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72–284 2012

REVIEW OF THE USE OF COMMITTEE FUNDS 

OF THE 112TH CONGRESS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE 

ADMINISTRATION 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

Held in Washington, DC, November 30, 2011 

Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration 

( 

Available on the Internet: 

www.fdsys.gov 


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COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California, Chairman 

GREGG HARPER, Mississippi 

PHIL GINGREY, M.D., Georgia 

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois 

TODD ROKITA, Indiana 

RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania, 

Ranking Minority Member 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

PHILIP KIKO, Staff Director & General Counsel 

JAMIE FLEET, Minority Staff Director 


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REVIEW OF THE USE OF COMMITTEE FUNDS 

OF THE 112TH CONGRESS 

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2011 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION, Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:45 a.m., in room 

1310, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Daniel E. Lungren 

(chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives, Lungren, Harper, Gingrey, Schock, 

Nugent, Rokita, Brady, Lofgren, and Gonzalez. 

Staff Present: Phil Kiko, Staff Director & General Counsel; Peter 

Schalestock, Deputy General Counsel; Kimani Little, Parliamentarian; Joe Wallace, Legislative Clerk; Yael Barash, Assistant Legislative Clerk; Salley Wood, Communications Director; Linda 

Ulrich, Director of Oversight; Dominic Storelli, Oversight Staff; Bob 

Sensenbrenner, Elections Counsel; Karin Moore, Elections Counsel; 

George Hadjiski, Director of Member Services; Richard Cappetto, 

Professional Staff; Jamie Fleet, Minority Staff Director; Kyle Andersen, Minority Press Secretary; Matt Defreitas, Minority Professional Staff; Khalil Abboud, Minority Elections Staff; Thomas 

Hicks, Minority Elections Counsel; Mike Harrison, Minority Professional Staff; and Greg Abbott, Minority Professional Staff. 

The CHAIRMAN. I now call to order the Committee on House Administration for today’s hearing on the use of committee funds during the 112th Congress. The hearing record will remain open for 

5 legislative days so that members may submit any materials they 

may wish to be included therein. A quorum is present, so we may 

proceed. 

As we all know, we are in the midst of difficult economic times, 

a $15 trillion debt and a trillion dollar annual deficit are incomprehensible, yet as we know, they are facts. The financial realities facing this country are dire and demand drastic restrictions in Federal 

spending. 

And as stewards of taxpayers’ dollars, not only should we rein in 

government spending, we should lead by example. So we, too, must 

do more with less. That is why, in January, the House adopted a 

resolution reducing member and committee budgets by 5 percent. 

And why the House moved again in July to further reduce legislative branch spending by an additional 6.4 percent in fiscal year 

2012. 

As the chairman of House Administration, I fully understand the 

practical impact these reductions have on committee operations. 

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trict, where many families are faced with economic hardships, I appreciate every committee’s willingness to find greater efficiencies 

and do more with less. 

Today we look forward to hearing from all of our chairs and 

ranking members. These are very important discussions for us to 

have. Mr. Brady, my fellow committee members and I are strongly 

interested in hearing how committees were able to manage their 

reduced funds this past year; how they plan to continue operating 

and conducting effective oversight and continue tight budget circumstances; and how they adhered to a fair allocation of committee 

resources. 

I want to thank all the chairs and ranking members who will 

testify here today. As I said this past March at our first committee 

funding hearing, I cannot stress enough the importance of their 

work. The executive branch is, as we all know, enormous. Our Federal Government is much too large, often at the expense of our 

States, our communities and our intermediary institutions. By comparison, our resources here in Congress are minimal. Thus, we 

often fight an uphill battle trying to conduct effective oversight for 

the American people, trying to ensure the responsible use of their 

taxpayer dollars. 

Nevertheless, Congress and our committees have trimmed budgets and expenditures, and we have sought to find ways to do more 

with less while carrying out our essential constitutional duties. 

And I thank all of the members and the committees for their service. 

I would like now to recognize my colleague and the committee’s 

ranking member, Mr. Brady, for the purpose of providing any opening statement he wishes. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you for having these hearings today. It is always a 

pleasure to see and hear from our chairman and ranking members 

of all the other committees, to say hello and find out how they are 

doing, review what they have been up to this session and what 

they are going to be doing in the next session. 

These oversight hearings are always important, but especially so 

this year to examine the effects of the previous cuts and hopefully 

not have to consider, but I am sure we need to consider, additional 

reductions for 2012. 

As the ranking member, my top concern is the fair treatment of 

the minority on each committee. I am fortunate to have a strong 

relationship with my chairman. And when I was chairman during 

the two preceding Congresses, I saw no reason to interfere with the 

minority’s control of the one-third of the budget, and Chairman 

Lungren has extended me that same courtesy, and I do appreciate 

that. 

I just hope that each committee has fairly applied the one-third 

rule. Where conflicts have arisen, I believe this committee will be 

able to help resolve them. 

So I thank you for appearing with us. We are going to have a 

long day, but it is always a fun day. I reflect back to the days when 

we have long hearings because we had chairmen and ranking 

members here asking for more money that we had when we had 

it. Unfortunately, these have become very short hearings, because 


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they all know that we don’t have any resources to give out, and 

they are probably trying to hold on to what they have, and hopefully, it doesn’t get any less. 

So, again, Mr. Lungren, thank you. 

And I look forward to hearing from our chairmen and our ranking members. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the ranking member, and I would reiterate the spirit of cooperation that he spoke and is a mark of this 

committee. And I appreciated his cooperative spirit when he was 

chairman. And I hope I have extended the same sort of cooperation 

as I have acted as chairman. 

The committee now welcomes Chairman Ryan and Ranking 

Member Van Hollen on the Committee of the Budget. 

And, gentlemen, we would love to hear from you how you budgeteers are taking care of your budget as an example for the rest of 

us. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. PAUL RYAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN, CHAIRMAN, 

COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET 

Mr. RYAN. Well, thank you very much. 

Chairman Lungren, Ranking Member Brady. We have the same 

tradition of collegiality in the Budget Committee as you do here in 

House Administration. 

And onto the chairman’s point, the Budget Committee has requested a flat budget for the past 8 years. And we have kept spending within the levels approved by this committee. In addition, regardless of which party has been in the minority or in the majority, 

we have always had the kind of collegial relationship of which you 

are discussing. We have gotten along very well. I got along extremely well with Mr. Spratt, Mr. Van Hollen’s predecessor, on the 

two-thirds/one-third and we continue that relationship going forward. And I am determined to keep that going. 

You asked us to address two questions. With respect to the impact of this year’s 5 percent cut, we have managed our operations 

to stay within that level. Our personnel costs are the largest part 

of our budget, as with most committees. We have had an extraordinary year with enormous demands on the committee’s resources. 

We currently have some vacancies in our staff that we will need 

to fill, particularly before we go into next year’s budget cycle. But 

we have avoided any adverse impact on the nonpersonnel portion 

of our budget, which is comprised mainly of administrative services, equipment and travel costs. 

An additional 6.4 percent reduction for the next year we will 

clearly present a more significant challenge for our committee. 

Under this scenario, it provides us with less possibility to meet our 

mission going forward, but it is manageable, and we will do so. 

It presents, I would argue, a greater challenge for the minority. 

At the beginning of this year when we moved into the majority, we 

transitioned to a much larger budget. Mr. Van Hollen had to go in 

the other direction and make large reductions to meet their smaller 

budget. That smaller budget has already been reduced by an additional 5 percent, and this would obviously be the third round of reductions for them on a very tight budget to begin with. 


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While it is not part of our committee budget that you approve, 

the sound system in our hearing room is antiquated and expensive 

to maintain. In addition to the committee’s business, we loan out 

the hearing room quite frequently, particularly to the Joint Economic Committee and for other outside events. 

In our opinion, transparency is critically important in our deliberations and increasingly we and others who use our hearing room 

are having audio and video equipment troubles, and this is something that we are going to have to address at some point in the 

near future. 

I appreciate the committee’s efforts and it is great to be back 

with you guys. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Ryan follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Van Hollen. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND, 

RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Lungren, 

Ranking Member Brady, members of the committee. 

Let me start by thanking my friend, Paul Ryan, chairman of the 

Committee, for that spirit of collegiality that he talked about. We 

have the same tradition, as he said, on the Budget Committee as 

you do here on the Committee on House Administration. 

And I appreciate the fact that our budget has been treated fairly 

by the majority in the committee. We have a third of the committee 

budget, and we have the same opportunity to share some of the 

overhead costs on the full committee budget, majority committee 

budget. So I appreciate that. 

I also recognize, as all of us do, that the Congress needs to lead 

by example during these difficult times, and I fully support the 

need to tighten our belts. I would just want to emphasize the point 

that the chairman of our committee made with respect to the history of the Budget Committee when it comes to frugality. The 

Budget Committee has not increased its budget since 2004, not at 

all. Flat-lined. 

During that same period of time between 2004 and today, other 

House committee budgets increased by an average of 21 percent, 

with one committee budget increasing by 84 percent, and the next 

lowest increase—again, we didn’t increase at all. We were flatlined—the next smallest growth was 8 percent. 

During that period of time, the majority under the chairmanship 

of John Spratt did not use its full allocation, and so we were somewhat cushioned early on when the majority in the House shifted. 

But that loss, obviously, as many in this room have experienced, 

plus the first two rounds of cuts have meant that we had to lay 

off a good number of staff members and cut salaries by 5 percent 

in the Budget Committee across the board. 

And so while we have been able to do that and still retain very 

good staff, I am very nervous that another round of cuts will mean 

that we are not able to keep or attract the kind of quality staff that 

we all need on all of our committees. And as all of you know, the 

Budget Committee has been very, very busy this year. 

So what I would ask the committee to consider is that the Budget Committee not be penalized for its history of frugality because 

that is ultimately what will happen if you take just an arbitrary 

across-the-board approach. When you do that, you penalize those 

committees that have been frugal in the past, those whose budgets 

have not grown at the average of 21 percent. And you often see this 

phenomenon in other parts of the Federal Government where agencies are penalized for having money left over; it means they often 

don’t get as much as before, and that creates this perverse incentive for them to spend more at the end. And I think it would be 

a mistake to create that kind of incentive here in the House of Representatives, where ultimately committees that demonstrated frugality and fiscal discipline end up being punished for that fiscal 

discipline. 


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So we agree that we in the Congress should lead by example, and 

I would submit that the Budget Committee has been leading by example by having a flat-lined budget since 2004. By taking arbitrary 

across-the-board cuts and applying that to the Budget Committee, 

you are going to punish a committee that has led by example, not 

just in the last couple of years, but for the last 8 years. So I ask 

the committee members to take that into consideration as you consider our budget. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Van Hollen follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I just want to reiterate or have you reiterate that 

you are satisfied with the two-thirds/one-third, that there is no 

question about, even in these tough budget times, the fairness 

within your committee itself. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, of course, we would always prefer more than one-third, but the answer to your question is, yes, 

we have been treated fairly. And as I said at the outset, I thank 

the chairman of our committee for that. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you for that. 

And, Mr. Ryan, with respect to your comments about the speaking system over there, I have tried to alert and the ranking member tried to alert the Members as to the need for us to do a major 

renovation of the Cannon Office Building. During the holidays, 

they had one hallway in which—I think it was a 64-square-foot section of—the ceiling fell down. 

Mr. RYAN. That was the Budget Committee minority staff. They 

had—the ceiling came down, a flood and a little bit of a fire if I 

am not mistaken. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Yes. We invite any of you who want to take 

a tour of the Democratic offices; yes, we had a big flood. 

The CHAIRMAN. And the only reason I bring that up is at some 

point in time, we have to stop deferring maintenance and actually 

have to try and restore this Capitol. And I consider the Cannon Office Building part of the Capitol since it is the first House Office 

Building. So we are going to have to make some tough decisions 

as we go forward. And I take your point about across-the-board 

cuts versus going in and looking at those committees which have 

been most frugal. Thank you. 

Mr. BRADY. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

The ceiling fell down only in the minority room? Thank you. 

Okay. No, I just—did you lose any employment? Did you have to 

lay anybody off this last session? 

Mr. RYAN. The minority obviously had to when we went from 

two-thirds to one-third. 

Mr. BRADY. I am talking about as they—total—anybody have to 

leave because of the budget cut? 

Mr. RYAN. Not on the majority. But you have to understand, we 

went from a one-third to a two-third. So ours didn’t increase as 

much as one would normally because of the cut. So we had preparation for the cut knowing it was coming, so we didn’t hire up as 

much as the majority in the past had. 

Mr. BRADY. How about in the second session, you can maintain? 

Mr. RYAN. Yes, we can maintain. We have lost a few people who 

went on to other things, and these are slots that we need to fill. 

In the Budget Committee, you need highly technical people to do 

the budget. And so we will have to replace a couple of these highly 

technical people. And we use some people from executive agencies 

on loan, detailees. We rely on some detailees, you know, like GAO 

or OMB or other areas for technical expertise. And that has been 

very helpful. And we lost one of those folks. So we are going to 

have to get some more technical people. So we will make it work. 

Mr. BRADY. Okay. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Schock. 


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Mr. SCHOCK. I would just add that we always get hit up at home 

about accountability for the dollars that we spend. And I can say 

with a straight face when my constituents ask me about the Budget Committee, you guys are not only leaders by example, but you 

actually produced. And so I think it goes without saying to both the 

majority and the minority staff because you moved a budget, 

whether your staffs or members voted for it or not, it actually required work, and it actually produced some results. And so for that, 

I say thank you, and I feel much better about the tax dollars that 

were spent. 

Mr. RYAN. And the minority prepared a budget as well. So both 

our staff wrote budgets. And unlike the typical Budget Committee 

year, we are doing year-round work because our staffs did the 

supercommittee, the select committee’s work on number crunching, 

on preparing estimates. And then we have also done very comprehensive budget process reform work as well. So we have—unlike 

the past, when the Budget Committee would just turn on during 

the budget season, it has been year round. And so we are doing a 

lot more work with less people. 

Mr. SCHOCK. Great. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Florida. 

Mr. NUGENT. I just want to thank both of you for being here 

today. Obviously I am a little concerned as it relates to making 

sure that it is across the board in the majority and the minority. 

And, Mr. Van Hollen, I don’t know that you answered that. 

Have you had to reduce your staff as it relates to the current 

budget and the upcoming cut? Are you going to have lay offs? 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. We will either have to lay off or have an 

across-the-board pay cut I believe of 6.4 percent. So that will necessitate one or the other. 

And, again, that is why I thought it was important to make the 

point that, unlike every other committee in the Congress, our budget has been flat-lined, and therefore, there is a lot less room for 

maneuverability. 

So, yeah, we will have to lay people off. And as the chairman 

mentioned, it has been a very busy period of time for the Budget 

Committee. I think all of you know well the issues that have been 

debated in the House, but also both the majority and the minority 

staff did staff this so-called supercommittee, the Joint Committee 

on Deficit Reduction, process. 

Mr. NUGENT. And I would suggest you are going to be extremely 

busy in this upcoming year. I don’t see any reduction in the workload. That is for sure. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. No, I think it is going to be a very high workload. And as the chairman said, there are a number of initiatives 

that are going to be moving through the committee on budget process reform. 

So, again, I would ask the committee to take into account our 

history of leading by example and that in answer to your question, 

we will either have to lay off people or have across-the-board pay 

cuts to deal with this. 

Mr. RYAN. And we have not done bonuses as well for staff. So 

a lot of committees do bonuses at the end of the year or COLAs. 

We haven’t done that. 


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Mr. NUGENT. Okay. Thank you. I yield. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just ask one thing. Some folks would 

think that since we found ourselves into automatic budget sequestration, that that would minimize the work you have to do. Could 

you respond to that? 

Mr. RYAN. It actually makes it more complicated for the Budget 

Committee because we police the sequester tool. It is the Budget 

Control Act, which is in the jurisdiction of the Budget Committee, 

which is in charge of this. So—versus Armed Services or authorizers or appropriators, we are sort of the ones that implement and 

police the sequester as we now know it. 

The CHAIRMAN. So that would be an additional responsibility essentially? 

Mr. RYAN. That is right. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, if you have no other comments, we thank 

you for your work, your leadership, your spirit of cooperation and 

the effort that you are putting forward on very difficult questions 

with respect to our budget. Thank you. 

Mr. RYAN. Thank you. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thanks. 

The CHAIRMAN. I should have thought that folks that deal with 

those in the agricultural industry and farmers—including farmers—would be here on time. So I appreciate it very, very much. 

The committee now welcomes Chairman Lucas, Ranking Member 

Peterson of the Committee on Agriculture. And we would ask you 

to give us a little bit about how you have managed with the already existing cuts and how you will manage under the projected 

cuts, as required by the resolution passed by the House earlier this 

year. 

Mr. Lucas. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. FRANK D. LUCAS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA, 

CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE 

Mr. LUCAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and ranking member and 

members of the committee, for the opportunity to visit with you 

today about those issues. And I want to express my appreciation 

to Ranking Member Collin Peterson for joining me to outline or 

committee’s proposed budget for 2012. As all of you know, we have 

a very long and proud history of bipartisan cooperation, and I plan 

to continue that spirit of cooperation as we proceed with the work 

of the committee next year. 

In addition to a bipartisanship, the Ag Committee has a strong 

history of fiscal responsibility. The modest spending and the cooperative nature of our committee spans back at least two decades 

under the control of both parties. And in support of the leadership 

in this committee, our budget submission for 2012 Congress includes a 5 percent reduction from the previous year’s funding, but 

allocated a larger amount in 2011 than in 2012 in anticipation of 

increased travel needs for field hearings to prepare for the 2012 

farm bill. 

Salaries were budgeted to remain the same for both years, and 

I am pleased to report that we have successfully implemented the 

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ative staffing decisions and stretching our resources as far as possible. We rehired staff that were with the committee previously to 

retain institutional knowledge, combine staff responsibilities where 

appropriate of course and have postponed filling the staff vacancies. 

And on the operation side, all purchases have been kept to a 

minimum, savings incurred where possible by limiting travel and 

shopping around for the best possible prices on equipment and supplies. 

The committee will continue to support the leadership in implementing an additional 6.4 percent cut. However, I must note that 

I am concerned about the long-term impact on the ability of the 

committee to retain qualified, experienced staff. In order to implement this additional cut, we will have to continue to make very 

conservative staffing decisions and additionally left to consider if 

we have the resources necessary to do our traditional series of farm 

bill hearings. 

We intentionally allocated more money in 2011 for travel for 

farm bill field hearings. We had planned to hold those hearings 

this fall. However, we had to delay those hearings in order to work 

on a reduction package to submit to the supercommittee. Therefore, 

we anticipate holding the farm bill field hearings next year and 

will need the resources to do that. 

Because we did not split our funding evenly between the 2 years 

as most committees do, we are already experiencing a reduction in 

funding for 2012 of $71,980.50, or about 1.2 percent, by taking an 

additional 6.4 percent reduction off the authorized 2012 account. 

We would really be taking a 7.6 percent reduction as compared to 

other committees. We ask that you take this into consideration 

when determining the final authorized amount for 2012. 

Mr. Chairman, we truly have our work cut out for us in this Congress. But we firmly believe we can accomplish all that needs to 

be done on fewer resources. We greatly appreciate your consideration of our budget request and certainly will be pleased to provide 

any additional information you may offer and look forward to whatever questions the committee may have for us. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The statement of Mr. Lucas follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Peterson. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. COLLIN C. PETERSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE 

Mr. PETERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking 

Member and members of the committee. I am pleased to be here 

today in support of the Agriculture Committee’s budget request. 

The Agriculture Committee has a history of putting aside partisanship and working together in the best interests of our constituents. In fact, we were the only congressional committee to propose a bipartisan, bicameral deficit reduction package to the Joint 

Committee on Deficit Reduction. 

Much of the committee’s work for the coming year will be focused 

on the reauthorization of the 2008 Farm Bill, which expires next 

fall. This is something that the committee had originally planned 

to begin considering this year, but the work of the supercommittee 

modified our original timeframe. 

I share Chairman Lucas’ concern about the potential long-term 

impact of committee funding reductions and echo the request that 

you take into consideration the fact that the Agriculture Committee’s original 112th Congress budget submission placed greater resources in 2011 than 2012. A percentage cut off the lower number 

will mean that the Agriculture Committee would take a greater cut 

than committees that kept funding levels equal between the 2 

years or had a larger 2012 number. 

So, as I said, Chairman Lucas and I have a good working relationship, not just on policy issues but on the day-to-day functions 

of the committee. I appreciate the chairman’s respect for the minority’s control and direction of our one-third of the budget, and I 

look forward to continuing to work together on committee priorities. 

I appreciate your consideration of the Agriculture Committee’s 

budget request, and I am happy to respond to any questions. 

[The statement of Mr. Peterson follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Peterson, I take it from your comments that while we can 

argue about what the overall numbers are, at least the way it is 

allocated between Mr. Lucas and yourself in terms of your staff 

and so forth, it is acceptable and is consistent with what you folks 

testified to last year? 

Mr. PETERSON. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. For the benefit of the membership of the committee and also any member of the public who might be watching, 

could you tell us what the implications are of the farm bill reauthorization coming up this next year? That is the work your committee has to do, and what are the ramifications if we were not to 

have reauthorization in 2012? 

Mr. LUCAS. First off, let me say, Mr. Chairman, I think we need 

to look at the nature of the House Agriculture Committee. Collin 

and I have 46 members, counting ourselves, of the total committee. 

Of that 46, 23 have never served on the committee before, and I 

know those challenges are shared by other committees. Of the 23, 

16 have never served in Congress before. If you look at the nature 

of the farm bill, it is not just the wheat and the corn programs, the 

cotton programs; it is also conservation. It is rural development. It 

is ag research. It is farm credit. It is the nutrition programs. 

Literally, 74 percent of farm bill spending under this present 

farm bill goes to the feeding programs. 

It is a very diverse set of jurisdictions, and there are huge differences between commodities and regions. These field hearings are 

important so that we can take not only our brand new members 

who have never served on the committee before and give them an 

opportunity to learn about the needs and the diversity of the country in the field, so to speak, but it also an important refresher for 

upper classmen to understand the impact the comprehensive farm 

bill has on everyone, producer and consumer alike, in this great 

country. So being able to do that is a very important thing. 

And you are exactly right, if you care about the food on your 

plate, then it is important that we continue to raise the safest, 

most affordable, abundant supply of food in the world. If you care 

about water quality, air quality, if you care about preserving the 

soil in place, for instance, the conservation programs are incredibly 

important. I like to say, in Oklahoma, it doesn’t matter whether 

you are a hook and bullet kind of person or a camera lens person; 

the conservation programs help enhance the diversity and the quality of the wildlife of the environment out there, all of those things. 

And not to mention or forget rural development, all of the other 

programs. 

But we have a large jurisdiction. We have got a lot of important 

issues. And if we can’t—Collin and I working together—build a 

consensus and bring our committee together and up to speed, then 

we won’t be able to present a comprehensive package to the entire 

House, ultimately a conference committee, and the environment as 

well as the consumers will suffer if we are not able to do that. 

Mr. PETERSON. Well, I agree with a lot of what the chairman 

said. 

But, you know, as I said earlier, we took the Super Committee’s 

and Congress’ request seriously and produced a product and that 


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probably, preempted what might have been some field hearings 

that we would have been doing to do the farm bill in the regular 

order next year. 

So I am not sure how much time there is going to be, frankly, 

to do field hearings. We can try to fit them in. But I think if we 

get too far into the year, we are going to run into the politics of 

the election year and so forth. But the bill expires September 30th. 

You know, we have in the past gone by the deadline and not done 

a bill, you know, until I guess one year, it was May of the next 

year. 

So it is not the end of the world, but people like winter wheat 

guys end up planting not knowing what the situation is. The 

Southerners plant rice and sometimes cotton without knowing 

what the situation is, which is not an ideal situation. 

So we will just have to juggle this. I mean, see how the rest of 

this year plays out, and see if we can find time to fit hearings in 

if we have the resources. 

But given the cuts that we are taking, I am not sure that we are 

going to have the money to do a whole lot of that anyway, you 

know. So we will just have to work through it. We have always 

been able to work together and make things work out. 

You know, the chairman had a hearing in every area of our jurisdiction, so these new members have been exposed to all of the 

very—they went through all of these programs and had an opportunity to ask questions and learn and so forth. 

But we do have a lot of new members. We have a lot of new 

members on the Democratic side as well. And we are trying to 

bring them up to speed as best we can. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ranking Member. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I know that I am not being presumptuous, but I know on the majority part, you had to hire new people because you became the majority. But with the projection that may happen in this next go 

around, do you think you will have to lay anybody off? Any people 

have to be laid off? 

Mr. PETERSON. No, I don’t think we are going to have to lay anybody off. When I was chairman, I spent below our budget every 

year by a considerable amount. When we went into the minority, 

we obviously had to let a number of people go. It is going to be 

tight next year, but I think we will be able to work through it by— 

we are going to have to freeze salaries basically is what it is going 

to boil down to, but I think we will be able to maintain the people 

that we need on our side to do the work that we need to do. 

Mr. LUCAS. I would just note, Ranking Member, that there is 

really a very limited pool of people with the kind of agricultural 

policy or agricultural economic experience. Collin and I are very 

fortunate in both the majority and the minority staff, the people we 

have. We are going to work really hard to hold onto those good 

folks until whatever is concluded in the farm bill process, at whatever point this year or next year that may be. 

Mr. BRADY. How do you get along with the Secretary of Agriculture? Both of you. The response is, well, the Secretary of Agriculture, you get along well? 


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Mr. LUCAS. Yes, I believe we both have a good relationship with 

Secretary Vilsack and with the department agency heads down 

there. 

Mr. BRADY. Now is your chance, because I am taking mine. 

Mr. LUCAS. I would just say, Ranking Member, to go for a moment back to what Collin said. The ability of the Ag Committee to 

work in a bipartisan way on the House and in a bicameral way 

with the Senate to come up with $23 billion in savings, to make 

dramatic proposals in policy changes, stepping away from the direct payment and a number of these things—and I say this respectfully to all other standing committees—but Collin and I and the Ag 

Committee, we stepped up, and I think that says something about 

our relationship together and, yes, for that matter our relationship 

with the department. 

Mr. BRADY. I am not talking about—I am talking about your relationship with the Secretary of Agriculture. I am not talking about 

the relationship between each other. The reason why I say that is 

because I have had bad experiences with him, and I hope that 

maybe he probably can’t hear my voice, but at least I am on record 

saying that; I might be able to get a phone call back from him. 

Mr. LUCAS. I promise you, Mr. Brady, we have had a long series 

of oversight hearings, as I call them, looking at how the 

departmenthas implemented things. And we have had a long series 

of what I call auditing hearings, looking at how the money has 

been spent. If there are issues that any Member has with the department, let us know. We will work with all of you. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you. 

Mr. PETERSON. If I could just—I think that Secretary Vilsack has 

brought considerable management expertise to the department. We 

have made significant progress I think since he has been Secretary, 

compared to what was going on before, especially in the IT area. 

And they are rolling out new IT—well, we have had a problem 

there because we were tied into some old system 36 and AS400 

computers that kept us from going to a PC-based system. But they 

brought in a couple of people now, and they are going to roll out 

for NRCS and FSA this year the ability for farmers to be able to 

sign up over the Internet. And they are going to have mobile computer capability, so the conservation people can actually sign up 

people out in the field and only enter it once, instead of 10 times. 

And they think it is going to make their people go twice as far. 

So he is dealing with a lot of cuts. We are going to probably have 

to consolidate FSA offices because of the cuts that he has had. But 

they are responding to it. And one of the things that was a very 

difficult thing for me, when I was chairman, is that I was consistently fighting the Department of Agriculture. They were opposed to 

everything that we were doing on the committee. And they developed their own farm bill, you know, and caused us all kinds of 

problems. At the end of the day, we worked through all of that, and 

then we went to the floor, and we passed the bill with 300 and 

some votes, and the President vetoed it twice. And we overrode the 

veto. So this Secretary has I think learned from that and has been 

helpful to us in terms of working with us but has deferred to us 

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ter situation in my opinion than what went on when we did the 

last farm bill. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Schock. 

Mr. SCHOCK. Yes. I am just interested in—I know that according 

to our records, that you have spent just over half of the budget allotment for the 2 years in the first year, and I wondered if you 

could maybe speak to that as to why, and if perhaps we are able 

to pass the farm bill, whether or not you have got the staff and the 

resources necessary to commit to do that in the next year? 

Mr. LUCAS. Part of the extra spending in the first year was staffing up in preparation for the farm bill process. I brought on additional agriculture economists and positioned my staff to be able to 

work on the policy issues. 

We also made provisions, as has been noted, for field hearings, 

which we were not able to conduct. Once the farm bill process is 

over with, then because—at least in my tenure in Congress and I 

think most of Collin’s, too—we have done farm bills on an every 5- 

year cycle. So there is some surging up and down in anticipation 

of the every 5-year farm bill. 

The present farm bill begins to expire at the end of July, September of 2012. If we are able successfully to craft and put into 

place a new farm bill in calendar year 2012, then, yes, potentially 

in 2013 and 2014 and on down the road, Congressman, you would 

see some of our needs reduced. 

If we are not able to pass a farm bill—and I cringe at the 

thought of a 1-year extension or I cringe at the thought of a conference that goes until December of 2012 or we can’t pass a bill and 

we go into the next cycle—then our tempo will be maintained for 

the next couple of years. But I want to do this farm bill, and I want 

to do a good farm bill, and I want to put this puppy to bed for 5 

years, which will be good for our budget request in the future, too. 

Mr. PETERSON. The only other thing—what a lot of people forget 

about is that we had about half of the work and jurisdiction in the 

Dodd-Frank bill that nobody really pays attention to very much, 

but we did all of the derivative work. And we continue to work on 

that. I don’t know how many hearings we have had. There have 

been all kinds of bills to change this and that and the other thing, 

and you have probably run into some of that with end users and 

co-ops and those kinds of people coming and lobbying you to get out 

from under this and so forth. 

But we have had a lot of work that we have had to do, especially 

this year and in the last couple of years before that, getting up to 

speed on what was going on in this derivative market. This is complicated stuff, and we have had to bring on people that have expertise, you know, so we can try to keep up with it. And now there 

has been a lot of lobbying—I think there has been way more money 

spent lobbying the regulators than there ever was spent lobbying 

us, trying to undo these regulations. 

And so we keep sorting through that, and we don’t necessarily 

always agree on this particular thing, but I would just warn people 

that I am sure in your district, you probably have some people who 

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zen. So be careful what you are doing here because, you know, 

these guys are slippery, and they need to be regulated. 

I am not a big guy for regulating everything that moves, but 

after spending 3 years—we need to be careful in what we are doing 

to protect people from some of this stuff. And I know I had a bunch 

of my guys get caught up in this, and I am not sure when they are 

going to get their money back. 

Mr. LUCAS. Just to note for the record, the Securities and Exchange Commission is under jurisdiction of the Financial Services 

Committee, but the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is our 

jurisdiction, and that is the primary regulator of the derivatives 

market. 

Mr. SCHOCK. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Florida. 

Mr. NUGENT. I appreciate both of you being here. Interesting to 

hear about the derivatives, obviously. I think that is a little known 

fact that everybody kind of forgets about in regards to agriculture 

and this committee. 

I am concerned about the ability to do field hearings as it relates 

to the farm bill, and the ranking member brought that up, and I 

want to make sure that we are on track to do that, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. LUCAS. If we are not doing a farm bill markup in February, 

it is my intention working with the ranking member to take our 

folks to the field. Because literally, I think it is important with 

23—half the committee never serving before, 16 of the 46 members 

never having been in Congress before; it is important to be in the 

field. 

But as Collin very correctly noted, it comes down to a scheduling 

issue. Do we write a farm bill next summer under regular order? 

Do we become a part of some effort once again to address the budget situation and have to move early, February, March? It is a timing issue. But I want to go into the field, yes, and with the resources of course, I want to go into the field. 

Mr. PETERSON. The other thing—there has been all this commotion about the secret farm bill. And you need to recognize where 

this is coming from. These people that are complaining don’t agree 

with anything we are doing. They have a completely different agenda. And they would be complaining no matter what happened. So 

people need to understand that. 

But during that process, it was a truncated process, but I know 

Chairman Lucas met with his members all the time. They had 

input into this. I met with my members. We met with all of the 

commodity groups and the nutrition groups and the conservation 

groups and all of the things that we always do. The only thing different is we didn’t have a markup process but we kind of had one 

behind the scenes, if you will. 

So it wasn’t a perfect process, but it was something that was put 

on us by the supercommittee and by that process, and I think we 

managed it pretty well. Not everybody is happy. The corn growers 

are not completely happy. Some of the conservation folks aren’t 

completely happy. Some of the nutrition people—even though we 

cut very little out of nutrition and cut no benefits, they are not 

happy because they wanted more money, and I don’t know how 

anybody in this climate thinks that they can get more money. 


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So I think we did a pretty good job. And I think the members 

learned through this process—I know mine did and I assume 

Chairman Lucas’ did—because they were involved. They were engaged. They were being talked to by their constituents and the different groups, and they would come to us, and we would work 

through the process. 

So, you know, we will see. If we have time. But I am just afraid 

if we get bogged down doing a lot of field hearings, we are going 

to delay getting started on this, and then we are going to get too 

far into the political year and not be able to get it done. Then we 

are going to be without a farm bill when it expires, and that is a 

worse outcome in my opinion. 

Mr. NUGENT. We certainly would like to see you get back to regular order. That is for sure. I think it is good for this body, and 

I think it is good for the American public. 

Mr. PETERSON. We didn’t ask for this. I was not a big fan of the 

supercommittee. But they asked us to do this. We did it. We were 

the only people that did it. It wasn’t pretty, but—— 

Mr. LUCAS. And as of all of the committees in Congress in particular that would understand better than no other, House Administration, making cuts is tough. And we proposed cuts everywhere, 

just as you are having to propose cuts everywhere. It is tough. 

Mr. PETERSON. What we don’t get credit for is that we cut $12 

billion out of the ag budget before we even started this. So we had 

$23 billion that we put forward in this proposal. We had cut $12 

billion the last 2 or 3 years before that. And $4 billion of it went 

directly to the deficit. We are the only committee in the Congress 

that has done this. And I think it just shows that if you work in 

a bipartisan basis, you can get stuff done. And the rest of Congress 

could take a lesson from us, I think. 

The CHAIRMAN. I want to thank both of you for your testimony, 

for your work and the cooperative spirit with which you approach 

it. I would say, Mr. Peterson, I am shocked that you would suggest 

that agriculture issues might be political in a Presidential year. 

But anyway, thank you for your work. And we appreciate your 

candor and appearing before us. All right. 

Thank you very much for being here on time. The committee now 

welcomes Chairman Kline and Ranking Member Miller, the Committee on Education and Workforce. We are pleased to have you 

here. 

These hearings are somewhat different than they have been in 

the past in that we would ask you to tell us how you handled this 

5 percent cut we have already been under and this perspective 6.4 

percent that we are talking about in the upcoming year and bring 

us up to date on how the budget sharing has gone on between your 

two operations. 

And with that, I would just recognize Mr. Kline. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOHN KLINE, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA, CHAIRMAN, 

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member 

Brady, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity 


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to appear with my colleague, the senior Democratic member, 

George Miller, to testify about our budget for the 112th Congress. In the first session, our committee was allocated $8,346,254, of 

which we are on target to spend roughly 76 percent. Our goal is 

to spend only what is necessary as we strive to be good stewards 

of the taxpayer dollars. 

Among the cost-saving measures we embraced on the Republican 

side of the committee were the elimination of end-of-year bonuses 

for staff and a decision not to fill all of our staff slots. In the second 

session of the 112th Congress, if we face the additional 6.4 percent 

cuts we anticipate, we will continue to do what we can to be good 

stewards of the taxpayer dollars. 

I remain confident that our team will be able to maintain our 

current workflow and carry out our agenda for 2012 by taking advantage of cost-saving measures, including collaborating with other 

committees and personal offices and negotiating prices with current 

publication vendors, finding multiple price quotes on equipment 

and supply purchases before making a final decision, using new 

media to get our message out without incurring printing and publication costs, and producing posters and reports inhouse rather than 

hiring outside vendors. 

While I am confident in our ability to weather this additional 6.4 

percent reduction in resources, I caution the committee that cuts 

above and beyond that figure could compromise our ability to carry 

out our agenda. I have serious concerns that additional cuts could 

threaten our ability to conduct rigorous oversight while carrying 

out our legislative responsibilities. Thank you for the opportunity 

to testify. I appreciate your time. I would be happy to answer any 

questions. 

[The statement of Mr. Kline follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Miller. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. GEORGE MILLER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, 

RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE 

WORKFORCE 

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and 

Ranking Member Brady for the opportunity to discuss our budget 

for the 112th Congress. 

I also want to thank Chairman Kline for his cooperation on the 

budget and the other administrative matters during our first session. As you know, the minority was allotted the customary onethird of the total committee budget, and the majority provided the 

minority the autonomy over that share. 

At the beginning of the year, the minority’s authority was $2,782,000. And while the year is not complete, we are currently 

anticipating the yearend balance of at least $100,000. As I said in 

our last appearance in March, the committee needs sufficient funding, not only to conduct the normal legislative and oversight business but also to be able to deal with sudden critical needs. 

This committee has experienced that time and again with our jurisdiction over mine safety, where we have had tragedies across the 

country and have had to dedicate staff and acquire expert witnesses and talent to understand what happened in many of those 

explosions. 

The same was true in the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf. 

Staff was sent to be on the ground. So these kinds of things come 

across this committee’s jurisdiction with no warning and no notice. 

And hopefully, we will be able to respond to that. 

While they were unexpected in that fashion in the 112th Congress, on the minority side, we have had four staffers in critical positions on necessary Family and Medical Leave simultaneously. 

And this has required the hiring of additional staffers to help fill 

those two positions. Chairman Kline was also very kind and helpful 

to authorize the use of a detailee from the Department of Education, which has helped with that sudden change in the workload 

and the workforce. 

In the next year, we have begun making preparations for a cut 

of at least 6.4 percent from the committee budget. We do not seek 

to cut any staffers’ salaries. Those salaries are hard-earned and 

long hours, and to retrain and attract the top quality staff, we need 

to avoid cutting too deeply into our overall staffing budgets. Instead, we plan to try to focus on our cuts in other areas, such as 

equipment. We are trying to replace and upgrade equipment as 

necessary to meet the workload of the minority staff and the members. We are doing that now, trying to do that to the extent that 

we could out of this year’s budget. 

We think that we, obviously, can live with the 6.4 percent. It is 

going to be difficult. I would join Chairman Kline in that going beyond that starts to change substantially the nature of the decisions 

and the resources that are available to us both for the legislative 

calendar and for the oversight commitments that the majority has 

made and, again, that arise sometimes without notice. 


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But thank you very much for your cooperation in allowing the 

committee to testify. 

[The statement of Mr. Miller of California follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

And let me just ask you about the responsibilities of oversight 

that you have in your committee. I mean, one of the things that 

seems to me that some people could look at in the Congress and 

say, this is my own observation, that we never do enough oversight, and it is a responsibility that we need to take very seriously, 

and I think most Members do. And as we are about the process of 

cutting our budgets, I want to make sure we at least have the continuing capability to do the oversight where the big money is being 

spent over in the Federal establishment better known as the executive branch. 

Do you believe with these cuts you will be able to do the kind 

of oversight that you think is necessary for all of those areas of the 

Federal Government that are within your jurisdiction? Mr. Kline, 

Mr. Miller. 

Mr. KLINE. Yeah, Mr. Chairman, I think that we will. We organized, like some committees and unlike others, we don’t have a specific oversight subcommittee. Each of our legislative subcommittees 

has an oversight responsibility. 

We did however on the majority side dedicate some staff specifically to doing oversight. So I think we can carry out those responsibilities. I believe we have been able to do so with this year’s 

budget, and we will be able to do so with the projected 6.4 percent 

cut. 

But again, my caution would be if we were to cut more than that, 

it would make that increasingly difficult to do that oversight. It is 

time-consuming. As you pointed out, this committee has got two 

major departments, Education and Labor; multiple agencies, 

OSHA, MSHA, and so forth. So it keeps the oversight effort pretty 

busy. 

And I would also agree with you, Mr. Chairman, that both parties, since I have been here, I think have been remiss in providing 

all of the oversight that should have been done. 

There is, as you know, a tendency when there is a Democrat in 

the White House and a Republican majority over here for oversight 

to get more intense, and the reverse is true. We need to provide 

that oversight as a constitutional and congressional responsibility 

all of the time. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Miller, you mentioned a couple different instances that required your staffers to be on location. For me, that 

is not only legislative, but that is oversight as well. Do you feel 

that—I mean, given these resources that we have, that you will be 

able to continue to be able to do that kind of oversight? 

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Well, we have been able to do 

it in the past. I mean, hopefully, we won’t have mine explosions 

and oil spills and any of these kinds of problems, and we will be 

able to do it. 

I may not always agree with the oversight selections that the 

majority makes, but I think they have actually had a fairly robust 

oversight calendar this year, ranging across—we have a significant 

number of new members on the committee, and so just doing oversight, both for the purposes of oversight but also of helping the 

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ondary education, the National Labor Relations Board, how all of 

this has played out. But it has been pretty robust. 

I don’t know how much you get to do of that when the cuts go 

beyond—the chairman says he thinks he can handle this 6.4 percent. And that includes—I assume that includes a continuation of 

the kind of oversight they have been doing. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. BRADY. Yes. 

Mr. Chairman or/and Ranking Member, you don’t foresee laying 

anybody off this next—the second session? With a possibility of a 

6.4 percent cut, you won’t have to lay anybody off the job? 

Mr. KLINE. No, sir. No, sir. We do not anticipate that. We have 

a couple of staff slots that we may have to fill, and I hope we will 

be able to do that. It puts a little bit of pressure on our ability to 

do that. But under no circumstances are we looking at laying off 

staff in order to meet the 6.4 percent cut. 

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. That would be our goal, that 

we would try to avoid that. And we are trying to make those adjustments now in looking at how we would manage other changes 

in the committee to hold onto the personnel. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Schock. 

Mr. NUGENT. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Well, the committee now welcomes Chairman Hall and Ranking 

Member Johnson of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology. We would appreciate hearing how you have handled your 

committee with the 5 percent cut that is ongoing this particular 

year and the projected 6.4 percent cut for the upcoming year. And 

also, Mr. Hall, I want to know how your 88-year-old neighbor is 

doing. You mentioned him last year in your testimony before us, 

and I hope he is having a happy honeymoon. 

Mr. HALL. Well, they didn’t get married, but they are living together. And she can still drive. 

Mr. BRADY. Push the button. 

Mr. HALL. How is that? 

The CHAIRMAN. Very good. 

Mr. HALL. Do you want us to start over? 

The CHAIRMAN. We are happy to hear from you on how your committee is doing and how you would project you will be able to do 

in the next Congress with the—or the next session with the 6.4 

percent cut. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. RALPH M. HALL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS, CHAIRMAN, 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

Mr. HALL. Well, I will say to you good morning and thank you 

for having me here. And I guess I am glad I am here. But, you 

know, I checked the first of the year, from January to the end of 

January, how much more I had to do as the chairman, and it is 

about four or five times as much, and then when I got my dang 


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check, it is the same as it had been the last 30 years. There is 

something wrong with my thinking and everything. 

But I am going to do my best to read this statement that they 

wrote for me. They say I am supposed to thank you for having me 

here and that we have had a good year on the committee conducting careful oversight and advancing good pieces of legislation. 

Our country is facing major economic challenges, and we are mindful that we have to be prudent with our spending. And I think we 

have been, and I think that Ms. Johnson has been very prudent. 

You asked for a review of the committee funding. Like all committees we had to shoulder a 5 percent cut this year, and we were 

able to use the funds that we were provided and put off buying 

some major equipment in the computer field, and that kept us 

within our budget. Our total budget for the 112th Congress is $13 million, divided up $6.6 million for 2011 and $6.6 million for 2012. For 2011, we 

are currently projecting a surplus of approximately $860,800 as a 

result of, I think, careful budgeting. 

And as always the case, personnel costs make up most of the 

budget. In 2011, almost 95 percent of our budget was allocated to 

personnel costs, and in the majority we didn’t staff all of our slots 

right away, and we haven’t staffed all of them yet. But with the 

money that was budgeted and the surplus accumulated from the 

unallocated slots, we were able to manage the surplus in the salary 

to approximately $846,500. In years past we have, I think, been 

careful about making sure the minority—well we were positive, not 

just being careful about it—the minority received one-third of the 

total staff slots as well as control over one-third of the personnel 

salary budget, and the minority had a surplus of approximately 

$154,200 giving us a total surplus together of approximately 

$1,000,700. 

Our other main budget categories are travel, supplies, equipment, and this is where we shouldered most of the 5 percent cut 

early this year. Since our budgets are tighter in these categories, 

we anticipate using the salary funds to purchase some items, including an upgraded server for our leave-tracking system. That is, 

as well as the remote applications access, travel through computer, 

both of which the House doesn’t provide at this time. This will give 

increased longevity to existing systems and defer the costs in the 

future. With the purchase of the remote application access, this is 

the first step of the committee to move toward virtual desktops. 

In 2012, we showed a possible 6.4 percent cut. We found out that 

was put into place, and we will continue to meet the needs of the 

committee and stay within our means. However, unlike this year, 

the bulk of further reductions would need to come from our salary 

budget, which is 89 percent of the cut, because we have already 

pared down spending in the operational budget. In order to ease 

the reduction on salaries, we reduced our travel budget by nearly 

35 percent and our supplies budget by almost 20 percent. 

Our travel budget this year, I think we are at $70,000, and I am 

not sure Ms. Johnson is happy with that, but I will be glad to talk 

with her about it. 

With these cuts, our staff and Members would be further capped 

in the amount they can travel to see projects. You know, travel, we 


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get—our overseas travel is what we have had more of than the 

other type travel, and the State Department pays for that, so that 

doesn’t come into effect here. 

With the reduction in supplies, we need to make additional cuts 

in publications, and in anticipation of a further cut, we will make 

use of the surplus that we have this year to purchase supplies such 

as paper and toner for use next year. 

I think it says here I would be happy to answer any questions 

you may have. That is not exactly true, but I will do my best. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Hall. 

[The statement of Mr. Hall follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Johnson. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS, 

RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning. 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today on the committee 

funding. Chairman Hall has already presented an overview of the 

committee finances, so I will just make brief remarks. 

As he has noted, we had to absorb the 5 percent cut in our budget this year, as did other committees, and he already described the 

areas impacted by the cuts. And I would just like to add that the 

5 percent cut combined with uncertainty about the potential additional cuts in the second session of the 112th led the minority to 

defer filling two staff slots for the time being as well as to cut salaries of almost—most of the staff who were retained from the 111th 

Congress. 

And this has been a desirable situation, but it was deemed prudent—it has not been desirable—to ensure that we would not have 

a layoff of additional staff beyond those who lost their jobs when 

we became the minority. And we have to make additional cuts in 

salaries in the event that Congress mandated additional cuts of our 

committee’s budget in the second session. 

As a result we will be able to end the current year with a surplus 

of approximately $154,000. I do not anticipate being able to have 

a similar surplus in 2012 as we would like to fill the vacant minority slots as well as potentially adjusting staff salaries as appropriate to attempt to give back what we cut the staff when we got 

to the freeze level. 

And I would also anticipate that some oversight travel that had 

been deferred this year due to committee and congressional commitments, schedules, were necessary to carry out this year, so 

clearly an additional 6.4 percent cut to the committee funding 

would adversely impact our ability to meet our responsibilities for 

the coming year. 

And so I would respectfully request that we attempt to leave us 

where we are. I know your hands are tied, but in moving forward 

we hope to experience as little cuts as possible, because we have 

attempted to reduce our spending, and we have also done without 

a couple of staff people. 

So thank you again, and I will be happy to answer your questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Ms. Johnson follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate the work that both of you do on this 

committee. 

Mr. Hall, you brought up the issue of travel. Congress gets a lot 

of criticism for travel. Can you tell us the nature of the kind of 

travel that your committee needs to do for oversight and for anticipation of legislation? 

Mr. HALL. Well, this wouldn’t apply to oversight, but we made 

two trips to the liftoffs at Kennedy, and we travel to Johnson and 

to Huntsville and to Kennedy from time to time. 

The new Members need—the first thing I did when almost 30 

years ago I came here and got on the same committee, I wanted 

to go to Huntsville and see what they were doing, and I wanted to 

go to Kennedy and see what they were doing, and I wanted to go 

to Johnson to see what they were doing. And I took a half a day 

and a night at each place. And I found some things that were unusual to me then, because the McDonnell Douglases and all of the 

people that were contracting with the government were all together, and I thought that probably impaired the bidding, the competitive bidding. But the answer I was given almost everywhere, 

and I was new, was that they had what they wanted because of the 

danger of the mission that they were overseeing, that they trusted 

those that they had been doing business with, and they wanted to 

keep on doing that business. 

And just recently there has been an effort for the commercial 

people to go into the business of travel and making some trips to 

the space station, and maybe one day to Mars or wherever they are 

going to go, realizing that we are not going to get to go anywhere 

until people can go to the grocery store. But those are things in 

store, and we need to try to keep our space station alive and keep 

alive just a thread of making it to Mars when we can. But I think 

we need to keep—try to keep NASA going, keep them up and have 

a little closer supervision on what they are doing. 

The CHAIRMAN. Since your committee is called Science, Space, 

and Technology, maybe we can ask you to figure out what technology might be able to get us to keep a warm but not freezing 

hearing room. This morning it was 80 degrees in here, and they decided they would cool it down a little bit, and I think that they 

have succeeded. I am kind of reminded of Rocky hitting that slab 

of meat. This feels about as cold. That doesn’t need an answer. 

Mr. Brady. 

Mr. BRADY. I just thank you for being here today, and I appreciate your testimony. 

Mr. NUGENT. I just echo that. Thank you so very much, particularly in keeping your spending rates down. Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. I just want to say that, and Mr. Hall pointed out, 

there are times when the State Department underwrites some of 

our travel. I just returned from Brussels, where I represented the 

U.S. Congress, but it was paid for by the State Department to the 

European Union on science. So we are grateful for that help. It is 

still government money, but it didn’t come directly out of our committee. 

We have been very prudent in our spending, but we do have a 

large number of new people who have not been to many of the 

places that we have jurisdiction, research labs and the space—the 


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network of space interests we have invested in. So some are beginning to ask for travel. So we might have to do a little bit of that 

more early on in the year. 

The CHAIRMAN. We thank both of you for testifying. 

I don’t know, Mr. Hall, if you have any parting thought for us 

this year as you gave us a wonderful parting thought last year. 

Mr. HALL. No. I hope I am back next year, and I will try to save 

up something for you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. HALL. And thank you. And I still think you should have been 

Attorney General. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing. 

The committee now welcomes Chairman Peter King and Ranking 

Member Bennie Thompson of the Committee on Homeland Security. 

We would like an update on how your committee is doing from 

a budget standpoint after working through the 5 percent cut this 

last—or the current year, and projected 6.4 percent cut as a result 

of the resolution passed by the House earlier this year that will affect us in the upcoming year. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. PETER T. KING, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. KING. Thank you, Chairman Lungren and Ranking Member 

Brady. We appreciate the opportunity to be here today. 

You are right, we did have the cuts last year. We face more cuts 

coming into the next year. The ranking member and I have attempted to work together to work within those cuts. Basically we 

have managed to do it. 

I should point out that our budget for 2012 will be roughly what 

it was back in 2006. And even though we have 75 authorized positions this year compared to 60 in 2012, we expect to come in at the 

same number. We expect to live within the budget itself. We have 

done this in a number of ways. We agreed last year, pledged to do 

more with less, but in doing that, we still wanted to have a full 

range of hearings, of field hearings, of site inspections, of rigorous 

oversight. We have had hearings on radicalization. We have sent 

Members to the border. There has been field hearings at the border. We sent staff to investigate security breaches at airports 

around the country, to visit local police departments. 

We have also had natural disasters, which come under FEMA, 

such as the terrible tornadoes; Hurricane Irene; the tornado in Joplin, Missouri, which directly affected one of the members of our 

committee Mr. Long, and with all that we have managed to, I believe, do a very admirable job and still live within the budget. 

We didn’t fill all authorized staff positions. We did use existing 

staff for roles that could have been filled with experienced, higherpaid staff. We also made use of senior fellows and detailees, which 

are at no cost to the committee. For instance, we have a member 

of the New York Police Intelligence Unit who—a full inspector who 

has been at the committee now for almost a year at no expense at 

all. We have attempted to reduce travel expenses. We have impleVerDate Mar 15 2010 01:19 Jan 28, 2012 Jkt 072284 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A284.XXX A284

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mented internal administrative reforms, and we are going to be 

coming in under budget for this year. 

I will say that with some of the savings from the 2011 budget, 

we intend to prepay some of the expenses for 2012 as far as equipment and supplies that will enable us to live within the 2012 budget. We have eliminated intern stipends, and we also intend to recruit a GAO office detailee and senior fellows to augment committee staffing without additional costs to the committee. 

Let me, Mr. Chairman, also maybe in the hope that you will ask 

me easy questions, give you credit for the great job you do as chairman of the cybersecurity subcommittee, which will be moving 

ahead in a dramatic way over the next several weeks. 

I will continue to leave this to Mr. Thompson to describe that we 

have followed the committee’s customary two-thirds, one-third division, and we intend to follow that division in 2012. 

So with that I thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, 

members of the committee, for the opportunity to be here today 

and again look forward to going ahead into a new year and also 

to continue to work with all of you. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. King follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Thompson. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND 

SECURITY 

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you very much, Chairman Lungren, 

Ranking Member Brady and members of the committee for the opportunity to testify regarding the 112th Congress committee allocation and possible cuts. 

In March of this year, I had to reduce the size of the committee 

staff by three employees and reduce all of my staff’s salaries by between 2 and 8 percent. Consequently, I also was not able to fill vacancies. 

Our participation in travel on committee business has been limited, and we have been very conservative in the purchases of office 

supplies. With the limited funds remaining, we plan to replace an 

aging copier and computers. 

For next year, for 2012, an additional 6.4 percent cut for the 

Democratic side would place our panel at even greater disadvantage than we are experiencing this year. At this point we are not 

making—talking about any amenities, but rather bare essentials, 

like adequate staffing levels. In my estimation we would not be 

able to sufficiently execute the duties of a committee staff without 

additional funding. 

Mr. Chairman, resources matter. Without them we would not be 

able to fill vacancies, maintain competitive salaries or continue to 

offer paid internships for deserving, eager college students. While 

we continue to be frugal with purchases like news subscriptions 

and equipment, I am sure our travel will be even more limited even 

as the Speaker has directed all committees to engage in field hearings. I cannot overstate the difficulty an additional budget cut 

would create on this committee’s staff. As it stands now, many of 

them are doing the work of two or three staffers at reduced salaries. 

Let me repeat, my greatest concern is we will be told that more 

than 6.4 percent will be taken. If this happens, I will have no alternative but to, yet again, terminate more staff. Therefore, I am respectfully requesting this committee to keep that in mind. 

Our legislative and oversight activities require, our mission and 

jurisdiction as a committee require us to, in some instances, go all 

over the world. That travel in some instances comes out of the committee’s budget. But our mission is to keep America safe, and we 

have to do it, obviously within the confines of the budget, but obviously notwithstanding the fact that our country deserves no less 

than to be safe. 

And I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank both of you. And let me just ask one 

question to start off, and that is, how do you work out the issue 

of field hearings majority to minority? Is there consultation? Is that 

done from the subcommittee level, full-committee level? How does 

that work? 

Mr. KING. Well, it ends up going to the full-committee level for 

the decision, but for the most part we allow the hearings. It is pretVerDate Mar 15 2010 06:07 Jan 28, 2012 Jkt 072284 PO 00000 Frm 00050 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A284.XXX A284

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ty much the same procedure that was in effect when Ranking 

Member Thompson was the chairman. We generally have at least 

one Member from each party. They lay out the reason for the field 

trip, and almost all of them have been approved. I can think of a 

number of bipartisan hearings that have been held, including some 

in the districts of the Democratic Members. 

So I would say probably the main field hearings have been at 

the—regarding border security, they are the main ones that I can 

focus on right now. But I am not aware, for instance, in the last 

year of any significant cutback in field hearings. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Thompson. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Well, that is absolutely correct. I think we have 

been to Texas, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan and several 

other States with field hearings both at the subcommittee level 

where the chair and ranking member of the committees agreed. So 

that policy continues. 

The CHAIRMAN. Good. I am glad to hear that. I had requested a 

field hearing for 2 years in the previous Congress and didn’t get 

it, and so I was hoping there was a spirit of cooperation that prevails today. 

I would ask this, Mr. Thompson. You have mentioned that you 

had to lay off staff. Now, we had testimony from others that as 

Democratic membership went from majority to minority, they necessarily went from the two-thirds to one-third. Are you saying that 

in addition to that you have had to lay off staff on the minority 

side? 

Mr. THOMPSON. Yes. What we did, obviously, we came from twothirds to one-third. We had to make significant adjustments as well 

as reduce salaries, and we did it, and we are presently managing 

a committee. But it is also indicated that, at some point, if this cut 

that is proposed goes into effect, obviously, we would have to let 

someone else go. 

Mr. KING. If I can just note, Mr. Chairman, one of the toughest 

moments that I had was when the Democrats did take control of 

the committee back in 2007, and I had to make those decisions to 

lay a significant number of people off as you go from majority to 

minority, and it is always painful because these are very qualified 

people. 

The CHAIRMAN. I am just trying to get at the point that Mr. 

Brady had made with several other committees, and that is have 

the 5 percent cut required any layoff of staff in this current year? 

I think that is what Mr. Brady was asking. 

Mr. THOMPSON. It was three for me. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Also I was interested in the 6.4 projected cut that would require 

also the majority and the minority to lay more people—to lay people off. 

Mr. KING. Right now I don’t believe we will have to lay anyone 

off. There are spots we are not going to fill. I think there are six 

vacancies right now. I don’t if we are going to be filling them. 

There are also several more that may be leaving. We may not be 

filling them either. So we can work within the budget we have 

right now. Obviously it is not going to be easy. But as of now I do 

not anticipate having to lay anyone off on the majority side. 


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Mr. BRADY. You are a pretty important committee, and you functioned for a lot of years with a—for a limited amount of years, it 

was brand new, but now are you going to be able to function with 

six being not filled and maybe a possible couple others not being 

filled. And as you say in your testimony, and I agree with you, you 

have got to keep us safe. And I think of any committee, I would 

fight as best as I can to try to make sure that that doesn’t happen 

to your committee because you need to keep us safe. And not only 

us I am talking here, I am talking about the American people. But 

that is on the majority side. But yet on the minority side with a 

projected 6.4, you are saying that you probably have to lay three 

people off? 

Mr. THOMPSON. That is correct. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. KING. I would just add to your point. I agree this is going 

to be difficult, and in an optimum situation we could certainly use 

additional personnel in a very worthwhile way. Chairman Lungren 

is a member of our committee. He is a very senior member of the 

committee, and he realizes the type of work we do. I am not saying 

that these cuts are good for the committee, I am just saying we can 

live within them. 

The CHAIRMAN. It would also help if we finally got settlement of 

the jurisdictional question since the last remaining unfilled recommendation of the 9/11 Commission is that the Congress consolidate its authority for homeland security matters in a single committee in the House and the Senate, and unfortunately, under both 

Democrats and Republicans, we failed to do that thus far. 

Gentleman from Mississippi. 

Gentleman from Florida. 

Mr. NUGENT. No, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to thank you for your testimony and 

thank you for your work. And the only thing I would add is we 

have outstanding staff on that committee, and there is a certain 

amount of particular expertise that we need in order for us to be 

able to cover the subject matter that comes under homeland security. And it is not just when we lose a person we can necessarily 

say we are not going to fill that position if it is an area of expertise 

in nuclear materials, for instance, or other types of things. And so 

I just hope anybody who might be listening might understand that 

for us to do the important oversight, we have to have the expertise 

to ensure that the Department is doing what we intended it to do 

when we set it up. 

Mr. KING. I agree with you completely. The staff does a phenomenal job, and I can understand, again, Mr. Thompson’s situation is you let people go that have unique talents and unique abilities. It is not just a staff member who can go from one committee 

to another. Many of the people we have, whether it is a scientific 

background, intelligence background or law enforcement background, it is a very unique skill set, and once you lose them, it is 

hard to get them back, and it is very hard to replace. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Absolutely. 

The CHAIRMAN. We thank you both. 

Mr. FILNER. I have been delegated to speak for the majority. 


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Mr. MILLER of Florida. No, you haven’t. 

Mr. BRADY. You know, coming from anybody but you, we might 

be able to believe that. 

The CHAIRMAN. It is a pleasure to welcome both Chairman Miller 

and Ranking Member Filner of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee before our committee to hear how well you are getting along this 

year, to find out how you are operating under the current 5 percent 

cut that was imposed by a vote of the House, and how you would 

anticipate operating with the projected 6.4 percent cut that was 

also the result of a vote on a House resolution. And I am glad to 

hear from both of you. 

Mr. Chairman. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JEFF MILLER, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA, CHAIRMAN, 

COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS 

Mr. MILLER of Florida. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, 

Ranking Member Brady. Good to see you both for the opportunity 

to appear before you for the Veterans’ Affairs budget for the 112th 

Congress, for the second session. My good friend Bob Filner is with 

me today, and we have worked side by side very well this year, and 

we look forward to continuing to work on issues that are important 

to our veterans community. 

As the committee knows, we have oversight over the Department 

of Veterans Affairs with a staff of close to 300,000 individuals and 

a budget of over $120 billion, and we have what I think is an aggressive plan of action that has already engaged in oversight in 

several of the areas that are included in our oversight plan. 

The VA Committee’s total budget request for the 112th Congress 

was a 5 percent decrease in funds from the 111th Congress, and 

we did manage to find those savings by decreasing our salary and 

equipment budget at the beginning of the year. We had to make 

some decisions on staffing, equipment and travel this year based on 

our cuts, and we are going to be returning money to the Treasury 

due to the fact that we have not fully staffed the majority, and it 

allowed us some flexibility within that 5 percent decrease for any 

needed purchases or committee travel since we have such a small 

travel budget for the size of the committee. 

Remember, the vast majority of our travel that we are engaged 

in is paid for by the very agency that we have oversight on. VA 

pays for the majority of the VA Committee’s travel. 

The committee’s equipment funds were one-third of what was requested in the 111th Congress; therefore, we made only major purchases when absolutely necessary, but by the end of the year, we 

do hope to replace some outdated equipment and a constituent 

management system that has not been updated since 2005. 

We have asked for and received requests from the majority and 

minority staff for needed items, and we will consider them for purchase within our remaining balance for 2011. 

Now, the additional 6.4 percent cut from our 2012 budget will be 

challenging, but we are anticipating and planning for it by decreasing the total salary allotment number and providing the minority 

with one-third of that salary budget. 


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This is a small committee charged with an awesome responsibility: oversight of those who care and provide services for our Nation’s warriors and their families. 

Mr. Chairman, you have my assurance that we will account for 

every dollar, we will stretch every dollar afforded us as we 

outstrive the expectations placed upon us, and we will welcome any 

questions that you have before us. 

[The statement of Mr. Miller of Florida follows:] 


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Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Chairman, is it appropriate to ask the chairman a question, or do you want to wait until after the ranking 

member testifies? 

The CHAIRMAN. After the ranking member. 

Mr. Filner. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. BOB FILNER, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, RANKING 

MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS 

Mr. FILNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and as Chairman Miller 

said, we have had a great working relationship, and we are here 

to talk to you about the budget cuts. 

And the concern I have, and it picks up for the end of the discussion I just heard with Homeland Security, that the impact upon the 

staff and on this institution both in the near term and the future, 

I think, is threatened by applying these cuts across the board. The 

cuts I think we can handle, as the chairman said, but I really think 

we should exempt the salaries from the proposed cuts. I am not 

sure that in these tough economic times the ordinary staff person 

should absorb those cuts, functioning with that is going to be very 

difficult. 

That is, as—when we went from majority to minority, obviously 

we had to cut our staff in half, but we didn’t just cut the staff in 

half, their salaries went down as was mandated basically by the 

cuts that we had and the way they were distributed. So we already 

cut the salary of our working staff members. And, that, as you 

heard from Homeland Security, the chair and ranking member—affects the ability to keep good people, that affects the institutional 

memory of the institution, that affects our ability for oversight as 

the chairman said was our prime responsibility. 

That is, if we continue to have to cut back, reduce salaries, we 

are going to lose the very people that we need to do the function 

that this Congress is supposed to do, and that is oversight. We 

have a small committee, we have the second biggest bureaucracy 

to oversee, and it is hard to do that with the contemplated cuts in 

the staff salaries. 

I don’t think that we should make it in those areas. It becomes 

really a token demonstration of our seriousness to cut back, and we 

risk losing the most able staff among us, the loss of the ability, the 

institutional knowledge, and the effect of the quality of the laws we 

pass and the oversight that we can exercise. 

So, Mr. Chairman, I agree with Chairman Miller that we can 

deal with these cuts. I would just not apply them across the board 

and exclude the salaries. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank both of you for testifying. I just want to 

say our staff does a great job of doing preparation for us, and they 

always have pictures of those who are to appear, and I must say 

that they gave us very youthful pictures of the two of you. They 

look very, very good. 

Mr. FILNER. What is he talking about? What are you referring 

to, Mr. Chairman? 

The CHAIRMAN. I think they are your official photos. 


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Anyway, thanks for the work that you are doing on the committee, and thank you for your members’ work on the committee 

as well. 

Have you had to—now, look, I know you went from majority to 

minority status, and we went from minority to majority status, but 

in terms of the 5 percent imposed cut for this year, have you had 

to lay off any members of your staff? 

Mr. MILLER of Florida. We actually have not fully implemented 

the staff level that we are budgeted for. We actually held open numerous positions on the committee so that we would have flexibility at the end of this session, contemplating the additional cuts 

that probably would be coming forward. 

So the answer on our side is we are not fully staffed. I would say 

that some areas that we are looking at bringing additional staff on 

is within our oversight and investigative committee, because we 

have really started what I think is an important requirement of 

this committee, and we have very aggressively been looking at VA 

in some areas that they have not been looked at in the past. And 

I think we have been derelict from a congressional standpoint in 

providing the oversight that has been necessary, and that is going 

back to when the Republicans held the majority the last time. 

So in answer to your question, we are understaffed at this point, 

so it has not been an issue for us. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Filner. 

Mr. FILNER. We did not have to lay off anybody, but we did significantly reduce our staff salaries. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Miller, you mentioned something, and I 

think you mentioned it to me before, and that is when you do your 

oversight, your travel is paid for by those you are overseeing? 

Mr. MILLER of Florida. We only have a $50,000 travel budget for 

the committee, and so we have been very careful in expenditure of 

those funds, and I wanted to be extra careful in the first session 

because I just didn’t know how far we would be able to expand. 

However, outside of that, most of the times when we travel to a 

Veterans Affairs whether it be hospital, cemetery, clinic, the VA actually picks up and provides for that. And my concern is—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Does that cause a difficulty? 

Mr. MILLER of Florida. It has not caused us a problem yet, but 

I am still concerned that it may because they do get a heads up 

as to when the committee is coming in and what we are actually 

looking for. 

But I would say this: Secretary Shinseki has been very helpful 

in the areas that we have worked on in this last year, and we have 

told each other that we want to continue to work with the ranking 

member in helping them fix some of the issues that are out there. 

So, while I was very concerned last time we appeared before your 

committee, it has not come to fruition, but it very easily could. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Filner, how about you on that issue? 

Mr. FILNER. When I was chair, by the way, and we had a significantly higher travel budget, we tried to free ourselves from that; 

that is, we did not want to get permission as it were to travel, and 

so we paid for it pretty much. And I think the cutback led to this 

more—they seem to be willing to step in, and we know why. But 

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sponsibility as a committee is oversight. And yet if you cut us back 

so significantly that they have to pay for it, you have given up 

some of your independence in that oversight. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Brady. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Filner, you talked about your cuts to personnel. If the projected 6.4 cut comes to you on the minority side, would you have 

to lay people off? 

Mr. FILNER. I don’t think so—I don’t think officially, but the cutback in salary may lead to movement and basically the effect of a 

layoff, because either people will not accept—— 

Mr. BRADY. I don’t think you lessen the pain by laying somebody 

off unofficially. You said ‘‘officially.’’ I don’t think—— 

Mr. FILNER. Well, we may not have laid them off, but they will 

have looked for a better job and left. 

Mr. BRADY. Okay. 

Mr. FILNER. De facto as opposed to de jure. I don’t know, I am 

not a lawyer. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Mississippi. 

Mr. HARPER. Since I hold the seat that the late Sonny Montgomery held for 30 years, and knowing how important what you do 

is, I just want to say thanks for the great job you are doing, and 

we look forward to working with you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Gingrey. 

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

Chairman Miller, I want to go back to that point in regard to the 

travel budget, that you are underfunded, obviously badly, in your 

account in the department of which you and Ranking Member Filner so clearly said that you have the oversight responsibility, and 

yet you rely on them to travel. Are there any other committees that 

are in that situation? Is that unique to Veterans Administration? 

Mr. MILLER of Florida. Armed Services, I would expect, is that 

way as well, although it is a little bit different. 

However, I will say this: With the travel budget that we do have, 

we have been able to send our investigators and committee staff 

members and Members on certain occasions out without VA’s 

knowledge, and I think that is an important part of what we do. 

And so I think we will have the ability to do more, but it is just— 

I understand why it is done, but it could be abused if not looked 

at very carefully. And the ranking member and myself have 

worked as closely as we possibly could to make sure that that does 

not become a major issue for our committee. 

Mr. GINGREY. Well, I am reassured by what you said in regard 

to your working relationship with General Shinseki, and everything, at least in the first session, so far so good. But if we get into 

the second session of 112, and you take another 6.4 percent cut, 

then it may be very difficult. And we will be interested in hearing 

back from you next year. 

Mr. MILLER of Florida. Certainly. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Nugent. 

Mr. NUGENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you both for 

being here. 


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You know, having a district that has over 116,000 veterans, and 

I do veterans advisory board meetings on a monthly basis throughout the district in different counties, so I would certainly encourage 

you to keep your oversight up. My ears get blistered sometimes in 

reference to some of the issues that they see not with the quality 

of care, but the processing of their claims. 

And so I think that is one area that I know where there has been 

some positive movement, but we need to move further, and I think 

we need to move faster. But I would like to see more oversight, and 

I am concerned about the VA having basically control over when 

and where you come and how you do that. 

Mr. MILLER of Florida. Well, and as you might well imagine, 

when you go to a VA facility, whether we were in control or the 

Democrats were in control, they will let you see what they want 

you to see. If you drill through that and begin the possibility of 

talking with some of the employees off site, you will find a much 

different picture. 

But we all want the same thing, and that is, as Mr. Harper said, 

to serve those individuals who have served and protected this Nation. 

For the record, if the Florida maps hold as the Senate released, 

my district will then have 147,000 veterans. 

Mr. FILNER. Let me make clear for the record I don’t think the 

chairman was implying that they control what we do and where we 

go. Like the military, they find it in their interest to help pay for 

it. I mean, it makes it friendlier. But then that, of course, sets 

some of the stage. 

So they have never, I am sure, Mr. Miller, said, you can’t go 

here, or we are not going there, or because we won’t pay for it. 

They have just stepped forward to help us like the military steps 

forward, but they make sure then they know when you are coming, 

and it is a little too friendly a relationship. But I don’t think Mr. 

Miller would want to imply that they would ever tell us what to 

do or where to go. 

Mr. MILLER of Florida. If my statement needs to be clarified, I 

will use a perfect example of the Miami VA Medical Center where 

there were significant problems with sterilization issues, with 

colonoscopy material a couple years ago. The director of that facility was removed temporarily, sent to the VISN, and then ultimately when they did their internal investigation, they brought 

that director back. 

We continued to drill into and try to find out exactly what happened and some of the things that took place. While we were down 

at the facility sometime earlier this year, I began hearing rumors 

of other things that took place. And we had the director and 

brought her up here for a hearing and asked her questions in an 

open hearing. She was not able to answer those questions well at 

all. She is now being reassigned. 

The only way that we were able to get the information that we 

needed was to go off site, because what I was saying in my comments was when you go to a facility, as does DOD many times, 

they provide you the picture they want you to see. Everything is 

rosy, everything is great. But then when you do have an opportunity to visit with individuals outside of that setting that the diVerDate Mar 15 2010 06:07 Jan 28, 2012 Jkt 072284 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A284.XXX A284

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rectors never would have allowed us to talk to had we been in that 

facility, and we wouldn’t have known to ask to talk to them, we 

were able to find out some things that were pretty damaging and 

unfortunately put veterans in places that they did not need to be. 

In fact, one was shot by a police officer shortly after walking out 

of the facility, having been Baker Acted and put into Jackson Memorial facility involuntarily, and then somehow when they got 

brought from Jackson to the VA, it appears there was a mix-up in 

the paperwork, and they claim that this person voluntarily admitted himself even though they had already said that they were going 

to commit suicide by cop. This veteran walked out the doors of the 

hospital and was actually killed by a police officer just a short time 

after walking out the door. 

Mr. NUGENT. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. We thank the gentlemen very, very much. I hope 

if I went off site to talk to the two of you, I wouldn’t find a different 

story than I had here from you. This spirit of cooperation that you 

have exhibited is refreshing, and I am glad that we are working 

together on behalf of our veterans. In tough budget times we are 

trying to make those decisions that are best under those circumstances, so I thank both of you. 

Mr. MILLER of Florida. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Bachus, for being 

here. I understand the ranking member is not going to appear. 

Mr. BACHUS. Yes, but he and I, I think, are in accord as to what 

I am going to say. He is aware—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Actually, it is kind of funny. I considered Barney 

a friend, and I saw what he said in his announcement that he no 

longer had to be nice to people he didn’t want to be nice to anymore, and I hope that is not an indication of his failure to appear 

here. 

But we welcome you representing the entire committee, and we 

would love to hear from you as to how well your committee is doing 

while operating under the 5 percent cut that was imposed this year 

and the prospective 6.4 percent cut for next year. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. SPENCER BACHUS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ALABAMA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

Mr. BACHUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the 

committee. I am pleased to appear before you today as chairman 

of the Financial Services Committee. 

Our budget continues the policy of providing the minority a full 

one-third of both funding and staff slots allocated to the committee. 

For the first session of the 112th Congress, our committee has 

managed the 5 percent budget reduction prudently, and it has not 

negatively affected our day-to-day operations. Recognizing that further cuts could occur, we did not fill all our vacant slots, thus 

avoiding the need to terminate any staff from our payroll or reduce 

salaries. 

The budget cuts have not been without impact, however. The positions we have not filled are analytical and research positions, the 

absence of which has restricted our resources we can devote to foreVerDate Mar 15 2010 06:07 Jan 28, 2012 Jkt 072284 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A284.XXX A284

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casting financial, economic and regulatory developments and researching those that arise under our jurisdiction. 

For the second session, of course, we have been advised to plan 

for a 6.4 percent reduction in the amount allocated to our committee. We will continue to be cautious in our spending and in our 

staffing, and although it will be tight, we anticipate we will be able 

to operate given the 6.4 percent additional reduction. We want to 

be team players, and I think we are asking the taxpayers, the 

American citizens, to sacrifice, and we want to be a part of that 

sacrifice. 

That will restrict our ability to fill some vacant staff slots, and, 

as I said, it will reduce our analytical abilities, and that could 

prove to be penny wise and pound foolish. As we have seen many 

times, government policies sometimes can cause dire economic and 

financial consequences. 

Our committee continues with a significant amount of work 

ahead, given the financial challenges, the economic challenges, and 

the events in Europe. They obviously are in a recession today. And 

with the interconnectivity of our global economy, that is going to 

be a challenge for all of us. We ask you to continue to provide us 

with the resources we need to do our job, particularly in an era 

where our oversight of financial markets is critical. But all in all, 

I am happy to report to you that we will live within the restrictions 

you impose. 

[The statement of Mr. Bachus follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. We thank you very, very much for your work. 

Does the committee anticipate what—let me put it this way. 

Some people would look at it and say, well, your committee spent 

a good deal of time passing what is known as Dodd-Frank, and this 

was a monumental task, and there are obviously different opinions 

as to its success. And some would say, well, therefore, that is in 

your back—in your rearview mirror; you won’t have as much to do 

now. How would you respond to that? 

Mr. BACHUS. Several different ways. We have only implemented 

27 percent of the regulations. We still have at least 73 percent of 

the implementation. The bill may be about 3,000 pages long, but 

the regulations presently—and this is—we are 27, 28 percent 

through—they fill two bankers boxes. So we are dealing with really 

the largest financial services changes in regulation in the history 

of our country. 

It is putting tremendous stress particularly on our community 

banks and our credit unions. It is affecting their financial health. 

And we are having to oversee a new agency with sweeping powers, 

the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, integrating mergers of 

different regulators, instituting a Financial Stability Oversight 

Board. 

We are beginning, as with the European crisis, which is—53 percent of our multinational corporations’, American multinational 

corporations’, profit is generated in Europe. The European banks 

are having trouble financing American companies’ operations in 

Europe. So there is always—every day there is a new—there seems 

to be a new financial challenge. 

The CHAIRMAN. One of the biggest complaints I have in my district, I deal with the difficulty of small business getting loans, and 

then when I talk to my community bankers, they say that some of 

this regulatory reform and implementation of regs that seemingly 

were done in reaction to what the, quote/unquote, ‘‘big banks’’ did 

has come down on them in such a way that they can’t be reasonably flexible and prudent. And my response to them has been, 

among other things, that the Congress of the United States is conducting oversight on that, and that we are looking at these things, 

and that as the regulatory scheme goes forward, we have to ensure 

that the voices of our constituents, small business community and 

small bankers, that is community bankers, is heard. 

For the record, your committee is one that is charged with that 

responsibility, correct? 

Mr. BACHUS. That is right. That is correct. In fact, we have 

passed 15 legislative bills which address small business and job 

creation, and I am happy to report that those were done in a bipartisan manner. 

The CHAIRMAN. We passed them in the House. 

Mr. BACHUS. They have all passed. I think 14 of the 15 passed 

the House. We considered three more today. 

The CHAIRMAN. What has the Senate done so far? 

Mr. BACHUS. Nothing. The Senate has not done anything. 

The CHAIRMAN. I want to make it clear that your committee is 

working on these requests for consideration by small businesses 

and community banks in our districts, and that you have brought 

forth legislation. The only reason they say ‘‘do-nothing Congress,’’ 


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and yet on a bipartisan basis your committee has considered a 

number of these things and passed out legislation—— 

Mr. BACHUS. And the Congress has picked them up in a bipartisan way, and most of them have passed with over 400 votes. So 

there is a consensus in the House that these are important measures. I am disappointed in the Senate. It is very good work product. 

There are two ways that small businesses can finance their operations. 

Mr. BACHUS. In fact, 70 something percent of your small businesses say that given additional capital, they would hire people 

today. In fact, if you look at the job numbers, 70, 80 percent of your 

new jobs are in small businesses. 

And there are two ways for them to build capital or seek funds. 

One is lending, go to a bank and lend. And many small businesses, 

because they are new in many cases, they are sometimes risky enterprises and the regulators are urging the banks not to take risks. 

Well, most new businesses don’t have a track record. So the way 

that they normally do is raise—have capital contributions, people 

that are willing to come in and participate as—you know, put capital in, and, if they lose their capital, if the company loses money, 

they lose their investment. But if the company is successful, their 

capital grows. 

And we have passed at least six or seven measures which should 

enable small businesses to raise capital. But none of them have 

been taken up in the Senate. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you. 

Mr. BACHUS. In fact—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Sometimes we don’t connect the budgets that you 

have and the staff that you have with the work that you do. And 

that is certainly vital at this present time. 

Mr. BACHUS. And I will say this, I think one thing that we all 

feel great about America; America is a country of entrepreneurs. It 

is a country of risk takers, people who are willing to put their capital behind either their own efforts or the efforts of others and participate in the profits but share the risk. And there are restraints 

in peoples’ abilities to become entrepreneurs and to invest in the 

ventures of other entrepreneurs. But as I said, we have, in a bipartisan nature—and many of the Democratic House freshmen have 

been the major sponsors on some of the bills. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

So you did double duty here and you get out on time. Thank you 

very much, Mr. Bachus. 

Mr. BACHUS. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much for being here. 

Thank you for adjusting your schedules to be here at this time. 

Representing the Oversight and Government Reform Committees, 

the chairman of the committee, Mr. Issa; the ranking member, Mr. 

Cummings. 

We would appreciate hearing from you as to how you are operating this year with a 5 percent cut that was imposed and also how 

you anticipate operating next year with the 6.4 percent cut that is 

projected as a result of the House resolution which was passed earlier this year. 

Mr. Issa. 


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STATEMENT OF THE HON. DARRELL E. ISSA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, 

CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT 

REFORM 

Mr. ISSA. I would ask unanimous consent that my entire opening 

statement, plus collateral material, be placed in the record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, these are great questions. 

Ranking Member Cummings and myself have made the adjustments to live within our means, barely within our means. The fact 

is that both of us could oversubscribe this year and do more as a 

result. Clearly, I will finish out the year obligated greater than the 

funds available and will then make appropriate cuts in the future 

obligations and hope that next year, additional cost savings we can 

find will allow us to take care of those items that we will defer at 

the end of the year. 

Every committee has an obligation to use the money wisely. I 

think our committee has done that. Every committee should look, 

though, at the Oversight Committee on a bipartisan basis, which 

has for multiple Congresses been moving toward greater transparency. Some of these investments include, we broadcast every 

hearing, field hearing or here, to the greatest extent possible in 

realtime. With rare exception, we stream, even from the field, hearings so that the public has full access. Every single one of our hearings, going back through multiple chairmen, are online today and 

available to the public. The investment in making sure we are not 

just open in discussion, but we are open in all access, is critical to 

our committee. 

We require open government every day, no matter who is in the 

chair. We work together on a bipartisan basis to make sure that 

we open up government. A number of initiatives coming out of our 

committee are designed to invest money in open government. The 

DATA Act and other bills that are pending now before the Congress are designed to make government more accessible and ultimately, as a result, save money for the taxpayers. Sometimes you 

have to spend money to save money. 

I will tell you that it is my opinion, both having been a ranking 

member and now a chairman and looking at the balance between 

the executive branch and our branch, that we couldn’t be more 

wrongminded in what we are doing. Oversight under Speaker 

Pelosi and oversight under Speaker Boehner have been spoken of 

as extremely important. Committees of all jurisdiction have been 

instructed to do more oversight. And they have tried. Our committee has tried to do an even better job with even less money. 

Having said that, let us just give a couple of comparisons that 

will be more fully laid out in my opening statement. There are 

12,000 employees that work for or are the IGs of the executive 

branch. They spend over $2 billion, quote, maintaining an effort 

against waste, fraud and abuse. 

We don’t have within our committee’s jurisdiction or funds, the 

majority and minority combined, enough resources to simply assign 

one person per IG to see what they are doing to see whether or not 

we can help or whether they are doing their job. 


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The comparison between the executive branch’s resources and 

ours shows the difference in whether or not we maintain properly 

the balance of power. 

Congress, both the House and the Senate, must do a great deal 

more if we are going to contain government. Two generations ago, 

Harry S. Truman asked for and received at the start of World War 

II, a special Senate Committee. That task force, the Truman Commission, rooted out waste in government procurement at the start 

of a war. His resources were roughly equal to what our combined 

committee resources equal today. The investment saved countless, 

hundreds of millions of dollars. Today that would be tens of billions 

of dollars. 

We can save $80 billion if we do a better job of oversight. We can 

save a few million dollars if we cut budgets. So today I recognize 

that we will be operating on a 6.4 less next year, and we will do 

what we have to do. But I would say to this committee on behalf 

of our constitutional responsibility, that we need to do a great deal 

more, and we need to allocate the resources vastly greater than we 

are to oversight. 

I recognize that there will be asked for cuts everywhere. I would 

only say here today that cutting across the board, as we did last 

year and as we are being asked to do again this year, makes the 

exact wrong message. 

And, Chairman Lungren, you and I are often asked whether we 

will vote for a 2 percent or a 5 percent across-the-board cut. Sometimes perhaps we do, sometimes we don’t. But we always say it is 

not the right way to make cuts. The right way to make cuts is to 

say, where should you cut, and where should you invest? 

I would say that there are opportunities to cut both in the executive branch and in this branch. But there are requirements that as 

government grows, that our oversight, whether done by this committee or other committees of the Congress, be in fact beefed up, 

and I would hope that we would make that point here today. 

And I lastly would say that many of the efficiencies that we are 

achieving have to do with leveraging electronic technology. And for 

the chairman and the ranking member, I want to thank you for the 

work you have done with the various committees to try to give us 

better resources in the House, which we leverage to try to do a better job. 

And I know there is an initiative by the end of the year to try 

to duplicate what we have done doing in our committee so that all 

of the House’s historic and current hearings be simulcast so the 

public has the full access so that our committee perhaps more 

uniquely stands with those groups in support of. 

And I thank the gentlemen, and I yield back. 

[The statement of Mr. Issa follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Cummings. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. ELIJAH CUMMINGS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND, 

RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you and good afternoon. 

I ask unanimous consent that my entire statement be made a 

part of the record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it shall be. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. First of all, let me say to you that I associate myself with the words of Mr. Issa. 

You know, our staff took a 5 percent cut, which meant that almost every employee on my staff took that cut. We have had a situation where, of course, now with the 6.4 percent cut, we are going 

to have to let people go. And the work is increasing. 

Chairman Issa is absolutely right. Our—the job that we do is one 

of trying to bring about transparency as best we can and accountability. And we have on our side some major priorities and one of 

them being foreclosure. We have taken the money that we have, 

and we have used it effectively and efficiently, inquiring into foreclosure with regard to the banks, with regard to why this is happening and how we can solve it, addressing the head of the various 

agencies, including Mr. Geithner and others. 

But I have got to tell you that to cut, cut, cut, I don’t think is 

the way to go, because I believe now that when people will hear 

that Government Reform and Oversight—Oversight and Government Reform is even looking at them or thinking about them, they 

begin to tremble because they know that we are going to do a thorough job. They know that we are going to be fair, but they know 

that we are going to demand accountability. 

So when you take away resources, I think all that does is weaken 

our position, and at some point, the chairman is right; the question 

is, are you cutting in one place but cutting money that could be 

used to make sure that you maintain that accountability? 

I am proud of the job that we have been doing. And I have obviously said that we have to be very careful, not only with regard to 

government agencies but to ourselves, that we do not become mired 

in a culture of mediocrity, and that is exactly what can happen. If 

you continue to pull resources away, you don’t have the personnel. 

The personnel that you do have is stretched to the limit. People 

then look at a situation where they say, wait a minute, not going 

to get a raise; I am working harder and harder. And they don’t 

mind working hard. I know for a fact that people on the chairman’s 

staff and my staff work very, very long hours, sometimes late into 

the night, because I get the emails. 

And I just think that if we are going to try to accomplish the 

things that we want to accomplish, another 6.4 percent cut, I think 

it does much harm. And again, we will work within the bounds 

that you set for us. I mean, we have no choice. But the question 

becomes at what price? 

And I just think that sometimes we have got to stop and think 

about what we are doing. I realize that everybody wants to have 


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cuts here and cuts there, but sometimes, to be frank with you, it 

doesn’t make any sense. And in this instance, with a committee 

like ours, doing the things that we do, I think other committees 

kind of depend on us. I mean, when they see what we are doing, 

a lot of times they either use the information that we are able to 

obtain, or they find ways to piggy back on what we are trying to 

do. 

So I would urge—and I would hope that this practice that we are 

going through is not one where we just sort of are sitting here and 

just talking. I am hoping that you are listening to us very carefully 

because I think if there is any committee that deserves to have the 

resources that are necessary to do its job is this committee. 

And by the way, our responsibilities are only going to increase 

because again, we are demanding excellence from government. Just 

as we demand excellence from our ourselves, we demand excellence 

from government. And so with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back 

and thank you very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Cummings follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I thank both of you for your testimony. 

You remind me of something that I heard from the Supreme 

Court Justice Scalia this summer when he was speaking to a group 

of college students, and he asked them what they thought made us 

the freest nation in the world, what protected our freedoms in the 

governmental sense? And he said it is not the First Amendment, 

not the Second Amendment, not the Fifth Amendment, not the Bill 

of Rights together. He said it is the construct of government that 

was established by our Founding Fathers. 

And by way of illustration, he said, what is the British equivalent of our President? He said the prime minister. He said, what 

does the prime minister have to be? A sitting member of Parliament. He said they have no concept; they have it difficult to 

wrap their minds around our different branches of government that 

create a tension in our constitution for the purpose of protecting 

our freedoms from an overreaching government. He said we have 

a difference between the executive and the legislative branch, and 

that is why I have always been so strong on the concept of our responsibility, not just of legislation but oversight, of every committee, including your committee. 

And when you see the size of the Federal establishment, primarily the executive branch, versus the size of the legislative 

branch and we are supposed to do oversight, we have to make sure 

that we have the resources that allow us to do that oversight. Because if we are talking about saving trillions of dollars, the savings 

are going to be in the executive side, not the legislative side. And 

in order for us to make the proper decisions, we need to have the 

ability to look across the horizon of the executive branch. So I understand what both of you are saying. 

We are in very difficult times where we believe it was important 

for us to set the example. We did a 5 percent cut from our Members’ individual staffs, committee staffs, leadership staff, followed 

up by the 6.4 percent. Reluctantly, the Senate joined us. At least 

the information I have is the Senate voted a 5 percent cut for the 

remainder of fiscal year 2011 in March, which resulted in a 1.3 percent cut. And now they have decided that leadership, committee 

and support staff on the Senate side will be cut 6.3 percent next 

year, but personal staffs by 3.2 percent. 

So I think we are providing that leadership, but I do think you 

make a point. At what point do we say we have to have the resources to be able to really do the oversight that is necessary on 

a regular basis, no matter who is President, no matter what party 

happens to control the White House. 

I think as much as I always talk about the trespass on the proper legislative role of the executive role by the judiciary, I am concerned about the trespass on our job by the executive branch by 

way of regulation, by way of ignoring what we say in terms of legislation. 

So I thank you for the work you are doing. We have a difficult 

task. I mean, this is a very different set of hearings we are having 

this year and last year. Usually people come before us seeing how 

much they are going to get an increase, and frankly, they didn’t 

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So we are on different times. Folks back home are hurting. I 

think they expect us to show an example, give an example. I think 

we are. But I think we also have to at some point in time say, how 

are we going to effectively do our role in curbing what I think is 

the excessive spending and the excessive power and reach of the 

Federal Government by way of the executive branch. 

I know that is not a question; it is a statement. But I thank you 

for it. 

Mr. Brady. 

Mr. ISSA. Chairman Lungren, in answer to your statement, just 

for example, the GAO as an independent body under our auspices, 

shows in the last 5 years under these two administrations, $1.8 

trillion in the high-risk loss to the government. This is either failure to get revenue or excess spending. It began at $1.31 billion in 

2003. This year, the 2011, is at 551. At that rate of lost revenue 

and/or wasted money, we are looking at the savings that the supercommittee not only didn’t get in 10 years; this could have gotten 

it to us in 5. But the rate of growth means that virtually half of 

our projected deficit is right here to be wiped out. But it is only 

wiped out by getting these high-risk groups to actually change. 

And many of these, as the chairman and the ranking member 

know, many of these high-risk losses, including the IRS’s failures, 

these, in fact, are on the list every year for 10 years. So it is clear 

the executive branch won’t do it, and if we keep doing what we are 

doing, plus or minus 6.4 percent, we won’t get it done either. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Brady. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

If this 6.4 percent comes to you and your committee, will you 

have to lay anybody off? 

Mr. ISSA. Yes. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Oh, definitely. 

Mr. ISSA. Both of us hire primarily a great deal of attorneys, and 

they are already paid far less than other attorneys, not just in this 

town but around the country. 

Mr. BRADY. That is not making an impact on me, but go ahead. 

Mr. ISSA. We are the investigative committee of the Congress, 

and I am not a lawyer. The ranking member is an experienced lawyer. But there comes a point at which we don’t get the caliber. So 

having a few less but maintaining at least the minimum salaries 

so these people don’t have to leave elsewhere will become necessary. Both the majority and the minority are currently under our 

maximum cap; something we never envisioned. We usually bump 

up against our cap. But that has been part of what we have done 

in anticipation of the 6.4 percent cut. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. ISSA. If you want to say, darn it, we have changed our mind, 

we are going to give you the increase you need in order to do the 

oversight, we will take it from somewhere else, is there a motion 

on the floor? 

The CHAIRMAN. Darrell, I have known you long enough that I 

knew I didn’t need to have to say that. Thank you very much. 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you. 

[Recess.] 


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The CHAIRMAN. All right. 

The committee will now welcome Vice Chairman Sessions and 

Ranking Member Slaughter of the Committee on Rules. We would 

ask you to give us an idea of how you have been operating this 

year with the 5 percent cut that was imposed by the resolution 

passed by the House and how you will operate with the expected 

6.4 percent cut as a result of the House resolution passed by our 

Chamber earlier this year. 

Mr. Sessions. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. PETE SESSIONS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS, VICE 

CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON RULES 

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And also 

certainly, Ranking Member Brady, I want to say thank you for allowing Louise Slaughter and I the opportunity on behalf of Representative David Dreier, who is still on an official business mission over in Egypt as an observer for the free elections in that 

country. 

Today what I would like to do is represent Chairman Dreier and 

let you know that the Rules Committee is the tool by which this 

House of Representatives manages its legislative agenda and 

schedule. And it is a very small committee, a small staff, but I believe has a very important responsibility. 

And as we work to meet that responsibility, we have been busy 

in the last 11 months. We have reported 76 rules that allowed 89 

bills to come to the floor. We have also processed more than 900 

amendments and 103 revisions. The end result is that floor debate, 

I believe and the chairman believes, is more open than it has ever 

been by either party for sure in the 15 years that I have been here, 

and it has, I believe, changed in a positive way the way that we 

do business. And the accessibility and the ability for the Rules 

Committee to continue this important mission is why we are here 

today. 

We also serve the House as a whole and our award-winning Web 

site serves as a location where members and the public can go 

quickly to the latest text of bills and to amendments. And we are 

working closely with the Clerk and the Government Printing Office 

to streamline our document production and to reduce printing 

costs. We are doing this as a result of not just trying to stay more 

efficient but also because we need to do that. We need to do that 

because, as you have already alluded to, Mr. Chairman, a 5 percent 

reduction from 2010 levels has made us change the way we operate. 

But we have been able to meet our obligations. We are staying 

lean, and we are leveraging our investments in technology to do 

more with less. 

We understand that the committee is also considering, as the 

chairman also said, a 6.4 percent reduction for next year. And we 

estimate that we will be able to continue to meet our obligations 

under a reduced budget. Again, in order to do that, once again, we 

are going to use technology, and we are going to try and do more 

with less by streamlining our operations. 


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This year also represents the first year when the Rules Committee minority has controlled a full one-third of the budget. We 

are concerned, however, that next year’s cut may disproportionately affect the minority simply because they have a smaller share 

of that budget. 

Chairman Dreier has committed to Ranking Member Slaughter, 

who is here with us today, that he will continue to work with her 

on essential needs that she has in order to perform the duties that 

are necessary, not just to her party but also to the overall effectiveness of the Rules Committee. 

Finally, we want to encourage the committee to exercise caution 

in future years because the role of the Rules Committee is unique, 

and we believe that further additional cuts, even though we are 

working within the context of what we have been given, would 

mean that it would affect us and our ability to effectively get our 

job done. 

So with that said, I note you may want to go and allow Ranking 

Member Slaughter to give her words, but I will open myself up for 

any questions that you have on behalf of the committee. 

[The statements of Mr. Sessions and Mr. Dreier follow:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Sessions. 

Ms. Slaughter. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. LOUISE SLAUGHTER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW 

YORK, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON RULES 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Brady, and our fellow Rules Committee person, Mr. Nugent. 

I am glad to be here with you today regarding the budget request 

for the Committee on Rules. As I testified to the panel earlier this 

year, the Rules Committee has a long and great tradition, regardless of which party controls the House, of conducting its administrative functions in a collegial, nonpartisan way. 

Although we often disagree about important policy issues, we 

have a deep respect for our committee and for each other, and we 

have always managed to ensure that it can fulfill its unique and 

essential role. The tradition of working in a bipartisan fashion on 

our budget and administrative activities continues today. 

Chairman Dreier, as Mr. Sessions has said, has already said that 

we will be able to work together on problems that we may have in 

the minority. We are fully prepared to continue those efforts in the 

next session as we implement the additional cuts that will be approved by the House. 

I would like to highlight one important concern that has been 

raised by Mr. Sessions, a concern which I share. Given the unique 

circumstances of our committee and the relatively small size of our 

budget compared to other House panels, an additional 6.4 percent 

reduction next year could have, as Mr. Sessions noted, a disproportionate impact on the minority. So, given this concern, I appreciate 

Chairman Dreier’s commitment to work with us next year to make 

sure that the essential needs of the minority are met. 

As ranking member, I look forward to working with Chairman 

Dreier and the other members on the committee to continue to 

make our committee transparent, fair and responsible. 

Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Ms. Slaughter follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I thank both of you for your testimony. 

Just a question, are all proceedings before the Rules Committee 

now televised? 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Yes. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Chairman, I believe that all of them are. I 

don’t know that they are live necessarily, but I believe that all of 

the committee hearings would be made available. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I think they are streamed in real-time. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I just want to thank both of you on that. 

I always wondered why the Rules Committee, as important a 

committee as it is, has the smallest hearing room in the entire 

House of Representatives. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. With the worst ventilation on the face of the 

Earth. When we have a long hearing—— 

The CHAIRMAN. At least you have got a heater. If you had been 

here earlier, you would have said you wish you were back in the 

Rules Committee. But we have managed to bring our temperature 

up to almost comfortable. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. We watch them drop off one by one. 

The CHAIRMAN. I just want to say, I think it is important for the 

American people to be able to see what is happening with the 

Rules Committee because otherwise it is kind of like the mystery 

of the Supreme Court. It is almost too important for the public to 

see it, which is a bugaboo of mine. I think the court ought to allow 

people in. 

I could never understand why we didn’t make every effort to be 

as transparent as possible in the Rules Committee, where people 

could see what the Rules Committee does, which is very, very important in setting the rules of the terms of the debate up for the 

floor. And often, I think there is a great advanced debate on some 

of the issues that are going to be on the floor before the Rules Committee, and I think it is very highly educational for members to see 

it and the public to see it. 

So I am very, very pleased that that is the case. I know that 

there are—I have noticed before the Rules Committee that occasionally the two of you have differences of opinion. But I am 

pleased to see that there is acknowledgement of the cooperative 

spirit with respect to the administration of the committee itself. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Exactly. That has existed as long as I have been 

on the committee. And Pete would say the same thing. 

The CHAIRMAN. And I know these cuts are tough. I happen to 

think we have an obligation to show the American people that we 

would lead. At some point in time, we have to make sure that we 

still have the capacity to do the job that we have to do as a coequal 

branch of government, particularly up against that large behemoth 

called the executive branch. That is why oversight is so important. 

But we are going ahead with that. There are tough decisions that 

we are to make here on the committee. The expectation is about 

6.4 percent for all committees. We will see what the final decision 

is. But I am happy that you at least are prepared to work within 

that. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Indeed. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Chairman, I believe that your points are well 

made, and I believe that what the gentlewoman has spoken about 


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is a level of consistency and professionalism. We believe we have 

now cut there. And we were very eager as a committee, all of us, 

Republicans and Democrats, to recognize that the House of Representatives must lead. 

We now think we have done our peace dividend, and it has given 

us what we have got. But we have to make sure; for instance, we 

had a hearing problem; you could not hear effectively in the room, 

and we had to make some other changes that were necessary. But 

we will get our job done. But we have now tried to also say, well, 

we have accepted the 5 percent, the 6.4 percent. We think any further cuts would need to be reviewed as to what we could—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Let us make it clear, the 6.4 percent is on the 

reduced number. So it is actually, over 2 years, more than 10 percent. Probably closer to 12 percent. What if we could get the executive branch to accept a 12 percent cut over 2 years? It might balance the budget. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. To show how frugal the Rules Committee is, our 

chairs, the chairs on which we sit—and I really admire yours— 

were purchased in 1967. They have not been changed in all this 

time, although some of them are getting a little shabby. But I think 

we don’t ever spend money up there frivolously. 

The CHAIRMAN. I am glad to hear that you are using antiques 

so well over there. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. We did go through a flurry of looking at some 

chairs and we said, no never mind. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Ranking Member, former chairman. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you. Sometimes being comfortable has a disadvantage. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Well I tell you being uncomfortable and not 

being able to breathe. I mean, we certainly do feel from time to 

time that we would like a little relief. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you. 

I would like to ask the majority and the minority if these cuts 

become effective, would you lose any staff? Would you have to lay 

anybody off? 

Mr. SESSIONS. We anticipate that as the change—when we find 

out what this will be, that we will balance that with the technology 

that needs to be gained and try to change the functions. At some 

point, there could be a push to have to do that, but at this time, 

we are not necessarily believing that that would occur. 

Mr. BRADY. The minority also? 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. We had the normal attrition going from 21 to 

11 with the change in majority/minority. We hope not to have any 

more layoffs. What we do have, though, is a vacancy of one of our 

major positions that we hope to be able to fill. And we have worked 

with Mr. Dreier on being able to do that. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. If you wouldn’t continue to raid our Homeland 

Security Committee for Parliamentarians, maybe you wouldn’t 

have to worry on your budget. 

Mr. Nugent. 


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Mr. NUGENT. Well, as one of the junior members of the Rules 

Committee, I didn’t realize the chairs—— 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. 1967. 

Mr. NUGENT. My goodness. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I have a child that age. 

Mr. NUGENT. As many times as we meet, which is quite often, 

those are the lousiest chairs. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I’m expecting we are going to have a collapse of 

one or two of them any day now. 

Mr. NUGENT. I would think so. I want to thank both of you for 

appearing. It is a pleasure to serve with both of you on the Rules 

Committee. 

I will say this, that there is a lot of mystique about the Rules 

Committee because it was not, I guess, televised in years past. I 

recommend that all Members come up in front of the Rules Committee at least once to see how the process works. It is a lively and 

open debate. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Yes indeed. 

Mr. NUGENT. One thing is there is no time limit on members to 

speak in front of the Rules Committee. So it certainly does keep 

things lively. Thank you very much. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Thank you, Mr. Nugent. 

The CHAIRMAN. So all of the aspiring Senators get to testify in 

front of the Rules Committee, is that it? 

Mr. NUGENT. Basically they could filibuster that one. 

The CHAIRMAN. All right. I want to thank both of you for appearing before us. We appreciate the work you are doing. And once 

again, I am very pleased to see that we have live streaming of the 

proceedings before the Rules Committee. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Chairman, all we ask is that as you work 

through this process, if you will work with us to the best of your 

ability, we can then effectively plan our process. And we appreciate 

this committee and what they do, and respectfully would say to you 

that we believe that Mr. Nugent being on this committee is a plus 

for the Rules Committee because it brings the understanding of the 

importance—— 

The CHAIRMAN. That is true and your budget is all on him. 

Thank you very much. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Thanks for your hospitality. 

The CHAIRMAN. Gentlemen, thank you for appearing before us. 

We now have the chairman and the ranking member of the 

Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. We would ask you 

to give us some idea about how the 5 percent cut affected your committee operations this first session, and you know, what efficiencies 

did you utilize? And we are facing a 6.4 percent cut for all committees as a result of the resolution passed by the House earlier this 

year, and we would love to hear from you on your ideas of how you 

are going to manage with that. 

Mr. Mica. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOHN L. MICA, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA, CHAIRMAN, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. 


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And let me try to summarize, and we will submit this whole 

statement to the record. But we have, as the Transportation and 

Infrastructure Committee, lived within our means. In fact, we intend to return to the Treasury a greater amount in 2011 than was 

returned in 2010. 

Part of that was accomplished by not fully staffing up. We have 

had to not fill some positions. We have tried to do more with less, 

both as far as personnel and also with our public resources. 

We have at the same time run a full operation. We have done 

probably close to an unprecedented series of public hearings during 

the past year on major legislation across the country, and we have 

allowed members on both sides of the aisle to travel. I don’t think 

any request has been denied that conformed with the rules. 

We have a full schedule ahead, but I think we can do it with— 

within the 6.4 percent and maybe even better than that. I know 

you are going to hear from my counterpart, the Democrat ranking 

member, they have had a rough time of it. And they did transition 

into the minority. And I recall from Mr. Rahall that I had to do 

the same thing some 4 or 5 years ago when I became the ranking 

member. We went from 58 or 59 positions to 29, and that was also 

right about the holiday time, which wasn’t an easy task. But both 

sides, minority and majority, in difficult times, the public has had 

to cut back. 

We have asked others to be more frugal and more productive and 

that is what we have hoped to achieve. I don’t think it is going to 

impede with any of our agenda, and we do have a full agenda for 

the next year. 

So, with that, I will also submit this longer testimony. But we 

appreciate your work and yield back. 

[The statement of Mr. Mica follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. 

Rahall. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. NICK J. RAHALL, II, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA, 

RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you, Chairman Lungren and Ranking Member Brady, for having us back for this mid-Congress review of our 

committee’s budget. As a general matter, I have no complaints regarding the way in which the T&I Committee handles administrative functions. I control one-third of the budget for salaries, and office supplies and electronic equipment are dealt with on a non-partisan basis. At the beginning of the year, I was able to fill 27 of 

the 29 staff slots allotted to me with available funds for salaries. 

When the 5 percent committee funding reduction came down earlier this year, my senior staff took an across-the-board reduction in 

their salaries. As you contemplate an additional 6.4 percent cut for 

next year, I believe that the only way we will avoid any further salary cuts is through attrition. 

I want this committee to know that I am fully aware of the problems this Nation faces in terms of fighting high unemployment 

rates and the overall economy. We all are quite aware of those 

facts. But if we continue to follow the path of consistently reducing 

House committee budgets, this place, I fear, Mr. Chairman and 

Ranking Member, will be staffed only by 20-somethings because we 

will not be able to retain professional staff. 

Nothing against 20-year-olds, just I feel very strongly that the 

knowledge, the institutional memory, the background and the history of this institution afforded by those with experience to advise 

us on conflicts, legislative issues is vital to our functioning as effective Representatives of the people. And that, I would submit, if we 

were to allow only the younger—without this type of knowledge, we 

would not be best serving the American people. 

In the case of the T&I Committee, we would not have the type 

of staff who knows the difference between contract authority under 

the Highway Trust Fund versus the General Fund authority, and 

who know when we talk about slots at Reagan National Airport, 

we are not talking about expanding gambling. 

So I think it is important that we have that type of knowledge. 

And you know who would be grinning from ear to ear if we are not 

able to retain the experienced staff to which I reference, it would 

be K Street, because the lobbyists will be writing the bills, sending 

them up here for us to automatically introduce, and I hardly think 

that is in the best interest of the American public. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The statement of Mr. Rahall follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I thank you much, Mr. Rahall. 

I heard a rumor that you were a 20-something once; is that 

right? 

Mr. RAHALL. I guess I was. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you for your testimony. 

Could you outline for me, Mr. Mica and Mr. Rahall, what the 

oversight responsibilities are within the jurisdiction of your committee? 

Mr. MICA. Well, they are significant. We do have—we have an 

investigative staff on the majority side. And we, of course, cover all 

modes. We have also taken on some responsibility for oversight in 

the areas for which we have had previous authorization authority, 

but we continue oversight. For example, TSA, we just finished a 4- 

month pretty comprehensive review of their activities. So, both 

within all of the modes, highway, surface, rail, aviation, we try, 

both within our subcommittees and then we have separate investigative personnel to assist us with oversight and investigations. 

The CHAIRMAN. Is that done on a bipartisan basis, the minority—— 

Mr. MICA. They are welcome to participate. We have operated— 

I think they do some, and we do some. And we always open any 

of our reports to their comments for minority report. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Rahall, do you have anything to say about 

oversight? 

Mr. RAHALL. I think the chairman has adequately described our 

oversight. He did mention public buildings also. That is a very important part. 

Mr. MICA. And we have done a—I think we have done a pretty 

good job, too. We should have a bipartisan bill coming up pretty 

soon to dispose of some of the property in a more orderly fashion. 

But we have published a report, when we were in the minority, we 

did a report entitled ‘‘The Federal Government Must Stop Sitting 

on Its Assets.’’ And that has become sort of the blueprint for what 

we want to do, take buildings that have been vacant for sometime. 

The first hearing we did, an oversight hearing on the subcommittee 

we held down in a building half occupied, the old post office, next 

door, totally unoccupied, 60,000 square feet, two blocks from the 

U.S. Capitol. It happened to be in February; we did it in a building 

with no heat, which got a little bit of attention from GSA, and a 

little bit of movement working with Ms. Norton and Mr. Rahall and 

a great young leader, Mr. Denham. 

In fact, now I am seeing that the proposals have come in. And 

instead of spending—costing us those buildings $10 million a year, 

that we will have that much in revenue. They are planning hotels, 

other improvements, and will employ about 1,000 people in the District of Columbia. So we can turn lemons into lemon aid, and our 

committee is working hard on oversight to do that. 

The CHAIRMAN. We have a very difficult situation here in the 

Congress in which we have decided that we as a Congress do not 

involve ourselves in earmarks, and yet at the same point in time, 

there has been a historic record with respect to the Federal Government under the constitutional waters of the U.S., et cetera 

being involved in water projects, participating with local and State 

governments. Is it your committee that would be given the responVerDate Mar 15 2010 01:19 Jan 28, 2012 Jkt 072284 PO 00000 Frm 00103 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A284.XXX A284

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sibility of trying to thread that needle between what is earmarks—— 

Mr. MICA. Did you say water projects? 

Mr. RAHALL. Yes, Corps of Engineers. 

The CHAIRMAN. And water projects which have always been 

something from the beginning of the Republic, as I understand it, 

there has been a Federal nexus to that. 

Mr. MICA. About some 11 months ago, I inherited a laundry list 

of to-do items that were left over, including a 4-year delayed FAA 

bill, including a more than year delayed transportation bill, now 2 

years delayed, the reauthorization for Coast Guard pipelines and 

other things that needed to be done, and we have—we have moved 

forward. My hope is to get that FAA bill by working with Mr. 

Rahall hopefully by Christmas. And we got word today that we will 

have a little bit more time in January for the major transportation 

bill. We would like to get it out, but we have a jammed schedule, 

as you know. 

But to answer your question, I would like to turn, with Mr. Rahall’s consent, to a water resources reauthorization bill, and maybe 

we can’t do earmarks as they used to do, but hopefully, we can 

prioritize projects, and I think Members of Congress deserve to be 

heard and also to help influence what gets done on what priority 

basis. 

Mr. RAHALL. In addition, though, Mr. Chairman, I think our 

Army Corps of Engineers needs some direction on these projects. 

These are dams and other infrastructure projects across our country, many of which are in dire need of repair. And if they don’t receive that repair and, God forbid, a disaster occurs, it is going to 

cost our government many times over in disaster recovery efforts, 

FEMA efforts, displaced housing and other untold expenses that 

will naturally occur if a disaster of that type would occur. 

So the Corps of Engineers responsible, of course, for doing these 

projects needs that type of direction or authority from the Congress. 

Earmarks in general, you know, when we were in the majority 

under then Chairman Oberstar, we had an extensive scrutinizing 

of every Member’s request for a project. We had an extensive survey that went out to those Members. The responses to those questions scrubbed every aspect of an earmark or project request, local 

support, nobody would benefit personally, et cetera, et cetera, et 

cetera. And of all of the hundreds of projects we did, there was little if any—I cannot recall any pushback that we had from any outside group that scrutinizes our requests, our projects because every 

project was found to be worthy of the Member requesting it. So, 

you know, there is a process here that if we are open and transparent with the people, that I think is proper in whatever process 

you want to call it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Do you two believe that you have sufficient staff 

to be able to work on that project this coming year? 

Mr. MICA. I do. 

The CHAIRMAN. That is—I am trying to find a solution to what 

we do in terms of water projects. You have a President who said 

he won’t sign a bill with earmarks. So we voted that we won’t have 


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any earmarks. The Senate has voted they won’t have any earmarks 

with respect to certain things. Well, I guess the Senate hasn’t. 

But somehow we have to confront that question, what do we do 

with water projects? And it is going to be a real heavy lift. And I 

just want to know whether you think you have got sufficient staff 

that you can work on that next year. 

Mr. MICA. On the majority side, we have great staff, fully staffed 

Subcommittee on Water Resources, experienced personnel, and I 

think the staffs have worked very well together. But we are going 

to try to do that bill. A lot depends on what our leadership agrees 

to. We can’t bring any bill to the floor, Mr. Rahall and I. And I 

would like, if I had my druthers, by Friday, we would finalize our 

transportation bill, and then we would introduce it on Monday together and mark it up next week and have it on the floor. But we 

do not have that ability. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. 

Mr. RAHALL. Yes, to answer your question. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. 

Mr. Brady. 

Mr. Nugent. 

Thank you both. We appreciate it. 

Now the Armed Services Committee. 

Mr. RAHALL. Where do we get the check? 

The CHAIRMAN. It is in the mail. 

Welcome. It is good to have you here. Armed Services Committee 

Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith. We appreciate you 

being here. We would ask that you give us an idea of how you were 

able to operate this year after we had the 5 percent cut that we 

imposed and the expected 6.4 percent cut for the upcoming year 

and the kinds of efficiencies that you were able to implement and 

those that you look at for the coming year. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

Mr. MCKEON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Brady, distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity 

to testify on behalf of the Armed Services Committee’s funding requirements. 

I am also grateful to have my good friend, Ranking Member 

Adam Smith, here today also. 

Our committee has one of the widest, most critical mandates in 

Congress. We conduct oversight of a military that is engaged in 

combat operations in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and Yemen, 

sustaining a drawdown from Iraq, successfully concluding operations over Libya and are engaged in a wide variety of training and 

assistance missions in support of our allies globally. 

We further oversee a Defense Department that is undergoing one 

of the most revolutionary periods in its history, both from a strategic and a budgetary perspective. 

The tasks we ask our military to accomplish have greatly expanded since the end of the Cold War. Annually and without fail, 

we produce a National Defense Authorization Act, which fulfill’s 


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Congress’ constitutional obligation to provide for the common defense. 

We further conduct a steady series of hearings that, under the 

direct—under the joint direction of Ranking Member Smith and 

myself, have included rigorous oversight to improve efficiencies, 

spending and acquisition programs in the Defense Department 

without compromising our national security. 

We also must ensure that our men and women in harm’s way are 

properly equipped, supplied, trained and led. Our staff provides— 

prides itself on doing more with less. This committee provides the 

American people with an admiral bang for their buck, especially 

given our low number of staff relative to the immense number of 

defense dollars we are charged with watching. 

We rank 12th in overall funding and second to last in memberto-staff ratio, with 1.15 staffers for every member. It is important 

to note here that we are the largest committee in the House with 

62 members. We are proud of our long history operating in a fiscally conscious manner. That history includes time-tested operating 

practices that eschew excess and focus on providing legislation that 

is on time, on budget, without fail. 

It is worth noting that in addition to the broad Defense Department portfolio, we also provide significant oversight and resourcing 

to the Department of Energy. With that in mind, it is my opinion 

that the Armed Services Committee stands above our fellow committees in both cost effectiveness and productivity. 

Though we have long been a model for fiscal efficiency, we understand that we live in tough economic times. And everyone must 

sacrifice in order to right our financial ship. However, after absorbing a tough 6.8 percent cut from 2010 to 2011, I must strongly caution against any further decrease beyond 1 percent from our 2012 

budget. It is important to note that approximately 98 percent of our 

budget goes to payroll. We currently have 69 staff members, but 

should the committee receive a 6.4 percent cut, the only way to 

achieve budget compliance would to be reduce our workforce, which 

as I noted already has the second lowest member-to-staff ratio in 

the House. 

We did not provide COLA allowances in 2011 and currently do 

not have resources to offer COLA or nominal end-of-year bonuses 

in year 2012. These staffing shortages were the reason I requested 

that our committee be reduced in member numbers last year. I 

was, unfortunately, unsuccessful in this appeal. 

It should be noted that the committee absorbed this year’s reduction by delaying the equipment and supply purchases and slowly 

backfilling six staff vacancies created from the new Congress reaching 69 staff in August. The committee intends to utilize any nominal remaining funds for necessary equipment, Web hosting and 

database upgrades and supplies in anticipation of next year’s budget reduction. 

To date, the committee still hopes and expects to return $50,000 

of this year’s funds. A 1 percent cut coupled with the over $540,000 

decrease we absorbed last year would still significantly impact the 

effectiveness of our personnel and the committee’s mission but 

would allow us to perform the basic functions of the committee. 


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Within that cut, we would operate at absolute bare bones for 

technology, equipment and incentives but would be able to sustain 

our most critical resource, our staff levels. 

Additionally, committees have been directed to reinstitute reimbursement of Government Printing Office detailees. This was neither expected nor budgeted for at the beginning of this Congress. 

Due to the volume of hearings, the committee holds, over 113 this 

year, we have come to rely on our two GPO printers. However, 

coming in at a cost of approximately $225,000, it cuts into personnel funding, funding needed to sustain our current staffing 

level. 

As you know, attracting seasoned professionals, many of them 

military veterans, to staff our ranks is one of our top priorities. 

These staffers are our physical warriors, working to ensure through 

their oversight the defense programs are brought in on time and 

on budget. Forcing us to shed key talent from our ranks represents 

a penny-wise/pound-foolish strategy, as we would lose the ability to 

properly monitor certain areas of Pentagon spending, some of 

which account for billions in taxpayer dollars. 

Further cuts would stretch the remaining staff, already overworked by a wartime portfolio, and harm their ability to do their 

jobs. This committee has always stood ready to do its part and pay 

its fair share. 

But Mr. Chairman, you simply cannot scrutinize an agency like 

the Defense Department on a skeleton crew. I frequently note that 

the charge of our committee is specifically enumerated in the U.S. 

Constitution. The Armed Services Committee has faithfully executed that charge through good times and bad, and we pride ourselves in accomplishing this on a fully bipartisan and cost-efficient 

basis. 

Thank you for your time, Mr. Chairman. And I am happy to answer your questions once Ranking Member Smith completes his 

opening statement. 

[The statement of Mr. McKeon follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Smith. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON, RANKING 

MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a 

full statement I will submit to the record, but I will summarize. 

I agree with all of the chairman’s statements and just want to 

start by answering your question about how we found the efficiencies. I think the chairman has done a pretty adequate job of 

that. We reduced our overall staff level. As has been mentioned, 

relative to the size of our committee in terms of members and also 

relative to the size of the budget that we oversee, we already have 

one of the smallest committee staffs in Congress. 

So we found those efficiencies where we could, and I believe we 

are on a very lean, mean operation already. Further cuts would require reductions in staff, which would make that more difficult, 

and I agree with the chairman’s assessment that that should be 

avoided, and I do think we should look at, committee by committee, 

the circumstances and where they are at, and not simply take a 

broad brush and say, we are going to cut everything across the 

board. It does differ in terms of responsibilities that different committees have. 

I believe we have a fairly large responsibility and more importantly I think we have already put in place efficiencies that have 

got us to a more efficient use of our staffing. The numbers reflect 

that. So I think a simple across-the-board cut approach at that 

point would be unfair to those of us like our committee who tried 

to find those savings up front in the first place to run a more efficient operation. 

And the Department of Defense in general, given the size of the 

budget and the responsibilities, our responsibility for oversight and 

to implement the defense authorizing bill which allocates those 

funds is enormous in the best of times. But we are still at war in 

Afghanistan. That requires a substantial amount of oversight. We 

are facing the specter of sequestration, given the inability of the 

supercommittee to find necessary cuts. Trying to plan for those significant changes is a huge, huge responsibility for the staff and for 

the members of the committee. 

To force further reductions in our staffing would, quite frankly, 

undermine our ability as committee members to exercise appropriate oversight over how the Department of Defense spends its 

money and, as importantly, what strategic choices they make in 

making sure that our national security is protected. That is one of 

the paramount duties of the legislative branch, is to exercise that 

oversight and provide for our national security. And our staff is absolutely critical to us successfully accomplishing that task. 

And I hope the committee will keep all of that in mind as they 

try to figure out what to do in this admittedly very, very difficult 

budget environment. 

And with that, along with the chairman, I am happy to answer 

your questions. 

[The statement of Mr. Smith of Washington follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Let me ask you this. Some would say that the failure of the Congress to reach agreement with the special select committee or 

supercommittee, whatever we call it, requires sequestration in the 

military and that, therefore, your responsibilities would be less 

rather than more because these are across-the-board cuts in the 

Defense Department, as opposed to you carefully going through and 

finding out where cuts should be made versus where they should 

not be made. How would you respond to that, both of you? 

Mr. SMITH of Washington. In two ways. First of all, it is far from 

clear that sequestration is going to happen. I think if you polled 

the majority Members of Congress, they would say, we are not 

going to let that happen, one way or the other; we are going to find 

that $1.2 trillion. Sequestration doesn’t happen until January 2013. 

So the actual situation the DOD and those of us committed to 

doing the oversight of it find ourselves in now is we don’t know, 

we don’t know how much money there is going to be for the fiscal 

year 2013 budget, even as we are trying to plan it. So that increases the workload; it doesn’t decrease it because you have got 

to play out two, three, four, five, maybe more, different scenarios 

about how much money you are going to have, to do what? And 

even if it winds up being straight sequestration, there are a number of choices involved in that and how you move money around 

in other places to try to deal with that. I cannot imagine an argument that says that the specter of sequestration coming down at 

us reduces our workload. Our staff would laugh out load at that notion. It clearly increases it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MCKEON. We already are faced with cuts of about some- where between $465 billion and $500 billion that will be budgeted 

next year. So we are going over the next 10 years, we are looking 

at about a $50 billion annual cut; sequestration hits, you have another $50 billion on top of that. One thing we could do is just eliminate the Defense Department, and we could probably save our 

whole budget. But I think that most of us would agree that the 

world is a much safer place than it has been. I mean, with the 

places we are already fighting right now and with the prospects of 

what is happening in Egypt and Iran; I mean, we just have to turn 

on the TV every morning to see what new place is erupting. North 

Korea sank a South Korean ship. We were very close to war in this 

last year, and South Korea says, the next time it happens, they are 

going to take action. 

So—I mean, to think that we are on the verge of cutting our 

Navy to the lowest it has been since World War I, to cutting our 

Air Force down to the smallest it has been since it was put into 

existence, to cutting 200,000 end strength off of our Army and our 

Marines, and think that we are not going to have to spend a lot 

more time trying to decide what they should be doing and how they 

are going to be able to do it and overseeing the Pentagon to make 

sure that the proper cuts are being made. I think our staff has 

done a fantastic job this year on preparing us for these future problems that we see coming at us. And I think to contemplate that we 

are going to have to cut them down—we already are authorized 71, 

and we have only filled 69 slots. And it looks like if these cuts that 


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are contemplated—if everybody gets the same cut and we are not 

spared any—given the fact we are already so low on the totem pole, 

we would have to lose five staff people is the nearest we have been 

able to figure. And I tell you, we are not wasting any money in our 

committee. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Brady. 

Mr. BRADY. Yes. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Chairman, losing five spots, losing five people on your staff, 

is that the minority and the majority together or just the minority 

side? 

Mr. MCKEON. We do our staff different than probably any other 

committee. It is bipartisan. So when we had the transition from 

majority to minority, we were able to use a lot of the same people. 

We didn’t have to go through some of the things that some of the 

other committees have to go through. So when we cut, it would 

be—it would affect both the majority and the minority. 

Mr. SMITH of Washington. We do have some staff that are specifically assigned to the minority. I have got 14 spots, one of which is 

actually split between my office and the committee. But the larger—the bulk of the folks on the committee work in a bipartisan 

way. That staff would impact minority as well as majority, the 

losses there. 

Mr. BRADY. Mr. Chairman, I am probably one of the most fortunate people in this Congress. I have been allowed to be able to be 

on two committees. This one here, which I have a great relationship with my chairman and the members, and the Armed Services 

Committee, which I also have a great relationship with my chairman and the ranking member. And the class that they show on 

committee hearings—and we don’t always agree, like you and I 

don’t always agree, but we don’t always become disagreeable. We 

don’t hold any grudges, and we don’t let the American people be 

responsible for any bad actions that we do do from time to time. 

And I do think that that is a reflection of the trickle down from 

the leadership, both in this committee and the Armed Services 

Committee. And I thank you both for allowing me to be a member 

of that committee and be able to function. And I thank you for 

being here. 

The CHAIRMAN. We thank you very much. You have made a 

strong case. 

It is a pleasure to have the chairman and the ranking member 

of the committee most sought after by Members of Congress upon 

which to serve in the entire Congress. I salute you for the service 

that you do in this regard because it is a thankless but necessary 

job and one that serves the institution and Members and the country well. So I appreciate your service. 

We would like you to give us an idea of how you have been able 

to operate this last year under the funding restrictions we had, 5 

percent cut; how you would be able to operate under a proposed 6.4 

percent cut; and efficiencies that you have already put into effect, 

and those that you would project to be put into effect in the next 

year. 


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STATEMENT OF THE HON. JO BONNER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ALABAMA, CHAIRMAN, 

COMMITTEE ON ETHICS 

Mr. BONNER. Well, Chairman Lungren, Ranking Member Brady 

and members of the committee, thank you very much for inviting 

Congresswoman Sa ́nchez and me to share with you today, to the 

best of our ability, some of the budget challenges facing the Ethics 

Committee. And thank you also for your nice comments about service, and I say that on behalf of all the members of the committee, 

present and former, who have served on this committee. 

I trust that the Committee on House Administration probably 

more than most committees appreciates the fact that some of our 

funding challenges are made more difficult by some of the work 

that our committee does, which specifically, because of our strict 

rules of confidentiality out of necessity, might prevent me from answering some of the questions which would normally come from 

your committee to committee chairmen and ranking members, especially those who might be seeking additional funding. 

As you well know, the Ethics Committee has a distinct and vital 

role within this body and in many ways is more like your own committee in that our mission is mostly internal and nonlegislative. In 

much of our work, particularly in the area of advice, education and 

financial disclosure, our objective is to have a customer service-oriented focus such as the Offices of the General Counsel and the Parliamentarian. In addition, the committee serves as the internal 

agency disciplinary office, a role of equal importance, that also presents unique responsibilities and challenges for our investigative 

team. 

In all of these roles, as your committee staff experiences with 

their own responsibilities, we do not have the luxury of setting our 

own workload or agenda. Our committee’s core mission is, and always has been, to provide fair, prompt and thorough advice and 

education, and to conduct investigations whenever that aspect of 

our work is required in a professional, nonpartisan environment 

that is always driven by the facts and in search of the truth. 

To that end, Mr. Chairman, by and large our largest consumption of resources is a top-notch professional, nonpartisan staff who 

handle our everyday advice, education, review and investigative 

functions. Unfortunately, by the very nature of our work, and consistent with committee precedents, this committee does have matters, on occasion, that require an increase in staffing or even the 

employment of an outside counsel. I would like to give you some 

sense of what that workload looks like. 

While public adjudicatory hearings happen on average of once a 

decade, one time last year our committee was looking at two such 

hearings within 2 months of each other. This would have been an 

unprecedented occurrence. While one of theaforementioned matters 

was concluded before the end of the 111th Congress, the committee 

is still working on the second matter and has employed, as your 

committee knows, an outside counsel to help us get through the 

challenges that that matter has presented. Needless to say, the entire membership of our committee very much appreciates you and 

your staff’s working with us and their assistance in approving and 

financing that contract. Obviously, there is no guarantee that the 


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trend of Members invoking their rights, under our rules, to a public 

hearing may not continue to grow. 

While the ranking member will describe for you the ever-increasing workload before our committee, I want to turn for just a moment to how we have handled that workload and how we have 

shouldered and continue to shoulder the financial burdens that all 

other offices in the House and, most importantly, the American 

people have been sharing. 

After an admittedly controversial end to our work in the 111th 

Congress, the committee began this Congress with a downslide of 

staffing. On January 1, we had 23 staff positions filled out of a permitted cap of 29. While the ranking member and I worked very 

hard to find the best nonpartisan, professional staff we could to fill 

those ranks, we reached a low point of 15 sometime in June. At 

about the same time, we had found and brought on a new staff director and chief counsel, who is unquestionably nonpartisan and 

professional. As a result, I am pleased to report to your committee 

that the pathway toward fully staffing our committee has followed 

on our new staff director’s leadership and personal example. 

As I said, as of January 1, we had 23 staffers on the books. 

Today we have 24 full-time staff. But without having to reduce 

anyone’s salary, and mostly by attrition of higher-salaried staff and 

leveling of base salaries, we are spending less on these 24 outstanding individuals than we were previously spending on the 23 

staff that worked in the 111th Congress. In other words, as so 

many others are having to do, we at the Ethics Committee are trying to find new ways of doing more but costing less. Indeed, personnel is about 95 percent of our total budget, as currently 15 of 

our 24 staffers are experienced attorneys. 

In anticipation of possible additional budget cuts, and in line 

with what the rest of the House and the rest of the country is facing, we have stopped hiring. We have asked our staff to do everything possible to continue to meet and maintain your expectations 

as our customers. And as the ranking member will also discuss, 

there is an ever-increasing challenge that comes with this, but one 

that we take with a sense of mission, duty and shared sacrifice. 

Finally, and I know I am over my time, but if I might have an 

additional minute, I have been asked to discuss the unusual circumstances of requiring the assistance of an outside counsel. As 

leadership of your committee was briefed earlier this year, Mr. 

Billy Martin, with the firm of Dorsey & Whitney, has taken on an 

immense and vitally important task for us and is conducting his 

work with the utmost thoroughness, fairness, independence and 

impartiality that would be expected and required. 

From what I have been told, our hopes and estimates for a quick 

resolution to Mr. Martin’s work may not be realized. While no final 

conclusions have been reached about whatever the next steps in 

this process might encompass, it is highly possible that the contract 

with Mr. Martin will need to be extended into next year. It is necessary, therefore, in order to avoid overobligating and to ensure the 

consistent progress in this matter and the rest of our work, to plan 

for such contingencies before the committee reviews and acts on 

the step-by-step recommendations of our outside counsel. 


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The good news, though, is that we anticipate that the funding required for this year’s work by the outside counsel will be well below 

the $500,000 estimated. More importantly, using the surplus of our 

budget left over due to the time that we were short-staffed this 

year, we have not had to come to ask for any additional funds for 

reauthorization to cover his 2011 bills. We consider this a significant accomplishment, and we are proud of that fact. 

For next year, however, it is clear that at least one of our major 

investigative matters may require contract or other significant expenses for hearings and travels such that if our budget follows the 

standard formula, we will need to return to your committee in 

short order for a reauthorization. We have considered the work 

ahead and the stage of progress to date, and we believe that we 

will inevitably require a reauthorization of $350,000 to be safe from 

overobligating and to ensure that our duties to be thorough and 

fair do not suffer dramatically. 

As we have been requested to do, we are proposing to deal with 

the outside counsel contract and the growing workload at this time 

rather than returning to you at a later date. Therefore we propose 

to add a good-faith and fair estimate of our special investigative 

needs to an amount that begins with our current budget of 2012 

of $3,043,775. That additional request is $350,000, to a total of 

$3,393,775 for 2012. 

We appreciate the hard and careful work that you are putting 

into your process, and I am happy to answer questions after our 

ranking member has had a chance to share some of her thoughts. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Bonner follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Sa ́nchez. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, 

RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ETHICS 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member 

Brady. We appreciate the opportunity to provide you with an overview of how the Committee on Ethics has used its budget in the 

112th Congress and how we anticipate the committee will operate 

next year in light of possible budget changes. 

As the chairman Mr. Bonner stated, and as we both noted when 

we appeared before this committee earlier in the year, we are a 

fairly unique committee. Approximately 95 percent of our budget is 

spent on staff salaries, and so therefore that is the focus of any 

budget conversation that we have to have. 

Let me begin by saying how much both of us and our fellow committee members appreciate the staff and their incredible work. 

They work hard, they are dedicated, and the committee’s success 

depends on this talented staff to do the bulk of the committee’s 

work. 

As has been noted, in addition to hiring a new staff director earlier in the year, we had to fill a number of vacancies that came up, 

but we have not been able to hire the full complement of staff even 

though our workload continues to increase, so our staff and our 

committee have necessarily had to do more with less. 

Although the public attention tends to focus on the committee’s 

work on investigations, much of our work is actually serving the 

House in other areas, and our work in those areas is definitely on 

the rise. 

In the last Congress the House increased the committee staffing 

allotment in light of an increase in our investigative work and the 

creation of the Office of Congressional Ethics. There is no indication at this point that our workload in that area will decrease. 

In the area of advice, the committee has issued nearly 500 confidential advisory opinions to Members and staff so far this Congress, and that is an increase of more than 10 percent from the 

same period in the last Congress. We also continue to build on the 

improved turnaround time for those requests, as timing is clearly 

of importance to the Members. 

These formal advisory opinions don’t include the many informal 

requests the nonpartisan staff field by phone, email and in-person 

visits. We estimate that the committee fielded more than 15,000 

telephone calls and 3,000 email requests for advice between January 1 and October 31 of this year. 

The committee’s privately sponsored travel workload has increased even more, by more than 20 percent over the same period 

in the 111th Congress. We received over 1,700 requests for approval of travel between January 1 and October 31 of this year. 

The committee’s financial disclosure workload has also increased. 

So far this year the number of financial disclosure filings is up by 

about 20 percent over the same period in the 111th Congress. More 

than 5,600 financial disclosure statements have been filed so far 

this year, and all of these financial disclosure statements have to 

be reviewed. And many of those, in fact, have also been 


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prescreened before the filing as a service that the committee staff 

provides to any filer. 

Finally, the committee continues to provide training to more 

than 10,000 House Members, officers and employees each year and 

to review their certifications for satisfying the House’s mandatory 

training requirements. 

The committee staff is handling this increased workload with excellence and professionalism even though we handled last year’s 

budget cut by stopping short of our maximum staff slot allowance. 

In addition to hiring fewer staff, the committee also handled the 

budget cut by forgoing other investments that we could have made. 

Most significantly we postponed a possible major investment in 

new financial disclosure software. This software could have allowed 

on-line filing, which would have had benefits to both the filers and 

the public alike, and may have made the financial disclosure process less expensive in the long run. 

In addition, we also put off an investment of making our database of public documents more accessible to the House and the 

public. We also put off an investment in improving the committee’s 

database of internal documents, many of which predate the digital 

age, which could have ensured greater consistency and efficiency in 

our advisory functions. Although we were able to make substantial 

investments in technology in the last Congress to make the committee and its work more efficient, we have postponed further investments at this time. I continue to think that these are worthwhile investments that would help the committee better serve the 

House and the public, and I hope that we will be able to pursue 

them very shortly in the future. 

Finally, our outside counsel contract is vital to ensuring our committee, our colleagues and the public that we will resolve this matter with the utmost care, diligence and, above all else, integrity. 

The committee concluded that hiring an outside counsel would 

allow for an independent review and a faster resolution than if the 

committee staff were to handle it alone. We currently await the 

outside counsel’s recommendations for our consideration so the 

committee can complete the matter as quickly as possible and ensure that the committee’s work comports with the highest standards of integrity. 

For these reasons I join with the chairman in presenting our 

joint request for our 2012 authorization as the chairman described. 

Thank you, and we look forward to any questions you may have. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much for your presentation. 

[The statement of Ms. Sa ́nchez follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. As I said before, I think you play a vital role in 

this institution. I noted that the public has now—I think the Congress has risen to double digits now. I think 12 percent of the 

American people have a favorable opinion of the Congress. And I 

think that is a tragedy, because I think we have a government that 

was born in a reasonable suspicion of government. And I am all for 

skepticism, I am not for cynicism, and when you move from skepticism to cynicism, you tend the undercut the foundations of the institution you are talking about, and that is why I am very concerned that we make a decision that allows you to have the budget 

that is necessary to do the job that you have. 

My staff has received tremendous assistance from your committee staff. Before we take a trip, before we do anything that 

could possibly deal with the rules, we contact your office, we get 

an informal opinion. I think not only does that help Members, but 

it helps this institution in terms of its standing with the public. So 

I am very leery about us doing anything that would undercut your 

ability to respond in a timely fashion to a Member’s legitimate request about ethical issues. 

Furthermore, in terms of review of financial disclosure, that is 

crucial to the transparency necessary for the operations of this 

House. 

And then lastly, the thing that you can talk least about, your investigation. There is a lot of cynicism out there about us; about us, 

I mean the institution of the House. And the fact that we do have 

investigations performed by a bipartisan committee on as objective 

a basis as you can possibly have in an institution like this is important not only for our image, but for the substance of this House. 

So we have some very tough decisions to make because the 

rules—excuse me, the resolution passed by the House requires us 

to have a legislative branch cut of 6.4 percent. And by and large 

we have had committees come in and say they can accept 6.4 percent, they couldn’t accept anything more. The Committee on Armed 

Services said they can accept 1 percent, but nothing more. And I 

read through your language, and it suggests that you are not looking for a cut, but an increase in part because of the obligation of 

outside contracts. Is that correct? 

Mr. BONNER. Yes, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. Could you perform your task with respect to the 

reliability, the efficiency and the timeliness of response to which 

Members have a right to expect under our rules, as we are going 

into a very, very fractious year, if we were to cut you by 6.4 percent? 

Mr. BONNER. Well, Mr. Chairman, as the ranking member and 

I have both tried to indicate in our testimony, we are trying to do 

more with less, but we have an obligation that in working with this 

committee, your committee, we were able to take what I think was 

the right step by bringing in the outside counsel, and we would 

like, and I believe have an obligation to all parties involved, to see 

that brought to a conclusion. That is the right thing to do. 

But in terms of could our committee accept a reduction in funding in terms of our base committee and the work of the committee, 

the answer is yes, but it comes with certain conditions, and those 

conditions are there would be—if we had to cut salaries or cut our 


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staff even further, we would do so, obviously, but at the risk of losing institutional knowledge and skill in handling the kind of advice 

and instructions that Members such as yourself have come to us 

for in trying to be prompt and responsive. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. If I could just add that because so much of our 

budget is comprised of staff salary, that continued cuts would necessarily mean at some point not either having the full complement 

of staff, which is the situation that we are working under now, or 

cutting further positions down the line. 

And in terms of efficiency and timeliness of Members’ requests, 

that most certainly would impact that area. 

The CHAIRMAN. See, I sort of view a preliminary advice from 

your committee as an imprimatur essentially, am I doing the right 

thing ethically under the rules of the House of Representatives? I 

just want to make sure that whatever decision we finally make, 

you are able to allow that authority to be in place so that Members, 

who I think have a right to know what the rules are, have a right 

to know how facts are applied to the rules, have a right to know 

whether essentially they have permission—and I realize it is not 

total permission, but in the best sense of the word with an advisory 

opinion as to do something like that. Frankly, I think we owe it to 

the Members to be able to do that, and we as Members owe that 

to the public that we take that effort. 

Mr. BONNER. Mr. Chairman, if I might interrupt, and I know you 

and the ranking member and your committee knows this, but we 

also serve the staff that serves the American people that work with 

us. So we are talking about thousands of additional people that 

come to us—and we encourage them coming to us. And with regard 

to the financial disclosure, we are also talking about candidates 

who are seeking these jobs. 

The CHAIRMAN. If I can use an analogy, we have got the Cannon 

Office Building, it is falling down. All right. I briefed the staff, and 

we invited Members, but it was all staff just before we left. I didn’t 

know the ceiling was going to fall down over there right after I 

made my talk. Maybe I shouldn’t say as much. But anyway you can 

pretend we don’t have to deal with that, and you can defer maintenance on that, which we have done, until the point in time in 

which it is collapsing. I don’t think we can defer maintenance on 

the ethics of this House. That would be the analogy I would use. 

So we have a tough decision to make with respect to your operation. I hope you will work with us in trying to figure out how to 

solve this problem, because it is a knotty problem. 

Mr. Brady. 

Mr. Nugent. 

All right. Thank you very, very much. 

Mr. BONNER. Thank you, and we look forward to working with 

you. 

The CHAIRMAN. I guess Ways and Means is next. 

Thank you very much for being here, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Camp and Ranking Member Levin of the committee. We appreciate the written testimony that we have received 

from you. We would ask you to try and highlight how the 5 percent 

cut that is already in effect this year affected your committee’s operation in this the first session; secondly, how you propose to operVerDate Mar 15 2010 01:19 Jan 28, 2012 Jkt 072284 PO 00000 Frm 00129 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A284.XXX A284

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ate under what is most likely going to be a 6.4 percent cut in committee expenditures; and what efficiencies you have already implemented, and what you might be looking at with regard to next 

year. 

Mr. Camp. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. DAVE CAMP, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, CHAIRMAN, 

COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS 

Mr. CAMP. Well, thank you, Chairman Lungren, and Ranking 

Member Brady and Members of the Committee. I am here to talk 

about the budget for the Committee on Ways and Means for the 

112th Congress and am joined by our Ranking Member and my 

friend from Michigan, Mr. Levin. And today I will give you an update on how the 5 percent reduction for legislative year 2011 has 

impacted our budget and operations to date, and what it will mean 

for the remainder of the year, as well as a preview of the 6.4 percent budget reduction slated for legislative year 2012. 

And before I do so, I want to assure you that this budget, in accordance with the long tradition at Ways and Means, has been divided between the majority and the minority, the majority controlling two-thirds and the minority having full control over one-third 

of the budget. 

In March, I reported that the Ways and Means budget reflected 

our nation’s current financial problems, and that just as families 

were cutting back, so would we, and that is what we have done in 

the face of the 5 percent reduction in our budget. 

Because staff salaries represent a substantial portion of the Committee’s budget, we have met the challenge of the reduced funding 

in part by holding flat the number of staff allotted to the Committee, and, in fact, have left some staff slots open. I am pleased 

to report, however, that our staff, both the majority and the minority staff, have shouldered this responsibility and performed well for 

the Congress and the American people. In the majority we have 

used greater technological resources, especially mobile computer 

devices, to garner greater efficiencies. 

Additionally, in order to ensure that we met our budget cuts, we 

also have carefully limited Committee-funded travel. Given the 

Committee’s broad jurisdiction, especially with regard to international trade, the ability of our Members and staff to attend critical negotiating sessions across the country and world is imperative 

to our mission, so we have tried to balance the need for fiscal prudence with important policy considerations. 

We are confident based on this year’s activity that we have 

planned prudently for next year’s reductions. The bottom line, we 

have managed to meet our responsibilities with our allotted budget 

and will continue to do so. And I thank the Chairman and Members of this Committee for the opportunity to update you, and I 

look forward to any questions you may have. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Camp follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Levin. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. SANDER M. LEVIN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS 

Mr. LEVIN. Thank you very much. I am glad to join my colleague, 

the chairman of the committee. He has described it well. 

I want to emphasize how hardworking staff is of this committee, 

both majority and minority. And there are so many issues, as you 

know, that come before Ways and Means, and that requires long 

hours, sometimes around the clock, and I think our staffs have very 

much met their responsibility. 

Mr. Camp mentioned part of our jurisdiction relates to trade, and 

I simply want to add that we have had the need to be very, very 

careful about attendance at meetings overseas, sometimes in other 

States that are far away, and we have tried to meet our responsibility. I think that the reduction in our expenses at times has made 

it very challenging for us to carry out those responsibilities, but we 

surely have tried. 

We also have attempted to very much marshal our resources. 

Our chief of staff on the minority side, Janice Mays, has been exceptionally diligent to make sure that the staff that was hired met 

the responsibilities they do, and we had to assume some considerable losses last time in our staff. 

So very much, if the 6.4 is applied to us, we will do everything 

we can to live within it and to very much meet the major responsibilities of this committee. 

Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Levin follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Chairman, can you tell us what is your staffing level right now, total staff, on your committee? 

Mr. CAMP. Total staff is 50, 5–0. 

The CHAIRMAN. For both majority and minority? 

Mr. CAMP. That would just be the majority side. 

The CHAIRMAN. And minority is? 

Mr. LEVIN. Twenty-five. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Seventy-five. 

Has that changed much over the last couple years, and did it 

change at all with the 5 percent cut? 

Mr. CAMP. We ended up not filling some positions, but it has not 

changed. 

The CHAIRMAN. With the prospect of a 6.4 percent cut, would 

there be any expectation of layoffs? 

Mr. CAMP. I think what we are going to try to do is upgrade 

some of our technology capacity so we can better handle some of 

the flows of information and documents. And I think that we are 

hoping to be able to hold with that, but we are going to be having 

to do that in order to handle the vast amount of information we 

have. And obviously, given my service on the Supercommittee, we 

also had Mr. Becerra on the Supercommittee from the Committee 

on Ways and Means, there really were no staff assigned to that 

whole project, so the Committee staff worked very, very long hours 

and way into the night on many evenings in order to meet those 

responsibilities. 

So we had a lot of responsibilities, but I don’t anticipate any layoffs with that amount of reduction. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Levin. 

Mr. LEVIN. We don’t anticipate it, and I will indicate why. I think 

we have to try everything short of layoffs. I think you all know the 

responsibilities of the committee, and as I look ahead to next year, 

if we can possibly do that, it is likely, I think, that the responsibilities of this committee on both the majority and the minority side, 

those responsibilities would be enormous. And since we know firsthand the long hours worked by our staffs, I can’t foresee how we 

could perform adequately with any layoffs. We would have to simply find other ways to live within. 

The CHAIRMAN. So if you got one-third of the reduction in overall 

budget, I presume you are the one that makes that decision on how 

to handle it? 

Mr. LEVIN. That is true. 

The CHAIRMAN. Boy, is that a lot better than the 1980s. I remember being a member of the Judiciary Committee, and I had actually 

voted for a smaller budget for the legislative branch. And there 

were three professional staff on the subcommittee on the majority 

side and one on our side, and that lady left, and I went to go hire 

somebody, and the staff director of the committee told me that I 

guess 7-to-1 ratio of professional staff on the full committee was 

not sufficient, and since I had voted to cut spending, I would have 

to do without a professional staffer. It just happened that the person I was hiring was a woman and replacing a man, and the majority did not want to be in a position of denying advancement to 

someone who happened to be a woman. I didn’t hire her for that 


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reason, I hired her because she was good. But I had to go and grovel before the chairman of the committee to get someone hired. 

So I am glad to see that things have changed in this Congress. 

Mr. LEVIN. We have a different tradition. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, we do. 

Mr. CAMP. It has been a longstanding tradition in the Committee 

to operate this way. So this is a continuation of what has occurred 

for many years on the Committee. 

The CHAIRMAN. And it has through all the committees in the 

Congress now. I appreciate that. 

Mr. Brady. 

Mr. Rokita, any questions? 

Mr. ROKITA. No, Chairman. I yield back. Thank you for having 

me. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Nugent. 

Next up is Foreign Affairs. 

Well, it is good to have both of you here. We are reviewing the 

budgets for the upcoming year, and so we would love to hear from 

you as to how you have been able to deal with the 5 percent cut 

that was imposed as a result of the vote of the House for this current year; and how you would envision dealing with a 6.4 percent 

cut in the committee as a result of the House resolution that was 

passed on the legislative branch appropriations; and efficiencies 

that you have already put into place in your committee, and efficiencies that you would expect to put into place next year. So, welcome. 

And Madam Chair. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA, 

CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, Ranking 

Member Brady, and members of the committee and staff. Thank 

you for allowing my good friend Mr. Berman and I the opportunity 

to appear before you this afternoon. 

Our Committee on Foreign Affairs has been challenged this year 

by significant global developments, as we have all followed them on 

the tube, and these required rigorous examinations of our national 

security interests and foreign policy priorities, as well as U.S. programs and funding, in order to determine an appropriate and timely response. 

Despite the 5 percent reduction to the committee’s budget for 

this calendar year, we have met and we have surpassed our goals 

as described in our oversight plan. We have covered every region, 

every functional area, and held an average of one markup a month, 

including one of the most robust debates our committee has had in 

over a decade concerning the funding authorization and the policy 

prescriptions for the Department of State, USAID and other agencies under our committee’s jurisdiction. 

We have taken a strategic approach by hosting visiting foreign 

dignitaries, by considering whether there is added value to holding 

the meeting, by focusing on the most senior foreign leaders, and by 

scheduling during off times rather than during breakfast or lunch, 

that are expensive items to provide for. We cut a number of fatty 


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administrative expenses, such as domestic travel and high-priced 

subscriptions. We also conduct a cost estimate and do comparison 

pricing before deciding on a purchase. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. By taking these small steps, the committee 

has been able to carry out its protocol responsibilities while keeping costs down at the same time. 

We also established for the first time an oversight and investigations team and included a whistleblower feature on our committee 

Web site. This has enabled us to conduct serious oversight over the 

range of activities and agencies under our committee’s jurisdiction. 

One of those investigative efforts relating to the sexual assault 

of Peace Corps volunteers resulted in legislation that was signed 

into law by the President on Monday of last week. 

We have established several mechanisms to carefully scrutinize 

every congressional notification received by our committee to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being used for their intended purposes and are in a tangible way advancing U.S. interests and U.S. 

priorities. 

The main committee Web site added a new interactive feature 

this year called ‘‘Ask a Question,’’ and it allows the public to submit questions that they would like to have answered by our witnesses testifying before our committee. 

Looking forward, it will be tough, but I believe that we can continue to operate successfully despite the additional 6.4 percent cut 

to our operating budget. We have restructured the breakdown of 

the committee budget to minimize the impact on current personnel 

allocations, as I believe our most valuable resource is our dedicated 

staff. 

I made a commitment to Ranking Member Berman at the beginning of this Congress to provide the minority with an $180,000 supplement to their one-third allocation of the personnel budget. The 

additional $180,000 will continue in calendar year 2012. 

In making determinations about resource allocations, I respectfully ask this committee to take into account that the Foreign Affairs Committee, out of its budget, covers all administrative costs 

for the House Democracy Partnership and the Tom Lantos Human 

Rights Commission. This includes office space, equipment, supplies, 

and other support. The Committee on Foreign Affairs also covers 

the full salary for the staff director of the House Democracy Partnership. It covers a portion of the salary for the majority professional staff member of the House Democracy Partnership, and covers a portion of the salary for the majority professional staff of the 

Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. These two entities act 

independently and do not contribute to the work of the Committee 

on Foreign Affairs. And the further reduced budget for the calendar 

year 2012 will again pose a challenge, but one I believe we can and 

we will meet successfully. By demonstrating that we can do more 

with less in the running of our respective committee, we can demand the same from the agencies under our jurisdiction. 

I thank the chairman, the ranking member, Members and staff 

for their time. 

[The statement of Ms. Ros-Lehtinen follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Berman. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. HOWARD L. BERMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

Mr. BERMAN. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I 

want to thank both you and Ranking Member Brady and your 

staffs for all of the assistance that you have provided to the minority staff of the committee over the past year. And I also particularly want to thank my chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Her efforts 

and that of her staff director, Dr. Yleem Poblete, have really been 

very helpful to us in shaping a budget request that is fair. 

I don’t want to sugar-coat my testimony. It has been a difficult 

year for the minority on the committee. You mentioned the two 

joint resolutions that governed this year’s spending and next year’s 

spending, and we had that election back in 2010 that also had an 

impact on us. And just as all Americans have had to do, we have 

tightened our belts. We have made significant sacrifices while trying to ensure that we do not jeopardize the committee’s essential 

operations to oversee the foreign relations of the United States. 

Mr. Chairman, you asked me to comment on how the reduction 

this year affected our operations in the first session. First, as a result of that election—well, first, we were forced to keep one of the 

positions vacant that were allotted to us. This is after we had to 

dismiss 28 employees as we transitioned into the minority. When 

another senior staffer departed, we also kept that position vacant. 

So now we have two vacant positions that we can’t afford to fill. 

Secondly, all of our staff, including the seven minority subcommittee staff, experienced an average 10.17 percent cut to their 

salaries, and this was despite a truly generous allocation of additional funds to the minority’s salary budget by the chairman. I am 

very grateful to the chairman for once again offering the minority 

the $180,000 from operating funds to supplement the minority salary, but even after taking those funds into account, the 6.4 percent 

cut to the committee’s budget will probably require us to cut salaries of existing staff by an additional total of $53,000. And we will 

not be able to fill the two vacancies, which to some extent certainly 

impacts our ability to exercise the full oversight over all the programs in our jurisdiction. As the chairman states, our dedicated 

staff are our most valuable resource, and she has demonstrated her 

commitment to them in her relations with us. 

And I do want to also reiterate the chairman’s point about the 

budget of this committee covering the administrative expenses for 

both the House Democracy Partnership and the Tom Lantos 

Human Rights Commission. Those are both very good programs. 

When I chaired the committee, I supported the request of these two 

entities, but for funding independent of the committee. I continue 

to believe that should be the case. They are created by the body 

as a whole, and, it seems to me, concomitant and part of that is 

to fund them as such. But as it is, they represent an additional cost 

to the committee, which, as the chairman notes, includes office 

space, equipment, and other support. 


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Again, I want to express my appreciation for the chairman’s efforts to ensure a smooth coordination of committee functions. We 

do receive our share of all nonpersonnel expenses in each expense 

category, travel, communications, equipment upgrades. And I look 

forward to working with her in a bipartisan manner on a wide 

range of issues in the second year of the 112th Congress. 

Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. We thank you for your 

testimony as well as your service. 

[The statement of Mr. Berman follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Let me just ask a question, and I just don’t know 

what the answer is to this. With the House Democracy Partnership 

and Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, they are neither fish 

nor fowl. They are not legislative. They are not executive. They are 

not independent. What are they? 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. They were created by Congress and are technically under our committee, and so we have to fund their operational costs, as I pointed out in my testimony, whether it is this 

staffer or office space, et cetera. And it comes to an estimated cost 

for staff salaries, equipment supplies, and other administrative expenses for these two entities that are under our jurisdiction, so 

they are going to come from our budget, is close to $225,000. So 

that is the way that they were—when the bills were passed establishing them, they were placed under our jurisdiction, but we don’t 

get any money for them. 

The CHAIRMAN. Is there a prohibition against—and again, I am 

aware that they exist, but I don’t know the actual way they are set 

up. Is there a prohibition against them receiving outside funds to 

support their efforts? 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. I am sure that there would be. But they 

could be funded separately. We would love to farm them out. I 

think the House Administration Committee is a wonderful location 

for both Tom Lantos and the House Democracy Partnership. 

The CHAIRMAN. I am very serious about this. 

Mr. BERMAN. You mean outside of our budget or outside of the 

government’s budget? 

The CHAIRMAN. Outside of the government. 

Mr. BERMAN. I think there could be a problem there because of 

the commingling issues. They are created by House resolutions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Do we have any other creations like that? 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Well, these are the only two that are under 

our jurisdiction. There might be some other commissions that are 

under the jurisdiction of other committees, but these are the only 

ones—— 

Mr. BERMAN. We used to have a bunch. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. And as Mr. Berman said, they are wonderful 

organizations. 

The CHAIRMAN. No. I understand that. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. They come out of our budget but they are not 

really part of the Committee or contribute to the work of the Committee. 

The CHAIRMAN. I know. I am not against those organizations. All 

I am saying is when we are looking at very tough budget decisions—I just had the Ethics Committee here talking about how 

they might not be able to serve the Congress in the way that I 

think they need to be served because of monies. I have got to think 

outside the box as to where monies are coming from and where certain groups are. I am not trying to target it. I am just trying to 

think. We have got to make some tough decisions. That is all. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Would the gentleman yield? 

The CHAIRMAN. I would be happy to yield. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Like you, I am eager to think outside the box, but 

I think, having worked with both of these Commissions, to get outside funds, who would be interested in it might be a source that 


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would undercut the mission. For example, on a bipartisan basis we 

have sort of a Freedom in Vietnam Caucus, and the Commission 

has been very, very helpful on many of those issues. I want to 

thank both the chairman and ranking member for their really terrific service to our country. But if there were funding sources, I 

mean, depending on who they were could really undercut the mission. So I would be very nervous about that. 

I thank the gentleman for yielding. 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate that. We have real tough decisions 

to make. We are talking about a 6.4 percent cut across the board. 

Or if we find that some—I hope I am not talking out of school— 

but if we found some committees had a specific actual need next 

year, I have got to find that money somewhere else, out of other 

committees or somewhere. I am not sure this committee has ever 

had hearings, except for last year where it was a fait accompli, 

where we have ever talked about you getting less than you got before. I can tell you the difference in demeanor of chairmen and 

ranking members from when it was just ‘‘how much more are we 

going to get’’ versus now. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Well, if I may, Mr. Chairman, not knowing 

what would happen last year, we had drawn up several scenarios 

and several budget projections on whether it was going to be 2 percent to 8 percent or anything in between. And so we were prepared 

for as tough a cut or as small of a cut. And I think that has given 

us great flexibility to see what is the most needed program and 

what is not. 

The CHAIRMAN. And just to let you know, we have led, and the 

Senate has followed. When we took a 5 percent, they decided to 

take a 5 percent, but after most of the year was through. So they 

got a 1.3 percent cut. They are coming in with a 6.3 percent cut, 

I believe is the number I have got from their leadership committees, et cetera, support staff, but 3.2 percent, I think, for their individual offices. So we are leading the way, and there is no doubt 

about that. But they are going to have some consequences, and we 

have to understand what they are as we go forward. 

Mr. Brady. 

Mr. BRADY. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

If the 6.4 percent does go through, would you have to lay anybody off not by attrition, but by laying somebody off? Attrition, to 

me, means somebody who wanted to go anyway, or they are going 

to go because they found another job or whatever. But I am talking 

about telling somebody they are no longer employed that want to 

be employed. Either one of you. 

Mr. BERMAN. On our side, we have two authorized slots that we 

are not filling, and the additional 6.4 percent cut will mean a salary cut again this year after a significant salary cut last year for 

those who are remaining. Obviously we are in a special situation 

because we had the transition from majority to minority status, but 

over and on top of that, our contemplation would not be to lay off. 

It would be probably to just have to spread the pain of salary reductions, because we feel like we are fairly short staffed now with 

our two open slots that we can’t fill. So we probably wouldn’t lay 

off, we would probably opt for reductions. 


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Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. If I could add to what Mr. Berman said. We 

established an innovative, and have been very productive in the 

way we have implemented it, mentor/mentee program where we 

have had our junior staffers working with our most senior policy 

staffers, and then when those senior staffers have gone on to retire, 

we have been able to ride that problem out by promoting from 

within. 

Mr. BRADY. Sometimes that can contribute to attrition. 

Mr. BERMAN. Yes, that is true. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Rokita. 

Mr. ROKITA. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. I appreciate your work 

and your presentation here today. 

Intelligence is up next. 

Thank you, chairman and ranking member of the Intelligence 

Committee. And I also thank you for sending your first communion 

pictures for us here. Really nice looking. That was his line. 

Mr. ROGERS. It is the only pictures we can show, actually. 

The CHAIRMAN. We welcome you both representing the House 

Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. While your written 

testimony will be made a part of the record, if you could summarize 

and give us an idea of how you were able to operate with the 5 percent cut this last year, what efficiencies you may have implemented 

already and those you anticipate as we are looking at a 6.4 percent 

cut as a result of the resolution passed by the House. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. MIKE ROGERS, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ALABAMA, CHAIRMAN, 

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE 

Mr. ROGERS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Brady. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. 

Mr. Ruppersberger and I have worked pretty closely on all things 

on the committee, including the budget process, and we absorbed 

the 5 percent reduction last year, I am pleased to tell you, and 

were able to still continue to do our business. It enabled the committee to hold about 100 events, including hearings, briefings, 

roundtables with key leaders in intelligence, and off-sites to important facilities to conduct oversight—proper oversight of the Intelligence Community at large. 

We were authorized 44 staff positions. We achieved that cost savings by only filling those vacancies that we believed we could get 

by to fulfill the committee’s mission. So at present the committee’s 

20 members are served by 30 staff, to include 19 majority staff, and 

8 minority staff, and 3 support staff. Although we have not hired 

to capacity, we maintain the flexibility to hire additional staff 

should circumstances require and budget permitting. 

We continue to work for efficiencies gained from previous improvements to its information technology system. We had a heavy 

investment up front, and we think we are reaping some of those 

rewards now. These improvements have allowed us to reduce expenditures for equipment, while continuing to ensure the safe processing, dissemination, and retention of committee documents and 


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communications, as well as classified information received from the 

executive branch. 

As you know, Mr. Chairman, it is a unique committee indeed in 

the sense that all of the information that flows through has special 

handling requirements. So we have made sure that we have protected those handling requirements and our ability to secure that 

information, and at the same time try to maintain our tempo when 

it comes to aggressive oversight. 

We were able to put together a budget. We think it was probably 

the best we have seen in many, many years, mainly because it was 

a bipartisan effort not only with the Members, but we have joined 

the staff together—we are not sure that has ever happened before—to have joint briefings between Republican and Democrat 

staff sitting at the table to go through the numbers. We think it 

made a better product, we think it made it more efficient, and we 

stand ready, knowing the fiscal environment, to find that 6.4 percent, I believe, as we move forward into this year. We will do it 

through efficiencies, we will probably keep some vacancies on the 

committee, but we think we can absorb it and keep it. We are 

working in the tempo, and we have got some great people who are 

logging some long hours, and we will continue to ask them to do 

that as we move forward into next year. 

[The statement of Mr. Rogers and Mr. Ruppersberger follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Ruppersberger. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF 

MARYLAND, RANKING MEMBER, PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Thank you for having us here today. I 

think when Mr. Rogers and I in the beginning took over the leadership of the Intelligence Committee, we had both been on the committee before. And it was a very partisan committee, and the 

stakes on Intelligence are very high on the issues we deal with, 

whether it is cybersecurity, terrorism, rush tranche, China threat, 

all the things that we deal with. And it wasn’t serving our country 

by having a partisan relationship, so we agreed to work together. 

Mike was a former FBI agent. I was a former prosecutor. I do remind Mike that good FBI agents listen to their prosecutor, even if 

they are in the minority. That was a joke. But I think the reasons 

that we—— 

Mr. ROGERS. And he reminds me often of that, Mr. Chairman, for 

the record. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. But I think the reason that we have been 

so successful is that we have brought our staff together, which just 

hasn’t happened in the past, and we have worked together as a 

team on the committee. 

We knew that we had to absorb cuts like every other agency has 

to, every other committee, and when we did, we did program review. We made sure that our first goal, we would not affect the 

mission. We didn’t affect the mission, and we were able to do the 

cuts that were necessary in personnel and other areas. We hope 

that the committee gets better because eventually it is going to affect us all, but at this point we have to do our share, and I think 

it has been done, and I think the leadership of Chairman Rogers, 

working in a bipartisan way, has really helped us to accomplish 

what we did. 

We can say this publicly—I can’t give you an exact number—but 

we were able to cut over $1 billion from our budget without affecting the mission. 

The CHAIRMAN. That is very good. Are you fully moved into the 

CVC now? 

Mr. ROGERS. Yes, sir. We are fully moved in. The staff is in. We 

hold our hearings and briefings in the CVC. 

The CHAIRMAN. What has been the difference with respect to utilizing that—— 

Mr. ROGERS. Well, we have less claustrophobic reaction from the 

staff. For those familiar with the previous space, we were in—they 

call it ‘‘the tube.’’ There really was not sufficient staff to meet the 

demand not only just for staff space, but for the proper handling 

of the material as it came through the committee space. It looked 

like a rabbit haven back in there. 

So the space is appropriate. We now have ample enough space 

to accurately and adequately store and categorize the information 

that we had, and that was a weakness before. They couldn’t access 

information historically because of the really limited space and the 

way that it was filed. So it has been, I think, an exceptionally good 


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thing for both the staff and our ability to function when it came 

to properly handling materials. 

The CHAIRMAN. It is a great space. It is a little further away 

from the House floor and other things. Has that proven any difficulty for your Members, or for the general membership when they 

want to go and look at classified information? Have you seen any 

increase or decrease—— 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. We lose a couple of pounds—that is one of 

the changes we have seen—by walking so much. 

The CHAIRMAN. You are walking better. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I just had my knee operated on 3 weeks 

ago. 

Mr. ROGERS. And the good news is when we tell them to show 

up to the committee meeting, nobody can find it. So we kind of like 

it that way. The participation gets whittled down. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Another thing, we also have more conference rooms. A lot of what we do and what our staff does is oversee and interview all the agencies on a regular basis. In the 

former—in the other facility that we had, everybody had to wait because we have to be in a SCIF in a classified area. So having different conference rooms has really helped efficiency so when people 

come in, we can meet with them, and we don’t have to wait a half 

an hour for a room to become available. 

The CHAIRMAN. As I understand your testimony, you folks can 

operate effectively with a 6.4 percent cut, even though you would 

not be asking for a 6.4 percent cut. 

Mr. ROGERS. Obviously, Mr. Chairman, being from a committee 

that has not had a lot of plus-ups in the past, is it going to hurt 

a little bit? Sure. But we can understand the environment that we 

are in, and we believe together that we can meet that number and 

still efficiently perform our duties. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. And we did work with the other agencies 

to do this. We just didn’t say there—we work with each agency, we 

review their programs, and they give us their priorities. That is the 

way we should do it. You just can’t come in and say, cut this percentage. You will throw the baby out with the bathwater if you do 

that in that style. 

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, we did that through IT purchases. 

We renegotiated contracts. Some of those contracts we believe were 

probably not in the best interests of the government, so we went 

back and renegotiated contracts, and, again, we are getting a little 

bit more of staff. And we focused our travel. 

So we have made some changes on—in the intelligence business 

you can’t do it from the Capitol Building completely. You have to 

be someplace else. So we focused that travel, and we were able to 

trim some travel budget costs that way. So we were watching the 

pennies. Again, we think this is an important commitment for our 

committee to make, as all the committees are making here on the 

Hill. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Brady. 

Mr. BRADY. Mr. Chairman, an FBI agent and a prosecutor in 

front of me, I have no questions. 

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Brady, could we see you afterwards, please? 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Rokita. 


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Mr. ROKITA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank both of you gentlemen for your leadership and 

the staff that you have provided me on a couple of occasions when 

I needed your attention. I didn’t even have to bother you. I was a 

little skeptical the first time I had to go behind two or three different vaults to have the conversation, but your staff was very professional and treated my concerns with a lot of respect. As a new 

Member, I greatly appreciate them. 

I am very interested to know that—if I understood the testimony 

right, it went from 44 to 30 staff members? 

Mr. ROGERS. Forty-four authorized, but we filled thirty slots, and 

we did that in order to try to save some money. 

Mr. ROKITA. And that saved $1 million. So all the savings came 

from staff? 

Mr. ROGERS. Oh, no, no, no. There was a series. It was IT, renegotiated contracts, some for staff, some on travel. And the money 

that Mr. Ruppersberger was talking about is the money that we 

found in our authorization bill. It was $1 billion is the unclassified—— 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Not for administration, for our whole bill. 

Mr. ROGERS. From the Intelligence Community itself. We went 

back and forced some—as we went through efficiencies, we forced 

efficiencies onto the Intelligence Community as well and came up 

with—the unofficial number is about $1 billion. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. For certain programs. For instance, there 

are a lot of programs that are good, but some we can’t afford, so 

we needed to go to the agencies. We also didn’t have jurisdiction 

over the Intelligence Community and the military, and we made 

sure that whatever we did, it would not affect our national security. But there are certain programs we just could not afford, and 

we did away with some of those. 

Mr. ROKITA. Thank you for clearing that up. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Lofgren. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Just real quickly, thank you, of course, for your 

service. I want to make sure—and don’t discuss the details, obviously, in this open setting, but in a reduction in the IT budget, are 

you confident that you have the resources to have the vigorous 

kind of cybersecurity that is necessary for the committee itself? 

Mr. ROGERS. Yeah. I do believe that we are. Now, we have some 

added advantage from having some leverage from the agencies of 

which we oversee and, because of the nature of the information 

that they are involved in, our security procedures as well; NSA specifically, the Agency and others. So we do believe that we can do 

it. 

And, by the way, in the savings, we have even have added some 

other—and I can’t talk about what—but some other electronics 

matters to the committee that hadn’t been there before. So even 

though we have found the savings, we have found other places 

where we thought a small amount of investment could enhance the 

security and the security procedures at the committee. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Let me address that, too, because I think 

it is important. 


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The first thing, the cyberthreat is one of the most serious threats 

that we have in our country. As we speak, we are being attacked. 

We are losing billions of dollars. And my concern is we are going 

to have a catastrophic attack. The ability is there for other countries, al Qaeda, an organization like that, to hire a hacker, attack 

a banking system. North Korea just attacked South Korea. Our air 

traffic controllers. It is a very serious issue. So because of that, we 

didn’t do it. We did away with some programs, but we added billets, as an example, in the agencies that deal with cybersecurity. 

So it is a matter of prioritizing, doing away with one so we can put 

more in the area of cyber. 

Ms. LOFGREN. I appreciate that. But I was specifically—you 

know, every committee has information, some of it is more sensitive than others, and I can’t think of a committee that has more 

sensitive information than yours. So that is why I wanted to make 

sure you felt comfortable with the funding level. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you. Again, many of our systems—I worry 

about the House in general mainly because of—— 

Ms. LOFGREN. That is a whole separate subject. 

Mr. ROGERS [continuing]. As a whole separate subject. Our committee, because of—we are connected to already secured networks 

provided by the agencies, so in that regard I feel pretty comfortable. 

If you are asking me about the House computers of which our 

committee uses them as well, we have concerns that I have talked 

to Mr. Lungren, and I think we are hopefully on the right track 

to making some changes, and some of that is cultural changes as 

well. It is beyond the scope of a policy or a dollar. It is cultural. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Human behavior is your weakest link. 

Mr. ROGERS. And 80 percent of our problem in the House of Representatives could be cured by changing human behavior when it 

comes to the use of those computers. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. We just dropped today a bipartisan bill on 

cybersecurity, which is what we have been working on this for close 

to 5 years, and the bill is being dropped today. 

Ms. LOFGREN. I will be eager to look at it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much for your testimony. Thank 

you very much for your service, and we appreciate it. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. May I ask you a question, Mr. Chairman? 

What about the issue of subway? 

The CHAIRMAN. We are working on that. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Inside joke. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Lungren, Mr. Ranking 

Member. 

The CHAIRMAN. Judiciary. 

All right. Thank you very much for being here. The committee 

now welcomes Chairman Lamar Smith and Ranking Member John 

Conyers of the Committee on the Judiciary. We will receive your 

written testimony in its entirety. We would ask you to briefly outline how you have operated under the 5 percent cut this last year; 

how you would operate with a 6.4 percent, at least, cut to this coming year; and efficiencies that have been instituted already, and 

those that you may be looking forward to. 


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STATEMENT OF THE HON. LAMAR SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman Lungren, Ranking Member Brady, other members of 

the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the Judiciary Committee’s budget for the second session of the 112th Congress. 

In this economy, all Americans are forced to tighten their belts 

and do more with less. In recognition of that, earlier this year 

Ranking Member Conyers and I requested a budget cut of 5 percent below the funding for the 111th Congress. Now we are being 

asked to accept a further funding cut of 6.4 percent. 

In the 112th Congress, so far the Judiciary Committee has sent 

more bills to the House floor than any other committee. Among the 

important issues the committee continues to consider are ensuring 

that Federal law enforcement agencies have the necessary tools to 

prevent terrorist attacks, that America’s borders are secure, that 

our Nation’s children are safe from sexual predators, and that the 

administration of justice is fair and efficient within both the Justice Department and Federal law enforcement agencies and within 

our Federal Judiciary. 

In addition, the committee plays an important role in strengthening our economy and putting Americans back to work. We ensure 

robust and fair competition under the antitrust laws, promote 

America’s global competitiveness through our intellectual property 

laws, improve our immigration laws to attract the best and brightest from around the world, and bolster the business climate by 

reining in burdensome and unnecessary regulation. 

During the first year of this Congress, the committee worked to 

enact an historic patent reform bill that would make our economy 

much more productive by speeding up the issuance of patents and 

improving the quality of those patents. New jobs should follow as 

a result. This bill is the first major revision of the patent system 

in 60 years and is a result of a project started several years ago. 

In the next 2 weeks, the House is considering three significant 

regulatory reform bills reported by the Judiciary Committee to update a system designed in the 1940s for an industrial society and 

make it more responsive in today’s global information society. All 

of these issues are critical to the safety and well-being of millions 

of Americans. Because of this, it is vital that we retain a highly 

qualified staff as a cornerstone of the committee’s capacity to consider complicated and often controversial legislation and policy 

issues that fall within its jurisdiction. 

To attract and retain quality staff, the committee must be able 

to offer compensation that is at least somewhat competitive with 

the private sector. This is particularly challenging when a disproportionate number of committee staff are attorneys with substantial public policy expertise who could command higher salaries 

from the private sector. 

Although I would rather not see the committee budget cut for a 

second year in a row, I do support our leadership and this committee’s decision to reduce our budget by 6.4 percent in the coming 


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year. I will do what is necessary to ensure that the Judiciary Committee is even more productive while operating with less. 

Mr. Chairman, you asked to explain how we coped with this last 

year and how we might cope this coming year. This last year we 

were able to achieve a 5 percent cut mainly by cutting back on subscriptions to periodicals and other publications. This next year will 

be a little bit tougher, but we have a staff vacancy occurring actually at the end of this week, in 2 days, and by not filling that staff 

position and having another individual basically hold down two positions, we are going to be able to achieve, I believe, that 6.4 percent recommended cut in our budget. 

I will be happy to respond to questions after the ranking member 

has made his statement as well. 

[The statement of Mr. Smith of Texas follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Chairman Emeritus Conyers. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOHN CONYERS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Chairman Lungren, Ranking Member 

Bob Brady, our colleague Zoe Lofgren, and Mr. Rokita. 

First of all, I endorse and support the comments of the chairman 

of the committee, and I just want to add a few points. Since the 

112th Congress has begun, we have had 79 subcommittee hearings, 

8 full committee hearings. More than 640 bills have been referred 

to the committee, and 43 bills marked up, 32 bills reported out of 

the committee, 20 bills passed by the House of Representatives, 

and 8 bills signed into public law, accounting for somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of the legislative total of the entire 112th 

Congress. 

Now, I am less enthusiastic about the continued reduction of congressional budgets as it applies to the Judiciary Committee. I understand, of course, the tremendous fiscal pressures that our Nation is under, but I do not believe that underfunding the Federal 

Legislature is consistent with what we need to do in terms of our 

mission, and I think that sometimes this is counterproductive. 

A 6.4 percent cut on top of a 5 percent cut, I think, will reduce 

our productivity and our effectiveness. But in the end, I think the 

relationship between myself and the chairman—after all, he was 

the ranking member when I was the chairman—is one that has 

helped us maintain a very good working relationship. I have never 

had a problem with respect to the budget request in this area in 

terms of controlling our nonsalary items, and I look forward to our 

continuing to work together. Two of you I do not need to add or 

embellish what goes on in the committee because you know that as 

well as I do. 

So I appreciate being here once again and plead for your generous tendencies to keep us together and as whole as possible in 

the circumstances that we are going under at the present time. 

And I thank you for this opportunity. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Conyers follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I just wonder what would happen if we told the 

judiciary—not the Judiciary Committee—they had to cut 5 percent 

one year and 6.4 percent the next year. They would probably issue 

an injunction. I know the work the committee does. I appreciate 

the chairman’s comments on what we do with respect to dealing 

with this expected budget cut. 

And, Mr. Conyers, I understand the position that you have, being 

in the minority with one-third as opposed to two-thirds, as I have 

certainly been there before. But I thank both of you for your attention to detail on this. 

Mr. Brady. 

Mr. BRADY. No. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Brady is not asking a question of lawyers? 

Mr. BRADY. I learned my lesson. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Rokita. 

Mr. ROKITA. No. Thank you. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you to both of you. It is a hardworking 

committee, and this is a lean budget. 

The CHAIRMAN. I just wanted to let you know something I 

learned a little bit earlier. Have you always heard of that court 

that they hold in Philadelphia at the football field on Sundays 

when the Eagles have a game? Guess who the judge is at that 

court. My ranking member’s brother. So if you go up to a Philadelphia Eagles game, make sure you don’t find yourself in front of his 

brother. 

Mr. BRADY. Especially if you are rooting for another team. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

We have the Energy and Commerce chairman and ranking member before us. We appreciate you coming. I observed that you were 

here when we did the previous committee. So we would ask the 

same of you; that is, if you would give us an idea of how you were 

able to handle the 5 percent cut this last year, what your plans are 

for the 6.4 percent cut that is occasioned by the resolution passed 

by the House, and efficiencies that you can put into place and expect to put into place this next year. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. FRED UPTON, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, CHAIRMAN, 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE 

Mr. UPTON. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Both of us are glad 

to be here. 

We did demonstrate our commitment to deficit reduction by living with the 5 percent across-the-board cut this last year. We were 

very meticulous about our direct operating expenses. We deferred 

the hiring of some staff at the beginning of the year. 

I look to live within the spirit of the 6.4 percent cut coming in 

the second session. To manage that I don’t expect to fill some remaining staff slots, and in some cases not replace departing staff. 

We will continue to struggle to do the upgrades of our committee’s 

equipment and computers. I would note that this current year we 

have had very few field hearings. I would anticipate that we will 

do none in the next year. Certainly we will expect to do the tradiVerDate Mar 15 2010 01:19 Jan 28, 2012 Jkt 072284 PO 00000 Frm 00166 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A284.XXX A284

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tional two-thirds, one-third split with the majority, minority. It 

seems to work pretty well, at least from my end of things. 

There is an incurring cost of software that we have to continue 

to manage as we get thousands of pages of documents with a small 

oversight staff. And we expect that you all can help us with the 

high cost of information access and management, LexisNexis, et 

cetera. We look to meet our legal responsibilities to prepare and 

print hearing transcripts, et cetera. This year, we had over 100 

hearings and markups. We are in full committee markup now, 

which is why I am going to abbreviate my testimony and yield to 

my friend Mr. Waxman. 

[The statement of Mr. Upton follows:] 


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STATEMENT OF THE HON. HENRY A. WAXMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, 

RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE 

Mr. WAXMAN. Chairman Lungren, Ranking Member Brady and 

other members of the committee, I am pleased to be here with 

Chairman Upton to talk to you about our situation, our budget situation. 

The first year of the 112th Congress posed substantial budgetary 

challenges for the minority of the committee. As I noted in my testimony last spring before you, the Committee on Energy and Commerce has jurisdiction over subjects with broad impact on public 

welfare, health, and the economy, including implementation of the 

comprehensive health reform law, making sure our food and drugs 

are safe, ensuring the effectiveness of Medicaid and much of Medicare, developing the Nation’s energy and environmental policy, 

telecommunications policy, and consumer protection law. To meet 

these responsibilities, we need staff with expertise in a range of 

areas, access to key periodicals to keep staff current on the subject 

areas under the committee’s jurisdiction, and the ability to travel 

to conduct fact-finding and field hearings. 

Unfortunately, underfunding in this Congress has posed obstacles to meeting these basic staffing needs. I am proud of the work 

our committee has done, but we have been unable to fulfill all of 

our slots. We have a shortage of manpower. We have had to carry 

a significant number of vacancies due to budgeting constraints. 

Further, at the same time that staff have been shouldering an extraordinary workload, they have seen their pay decrease from last 

year. In addition, we have had to forgo basic administrative resources such as a backup server that ensures the integrity of the 

committee files. 

In the coming year, the Committee on Energy and Commerce 

will continue to be at the center on policymaking on issues key to 

the health and welfare of Americans. We need to ensure national 

energy security. We have a variety of health and environmental 

challenges posed by global warming, climate change, and we must 

determine how to forge a successful telecommunications policy that 

encourages innovation and appropriate allocation of spectrum resources. 

We need an increase in funding for the Committee on Energy 

and Commerce for the remainder of the 112th Congress in order 

to ensure retention of expert staff and essential resources to support their work. A cut in funding would have deleterious consequences. It would mean that we could not replace departing staff; 

we could not participate in committee field hearings, which 

shouldn’t be all that difficult since we are not going to have any 

next year; and we would have to eliminate paid subscriptions to 

newspapers, on-line news services, and databases. 

That is our story, and I would be happy to answer any questions. 

[The statement of Mr. Waxman follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Let me just ask this, Mr. Waxman, about what 

you said. You anticipate if we had a 6.4 percent cut that you would 

actually have layoffs on your minority personnel? 

Mr. WAXMAN. We probably would have to. We have already had 

four people we have had to let go because we couldn’t meet the 

payroll with the cut we had last time. And I think we would like 

to not have any more than that 6.4 percent cut so we could have 

some attrition of staff and not have to lay people off. 

The CHAIRMAN. When you say you have lost four already, was 

that over and above the fact when you go from majority to minority 

obviously—— 

Mr. WAXMAN. Yes. Aside from that. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Mr. Upton, would there be any personnel 

consequences? 

Mr. UPTON. We may well have some. I am very pleased with the 

staff that we have. They are tremendous. And as was said by other 

committees, I heard Lamar from the Judiciary Committee, I know 

that to have the talented staff that we have, particularly as we 

have taken them from the private sector, many of them have taken 

a reduction in pay from what they earned before. We are aware of 

some of those salary changes. And I am hoping that we don’t lose 

anybody. We are trying to keep them as happy as we can so that 

they want to continue to come work. But we are very aware of the 

need for sacrifice and leading the way and we are doing so by—— 

The CHAIRMAN. What is your total personnel now, both majority 

and minority? 

Mr. UPTON. I think our side has about—some staff would be 

joint. I think the count is about 75. Again, it is two-thirds, onethird. Six subcommittees. And we are active every day of the week. 

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Brady. 

Mr. UPTON. Any parking spots to give us? Something? 

The CHAIRMAN. I will give you parking spots in return for jurisdiction. You would have to give something that is very dear to your 

heart. 

Mr. UPTON. Ahead of us, I say nice things about the Judiciary 

Committee. 

The CHAIRMAN. No. I was thinking of Homeland Security. 

Mr. Rokita. 

Mr. ROKITA. Thank you. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very, very much. I know you have to 

get back to your full committee. I appreciate it. Thank you. 

Thanks for being here early, Sam. We were running behind time, 

and now we are ahead of time. We are trying to get this done before the votes. So we understand your ranking member is on her 

way. 

Mr. GRAVES. Yes, I think she is. 

The CHAIRMAN. We want to welcome the chairman and ranking 

member of the Small Business Committee. Your written statements will be made a part of the record. We ask you to summarize. 

And if you could give us some guidance as to how your committee 

was able to deal with the 5 percent budget cut in the current fiscal 

year; how you would expect to deal with a 6.4 percent budget cut, 

as promised by the resolution passed by the House; and any effiVerDate Mar 15 2010 01:19 Jan 28, 2012 Jkt 072284 PO 00000 Frm 00175 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A284.XXX A284

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ciencies that you have been able to incorporate in the operations 

of the committee from the majority and minority side of things. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. SAM GRAVES, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI, CHAIRMAN, 

COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS 

Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Chairman Lungren and Ranking Member Brady, for the opportunity here. I will just briefly summarize 

everything, and then I will go through real quick the budget plan, 

as you asked for. 

By the end of this year, the committee, we have held 40 hearings 

in Washington and 5 field hearings. We have also held five markups and participated in several roundtable events in Members’ districts. Other oversight activities conducted outside the hearing 

room have also had some pretty positive results, and this activity 

reflects the committee’s very narrow legislative authority and 

broad oversight jurisdiction, as well as our priority to bring in the 

committee directly to constituents back home. 

We have invested in outreach through technology. We launched 

a new feature on our Web site called ‘‘Open Mic’’ which allows 

small business men and women to communicate directly their concerns and ideas to the committee. The committee’s success is reflected in the awards that we have received both on the Web site 

and social media communications through the year. As a committee 

with one of the smallest budgets and staffs in Congress, we are 

very proud of those accomplishments. 

Now, in reviewing the committee’s budget, as of October 31, the 

Small Business Committee spent 69 percent of its total allocation 

for 2011, which is very good news as it indicates that we have been 

able to live within our means and still do the work required of us, 

even with the 5 percent cut this year. But it is very important to 

note that 2011 was somewhat of an anomaly for the committee because of the change in the majority status, which required so many 

staff changes at the beginning of the year. Speaking for the majority, this meant that we had a gradual hiring of staff over the first 

few months, which resulted in significant personnel changes early 

in the year, because our staff was smaller earlier in the year. 

But those savings won’t be realized in 2012 because we are 

staffed at least where we feel we need to be at the moment. We 

had a plan to add more staff, obviously, but that was stopped in 

mid-2011 when we learned that there might be potential cuts in 

2012. Now, additional staff would be dedicated to oversight and 

regulatory review, which are very important priorities for the committee. The staff would help us further the goals of cutting waste 

out of the government; reining in regulation, which is a very big 

aspect of what we do; and provide a better environment for job creators. We are going to continue to evaluate our personnel to ensure 

that we are maximizing the resources under the budget constraints. 

While we have been forced to make adjustments to our plans and 

projections in anticipation of cuts next year, we will continue to 

prioritize effective oversight, obviously travel to Members’ districts, 

and technology that provides much greater transparency and access for the public. We do believe in proper planning, and we will 


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have the resources next year, even if there is a cut, to make the 

investments that allow us to meet the committee’s objectives. 

So with that, I would be happy to answer any questions. And I 

will turn to Ranking Member Vela ́zquez. 

[The statement of Mr. Graves follows:] 


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STATEMENT OF THE HON. NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW 

YORK, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS 

Ms. VELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you, Chairman Lungren, Ranking Member Brady. 

You know, given the role—and I would like to put this in the perspective of our economy and the important role that small businesses play in helping us get out of this recession. It is important 

to understand that the committee serves a vast array of issues impacting small businesses, that Chairman Graves has held different 

field hearings to tackle those issues that are important to small 

businesses, and given the state of the economy and the fact that 

it took this committee close to 20 years to receive funding that was 

on margin with inflation. 

Initially we started off this year with a 5 percent cut in funding. 

That was already a challenge in and of itself. That cut represents 

money that could have gone towards operational costs. Mr. Chairman, I run a bare-bones operation. While I understand that the 

cuts are all around, I don’t have to tell you that working with a 

smaller budget has its challenges. We have barely managed this 

first round of cuts and are bracing ourselves for the next round. An 

additional 6.4 percent reduction in funding is going to have a significant impact on my office. 

As you may recall, historically this committee has repeatedly received the smallest funding of all committees. And the chairman 

can attest to the fact that we get calls from Members, individual 

Members—not only the members who serve in the committee, but 

individual Members who are being approached by small businesses 

in their districts. So a second round of cuts will make it even more 

challenging. We will have to examine our operational costs to see 

where and if we are able to cut expenses, as our office already runs 

with the bare necessities. I am afraid that with these cuts we will 

have to resort to attrition, thus losing valuable staff. This also 

means foregoing field hearings, which give us the opportunity to 

hear from entrepreneurs outside the Beltway. 

Chairman Graves and I are committed to small businesses and 

our committee members. We are focused on helping small businesses with the support they need in order to help them create 

jobs, the jobs this country needs so desperately right now. And I 

am concerned whether this budget will allow us to meet all the 

needs of our committee and the Members throughout the different 

districts. 

Small businesses turn to this committee time and time again. We 

need the resources to serve them properly and efficiently. With less 

funding available to pay staff salaries, subscriptions, equipment, it 

will be a challenge to fulfill this committee’s oversight responsibilities. 

And with that, I will answer any questions you may have. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

[The information follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. If we have a 6.4 percent cut, would that require 

layoffs, either majority or minority; that is, would you have to cut 

personnel, actually cut already existing personnel? 

Mr. GRAVES. What we did, we actually stopped hiring when we 

heard on the majority side—when we heard that there were potential cuts coming. What that ended up happening is—I mean, we are 

obviously getting the work done, but it is taking longer. And the 

staff we would have hired would have been senior staff to do oversight on administrative—from the administration standpoint when 

it comes to all this new regulation that is coming down in the SBA 

regulations. So we are behind on that. And that is where the staff 

would have gone to. But obviously we are dealing with it, and we 

just froze hiring for the time being. 

Obviously I sympathize with the minority. Any time you have a 

change in majority/minority, you have one side that is staffing up, 

which makes it easier to slow down. You have got one side that has 

got to significantly staff down, which is obviously a very tough 

thing to do for anybody in that position. 

The CHAIRMAN. Madam Ranking Member, would you have to lose 

staff, do you think, if you had—— 

Ms. VELA ́ ZQUEZ. I would have to look at everything, and I would 

say that layoffs, salary cuts, and furloughs are all possible. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. I understand what you are talking about, 

being a small committee; although, according to my records, you 

folks are the third smallest in terms of budget. Ethics and Rules 

actually have smaller budgets, believe it or not. 

Mr. Ranking Member. 

Mr. Rokita. 

Mr. ROKITA. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very, very much for your presentation. We appreciate it and will take it under advisement. 

Mr. Nugent, you are sitting back with staff. 

It is my pleasure to welcome the chairman and ranking member 

of the Natural Resources Committee. We have your statements. We 

would ask if you might highlight how you have been able to operate in this last year under the 5 percent cut that was imposed as 

a result of the vote of the House; what your prospects are in terms 

of next year’s budget, which is subject to a 6.4 percent cut as a result of a vote on the House resolution; and efficiencies that you 

have been able to achieve this past year, and others that you might 

anticipate in the upcoming year. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. DOC HASTINGS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON, 

CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES 

Mr. HASTINGS. Thank you. You have my full statement. I ask 

unanimous consent that it be made a part of the record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. 

Mr. HASTINGS. Thank you, Chairman Lungren, and Ranking 

Member Brady and members of the committee, for having Ranking 

Member Markey and me before you to discuss the budget of the 

Committee on Natural Resources. 

Earlier this year we testified before the committee and presented 

a budget for the 112th Congress that reflected the 5 percent deVerDate Mar 15 2010 01:19 Jan 28, 2012 Jkt 072284 PO 00000 Frm 00182 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A284.XXX A284

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crease from the budget of the 111th Congress. Our nonpartisan administrative staff review each and every budget category for savings. The most significant impact of the reduction, however, is the 

salary portion of our budget. Retaining and hiring knowledgeable 

staff with expertise in the diverse areas within the committee’s jurisdiction is critical to the legislative and oversight duties that we 

have responsibility to carry out. On our committee salaries account 

for about 90 percent of the total committee budget. Decisions on 

hiring have to be made very carefully to ensure compliance with 

the overall salary budget. 

For 2011, we fully expect to have unspent funds at the end of the 

year, but that is attributable to the timing of the hiring of both the 

majority and the minority. For example, if a new staff member was 

added to the payroll on July 1, there is a budget savings of 6 

months of the salary for that year, but they will, of course, earn 

the entire year’s salary for the ensuing year. This results in a saving at the end of 2011, but that will not occur in 2012. 

You have also asked that we discuss the impact of the possible 

6.4 percent reduction in the committee budget for 2012. This obviously was not anticipated at the beginning of this year and would 

have impacts on the committee’s operation. As I previously stated, 

90 percent of the committee’s budget is for salary, and we feel the 

greatest pressure of the 6.4 percent reduction on our ability to hire 

and retain necessary staff. I have asked our committee’s nonpartisan administrative staff to review how much savings could be 

found in each nonsalary budget category, though it would not be 

possible to implement a 6.4 percent reduction in the committee’s 

budget from just the 10 percent of the budget that is nonsalary. 

Now, to be clear, if the 6.4 percent reduction were to occur, we 

would find a way to implement it in a way that best maintains the 

committee’s ability to fully and effectively function. In these tough 

economic times when we need to reduce Federal spending, Congress must do its part. However, it is important to maintain the 

ability of Congress to effectively conduct oversight of the spending 

and activities of the various Federal agencies and departments. 

Not many people realize that our committee oversees the greatest source of revenue to the Federal Government after the Federal 

income tax, and that revenue is offshore and onshore energy leasing. Tens of billions of dollars every year are generated and collected by the agencies under our jurisdiction. Our committee budget and the staff is tiny compared to the billions of dollars spent and 

generated by, and the tens of thousands employed by, those agencies that we are charged with overseeing. There is a point at which 

budget reductions cross from belt-tightening to having an impact 

on our core oversight functions. While it is my hope that a possible 

6.4 percent reduction could be absorbed without unduly impacting 

our core duties, a reduction beyond 2012 would certainly raise 

some serious concerns. 

I know that this committee is also concerned about how we share 

resources at the Natural Resources Committee. That is covered in 

detail in my full statement, but in short we operate on a twothirds, one-third budget for salary and staff positions. The remainder of the budget is shared openly between the majority and the 

minority. 


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Thank you very much for the invitation to appear before you, and 

I will be happy to answer any questions you may have. 

[The statement of Mr. Hastings follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Markey. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS, 

RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES 

Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Brady, members of 

the committee. 

The CHAIRMAN. Did you notice the BC game this year? Oh, I am 

sorry. 

Mr. MARKEY. Notre Dame’s superiority is a lifelong condition I 

have had to live with. 

As Chairman Hastings has noted in his testimony, when we appeared in March, we presented a budget for the committee’s operations that represented a 5 percent decrease in the budget for the 

committee. We have held that we would be able to carry out the 

committee’s work at this funding level by making cuts in our budget for field hearings and related travel. 

The 6.4 percent reduction poses a real challenge to us. While we 

do expect to have some unspent funds at the end of this year, as 

Chairman Hastings has pointed out in his testimony, this is largely 

due to the fact that both of us had to hire significant numbers of 

new staff. When Nick Rahall left for the Transportation Committee, he took a huge percentage of the staff with him, and many 

others retired, so I have had to spend the year rebuilding that 

staff. In Chairman Hastings’ case, that was due to the transition 

from minority to majority, and the same thing is true for me, taking over for Nick. 

I am nearing the completion of that hiring process; so is Chairman Hastings. And we expect our staff budget for next year to be 

much higher than this year’s budget within the context of the 

spending constraints that this committee has imposed upon us. 

Further cuts in the committee’s budget could, as Chairman Hastings has noted, seriously impair our ability to hire and retain the 

skilled professional staff we need to support our legislative and 

oversight activities. It would certainly make it difficult, if not impossible, for the committee to conduct field hearings in the many 

areas of the country that are directly affected by the laws and regulations within our jurisdiction. 

Such cuts also could adversely affect our ability to efficiently 

process legislation referred to the committee, much of which is not 

controversial, in response to real local needs and concerns, such as 

the settlement of Native American land or water claims; adjustment to borders of public lands; or the protection of the historical, 

cultural, and natural resources of the Nation. 

Demand among our colleagues for approval of legislation within 

the jurisdiction of the Natural Resources Committee remains exceedingly high, and the committee has a proven track record of efficient bipartisan consideration of these measures. 

To date, the committee currently has reported or ordered 76 bills, 

16 of which have already passed the House. This represents the 

most reported bills of any committee other than the Committee on 

Rules. About half of these measures have bipartisan support, and 

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ready held more than 100 legislative or oversight hearings this 

year, in the first year; 100 hearings so far this year. And I would 

suggest that to the extent to which committee activities should 

meet the needs of Members and demonstrates that bipartisan cooperation, this record shows the Natural Resources Committee has 

an excellent record and really is a peer for any committee in Congress. 

We have significant differences, obviously, on many issues; but at 

the same time we work together cooperatively on the oversight and 

legislative activity. 

And with respect to the allocation of funds within the committee, 

Chairman Hastings has, consistent with prior practice of the committee, allocated one-third of the personnel and salary budget to 

the minority. We have continued that longstanding practice of the 

committee to employ nonpartisan shared staff responsible for many 

of the financial management, administrative, and support functions 

out of the two-thirds share for the majority. Thus far we think this 

arrangement has been very fair to both the majority and the minority. 

Again, I thank the committee for all of your work, and we appreciate the attention you are giving to our request. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much for your testimony. 

[The statement of Mr. Markey follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I just have a general question. What would be 

the impact of a 6.4 percent cut on your ability to do oversight? And 

how broad a range of oversight do you have jurisdiction over, which 

entity? 

Mr. HASTINGS. Well, just to give you an example, I mentioned 

that the second largest source of revenue to the Federal Government comes from those areas over which we have jurisdiction. We 

have 69 staff, and we have an oversight responsibility for tens of 

thousands, within the Federal Government, with a budget of well 

over $20 billion. So oversight is important. 

And I might add that—and I think I might have said this when 

I was here the first time—that we need more oversight. I am not 

saying that just because, I am a Republican and the administration 

is Democrat. I think that we have been negligent for some time, 

quite frankly, in the time that I have been in Congress, for proper 

oversight. And clearly we set the agenda for oversight, but that always illuminates something. I think both sides win, but, more importantly, the American people win. 

We think that we can do that with the constraints of the 6.4 percent decrease. We are planning to do that. But clearly in the long 

run, if we are going to be more aggressive in oversight, because, 

as you know, when you have oversight, you turn up something, and 

you want to follow it down a line, you simply have to have the resources to do so. But we can live within those constraints, but I 

think in the long term it raises serious concerns. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you this: The second largest committee by staff is the, quote/unquote, oversight government ops 

committee. It does a lot of oversight. How would you answer a constituent who said to you, why do you folks have to do oversight? 

You have got an oversight committee that has got more staff than 

anybody else. Can’t they fill in the blanks where you folks miss it? 

Mr. HASTINGS. Well, we set policy, too. The Oversight Committee 

does the oversight, and they may find something that needs to be 

corrected, but it is up to the authorizing committee to do that. But 

I think on a regular basis—and I would expect that Oversight 

Committee to probably look at something that may be more egregious. I mean, they look at things. As I mentioned, the revenue 

coming into our committee. Are we getting all of that revenue? Is 

there waste someplace involved? That is the sort of stuff that we 

need to look at. I fully recognize we set the policy, and the executive branch carries it out, but I fully recognize that we have to 

make sure that they do that in a proper way. 

I think it is just a division of power. If there is something that 

has to be done legislatively, whether that committee finds it or our 

committee finds it, it still comes through the authorizing committee, and it is our responsibility. 

Mr. MARKEY. I would just give one example. We had the worst 

oil spill in world history last year, and it was on public lands in 

the jurisdiction of our committee in the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, 

the entire agency has been reorganized. But there are still oversight questions in terms of how much of the pollution has been 

cleaned up, how it affects the fishermen, how it affects the workers 

on all of the land-based industries down there. And while there is 


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an oversight committee, there is no way they can do the work this 

committee does on an ongoing basis. 

That is just one issue on the 20 percent of the land and the 

oceans of the United States that we have jurisdiction over, but that 

alone is a huge responsibility that the Oversight Committee just 

could not discharge with the level of expertise and accountability 

that this committee can extract from the Department of Interior 

and all other entities affected by that catastrophe. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Ranking Member. 

Mr. BRADY. Yes, Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

I know you talked about hiring somebody 6 months into the year. 

Fast forward up to the second session. Would we have to lay anybody off with the 6.4 percent budget cut? 

Mr. HASTINGS. We don’t anticipate that, no. 

Mr. BRADY. Does the minority anticipate that? 

Mr. MARKEY. No. I agree with the chairman. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you. That is all I have. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Harper. 

Mr. HARPER. No questions, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Gingrey. 

Mr. GINGREY. I have no questions, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. I now recognize Mr. Nugent in the far right corner. 

Mr. NUGENT. No questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. You did such a fantastic job, or maybe it is just 

because you are the last of all the committees, and we are tired. 

Mr. HASTINGS. I will think it is the latter rather than the former. 

The CHAIRMAN. We appreciate your testimony and appreciate 

your work. Thank you very much. 

Mr. MARKEY. We appreciate your work. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:28 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 


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