good morning the overisght committee will come to order today we meet to consider a number of bills house resolution six hundred and sixty five the excess federal building and property disposal act of two thousand and eleven seventy three the unfunded mandates information and transparency act of two thousand and eleven but before we consider these bills i want to open a colloquy with my friend from maryland over the most important bill which we are not considering today this committee has exclusive jurisdiction over the district of columbia as its authorization and oversight committee we take that seriously on a bipartisan basis we have been working for a number of months to come up with a budget reform procedure that will allow the district of columbia to enjoy effectively the autonomy that every other city in america enjoys we had planned to mark up a bill here today but after discussions with the ranking member with the mayor the head of city council and individuals on both sides we find that there are still issues that need to be resolved in order to get a lasting way for the district of columbia to control its own budget as chair i remain committed that we will accomplish that the district of columbia has had reasonable autonomy for a long time in most areas the clear exception has been in preparing well in advance to spend its own money i will note today the presence of a great many young faces some of them school age schools are the most important part of any citys budget and the district of columbia cannot make its plans independent of the appropriations process to that end we will attempt to find solutions for the limited amount of additional problems so that we can bring that bill to the floor at the next markup failing to do so will not mean that we will give up on the bill we will continue to be dedicated to this piece of legislation until it becomes law i now recognize the gentleman from maryland for mister cummings thank you very much mister chairman let me start by thanking you for proposing legislation that would substantially expand the ability of the district of columbia to govern itself as a division by the d c home rule act this spring the district government was pushed to the brink of shutdown because congress was unable to finalize the federal governments own fiscal year two thousand and eleven spending measures additionally the repeated adoption by congress of temporary stopgap continuing resolutions has created serious challenges for the district of columbia no locality should be forced to operate under such uncertainty which is why it is so critical for the district to be able to enact its own budget i believe that the legislation is a result of a good faith effort to give the district the enhanced autonomy it so rightfully deserves over its own locally generated funds i therefore deeply regret that i must opposed the proposed legislation in its current form while the draft bill significantly reduces federal interference in the district of columbia s local budget making process it adjusts the districts fiscal year so that it begins in july and ends in june the measure also permanently strips the authority of the district to make its own decisions about how to use its own funds specifically the proposed bill would permanently eliminate the ability of the district to use locally generated funds to pay for abortions for low income women i strongly oppose this it out of the house without this provision in it he may be correct in that assumption however it is grossly unfair and indeed unnecessary to tie this controversial social rider to legislation that should be focused on expanding self governance for the district and its residents as mayor vincent gray city council chairman kwame brown and the distinguished gentlelady of this committee congresswoman eleanor holmes norton have already made clear  anti abortion provision amounts to a poison pill that does not reflect the will of the d c residents as the duly elected leaders of the city i defer to their judgment and support their opposition to the inclusion in this legislation of came during a hearing that was called a rare hearing for this committee on the citys budget rare because the budget hearing of course usually takes place in the appropriations committee but of course the authorizers have jurisdiction to discuss and act on certain budget issues as well the chairman listened to the witnesses the minority and the majority witnesses and i think that he along with many members were interested in that testimony the testimony essentially said that at a time when many state and local budgets and finances are in disarray the districts budget seemed outstanding compared to many of those and the witnesses testified that  inefficiencies tended to come because of the dual process that the budget had to come to the congress that the district paid a premium in wall street because of this dual process  that many inefficiencies go back to the local government because of this process the chairman then said that he thought he would like to work with the city on make the chairmans ideas essentially operational within the context of the way the local government operates i want to say mister chairman that your proposal came close to my own budget autonomy bill bearing in mind as you must the prerogatives of the house local funds would have become effective in a new fiscal year the same fiscal year that every member of this house extraordinary in its scope and in its deference and understanding of the city taking into account as the chairman had to what the house would require so while it wasnt exactly my bill it came so didnt come forward and quickly say that because of a part of the bill that they knew we opposed that we didnt want to talk about this bill on the contrary when a chairman of either party listens to the district of columbia the way chairman issa listened to his own witnesses and to the witnesses of the city comes forward with a plan even if that plan is not your perfect plan the very least it seemed to us that we owed the chairman of this committee was to seriously do our due diligence to look at this proposal and i am glad we did because when we looked at the proposal ourselves when we combed it as thoroughly as we could bearing in mind that involved our most vulnerable citizens our low income women but because it would be the first permanent rider in the history of home rule we were quite aware that this was not an idea that the chairman authored and we were understanding of his practical sense in wanting to get the bill done we believe as well however that there would be others perhaps i regret to say some in this committee who might believe that they ought to also offer riders should the bill move forward at this time so after a great deal of  discussion among the leaders in the city we decided that we could not accept the bill at this time but we had to do all we could to make our own constituents and to make the chairman understand that he had taken a mighty leap forward toward exactly what the city has been trying to achieve ever since the home rule act was passed i had some conversations with the chairman yesterday and indicated to him as we did in our statement that this was such an important step were it to be made by a member of either party  certainly hope that we would continue this conversation in the spirit in which he has started mister chairman i think that what this process has told it seems to me the public and us is it was something of a civic lesson in how the committee operates at their best ideas thrown out here the other side is not sure where they want to go on that idea then it and after that there are discussions and decisions and nobody goes away mad in fact i want to say to you mister chairman that we went away very glad and very happy that you had made what we regarded as a historic step forward for independence for the budget of the district of columbia the local budget raised by the citizens of the district of columbia again i want to thank you on behalf of not only myself as a member of this committee but the city member who i look to but on the district of columbia i have two ranking members to look to in closing it became apparent as you said and alluded to both directly and indirectly there were lots of other potential riders i believe we could have gotten past the hyde amendment in a way that would have been mutually beneficial but the lack of knowing all the other riders puts us in an unusual position that going forward with the markup and trying to fix at that time could have been a fools journey so i am on record today that if people have riders on either side within this committee or within other committees that we look forward to seeing those hearing those including them in the bill and then pre conferencing them in a way to make sure that they are not overly onerous tribe the district and we will go forward based on the assumption that all parties have had an opportunity to weigh in on what they believe they have some right to dictate to the city but my intention is to make sure that once we agree within this committee the committee of jurisdiction that we not be i dont want to say bushwhacked because that would be a bad word but surprised unfairly and i am reaching out to all the chairmen i know you will be reaching out to the ranking members to make sure that if they have got something lets know about it i dont want to have some hypothetical that comes up on the house floor  therefore the next markup will probably be nearly exclusively on this bill if it is not in december then i will tell you we will have subsequently hearing to vett all of these because i will keep the light on this issue until we have a law i thank all of you for your comments at this time the committee will now consider house resolution six hundred and sixty five the excess federal building and property disposal act of two thousand and eleven without objection i discharge the subcommittee on government organization efficiency and financial management from considering further h r six hundred and sixty five the chair will now open the bill house resolution six hundred and sixty five for consideration without objection h r six hundred and sixty five will be considered as read and open for amendment at any point the text has already been distributed and is in each of your folders the clerk will designate the bill thousand excess properties and spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually maintaining that property by any other measure the federal government has over forty five thousand properties that the government accountability office reports are under utilized this bill is bipartisan well reasoned well vetted and has in fact the support of the chair and the ranking member we intend to ensure that  jurisdiction over this type of property disposal be maintained and to ensure that the executive branch begins the process in earnest of being able to liquidate this property with a g estimate to save the taxpayers over one dollar fifty cents billion per year regrettably current law does not provide an incentive for agencies to dispose of unneeded assets in may the president announced a plan to reduce the number of surplus government properties through a brac like commission while the presidents goals are commendable we are concerned that the approach that he has proposed would be costly  request earlier this year the congressional budget office reviewed president obamas proposal in july the cbo testified before this committee regarding the presidents proposal and stated that the presidents proposal would increase direct spending over ten years while also increasing discretionary spending by as much as four hundred and twenty dollars million over the next five years making sure the american people get to the presidents goal at the earliest possible time and to ensure that we use space as efficiently and inexpensively as possible i am pleased to support a bill that mister chaffetz and mister quigley both members of the committee have worked on together worked out many details and reached a consensus that i believe the entire committee will favorably report today this is not to diminish the need for the support of the administration without obamas willingness to take up an issue to admit at an executive level that there are vast amounts of excess and under used property we would not be in a position today to move this bill so i want to thank all those involved including my ranking through the years our committee has led the effort to address the deficiencies that currently exist in real property management and we have worked to find bipartisan solutions to these very difficult issues today i believe that we have found a bipartisan solution in the issa i thank the gentleman i will hold open the record until the end of the day for any member who would like to make opening statements i now recognize mister quigley i understand you have an amendment in the form of a substitute on this federal property disposal bill and serving as co sponsor there could not be a better time to move a measure like this one through the congress we are facing an unsustainable budget deficit and must get our fiscal house in order one of the best ways to achieve much needed reductions in spending is to create efficiencies and cut waste that is exactly what this bipartisan measure accomplishes the federal government is the largest property owner in the world with an inventory of over nine hundred thousand buildings and structures and forty one million acres of land we waste billions of dollars each year maintaining properties we no longer need the federal government currently maintains fourteen thousand buildings and structures deemed excess and over seventy six thousand properties identified as under utilized in fiscal year two thousand and nine the under utilized buildings cost us one dollar seventy cents billion to operate annually and we spend hundreds of millions more on buildings we simply dont need the gao has continuously found that many properties are no longer relevant to their agencies missions and their agencies could do a better job of identifying and disposing of unneeded properties so why are we paying billions to sit on thousands of unneeded properties all these problems  addressed by this amendment the amendment addresses three major hurdles to disposing of thousands of unneeded federal properties and generate much needed revenue first administrative burdens agencies are often deterred from disposing of unneeded property due to a to expeditiously dispose of fifteen high value unneeded properties importantly this property also sets aside two percent of the proceeds from the sale of these properties for homeless assistance grants second budgetary disincentives currently agencies avoid disposing of excess property because of high up front cost of disposal paying for environmental cleanup can cost millions this amendment would allow all agencies to retain the proceeds from the disposition of property and use those funds as authorized by congress to maintain repair and dispose of other excess properties any funds not used to repair and dispose of property will be paid back to the treasury for reduction the third and final obstacle is the lack of transparency and oversight of federal property all federal property information is currently maintained in an extensive database managed by gsa but this information is not available to the public federal workers or most congressional staff our amendment would require gsa to submit an annual report to congress that includes information on the number value and maintenance costs of all federal properties this information would also be made available to the public at no cost on an online database the transparency the amendment will provide is absolutely imperative because as things stand today we are flying blind let me give you one example when i learned about all these valuable excess properties my staff decided to go take a look at a few of them in my home state of illinois we visited a property that was reportedly worth over eight dollars million and costs over eighty thousand dollars per year to maintain the usda database said the property was in excellent condition but the reality was quite different the eight dollars million storage facility was in shambles complete with peeling paint and deteriorated siding the exterior overtaken by vegetation and the interior looted by vandals so it was with scores of other buildings on the site what the usda spreadsheet represented as in excellent shape and receiving thousands annually in maintenance was in fact a dilapidated mess the usda explained that a formula was used to arrive at the estimates for annual maintenance costs and replacement value but that the numbers had no relation to reality clearly there is a serious disconnect between what is on our books and the reality on the ground we cant possibly know what our assets are worth or make a plan to capitalize on them without accurate data without better more transparent data we are flying blind i thank the chair and my colleagues again for their work on this important issue i urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan  appreciate the ranking member and his working together in a bipartisan way i particularly want to thank mister quigley who has taken a keen interest and done a great deal of work on this i am recommending to the committee that we accept his amendment as offered i think it improves the bill and it will truly move us in the right direction i would also like to remind my colleagues that the federal government is the largest single holder of real property in the united states with more than nine hundred thousand buildings and structures and the gao estimates that the federal testified before a senate subcommittee that the government controls even more than fourteen thousand excess buildings and structures and seventy six zero under utilized properties the federal government has accumulated excess percent would be directed to the u s treasury general fund the other two percent would be used to fund a grant program for the homeless the bill would also overhaul the current disposal process by reducing the administrative overhead creating new agency incentives and requiring greater transparency an accountability from the property disposal apparatus the bill is bipartisan it generates revenue it reduces operational budget maintenance addresses the concern of third parties such as the homeless i would urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this  lands as a result the gao has placed this issue in its high risk list unneeded and under utilized buildings are languishing in the federal inventory when their sale could generate much needed revenue for the national treasury to help solve the problem this amendment combines the best elements of these legislative proposals and creates a timely and workable method of disposing of excess federal property while generating the highest possible financial returns the amendment would establish a five year significant savings by eliminating maintenance and operating costs i also support this amendment because it will provide aid to organizations dedicated to helping the most vulnerable among us the homeless the amendment requires that two percent of the proceeds of the and i both shared a concern that there could be one unintended consequence which was to preclude state and local governments from fairly bidding on excess property when there could be a good public use you may recall mis predecessor and mine helped negotiate a great deal with the former federal lorton prison in lorton fairfax virginia and that is a great example of how a local government partnering with the federal government was able to take advantage of what was then excess property the federal government benefitted by not having to incur the maintenance cost on a recurring basis for preserving over three hundred buildings on that two five hundred acre site part of the site was allowed to be developed the rest of it was preserved as recreational space or actually as a museum and an art center for public purposes it was a great boon frankly  community and allowed enormous economic expansion around the site by taking away the stigma of the prison while the site itself the two thousand acres were preserved and not developed so i just wanted to make sure that we didnt preclude another mechanism that we would have to set up and we would run into scoring problems and that bill has not moved i have been thinking for a long time why dont we just use the existing together to take on this accumulating property and you have got an incentive in the bill twenty percent for the agencies that are holding on to the property they get some of the proceeds on the property you have dealt with the homeless which and does it in a pilot way so that i take it mister chairman that would mean that we wouldnt have fire sales of property that we would look at the property to see if this is a good time to sell the property to see if there was any other government use for the property so we wouldnt sell a property and then go out and now have to lease property and the pilot notion it seems to me does take that into account so i think it is a very intelligent way to handle the  issa first of all i think the brilliance of this bill is that it preserves do some good disposal come back and report and look at it additionally as to the other legislation that i  know your other committee has marked up we were prepared to mark it up here today the parties felt that with the likely changes that would occur here they would rather negotiate further to try to have bipartisan amendments and we offered them time to do so so it is still the intention for us as a sequential referral to mark up that bill when the parties have reached a bipartisan agreement that could create competing bills we have no problem with good competition here but this bill was ripe it was well support and we believe in its current form as it leaves this committee it is prepared to become law so that is why it is here today ms norton if i could reclaim my time for just another minute mister chairman  i think this approach is more likely to pass both houses and if we are serious about disposing of property i believe that the senate is working on a comb down approach that to a commission would seem to favor the other bill but i believe the bill that we have before us today keeps the instance of the presidents proposal and then does it within an existing system we believe has the shortest distance to success without objection i did discharge the subcommittee on health care district of columbia census and national archives from further consideration of house resolution three thousand and seventy one we will now open the bill house resolution three  chapter twenty two of title forty four united states code popularly known as the presidential records act to establish procedures for the consideration of claims of constitutionally based privilege against disclosure of presidential records chairman issa i recognize myself for the purpose of offering an amendment in the nature of a substitute and i ask the clerk to distribute the amendment without objection the amendment will be considered as read and as the original text for purposes of amendment i now recognize myself for an opening statement the amendment in the nature of a substitute incorporates the full text of h r three thousand and seventy one the bill was introduced by mister towns in september and codifies the existing executive order that allows former presidents to appeal to an incumbent president to keep certain presidential documents privileged under the presidential records act this puts into statute a process instituted by president and eighty nine restored by president obama in two thousand and nine and used without controversy by four of the last five presidents many on this committee myself include want to always have the maximum level of transparency but as we know presidents of one party to another often see the wisdom in an extension for a period of time particularly when those documents would be so redacted as to be useless or it is appropriate to retain some level of cumulative secrets for the benefit of the current administration there is no evidence that this privilege has ever been wrongfully used or that the eventual discovery does not occur it does allow federal agencies to turn over records to the national archives on a regular basis without sacrificing legal custody for the documents this means they need not self store the documents for thirty years the process which almost guarantees some information will be lost and a great excess cost will be born eliminates the so called print to file rule which actually encourages agencies to print out their electronic files and send paper to the national archives as all of us know we are not a paperless society but we certainly do not want to be a paper producing government ultimately we want to have all of the presidential records in electronic files and available through redundant storage to be never lost or damaged whether by legislation and it passed the house by an overwhelming margin of three hundred and fifty nine to fifty eight during this congress i have joined mister towns and every democratic member of the committee in reintroducing this legislation because we all believe that we need to improve together on this legislation as well as the effort your staff put forth in crafting this amendment this amendment incorporates the language of the electronic message preservation act that legislation is part of the transparency and open government act that i along with every democratic member of this committee introduced in march the electronic message preservation act will ensure that white house and agency email records will be preserved currently agencies are not required to preserve emails electronically in fact some agencies literally print out emails and throw them in boxes under this amendment federal agencies and the white house will be required to adopt and maintain modern records management and retention policies with the additions made amendment of two thousand and eleven and the amendment in the nature of a substitute offered by chairman issa let me thank you chairman issa for your assistance and for the assistance of your staff with the language of this bill we have shared a strong bipartisan appreciation for the importance of this bill over the course of many congresses i appreciate your cooperation in helping it to move this bill forward the will allow historians to tell a complete story about presidential administrations the bill sets strict deadlines for the president and former president to review records before they are released to the public the bill also makes clear that only presidents and former presidents can assert privilege over presidential records this means that the right to assert executive privilege is personal to current and former presidents and cannot be bequeathed to assistants relatives or descendants as public servants it is important that we maintain our roles as stewards of our nations great history the records of a president pain an important picture of an administration as well as the time that surrounds it most importantly these records belong to the people and this bill is a very simple amendment to improve the legislation this amendment is putting an end to the all too common practice of the executive office of the president employees using personal email instant messaging and other similar accounts to engage in official federal business this i think is an important addition to this legislation when the presidential records act became law in one thousand nine hundred and seventy eight it was to ensure all presidential documents were captured stored and reviewed by the national archives with an eye towards preservation i think it is a very important thing regardless of the administration i think it is important that we do this now and this would  y one of the great concerns that has been raised on a bipartisan basis democrats raise it when there is a republican in the white house republicans raise it when there is a democrat in the white  i have some questions about this as well let me say that i support the overall goal of clarity for executive branch employees but since we just got this  amendment i have some concerns when you just get something i would like to be able to look at it a little further and study it and see in terms of what we are really really doing here for example i am trying to understand how this amendment applies to communications covered by both the presidential records act and the hatch act and let me give you an example suppose the president lets use president george bush wanted to give house what if the president asked the head of this office to review his speech for accuracy in terms of what that office accomplished under this amendment if i understand it use an outside email account either what happens in a situation like this how would your amendment handle this let me say that i really want to work with you but i would hope that this is constructed in such a way that the obama white house could keep their political accounts that is not a personal account there has been a history created from the clinton white house through the bush white house and now to the obama white house on the protocols and the proper channels for individuals within the executive branch that are doing that political scheduling that you are discussing that has been established we actually have nearly two decades of establishment of that process and it is a limited number of folks within the executive branch what this is very narrowly constructed to prevent is for somebody to use their gmail account in order to schedule perhaps political meetings or something they dont want to be part of their official email exchange that  maybe we need to hold up on this for example the amendment prohibits some white house employees from using non official electronic messaging account programs or systems to communicate for official purposes it is unclear  sponsor of the amendment how this would impact the ability of white house employees to post official electronic messages on non official systems such as twitter and facebook as technology and our use of it evolves i am sure that we all want to ensure that the white house is able to use the latest technology systems to communicate its official messages additionally this amendment uses some terms that are not defined in the pra such as  considered presidential records under the pra or is it meant to refer to some other types of communications by the way i look forward to your answer but these are the kinds of things that i think we need to see if we can work out i mean house so this amendment is crafted in such a way that is permitted now what would not be permissible is for an individual to use a gmail account or a yahoo account or whatever different type of form that they use for their personal email account they would not be able to use that in order to transact business i mean it is a very simple prohibition this is not very complex to be honest about it on this committee we have had in my seven years on this committee we have discussed it every year have been here this is not a new issue in fact chairman waxman raised this issue during the bush administration the fact is under the bush administration you were not permitted to use a personal email account from a computer in the white house they had a firewall preventing that i was aware because i was friends with a number of staff during that administration and they thought that was difficult for them because they couldnt email somebody to go to lunch sitting at their desk but unfortunately with suggest here is i suspect that when this particular amendment comes up for a vote there will be a recorded vote if during the intervening time before we conclude today there can be some sort of an agreement on an amendment to that amendment i certainly would hold the bill open we would do it if not then i would ask the former chairman if he would want to have his bill moved to the next markup which we expect to have in about two weeks we will have a markup in december but that would be your decision and maybe it would be a good one i ask unanimous consent for an additional minute i the gentleman would continue yielding i believe that this committee is dedicated and i know that the author of the bill is dedicated that we have seen and i am going to use the word abuse in the loosest sense of the word i am not intending to disparage but inconsistencies under both the bush administration chairman waxman  chairman towns and under the obama administration where the rules are not clear and that lack of clarity as to what an ipad in the white house is or what a account is and how it can or cant be used in spite of the bush administration and the obama administration having guidelines so i do think this is a worthwhile amendment to seek but i also think that mister towns is correct that we want to get it right we dont want to have that so if we can go through that sort of a procedure the amendment will be pending a vote i am hoping that staff can get to it i have my doubts but then ultimately i think it would be the  degree amendment that i am proposing would create an exception to the prohibition in mister mchenrys amendment against the use of non official email accounts to allow the use of those accounts in instances when official email accounts are inaccessible it would also clarify that the prohibition applies to the creation or sending of presidential records a type of record that is specifically defined within the pra many white house employees and certainly the president and vice president have demanding would be appropriate to permit them to use an unofficial device or account additionally the white house has experienced outages in email service it doesnt make sense for the white house to have to close for business just because a serv down that said i know that under the presidential records act any presidential record created in such a circumstance would still have to be preserved my amendment also substitutes the term presidential records for the term communicate for  from an unofficial email account while both of these changes would improve the underlying amendment there are still a number of questions that need to be answered before we adopt any provision with such potentially far reaching consequences as the mchenry amendment this amendment however we have before us a second degree amendment to my amendment that was prepared ahead of time it is not handwritten it is typed out it is thought out apparently i would say that that says to me that you simply dont like the original amendment and this would mean that there was plenty of time to review whether or not our amendment was appropriate in terms of  large way presidential records are not determined by the person who created them they are determined by a process that has been established for almost forty years now  about what is official business and what must be disclosed my amendment simply closes a loophole that is there for republican or democrat administrations now i have restrained from talking about this white house and their policies on email accounts but i can quote henry waxman for a period chairman of this committee too often over the past several years our investigations have revealed weaknesses in government preservation of email that could leave substantial gaps as future historians examine preserved as a vital part of our history in his legislation he outlines and assures that email records are properly preserved that is what this is about this doesnt say that as an individual working for the president you cant have a email account at home it just simply means you cannot transact official business over that email account this closes a loophole i would ask the committee to ways that i can pick out quickly even before my staff grabs it one is that it doesnt define emergency or who would declare that emergency two it doesnt have a reporting requirement of that emergency a private usage occurred and three it doesnt have any determination of how one would then capture as required in the base statute that information for that reason i also will oppose the second degree amendment house has an obligation to have the official business of the white house on emails that are preserved and they need to be preserved whether they are on one account or another it was brought out at this time that and many of us thought that was a breach of presidential records i think what this amendment does is take it out of the partisan realm solidify what is and what is not appropriate with that fixed where we are dealing with clear cut matters there is no problem the problem as we who sit in this house understand is the overlap that in fact there would be some standard since i am not sure who you would go to to find out if you had a question when we have those very same questions here we do have some place to go  lead somebody in the white house who let us say is a staff person to want to ask somebody or to have some standard by which to judge whether or not this falls under official or non official i think that if  point and i would like to make sure that we do get input from the white house between now and the time this bill goes to the floor and i know the author would agree what i would say though not to disagree with the lady but to remind her that the jurisdiction of this legislation is that this belongs to the people so although i think it is important that the administration weigh in with these guidelines if we assume that they can determine what information does or doesnt go to the people then we  i am trying to find is some standard by which a staffer who wants to know as we have a standard at least we have somebody to go to if it is official or non official if this administration has no duty to have each white house has to promulgate its own standards it was you mister mchenry who said that the white house had indeed erected a firewall in a particular situation then there would be some accountability there would be some standard mchenry i certainly appreciate it i believe it is a loophole and furthermore being an internet child i mean i have used the internet and email in most of what i do to communicate right i would say that washington existed and was able to communicate with one another before email it is not the end of the world if you do not have access to email or electronic devices so much as that would upset my nieces and nephews and make them angry that i said they could exist outside of a digital world i think we could exist  concern that you received our amendment yesterday we only received your amendment this morning so in terms of vetting it it is a two way street i certainly understand that your second  myself and i am not trying to in any way harm this president but if it were a republican president you would want us to accept this language it is all a matter of perspective of where we are so if we could work out the language i think that would be a wonderful thing there is no need for us to if we can work out the language for us to even have a vote on it i mean i wouldnt require that i wouldnt request that if we work out something friend from north carolina the underlying amendment from the gentleman from north carolina because let me give you a hypothetical situation a scenario what if during an emergency  all white house servers went down would all communications have to stop or could staff use personal email until official systems are back online with the understanding that what they put on their personal email account would have to be considered official record i dont think the underlying amendment actually explains it white house or the general counsel said use what you have to communicate at that moment this bill and the presidential records act does not state that just because you have paid for an account that it cant be an official account government so as i said earlier when i was commenting on mister cummings second degree amendment one of the challenges if you have a formal out clause and you try to do it is then you have to ask the question the subsequent questions that  ms norton had referred to you would have to have the rules related to how do you capture what do you do what do you designate we believe the simplicity of the amendment as it is is one it has no criminal or civil penalties it allows for a clear understanding that quite frankly if you do official work on another account and it is reported acknowledged et cetera it then becomes an official account even if account a twitter a facebook if you do official work then it is an official account and it is to be captured by the presidential records act it is one of the reasons though i think we are trying to make perfect by over describing the fact that mister towns receives something from a twitter account and it is clearly official but he doesnt know it is an official account he has an expectation that that twitter account or that facebook will be captured under the presidential records act and it would be the the gentleman would yield the term personal probably gives us all trouble but there is no such thing as a government paid for facebook account or a government paid for twitter most of these things are free so when you have something free you simply sign up there is no prohibition my own committee our committee we can have dot com events we can actually post to something that is outside the congress but it doesnt make it any less an official activity so i think the gentlemans attempt to perfect while well meaning begs the whole question of what we are saying in reverse is if anybody uses anything whether it is paid for or not whether it is a free gmail if they in fact do official business it must be captured as official business now if they fail to capture fail to disclose and they using a personal email to do back and forth communication to circumvent the presidential records act then it is a violation that is all we are trying to achieve in this i expect there to be a proliferation of accounts that we do not expect today and the question is are they official because they are paid for by the government no they are official because the president captured them on behalf of the american people mister clay and just to respond to that i am not seeing any evidence of this administration trying communicating with the rnc and other areas what he saw was individuals well subordinated within the white house he believed were engaging in communication that should have been captured if you remember i think he issue subpoena the rnc for that purpose to try to gather it he may or may not have been correct but it is that exact kind of work people who work for the president that we want to make sure capture it i have no doubt that the president and the vice president recognize myself for five minutes and yield to the gentleman from north carolina to answer that question mister mchenry i thank my colleague for asking the question because this is constructed very similar language to the rest of the presidential records act we wanted to be consistent with that that is why we have amended the existing code in the way that we have and it is proper in the nature of the rest of the  for it to be constructed this way furthermore the explanation is very self evident you are not to use a personal account for official business a non official account for official business very basic thing to my colleague from missouris question about what happens if we have this cataclysmic event where a server goes down which apparently i dont know if you all are on verizon but i got the notice today the house network is running slow and i didnt receive email for about two hours i lived i survived i had a nice breakfast i was able to communicate with my staff through carrier pigeon through  you can then use your accounts and cc your official accounts and it would be a presidential record very clearly very easily a presidential record that would be a way to get around that with surety and certainty that what you are doing is permissible and acceptable now what became an issue and the reason why chairman waxman raised the question of the political accounts that the white house  it wasnt a question of whether or not they could have a political account the bush administration used the same protocols that the clinton administration did to provide for that meaning very simply if you were doing that scheduling event that ms norton mentioned and you are communicating about a fund raising event you should not be using under the hatch act there are designated officials that can have that communication on scheduling matters similar to what we have as a matter of house rules that is established all that is done it became an issue when you were using that political account to communicate with others on their official accounts about official business then you are going beyond what chairman waxman thought was permissible and that became a presidential record when you are transacting official business chairman issa i thank the gentleman for answering the question and i reclaim my time reclaiming my the opinion of the chair the noes have it the noes have it the amendment is not agreed to the question now occurs on the amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute offered by the gentleman from north carolina all those in today marks another important step of the committees goal of creating a more transparent and accountable federal government the bill brings long overdue reform to the federal grant making process from  thousand and ten federal outlays for grants increased from one hundred and thirty five dollars billion to more than six hundred dollars billion grants now consume nearly one fifth of the entire federal budget in the opinion of go toward competitive grant programs as opposed to state block grants or formula grants the dramatic increase in federal grant spending has left taxpayer dollars vulnerable to waste fraud mismanagement and abuse identifying and reducing these vulnerabilities in a way in which the administration of grant programs has often give agencies wide latitude on how to chose to distribute grant funds the agencys decision makers may have virtually unilateral and unchecked discretion while grant r agencies often employ some form of competitive or merit based procedures in awarding grants frequently the process is impenetrable and opaque the bill made an award decision that it did such decisions are often unexplained and undocumented making it virtually impossible for the public or an oversight body like ours to determine whether the federal grant award was based purely on merit or whether improper consideration came into play this bill remedies that situation as well i commend mister lankford for introducing this legislation before us today and i recognize the ranking member for his opening statement mister cummings mister chairman i believe this legislation is well intentioned and i agree with its goals as written the legislation would increase transparency in the competitive grants selection process and would make several grant applications the bill would also enable grant applicants to request a debriefing from an agency if their applications are not chosen to receive funding these provisions would help ensure that grant awards are made in a transparent manner and that applicants  clear understanding of the process that said while i am encouraged that the majority has so far worked on this bill in a bipartisan manner i still have some concerns with the legislation as currently written and i wish we had taken the time to line as would be required by the bill competing institutions will gain access to their proprietary information i certainly share the goal of improving the transparency of the grants process but believe we need to accomplish this objective in a way that appropriately protects the work products of researchers who are developing new ideas several members on our side of the aisle plan to offer perfecting amendments that would address this matter as well as a few other concerns i have with the legislation if these amendments are adopted i will support the legislation however if these amendments are not adopted i will reluctantly oppose this bill mister chairman again i support the goals of the bill but it is essential that we get the details right to ensure that the bill is implemented in a way that achieves our share of priorities i would hope that you will continue to work with me and the other members of the committee to improve the bill and i would hope that we will begin that process right now by adopting the amendment to be grant funds are spent the bill focuses primarily on discretionary competitive grants in other words grants through which agencies quite literally transfer tax dollars at their discretion to the projects that the agency deems as deserving the bill ensures that agencies that are authorized to do this have the basic procedures in place to ensure fairness in the process the bill does not prescribe procedures that should be in place but instead leaves that to each agency since each agency knows its programs and authorities best the bill does however set out some basic elements that must be met these procedures are necessary but not sufficient they need to be followed and agencies need to know if they are following them and they will be held accountable accountability and transparency are at the heart of this bill this bill will require agencies to be more open about how they spend taxpayers money when left to their discretion this should not be a controversial idea grant applicants who have invested time and energy in applying for grants to further public purpose have a right to know that they have been treated fairly moreover the public has the right to know that their money is being spent well to that end the bill requires agencies to post to a central government wide website information about upcoming grant opportunities and about the outcome of every grant competition to including the posting of successful grant proposals and the reasons supporting the selection of that successful grant upon completion of the grant the bill requires that the agencies post the final report or results of the grant for the benefit of future research and the american public the bill adds two other measures to improve the grant making process and to promote transparency first the bill requires agencies to screen potential grantees and to make sure they have the necessary financial systems in place and are capable of actually performing the grant there is no entitlement to a discretionary competitive grant screening out grantees that are not capable of carrying out the grant will reduce waste and of funds during the performance of the grant second the bill promotes transparency and open decision making by providing disappointed applicants for grants for those grants that are valued at more than one hundred thousand dollars with an opportunity for a debriefing in which the agency will inform the entity about why it made the decision and how they can then improve the bill is designed to ensure that agencies have a fair and open process in spending grant funds this should help all applicants for grants but particularly for those who may feel that the deck is stacked against them in favor of the big guys grantee for example requiring the publication of a grant solicitation forecast as called for in the bill is designed to also help smaller grantees compete for grants the more time a grantee has to decide if it should prepare a proposal the better chance it will have to successfully compete a smaller entity may have to choose between different projects or uses of limited resources if a prospective grantee has an idea where an agency may be going months in advance he will be in a better position to compete even against the bigger grantee that may not need to make choices about where to focus because it has the resources to quickly put together proposals and then it also relies on its own reputation this bill covers a lot of ground touching every federal agency and grantees or potential grantees involved in a wide range of activities from assisting victims of domestic violence to conducting cutting  research we have attempted to craft the bill in a way that allows all agencies regardless of their mission to implement the measures without undue disruption to their operation at the subcommittee hearing held in june we received testimony from agencies such a have studied grant policy and looked at the need for reform from a broad government wide perspective in developing the bill the committee staff sought the input of numerous agencies including omb darpa nih and the national science foundation the staff also met with representatives of the nations leading university associations who represent the academic and research community we have worked with these groups and will continue to do so to ensure this bill accomplishes its objectives and does not compromise academic freedom or do anything that would dampen the innovative research coming out of our countrys excellent universit the chairman of the subcommittee on which i serve as ranking member and the majority staff as well as minority staff for really collaborating on this legislation as closely as we have unfortunately for us i have to echo the sentiments of the ranking member the clock has just run out the concern we have about the bill has to do with unintended consequences i will have an amendment that would address the one big concern we have heard from the research community and i understand the intent of the gentleman from oklahoma and i am sympathetic with him but i am also concerned about unintended consequences i am concerned about the compromise of intellectual property i am also concerned that with the best of intentions we could end up imposing an unfunded mandate on the recipients of such grants namely universities so i think we have to tread carefully here i believe a little bit more time frankly mister chairman would allow us to have a unanimous vote on this bill and it would be most unfortunate if today in the rush to get it done especially if we are as you suggested perhaps going to have another markup i believe we could use that time wisely and productively to have bipartisan compromise because we are almost there but we do have this one sticking point that i think is not a trivial issue it may be that our concerns could be satisfied it may be that we could still craft language working together that would meet the concerns at least halfway but i think the intent of the legislation is something that we can get behind and i am hopeful mister chairman that you might consider think we can make progress through the amendment process and i know there is at least one amendment that between your amendment and a second degree amendment is going to be mutually acceptable at least i have been informed by our much smarter than us staff that that is the case but secondly without taking exception to the claim that it is an unfunded mandate one of the challenges we have is that when we are giving people money our core responsibility is to ensure that it is well spent so that is one of the challenges where i have sympathy for those who say it is going to cost me more to administer the money you are giving me but i would take exception to calling it truly unfunded when in fact it is money  i want to be very clear everything that i said was in the context of our concern that it could be unintentional nobody is questioning the motivation behind the bill because in fact i think we actually have common ground on the intent as the ranking member changes reflect constructive feedback from stakeholders including universities and federal agencies those changes avoid what could have otherwise been an unintended negative consequences of a well intentioned piece of legislation however given the very rapid pace which this bill has come to the full committee markup there is one major issue that we were not able to resolve in the amendment in the nature of a substitute just yesterday my staff and staff of the committee discussed the legislation with representatives of the national institutes of health the national science foundation add that was reiterated by the university community as well in our feedback and replace the requirement that we post full grant applications with a requirement that grant abstracts be posted instead the purpose of posting either the full grant application or an abstract is to help the public understand where federal dollars are being invested as nih and nsf and others have noted however posting the full grant applications could have the unintended effect of allowing the theft of intellectual property exposing national security information or even adding hundreds of thousands of pages of paperwork to agency s already undergoing funding cuts nih and nsf noted that the average grant application is fifteen pages plus supplementary material which can be much longer nsf provides seven hundred grants per year which means that requiring full posting of grants could create at least one hundred and five thousand pages of paperwork for nsf not including supplements to process post online and make searchable while this work would surely employ some federal employees in my district it is not necessarily the best use of our federal tax dollars a greater problem than the paperwork however is the need to portions of the grant application that could expose individuals intellectual property consistent with provisions of the freedom of information act nih has one foia lawyer who would be required to complete those redactions an impossible task without hiring dozens more federal lawyers the alternative is to require universities to complete this paperwork which would constitute possibly a massive unfunded mandate and an inexcusable burden at a time when state support  universities has crated to avoid both the paperwork expenses and the bureaucratic nightmare of redacting tens of thousands of pages of grant materials i have drafted this amendment which would require posting grant abstracts rather than the full grant information this would still protect the public interest by requiring agencies to explain how they are using taxpayer money but would do so in a way that takes cognizance of the concerns i have raised my staff and i have been in discussions with the subcommittee chairman and the staff since yesterday about this amendment amendment i think it guts the core provision here i do agree that redaction of proprietary information and classified information is essential but i disagree with the gentlemans amendment in two ways first of all the assumption is that every single page and every single addendum is already reviewed as part of the grant process all too often this committee has found that people sign things as they did in the case of mineral management service they sign a cover page never having read it so their initials are on it and it means nothing if they are not currently reading and evaluating all of the grant requests in their totality then shame on them and shame on them on behalf of the taxpayers however i do sympathize that redaction is a separate question and no better organization to propose in electronic format those items which are proprietary which would not be releasable by foia than the grant applicant in so doing the grant applicant in fact dramatically reduces the time necessary for evaluating whether or not those requests for redaction are appropriate we certainly understand social security numbers individual identity home addresses and other information of that sort are commonly redacted and you must read the entire text in order to find all of those so i do believe that there is a hand and glove relationship that has to exist that will mitigate most if not all of that having said that i know the author of the bill is perfectly willing to work in any way shape or form to ensure that that be further streamlined in the process and if it is not agreed to today certainly i am willing to have a managers amendment very important that we do protect intellectual replacement rights it is very important that we dont put out trade secrets or something that can be patented and it is stolen in advance by someone else who gets it by going online and gathering that information i do understand that that has been part of the ongoing conversation as we have walked through this process we want to be careful to do that that is why we made a change in the bill adding the sections on page eleven beginning on line eighteen that allows that exception so that any agency head when notified and we are talking about adding a check box on the application to say this has proprietary information in it i would like for this not to be posted online that agency can then give authority to anyone within the agency to say if this is checked then only the abstract is posted which is what  gentleman from virginia is requesting on this that only the abstract would be posted we want the default to be that the full piece is posted we are not talking about printing out the documents i know mister connolly was talking about printing out the documents we are talking about just posting online on a website it doesnt increase the amount of paper being produced here it is just the production of a pdf that may go out on a website but this allows that exception to go out and say if this has proprietary information it does not go public only the abstract gets posted there so that is a request that the applicant can make on it that is something the agency head can look at there is also the exemptions for foia that are built into this the reason we felt like it was very important to get this out is we want the final winning application to be seen so smaller grant requestors that do not have large grant staff can look and learn through the process we are perpetually excluding people in small towns and smaller universities because they do not have the large grant writing staff we want them to see multiple winning pieces that they can then evaluate and be able to step in and  are generally the ones who have told us let us not change this do have a form of proprietary information that will not be exempt and that will be writing a really good grant something that you pay grant writers to do it is not the intention of this committee to have how you write a good grant remain a secret whether the grants substance has merit is what we want to make sure that grantees ask for but the style and the capability of what makes a good one should be a lesson that they want all universities want all of us to have as a gift to society i yield to the gentleman from virginia mister connolly i thank the chair for yielding i would simply point out on the issue of redaction i mean the the idea that they are going to now go through and redact sensitive or intellectual property issues in every single one of those grant awards and possibly applications as well i think is not a trivial issue that is one of the concerns we got now if they delegate that responsibility to universities for example then that puts the unfunded mandate on the universities which is of concern to me and i know my colleagues as well that is the nature of our concern  that as i previously said that in fact a university an applicant must by definition know what is sensitive so it is not a burden to say tell us what is sensitive at all and as the gentleman from oklahoma already said clearly the agency can go the abstract completely so the request that this amendment makes is currently in the bill it just changes the default from the default being that the abstract is always up and people dont get the full application this changes  the application being the default and if they request it then it goes to the abstract so it is not just a matter of they have to go through and be a foia expert to figure out what is in and what is out they just request this has proprietary information in it and i would like it to go to abstract if the agency head agrees yes it goes to abstract completely so on the issue of you have to have foia experts everywhere i dont agree with that what we have to have is someone that is writing a grant that has the information in their head to be able to know which is obviously what they are doing they understand this is a significant piece and if it goes forward and gets public then this is a problem so this allows that but it just puts the default rather than the exception running the rule this puts the rule running the rule most applications are not going to point that is not the information we got yesterday from the granting organizations in fact quite the opposite they said most applications in fact include sensitive material mister lankford right reclaiming my time just based on obviously who you ask and the grants that are coming through if you are  competing for a water grant in a rural water district that may be a completely different issue than if you are competing for a grant for scientific research so depending on the agency obviously some agencies are going to run a lot more sensitive information they are also going to be up to speed on what sensitive and what is not sensitive at that point all i am looking for is the default measure to be this it gives full latitude to the agencies to be able to come back and say it goes to completely to what you are requesting on that and is a simple form so i dont see it as an unfunded mandate again for two reasons one is they are requesting money from the federal government for the general benefit of all americans but the second part of it is that they already have that information the grantee can just request it in their application process with that i would yield back chairman issa the gentleman yields back if there are no further questions identities are revealed these individuals may face backlash from individuals and institutions whom they did not select to receive an award additionally there is a danger that peer reviewers who know that their identities will be revealed m have difficulty remaining impartial for fear of offending a particular applicant after initial conversation with several scientific agencies and other stakeholders we found that the concerns with the peer review provision as written are widespread these