
here in DC work in the greater local area, I would say--and
this is more by feel than actual data--probably most of our
folks are in the Maryland area. We do draw from Virginia as
well.
Ms. Wexton. Not unusual.
Mr. Halpern. But we also have folks who commute every day
from as far away as Pennsylvania, West Virginia. And those are
killer commutes, but because they are working here, they get
the higher DC locality pay and that kind of thing.
Ms. Wexton. Yeah. They can also carpool and things like
that.
Mr. Halpern. Right, exactly. We have always had a
distributed workforce. So our customer services folks,
basically our sales team, they were originally in physical
offices all over the country, about 10 to 12 physical offices.
One of the things that telework and remote work has enabled
us to do is we actually are in the process of closing all of
those physical spaces, and all of those folks are working
remotely. And it has been a huge boon for morale. It has been a
huge boon in productivity. You know, we did $400 million in
sales to Federal agencies last year.
And it lets us have a high degree of flexibility. So, if
you have got somebody who, say, is living in rural Virginia,
but they are willing to work the hours to service our west
coast customers, that works just fine for me. I don't care
where you are physically located if you are doing the work and
you are meeting our needs and we are meeting your needs.
I think there are some real opportunities there for folks
to have a great career with GPO, and it seems to be working for
everybody at the moment.
Ms. Wexton. It sure does. Thank you so much, Mr. Halpern.
I yield back with that. I am out of time. So I do have one
more question, but it is kind of a long one, and I don't want
to subject the whole committee to it.
Mr. Amodei. Well, you can if you want. I was just going to
say, does anybody have any other questions?
Ms. Wexton. Actually, I do. It is kind of a long one,
though.
Mr. Halpern, I used to serve in the State legislature, and
we had something called the Virginia Legislative Information
System, which was fantastic. It was very interoperable. And,
when you got a bill, it had links on there to what the previous
version of it was. It had a redline version, all that sort of
thing.
So Congress.gov does not have anything like that in there.
And it just seems like it would be very beneficial to us to
have something interoperable like that actually gives you some
information about what the previous version said, what other
Code sections are nearby in the Code, things like that, to
really help you do a better job as a legislator.
Mr. Halpern. So I can get up on my soapbox if you would
like.
Ms. Wexton. Really, my question for you--because I know it
is probably going to be something that resides mostly with the
Library of Congress. But my question for you----
Mr. Halpern. Well, actually, it is a legislative branchwide
initiative. So we work very well with our partners over at the
Library of Congress and folks here, both in the House and
Senate, through the Congressional Data Task Force.
Ms. Wexton. Right.
Mr. Halpern. And we are trying to deliver a more modern
experience.
Ms. Wexton. Okay.
Mr. Halpern. The best way to put this is the folks who
started this institution 226 years ago made some really poor
decisions that don't scale very well.
So, unlike Virginia, unlike most other State legislatures
which, say, have a unified code of law, the U.S. does not have
one single code of law. We have the U.S. Code, some of which
are positive laws, some of which are not. We have the Internal
Revenue Code. We have got a whole bunch of other things. So
there is not a single body of law that you can easily amend and
build these systems around.
Similarly, when we decided how we were going to write law,
the Founders made the decision that it was going to be
expressed in terms of instructions to an unseen clerk: Page 6,
strike this, insert that.
That causes problems when you are trying to scale this up
to modern information systems.
Ms. Wexton. Right. When you are trying to look at the
legislation and see what it actually means----
Mr. Halpern. Exactly. It makes it very hard to compare.
Ms. Bice. Yes.
Mr. Halpern. So I know that the House has done the
Comparative Print Project. That came out of a rules change back
when I worked for the House Rules Committee. And that project
has been doing really, really well and is a great, great boon
forward.
The other thing I would point to is our changeover to XPub,
our new composition engine, is really key to this as well
because our current composition system was designed for
typesetting. It was designed to describe how things look, not
what they are, not what the data is.
The new system, XPub, is based around the legislative
branch's standards for XML for data. And those systems look at
legislative elements as data. What is it? This is a paragraph.
This is a clause. This is a title.
And it is easier to relate those pieces of data to other
pieces of data. And so, when we are able to fully move to XPub,
we are going to have much better data coming to our partners.
You can then use that, whether you are at the Library of
Congress or you are some private entity out there.
Ms. Wexton. They will be using XPub as well? They will be
using XPub as well, or they will talk with one another?
Mr. Halpern. The data will be based around something we
call USLM, the United States Legislative Markup, standard. And
that will be an open standard that anybody can use. XPub will
be proprietary largely for the legislative branch.
Actually, now that Mr. Quigley is here, one of our hopes--
--
Mr. Quigley. We can begin.
Mr. Halpern [continuing]. And one of our areas for growth
in the future will be with complying with the congressionally
mandated reports----
Ms. Wexton. Those are--yeah.
Mr. Halpern [continuing]. Legislation. So what we would
like to be able to do is offer to those agencies that you all
task with reporting to Congress saying: Hey, here is your Word
template. If you just use this template and use the styles and
things like that we built into this template, we will have a
website where you can upload that file and get back good
typeset copy and good machine-readable copy.
Now, that is several years away at this point. And we are
working really hard just to meet the deadlines in the bill to
get the system up and running. But, in terms of where we would
like to go, that is where we would like to go. And we are
working hard to try and build the pillars to make that happen.
Ms. Wexton. That is wonderful. Thank you so much. I just
hope I get to stick around here long enough to see it happen,
come to fruition.
Mr. Halpern. Me too.
Ms. Wexton. Thank you so much. I have no further questions
for you.
Mr. Amodei. The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Quigley, the
floor is yours.
Mr. Quigley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sorry I was----
Ms. Wexton. I was stalling until Mr. Quigley got here.
Mr. Amodei. You did a good job.
Mr. Quigley. Thank you.
And thank you, sir, for your service. And I just want to--
appreciate your efforts to congressionally mandated reports,
and we look forward to working with you on that.
But, in your notes, you talk about improving efficiency in
the office. Can you tell us if any of that relates to
sustainability efforts, reductions on waste production and so
forth?
Mr. Halpern. So we recycle as much as we physically can.
And that is everything from wastepaper to the aluminum plates
that we use for offset printing. But, beyond that, we are
trying to use new technology to just cut down on waste to begin
with.
So one of the things to keep in mind is the older style
printing, offset printing, actually creates a lot of waste
because it takes you a lot of prints to make sure that
everything is working and that you are getting the quality out
of the print and everything like that.
So, for instance, if you are trying to do color on an
offset press, there are actually four different plates that
have to line up exactly for each image so you can mix the inks
to get the colors you need.
That is very expensive from a labor standpoint because you
need really talented craftspeople who know how to do that, but
it is also expensive from a materials standpoint because you
have got all of that waste that you are creating to make sure
that you got that right.
What we have shifted to for much of our production work--
and we are going to continue this trend--is we have shifted to
digital inkjet presses for things like the Federal Register or
the Congressional Record or even large bills reports, Code of
Federal Regulations.
And what that lets us do, there is far less waste in that
process because they operate very much like a large office
copier. Think that inkjet that is probably sitting next to your
desk the size of a panel van.
And we don't have all of that set up. We don't have all of
those kinds of things. And we can just print basically pages in
order and then we have got other machines that will cut those
pages apart, assemble them into a book, and move them out the
door.
Changes like that are huge changes in terms of
sustainability. We are using less paper. We are using less ink.
Those inks tend to be less toxic. And it helps us keep our
costs down because those are highly efficient presses.
And it is actually a very clean, very easy, very nice place
to work in the plant. Like, you don't feel like you are in a
traditional industrial area when you are in the area with those
presses.
We would love to have you over to GPO and show you what is
operating there. So----
Mr. Quigley. Sounds good.
Mr. Halpern. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Quigley. Very good. I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Nobody on the committee should think that I am
telling them what to do, and it has been a while, but it is a
fascinating operation over there.
And I will tell you that the Director's office, while it is
not the Oval Office or the Speaker's Office or anything like
that, it is pretty neat from a historical standpoint. And those
book people that do that wavy stuff on the edge----
Mr. Halpern. Marbling, yeah.
Mr. Amodei. That is pretty neat stuff too.
I do want to, before we adjourn the meeting, just put on
the record that we have given you, Mr. Director, a question
regarding proof room operations, congressional work, that sort
of stuff. So we will look forward to your response for that.
And who is the lady who had an extra copy of the directory
from a couple Congresses ago?
Mr. Halpern. Sarah Wheeling.
Mr. Amodei. Would you tell Sarah--I am putting it on the
record. Thank you very much, Sarah. I will be over to thank you
personally.
Mr. Halpern. Absolutely. I actually mentioned it to her the
other day. I saw her in the hall. So thank you.
Mr. Amodei. You bet.
If there are no further questions, I would like to again
thank you, Director Halpern, for being here today. Members may
submit any additional questions for the record.
The subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Questions and answers submitted for the record follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Thursday, March 23, 2023.
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
WITNESS
GENE L. DODARO, COMPTROLLER GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
Mr. Amodei. The subcommittee will come to order.
I am going to reserve on any opening remarks, which, if I
give some later, will not be opening remarks, so don't anybody
sharp-shoot me on definitions or anything else like that.
The subject of today's hearing is the fiscal year 2024
request for the Government Accountability Office. I would like
to thank our witnesses for being here.
And I would now recognize for opening remarks my ranking
member, Mr. Espaillat.
The floor is yours, sir.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all for being here today.
The Government Accountability Office has a tremendous
responsibility to provide independent oversight of U.S.
Government programs, activities, and nonpartisan support to
Congress.
This subcommittee has a great appreciation of GAO's work. I
would like to commend GAO for its work to reinforce Congress's
constitutional power of the purse and for dedicating the
resources necessary to support this committee.
I would also like to commend GAO for its commitment to
recruiting and retaining a diverse staff and its track record
of earning a top spot among the best employers for veterans and
the best places to work for overall.
So maybe someday I will go work for you guys.
But, anyway, Mr. Dodaro, I look forward to your testimony,
and thank you for being here today.
Mr. Dodaro. Thank you.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
I want to thank you, Mr. Comptroller General, for your
presence here today, and I would now recognize you for a
summary of the written testimony that you have submitted.
Mr. Dodaro. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Ranking
Member Espaillat, Congressman Quigley, Congressman Franklin. I
appreciate the opportunity to be here today to discuss GAO's
fiscal year 2024 request.
I appreciate the confidence this subcommittee previously
has given us and the resources you have provided. I believe we
have provided a great return on investment as a result of
Congress's provision of funds to us. Last year alone,
implementation of our recommendations led to over $55 billion
in financial benefits to the government.
On average, over the last 5 years, GAO has returned $145 in
financial benefits for every dollar invested in our activities.
We do this through our ongoing reviews looking at waste, fraud,
and abuse in the Federal Government as well as identifying
overlap, duplication, and fragmentation in our government
programs and activities.
We also annually, on average, have over 1,200 other
benefits that help improve public safety, promote the more
efficient and effective use of Federal resources and programs
and help Congress craft laws and provide effective oversight
over the executive branch. This helps ensure our system of
checks and balances works effectively in our government.
GAO serves a wide footprint across the Congress, since our
scope is the entire breadth of the Federal Government. On a
regular basis, we conduct work for over 90 percent of the
congressional standing committees.
We also have been charged with responsibilities in a number
of recent laws. The recent National Defense Authorization Act
for 2023 has 158 mandates for GAO; the Consolidated
Appropriations Act for 2023 has close to 100 additional
requirements for GAO studies; the Infrastructure Investment and
Jobs Act has over 35; the CHIPS Act, over 10. The Inflation
Reduction Act has a broad mandate for GAO. We have 32 different
engagements already ongoing or planned in that area.
Congress also has asked us to review the accountability of
aid provided to the Ukraine. So we will be looking at both
military aid and humanitarian assistance, as well as how DOD is
replenishing the materiel that we have provided to Ukraine.
Also, and this wasn't anticipated in our budget request--
the recent bank failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature
Bank triggered a mandate that GAO has to look at any ``systemic
risk'' designation by the regulators and look at the emergency
lending facilities set up by the Federal Reserve. We also just
recently received a bipartisan request from the House Financial
Services Committee on these issues.
I have already signed out letters to the Secretary of
Treasury and Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Chairman
of the FDIC to begin our analysis of what went wrong here and
what recommendations we would have for the Congress to address
this particular situation.
Now, our request reflects the, hundreds of requirements
that we have been given by the Congress, it would allow us
also, I would like to expand our resources modestly in four
areas.
One is science and technology. Congress has given us
additional responsibilities to do technology assessments to
support the Congress, and to provide technical assistance to
the Congress to help them understand the developments in
science and technology, which are evolving faster than any time
in human history. Congress needs more support in this area, and
Congress has been encouraging us to broaden our capabilities.
We have done that, but we think we continue to need some
additional resources to expand our capacity in that area.
Second is cybersecurity. We designated that a high-risk
area across the entire Federal Government in 1997; we added
critical infrastructure protection in 2003. There are many
recommendations we have made in this area, but the requests for
us to continue to do work in this area have greatly expanded.
And I am not just talking about information systems; I am
talking about weapons systems, satellite systems, and other
areas, as well as critical infrastructure--electricity grid,
financial markets, et cetera.
Third is national defense. With the conflict in Ukraine and
strategic competition with China and Russia, a lot of attention
has been focused on modernizing, for example, our Air Force
aircraft systems. We look at the full range of national defense
programs such as the missile defense system, space-based
programs, and others. So national defense would be the third
area.
Last would be healthcare. Healthcare costs are the fastest
growing part of the Federal Government's budget. It is over 25
percent right now. If we are ever going to have a shot at
getting our deficit and debt down, healthcare is critical to
that path, as well as bringing down net interest on the debt
over a period of time. We have a broad portfolio in the
healthcare area, and we want to continue to address this
critical issue.
In closing, we have one of the most dedicated and talented
workforces among audit organizations in the world. I am very
proud of our people. They are dedicated, very talented. We are
a very diverse, multidisciplinary organization.
As Congressman Espaillat has mentioned, for the last 15
years, during my entire tenure, we have been ranked as one of
the best places to work in the Federal Government. The last 2
years, we have been number one across midsize Federal agencies
across the government.
So I am very pleased to be here, and I am happy to address
any questions that you may have.
Mr. Amodei. Thanks, General, for your testimony.
We are going to go to members now, based on their arrival.
The gentleman from Illinois, the floor is yours.
Mr. Quigley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for your service and being here today.
So a lot of requests, a lot of mandates. As well as I can
ask this, are you able to do all you need to do given the
resources you have?
And if challenged with reduction in resources, you know,
how do you prioritize where you spend your resources and what
you focus on in order of ranking, I guess?
Mr. Dodaro. First, I believe the request I put forward for
fiscal year 2024 would provide the resources necessary for GAO
to effectively support the Congress in meeting all the
mandates. But we need that request to be honored in order to
meet those requirements----
Mr. Quigley. Have you been short resources in the past to
get things done on a timely basis?
Mr. Dodaro. Yes. We have struggled since sequestration back
in 2013. We lost about 12 percent, of our authorized staffing
levels to get through that period of time.
We have been steadily working with Congress to build back
our capability, so we are finally back to the position we were
in around 2010. Congress has been giving us additional support
in the science and technology area in particular to build that
capacity.
So, yes, we have struggled in the past. We are back in a
pretty good situation right now. I am hopeful we can continue
on this path forward to fully serve the Congress.
Mr. Quigley. Well, what do you do, so far, if you have to
limit what you do?
Mr. Dodaro. Right.
Mr. Quigley. Is this putting off when you get something,
how long something gets done or how many resources you can put
toward an analysis? And I want to ask this in a sensitive way.
Mr. Dodaro. Sure.
Mr. Quigley. Does it affect how well you are able to
accomplish a request?
Mr. Dodaro. It doesn't affect how well we accomplish it,
but it does affect when we get to the request.
Right now, we have about 800 audits going. We have 88
requests from chairs and ranking members waiting to be staffed
in the queue. We have 265 mandates that are waiting to be
staffed. But they will be staffed as we go forward.
Now, you asked how we prioritize. We have worked out a
prioritization system with the congressional leadership. It is
written in our protocols. Priority 1 are mandates that are in
law or in committee and conference reports accompanying a law.
Mandates are the broadest expression of congressional interest.
Priority 2 are chair and ranking members, requests. To
reinforce our nonpartisan status, we treat both parties the
same in terms of access to our resources.
Priority 3 are requests from individual Members of
Congress, but we haven't had enough resources to do that in
about 15, 20 years. Right now a Member would need to get, a
chair or ranking member to sign on to a request to get into the
queue.
We work with each committee across the Congress to
prioritize the work. And it is a constant reprioritization
based on ongoing events.
So we get to everything, but the question is when. Now, for
the requests that are in the queue, on average, they will be
there, because mandates keep going ahead of the request, about
8 months before we can start those requests.
A degradation in our resource commitment would really push
off further starting that work or even being able to entertain
new requests from committee chairs and ranking members.
Mr. Quigley. Can you characterize the level of cooperation
you typically get or if there are outliers that are more
problematic than others?
Mr. Dodaro. Yes. We typically get good cooperation from the
executive branch, as a general rule. But there have been
exceptions to that area, and when there are, I will go meet
with the agency head.
I just met recently with the Secretary of Education. We
were having some issues there. It got resolved within a day or
two after that meeting. I have talked to the Department of
Justice in the past. Those issues are resolved.
I had trouble during the early stages of the pandemic--
because we were given responsibilities for tracking the $4.6
trillion in Federal pandemic aid, and providing monthly
briefings to the Congress. And we were having problems at Small
Business Administration. I let you know and you were very
helpful in helping resolve that situation.
So I meet with all the heads of the executive branch
departments and agencies as they are confirmed and try to
establish a good, constructive working relationship. So I try
to deal with them, and then, if I need the help from Congress,
I ask.
Mr. Quigley. Very good. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Mr. Franklin, the floor is yours.
Mr. Franklin. Thank you, Chairman.
And I don't have a lot for questions, but, General, thank
you for your testimony. And I am learning, as a new member of
the committee, and trying to get my arms around the scope of
what these agencies do. And I appreciate that you all have a
lot on your plate.
What strikes me--and I understand the line of questioning
of, you know, what is going to give if cuts are required. I see
that. But I also see, and what concerns me, is, just in the
technology space, for example, in a 5-year period from 2019 to
what you are projecting at the end of 2024, just the FTE, you
know, the number of employees in that one section of what you
oversee is going to quadruple.
So, in 5 years, we are talking about head count
quadrupling. Clearly--and we are seeing this across every
single thing----
Mr. Dodaro. Yes.
Mr. Franklin [continuing]. We touch. I mean, government has
exploded in the last 5 years.
To me, my perception, my opinion is that is not a
sustainable path. But where do you see this going? Five years
from now, is this 200 going to turn into, you know, 800?
Mr. Dodaro. Yeah.
The 200 would put it around the same size as many of our
other teams that conduct work in other areas of government. It
is our newest team within GAO. It is like, those horse races
where somebody starts, way in the back of the field and then
they catch up with the rest of the pack. That is where it is.
The reason it has grown so fast is that Congress debated
whether to recreate the Office of Technology Assessment or beef
up GAO's resources. Congress decided to go with the approach of
beefing up GAO's resources.
So we were given explicit direction, and asked to provide a
plan to the Congress to increase our resources and capacity in
the science and technology area. We did so in 2019 and have met
the plan's goals. We have met that plan. Despite speculation
that we would have difficulty recruiting people in that area,
we have been able to do that.
So we have met the plan Congress asked us to develop. And
our FY 2024 request, would bring us up to a level that is
commensurate with the demands. I don't expect it to keep
growing exponentially as it has in the past.
Mr. Franklin. Okay.
Well--and looking at the types of things that are
contemplated under that, I agree, these are critical needs now.
They are areas we need to be focused on. At some point, I would
just hope that--there is a tendency in government programs
that, once they come into place--I mean, government never goes
away; it only grows.
Mr. Dodaro. Right.
Mr. Franklin. But at some point we are going to be forced
to make the hard choices to do reallocation.
Mr. Dodaro. Right.
Mr. Franklin. So hopefully some things that have, you know,
been necessary before, the need may change, and we are just
going to have to be willing to make the hard decision to
reallocate those resources.
Mr. Dodaro. I understand.
Mr. Franklin. I know you do.
Mr. Dodaro. I am the auditor of the Federal Government's
financial statements.
Mr. Franklin. Exactly.
Mr. Dodaro. I understand our position.
Mr. Franklin. Right.
Mr. Dodaro. But I also understand GAO provides a lot of
return on our investment. So you get more back than----
Mr. Franklin. Right.
Mr. Dodaro [continuing]. You put into us----
Mr. Franklin. And you are the watchdog over, you know,
ensuring that what we are spending is being done
appropriately----
Mr. Dodaro. Yes actually----
Mr. Franklin [continuing]. And I appreciate that.
Mr. Dodaro [continuing]. We issue an annual report on
fragmentation, overlap, and duplication in the Federal
Government. And the last 12 years, we have made about 1,300
recommendations. Congress and the agencies has implemented
fully or partially 74 percent of these recommendations. This
has generated financial benefits of $552 billion. So it is
already over the half-trillion-dollar mark.
And believe me, I am judicious in managing our own
organization, I only ask for what we need, because I am aware
of our fiscal position. But I am also aware that Congress is
basically outresourced against the executive branch. And unless
you have strong oversight--or, a strong GAO, it is hard to
provide effective oversight of what is really going on, as
opposed to what the executive branch, puts forward as their
position on that issue. So Congress needs independent check and
balance----
Mr. Franklin. I agree.
Mr. Dodaro [continuing]. And GAO provides that.
Mr. Franklin. Very good.
All right. Thank you.
Mr. Dodaro. Sure.
Mr. Franklin. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. The gentleman from the Empire State, Ranking
Member Espaillat, the floor is yours.
Mr. Espaillat. From the Big Apple. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yes, Comptroller, I know that the Appropriations Law group
has done tremendous work, as we seek legal opinions about the
different work that we do here. It is so important for us to be
in compliance with the Constitution, and with the law, and I
know that they continue to do good work. I also want to commend
you for the resources that you have dedicated to that
particular group.
Can you share with us, some of the services that they
provide that are relevant and important to the work that we do?
Mr. Dodaro. Actually, their responsibilities go directly to
the heart of Congress's power of the purse.
They are experts in appropriation law decisions. We have
issued 42 decisions since March of 2020 as to whether or not
the agencies are following the direction given by the
appropriation committees and the law, and sometimes we find
that they don't heed that. There are provisions, for example,
that they consult with the Congress before they make a change;
sometimes they don't do that.
Also, we train congressional staff in appropriation law
decisions. We have regular classes that we provide in addition
to regular rulings in that area.
We also have responsibilities in the Congressional Review
Act. We must review major rules promulgated by Federal
agencies, congress can act to stop a rule if they don't agree
with it. We have issued, a one hundred products in that area.
We also have responsibilities under the Vacancies Act.
There is only supposed to be people serving in acting positions
for a certain period of time, so we monitor this issue across
the executive branch for Congress.
And then, also, very importantly, we issue decisions
related to antideficiency Act. Congress's direction is supposed
to determine what agencies spend the money on. So we make sure
that they spend the money that Congress directed them to. But,
on the flip side, if they spend more than Congress authorized,
that is an antideficiency violation, and we point that out to
the Congress.
Mr. Espaillat. I know that you are also doing work on
enhancing cybersecurity. And, just recently, the Washington,
D.C., health exchange was compromised, exposing confidential
information about our team, and ourselves. This is a growing
problem in a very hostile world environment.
Mr. Dodaro. Yes.
Mr. Espaillat. What are you doing, what are the priorities
of the center, of the Center for Enhanced Cybersecurity, as we
move forward?
Mr. Dodaro. Yes. I do not believe the Federal Government is
operating at a pace of strengthening computer security
commensurate with this evolving grave threat.
We have been doing this; I have been pushing this. I
mentioned in my opening remarks, we designated cybersecurity
across the Federal Government as a high risk area in 1997. We
got Congress to pass a series of laws. It is a little better,
but most Federal agencies still do not have effective
information security programs. And since 2010, we have issued
4,000 recommendations. 860 are still open, so we are going to
continue to follow up there.
We are doing more work also in critical infrastructure
protection. The Federal agencies, try to encourage voluntary
compliance, but basically the Federal Government really doesn't
know how prepared the private sector is to deal with these
issues until for example, there is a ransomware attack on
Colonial Pipeline. So I have been trying to encourage more
information-sharing between the government and the private
sector, and capacity building in the Federal agencies.
We have had our center for 25 years now. I have been
expanding the size of it. In addition to looking at current
threats, we need to look ahead; growing our resources in this
area will allow us to do this.
Artificial intelligence will bring new threats in this
area. It has a lot of advantages, but like most technologies it
also has a darker side. Quantum computing is another example,
it has advantages but it could also be used to break all the
current encryption techniques.
Another example is blockchain technologies. We have a pilot
right now with Treasury that tests new auditing techniques that
would be required if they adopt blockchain technology.
In artificial intelligence, we have issued a framework so
we can be positioned to audit algorithms used under artificial
intelligence. We will continue to focus on artificial
intelligence issues.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Amodei. The gentlelady from Oklahoma is recognized.
Mrs. Bice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you for being here with us this morning.
I want to start--you mentioned the cybersecurity aspect.
And last Congress, I had the great pleasure of serving on the
new subcommittee on House Armed Services focused on cyber. I
don't think that there is enough emphasis put on the
ramifications of a cyber attack across government.
One of the things that I have been focused on is the, what
they call, ``rip and replace'' of technology hardware that has
been installed throughout government, whether that is local,
State, municipal, or other agencies, that is equipment from
adversarial nations.
Mr. Dodaro. Yes.
Mrs. Bice. Do you have a little bit of insight that you can
share with us about that rip and replace program?
My understanding is there was $5 billion--or, I am sorry,
there was $1.9 billion allocated for that program. There were
over $5 billion in requests. There has just now been a first
let to be able to start doing that.
But this is an important piece, because the potential harm
that can be done by having this equipment within our
infrastructure is grave, and I don't know that it has gotten
enough attention.
Can you speak a little bit to that?
Mr. Dodaro. Yes, absolutely.
On this particular program, I don't think we have done a
detailed evaluation. I will check, and if we do, we will let
you know.
But the broader issue you bring up is a supply-chain issue.
We have done a lot of work on supply-chain issues in
information technology. We have come up with a set of best
practices. We compared those to what agencies are doing,
including Defense; we found them short of those best practices.
We issued that report before the SolarWinds incident happened.
So we are very aware of this problem. You are right to be
concerned about it. I am too. And I would like to do more work
in that area. Because the government is moving to zero-trust
architecture, which is all based upon knowing who, along in the
supply chain, you can trust.
Mrs. Bice. And to follow up on that, can you talk a little
bit about the technology that GAO is using currently and what
you are looking to potentially upgrade in the near future? I
know there is a lot of different--whether that is e-discovery
software or other things that would be helpful.
Talk a little bit about where you are now and what the
future looks like----
Mr. Dodaro. Sure.
Mrs. Bice [continuing]. For the organization.
Mr. Dodaro. Sure. We are in the process now of moving to
the cloud in most of our operations. We have a multiyear IT
modernization underway. We are taking steps to ensure it is
secure and we have good computer security over the information
we collect.
We are replacing our document management system, which is
all the records that we keep for our audits. The system we have
in place now is over 30 years old. So we are replacing that as
we go forward.
Mrs. Bice. How long do you anticipate that process to take?
Mr. Dodaro. I am hopeful, if we get the support from the
committee, that we can have that done within the next year or
two.
Mrs. Bice. And you started that process in----
Mr. Dodaro. Well, we started moving to the cloud a few
years ago. For example, our email is in the cloud now. But not
all of our operations are in the cloud.
Completing our move to the cloud, is a multi-year effort--
we are moving at a deliberate pace because we want to be
careful about how we are doing it, make sure we have good
security and that we have good, access to everything we need.
Some of the federal contracts haven't been struck very
carefully, and so I want to do that.
For the document management system, we are on track to try
to do that next fiscal year.
Mrs. Bice. One of the challenges I see with the procurement
and acquisitions structure is that it takes so long to move to
new software applications or new technologies. And I think that
we are up against a time crunch now. We don't have time to
spend waiting for approval at every step. In some cases, we
need to really figure out how can we move forward quickly,
because we are falling behind----
Mr. Dodaro. Yes.
Mrs. Bice [continuing]. And I think that is a really
dangerous place for us to be.
So, certainly, anything that we can do to speed up that
procurement and acquisitions process, particularly for software
and technology, I am happy to help with.
Mr. Dodaro. The basic thing would be having stability in
our funding. I mean, part of the problem is that, almost every
year we are in a continuing resolution process. So we enter a
year, and maybe a quarter or half through the year we don't
know what our funding is going to be for that year. It is hard
to enter into a multiyear procurement without knowing that you
are going to be able to honor your commitments that you are
making.
We have also created, on our audit side, an Innovation Lab
where we are testing new technologies we want to be able to
develop and test new audit technologies and methods that are
needed as federal activities grow in size and complexity.
And so I am very aware of the issue. Part of the problem we
had--and I mentioned earlier in response to one of is that
during sequestration we lost 12 percent of our staff. We also
stopped a lot of our IT modernizations during that period of
time so that we would not have to lay people off. I didn't want
to lose our talent base.
So we are still catching up from some of those problems we
have had in the past. And I hope that with robust funding we
could move quicker.
Mrs. Bice. Great. Thank you.
My time has expired. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Additional questions from any committee members
for the General?
Seeing none, General, I have a few.
You have alluded to it in your testimony, but--you know,
what we have been asked to do--is 100 percent of your work
requirements generated by Members of the House and Senate?
Mr. Dodaro. Almost 100 percent. There is a small number,
like 5 percent, that I will reserve to determine new areas that
we need to invest in. Like, originally, we did a lot of
computer security work under my authority. But after we start
work on our own Congress starts asking for it.
Part of the work that we do under my authority includes
budget scrubs that we do for the Appropriations Committee. We
go through the President's budget request every year for major
departments and agencies and see where there are unused
obligations and therefore, an opportunity where there is a need
to reduce funds in some areas that they have carryover money.
That work is done under my authority, rather than have requests
from the committees every year.
We also work on identifying fraud, waste, and abuse in the
government under my authority.
And then I will do some targeted areas. For example, our
housing agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they are still in
Federal conservatorship from the 2008-2009 global financial
crisis. And a lot of the housing risk right now, if there is a
downturn in the housing economy, it lays at the Federal
Government's footstep, because the Federal Government is either
directly or indirectly guaranteeing about 70 percent of
individual home mortgages.
And so, I issued a framework for the Congress that they
could use in making decisions on how to decide whether to
privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or use a hybrid model.
But most all of our workload is driven by the mandates and
requests.
Mr. Amodei. So is it fair to say that 100 percent of what
you do is either a direct request or related to that oversight
function that you play in supporting the Congress?
Mr. Dodaro. Absolutely.
Mr. Amodei. Okay.
And so you are in a unique situation--and, actually, the
committee is in a unique situation--that it is no surprise to
anybody here that the general atmosphere is going to be, okay,
how can we cut, how can we reduce, blah, blah, blah. It is your
job to take a look at if people are doing what they were
supposed to do, being asked by--the vast majority of those
comments, or missions, if you will, are generated by specific
legislation, committee chairs, committee ranking members, that
sort of stuff.
So if you were going to play the GAO, looking at yourself,
when this committee comes forward with its recommendations in
front of the full committee and then on the floor, what would
you say? ``Hey, here is why''--and I am not putting words in
your mouth.
Mr. Dodaro. Yes.
Mr. Amodei. They will be your words. But it is like, ``If
you value oversight, if you value responsiveness, if you
value''--go ahead and take off from there.
Mr. Dodaro. Yeah. No, absolutely.
First, I would say, if Congress wants to have an aggressive
posture on reducing waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal
Government, if Congress wants to generate good ideas, smart
ideas on how to cut the Federal Government's spending without
harming individuals, and if Congress wants an effective
oversight mechanism over the executive branch, you need a
strong GAO.
And without us being strong, your ability, Congress's
ability, to manage and oversee the rest of the Federal
Government will be severely diminished.
Mr. Amodei. Okay. Thank you.
I want to thank you for your testimony.
Members may submit additional questions, not forever,
within--yeah. If you have additional questions, please contact
the committee staff so that we can get them to you and they can
be meaningful in time for markup and that sort of stuff.
General, thank you very much. Appreciate your appearance
and your testimony.
The meeting is adjourned.
[Questions and answers submitted for the record follow:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Thursday, March 23, 2023.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
WITNESSES
CARLA HAYDEN, PH.D., LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS, MARY MAZANEC, PH.D.,
DIRECTOR, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE, MARIA STRONG, ASSOCIATE
REGISTER OF COPYRIGHTS AND DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND INTERNAL AFFAIRS,
UNITED STATES COPYRIGHT OFFICE
Mr. Amodei. The meeting of the Legislative Branch
Subcommittee will come to order.
Since it seems to be going okay so far and nobody has
complained about the chair not doing opening remarks, we are
going to stick with that proven formula.
And I am going to recognize the ranking member, Mr.
Espaillat, for your opening remarks.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Dr. Hayden, for coming here and for your
colleagues being here as well today.
The Library of Congress is a national treasure, and it has
unparalleled resources, as you know. I appreciate your
commitment to making it more accessible to every American
across the country and particularly to us here in Congress.
Importantly, we look forward to the unveiling of the
Visitor Experience Center in 2025. My team was able to take a
peek at that, and they really bragged about it. So we are
looking forward to that.
And as ranking member, I am committed to ensuring that the
Library has the resources it needs to continue its mission,
safeguard its collection, and provide a robust cybersecurity
protection for all of us.
I would also like to thank and recognize the staff of the
Congressional Research Service, especially the Appropriations
Team and Executive Branch Operations Section, for their
continued support and essential support to our entire
committee.
So I look forward to your testimony. Thank you, Dr. Hayden.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member.
I would like to thank our witness for being here, the
Librarian of Congress.
Ms. Strong is also here, representing Ms. Shira Perlmutter
for the Copyright Office. And Dr. Mazanec is here, representing
the Congressional Research Service. Ms. Perlmutter and Dr.
Mazanec's testimony have been submitted for the record.
Mr. Amodei. And I now recognize you, Dr. Hayden, for your
summary of your written testimony. Welcome.
Dr. Hayden. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Amodei, Ranking
Member Espaillat, and members of the subcommittee, for this
opportunity to provide testimony in support of the Library's
2024 budget.
And I am pleased to report that in fiscal year 2022 the
Library returned to regular operations. Visitors and
researchers returned on site. The reading rooms reopened and
in-person events multiplied, while our very popular virtual
programming continued.
And with the support of Congress, the Library continued to
build collections in multiple formats and engage users in a
variety of ways. Today, the physical collections contain nearly
175 million items, and many of those are in digital form. And
the Library's digital engagement increased dramatically since
2020.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the
support from this committee and Congress in general for
investing in our recent IT infrastructure; also, the Visitor
Experience Initiative. We have raised over--almost--and you
see, I am ready to go there--we have raised almost $20 million
from donors nationwide for this impactful initiative. And our
goal is to have engaging new spaces in the Thomas Jefferson
Building open to the public for the Nation's 250-year
celebration in 2026.
I come before you today to discuss the Library of
Congress's appropriations request for $940.8 million, a 7.5-
percent increase over the fiscal year 2023 enacted
appropriation. This request includes $45.8 million in mandatory
pay and price level increases, and the remaining increases
represent critical investments necessary to meet the Library's
mission.
With modern IT infrastructure in place, thanks to your
support, we are using a continuous development approach to
ensure improvements as we manage all of the Library's
technology, and our requests build on that: for instance,
resources for Congress.gov to build capacity to continue to
serve Congress effectively.
The U.S. Copyright Office has reached major milestones
toward a new Enterprise Copyright System, ECS, which is
transforming the entire copyright process. And the budget
request this year asks for a permanent base for continuing to
develop the ECS.
The Library's special responsibility to the National
Library for the Blind and Print Disabled extends to critical IT
systems that ensure accessibility for its patrons and blind
staff. The request this year includes staffing dedicated to
continuous innovation and development of these systems. Other
forms would replace very obsolete talking-book machines with
web-based systems and make refreshable Braille e-readers
available to patrons.
In addition, we have a request for support for the
increasing volume and complexity of the contracts that support
the growing IT structure that we have, and that would mean
additional experienced staff for the Library's Contracts and
Grants Directorate.
Other requests would ensure more responsibility for the
service to Congress.
And with the significant increase in the volume and
complexity of bills introduced, the CRS, Congressional Research
Service, requests additional staff to accommodate the growing
Bill Digest workload and to enhance its support for Congress.
There is also a request for a pilot program for
quantitative analysis of research and operational big data to
meet emerging congressional demand.
We recognize the challenges that result from the current
fiscal environment, and we know that our programmatic requests
this year represent the most necessary and impactful priorities
that will enhance our ability to serve Congress and the
American people.
So thank you for your support, and we look forward to your
questions.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Dr. Hayden.
And Dr. Hayden's written testimony will be part of our
record, as well as the stuff that I have indicated before.
And so the chair now recognizes for questions the
Representative from the Bronx, Mr. Espaillat.
Mr. Espaillat. And Manhattan. Thank you, Chairman. I mean,
we went from the Empire State to the Big Apple to the Boogie
Down Bronx.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Dr. Hayden, I know that all of us really enjoy the Library.
And I wanted to get your impression on how you feel the
services that you provide will be compromised if the
discretionary spending cuts come through. And what will be the
impact on the work that you do there?
Dr. Hayden. There is no aspect of the Library's work and
the people we serve that would not be affected by reductions in
resources.
And because the Library is roughly 65 percent pay, and the
non-pay is used for the majority of the modernization efforts,
some that I referred to just a minute ago, the support to
Congress specifically, as well as the people it serves, would
be dramatic, depending on the reduction.
For instance, depending on the size of a reduction, we
would immediately implement a year-long hiring freeze and not
backfill positions from attrition, which would then make our
FTE count go down, and you would have fewer people doing more
work. We would have to mandate, for instance, furlough days,
and that would have a real effect on our ability to provide
timely service to Congress.
So CRS is 85 to 90 percent pay. They are people. So when
you cut CRS, you are cutting direct service to Congress.
Then, copyright registrations. We have made great strides.
We talked about the milestones. But the work on the new
copyright system that our public stakeholders are very
interested in--that is why our Register is actually in
California, at a copyright conference, where they are urging us
to continue--that work would stop.
Our other IT systems, the National Library for the Blind
and Physically Handicapped, the rollout of the e-readers would
curtail. We circulate about 22 million items to the blind and
print-disabled each year. And when you think about the impact
on that community, people who are really dependent on our
services throughout the country--I can go on, with the
cataloging of the materials that we provide for thousands of
libraries throughout the country.
Digitizing the collection. Our security and IT development
would be compromised. And that is one we would have to make
sure that we preserve, because cybersecurity is so important,
so we have to maintain that.
And then, of course, we would have to reduce the public
services, the on-site services in those reading rooms. So some
would close, reduced hours. And then things like our signature
programming and those things would have to be halted.
So it is the degradation of services, right when we are
coming out of really renewing what the Library had to endure in
previous years. So----
Mr. Espaillat. And you mentioned cybersecurity, and that is
so important to all of us. In fact, the Library of Congress
experienced more than 180,000 attempted cyber attacks in a
year.
Dr. Hayden. Yes.
Mr. Espaillat. What is the Library doing to handle that?
What are you proposing to do?
Dr. Hayden. Well, thank you for mentioning that, because we
are a target, and we know that, and we take it very seriously,
and we have a very robust security system.
And we are very fortunate to have a CIO, Judith Conklin,
who is here, who is a cybersecurity expert, and who could, if
you wouldn't mind, give you even more in depth, because there
are certain things we can say publicly, but--Judith is that.
And just as she comes up, she is receiving in a couple of
weeks her second award for public service, specifically for
what she does with cybersecurity and making sure our systems--
--
Ms. Conklin. Thank you, Dr. Hayden.
Dr. Hayden [continuing]. Are not attacked.
Mr. Espaillat. Ms. Conklin, could I have you just hang on
for a minute? I wanted to make Mr. Franklin aware, before you
started testifying----
Ms. Conklin. Oh, sorry.
Mr. Espaillat [continuing]. She is a former Army officer.
So I would expect you would be open-minded, based on your
military background, to anything she would have to say.
Please proceed.
Dr. Hayden. She was a major.
Ms. Conklin. But Army.
Thank you for the question. And thank you for your concern
about cybersecurity at the Library of Congress. Cybersecurity
is a passion of mine, and it is a top priority for me as the
CIO.
The cybersecurity program at the Library of Congress really
took off in 2002. And it was built in a non-centralized way,
and the specialists were down in the businesses.
When, as you know, in 2015, technology needed to be
revamped in our agency, and Dr. Hayden arrived in 2016, and she
directed centralization, we centralized the cybersecurity
roles. And that has strengthened it significantly.
So we have cybersecurity professionals under our Chief
Information Security Officer. We have an authorizing official,
Steve Elky, that started building it in 2002, and he is very,
very well knowledgeable in IT security. And he only allows
things on the production network; it takes his signature to do
that. Our CISO, Sean Lang, is very technical and works with the
legislative branch CISOs also.
From a tools perspective, we are always vigilant. We are
always monitoring the network, monitoring our assets,
monitoring folks coming in or attempting to come in. We have a
24-hour virtual SOC, security operations center.
And we have been very lucky to receive support from
Congress since 2015 on our IT security initiatives, and that
has helped us strengthen the security program.
So I feel very strong that we are very mature in our IT
security program, but we continue to mature, because the cyber
threats in the world continue to evolve.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you.
Dr. Hayden. I would also add that we have added additional
funding to have additional background checks for certain staff
members, even the ones that are physically around some of our
equipment. So we have stepped that up too, and so that is
increased in our budget.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you so much.
I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. The gentleman from Kansas, you are recognized.
The floor is yours, Mr. LaTurner.
Mr. LaTurner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Hayden, I wanted to ask about the trend line. Digital
engagement increased dramatically since the start of the
pandemic. Have you seen that trend continue this year?
Dr. Hayden. Yes, we have. And what is very interesting, at
certain points, when we post something or we have a special
something to put out, like when we had a pop star that used one
of our historic flutes, we saw a dramatic uptick, and we were
able to see that quite a few people were looking and saying,
what else does the Library of Congress have?
Mr. LaTurner. The flute helped.
Dr. Hayden. It helped quite a bit, quite a bit, because
then they are seeing all of this, and then they look and they
say, oh, you have a digital jukebox, or you have old movies,
you have photographs, you have maps, you have this, you have
that, and people start exploring what we call our digital front
door, our website.
And so to see that increase and to see it being sustained
is very rewarding.
Mr. LaTurner. Talk about, a little bit, the funds to
improve IT contracting.
Dr. Hayden. We find--and we are not alone--that the
attrition rate for contractors, people who can work in
contracting, is rather high. For the Library in general, it
averages about 7 to 8 percent attrition. And that area in
contracts, it is about 25 percent.
And we share the difficulty with other agencies that those
people are very highly sought after, and so we have to do more
to recruit them but also to make sure that we maintain staff
there.
Mr. LaTurner. Talk a little bit about the plan to develop
Congress.gov. What does that look like?
Dr. Hayden. Ah. Well, you have Mary Mazanec here, but
before she starts, I want you to know that, in terms of impact
and budget impact, that would be a system that would be
impacted. Because right now, for instance, we are able to have
every 3 weeks new improvements to Congress.gov for its
continuous improvement in doing that.
So we are on track for that, we have been funded for that,
and it is vital to the work.
Dr. Mazanec. So Congress.gov is also the repository of the
bill summaries. And one of the concerns that have been raised
is the timeliness of the bill summaries. And if you compare the
number of measures introduced from the 115th to the 117th,
there has been a 30-percent increase, and the bills are more
complex.
So the programmatic increase that we have requested would
fund 12 additional slots that would increase the size of the
team that does bill summaries by a third, and it would
hopefully improve the timeliness of bill summaries by 40
percent. We are also requesting four additional FTEs to help
support continuous upgrades and improvement to Congress.gov.
Congress.gov is a joint effort between CRS and other parts
of the Library. Also, the Clerk of the House and the Secretary
of the Senate, they are also partners in this effort. And so we
are constantly trying to introduce new features to Congress.gov
that you find useful.
Mr. LaTurner. Sure. I appreciate that. And I see your
lanyard. Go Irish!
And I yield back, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. LaTurner, for that.
And the chair now recognizes the gentleman from the
Sunshine State, Mr. Franklin.
Mr. Franklin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Dr. Hayden. I appreciate learning about your
organization. I have always been a fan of it. And, you know,
like everything I have experienced around here, there is a lot
more to it under the hood as I start diving in.
I guess I am curious to know more on the personnel side,
because so many of the entities that fall under leg. branch are
people-driven. That is where the source of the budget primarily
lies.
How has telework evolved within your organization, pre-
pandemic? And then now that we have come back out of that, are
you seeing some permanent changes? And what would you consider
some of the benefits?
And are there challenges, say, culturally or, you know,
transitioning knowledge? As we hear from most branches, you
know, we are seeing a brain drain in a lot of areas as people
retire from the workforce. How do we transition that knowledge
to the next generations? And what challenges do you see when
folks aren't always face-to-face?
Dr. Hayden. Our post-pandemic telework policy was
redesigned to make sure that we have our mission stable, to
serve Congress and the public, and then also, though, to
provide the flexibilities that we really got a chance to see
during the pandemic.
And what we know and the way we have revised the policy is
that there are going to be differences based on the unit. For
instance, you have CRS, very direct-service-intensive; the
reading rooms, people coming in. There are different units that
had to look at their own policies.
And there are requirements now that we have where there is
a minimum of on site regardless and then there are
opportunities for more telework based on what the position is.
For instance, IT, they could do different types of things. So
it depends on the type of service that is being provided.
But we made sure that we had some flexibilities, and we
learned what those are, but we also wanted to make sure that we
maintain a certain level of service. And so those checks and
balances are in there with that.
Mr. Franklin. Okay.
I would think, within your realm, that being associated
with the Library of Congress would be like the World Series.
You know, everyone would want to be affiliated with the
organization. It would make your staff very enticing to folks
elsewhere. I mean, I would think having experience with the
Library of Congress would look very good on a resume.
Do you find yourself--are you poached a lot from
universities and other entities trying to hire away your
people? And do you have a salary structure that is competitive
to keep your best?
Dr. Hayden. What the Library of Congress has--and I am
speaking as a career librarian--is that it is almost like you
are going to the top, all right, and it is the Nation's Library
and that. So you have that, even though sometimes the salaries
might not be as competitive with universities and colleges. And
then in other areas--for instance, IT--you have to look at
that.
So we have interesting projects that people could get
involved with. But that also gives you more of a turnover.
Possibly, people get the experience at the Library of Congress
and then industry might take them away.
So we try to keep staff members engaged and to make sure
that we at least--and that is when you think about the telework
policy, for instance, some flexibilities. Before the pandemic,
it was rather rigid.
So we look at our HR policies in terms of being attractive
not just for the status but the fact that people--Washington,
D.C., physically living in this area is sometimes a challenge.
Mr. Franklin. Okay.
Well, I thank you that you have brought the dinner series
back. I am looking forward to participating in those. And as I
came in last session as a freshman, I was told really across
the board that, of all the events and things you can go to in
D.C., those speaker series, the dinners, are one of the best
things in Washington. So I am glad to see we are putting that
part of the pandemic behind us.
But I don't have any other questions, Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you. You should know, they also have a
lunch series which you don't have to pass an entrance exam for.
It is just in the cafeteria every day at noon. That is the one
I have been able to go to, but not with a lot of frequency. But
they are working on lowering the standards for the other one.
I appreciate that, Dr. Hayden.
The gentleman from the Peach State, Mr. Clyde, you have the
floor.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman.
Ladies, thank you for being here.
To Dr. Hayden, the offsetting collections that are reported
here for fiscal year 2022, I believe that is about $44 million,
almost $45 million. That would be on summary tables. How do you
handle that? As in, are those collections then used for the
next year's budget, or do they decrease the appropriation for
the current year?
Dr. Hayden. My understanding is they are in Copyright.
Mr. Clyde. Okay.
Dr. Hayden. And that is an area that--and you might want to
speak to that.
Ms. Strong is here.
Ms. Strong. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Hayden.
Yes. So the Copyright Office is funded in two ways, by
appropriated dollars from Congress as well as offsetting
collections, which are the payments and fees that we collect
for some of our services.
And so we are not a fully fee-funded agency----
But the offsetting collections are those fees that we
generate from that. And so that does pay for part of the
Copyright Office basic budget.
Mr. Clyde. Okay. But the question was, what fiscal year?
The year that you collect them? Are they used the year that you
collect them, or are they the next year?
Ms. Strong. My understanding is we definitely try to use it
the years that collect. We do have a very small prior-year fund
of, I believe, $1 million, which we can use to go back to a
prior year that would go to the next year.
So we do have a very small fund to use to fund the next
year's event--but primarily we aim to execute in that fiscal
year.
Mr. Clyde. Okay. Thank you.
I went back and looked at your 2019 budget, which was about
$696 million. And then if you look at offsetting collections,
projected for fiscal year 2024 at $45.5 million, that would be
a total appropriation of almost $742 million.
Would you be able to make the Library of Congress work
efficiently with that kind of an appropriation for fiscal year
2024?
Dr. Hayden. You are referring to the 2019?
Mr. Clyde. I am. The pre-COVID.
Dr. Hayden. It would be very difficult.
Mr. Clyde. Okay. Could you do it?
Dr. Hayden. When you say ``operate,'' it would be at a
reduced--reduced services, reduced everything, for the public,
for Congress which is our primary goal. We are the Library of
Congress. CRS would be severely damaged, because they are 90
percent personnel and people.
So services to Congress and the people Congress serves
would be severely affected.
Mr. Clyde. So the current ask is $895 million. This year's
enacted was $828.5 million. And this would be, then, 741, 742,
so about $75 million less than what you are currently getting?
Dr. Hayden. Are you----
Mr. Clyde. About three-quarters of a billion dollars.
Dr. Hayden. And I just want to clarify----
Mr. Clyde. Sure.
Dr. Hayden [continuing]. What you are asking. In terms of
the effect on services to Congress and the public?
Mr. Clyde. Sure, why not.
Dr. Hayden. There would be service cuts.
Mr. Clyde. Okay. All right.
To Director Mazanec, you spent about an entire page of your
eight-page testimony, I believe, on talking about diversity,
equity, and inclusion training. How much money do you actually
spend on that annually?
Dr. Mazanec. I don't have that figure in my head. We can
certainly calculate that and get it back to you.
We try to do quarterly trainings for the staff and for
managers on diversity and inclusion topics. It is a priority of
mine to recruit and retain a diverse workforce and have a very
inclusive work environment.
But I can get back to you with a specific figure.
Mr. Clyde. Okay. I understand you have a website dedicated
to it?
Dr. Mazanec. We recently introduced----
Mr. Clyde. And newsletter, et cetera?
Dr. Mazanec [continuing]. Introduced a website that has all
the information on it. I wouldn't call it a newsletter. There
is on-site information that staff can look at.
We have expanded our efforts to participate in recruitment
events--we did 30 last year; we have done 8 this year--to try
to reach populations that are not routinely represented in the
Federal workforce.
And I think it has had an impact. At the senior level,
which I am involved in, in selecting people, since 2020, we
have had eight senior-level hires, senior-level managers. Five
have added diversity. So we are making an impact.
Mr. Clyde. Uh-huh. I only used the term ``newsletter''
because you used it in your testimony here. That is all.
Okay. I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Any other questions from committee members?
Okay.
Dr. Hayden, we learned something this morning in the GAO
hearing that I would encourage you folks to do if it is
appropriate, and that is to supplement your testimony, because
we all know that we are in a challenging fiscal environment. As
you go through your presentation, if there are areas where you
go, ``Hey, here is the value that we are providing,'' so that--
when we look to make the decisions that will inevitably have to
be made, I think part of the consideration needs to be, where
is the value?
Now, that may be a hard thing to quantify, and if you
can't, you can't. But I want to encourage you, so that all
committee members can see. It is like, ``So here is what we are
asking for, and here is what we have done programmatically,''
but to try to reduce that to a, ``By the way, here is the value
that we are providing for the dollars that you are spending on
us.'' If you can quantify that somehow, we would certainly
encourage you to do that to supplement it.
And we are not picking on you guys. We are going to ask
everybody, ``Hey, where is the value here?'' so that when those
decisions are made, it is not just, ``Where do we start, and
how do we get to where we need to get?'' So that if there are
cuts, not that you wouldn't have the discretion to see how you
implement those, but we want to be as well-informed as
possible.
So I put that out there for you.
Dr. Hayden. Thank you.
Mr. Amodei. And, with that, since there are no other
questions or whatever, the members have 10 days--I am making
that up, so don't look for the rule--10 days to submit
additional questions on behalf of committee members.
Mr. Amodei. And the meeting is adjourned. Thank you.
Dr. Hayden. Thank you.
[Questions and answers submitted for the record follow:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Friday, March 24, 2023.
MEMBER'S DAY
Mr. Amodei. The subcommittee will come to order.
Today is our Member Day hearing for the Legislative Branch
Subcommittee on Appropriations. I would like to thank our
witness, Mr. Kilmer, for being here. I now recognize the
ranking member for his opening remarks.
Mr. Espaillat, the floor is yours.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Congratulations on all the work that you accomplished in
the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress over the
last 4 years. That committee has passed over 200
recommendations to improve the way Congress works, and this
subcommittee has been supported by providing the necessary
resource. In fiscal year 2023, we provided $10 million for
modernization.
I think what we have heard here so far from most of the
witnesses is that we need to really modernize. We are falling
behind rapidly, and that is not good for cyber security, that
is not food for the way we conduct our business, that is not
good for the future of our Nation.
So thank you, Mr. Kilmer, for your commitment.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Espaillat.
I would like to thank Mr. Kilmer for being here. Hope you
are feeling better and going to feel even more so. The floor is
yours for your statement. And for the record, we have your
statement, which will be made part of the record. And public
witness testimonies for all topics related to Member Day will
also be part of our record.
Mr. Kilmer, please.
----------
Friday, March 24, 2023.
WITNESS
HON. DEREK KILMER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF
WASHINGTON
Mr. Kilmer. Great. Thank you, Chairman and Ranking Member,
and Mr. Clyde, thank you to your staff as well for paying
attention to this stuff. Apologies that I look a little like
Frankenstein or like unshaven Frankenstein. I had sleep apnea
surgery earlier this week, so a little bit the walking wounded.
I wanted to talk about the work of the Select Committee on
the Modernization of Congress. As Mr. Espaillat said, our
committee over the course of the last two Congresses passed 202
bipartisan recommendations. At this point, 45 have been fully
implemented, and another 87 are on their way to implementation.
And that is in no small part due to the work of this
subcommittee.
The new majority created a subcommittee now as part of
House Admin that is going to focus on implementation of the
remaining recommendations.
And we covered a whole lot of terrain, looking at how this
institution can do a better job of recruiting and retaining and
having a more diverse staff, working on having this institution
be more civil and collaborative, working on strengthening how
our institution does law making and conducts oversight, working
on modernizing the workplace and how we use technology as an
institution. And while we were able to get a whole lot done,
there is a whole lot of work that remains. And I want to thank
this subcommittee for helping us move forward where we have.
The omnibus that we passed at the end of last year included
funding. And particularly and the thing I want to underscore is
for the Modernization Initiative Account. That provides some
flexibility to the institution so that we don't have to
necessarily micromanage every one of the 202 recommendations
and their implementation, but rather gives the CAO some
flexibility to move forward.
The omnibus also included funding for the MRA, which was
important. As we look to improve the institution, that matters.
Funding to provide paid internships and to develop an intern
resource office. We heard in House Admin last week that that
process is underway so that there can be some--a more
systematic way of bringing on interns and making sure that the
internship experience is positive for the young people who come
and work here.
Expanding the student loan repayment program so that it
also covers tuition assistance, if we have a member of our team
who wants to take night classes or go get a grad degree while
they are working for us. Mr. Espaillat mentioned cyber
security. I had a team member who was our MLA who wanted to get
an advanced degree in cyber security policy while they were
doing defense policy for us. Being able to provide that tuition
assistance was a positive change provided in the omnibus.
And working on improving childcare options was something
that we heard consistently as we engaged with staff within the
institution, and all of that saw some progress in the omnibus.
So again, thanks to this subcommittee for that.
As we look at fiscal year 2024, I think the main thing I
want to plea for is just level funding for the next year for
the Modernization Initiatives Account. That will help move
forward some of the recommendations that haven't yet been
implemented, with an eye towards reducing turnover, providing
more efficiency within the institution, helping the institution
be more effective and get its work done.
A lot of the recommendations of the select committee
actually save money and with minimal upfront investment. We can
actually save a fair amount of money streamlining some of the
purchasing across the House and the Senate. Setting up a system
where we can have House-wide bulk purchasing of goods and
services can cut back on waste and inefficiency, trying to
drive more implementation of some of the Government
Accountability Office recommendations. Those all are focused on
saving taxpayer dollars and were all bipartisan recommendations
of the select committee.
Through the--we put into the portal not just a request for
money, but a fair amount of report language with directive
language to primarily the CAO about where we are hoping that
the CAO's office will focus. That includes launching a new
calendar tool to reduce committee conflicts for Members so that
we can actually attend more of our committee hearings.
Most colleges and universities and high schools have
figured out how to deconflict the schedule. For those of us
appropriators who, as I was yesterday, were in three
subcommittee hearings at the exact same time, we have not
cracked the code as an institution on deconflicting the
calendar. We--to quote the beginning of the TV show The Six
Million Dollar Man, ``we have the technology, we know how to
fix him.''
In that same vein, the Modernization Initiatives Account
could fund the select committee recommendation to the chief
administrative officer to construct a committee feedback tool
that committee leadership could use to solicit Member feedback
to improve the operations of our committees. Think about sort
of Yelpifying the work of our committees so that we can
actually try to improve.
On top of that, the Account can be used to better serve our
constituents and implement some of the recommendations that
were made around constituent engagement and constituent
services, including setting up a best practices hub, making
sure that our offices are getting more cutting edge
correspondence technology tools so that we can respond to our
constituents in a more thorough and timely fashion.
One of the recommendations that we made that was bipartisan
and that Members were pretty enthusiastic about was trying to
aggregate and anonymize casework data. So Imagine, you know,
Mr. Clyde, in your office, if you get three or four messages on
the same VA issue, you might say that seems unusual, but if we
discovered that every office was getting three or four,
suddenly we recognize, hey, there is a systemic problem in the
VA, let's go to work on that systemic problem. Same thing with
the IRS or Social Security or you name it.
We don't really have a way of aggregating that data,
identifying trends, and being able to solve problems. So one of
our recommendations that can be funded out of the Modernization
Initiatives Account is to do that.
Improving some of the transparency regarding the work of
Congress for our constituents so that they can do a better job
of providing feedback and offering opinions on pending
legislation for staff. The Modernizations Initiatives Account
could provide for the automation of obtaining bill sponsors to
save staff time and reduce the risk of error.
Having a staff directory so that our staffs can better
collaborate on policy issues. Most management consulting firms,
including the one I worked for, had a sort of firm intranet, so
that if you wanted to dive into a particular area, you could
quickly find people who have expertise in that area.
Forming a mentorship program, which is something that we
heard from junior staff in particular, that they wanted to see
happen within the institution so that they could improve,
develop professionally, and hopefully stick around so that we
don't see the turnover that we have seen here.
I think I will leave it at that. I submitted written
testimony to you, but I kind of wanted to hit the highlights of
some of the areas where I think, if we move forward with
implementation with some of these recommendations, the
institution will be better, will be more efficient, will be
more transparent to our constituents, will hopefully be more
collaborative, and hopefully as an institution, we can get some
more stuff done.
[The statement of Mr. Kilmer follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Kilmer.
Mr. Clyde the floor is yours.
Mr. Clyde. I have no questions.
Mr. Amodei. Good.
I can tell you that I will sure as hell vote for anything
which deconflicts committee hearings. I don't want to say
anything about sight unseen, but I will make an exception in
that case. So thank you for your work.
I am sorry. Fire away.
Mr. Espaillat. Is there any like--one of the top three--I
heard you mention, one of the top three modernization
recommendations that your committee worked on that you feel
need immediate action?
Mr. Kilmer. Yeah. The ones that haven't been yet
implemented?
Mr. Espaillat. That is right, that haven't been
implemented.
Mr. Kilmer. Yeah. I think the committee deconfliction tool
is one of the biggies. If you think about, as an institution,
if we want policymaking to happen in a thoughtful way, it means
we have to be able to show up at committee. The committee is
where that work is supposed to happen.
A lot of the discussion in the Speaker's race around
getting back to regular order presumes that we can have
functional committees. That is really hard when Members right
now primarily pinball from committee to committee, by and large
show up, make their 5-minute speech for social media and bail
because they have got to get to the other committee that they
are scheduled in at the same time.
Mr. Espaillat. So you say that is the----
Mr. Kilmer. I think that is a really big deal. If we want
this institution to get back to being a regular order
policymaking institution that allows for more collaborative
give and take of ideas, committee has to be a place where that
can happen, rather than be a place where people parachute in
for 5 minutes and then bail because they are in three other
committees at the same time. I think that is a biggie.
A lot of the work around staff matters. This subcommittee,
with the increase in the MRA, went a long way towards helping
us. And I think data will show over time that we will be able
to hang on to staff better with some of the changes that have
been made. But there continue to be things that we have to do
on the implementation side with regard to staffing. You know,
and some of that is underway. The internship office is a good
example of that.
You know, if you think about, just as an example, a lot of
our junior staff and a lot of eventually senior staff start out
as interns. Making sure that those interns are learning the
ropes in an effective way matters. The fact that we are now
providing payment to interns matters because it means that
interns aren't just the children of wealth who can afford to
come to Washington, D.C., for an internship, that we are
actually able to better diversify the ranks of our interns, and
as a consequence, diversify the ranks of congressional staffs.
And that is most often the sort of foot in the door.
I think the other thing that I would mention--I mentioned
this--the importance of having this tool related to case work.
I think we are missing opportunities to fix things that are
broken in government, because when our constituents reach out
to us with a constituent problem with an agency, right now it
is a discrete problem that only our office is hearing. And we
don't necessarily know whether other offices are hearing the
same thing.
My sense is that there is a lot of examples where there is
a systemic problem that if we just had a tool for being able to
identify that, this institution could go to work on that and
drive better accountability for our constituents.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you.
Mr. Kilmer. You bet.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Espaillat.
Mr. Clyde, still nothing?
Mr. Clyde. I have nothing.
Mr. Amodei. Okay. Mr. Kilmer, thank you. I know that, as
you described, the institution or whatever, in some instances
Member Day, before many committees it is like mandatory fun,
but with the--with your presentation and your committee's work,
it is certainly thought provoking in terms of how we try to do
the right thing as far as what resources are given and where,
which happens regardless of who is making the executive budget
and that stuff. So appreciate your work.
Mr. Kilmer. You bet.
Mr. Amodei. We expect to be back in contact with you as we
move on to the next phase of actually gathering the thoughts of
Members and writing the bill.
So thank you, sir. I hope you feel better.
Mr. Kilmer. You too.
Mr. Amodei. Since there are no further questions, the
subcommittee will stand adjourned.
Tuesday, March 28, 2023.
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
WITNESSES
HON. CHERYL L. JOHNSON, CLERK, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, HON.
WILLIAM McFARLAND, ACTING SERGEANT AT ARMS, U.S. HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, HON. CATHERINE L. SZPINDOR, CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE
OFFICER, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Mr. Amodei. The meeting of the Legislative Branch
Subcommittee will come to order.
I am going to, for this meeting, do as I have done in the
other meetings, which is forego opening remarks. And as I have
indicated on the record in other ones, nobody has complained
yet about the lack of opening remarks from the Chair, so we are
going to stick with that.
The subject of today's hearing is the ``Fiscal Year 2024
Budget Request for the United States House of
Representatives.'' And we will start with an opening statement
from our ranking member.
Mr. Espaillat, the floor is yours.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And good morning, still, to everyone.
Congratulations, Madam Clerk and Ms. Szpindor, on your
return to this Congress, as well as congratulations to Mr.
McFarland on your acting role as Sergeant at Arms. I am looking
forward to working with all of you, obviously, this Congress.
The Committee has always supported the men and women that
run our House, and we consider them family. I would like to
take a moment to thank all the officers and officials and their
staff on their extraordinary work this past year. You do an
exceptional job, and we will continue to support you.
The overall fiscal year 2024 request for the House of
Representatives is $1.9 billion, which is $55.3 million, or 3
percent, above the fiscal year 2024 enacted level.
So we look forward to hearing from you and working with you
and with our chairperson, and thank you.
I will yield back, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Espaillat.
I would now recognize the Clerk of the House, the Honorable
Cheryl Johnson, for your testimony in support of your budget.
Ma'am, the floor is yours.
Ms. Johnson. Good morning. Chairperson Amodei and Ranking
Member Espaillat, members of the subcommittee, thank you for
inviting me to testify regarding the Office of the Clerk's
operations as well as our fiscal year 2024 budget request.
The past several months have been unique in my tenure as
Clerk of the House. The events at the beginning of the 118th
Congress brought an increased awareness by the American public
of some of the Clerk's duties in supporting the operations of
the House. What the public saw, however, is simply the tip of
the iceberg in terms of what the Clerk's Office does to support
the House daily legislative activities.
The Clerk's Office, as you know, is a nonpartisan
organization composed of 244 full-time staff spread across 9
offices. We provide a wide array of procedural assistance and
support necessary for the orderly conduct of official business
of the House, its Members, and committees.
My goal throughout my tenure as Clerk has been to harmonize
outstanding service with the responsible use of taxpayers'
dollars. In other words, I am committed to tying all spending
to actual need. It gives me great pride to report that we have
continued to strike that balance while tackling new challenges
and addressing expanded responsibilities.
My written testimony goes into more detail about our budget
request and some of our most important projects, but I would
like to take a moment to highlight for you just one area of my
budget today, which is maintenance, with an example of how some
of those funds are used to support the House.
I have here a Luminex II machine that I will pass around.
This machine is used by our official reporters, better known as
stenographers, and they use it to record everything from the
State of the Union Address and committee hearings to House
floor activities.
That machine there costs approximately $6,000, and we have
52 of those machines. And the annual maintenance and licensing
costs are approximately $56,000 annually.
To be clear, these are necessary costs to ensure that our
stenographers have the tools in proper condition to enable them
to provide accurate and timely service to House Members and
committees.
Last Thursday, our stenographers supported 42 committee
meetings in a single day. Notwithstanding that level of
activity, the reporter here with us today, Martin, will produce
the transcript for this hearing so it can be reviewed by our
editors and will be delivered to you, Mr. Chairman, no later
than Thursday.
I appreciate the subcommittee's ongoing support for the
operations of the Office of the Clerk. For fiscal year 2024, I
respectfully request $44,747,000. The request is a net increase
of $3,920,000, or roughly 9.6 percent, above the fiscal year
2023 enacted funding level.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Espaillat, subcommittee
members, I want to reemphasize, in conclusion, that my staff
and I share a commitment to providing outstanding service while
remaining respectful that we are stewards of taxpayers'
dollars. That combination provides me with great comfort as I
constantly analyze the efficiencies of my office budget.
We are all dedicated to making efficient and effective use
of the funds allocated to our efforts in serving this great
institution.
Thank you again for your continued support, and I look
forward to your questions. Thank you.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Madam Clerk.
The record should reflect, Martin, that when that visual
aid was handed back to you, it was in perfect working order.
We will start with the ranking member, Mr. Espaillat.
Staff. Mr. McFarland.
Mr. Amodei. Oh, we don't want to give him a little time to
see how the first one goes and how that goes?
I am sorry. Thank you for yielding back, Mr. Ranking
Member.
Mr. Sergeant at Arms?
First of all, before I recognize you for your testimony,
have you brought any visual aids?
Mr. McFarland. No, I did not, sir. Sorry.
Mr. Amodei. Okay. The floor is yours, sir.
Mr. McFarland. Thank you, sir.
Good morning, Chair Amodei, Ranking Member Espaillat, and
members of the committee. I appreciate the invitation to appear
before you today and present the Office of the Sergeant at
Arms' fiscal year 2024 budget request, which totals
$33,628,000.
I am very pleased to sit in front of you today and report
that we are able to decrease our funding needs in fiscal year
2024 by 13 percent overall.
It is an honor and privilege to serve this institution and
to collaborate with the committee to provide the necessary
resources to serve the congressional community and to help keep
Members, staff, visitors, and facilities safe and open to the
public.
Since I was sworn in as Acting Sergeant at Arms on January
7, 2023, I have focused the efforts of my office on the mission
of providing high-quality, customer-serving, nonpartisan
services to improve the safety of Members and their families
wherever they may be and to ensure that the Capitol complex and
district offices are safe and secure to Members, staff, and
visitors from across the country.
I am deeply engaged with building our team up to provide
you with the best security and safety services our office can
offer. We are here to serve you, and my first priority is
making sure that my team is appropriately resourced, trained,
and aligned to provide you with the services you need to safely
represent your constituents.
While you will hear references to security throughout my
discussion today, I also must point out that I recognize the
challenging harmony that must be struck to improve security
while maintaining the right for Americans to petition their
elected officials. And it is in this spirit that I want to take
the opportunity to highlight a few initiatives in the Sergeant
at Arms' budget that will help achieve this goal.
The appropriations request focuses on investing in the
Sergeant at Arms' employees, modernizing the Sergeant at Arms
Office, and continuing building security and safety programs.
With respect to continuing existing security programs,
included in the Sergeant at Arms' budget request is funding for
the Residential Security Program. Based on the threat
landscape, Member security concerns are not limited to the
Capitol complex. To respond to this threat, and with the
support of this subcommittee, last year our office was able to
repurpose existing funds to start a program that provides for
equipment installation and the monitoring and maintenance of
security systems at a Member's residence.
This program has been of significant interest for Members,
and I can report that we have a robust, bipartisan
participation in the program.
The Sergeant at Arms is committed to modernizing and
providing its services in a more customer-friendly and
accessible way. This initiative includes a new outreach center
located in Longworth House Office Building, and it is designed
to make our trainings and services more accessible to the House
community.
Furthermore, we are delivering most of our services in a
digital format and intend to continue to leverage technology to
improve our services. Our office has launched eight digital
training courses so Members and staff can receive important
training on security best practices and emergency procedures
anytime, anywhere, and we intend to expand these offerings.
Included in the fiscal year 2024 budget request are certain
digital tools to allow Members and offices to better access our
services. One initiative included is a mobile duress capability
that will allow Members to request emergency assistance or
communicate with the U.S. Capitol Police. There are a number of
other technologies available in the marketplace, and we hope to
find an appropriate technology with the right controls and
features to provide to the House community.
Additionally, I would like to emphasize that the employees
of the Sergeant at Arms are our most valuable resource. I want
to thank them for their hard work and dedication to Congress.
My funding request includes critical job-specific training
for Sergeant at Arms staff in the areas of leadership and
management, physical protection systems, emergency
preparedness, project management, and customer service.
The fiscal year 2024 Sergeant at Arms' budget request has
been prepared in the spirit of zero-based budgeting, remaining
fiscally responsible without jeopardizing mission-critical
services provided to the House community.
Thank you once again for the opportunity to appear before
the committee. I am deeply appreciative for the committee's
support and partnership as we strive to maintain the
challenging harmony between strong security measures and free
and open access to the Capitol complex.
I am happy to answer any questions you may have.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Sergeant at Arms.
Next, we will recognize the Chief Administrative Officer
for the House, Chief Catherine Szpindor.
Ma'am, the floor is yours.
Ms. Szpindor. Thank you, Chairman Amodei, Ranking Member
Espaillat, and members of the subcommittee. I appreciate the
opportunity to discuss the Chief Administrative Office's fiscal
year 2024 priorities and subsequent budget request.
Our budget request is $227.9 million, which is $16.3
million, or approximately 7.7 percent, above the fiscal year
2023 enacted budget. To continue to support existing services
and respond to new requests, our fiscal year 2024 budget needs
to increase.
We are requesting $2.5 million to fund existing personnel,
recruitment efforts, and cost-of-living adjustments; $7.9
million increase to enhance cloud security and support licenses
for current software and the expansion of a data storage
environment for robust data archiving retrieval services; $2.8
million for consultants in the CAO Coach Program to develop
content for professional development and training courses and
for creative services contractors to work on popular multimedia
design and photography services on behalf of the House; $1.2
million for the House Recording Studio to support two
audiovisual contractors and the much-needed 7-year-lifecycle
replacement of recording studio equipment.
$1.1 million is to support existing logistics and support
contractors, the furniture warehouse contract, and the supplies
and material costs associated with the Member Furniture
Program.
Finally, $750,000 of our requested increase is for
sustainment of the House mail contract, the Human Resources
Hub, and the House Resume Bank.
With adequate funding, the CAO undertakes projects on
behalf of Members and staff. For example, we are modernizing
HouseNet, the House intranet, to evolve the platform into a
single hub for easy user access to all CAO services in the
House. This cloud-based platform has new capabilities,
including improved search, user-personalized content, and
creates a mobile-friendly and application-based experience. The
new HouseNet will launch this year.
In 2023, the CAO begins a multiyear process to modernize
and replace our payroll and human resources systems, as the
current system is near end of life. During the requirements
phase, we will examine how to automate current manual
procedures and processes. Also, we will evaluate possible
changes to the House pay cycle, which is currently monthly for
both Members and staff pay.
The CAO is working with the Modernization Subcommittee for
improved e-discovery tools for House oversight and
investigative committees. The goal is to select a single
platform for managing and expanding the House's institutional
oversight capacity. I plan to request funds from the
Modernization Account for this initiative next month.
I am proud of the commitment to the CAO's motto, ``Member-
focused. Service-driven.'' In the past few years, our services
evolved to be more comprehensive than ever. I am confident that
we can continue to mature our services while providing the full
support and protection that Members and staff need.
It is imperative our cyber defense remains strong--a
posture we cannot afford to compromise. Whether it is
safeguarding more than 3,000 House servers or deploying more
than 250,000 software patches annually, the HIR team blocks
approximately 2.8 million attempted cyber attacks against the
House every month of every year.
If our fiscal year 2024 funding is reduced, I will work
with this subcommittee and the Committee on House
Administration to protect core services and ensure Members have
what they need to serve their constituents. We will move
forward with those initiatives deemed most critical to the
successful execution of our services and operations for the
House. The CAO staff is talented, resilient, and innovative. We
look for opportunities to make the best use of taxpayer funds
to ensure quality services for the House.
Thank you again for the opportunity to present the CAO's
fiscal year 2024 budget, and I look forward to answering your
questions. Thank you.
Mr. Amodei. Thanks, Chief.
Before we start questions, I don't want to put too fine a
point on it; however, these three witnesses are in charge of if
you get paid, if your legislation moves, and if you are going
to be allowed on the floor to do any of those things.
So, with that, Mr. Ranking Member, you are first up.
Mr. Espaillat. Well, I am glad you brought that up.
Mr. Amodei. Go get 'em, tiger.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you all for being here today. But we
do want to ask some questions, and I will start with the Clerk,
of course.
I know that you have been modernizing, and we saw how nice
and slick this new equipment is. What other efforts in
modernization are you undertaking to make it easier for us to
move forward? Are there any other initiatives that require some
funding that you would like to highlight besides this?
Ms. Johnson. Well, Congressman, I am certain you have made
use of the eHopper that allows Members of Congress now to
introduce bills electronically.
The eHopper has gone from a simple email to an actual
application. So, in the past, Members would only come to the
floor and drop the bill physically in the hopper. Members now
can carry out their constitutional duties of introducing bills
from their living rooms, which is very convenient for Members
and certainly makes the House operate more efficiently and more
effectively.
In addition to an advanced eHopper system, we have the
Comparative Print Suite, which allows you to look at your
proposed bill and look at the law that you are looking to amend
and see exactly where that proposal is going to fit in a law
that has been on the books for years that may be 500 pages or
more. You can actually do a side-by-side comparison and see
what your proposal will do and where it is going to fit.
Mr. Espaillat. So, if some of the proposed cuts are
implemented, would Mr. Amodei not be able to put the bills on
the hopper from a nice tropical beach?
Ms. Johnson. We would certainly--as my colleague here said,
we would sit down with the stakeholders, which are you, the
committee members, and House Administration and the
Modernization Committee, and to prioritize. Maybe some of our
priorities will be delayed, but we look forward to working with
you to find whatever cuts that we can find without impeding the
effectiveness of Members.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you.
And, Mr. McFarland, how is the House Residential Security
Program coming along? How is that doing? And could you give us
an update on that?
Mr. McFarland. Sure. Ranking Member Espaillat, as I stated
in my opening statement, I think we have a great, robust,
bipartisan, you know--meaning that basically we are making sure
that almost every Member is knowing about the Residential
Security Program and letting people know exactly how to go
about doing it.
We have spoken to the Member spouses in both retreats about
it. I think they seemed a little bit more excited, that they
are looking forward to using it.
So I think one of the challenges we have is getting every
Member to use it. We can't talk about the levels, but I think
we have a great bipartisan effort going on, and I would like to
continue seeing it going on.
Mr. Espaillat. And you mentioned that you are looking at
other technologies. So what other technologies are you looking
at to make our offices and staff and visitors safer?
Mr. McFarland. Sure.
So we have started, like I said, a mobile duress button
that we are currently working with a contractor, that you would
be able to hit the button at any given time to let people know
if you are in distress, and it would go back to the Capitol
Police.
Mr. Espaillat. And you will be able to implement these even
with your proposed 13-percent decrease?
Mr. McFarland. Yes, sir.
Mr. Espaillat. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. McFarland. We also have an online portal that is going
to make it a lot easier for Members to track their requests to
the Sergeant at Arms Office.
And we have a floor-mapping design that will basically be
able to help with the evacuation procedures that exist today.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member.
Going in order of arrival, Ms. Wexton, the floor is yours.
Ms. Wexton. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
I would also like to say that, it is great to have
everybody here. I would not say quite the same things that the
chairman did, but, in the Legislative Branch Subcommittee, we
love all of our children equally, but we love you guys best.
So, great to have you here with us.
Also, I think it is good to note that I don't think anybody
needs to worry about me becoming a court transcriber, because
this is what I managed to transcribe during this conversation.
I got: ``You, the defendant, are mad. Have Palm Beach. If it is
Social Security or if it is''--something--''all right?''
So that is totally what I heard. I don't know if that is
what you said, but, in any event, that is----
Mr. Amodei. If you would yield back for a minute.
We will pay to fix the machine after she touched it.
The floor is yours again.
Ms. Wexton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Now, Mr. McFarland, we talked a little bit about including
cybersecurity as one of the parts of the home security program.
How is that going?
Mr. McFarland. Ma'am, we have been actually talking with
the CAO in conjunction with trying to include this into the
Residential Security Program. We are all on board with it. We
are just trying to figure out exactly the right path to go
about getting the right vendors involved.
Ms. Wexton. Very good.
And do you think--if you can do it administratively, or are
you going to need statutory language in order to make that
happen?
Mr. McFarland. No, I think we can do it administratively.
Ms. Wexton. Very good. Nice. And please keep us posted and
let us know when it happens.
Mr. McFarland. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Wexton. Ms. Johnson, you were speaking my language when
you were talking about modernizing the way that you display the
bills and stuff like that. Because it really is one of my pet
peeves that we can't look at the code and actually see where--
you know, not just see the changes to the code but actually
get, a redlined version to the code. So thank you very much for
that.
Do you have any idea when that might actually take place,
when the actual----
Ms. Johnson. It is in effect now. There was a pilot program
most of last year. But the Comparative Print Suite is fully up
and running.
And we actually also have a help desk for Members or staff
that need assistance with it. And if you would like a
demonstration, we would be
Ms. Johnson. We would be happy to arrange to come to your
office to give you a demonstration.
Ms. Wexton. Good. That would be great.
And where is it? It is not housed under Congress.gov? Or
where is it housed under?
Ms. Johnson. It is housed under compare.house.gov.
Ms. Wexton. I would love that tutorial. Thank you so much.
Ms. Szpindor, I see that the CAO is currently working on a
number of different modernization efforts in Congress,
including improvements to the House intranet, pay and human
resources programs, and e-discovery tools in order to equip us
for oversight and investigative duties.
Can you explain how these tools would work? Some of the
things that you are working on, the e-discovery and things like
that, can you explain how they work?
Ms. Szpindor. How we go about it?
Ms. Wexton. Yes.
Ms. Szpindor. We have our Digital Services team, which we
formed a little over a year and a half ago, that is working on
many of those projects, particularly the investigative tool
that they are looking to roll out.
We have really just started work on that. We are evaluating
what it would take and looking at possible tools that we would
consider. But it is in its formation stage. We kind of got a
discussion going on that earlier this month and the last part
of February.
Ms. Wexton. Is it for internal investigations within CAO,
or is it just for, the Oversight Committee and things like
that, to be able to use that tool?
Ms. Szpindor. We would be developing it probably along with
any partners that we decide to bring in to help us with it----
Ms. Wexton. Uh-huh.
Ms. Szpindor [continuing]. Technology partners to help us
with it, looking at vendors and things of that sort, along with
the intent of including any of the committees that would be
using that tool.
Ms. Wexton. Very good.
Ms. Szpindor. We have to, because they have the expertise
on what they are going to need.
Ms. Wexton. Right. Yeah.
Ms. Szpindor. We can work in partnership with them to make
sure that we deliver it as needed.
Ms. Wexton. Wonderful.
Ms. Szpindor. So it would be very much a partnership.
Ms. Wexton. My last question with the time I have
remaining: Could you just please explain a little bit about the
services of the Congressional Excellence Program and what the
sort of issues you have----
Ms. Szpindor. Sure. I would love to do so.
The Congressional Excellence Program is a program we
started in pilot last year. It was intended specifically for
the Members and their staff, to work with them to help them set
a vision for their office, be able to help them set strategic
objectives for what they want to accomplish during their term
in Congress, and to really sit down and work with them in a
partnership with their staff to define how they are going to
accomplish the Member's vision for what he wants to have as his
accomplishments while he is in the Congress.
Currently, the Congressional Excellence Program is working
with about 30 Members. We have added some more, quite frankly,
since I first mentioned it during the Modernization hearing a
couple of weeks ago.
Ms. Wexton. As more Members heard about it.
Ms. Szpindor. It is just a way to improve the distinction
of the office and what the Member wants to do with his time
here in the House.
Ms. Wexton. Uh-huh. Very good.
And does that communication between that consultant and the
Member office stay privileged between those two offices?
Ms. Szpindor. The consultant works as a partner with the
Member office.
The consultants we use are skilled consultants, have been
doing this, working with corporations, working with other
government agencies, working with major issues that
corporations have had, to kind of set the mission and vision
for them so that they can improve upon the operations of their
business and things of that sort. That is the background that
they have.
They are here. They are talented. They have a world of
experience to provide to the House and to provide to our
Members.
I hope the Members do take advantage of what we have to
offer there.
Ms. Wexton. Thank you so much.
And I will yield back. Before I yield back, Mr. Chairman, I
would just say that we have many great programs here in the
House of Representatives. I think one of the issues is just
awareness of them, I think. So I hope that now people are more
aware of some of those good things that we have going on here.
Thank you.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you for that. You know, goals, effort,
teamwork--I am not sure we can support any of those sorts of
things, but we will certainly take it.
Mr. Franklin?
Mr. Franklin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I guess my questions--I just want to sort of zero in a
little bit more on cybersecurity, because that scares me to
death when I start looking across all of our agencies and all
the things we do. So a couple things for you, Mr. McFarland,
also CAO.
On the Residential Security Program, I was looking into
that and talking with some vendors, and I was very pleased to
see that there are some requirements in there about, you know,
the camera systems that we use. And a lot of that goes--the
requirements, if I remember right--and you can correct me if I
am wrong or even if you want to elaborate--go back to some NDAA
language that was put into place. For example, these cameras--
like, if you wanted to put in security cameras, they can't be
Chinese cameras, and there is a laundry list of approved
vendors.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
And I guess, really, where I want to go with that is: Are
we just lucky that that happens to be there? Should we be doing
more robust guidance across all of our departments as to the
equipment we buy? What is the vetting process? And do we have
the bumpers, the guardrails in place now that we should, now
knowing how much of this stuff is being exploited?
Mr. McFarland. Mr. Franklin, what I can tell you about the
vendor list: We did a vetted vendor list for the Residential
Security Program just to make sure that the right people are
using it--or, right people are providing the services.
With that, we are also--if there is somebody that is more
comfortable with their mom-and-pop security, you know, we do
recommend that they reach out to the U.S. Capitol Police so
that they can do a security assessment and then be able to
provide that information to the Member and let them make that
determination if they still want to use the mom-and-pop or go
to the vetted vendor list, is what we try to do.
As it relates to more of the cybersecurity, Catherine is
the expert at that, but I do want to say that, in my 30 years
of being on Capitol Hill before leaving and coming back, I do
know that I have seen different things that have been
concerning to me regarding technology that comes into the
Capitol. I think we used to do some things that--we wanted to
make sure that the right companies were coming in. Some were
mostly USA companies, but we would see some getting underbid by
foreign companies.
And we would still try to make that argument today, that,
listen, we want to try to go USA first in this. But mostly the
foreign companies, they come in at a lower bid, and
unfortunately they get the work.
Mr. Franklin. Well, unfortunately, even if it is an
American company, they are price-conscious, and they know that
the job is going to go to the lowest bidder, so a lot of the
components that they are purchasing are where the
vulnerabilities lie. So, I mean, that is what worries me.
I have a group back in my district that is working with the
DOD looking at, just as an example, they have one weapon system
they have been looking into, and they found over a thousand
vulnerabilities just in this one piece of military gear from
the subcomponents. And I just--I really--I worry. That is more
of a broader concern.
But I am glad to hear that the program is being looked at.
And is that--I think some of your budget decrease year over
year is from one-time expenses that have fallen off, but is
that----
Mr. McFarland. Correct.
Mr. Franklin. Is that a recurring line, the residential
program, in your budget amount?
Mr. McFarland. Yes, sir, that is a recurring line.
Mr. Franklin. And how much was that for?
Mr. McFarland. The residential program was a 60-percent
decrease, but that was for residential program as well as a
lifecycle replacement of escape hoods and VRU units.
Mr. Franklin. Okay. So that is something that comes up
every few years or----
Mr. McFarland. That comes up every 10 years, is what we
have.
Mr. Franklin. Ten years. Okay. All right. Thank you.
And, Ms. Szpindor----
Ms. Szpindor. Yes.
Mr. Franklin [continuing] I would like to hear a little of
your thoughts on the DC Health Link breach.
And, again, back to vendors, what is our process for
vetting outside parties? And I feel pretty confident, I know
there is a high awareness on the Hill of strengthening our
networks and making sure our things are in order. But when we
are relying on outside parties, what is our process for making
sure vendors we choose are doing the things they should be
doing?
Ms. Szpindor. Well, we do have a process within the CAO's
office whereby we do vet vendors. We work very closely with our
Acquisitions Management group, which is part of the CAO, as
well as my Admin Counsel that I have. They work with our
technology staff. We review the soundness of companies that we
are working with.
We do not purchase outside of the United States, companies
that are not corporately registered within the United States.
We go with just those that are.
I will get to your point about components in a minute, but
we do have a process that we follow. We vet all of the vendors
that we are using. Any contracts that we enter into have to
meet certain requirements, as far as speech and debate rules,
as far as anything that could hold us accountable to the
vendor. We make sure that we have the proper language in place
in all of our contracts.
Now, I can identify with what you are saying, and it keeps
me up at night, worrying about a possible situation where there
is a component piece that is used in a product or software that
is pushed from a vendor that has a vulnerability in it.
We have experienced some of this in the past. We have been
able to prevent anything bad from happening because I have one
of the best cybersecurity groups, I think, that any government
agency has, in my organization.
We have grown significantly with our cybersecurity program
since I have been at the House in the past 12 years. I worked
to champion additional improvements in cybersecurity when I was
CIO. I am very, very conscious of how we have to constantly be
upgrading our strategies for cybersecurity and ensuring that we
do not take our foot off the gas.
We have outside consultants. I don't have a piece of
equipment, but I do have a chart. We have outside consultants
that come in periodically to review how we are doing on
cybersecurity.
Back in 2017, we knew we needed help, so we had them come
in and evaluate where we were in comparison to other
corporations, other agencies, other individuals, as far as
cybersecurity at that point in time. You can see the gray bars
here. That is pretty much where we were. We were not in good
shape.
We had the same company come back a year ago and give us
another comparison on where we were in cybersecurity. The blue
line indicates where we are today. We have made substantial
progress, but we are not where I want us to be. We have to
continue to improve.
Mr. Franklin. But what is the process for the vendors? For
example, like, all of, you know, our health information that
has been compromised, I have no choice----
Ms. Szpindor. Yes.
Mr. Franklin [continuing]. I have to provide that
information. I trust that, you know, we are using vendors that
are reliable and will keep that data secure, and then they
don't.
I mean, what are we doing to ensure that those vendors are
doing what they tell us they are going to do when they win the
business?
Ms. Szpindor. For the vendors I work with--and DC Health
Link was not one that we chose, okay? Me and my team, in
particular James Butler here, have spent I don't know how many
extra hours over the past 3 weeks because of that. It
infuriates me, okay, basically.
For our vendors, we go with companies that we know use good
cyber practices themselves. Our vendors are not individuals
that come in, as I have said before, and just are here and
maybe a company that doesn't even understand cybersecurity. We
are very cautious, and our cybersecurity team takes great
strides in reviewing any submission by a vendor, any products
coming in by a vendor.
We have had, probably about 2 years ago, one of our CMS
vendors--and I won't mention the name, but a CMS vendor who had
a vulnerability. It was not good, what happened. I moved
immediately to begin the process of no longer having that
vendor here. So they are gone. They are no longer a part of the
House and no longer support us.
We had accountability that we had to talk with one of the
vendors about a year ago. Many of you may have heard about
VMware, which we use, which is a reliable vendor, by all
estimates, and we still use. But when they rolled out an
upgrade to some of the server software, they had an issue with
some of the upgrade. It had a vulnerability in it. Luckily,
nothing was taken from us, but there was a possibility where
they could have allowed individuals to get into our system.
And they tried. As soon as a vulnerability comes up, any
hacker around will start trying to take advantage of it. So, as
soon as they broadcast that they had a vulnerability, we knew
that we better check really, really quick. Our cybersecurity
team went to work, and they found that they had tried to get
in, but they did not compromise any of the data for the House.
It scares me. I worry about our constituent data and
protecting it. I worry about all of our financial data. All of
the things that we work very, very hard to protect here at the
House keeps me up at night.
Mr. Franklin. All right. Thank you.
Ms. Szpindor. Thank you.
Mr. Amodei. Before we go to Mr. Clyde, Ms. Szpindor, you
said, referring to a vendor, that that particular vendor was
not somebody you selected. Who selected that vendor?
Ms. Szpindor. DC Health Link was not selected by our firm.
I think this was years ago. OPM was the one who selected that
vendor for use by the House.
Mr. Amodei. Okay. Thank you.
And since Mr. Franklin used up all of Mr. Clyde's time, I
trust you Navy guys will work that out.
Mr. Clyde, the floor is yours.
Mr. Clyde. I am going to come in over top.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member.
And thank you to three very important individuals for the
operations of the House.
Ms. Szpindor, the fiscal year 2024 budget request includes
significant increases for transition activities, from $6
million to $13 million, and business continuity and disaster
recovery, from just over $22 million to $27 million. And before
that, it was $14 million in 2022, so literally almost double in
2 years, and that is a significant amount.
Can you please provide more details on the specific
projects and initiatives that will be funded by these increases
and how they align with the financial priorities of the House?
Ms. Szpindor. Sure. I will try not to take as long as I did
with the cybersecurity part.
Mr. Clyde. No. One minute would be good.
Mr. Amodei. That is all he has left.
Ms. Szpindor. So, usually, when we enter into contracts
with companies, like Microsoft or Oracle for PeopleSoft
particularly, we have multiyear contracts with them. On the
years when those contracts come due, we usually have a pretty
significant increase, because we know that they are going to be
higher than what they were before. We just know. It always is.
Every option year we have with a contract, there is usually an
increase. It could be 2 percent, 3 percent, 4 percent, but
there is usually an increase, particularly with contractors. I
think everyone here experiences that.
So we know that we have a 7-year replacement of our
recording studio equipment that we have to do this year. I
think it is in all of our best efforts to make sure that it
gets done if we want to continue to have the hearings that we
are having and everything and be able to support them
adequately.
We know that we have a major option year renewal with
Microsoft for all of our email, for Teams, which is the
teleconferencing that we use, and there will be additional
dollars for that.
We also have ongoing needs for our servers in our data
centers. We have almost 3,000, I think, servers that we have
that we support, and those have lifespan associated with them.
That adds to the cost.
So we are wanting to continue to grow and expand some of
the services that we have been able to provide to the House
over the past couple years, which, I think, to me, is the
reason the CAO is here, to provide those services and make sure
that you have what you need to run your offices.
And we have really done a wonderful job with our CAO Coach
Program, delivering training to our staff and to your staff,
hosting conferences for the caseworkers, for the chiefs of
staff, and others so that they can be able to better understand
what their jobs are within each Member office and be able to
perform more.
Mr. Clyde. Where do you hold those conferences?
Ms. Szpindor. We hold them here at the Capitol.
Mr. Clyde. Okay.
Ms. Szpindor. Last year, we held three conferences, and it
was a bipartisan group of individuals that we offered this to,
from both sides of the House. We had hundreds of individuals
here from the districts. I met with some of them. They were
very supportive of the information that we were providing to
them. We had our CAO coaches, who, by the way, are ex-staff
from Member offices, sit down with them. We had discussions,
roundtable-type discussions, with them for them to better
understand.
Mr. Clyde. Let me ask you another question.
Ms. Szpindor. Uh-huh.
Mr. Clyde. In your written testimony, you mention a $7.9
million increase for enhancements to House cloud security and
enterprise licenses for software like Zoom and Webex.
You know, now that the Capitol has reopened, Committee
business is conducted in person, we are not using Webex and
Zoom anymore. In fact, it is prohibited. Witnesses are required
to appear in person. Proxy voting has been eliminated. Why such
a significant need for funding for Zoom and Webex? I mean, we
are prohibited from using Zoom and Webex.
Ms. Szpindor. For hearings, yes.
Mr. Clyde. For hearings, yes.
Ms. Szpindor. Yes. There are individuals in quite a few
offices that still use the Zoom and the Webex for other
teleconferencing and meetings outside of hearings.
Office 365, the Teams that is offered--comes bundled into
everything you get with your email anymore. We usually have, on
an average basis, just between our organizations, thousands of
those meetings that occur every week.
A lot of it is because we are dispersed. We have
individuals--I have individuals at our data centers out in
Manassas. I have individuals in Ford and O'Neill and here. If
we are meeting and--like everybody else, every hour you have a
meeting, just about. Many of mine are in person, but many of
mine are still over Teams, because of our ability to be able to
get from one place to the other.
So, even though it is not used for hearings, it is still
being used within the House.
Mr. Clyde. Okay. Thank you.
Ms. Szpindor. Now, one thing we might be able to do is take
a pulse from the different Member offices and find out how much
do they really need Zoom and Webex any longer and look to
reduce the number of licenses that we are providing.
Mr. Clyde. I think my office has used it maybe once in the
last 3 months. So, just some info for you.
Ms. Szpindor. Yeah, that is helpful.
Mr. Clyde. And just one last real quick note for Mr.
McFarland, our Sergeant at Arms.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you yesterday.
And I appreciate that your number-one concern is the safety of
Members of Congress, wherever they reside. And, as we spoke
yesterday, probably, you know, the greatest vulnerability is in
traveling, in traveling either back and forth from here to
where we reside.
And I appreciate your efforts in working with us to make
sure that there are no policies in the Sergeant at Arms or the
Police Board--because you are a member of it--that would
inhibit us from protecting ourselves, as well, when you are not
there or when others are not there. So I appreciate your
efforts in that regard.
Mr. McFarland. Thanks.
Mr. Clyde. And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
According to my clock, Mr. Quigley, you have 4 hours and 32
minutes. The floor is yours.
Mr. Quigley. I got a text from the Air Force that they
usually get done on time, and I think Navy does.
Ms. Johnson, I want to--it is interesting, I have been here
14 years, and you keep learning about how this place operates.
I want to at least help educate the committee and the public on
one of your other roles, and that is the role your office plays
when Members leave office before they----
Ms. Johnson. Vacant office.
Mr. Quigley. Yeah, leave their office. And there is a dark-
humor joke in Chicago politics that the only time a Chicago
alderman leaves office, there is a box involved--a ballot box,
a jury box, or a pine box. It is different here; people somehow
leave.
But you told me there is a range, that at one time--you
currently have zero that you are operating, but it has been as
high as what number?
Ms. Johnson. In the 117th Congress, we had 22 vacant
offices. We never had more than 7 at one time, but we had a
total of 22 vacant offices.
Mr. Quigley. So I am curious how you budget for that. And
then I want you to elaborate on what your roles are. I mean,
how do you budget for a year? Do you know something we don't
know about how many of us aren't going to be here?
Or, more specifically, that range is so involved, but, you
know, if you could elaborate a little bit of just what role you
do play when this takes place and how long that time can be
before there is a new Member and, again, how you plan to budget
that.
Ms. Johnson. And, fortunately--the House rules state that
all staff that are on the payroll at the time of the vacancy
remain on the payroll. Also, fortunately, the budget for the
vacant office comes out of the vacant office account. In a
sense, that Member's MRA continues. It does not come from the
Clerk's Office.
Mr. Quigley. But it is a snapshot. You can't change what
they are doing internally.
Ms. Johnson. We cannot. I cannot increase any of the staff
salaries. The staff continue to operate, because they are
providing constituent services, so they continue to order
supplies. But that is deducted from their vacant office
account.
We provide resources. We provide management. My human
resource director--so, in addition to managing and paying
attention to the annual leave of the 240 Clerk staff, she is
now looking at another 100, 120 staffers that are from the
vacant offices.
And it is a matter of management more than anything else.
It is not necessarily budgetarly. But it is taking resources
from our time that we would dedicate to our own office staff.
Mr. Quigley. So are you able to--you know, just to maintain
the services that district deserves, what would happen if you
had to hire somebody?
Ms. Johnson. In a rare instance, the Member might take half
of his staff or staff might begin seeking other jobs. We will
not let the office fall below three staffers. And we are able
to hire new staff.
Mr. Quigley. You mean three over the whole thing?
Ms. Johnson. Three in the DC office, maybe two in the
district office, because those constituents are still entitled
to have constituent services.
Mr. Quigley. What I am going to suggest is, on passports
alone right now, we need three people. But it just seems like a
low number when you have to help people get the services they
need.
Ms. Johnson. I will tell you, in a case where staff leaves,
if there are 15 in the DC office and 12 leave and you are down
to 3, it is very difficult to hire additional staff because it
is for a short period of time. You want qualified people, so
you are asking a person who may already have a permanent job to
come and work in an office for 3 months or 4 months. It is very
difficult to hire for a vacant office.
Mr. Quigley. Very good. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Normally, this is the point where I would ask
if there are any additional questions. However, at this point,
I would only offer that to the ranking member and Ms. Wexton,
who were very conscious of the committee rules.
If there are additional questions from the ranking member
or the lady from the Old Dominion, the floor is yours.
Mr. Espaillat. No, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Wexton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think you all did a
great job of answering all my questions already.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you all very much.
I have a couple of questions--briefly, so I am not a
hypocrite.
Mr. Kilmer from Washington State, who is on the
Modernization Committee, testified during Member Day and talked
about this mythical thing that I guess is out there for all
other legislative--or, many other legislative organizations but
not us, and it is called meeting deconfliction software.
If we gave that to them, would that be under your office?
Ms. Szpindor. Yes. We are giving it to them, actually, the
product.
Mr. Amodei. So we don't need to fund that? It is already
paid for?
Mr. Clocker. Oh, no, we need lots of money.
Ms. Szpindor. No. We have been working on that. We met with
Representative Kilmer and also some of his staff and also with
Representative Timmons back before the first of the year and
understood better what they were asking for.
We have our Digital Services team, once again, which is
doing a great job right now, to work with different committees
and come up with a system that should allow us to better
understand when there are some conflicts in schedules with the
Members in the committee.
Mr. Amodei. Well, we can help you. There is absolutely no
consideration given to schedules when meetings are scheduled,
at least in the 118th Congress. So what I would like is, if we
could get kind of an update on where you are at, since if that
ever happens, it will be under your umbrella so we can
intelligently draft the bill accordingly.
Ms. Szpindor. Yes. We will do that.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
Ms. Szpindor. We will work with you.
Mr. Amodei. One other thing. Following up on Mr. Clyde's
questions, I know when I go to use the House studio, I am
charged for that out of my MRA, and appropriately so. For Zoom
services and stuff like that, is that not something that is
charged back to the Members?
Ms. Szpindor. We have not in the past. We negotiated the
contracts, and we have given each Member office X number of
licenses--I don't know the exact total--who called and asked
for assistance. This started a couple years ago, when we first
started distributing that.
But there are a lot of services that we do that we do not
charge the offices for. We do it through our budget.
Mr. Amodei. So those Members that rely on it particularly
heavily, that is just kind of part of general admin; and those
that don't use it, thanks for being a team player.
Ms. Szpindor. But we do support most of the services that
we provide to the users and to the staff and your offices
without any charge.
Mr. Amodei. Okay.
And I am just thinking out loud here; that doesn't mean it
is entitled to any attention. However, at a time when we are
being asked to economize--and we will see what that is defined
as. But when we look at MRA, whatever you call it, allocations
because those are not going down, at least yet. And so that is
something that maybe we want to think about if this end is
being funded--and I know there is a lot of pressures on
everybody, including running an office, but that is just a
thought out loud.
Madam Clerk, the side-by-side thing, that is--I think that
is something that has been around in other legislative
organizations for a while. But, now, if I understood your
testimony correctly, once you know it is out there, as a Member
or a part of a leg. shop or chief of staff or whatever, it is
like, hey, learn how to use it, and that is a great tool in
terms of efficiency, so you are not sitting there, like some of
us not-so-young people used to do, going----
Ms. Johnson. ``Delete'' or----
Mr. Amodei. Yeah. Okay.
Ms. Johnson. Yeah.
Mr. Amodei. Do you have an idea of how that is--if its
utilization is cool, medium, hot? I mean, is that something
that has been accepted? Or is there an opportunity for more,
going, ``Hey, by the way''? LDs or somebody?
Ms. Johnson. The question is, are we continuing to enhance
it? Or are you asking how much is it being used currently?
Mr. Amodei. Are you publicizing its availability?
Ms. Johnson. Oh, yes. Yes. We have sent a couple of ``Dear
Colleagues.'' And the staffers are taking advantage of it,
particularly committee staffers, because that is where the
legislation is made.
Mr. Amodei. Okay.
Ms. Johnson. For the longest, it was only a pilot program,
only available to Committee staffers, but now it is House-wide.
Mr. Amodei. Okay. Thank you.
Before we close, I do want to say that we also have here in
the room--for members, if you have questions, this is your
opportunity to get with those people and schedule further
meetings or something else like that, but--Office of Diversity
and Inclusion, Dr. Moon--thank you, ma'am--Inspector General
Mr. Picolla--thank you, sir--General Counsel Matthew Berry, Law
Revision Counsel Ralph Seep, and Legislative Counsel Wade
Ballou.
Thank you folks for coming.
Please feel free to accost them at your leisure, on your
own time.
And so, if there are no further questions--and there
aren't--I would like to thank all the House witnesses here
today. Your testimonies will be reflected in the record.
Members may submit additional questions for the record.
Mr. Amodei. The subcommittee stands adjourned.
Thank you.
[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Tuesday, March 29, 2023.
ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL
WITNESS
CHERE REXROAT, ACTING ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL AND CHIEF ENGINEER
Mr. Amodei. The subcommittee will come to order.
I will yield back on opening remarks.
Welcome, everyone. The subject of today's hearing is the
``Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Request of the Architect of the
Capitol.''
I would like to thank Ms. Rexroat--how bad did I do that?
Ms. Rexroat. You got it right.
Mr. Amodei. Don't get used to it--for being here.
I now recognize the ranking member from the congressional
district with the Apollo Theater, Mr. Espaillat, for his
opening remarks.
Mr. Espaillat. That is a great jump from the Empire State
to the Apollo Theater, huh?
Mr. Amodei. I am training, but quickly.
Mr. Espaillat. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and for
everyone here.
And thank you, Ms. Rexroat, for being here today. Today is
your first time, I believe. Is it your first time?
Ms. Rexroat. I had the Senate last week.
Mr. Espaillat. Oh, the Senate.
Mr. Quigley. We are much nicer.
Mr. Espaillat. You know what Tip O'Neill used to say: The
opponent on the other side of the aisle is the Senate.
So, anyway, congratulations to you and the entire AOC team
for your hard work and commitment and contributions to the
118th Congress and the transition.
You requested $1.1 billion for fiscal year 2024. This
request includes, of course, key security upgrades and
addresses critical infrastructure needs across the Capitol
complex.
So I am here to help, and I am sure the chairman is also
here to help, and we are happy that you will be here answering
questions. Thank you so much.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member.
Please proceed with your opening statement.
Ms. Rexroat. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Ranking Member
Espaillat and members of the subcommittee. Thanks again for the
opportunity to provide testimony for the Architect of the
Capitol's fiscal year 2024 budget request.
To begin, I would like to acknowledge and thank the
dedicated AOC employees who work diligently every day to
support the functions of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the
Library.
I am proud to have served with the agency in various roles
over the past 5 years. Since assuming this new role, I have met
with the subcommittee's clerks and the House and Senate
oversight staff to learn more about key initiatives and
identify areas of concern.
I am now taking all of this into account to outline a plan
for the future and to formulate recommended solutions.
The AOC's $1.128 billion fiscal year 2024 budget request is
focused on three key priorities: security, safety, and
accountability.
Security remains the agency's top budgetary requirement.
With the recommendations and the support of this subcommittee,
the AOC has made significant progress to improve the security
posture across campus. While some of these security changes are
more visible than others, we will continue to balance and
maintain the critical physical infrastructure while remaining
prepared to respond rapidly to any new developments.
Safety is another key priority. Across the agency, we
dedicate time and attention to safety training, processes,
procedures, and operations. This budget request recognizes
these essential measures, with a concentrated effort to avoid
hazards, risks, and interruptions.
Last but not least is accountability--fiscal
accountability, especially as it relates to the overall AOC
culture and corresponding cultural change to be good stewards
of the taxpayer dollar.
Our typical budget approach has been activity-focused,
which allocates resources based on historic spending patterns.
Moving forward, we need to reevaluate this approach to make
sure the most important parts of the budget are prioritized to
provide the most value, which is required to meet mission
objectives. This value proposition is fundamental when looking
at future operations, the pooling of resources, major building
upgrades, and Capitol renewals.
At the same time, we must continue to evaluate our current
siloed organizational structure. This structure is antiquated,
sluggish, and rigid. It has not kept up with current industry
standards, setting an inconsistent approach to policies and
procedures. This causes inequities in application, thus
impacting agency morale. This inconsistency has resulted in a
lack of accountability, as we have seen, and if not solved now,
it will remain our standard, business-as-usual practice.
Serving as the Chief Engineer, I am very familiar with the
AOC's project management processes. We have traditionally
managed our programs through a design, bid, then build
environment, prompting the completion of one step before
starting another. This process causes inefficiencies through
duplications of effort, lack of clarity of roles and
responsibilities, resulting in unbalanced workload assignments,
thereby delaying project development, leading to redesign,
scope creep, and modifications.
The above, mixed with the ongoing economic and labor
challenges, has resulted in what we have seen with our
increased project costs and schedule delays. The Cannon House
Office Building Restoration Project, for example, experienced
COVID-related impacts, limited availability of materials, and
skilled-labor shortages. These factors, combined with working
on a historic structure while remaining operationally open,
produced some of the recent cost increases.
To keep up with current standards of practice, the AOC
needs to realign operational functions in order to streamline
management and form a collaborative, matrixed organization.
These challenges will be considered as we look forward to the
future renewals of the Rayburn and Longworth.
Ultimately, we have to change how we operate to ensure that
we are achieving our goals to deliver value while speaking as
one AOC with one voice. So I ask for your support as we
continue to transform and modernize the agency.
Chairman Amodei, Ranking Member Espaillat, and members of
the subcommittee, thank you again for your consideration of the
Architect of the Capitol's fiscal year 2024 budget request.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, ma'am.
Mr. Ranking Member, the floor is yours.
Mr. Espaillat. Okay.
We know that cybersecurity is a major concern, and threats
and attacks have unfortunately become too familiar for all of
us. At the AOC particularly, concerns are the takeover the
grid, the power grid, or heating and cooling systems of the
Congress and Supreme Court being compromised.
What is AOC doing to avert cybersecurity attacks?
Ms. Rexroat. Thank you, sir.
Currently underway--it was funded in 2021--we did have an
exercise to take a look at an initial assessment of our overall
structure. That effort was also continued in 2022, and, as of
2023, we are still preparing some follow-on evaluations.
Mr. Espaillat. And what will your fiscal year 2024
request--how would that enhance--what particular enhancement
will we see in your cybersecurity posture?
Ms. Rexroat. Let me take that one back, sir, and I will
have to get back to you on that one. I will definitely be able
to answer that for you.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Mr. Quigley.
Mr. Quigley. Thank you, Chair.
One of the things your predecessor talked about was
sprinkler systems here. I am not sure if you have had time to
brief up on that, but they expressed concerns that, if there
was a fire, without support from the outside, it would be very
difficult to suppress a fire and a significant amount of damage
would take place.
I see sprinklers in some parts of the Capitol complex but
not in all. What is your understanding of where we are with
that and if there are plans to do more?
Ms. Rexroat. I will get back to you definitely on the
overall plans, but I know we have made progress in getting some
of the fire sprinklers updated and integrated into some of our
buildings, I know here in the Capitol, for instance, for one.
But we are not complete by any way, shape, or form.
So I will get back to you and provide----
Mr. Quigley. Yeah. I mean, what percentage of it is
covered?
Ms. Rexroat. I will get back to you on that, sir.
Mr. Quigley. Okay.
Mr. Quigley. And you may have to do the same with the power
plant, an assessment of its status or what improvements it
needs. Obviously, it burns natural gas with the coal backup, if
that is still the situation, I believe?
Ms. Rexroat. It is my understanding, but I can verify that
for you.
Mr. Quigley. Okay. And what the plans are and, if any, to
use sustainable energy, to shift toward that in the future. If
there are plans, if you could let us know as well.
Ms. Rexroat. Will do, sir.
Mr. Quigley. All right. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Mr. Clyde.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you. Appreciate you being here today.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
One of the projects that AOC has been working on is Cannon
House Office Building. And you all mentioned it; you mentioned
it in your statement. I mean, my office is there. I was on the
fifth floor last term, so I had to vacate the fifth floor, and
I have had nothing but construction to deal with my entire time
in Congress.
So I am a little bit concerned about that project. From
what I understand, the initial cost was $752,700,000. Is that
right?
Ms. Rexroat. Correct.
Mr. Clyde. And the current projected costs to complete it,
are they still $971,300,000?
Ms. Rexroat. To date, yes, sir.
Mr. Clyde. To date. Okay. That is a $220 million increase.
So how could they go so wrong, in such a huge disparity of
projected cost and then actual cost? That is a lot.
Ms. Rexroat. Let me do some homework on that for you, sir,
to get the answers to your question.
I know for projects we have seen just over the years, the
majority of our projects have increased in cost. One of the
examples to that is the fact that we did design so early in
just the overall planning process. So, with design starting
early, the cost estimates starting early, and then, as I noted
in my statement, as factors come into play, those factors can
exponentially increase the cost.
But I can get back to you for specifics on----
Mr. Clyde. Okay.
Mr. Clyde. When are you actually going to finish?
Mr. Quigley. When are you leaving?
Ms. Rexroat. I didn't say that.
Current schedule right now is 2025. We have some completion
within the courtyard that we need to do, so----
Mr. Clyde. 2025. Like, December 31, 2025?
Ms. Rexroat. As of right now, yes, sir.
Mr. Clyde. All right. Okay.
So what kind of steps have you taken, are you taking, do
you plan to take, to keep the current projected cost at where
it is and in the next 3 years we are not adding another $100
million to this cost, to the final phase of Cannon?
Ms. Rexroat. We do, at each end of the phase, take a look
at lessons learned. We are taking those and we did take those
into consideration as we----
Mr. Clyde. Okay.
Ms. Rexroat [continuing]. Moved into this phase four.
Mr. Clyde. Okay.
Ms. Rexroat. We will continue to do that. And we will
continue to track any change order requirements that come in
from the contractor to make sure that those are addressed
appropriately.
And then, ideally, too, as construction progresses, if
there is anything that does--for example, an unforeseen that
comes up, we will be able to address those and tackle those
early, and then, of course, get back to you or the committee,
as need be, with any updates on those things.
Mr. Clyde. Is this, like, a cost-plus contract or----
Ms. Rexroat. No, sir.
Mr. Clyde [continuing]. Just a--it is a fixed-price
contract?
Ms. Rexroat. Correct. Correct.
Mr. Clyde. It is a fixed-price contract?
Ms. Rexroat. Yes, sir.
Mr. Clyde. Okay.
And the last question I have for you is: According to a
February 2023 report, AOC has still not satisfied Office of
Inspector General requirements for $16,500 in unsupported
costs. Additionally, the AOC has determined that nearly $30,000
in unallowable reimbursements from phase zero and one are not
possible to recover.
How do you account for paying the contractor money that he
actually isn't owed and then not being able to get it back?
Ms. Rexroat. I am familiar with that one. I have not had an
opportunity to dive into the entire report to take a look at
that for you, so let me do some research on that one as well,
sir.
Mr. Clyde. All right.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you very much. And I am counting on you
being done, okay?
Ms. Rexroat. Okay. Before you go. Gotcha.
Mr. Clyde. Yeah. Thank you.
And I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
When you responded to Mr. Clyde, if it is appropriate--I am
not telling you what the reasons are, but, to the extent that
there is COVID-related stuff, supply-chain-related stuff, those
sorts of things--now, if there aren't, there aren't, so I don't
expect you to--but, anyhow, I think that is part of, you know,
figuring out how it is $200 million more than when it started,
which is a fair question to want to know the answer to.
Any other questions?
Mr. Quigley.
Mr. Quigley. No, sir.
Mr. Amodei. Okay.
Then thank you, Ms. Rexroat, for appearing today. We will
look forward to working with you as we go through drafting the
bill.
Members may submit additional questions for the record.
Mr. Amodei. The subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Questions and answers submitted for the record follow:]
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Wednesday, March 29, 2023.
UNITED STATES CAPITOL POLICE
WITNESS
J. THOMAS MANGER, CHIEF, UNITED STATES CAPITOL POLICE
Mr. Amodei. The subcommittee will come to order.
I am going to forego my opening remarks.
The subject of today's hearing is the fiscal year 2024
budget request for the United States Capitol Police.
I would like to thank our witness, Chief Manger, for being
here today.
And I now recognize the ranking member from the
congressional district with the highest percentage of people
living in buildings with 20 or more units, Mr. Espaillat, for
his opening remarks.
Mr. Espaillat. My God, Mr. Chairman. All these--are you
looking to run against me?
Mr. Amodei. No. No, sir.
Mr. Espaillat. Well, let's make sure we--I have got to
check your registration first.
But thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chief Manger, thank you for everything you have done.
Thanks to the men and women of the Capitol Police for their
relentless efforts to assist us, to help us, particularly
during the January 6 insurrection. They were so critical to
preserving our democracy and ensuring we were all safe.
Particularly, I want to also highlight, Mr. Chairman, a
Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, who is not from my district. He is
actually from the People's Republic of Brooklyn. And--he is of
Dominican descent. I am of Dominican descent. I am the first
Dominican American elected to Congress, and I am not a
shortstop or a pitcher, but I did play third base here and
there.
But Mr. Gonell proved also to be very courageous during
January 6. I met him and his family, and I want to wish him--he
retired now, but I want to wish him the very best, and, again,
stress to you, Chief, that you proved to be critical that day.
And the funding that--whatever funding we agree on, Mr.
Chairman, which I hope is not a decrease, will never be enough
for the courageous men and women of the Capitol Police. We
should be doing more. And they should be protected, because of
course, you know, they are on the front lines. They are in the
trenches. And, if I am ever in a foxhole, I want to be there
with a Capitol Police officer.
So thank you, Chief. I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member.
I would like to thank our witness, Chief Manger, for being
here today.
And, Chief, the committee understands how important this
budget cycle is to you in terms of following along with what
happened in the last budget cycle as far as your appropriations
and what you have done with that to make that appropriation
look smart in how we follow up on lessons learned and going
forward.
So, with that, Chief Manger, the floor is yours for the
summary of your budget submittal.
Chief Manger. Thank you. Chairman Amodei, Ranking Member
Espaillat, and members of the subcommittee, thank you all for
allowing me to present the United States Capitol Police budget
request for fiscal year 2024.
I am joined here today by my senior staff, and I am also
honored to be joined by the chairman of my Fraternal Order of
Police, Gus Papathanasiou.
The Department greatly appreciates the subcommittee's
consistent support of the women and men of the Capitol Police
who courageously carry out their duties every single day.
Congress' support has been invaluable in providing the
resources needed to continue our transformation into a
stronger, more effective, protective-oriented law enforcement
agency while meeting the dramatic workload increases and
increasing volatile threat environment.
The United States Capitol Police is unique among Federal
law enforcement agencies. We patrol a campus that is completely
open. Our officers work 24/7 to keep you safe, whether you are
here on Capitol Hill, whether you are traveling to your home
districts, whether you are traveling abroad as part of a
congressional delegation. We staff doors, corridors, plazas,
garages, street corners--in sum, every square foot of the
Capitol Grounds, which includes, of course, you know, the
Capitol itself, the 8 Congressional Office Buildings, as well
as three Library of Congress buildings, and the botanical
gardens.
Prior to the pandemic, the Capitol was visited every year
by an estimated 7- to 10 million people from around the world.
Now that the campus is fully reopened, the Department is once
again managing this increased level of visitor activity, all
within the context of evolving and increasing threats against
Members of Congress and their families. The fiscal year 2024
budget request reflects this reality.
Thanks to the Emergency Security Supplemental Act that was
enacted in fiscal year 2023, the Department was able to direct
its efforts into bolstering salaries, general expenses, mutual
aid to partner law enforcement agencies as stopgap measure.
These appropriations, while invaluable, represented the next
step in the United States Capitol's evolution but not our final
destination.
Thus, the fiscal year 2024 budget is predicated upon the
Department's continued transformation, one increasingly defined
by evolving technologies, an increased threat climate, and a
shift towards a more protective model of law enforcement.
In my testimony today, I will present the fiscal year 2024
budget request within the context of three general themes that
explain the Department's forward trajectory and support our
request for funding needed to keep us on the path.
I will talk about the enduring impact of the deficiencies
and failures of January 6, as well as the impact of the
pandemic, the Department's future challenges and continued
transformation, and the need to usher in a new phase of
protective policing.
The January 6 attack on the Capitol exposed failures and
weaknesses within the organization that were profound. There
were more than a dozen after-action reports that shifted the
Department's priorities and accelerated the timeline for
executing them. Working closely with Congress, we have
increased staffing levels for our Intelligence and the
Interagency Coordination Division, formally established the
Howard Liebengood Center for Wellness, procured additional
civil disturbance equipment for our sworn officers, provided
funding for our dignitary protection agents to travel and
protect Members of Congress, update Department technology to
enhance investigative--I am sorry--intelligence analysis and
investigative capabilities, provided iPhones to the entire
sworn workforce for information dissemination, and supported
the Department-wide specialty training.
The emergency appropriation also allowed for the
installation of physical barriers at vulnerable vehicular
access points on Capitol Grounds. Congress' support at that
time cannot be sufficiently overstated. It was absolutely
vital.
The Department has--as a result of the pandemic and those
challenges that it brought, the Department has had to manage
the delayed recruitment efforts due to the closure of the
Federal Law Enforcement Officer Training Center, a move that
affected the hiring and deployment of new sworn officers,
essentially bringing our sworn hiring to a halt.
Low officer morale, the public's declining confidence in
law enforcement put a further strain on the organization.
Hiring within law enforcement remains a challenge in the post-
pandemic environment, not just for our Department but
nationwide.
January 6 and the pandemic were unforeseen crises. The
Department's overall resource and staffing needs were not
sufficiently recognized or addressed internally in order to
develop more appropriate budget requests. Thus, the fiscal year
2023 and 2024 budget requests reflect a critical reality--that,
prior to January 6, the Department was operating at a reduced
staffing and resource baseline.
Subsequent requests, therefore, have been attempts to
rightsize the Department by elevating its budgetary baseline to
a more normalized level. The fiscal year 2024 budget request
incorporates both the lessons learned from January 6, as well
as the Department's articulation of its vision for the future
as it moves toward a more protective law enforcement model.
It reflects the need to improve intelligence functions by
increasing analytical expertise and operational planning and
support.
It reflects the need to strengthen physical security,
fortify the capability of our civil disturbance frontline
responders, and enhance coordination with the Nation's Capital
regional partners, strengthening our physical infrastructure,
and expanding dignitary protection and security.
While the fiscal year 2024 budget request is asking for
increased salaries to fund 2,126 sworn officers at a full-year
rate and 78 sworn officers at a half-year rate, which equates
to 2,165 full-time sworn employees, the Department requests
also funding for 555 civilian employees at a full-year rate and
81 civilians at a half-year rate, which equates to 596 full-
time civilian employees.
The general expense request is 228.672 million. The total
fiscal year 2024 budget increase is 106.366 million.
I fully recognize the Department's request increase is
significant, but equally significant are the Department's
growing responsibilities and challenges. Unlike all law
enforcement--unlike other law enforcement agencies, we have
been asked in the last 2 years to develop and implement
transformational, structural, and strategic changes with
extremely compressed timelines, while simultaneously
maintaining the staffing and resources needed to carry out the
Department's daily core mission.
The opening of doors throughout the congressional campus
exemplifies this challenge. Adequately staffing a campus door
requires three to four officers per shift to ensure the proper
level of security, three shifts per day, often 5 to 6 days per
week. Long lines are not only an inconvenience to Members,
staff, and visitors; they represent a security risk that, in
these increasingly volatile times, the Department must address.
While the big-picture reforms are significant and
important, staffing daily mission requirements are critical. We
engage in a no-fail mission every day recognizing there is no
tolerance for leadership or organizational failures post-
January 6.
The Department's 2024 budget request reflects the realities
that the Department's mission environmental changes have
evolved. So too must its staffing and resources evolve.
Therefore, the United States Capitol Police fiscal year 2024
budget request focuses on nine areas that continue to be
central to its efforts to grow and transform.
They are continued normalization of sworn and civilian
staffing levels; enhanced intelligence capabilities; expanded
dignitary protection capabilities; expanded capabilities to
address threats against Members, cybersecurity, and
investigative activity; expanded physical and technical
security capabilities to secure the Capitol complex; enhanced
event planning, command, and control coordination; enhanced
response and special operations capabilities; strengthened
training capabilities for recruit officer, in-service, physical
skills, professional development, and leadership development;
and, finally, enhanced administrative support infrastructure to
support operational and mission-oriented requirements.
The increase in the number of threats against the Members
of Congress, approximately 400 percent over the past 6 years,
requires new and innovative techniques to identify, deter, and
mitigate threats before they materialize. Upcoming elections,
the campaign activities that precede them, and the increasingly
heated political rhetoric further heighten the prospect of
future security risks and challenges.
The fiscal year 2024 budget request accounts for these
growing risks. The Department recognizes the new and evolving
challenges that will continue to emerge, rendering it
imperative that the United States Capitol Police be positioned,
equipped, and resourced to meet and defeat threats to the
Members of Congress and the Capitol complex.
Strategic planning, forward thinking, proactive versus
reactive policing is the new operational model that is best
suited to confront the operational challenges facing the
Department today and in its future.
The USCP's traditional model of law enforcement no longer
applies to the current situation. The old approach of Member
protection has been replaced by the need to protect a Member's
environment as well as a Member's family. Keeping you and your
family safe is our paramount objective.
While the Department has made significant strides toward
rightsizing its number of personnel and pivoting toward a more
protective operational model, more work remains to be done.
Thus, it is critically important to maintain this momentum. The
United States Capitol Police has risen to meet emergency
challenges at every turn, and the fiscal year 2024 budget
reflects the Department's determination to continue this upward
trajectory.
Mr. Chairman, we thank the subcommittee for its support and
greatly appreciate our continued partnership with Congress.
I welcome any questions or comments.
Mr. Amodei. Thanks, Chief. I appreciate that.
And I also want to point out for the record that anybody
who can pronounce Mr. Gus' name correctly on the first try in a
public testimony setting like this has obviously got quite a
few skills. That is noted for our record.
And I now yield to our ranking member, Mr. Espaillat, for
your questions. The floor is yours.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you. My name is equally challenging.
It is hard to pronounce but easy to remember. So, at another
time, Mr. Chairman, I am going to give you an exercise to see
if you can roll that R, and it is: Que rapido corren los carros
para ferrocarril.
Mr. Amodei. You know, we try to avoid showing off in this
committee, so I would appreciate it----
Mr. Espaillat. All right. Well----
Mr. Amodei. The floor is yours, sir.
Mr. Espaillat. But thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Manger. You have eloquently explained to us
how critical your work is to not just our safety and the safety
of our families and our staff and visitors but of democracy
really. And I just want to know, how do you feel a cut--a
budget cut would impact the department? Will it dramatically
impact that goal and objectives that you have set forward as a
Department?
Chief Manger. Well, it would have a dramatic impact. We are
still--as I mentioned, we are still addressing the more than
100 recommendations that came to us as a result of after-action
reports from January 6. So we are addressing those, and we are,
I think, over 80 percent completed with those recommendations.
But, along the way, things have changed since January 6.
The threat level against Members of Congress, the threat levels
against families, the fact that we can't just say, ``Well, we
will--as long as you are on the Capitol campus, we will protect
you, you will be safe, but as soon as you leave here, you are
on your own''; we can't do that anymore. And just--I think the
new reality is that the protection that we provide has to
extend all--from here all--while you are traveling until you
get to your destination, to your home, or to codels where you
travel.
We can't do that with the budgets that we had pre-January 6
or even in the couple years after that because these are new
challenges that have emerged. And these aren't things that I
would--I could look any Member of the Congress in the eye and
say, ``Well, look, we will--you know, let's cross our fingers
and hope that, you know, we can get money next year or the year
after that or year after that to address these threats.'' We
have got to do this now. It is imperative.
I mentioned in my comments we operate every day on a no-
fail mission.
Mr. Espaillat. Uh-huh.
Chief Manger. That is, we cannot fail. If we fail, someone
could get hurt or worse. And so we have had enough failures
over the years that we have got to learn by those. And what I
am asking for I think I can explain fully about what we are
trying to accomplish with that money.
And I do realize--and the elephant in the room is the
increase that we have seen in our budget from, you know, back
before I was here to what we are asking for today. And I heard
on the news today that, you know, it is--oh, our budget is
going to be bigger than several cities in the United States.
Well, our--there is not a city in this country that has a
national responsibility. We do. This police department does
have national responsibilities. We have national--
Mr. Espaillat. That is correct.
Chief Manger [continuing]. Jurisdiction, and we have
responsibilities all over this country. And so it is--we are
not being--we--compare apples to apples.
And I realize that what we are asking for is a huge
increase. But, again, if you look at the workload, if you look
at the expectations of the Members of Congress, and if you look
at the threats that we are facing, I am asking for the
resources to be able to address those because, again, that is
our responsibility. And I would be derelict in my duty if I
didn't point out what the issues were and what we are trying to
do to fix them.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you, Mr. Manger.
Now, you know, I have been very concerned that--Mr.
Chairman, I will share that concern with you--that another
attack may not necessarily be a racist mob. It could be a bomb.
We saw how two bombs were placed outside of campus. It could be
a drone attack. It could be of a different nature.
And so I am very concerned about three buckets, right,
which is a bomb--and I know you have increased the K-9 unit,
and I have asked that last time around; drones; and then, of
course, cybersecurity. Those three things are areas that are
not sort of, like, the traditional area, the ones they look at
when considering a potential attack, but it is very much
possible that it won't be the same.
So I want to know what are the results of your expansion of
the K-9 unit and the sweeps that you do. And let me just say
that I am glad to see the sweeps going on before we come in to
vote. I don't know if you have seen them, Mr. Chairman. The
dogs are around sweeping every car that comes in--I think--that
is important--inside the Capitol campus.
But also in the perimeter, I will say going as far as Union
Station and the botanicals and the RNC and DNC buildings, where
we saw a distraction, right, during January 6 by some mobs
being placed there.
So I just want to know how we are doing with regards to
that?
Chief Manger. So this is all part of, as I mentioned in my
earlier remarks, of being--taking a proactive approach versus a
reactive approach. We learned lessons from January 6. We have
learned lessons from looking at other incidents around the
country. We have learned lessons from attacks on Members of
Congress and their family.
And, with each one of those incidents, we understood that
our responsibility is to put something in place where we would
prevent something from happening again. And so what you talked
about with the--a bomb--you know, a bomb threat, a drone
attack, cybersecurity attacks, these are realities. And every
single one of those things, we are working proactively to deal
with. We are not going to wait for something to happen and say,
``Oh, guess we ought to, you know, staff up our K-9s so we can
do more sweeps.''
In fact, that has been done. And we are currently working
on legislation to give us more authority and more ability to
address drones. We have things in place now, but that could be
improved on, and we are working on that.
And then the cybersecurity, trying to keep--you know, to
make sure we are keeping pace with the bad guys, with those
that would do us harm, that is a part of what our threats folks
and our criminal investigation folks are dealing with.
But, in addition, there is preventive measures that we need
to take to prevent those kinds of attacks from occurring in the
first place. And we are working with both Sergeant at Arms on
that as well. So--but all of these things that you mentioned
are one of the many reasons that our budget continues to
increase because we know our responsibilities and the threats.
The reality of the threats that we deal with are increasing.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
Ms. Wexton, the floor is yours.
Ms. Wexton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chief, it is great to see you again.
Also, I really want to commend you on everything you have
done since you were last before us because you have done a lot
in terms of getting the Department staff back up. I saw the
recruits out there in the morning doing their PT and
everything, having a nice time, and----
Chief Manger. Were they smiling?
Ms. Wexton. They seemed to be, yeah. They seemed to be
happy. I saw them running down Constitution Avenue. They were,
``Good morning, ma'am, Good morning, ma'am, Good morning''----
Chief Manger. Yeah. If they were going downhill, they might
be smiling.
Ms. Wexton. They were coming from downhill. They had to go
back up. I don't think they were very pleased about that. But,
in any event, yeah, they looked really happy to be here, and it
is great to have them, so--as you know, Howard Liebengood was
my constituent. His birthday would have been yesterday. So it
is good to--I really appreciate you guys, everything you have
done with the Liebengood Center and making sure it is up and
running and everything is running well.
For anybody who is not familiar with the work of the
Liebengood Center, can you please tell us a little bit about
what it is about and what it does there?
Chief Manger. I would be very--be honored to.
The Howard Liebengood Center, prior to January 6, we--
employee assistance was available through other----
Ms. Wexton. Other entities?
Chief Manger [continuing]. Entities, you know, and----
Ms. Wexton. Yeah.
Chief Manger [continuing]. We really didn't have anything
on our own within the United States Capitol Police.
January 6 certainly pointed out that we needed--we needed
two things. We needed, one, an employee assistance program that
addressed just comprehensively----
Ms. Wexton. Numerous things, right.
Chief Manger [continuing]. You know, issues, whether you--
it was health issues, whether it was, you know, exercise;
whether it was financial issues, just a whole host of anything
that could help our employees live healthier and live better.
But we also needed to address the trauma that occurs----
Ms. Wexton. Yeah.
Chief Manger [continuing]. You know, in a police officer's
life, and anybody that works within a police department, both
sworn and civilian. And so we--we have not only put together a
world-class employee assistance program, but we have brought in
trauma-informed counselors so that we can address the trauma
that occurs with--you know, with our employees on a day-to-day
basis and whether it is responding to a particularly critical
incident or just, you know----
Ms. Wexton. The intensity----
Chief Manger. Just over the years, as it builds up.
Ms. Wexton [continuing]. Each and every time you go to
work.
Chief Manger. Yeah.
Ms. Wexton. Yeah. Yeah.
Chief Manger. So I am very proud of the center that we put
together. And one thing I did want to mention to you is that we
are--we want to make sure that folks are able--that we--we
continue on the path to best practices with regard to our
wellness center and the Liebengood Center, and so we are going
to--I want to put together a group to--that makes sure that we
continue on the right track and give folks, not only the family
members of our fallen, but the FOP, the--you know, just a
cross-section of the Department that gives them--continues to
give them a voice about the work that the wellness center is
doing to make sure that we are being responsive to the needs of
our employees.
Ms. Wexton. And one other thing that you may be aware of is
that one of the things that we keep hearing from officers is
that one thing that would be very helpful to them would be
having a space within the Capitol Grounds within, the House or
Senate office Buildings that they might be able to go and see
somebody in the middle of their shift, just things like that,
like on their lunch break because, right now, they have to go
all the way back to the D Street headquarters----
Chief Manger. Right.
Ms. Wexton [continuing]. And it makes it kind of hard for
them.
Chief Manger. Right.
Ms. Wexton. So----
Chief Manger. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the Fairchild Building.
Ms. Wexton. Yeah.
Chief Manger. Yes.
Ms. Wexton. Yeah. So thank you for that.
And thank you also for whatever role you played in helping
the DOJ do the right thing and declare Howie's death a line-of-
duty death. So it means a lot to the family. I just want to
express my appreciation as well.
We talked a little bit about some of the training that you
have been going through, you know, we have been having the
officers engage in. And I know that we talked last time about
crowd control, that not only the CTU is going to do that; you
are going to have all the officers doing crowd control
training.
How is that going?
Chief Manger. It is going well. In fact, we are--you know,
one of the big issues on January 6 was the fact that officers
didn't have the equipment that they needed this--the Civil
Disturbance Unit. We are now to a point where we are about 98
percent deployed with equipment--good, new, state-of-the-art
equipment for our Civil Disturbance Unit folks.
But, in addition, you--we have been doing--and I appreciate
Congress' willingness to let us train where we work. And this
is so critical if you want to do training right. We are doing
active-shooter training in the buildings.
Ms. Wexton. Right.
Chief Manger. Typically on the weekends when nobody is
here.
Ms. Wexton. I happened to come here on a Sunday. I was
giving a tour to some friends of mine who were in from out of
town, and then we--they had the--the CVC was closed down for
active-shooter drills. They had five different scenarios. It
sounded like it was really cool and everybody really learned a
lot out of it, so----
Chief Manger. Well, this is critical. I mean, I think--and
you just need to look at what happened in Nashville when you
can see where officers are properly trained and equipped, how
they can react to an active shooter versus a department that
doesn't invest in the training.
And, you know, it has got to become routine. It has got to
become instinctive. And what the training does, it gives the
officers the confidence that, when they go into a very
dangerous situation like that, that they are going to be able
to accomplish their mission.
Ms. Wexton. Thank you very much.
And, Chief, I would just add one more thing, which is that,
when you think about the long-term plans for the physical space
and everything for the Capitol Police, one thing that I heard
over and over again from cops is that they want to have a gym
within the Capitol Grounds here. And there was a space in the
CVC that was set aside for them, and it got taken over, so----
Chief Manger. I would love to.
Ms. Wexton. I would say eventually.
Chief Manger. Yeah.
Ms. Wexton. It may be a little beyond our budget at this
moment, but something just for the long-term planning, even
though you don't have a women's locker room in the House gym,
but, I think it would make sense for you guys to get that, so--
--
Chief Manger. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Wexton. That was my final thought.
And, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back. Before I--one thing I
will say before that is that, you know, Mr. Chairman seemed
very sympathetic to your budget plates in his opening
statement, so I don't know whether that is a good sign for you
or not, so thank you.
Mr. Amodei. The chair wishes to extend its thanks to
Congresswoman Wexton for her help on that. I appreciate that.
I also--before we go to Mr. Quigley, I want to let the
ranking member know on the record that he challenges me to roll
my Rs, but yet nobody on his side of the committee has an R in
their name, so I will have to butcher some Republican names in
order to prove how much work I need on that.
Mr. Quigley, the floor is yours.
Mr. Quigley. And there will be lessons on how to talk
Chicago later.
Chief, thank you and all for your service. I was in the
room on January 6. I wasn't sure--not sure I would be here
without the extraordinary efforts on that day. Thank you.
You were, in your testimony, talking about retention,
hiring. If you could go a little bit deeper on that, the
challenges of recruitment you talked about earlier. What are
the advantages and disadvantages the USCP has compared to other
local police jurisdictions, and what additional resources might
help you in that vein?
Chief Manger. Well, so I brag to my friends, my fellow
colleagues, police chiefs around the country that, when I hear
them talking about how desperate they are in terms of
recruiting and they can't get folks and they are operating
hundreds of positions below their staffing levels, and we have
been very blessed that our--we have not had a problem
recruiting, getting people through the door. It is always a
challenge to make sure you are hiring the right people for the
job, but we have got plenty of people applying.
And the reason for that is--I think is severalfold. One,
the--Congress passed a new pay scale for us, so it makes us
very competitive in terms of our starting salary. In fact, when
an officer graduates from the academy, their first day out of
the academy, they are making about $74,000 a year. That is--
compared to other police agencies around the country, that is
really good.
Mr. Quigley. What about locally, compared to, like, suburbs
of Maryland?
Chief Manger. I can tell you it is easily 10- to $12,000
more than other agencies in the region.
We have also been very blessed that, in the last few years,
that Congress has approved a retention bonus. And this is--you
know, while a number of agencies around the country are getting
money for signing bonuses, they are--there is one agency--
former agency that I worked for that is going to give somebody
$20,000 over the course, I think, of a couple of years if they
sign on and come on the department.
I would rather invest in the officers--the great officers
that I have here now in keeping them here. And so the retention
bonuses that we have had in the last couple of years has
lowered our attrition. It has lowered the number of people that
have left.
Mr. Quigley. But through time--you talk about the initial
pay coming out of the academy. Through time, you are still
competitive with the----
Chief Manger. Yes.
Mr. Quigley [continuing]. Proximities as well?
Chief Manger. Yes. Yes. The--we are also--I have extended--
the mandatory retirement age for Federal law enforcement and
for Capitol Police is 57 years old. Frankly, I think that is
very young, and I have extended it to 60. And so--and I have
gotten great feedback from a lot of officers who were looking
at, you know, having the mandatory retirement. And this ability
to stay on for a few extra years, it is a win-win.
It is great for us because we are keeping good, experienced
officers. And, frankly, it is good for them, because they want
to continue to work. And they would leave here and go work
somewhere else. Why can't we keep those good employees here?
So we put a number of strategies in place, student loan
repayment program. We need to continue, and we will continue to
hire about 280 officers per year to keep pace with the
increased workload that we have, to stay ahead of attrition. I
mean, one of the things that----
Mr. Quigley. I am sorry. You mentioned student loans. Do
you have a minimum requirement of education coming in?
Chief Manger. I believe it is a high school--yeah. High
school diploma, but most of the officers that we hire have some
college. And then--I mean, every--every academy graduation, it
is pointed out to me we have a couple of people that have
master's degrees. So we are doing very--we can be very
selective with the folks that are applying here.
But we--the key for us is to stay ahead of attrition, which
we were not doing right after January 6. And we have--so we are
adding--every year, we have, I would say, around a hundred more
officers that are deployed out in the Department. And it gives
us--it is starting to be able to allow us to fix one of the big
problems that we had, and that was officers being burned out
because they are being held over, forced to work overtime, you
know, because we were short of minimum staffing.
That still occurs. It is getting a little bit better, but
it still occurs, so we have still got some work to do to make
sure that we continue to add the number of officers so that
these officers can get the days off they deserve, that--when
they--you know, if they--if they think they are getting off at,
you know, you know, 5 o'clock in the afternoon, that they
actually get off instead of being told, ``No, I am sorry, you
have got to work extra hours because we are short in the
following shift.''
Again, that still happens a little bit too often to suit
me. And I am sure that Gus would agree with me. And so we will
continue and have to continue to keep our recruitment and
hiring at the level that we have done in the last couple years.
It is critical for us to get--every other goal we have is
conditioned on our ability to increase our staffing.
Mr. Quigley. Very good. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Mr. Quigley.
The chair now recognizes Mr. LaTurner. The floor is yours.
Mr. LaTurner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for being here today, and thank you for your
service.
I want to talk about--you have talked about in your
testimony and you have talked about it a little bit today, but
specifically what do you think the future is when it comes to
making sure that Members and their families are safe and
protected at home?
And I think we have made a good--you know, with the--the
allowance for home security is a great step, but what is the
future of this because I see no reason to believe that the huge
increase we have seen in threats is going to go down.
Chief Manger. Yeah, I am afraid you are right about that.
And so I think that the allowance for the security systems in
folks' homes is a good start. But I think there is more that we
can do, and that is to get--we want to set up--and one of the
things that--one of the goals we have with--in our fiscal year
2024 budget is to set up a protective operations room so that
we can monitor not only the leadership who have protection
details, but, you know, we--I would love to get to a point
where we are monitoring every Member of Congress, monitoring
their home security system.
I realize that the alarm company that puts things in, but
having that redundancy and having that--one of the things that
we are expanding and part of--in answer to your question is
more partnerships with State and local police.
We have now dozens and dozens of memorandums of agreement
with State and local police departments, but every Member--and
you may live in a jurisdiction that has a large police
department that covers your area, and so it would be very easy
for us to have an agreement saying: Look, put--put this Member
in the computer-aided dispatch file so that, if you get a 911
call from this address, they know it is a Member of Congress
lives at that address, you know, that responding officers know
that. Make sure that, if--if we call you and say that Mr.
LaTurner is going to a townhall meeting and expects, you know,
3 or 400 people, and there could be counterdemonstrators or
whatever at the--that, you know, could you assign a couple of
officers to be there for security?
And the incentive there is we have the money to reimburse
them for doing that, and this is the way we are getting the
cooperation from the State and local, is--look, having been on
the other side of this for many years, when people call and
say, ``Hey, could you have a couple officers do this or do
that,'' you know, sometimes you can do it; sometimes your
staffing just doesn't allow it. But if I can say, hey, I can
pay somebody overtime to do it, or I can, you know, bring
somebody in off duty who wants to, you know, make a little bit
of extra money, you know, and someone else is--will reimburse
the Department for that, it is much more easily accomplished.
So I think that we have got to continue to work with State
and local. We have got to continue to look at, whether it is
when you are traveling, when you are at your home--when you are
at your home district, whether you have--the offices in your
home district, we are--activities in your home district. All of
those things, I think we can enhance what we are doing with
additional resources.
And, frankly, I think we need to establish a baseline of at
least having every--not just--and I think it is just the
Members of the House that are getting the allowance now. It
needs to be every Member of Congress that gets it. And--you
know, and, frankly, I think it is a good start. My
recommendation would be, instead of, you know, ``Oh, here is
some money, get what you want,'' I would rather have a
standardized package of here is the money, here is the
standardized package of what--you know--and, look, people have
different sized houses. They have different needs.
And some people don't--may or may not want cameras, you
know--and I am not talking about cameras inside the house. I am
talking about cameras outside their house. Everybody has got
different preferences, but I think that we should standardize
that so that everybody has a good baseline of security when
they are at home.
Mr. LaTurner. Undoubtedly. And I know from your testimony
there is more that you want and believe needs to be done here.
But I--to me, this is going to be the biggest issue in the
future going forward as threats continue to increase.
We had a--and I want to publicly thank you and your
Department. We received a death threat this last year and went
through the arrest and the trial and the whole--we have gone
through all of that. And--and the Capitol Police were great to
work with throughout the process, and great coordinating with
local law enforcement so that--you know, so that there was a
proper security.
For me--and I think virtually every Member of Congress
would agree with this--it is not so much that--I am not
thinking about security for myself. I don't feel concerned
about it. It is family back home when you are here. That is the
biggest issue.
Chief Manger. Right.
Mr. LaTurner. So, anyway, I thank you, and I look forward
to continuing to talk to you about this because it is a major
issue that we are, sadly, going to be keep dealing with.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Amodei. Thank you.
The gentlelady from Oklahoma, the floor is yours.
Mrs. Bice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Chief, for being here. I had the great
pleasure of visiting the headquarters last week and was sorry
that we missed you, but learned a lot and got a lot of great
insight.
So a couple of questions for you. You mentioned that you
were looking to extend the retirement age from 57 to 60 to be
able to retain some of those employees. Can you talk a little
bit about retirement enhancements or benefits that may be
offered along with that?
Chief Manger. So I think there are some opportunities to
look at retirement enhancements. I mean--and I know that Gus
would actually be a much more expert--because Gus has, you
know, actually talked about some of the proposals that I think
make good sense.
The question is, look, I would--you know, do we want to
calculate in overtime, you know, into the retirement
calculation? And, you know--there are just questions that I
think we can look at.
But I guess my experience in--because, as a police chief in
two other jurisdictions, I actually was able to get retirement
enhancements done. But here is what my--I learned. They have
got to be sustainable, and this is--and what I don't want to do
is say, ``Oh, yeah, let's do this and this and this,'' and--
whatever we do needs to be sustainable, because I would love to
see these enhancements done, but I don't want them to go away 5
years from now and people say, ``Oh, my God, we can't afford
this.''
And you only need to look at some States around this
country where there is 15 different, you know, retirement
systems because people--you know, they got things, and then
they realized they couldn't continue to afford them.
So I think there are some enhancements that--and I would be
happy to get back to you. In fact, I think Gus and I could
probably get back to you together to give you some ideas that
we both support. But, you know----
Mrs. Bice. That is great. Yeah, I appreciate that.
Let me pivot, if I may. You mentioned--and I am sorry that
I missed some of the earlier comments, but you mentioned when I
arrived that you are on pace to hire 280 officers annually. Is
that correct?
Chief Manger. That is the goal.
Mrs. Bice. What is your--goal, yes, you are correct.
What is the current staffing numbers for Capitol Police,
and what is the projection of where you should be?
Chief Manger. So my staff gave me that, and I am going to--
here we go. Good.
So I have sworn, as of just this week, we have--we are
authorized 2,126. We have filled 1,977.
Civilian, we authorized 567. We have filled 403.
Mrs. Bice. Okay. So, based on these numbers, you only have
about a 200-person shortage, 150, something like that?
Chief Manger. True, but----
Mrs. Bice. For sworn officers. Is that right?
Chief Manger. Yeah, but if I hire 280, I will lose 120
through retirement, resignation, whatever, so--but we have made
progress in terms of attrition over the last couple of years,
but we have still got a--we have still got a ways to go.
Mrs. Bice. There was a conversation we had at the
headquarters about contract officers that you all have. I think
it is a fairly low number; 50 to 60, as I recall.
Chief Manger. Correct.
Mrs. Bice. Is that something that you are looking to
expand?
Chief Manger. The short answer to the question is no. I
think we have identified the posts where they are appropriate,
and I--there are--I think there is certain posts that require
an armed United States Capitol Police officer. And there are
some secondary posts that I think are appropriate for the
contract security officers, and so I would like to keep them
for as long as we need them.
But I would say--you know, 10 years from now, hopefully we
are at a staffing level where everything will be back to
Capitol Police. So, to me, it is a temporary thing, but it is a
long-term temporary. But I don't have any--I don't have any
notion that there are additional posts that we could--that they
would be appropriate for. I think we are at the level we are
going to be for a while.
Mrs. Bice. As we were walking through the Capitol to visit
the headquarters, we passed some of those folks, and I think
Chairman Steil and I sort of joked that, you know, they are
internal, and they are providing sort of assistance, but not
necessarily doors or providing security, per se.
Chief Manger. Right.
Mrs. Bice. Everybody----
Chief Manger. Everybody that they see should have already
been----
Mrs. Bice. Screened?
Chief Manger [continuing]. Gone through security and been
screened.
Mrs. Bice. Excellent. Last question that--well, I want to
say thank you. You have a difficult job. I recognize that there
has been some challenges over the last couple of years. I am
new to this committee and fairly new to Congress. And I know it
has been a difficult couple of years, but thank you for the
service to you and to the men and women that serve underneath
you.
And, Mr. Chairman, with that, I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Mr. Clyde, the floor is yours.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you. There we go.
Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Chief Manger, for being here.
First, I want to give my utmost appreciation for all the
officers of the U.S. Capitol Police who work day and night to
ensure our safety, both Members and the safety of the
legislative process and the Capitol Building and all the folks
that work here. So thank you.
Chief Manger. Thank you.
Mr. Clyde. You bet.
Now, since the events of January the 6th, 2021, a number of
reports have surfaced detailing the significant intelligence
failure that transpired that day, including numerous reports
detailing poor decisions and failures at the helm of the U.S.
Capitol Police's lead intelligence component, the Intelligence
and Interagency Coordination Division, or, for this--for my
use, I will just call it the Intelligence Division.
According to a Government Accountability Office report from
February of this year, the Intelligence Division did not
consistently incorporate complete information into assessments
of threats prior to the events of January 6.
And, furthermore, the GAO report finds that the
Intelligence Division did not properly share threat assessments
agencywide, resulting in some officers, agents, and
intelligence staff not having complete information on that day.
Additionally, the five Members of--that former Speaker
Pelosi rejected from her so-called bipartisan select committee
released their own report detailing the massive intelligence
failures at the helm of the Intel Division that her committee's
report did not address.
The testimony of these officers and analysts details how
the still standing assistant director to the Intelligence and
Interagency Coordination Division, Ms. Farnam, sent the
division into chaos and confusion in the weeks leading up to
January 6.
Page 53 of the report details how Ms. Farnam turned the
lead Intel Division of the Capitol Police to become, quote,
``nonfunctional,'' explaining how, at the time of January 6,
that they were not doing proactive searches of social media
like they had been before. Furthermore, the report details how
Ms. Farnam designed 3 analysts of the division's 12 total
analysts at the time to compile research on--and I quote--all
political assassinations in the history of the world in
December of 2020, just a few weeks prior to the violence at the
Capitol.
Chief Manger, you have previously testified in committee
hearings regarding your plans to overhaul the intelligence-
gathering arm of the Capitol Police. Therefore, I would like to
ask you, first, is Ms. Farnam still in the same position as the
assistant director of Intel?
Chief Manger. I would--I believe so, yes. I mean, I don't
know her title, but----
Mr. Clyde. Okay. All right. Well, that is what the report
says, all right?
So how can we be sure that the Capitol Police's
intelligence-gathering operations have improved if this person
responsible for their failure still runs the division?
Chief Manger. So I think that this goes back to, you know,
where we assign blame, and I will tell you that, with--the day
that I took this job, there were over a dozen after-action
reports, and many of them, if not most of them, focused on the
intelligence failures----
Mr. Clyde. Right.
Chief Manger [continuing]. Which were significant.
Mr. Clyde. Uh-huh.
Chief Manger. And it was not--the intelligence failures
were not the result of one person, two persons. I mean, you
could--there was a director of Intelligence. There were--there
was an assistant chief. There was a chief. There was Sergeant
at Arms. Everybody had a--either a--an oversight responsibility
or a direct responsibility for the way we handled our
intelligence.
Mr. Clyde. Uh-huh.
Chief Manger. But you can look back at, prior to January 6,
and just the way we operated then and how we interacted in the
intelligence community was deficient from the start. And you
can blame whoever you want to blame for that. But that is what
needed to be changed, and that is what has changed.
We have a--we do have a new director of Intelligence. He
has been here a year now. He has made great strides, but we
have--as a Department, we recognized that we needed to change
our posture in the intelligence community. We didn't have
people on task forces. We were basically consumers of
intelligence, all right?
If you are an intelligence agent, you tell me what you
think I should know. We weren't actively participating in the
intelligence community. We are now. We have, I think, at least
eight, if not more, task force analysts that are with the FBI,
Homeland Security, with other regional intelligence operations.
So we have people in the intelligence community that are
gathering information, analyzing information, disseminating
information, and making sure it gets back to us so that we can
use it for operational planning.
Sir, the--we could talk for a week about the deficiencies--
--
Mr. Clyde. Uh-huh.
Chief Manger [continuing]. In our intelligence operation,
and every bit of it is absolutely true.
Mr. Clyde. Uh-huh.
Chief Manger. But that has been one of the things that we
have overhauled and ensured that we have got the right people
in charge, the right oversight, and we are doing the right
things.
It has taken an investment. I mean, a lot of what we have
asked for in the past few budgets and what we continue to ask
for is to bolster our intelligence operation so that it is
where it needs to be. And we--and I--right now, I have great
confidence in the work that our analysts are doing, that we are
gathering that information; we are sharing it; we are
interacting with other--again, throughout the intelligence
community. And that is exactly what we should have been doing
several--you know, prior to January 6, but that is what we are
doing now.
And, if folks aren't on board with it, then they don't need
to be with the Capitol Police. But the folks that are on board,
everybody who is on board, from my director to the assistant
chief that oversees it, all those folks understand the critical
nature of this--and that we are--and I said this a couple of
times already--that we have a no-fail mission.
Mr. Clyde. Uh-huh. I hear you.
Chief Manger. And there will be no tolerance, no patience
from--if we have failure like that again. And there is not one
person--me at the top of the list--that I should be held
accountable if there is ever any other failure like that. And I
have done everything I know how to do to make sure that that
won't happen again.
Mr. Clyde. Well, I appreciate that, because I see you have
a nearly $4 million increase in your intelligence analysis
budget for this particular year.
One last thing I want to ask you real quick, if the
chairman will indulge me: You are a member of the Police Board,
of the three, the Architect of the Capitol, the----
Chief Manger. Yes.
Mr. Clyde [continuing]. Sergeant at Arms.
Chief Manger. Yes.
Mr. Clyde. Right. And one of the things that greatly
concerns me, because I believe that, you know, one of your
priorities is safety of every Member, and I think some of the--
our greatest vulnerable times are when we travel, either to and
from the Capitol, going home, or coming in in the morning, like
we saw the Congresswoman that was assaulted in her apartment
complex in the morning, and then going home at night, et
cetera.
And I am very concerned that we do not have the ability to
protect ourselves because of policies that the Police Board has
put forward, and I mean carrying--personally carrying.
So I would really like your attention to that and the
entire Police Board's attention to that, that would allow us to
more easily carry and protect ourselves when you are not there
because----
Chief Manger. Understood.
Mr. Clyde. Okay.
Chief Manger. Yeah. And, you know, it is--wouldn't it be
nice if the Police Board could just wave a wand and say,
``Okay, this is what we are going to do''? But we do have--
there are laws in place both in the District of Columbia as
well as statutes that we have to abide by, so it--there is--it
is--I think that we do need to pay more attention to the safety
just in those kinds of situations.
And so I--we are taking a more comprehensive look, but I
think--but including what--you know, your suggestion, we can
certainly look at that, but I think we shouldn't limit
ourselves. We should look at what--everything that we can do in
terms of----
Mr. Clyde. I concur.
Chief Manger [continuing]. Enhancing people's safety.
Mr. Clyde. Absolutely concur with you.
Thank you very much, and I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. Mr. Ranking Member, do you have any further
questions?
Mr. Espaillat. Just one quick one, Mr. Chairman.
I know that, Chief, that there is, over 400 officers that
are scheduled to retire or to be on that list. What is the
reality in that? How many of them will actually leave, and do
we have a plan to recruit to replace them?
Chief Manger. Yes. I think--yes, I think that many of them
will leave because there was a big hiring push around 9/11, and
so those folks are now eligible to go if--and so we have got to
continue, I think, to employ the strategies where we extend
the--and, look, I am administratively extending the mandatory
retirement age from 57 to 60. Let's just--I mean, my preference
would be let's just change the law, you know, and do it
permanently.
Frankly, somebody who is 60 years old still--I advocate for
old people. So I think that that would make sense. But to
continue with the retention bonuses----
Mr. Espaillat. Us 35-year-olds are not with you.
Chief Manger. Trust me, I have got to--yeah. I got a couple
of young people that live in my house that aren't with me
either.
But I think to continue the retention bonuses, to continue
the incentives that we have been able to incorporate in our
budget to keep officers--you know, incentivizing them to stay,
we have got to just keep that up. There is going to be people
that go, that want to go, and--but--and that also puts the
pressure on us on the front end to make sure we continue to
hire the number of officers that we will hire so that we stay
ahead of attrition.
But I am very attentive to that, and I think that the
biggest thing to hold them is the ability for them to stay a
few extra years and the retention bonus, which gives them
incentive to stay, you know, one year at a time, you know, and
that is--I think it is helping a lot so far.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Mr. Amodei. Mrs. Bice.
Mrs. Bice. Thank you.
One final question. Actually, sort of--or comment that ties
into what Representative Clyde brought up, and that is safety
and security in D.C. We have seen all of these really awful
situations--carjackings, stabbings of the staffer, that sort of
thing.
Also something to consider--and I didn't really think about
this until last night, but there are buildings in this city
that house many Members.
Chief Manger. Uh-huh.
Mrs. Bice. And I think that should also be something that
is maybe, you know, brought forward and thought through and how
we make sure that, in a particular building that has dozens of
Members, how we ensure that they are kept safe.
So thank you. I yield back.
Chief Manger. And we, in fact--one of the things that we
make sure of is that we actually have officers that patrol, and
they--we know where those buildings are, and we ensure that
they are patrolled regularly. So--and, again, I think there is
additional--with additional resources, we can have additional
enhancements in terms of making sure that the folks that live
in and around the complex--and I know we are--I don't want to
belabor this, Mr. Chairman, but one of the things that I heard
when I first came to this job was, you know--you know, when my
officers, you know, would make an arrest somewhere, you know,
on the campus or maybe a couple blocks from the campus, what
are they doing there? Why aren't they on the campus?
I am telling you, the work that they do--that officers do
who patrol around here keep this campus safer.
Mrs. Bice. And I think we learned that in visiting your
headquarters, that that radius around the actual Capitol
Grounds is where a lot of incidents occur and that we are able
to apprehend those individuals that maybe have nefarious
thoughts, yeah.
Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Amodei. If there are no further questions, I would like
to thank you, Chief Manger.
I want to just add a couple of things. One is I don't think
there is any argument that it is cheaper to pay them than it is
to replace them. If you folks have a figure of what you figure
your cost is, if you could get that to the committee in terms
of, if Gus there decides he is leaving, by the time you go
through the recruiting process, identify your people, put them
through your screening, put them through their formal training,
blah, blah, blah, what that cost is, because I know it is not
minimal, and I just think it is an important fact for us to
have as we move forward in making some of those decisions.
I also appreciate your comments where you talk about a no-
fail mission every day and that, quite frankly, your
organization's responsibility is a national one. I think those
hit home pretty well.
I also want to tell you that, while this process is
anything but predictable, this committee has a challenge to
walk that fine line between how do we go forth responsibly with
Federal dollars. But I can tell you this: As long as I am
around, which could be not tomorrow or a long time, we aren't
going to defund our own police.
So I want to thank you for your testimony.
And members may submit any additional questions they want
for the record.
I would like you, if you could, to remain a few minutes
after adjournment because I need to talk with you about a
couple other things offline.
And, with that, the committee is adjourned.
[all]