Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2005

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005 -- (House of Representatives - July 12, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 707 and rule XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 4755.

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

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

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

While I will support the bill, I want to highlight several matters of interest to me as the ranking minority member of the Committee on House Administration, which has authorizing jurisdiction over several accounts funded in the measure, and others.
First, I join with the Appropriations Committee in commending the staff of the numerous entities who helped to make last month's state funeral for President Reagan an occasion of which the entire legislative branch could be proud. Without the tireless efforts of countless individuals in the office of the Architect of the Capitol, the Capitol Police, the Government Printing Office, the Capitol Guide Service, the Attending Physician's Office, as well as the House and Senate leadership, committees, and others, Americans could not have paid proper respects to their former President. On behalf of my constituents in Connecticut, I wish to thank all of the dedicated legislative branch employees who made that funeral possible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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