good morning everyone i like to call our hearing on house of ministration daughter welcome everybody thank you all for being here a lot of things are happening our ranking member is in another committee and he's going to be on his way and other members are probably doing all the legislative business but i'm sure that they will be here when they get a chance to be here and we do appreciate you being here today during the transition between the one nine thousand one hundred tenth congress the house inspector general is conducting a routine  that want to point to protect course took its course but we then asked you to conduct a further review how did the system of shared employees make congressional offices vulnerable to misuse of data or even outright theft and what can we do about it the original defender was sentenced may second today we will hear the results of the further review the point of view is not to name any names or point any fingers i have asked not to use any names during this hearing and i asked the members of the avoid this is well our purpose here is to find out where we are vulnerable and what we can do to secure the house that we will hear today from the i g and some not all but some of these employees have ignore the controls we already have a place to prevent abuse further choice may also be necessary we really want to hear what you have to say about what we can do to protect ourselves with further controls to come back to from your employees got to come back in front of you so i look forward to the  members and shared employees as to how they ought to operate and i think that's a bipartisan approach and i thank you for the hearing thank you right now would like to welcome our panel jim cornell is our inspector general has served two thousand and four and is an accountant certified government financial manager by training also like to welcome dan beard as the chief administrative officer of the house dance experience on the hill is wide and diverse he began his career as she a rest then went to the white house the department's here and then returned to the house in numerous the house my office plays a vital role in helping to ensure integrity and identify opportunities for improvement in our house financial i'm in a state of processes in the past few months we have completed work on several initiatives that have revealed significant patients and the controls over shared employees shared employee voice the village intimate need they provide technical expertise in the area finances information technology and general office of ministration through part time positions recently we identified fifty one shared employees that were on the payroll of at least up to fourteen offices each their availability allows congressional offices to meet their support needs without having to hire full time personnel with the requisite skills and experience however through our audit and investigative work we have found three major areas where the current controls over the practices of shared employees are either unenforced or weak and in need of significant improvement if not addressed these control weaknesses place congressional offices at significant risk of build a goal or other improper activity occurring within their financial administrative functions the first of the three areas of control weakness with shared employees is inadequate oversight over their activities in most instances they have all the freedom of the vendor and all the benefits of an employee without the accountability one would expect with an employee care and practices do not provide for other office staff to review their day to day work and sure they attend appropriate training or stay current on house policies and procedures congressional offices may know their shared employee works for other offices but they do not know how many are which ones therefore they cannot determine if there are conflicts of interest within the functions performed or with the other offices serve we identified seven financial shared employees that were employed by ten or more offices and shared employees that were serving as system administrator for eleven or more offices in both this the plaintiff you serve both majority and minority offices simultaneously under current practices the work schedules of shared employees are also not monitored most of them are paid a flat monthly fee by the offices regardless of the time and effort expended i t shared employees with the ministre to rise presented additional risk in that they often have access to multiple offices data outside of both the oversight of congressional office staff and the visibility of house security personnel each of these factors points to an inappropriate employer employee relationship a second area where controls over shared employees need significant improvement as having mechanisms in place to ensure that the practices of this small group of personnel are in compliance with current laws and house rules for areas a violation to share with you first and foremost subletting or passing work to another individual not employed by the member office violates u s code and house rules a growing number of shared employees are working in illegal teaming arrangements where they pass the work off to other shared employees not on the payroll of the congressional office they are serving for example three members of one financial shared employee team each work on the finances of fifteen offices however one of the team members is only officially on the payroll of three of the offices six citee shared employee team seven member with her rights to multiple offices are not employed by one such team member has a ministre to rise to twenty eight congressional offices but is only on the payroll of ten offices we suspect that many of these employees we identify may not even though the practice violates current law and associated rules secondly telecommuting without an approved telecommuting plan detailing the procedures to be followed actually violates house rules working in a commercial or any unapproved personal space in addition to violating house rules may also place congressional offices at risk for workers compensation or congressional accountability claims in addition storing official house documents all cite a common practice amongst the financial shared employees we interviewed violates the guidance provided in the model house employee handbook and increases the risk that sensitive information may be lost mishandled or inappropriately shared with others and lastly using their house positions and access as a means to market their outside employment interest to other congressional offices as another practice of some shared employees that could be a violation of house ethics rules we identified a few that can also log in the document direct a system not available to house then there's this access to internal house vouchers and other privileged information could create an unfair practice and some shared employees are also house vendors the absence of compliance with the existing laws and house rules and each of the above stated the areas has occurred in part because of the lack of adequate attention to building controls over the practices of employees serving multiple offices the government accountability office as noted that internal controls service at the plants for for preventing and detecting violations of laws and regulations as well as preventing abuse and suring adequate separation of duties is a thirty year control that needs significant improvement we have then applied several ip shared employees serving a system minutes traders from multiple offices who are set up as the only person to be alerted are notified if questionable activity occurs within the office ip systems they are servicing basically without another staff member being included in the alert group shared i employee could by a leave the confidentiality availability and integrity standards by an appropriately sharing the leading or changing data without anyone knowing in the financial rayna we found in most instances the shared employees were authoriz purchases they initiated and approving financial reports and items they recorded some shared employees routinely provided office approval for reimbursements to themselves and or the transactions into the office accounting system prepared the monthly financial reports and kept the records of the individual transactions and the congressional office with an appropriate separation of duties in their financial functions and inadequate compensating internal controls is operating in an environment conducive to fraud i cannot stress enough the need for offices to examine their internal operations and practices to ensure they are operating with the appropriate controls through our audit covered a fraud perpetrated by a shared financial ministre her who provided services for three member offices in each of her offices this individual performed the full range of plan anshul services without any other member office staff reviewing or approving her work through manipulation of the trust mis placed in her and the excess of authority she was granted she did deep throated to the three offices of more than one hundred sixty nine thousand dollars in another ongoing investigation without a second financial ministre who was paid for thousands of dollars of improper expense reimbursements and bonuses  were self approved and resulted in improper payments to three areas of control weakness we have identified work together to create an environment that presents significant risk to the integrity of our house financial processes and the congressional offices ability to execute their fiduciary responsibilities to address them we recommend that the committee take steps directly or through the chief administrative officer to explore options for augmenting house provided financial services to member and committee offices they will both enhance the control environment and reduce the administrative burden on the individual offices secondly develop official guidelines for shared employees that address specific employment conditions and limitations based on current employment laws house rules policies and other guidance all shared employees should sign an acknowledgement that they are read and agreed to abide by the guidelines thirdly prohibit shared employees from serving as both house employees and vendors to the house we found this to be especially troubling with ip shared employees who generally have a ministre to rights and access to all records for the member offices they are employed by or otherwise set up the service next have the chief administrative officer of the house provide member and committee offices with quarterly reports identifying the full scope of employment for all their shared employees this will allow them to make any staffing adjustment appropriate due to incompatible interest or excessive workload we also recommend requiring shared employees to file financial disclosure statements regardless of house compensation in addition depending on the nature of the functions background investigations may be appropriate steps will help the house identify potential conflicts of interest and avoid on do risk should also review and update as appropriate the content of new member orientation as it applies to shared employees and lastly and perhaps most importantly advised members to utilize separation of duties internal controls and their offices by natural functions and provide them examples of what has happened when controls have not been in place mr chairman i wish to thank you congressman ehlers and members of the committee for this opportunity to address some specific insignificant control weaknesses we have found during the course of our recent work we look forward to continuing our role providing value added advice and counsel to the committee house leadership house officers and joint and these of the house as we focus on issues of strategic importance to the house this time i'll be happy to answer any questions and thank you mr canal before we get to mr beard i to stay until they were finished with questioning me but i just want to express my appreciation to the i g for the work that's been done and i don't see any impossible problems here it's just a matter employees i want to begin by complimenting the committee for requesting the inspector general to undertake this report we have known for some time that the growing use of shared employees could pose management risks and directing g to undertake the study was the right first step to addressing these possible risks in addition i want to compliment the inspector general and his team for the quality of the report that they have prepared their review is thorough and professional  regard and it provides all of us with the information we need and to develop and implement the necessary policies procedures and management controls to address these problems my message to you this morning is very simple i fully support all of the recommendations purport proposed by the inspector general my office is fully prepared to implement these recommendations should the committee so direct the recommendations in the report provide a solid foundation for us to base corrective actions in both the short and the long term given the problems described in the i g s report the recommendation for an official guidelines for shared employees is an excellent suggestion and we're prepared to work with  committee in the office to complete this document expeditiously specter general recommends we explore options for augmenting house provided financial services to members and committees i would point out that the house budget request f y o nine request includes a nine million dollars to provide funding to augment financial and i t capabilities for new members of the hundred and congress we are prepared to develop the appropriate budget request to provide additional services for existing members should the committee so desire the report's recommendation that there be a prohibition against employees serving as both house employees and contractors is both reasonable and appropriate we do not see any problem with implementing the recommendations to provide members and committees with a quarterly report identifying the full scope of employment of all shared employees and finally i would highlight the report's recommendation that the new member orientation stressed the risks to members associated with using shared employees without strength and management controls since you are in the planning stages for these orientations this is an appropriate time to develop the information in the approaches for implementing this recommendation again i want to thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning and be happy to answer any questions you might have thank don't get involved in it i just got baptized right away the next day after i want to election and i looked at the list and i figure i'm going to put a caucus together called them up caucus you know and there's like ninety of us there's like ninety members that came in sitting in this congress thanks for the report i think it's helpful you looked only at i t n financial people didn't look at the other polish policy shared employees to for example the california delegation and eliminated a lot of well but it when you look at both the california republican delegations they're in both cases larger than three so i mean i can't imagine that they'd have the there'd be an ability to do address the kind of problems correspondent i'm running out of examples but we do have a number in that area but the largest number and the ones that present the greatest problem other financial and in the  area did you take a look at how i mean there's a reason why they're shared because it's a complex situation it's expensive to hire professionals you really can't justify paying that kind of money for an t professional for the amount of time each office needs an id professional and yet there's no centralized services that are really top notch and reliable we don't have centralized servers we've gotten parceled out in all the members offices did you take a look at how our organizing our services in the house when it comes to just the problems with the shared employees we also looked at some potential solutions one of which would be to develop a centralized pool of employees both in the financial realm and to provide comparable services we think there's a lot of merit to exploring that even just from a pure financial employee with the same requisite skills and experience would be about sixty eight thousand if you were able to develop a pool of employees for instance for that service that could result and if you step away that out over the so that out again you have a significant savings actually probably have to raise a salary cap for employees on the i t side to get that the if you're going to centralize it the people you really want well are are you have to remember what's happening here the shared employees are providing the service to the individual but then that work is then sent to the that you've been mistreated by officers employees and so our financial counselors and our technical service reps provide a safety net for those but it's my business on the point of view of the members office it doesn't look like a safety net looks like an impediment and that it's slowed down and that's not that's not a criticism  just you know we're impatient we want to get stuff done right away all got contracts because we have to get stuff that's really it's not the way business is doing and i think you know it might be maybe we could sit down with you later see what you saw rather than take up all the hearing time in a kind of workshop session but i think we could make a substantial improvement and terry i think the gentleman for y used shared employees in the extent to which their use and also the extent to which they shared employees although their finances by a number of different people to extent to which they've increased their salary by working for a large number of members it just seems a little strange to me simply i suppose because we don't use an outside when we do it all and then our office and i just wonder about the economy overall to our institution house representatives to using this many people who are apparently earning quite a bit more money than they would if they work for the house of representatives this all comes apart of course because we run this institution as if we have four hundred thirty five independent business people and they are too free to hire or fire whoever they wish but there are clearly when you're dealing with money and a with information technology because of the possibility of leakage of information we're dealing with some pretty serious stuff here and just like your opinion on should should we have some method of screening outside employees rather than saying a member can go out and hire an employee should there be a training for for these employees so they understand the house rules and the law and i employees specifically in the house rules and in the laws dealing with the house so that they understand those i don't think any of the you know if you read your report it doesn't look like anyone is trying to break the law or trying to violate house rules but i suspect they didn't even know that they were and appreciate your comment on how you think we should address this problem should we have different employment practices should we have different training practices  s should we evaluate whether or not we really need trained shared in place appreciate your comments and all those issues i think there's definitely opportunity to tighten up the controls and part of that would be getting the appropriate training and sharing of the constraints on the run and i think the guidelines will go a long way to be unable to form a shared employees as to what the expectations are what the limits are and how they are to post expected to carry out their responsibilities we also looked at options their models out there in other areas where you could have a certification program for instance or a financial administrator where you're expecting them to demonstrate a certain level of competence and then you could periodic have them retested or require certain continuing education along the way just to ensure that they're staying current at the beginning of each congress probably have a session where you go over the rules with them and make sure that they are fully informed of what the expectation and how they can go about doing that in a very helpful way and same on the side there's  various training options but a lot of it is just being aware of some controls that could fairly easy to execute and put in place even in terms of having if you're going to have a shared administrator making sure that somebody else in that office has the identified as receiving the appropriate alerts so that should anything be changed or any information altered that there's a higher likelihood that they would know something's going on and would be able to then ask the appropriate questions and in terms of things such as a workshop or ensuring everyone understands the standards you mentioned that perhaps the officers have are old play would you also it we can't we have a problem and we can't guarantee you guarantee to you and the other members of the house that we won't be back here at some top point in the future with a similar problem unless we make substantial changes in the controls training and a number of other items we certify contractors the contractors that we employ maintenance providers we look at those companies we look at their financials we look at their training we look at their technical bill they then provide the maintenance they're the maintenance provider to the individual offices we do nothing like that for system administrators we're assuming that the system administrator is an employee they're not employed there or a vendor really i mean they're not employed so they so they are providing a system administrator service and we have no controls over certification or anything else now they have a they have a fallback position which is if they can't solve a problem they come to us and we have to solve it and which is a pretty good deal if you're working as a vendor there so we certify contractors we have our contract office pay close attention to each one of the maintenance providers and make sure that there are no changes along the way the other thing that's important for members to understand and this is what i would stress mr chairman at the orientation the most sensitive information you have is contained in your computer system and in your financial records and yet we have employees who have access to that information in one case up to twenty eight offices that could access any mission impossible room i can't go in unless they get two people to allow them in there they're there we have we monitor their keystrokes we have we film it who's in there what they did and everything else and that's because we want to be overly cautious and sensitive with the records and information the individual members the the other important thing to remember is the security of our computer system is only as secure as the weakest link we have so if we have a weak system administrator in an office somewhere it places all of us the whole house from the leadership on down of the special employees that we have now heard from my experience with them working with them even though we don't have on our office but also in talking to members who had them they when high praise for the way they manage t finances in the office i have not had contact with any dealing with but certainly in financial affairs they went high praise from the people employing them were not saying look this is a inappropriate activity is that a correct statement that is correct and i know i know you said i just wanted on the record as i read the report i want to make it clear again it's been stated a couple times we're talking about a specific segment of shared employees not all sh participated in one of the coppers is taking one of those employees four months here a month and that's not a problem i also see a value to it in certain instances particularly between the caucuses and i know that there are other ways to do what they have been other ways have been done in the past and don't know what what you can get and so you have options and sounds to me like we have some potential option on the table with some discussion to be had and i for one look forward to doing it but i want to make it clear that from my perspective and what i've heard you controls which any normal business runs into any day of the week i know in my in my campaign i guess i can talk about it i have my treasury doing one thing and have somebody else balancing the books not for any reason just it doesn't mean somebody can steal something it just means that if they do i can catch more quickly and i think you can't stop people from breaking the law but you can certainly make it a little bit easier to catch i look forward to working with you to make the system that will both work financially will work w i thought the question was was to the state of the financial fraud that i discussed with the testimony ok i just want to get that clear because there are violations of current house rules are there any possible any cases you ultimately there wouldn't be any savings really occurring because i doubt if members are going to give up their m r i s i happen to think sharon employees serve a useful purpose of a member knows how to use them and in some cases  if i were running my office as my off i might think that a shared employer would be more responsive to me than someone who is not an employee and so i think there's some reasons why members would prefer to continue to have shared employees and actually it works in an efficient way for members if a member pays a partial amount of the salary of a shared employee and does and that share an employee does the job they need then what concern should that member have that other members are receiving similar service and as a result of similar service being achieved the employee makes more than they would if they just worked for me i mean i don't see what the problem is with that so long as they're not getting more than the maximum allowed and so long as it's all above board aside i just want to make that clear the savings that some are suggesting may not actually occur if you don't have a proportional munition in the m r one of things i think that is clear from your report mr colonel is that both members and shared employees didn't know what all the rules were that's correct and it would seem to me one of very first things we should do is to follow your recommendation mr barrett has said that he would certainly do that to come up with some sort of guide or brochure or some written material that would do that and i think you both agreed on that secondly doesn't it seem to make sense that in addition to that we have a mandatory orientation or what you want to call a seminar for both members and shared i would also have an additional suggestion which would be because shared employees are a little different than an employee that you have full time i would suggest that at the time a shared employee is employed that  regard i don't see any problem that since we're talking about suggestions there is another solution we keep talking as if these functions have to be performed by an employee and in fact they don't many small businesses contract out bookkeeping services to corporations and they contract out i t services if you allowed these services to be contracted out in some fashion as we do with used some of these financial shared employees they get more than bookkeeping many of them have experience and how you project forward what your budget is going to be how you have to figure out bonuses if you're going to give bonuses to  use the word bonuses but if you're going to utilize your m r i and you want to make sure that you give staff the amount that you can give them pro rated over certain months i mean there are some enter prissy's of house rules that are different than what you find in just an outside bookkeeping operation and so sometimes that guidance and that working is more than just sitting down and working with them figure out how you're doing not just on a static analysis the beginning of the year but as you go along because i've told my staff once we set the rule that if we spend one dollar over what the m r a is i pay for it and they better make darn sure we're not a dollar over  and that that tends to focus the mind  are there with the recommendation you suggested mr canal that on a periodic basis mr beard's operation would give us reports with respect to the number of  employers that are shared employee has is there anything else that a member of as a share an employee ought to know that mr beard's office would would help them with if they if we do go through a lot of where you have a periodic certification or required training he would also be able to track that and provide you that information as well as and not just the number of offices but there may be what you would consider in compatibility based upon some of the other customers that way you could say well i'm not really comfortable with having you do my work if you're doing the work in this other and part of the written material that we would have been part of the seminar it seemed to me would be to stress the confidentiality for each office because that's something i would have thought would just be accepted as a matter of course but now that you've pointed these things out it seems to me that's something we need to say and repeat both for the member information prior to you as well you just mentioned about contracting out and i'm curious because they're the same concerns that we've had and the issue of caps and how  employees some shared employees actually want to be businesses as opposed to right and they can make more money that way right now they're limited to a salary of one hundred sixty three thousand and their controls on what additional income that they can they can earn they do get the advantage of having government health care and retirement number of other things but the employees and their kind of stuck if they want to become a business and actually operate like a business you wouldn't have the the limit in that case but the internal controls ir records their qualifications and we monitor them on a regular basis through our contracting office in our contract procurement office and so as a result we have a greater set of controls over contractors that we do employ the problem that we had that somebody was working in a number of different offices or putting in you don't think that it's not possible for someone to having changed the name of the company somewhere this but we we have situations where we could have vendors that have multiple employees with access for one access point which presents a certain amount of risk because you may not know you said you know people do get benefits but is there a point at which you know it would be difficult to find really could people to work here in the capital under those circumstances but it you see that is a problem is that i don't  as a general rule shared employees make about twice what employees make for the same functions and activities so the house itself is providing is paying the members themselves a pain that that that delta if you will ok and obviously we're looking at people at a high enough level that they can you know work quickly and move in and out of a number of different offices and they're doing that today i'm not sure that i don't think we're putting restraints that i'm just wanting to see that over time you think that those people are still going to be available i think we can still be competitive in a marketplace or sours have been going up as we work to attract and retain employees and there are other benefits to be working for the federal government or for the house our benefit package is better and i hope we'll get much better over time thank you thank you  information people don't know the rules and so some people are going to be on the rules here a couple different ideas on proposals contracting out but then you have the fear of the information security mr baird brought up doing it in house in your shop now with all due respect i would have concern with that in the past your position was always a bipartisan  now it's a partisan appointee so i would then see i would probably not be the only one with that concern so the majority would get an advantage because if they want to your shop there are m r a's are the same so they don't have to pay for it so the members would on the minority site then i find the whole idea of shared employees i'm very positive about that you've got experience you're getting something at a lower dollar cost in reality because you're only paying a certain but they're working for a number of others so you get more perspective there but you've got limits on how high they can go so that brings some of the rules changes what i what i think from a couple different perspectives here i think the members would like to have options if there's a way that you can keep the shared employee but you don't hit on a limit that we look at so you can keep a perspective of knowing the rules but you also then we wouldn't have  i don't know how you do the terminology but if you don't have to do the health care benefits and the others it's somewhat of contracting out but you keeping security inside i don't know how we make that together and then i don't know how we go about doing something in a bipartisan manner at the ca's those office as well is there any other options that are not out there that haven't been talked about yet mr cornell i'm not aware of others but i'm sure there could be some innovative approaches that we have not discovered  think what you have are several very good options and then reply that you could give members several different ways of which they could choose to go any other ideas you see mr baird i think throwing out that other idea wasn't such a good no i you know when we read the report we talked about it internally and we concluded that the suggested approach is the recommendations made in a report where the best ways that we could quickly fix the present system for the short and the long term here over the next six to nine months certainly and if the committee wants to move in a different direction are a different set of recommendations it would probably be something that we would have to institute a nine hundred eleven three hundred twelve congress will take a wild figured out and we studied in a matrix of seeing what technology is today based upon what it was in the past being what the m r a is today and the makeup of an office i always see within government that we are the last to modernize when it comes to technology and everywhere else because it's not driven by the free market within their head we analyze the makeup of the office itself and maybe even the m r a of being able to do something in that manner as well i'm not aware of anything on that side of things i think there has been a change in many of the physical aspects associated office mr ailes for example doesn't have in a filing cabinet you don't need filing cabinets anymore there's a technology available to do that but in terms of sitting down and trying to figure out the office of the twenty first century are eighteen employees sufficient for members should we have more should we have less should we have greater flexibility i'm at least the time i've been here we haven't had any of those kind of discussions i think would be useful i think to be very productive i'm one that started in  interning in congress and we used to have carbon paper the pink sheets and the little and all the names of the cards and the days well you got much more information at your fingertips by not having those file cabinets and others in the makeup of the offices where you'd look at what office you want by the number of file cabinet you had you don't need that but with the movement of technology we've actually talked about saving money in the long run maybe even having less employees being able to be more efficient and do more so i do appreciate the chairman having this hearing i just look at some of the recommendations i don't see the answer right out there for one i do believe we need greater education but i don't think going to the c e o is as an answer because i will tell you personally i won't go there because it's a comfort level that became a partisan appointee so there's then that becomes an advantage then i have to spend my m r i and doing something that the majority would not be that have a greater comfort to do and so i think there's other options that we can look at it may be discussed in the future but i yield back individual that's my opinion and i understand we disagree but i want to make it clear that i do disagree with the fact that the c e o in your opinion would yield for one second and let me clarify my statement as i came to this body i listened on the floor because one our first move was the c e o s office and i listened on your side to mr hoyer mr hoyer told the story of how the c e o come to came to fruition and how you used to have a committee made up of two democrats two republicans regardless of what the makeup was in the majority here and they would interview and he was part of this time and time again and they went through they interviewed somebody and they selected reclaiming my design oh that's if that's the case we're going to talk about this committee but just because somebody says what may or may not have happened in the past that's all well and good but i'm more interested in the current no more interest in the future and as far as i'm concerned in the current situation we have a bipartisan office of the cia oh there's no history there's no indication that i'm aware may have done everything that they are planning and doing is done in a partisan basis that i'm aware of and if you think that i think you should bring it to the attention of the chairman if i could just clarify a statement one thing i'm saying here and live listening to what i was did while they were in office they did things in that office weren't even told the minority and i believe that's kind of discussion maybe we should have the public eye but i can repeat them point by point what was not told to the minority by the past my hope and my presumption is that is not happening now and if it is i will do everything i got and i'm sure the channel will to rectify that the idea is to have somebody there regardless of how they are appointed who will play fair on a day to day basis and treat us as individual members as opposed to partisan mem and again if that's not happening well you should bring it to the attention of the chairman bringing to the attention this committee and we'll address it because i think on a repeated basis i think this committee of us fires work very well on a bipartisan basis we have differences of philosophies and that's fine but i haven't noticed we came to by part and every every single motion was in there was unanimous right you and i work on a lot of different committees within here and i feel that we work towards in that manner but what you're telling me is also what i feel is making my point if you felt comfortable i'm suggesting that if you're going to say something is partisan or bipartisan it is too partisan that you need to come up with specific ideas or specific concept of what has acted what actions have been taken and i'm not suggesting this is the place of the form that's up to you why would i over time i would like i suggest i'm asking as a member of this committee to work together on other things and i'd like to know if you if you think you're being treated unfairly not just by the c e o but by anybody else now again that's philosophical differences we all understand that  on these things this is philosophical i agree and i think the way we work here isn't ethical if you want an example i would say you go back to the when the c e o goes forward it's a bipartisan regardless of who's in the majority and equal bases will first going around for a few years and when the interview it so i think this is improvement but the other the last thing i want to say is i want to make it clear that relative to shoot employees that if the if the idea is to get to the free marketplace which i have no problem with the free marketplace also requires a level the level playing field means the same rules the same cost the same benefits now correct me if i'm wrong but an employee of the house gets health insurance that is not does not come out of our m contractor has to pay for their own health insurance which is significant amount of money a contractor has to pay for their own pension benefits a contractor has to pay for their own payroll taxes just off the top of my head and then maybe other benefits as well and i'm not suggesting i'm simply saying that if we're going to returns for those costs and if we're going to say we're going to have somebody doing something that's not a technical full time employee fine but let's level the playing field if you want to go outside fine go to a contractor who has the same cost the same overhead as everybody else as opposed to somebody who has a significant benefit which means no health insurance costs no retirement costs and no payroll tax cost those a major cost in the private world and i'm simply saying that these people have a significant benefit if we want to do that we need to be conscientious of it and evident that it was for somebody not the same parted i was with and he gave us service and that's the way i would expect him to no matter who would be so if you do have an ionic on the stand from past experience because i have a lot of issues of past experiences but i like to try to accept and i do support the report a recommendation that you make absolutely that's why we need to be here you know we need education i need education i'm a month i told you that i didn't get an education when i got first came to congress due to shared employees  educated absolutely asked why we're having this this year and we want to eliminate them no we want to make sure that they don't abuse the process on any other way possible with your cooperation the best thing i've heard here is and the thing that i'd like to hear is both of you are cooperating a beer to testifying in front of we need to listen we need to implement them there are some things that could be implemented by the by mr baird that could do we could do tomorrow what he thinks is right and what you think and you think and you think you think are right we will try to get that done we need to protect those was quite partisan i believe the other one was not really tried to be fair to everyone but in the perception of the recipient of the services or lack of services but i think the main point here and make sure that we solve this problem and that there is no doubt in our mind or the public's mind that people working here are following the rules of the house they're following the laws of the united states government and they're getting the job done efficiently