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50–203 2009

ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING 

MEETING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE 

ADMINISTRATION 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, JANUARY 27, 2009 

Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration 

( 

Available on the Internet: 

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/administration/index.html 

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(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania, Chairman 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

Vice-Chairwoman 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

Ranking Minority Member 

KEVIN MCCARTHY, California 

GREGG HARPER, Mississippi 

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

S. ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM, Staff Director 

VICTOR ARNOLD-BIK, Minority Staff Director 

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(1) 

ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING 

TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2009 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION, 

Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 1:30 p.m., in Room 1310, 

Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Robert A. Brady (chairman 

of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Brady, Lofgren, Capuano, Gonzalez, 

Davis of California, Davis of Alabama, Lungren, and Harper. 

Staff Present: Liz Birnbaum, Staff Director; Jamie Fleet, Deputy 

Staff Director; Charles Howell, Chief Counsel; Matt Pinkus, Professional Staff/Parliamentarian; Kyle Anderson, Press Director; Kristin McCowan, Chief Legislative Clerk; Gregory Abbott, Policy Analyst; Victor Arnold-Bik, Minority Staff Director; Peter Schalestock, 

Minority Counsel; and Bryan T. Dorsey, Minority Professional 

Staff. 

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to call to order the Committee on 

House Administration for its organizational meeting for the 111th 

Congress. A quorum of members is present, so we may proceed. 

At this first meeting of the committee in the new Congress, I 

would like to welcome back everyone on our side, who are all back, 

and I hope that we can all work together as we did in the last Congress. There are no changes on our side, but we have a new member on the Republican side. 

We will miss Mr. Ehlers as our ranking member. No disrespect 

to the new ranking member. He was an absolute positive gentleman, somebody whom I really, really enjoyed and somebody 

whom I got to know and whom I got to be extremely fond of. We 

did not always agree. We are not supposed to always agree. But we 

were never disagreeable. And he was a classy guy, an absolutely 

classy guy to work with. And we are not missing him in any bad 

way. He is still a Member of Congress, and we still will see him. 

And I will continue my great relationship I have with him. 

But we do have a new ranking member in Mr. Lungren, and I 

would like to welcome him as a new ranking member. We had a 

conversation. We agree on everything so far. Hopefully we will continue that, and I would ask him also if he would introduce his new 

member and for any remarks that you would like to make. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank 

you for your indulgence. 

The Republican Conference had an honor this afternoon. We met 

with the President of the United States, and he stayed an extra 25 

minutes to answer questions saying that the Senate could wait, 

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2 

which we all applauded wildly at. And I was seated towards the 

front, and the only way I could have left was to get up and walk 

in front of the President as if I was walking out. And I hope you 

will understand why I did not do that. 

So, again, I do apologize for our tardiness, but that was the reason. 

I would like to introduce and welcome our new member, Congressman Greg Harper, who was elected this past November to represent Mississippi’s Third District, where he has spent in the past 

considerable time on election law issues. 

In 2001, he served as the Republican representative on the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Election Task Force, and I believe that 

his expertise will help us on this committee. 

We do have Kevin McCarthy returning, and he will, again, be on 

our Subcommittee on Elections. 

And I thank the Chairman for his welcome, and I thank him for 

the spirit of bipartisanship that he has shown me over the last couple of years, in particular the last couple of months and especially 

the last couple of weeks when I have had this ranking member. We 

have had already, I think, enjoyable discussions, and we have had 

some additions on our committee staff, and we welcome the outreach from your staff as well. 

And we know there will be some issues upon which we may disagree, and there may be some strong partisan differences. But I 

would say at least 75 percent of the work in this committee is bipartisan. There ought not to be any misunderstanding of that. 

It is my hope—and you and I have discussed this—that we can 

work to make this an even more Member-friendly committee. And 

by that I mean not that we go outside the rules, but we try and 

delineate as clearly as possible what the rules are, and we make 

it clear to our membership, our fellow Members, what those rules 

are. And it is my hope that we can say yes far more than we can 

say no, so that Members may be able to work in very effective ways 

to do the job that they were sent here to do and to communicate 

with their constituents. 

And I know you share that. And so I very much appreciate that. 

As you know, one of my passions is security, and I look forward 

to working with the members on the other side of the aisle on making this, while it is a welcoming place, also an even more secure 

place because this institution is so important to our Nation, and we 

have every need to ensure that this is the case. 

And finally, I know by our rules, by the recently passed House 

Rules amendment requiring committees to conduct regular hearings on waste, fraud management, and abuse, that we need to do 

that as well. And I believe under our organization we can do that, 

and I will work with the chairman to ensure that we continue to 

do that. 

And I thank you for your indulgence, and I thank you for your 

spirit of bipartisanship. 

Mr. CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Anybody have anything to say on our side? 

For the record, if you don’t mind, we were wondering if the President changed your mind on anything. 

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Mr. LUNGREN. No, no. But we did sincerely tell him that every 

day he will receive prayers from our individual Members for his 

success and the success of our Nation. 

Mr. CHAIRMAN. Prayers and votes, I guess, are a little bit different. 

I need to make a few announcements. 

Pursuant to House Rules, I am appointing our distinguished colleague, the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Zoe Lofgren, as the 

Vice Chair of the Committee on House Administration in the 111th 

Congress. 

Also, as we announced at the last meeting of the committee in 

the 110th Congress, we took two actions by poll of the committee 

members. First, we adopted a new rule allowing Members to post 

video clips on Web sites outside the House Web address. Second, 

we agreed to recommendations from the Florida 13th Task Force 

to pay certain attorney’s fees for our colleague, Mr. Buchanan. 

These fees were incurred in the successful defense of an election 

contest during the last Congress. 

And our first item of business, I would like to because of—not 

that we want to get out of our committee hearing, because everything is pushed back, there are other committees that are having 

markups that are extremely important. So I would ask, without 

any objections, that we could take our four issues en bloc. They 

would be Resolutions 111–1; 111–2; 111–3; and 111–4. 

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The CHAIRMAN. I do need to make another announcement. I 

would like to now appoint the gentleman from Texas, Representative Gonzalez, to be Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on Elections 

in the 111th Congress. 

Hearing no objections to taking the four pieces of business en 

bloc as one, are there any amendments for these four? 

Will the ranking member have anything to add to anything that 

we are doing with these four? 

Mr. LUNGREN. I thank the chairman for agreeing to some of the 

suggestions that we made and believe that we have no further 

amendments. 

The CHAIRMAN. I would then like to ask for all of those in favor 

to signify by saying aye. 

Any opposed? None. 

So ordered. 

Our four amendments, our housekeeping amendments, for the 

new 111th Congress of the Committee on House Administration 

have been approved. 

Anybody have anything to say in the majority? Anybody have 

anything to say in the minority? 

We welcome you, sir. 

We hope that you enjoy yourself. 

As my dear friend Mr. Lungren said, we are a Members’ committee, and outside of getting any Member in trouble in any way, 

shape, or form, whether it be non-election or anything worse than 

that, we would like to try to help them, and I will continue to do 

that. 

Thank you all. This meeting is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:38 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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