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80–285 2013

COMMITTEE FUNDING FOR THE 113TH CONGRESS 

(DAY 1) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE 

ADMINISTRATION 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 5, 2013 

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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COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan, Chairman 

GREGG HARPER, Mississippi 

PHIL GINGREY, M.D., Georgia 

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois 

TODD ROKITA, Indiana 

RICHARD NUGENT, Florida 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

Ranking Minority Member 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

KELLY CRAVEN, Staff Director 

JAMIE FLEET, Minority Staff Director 


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COMMITTEE FUNDING FOR THE 113TH 

CONGRESS (DAY 1) 

TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2013 

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

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:44 a.m., in Room 

1310, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Candice S. Miller 

(chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Miller, Harper, Gingrey, Schock, 

Nugent, Brady, and VARGAS. Staff Present: Kelley Craven, Staff Director; Phil Kiko, General 

Counsel; Peter Schalestock, Deputy General Counsel; Kimani Little, Parliamentarian; Joe Wallace, Legislative Clerk; Yael Barash, 

Assistant Legislative Clerk; Salley Wood, Communications Director; Bob Sensenbrenner, Elections Counsel; George Hadjiski, Director of Member Services; Richard Cappetto, Professional Staff; 

Jamie Fleet, Minority Staff Director; Matt Pinkus, Senior Policy 

Analyst; Matt Defreitas, Minority Professional Staff; Thomas 

Hicks, Minority Elections Counsel; Greg Abbott, Minority Professional Staff and Eddie Flaherty, Minority Professional Staff. 

The CHAIRMAN. Good morning everyone, I will now call to order 

the committee on House Administration for today’s hearing on the 

Committee Funding for 113th Congress. The hearing record remained open for 5 legislative days so that members might submit 

any materials that they wish to have included. And a quorum is 

present so we can proceed. 

I want to thank everyone for being here this morning, and this 

process, while a bit lengthy—it is going to expand over 2 days as 

we hear from all the committee chairmen—is very necessary, I 

think, to our deliberations on committee funding levels. And certainly even more important as we think about what is happening 

with the cuts with sequestration. 

I think it is important as we listen to everybody’s testimony 

today, and certainly the committee understands the importance of 

each of the committee’s work, how incredibly important they are, 

what a critical component they are really of the vital responsibility 

that we have in the Congress to oversee our Federal agencies, and 

of course, we have limited resources to do that. So we have a task 

that demands efficiency as well. 

Of course, the legislative branch resources that we have pales in 

comparison to the executive branch; we have about a trillion dollars less. And yet our responsibility is to oversee these agencies on 

behalf of the American taxpayers. Our job is to ensure that the 


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hard-earned money taxpayers provide for government is spent effectively, efficiently and as transparently as possible. I think that 

is what makes our process that we undertake today and tomorrow—over the next 2 days, we are going to hear from every House 

committee about how they plan to allocate and prioritize their resources and how they are going to become even more efficient; 

‘‘doing more with less’’ is sort of the buzz phrase here. 

As we all know, last Friday, OMB issued its sequestration order 

detailing the automatic spending cuts, and although the cuts are 

going to mean a little bit different to every branch, every agency, 

every employee, it will mean something to every one, including 

every Member of Congress. And certainly for this committee, we all 

understand the reality of these reductions on committee operations. 

Of course, as I mentioned, every Member of Congress is also looking at an 8.2 percent cut to our own MRAs, so we have to certainly 

lead by example and to control our government spending. 

In addition to hearing from every committee about how they are 

going to implement these cuts, we certainly are looking forward to 

hearing about how they plan to manage their resources, adhering 

to the two-thirds/one-third allocation. As some of you might recall, 

the one-third allocation was championed by our ranking member at 

that time, House Administration Ranking Member Bill Thomas, in 

the 103rd Congress, when the Republicans were in the minority, so 

I think this is an important—it has been a tradition for quite a few 

Congresses. 

And I am pleased to report that for the last 16 years, the onethird rule has been supported by not just the majority but the minority party, whether it was Republicans or Democrats, and we will 

be looking forward to this bipartisan agreement, I think, for many, 

many years to come. Again, I want to thank all the members for 

being here and the ranking members and the chairmen. 

And we are going to begin with House Rules, and we certainly 

welcome Chairman Pete Sessions and Louise Slaughter, both of 

you do a great job, on Rules. 

I ask the official reporter to enter a page into the hearing record 

as we begin this section. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Committee on Rules has a very long history 

and the important job of presenting to the House the pieces of legislation for its consideration, its priority in the 113th Congress is 

to maintain its very high standard of establishing the parameters 

of floor consideration for the pieces of legislation we collectively 

consider and deliberate upon. 

So we welcome both the chairman and the ranking member, and 

we would open the floor to Chairman Sessions for his testimony to 

the committee, sir. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. PETE SESSIONS, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS 

Mr. SESSIONS. Chairman Miller, thank you very much, both Louise Slaughter, former chairman of the Rules Committee and I wish 

to approach this committee very respectfully, not only to you, 

Chairman Miller, but also former Chairman Brady who allowed us 

to testify a few years ago about the needs of the Rules Committee. 


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I might also with some great deal of respect acknowledge the 

gentleman Mr. Nugent, who serves on the Rules Committee, who 

and has a clear understanding of whatever we do. And I would 

hope in this committee’s deliberations and review of the things 

which you are requesting would feel free to talk with Congressman 

Nugent, not only about the diligence by which we go about our 

work, but also I think the frugality that is involved with us effectively using the resources which you so graciously give to us. 

You know, as I come before you it kind of reminds me of an old 

saying, gosh, if I had known I was going to live that long, I would 

have taken better care of myself. I might say to you today that the 

Rules Committee I believe has done a very good job of taking care 

of itself before today, but once again, we show up with some needs 

that we have, not only to our mission statement but also what lies 

ahead. 

Certainly, the Rules Committee has been working with your staff 

to try and give you a clear and better understanding and us hearing from you about your ideas and needs about our service and 

what we do. First of all, let me say this, the things which we do 

are at the service for the entire House of Representatives. We serve 

people 24 hours a day. We have not only Web sites that need to 

be updated with legislation but ideas. Perhaps, maybe over a weekend, someone will decide that we are going to post a bill; we need 

to make sure that we are available with Twitter; all Web sites, we 

need to make sure that we are leading edge in what we do. We 

need to make sure that we are available to print out thousands of 

copies at the last minute. We need to make sure we are open and 

available as a service product to the House of Representatives. 

The down side to that is if we are not, it means it is not only 

the prestige of the House of Representatives but also can cost the 

entire body overtime, inefficiency and frustration. I don’t need to 

remind you that a few years ago, when the official board, voting 

board went down, it caused great frustration. While I had no real 

part of that, I remember it well that the things which are inherent 

to the operation, the successful operation, of the House of Representatives must be done. 

So, with that said, both Mrs. Slaughter and I approach you respectfully today to help you understand several things. First of all, 

we do not have a travel budget. We do not have something that we 

can cut or manage on a moving-forward basis. We have by and 

large taken ourselves down to the bare bones. 

However, we have needs, needs that happen. Every couple of 

years, we burn through computers. We have new technology that 

we have to manage and make available. And we have needs of 

printed copies, doing things to where we reproduce things for the 

benefit of the majority and the minority on a timely manner to 

make sure that they are all available to people. We do not have at 

our pleasure four or five subcommittees, each with printers. We 

have one upstairs that produces what we need. And we need to be 

able to buy new equipment because we wear through what we 

have. 

What we do at the Rules Committee is a service to the House of 

Representatives, and we believe that our efficiency comes not just 

from our ability to get better every few years with technology, but 


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we also believe that the service we provide is there on a 24-hour 

basis to make sure that the entire House of Representatives works 

well. 

Now the core functions of what we do are what we are talking 

about doing; we are not talking about going out and making any 

grand scheme or going out and creating something that would necessarily help save us millions of dollars later. What we are talking 

about is basic functions that need to be covered. And so, as a result 

of that, I would submit to this committee, we have already taken 

that cut, and that we believe that any review and analysis of that 

would say that if we did take a cut, we would be putting ourselves 

at risk for the entire House of Representatives, for others to be prepared and to move efficiently. And so we are asking, at least I am 

today, and I believe Mrs. Slaughter would be asking the same, to 

carefully review us and understand that a hit to our budget that 

the chairwoman has spoken of, that I in my office, personal office, 

will willingly accept but that this committee had prepared itself 

last term and done that. So we are asking a very careful, thorough 

review. 

And I appreciate the opportunity to be before you here today, 

thank you very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Sessions follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman for the comments. 

The chair now recognizes the ranking member of the Rules Committee, Ms. Slaughter. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. LOUISE SLAUGHTER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW 

YORK 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member Brady, and all the other members of the committee. I am 

pleased to join with my new chairman, Pete Sessions, in presenting 

the Rules Committee budget request for 2013. 

I want to begin by saying that although Chairman Sessions and 

I have worked together for many years on the Rules Committee, 

this is our first appearance before you since he became chairman. 

And I want to express my appreciation to him for the warm 

collegiality he has shown to me and all members of the minority 

since he became chairman. 

Ours can be one of the most boisterous committees of the House, 

but we have a long tradition of working in a bipartisan fashion 

when it comes to the efficient operation and administration of our 

committee. I am grateful that Chairman Sessions has chosen to 

continue that tradition and especially that he plans to continue the 

policy of dedicating one-third of the committee’s overall budget to 

the minority. I fully support our chairman’s request to the House 

Administration Committee, and I, too, am glad Mr. Nugent is here, 

because I think he can certify us. 

Right, Mr. Nugent? 

Mr. NUGENT. Absolutely. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. As the chairman said, we take very serously our 

responsibility to tighten our belts and to reduce costs in every way 

that we can. We have done our share over the last 2 years. In fact, 

the Rules Committee achieved a 12.4 percent cut in our authorized 

level over the 112th Congress. We were able to make that cut in 

the last round, and we continue to be ready to do our share. 

But as the chairman stated, the Rules Committee is a unique institution in the House, founded in 1789; it has been important to 

the runnings of the House of Representatives ever since. We are 

small. We have a lean budget, but we are very efficient. The most 

important distinction is the fact that we do not control our own 

work flow or our schedule. Our agenda is set by the leadership, and 

we must be able to act at a moment’s notice. We have markups almost every single week, sometimes more than one. 

We do not have the option of using many of the traditional tools 

for reducing committee costs. We cannot postpone our meetings to 

save money. We cannot combine our hearings to reduce duplication. 

When the agenda of the House calls for action, the Rules Committee must be available no matter the hour. 

Furthermore, delays at the Rules Committee have significant 

multiplier affects on the cost of operating the House. When we take 

longer to do our job, the House must remain in session, and that 

means all of the personnel, the police officers, the Chamber security, the clerks, the Official Reporters and the recording studio personnel must remain on duty and will often be earning overtime. 

Even short delays can cost the House tens of thousands of dollars. 


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Finally, I appreciate my chairman’s point that since our budget 

is small, the proposed cuts will have the largest effect on the minority, where smaller cuts can have a larger relative impact. If we 

must absorb the higher level of cuts under consideration, the minority will have to choose between essential administrative services 

and adequate staffing. 

Madam Chairwoman, we are very proud of our committee. We 

provide an essential and a cost-efficient service to the House, and 

we have a long tradition of accomplishing that task with bipartisan 

comity, no matter the intensity of our disagreement on the underlying policy issues. And therefore, I am pleased to support my 

chairman’s request that the committee be funded at a level that 

will allow us to continue to provide that same kind of service to the 

House. 

Thank you. 

[The statement of Ms. Slaughter follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

I just have one question, I guess, in regards to technology, listening to you talk about all of the printing in particular that you have 

done. I have had the pleasure of testifying before the Rules Committee in the past, and I would just comment—I am sure everybody 

has—it is run so incredibly professionally on both sides, I think, 

very well, but there is a lot of paperwork that has to go through 

there, as you say, to keep the House running. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. Have you really explored, I am sure you have, 

the various kinds of technologies that might assist you with—you 

buy a new printer—you mentioned the upstairs printer—those 

kinds of things or if there is anything that our committee can help 

you with, duplicative kinds of things, that we may be able to resource you with as well, have you looked at those kinds of things? 

Mr. SESSIONS. In fact, I believe we have. In some conversations, 

I believe, that have taken place between our staffs, the Rules Committee began a discussion 3 or 4 years ago about how we were 

going to adapt ourselves to the needs of Members. For instance, 

iPads several years ago became more functional, and people came 

to us and said, your output doesn’t allow me a chance to get it on 

my iPad. Well, we had to go back and figure out how to do that. 

Increasingly as the complexity of technology has changed, we 

have tried to do the same. Once again, our budgets and our limitations have been met very seriously internally as we have tried to 

adapt ourselves. Those of us that are on the Republican side might 

remember there was a vigorous debate when we reorganized about 

what is available through the Rules Committee to CRS, back and 

forth with OMB, and how we effectively work together. These have 

all been important debates we find ourselves trying to meet the 

minimum needs of Members. We are a supply-oriented body, and 

I think that Ms. Slaughter very effectively not only laid out how 

essential our services are but that we have people coming to us 

asking for more and more, and there is only so much we can do 

at one time. 

Now as it relates to the actual printing operations that we have, 

that is perhaps the most essential thing that I would lay before you 

today, not that we are a bare bones organization, not that we necessarily would be available, as Ms. Slaughter suggested, at a drop 

of a hat, at the whim of anyone who needs our services, but actually the production of what we do. And I believe I could successfully say to you today, every couple of years, we wear out our machines, and we need that ability to be able to stay leading edge 

with the essential services we provide, and then we are trying to 

get beyond that for technology. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. 

With that, I would recognize our ranking member, and I apologize for not recognizing him for his opening statement. 

Mr. BRADY. You don’t need to hear an opening statement from 

me. I am fine, Madam Chairman. Thank you. 

You know, about 12, 13 years ago, when I first got here, I really 

wanted to get on the Rules Committee. I tried for a couple of years, 

and boy, am I thankful Dick Gephardt didn’t put me on it, because 

without question, you are the hardest-working committee there is. 


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You know, it is ironic that I have been here for a while, and I 

just asked my staff, where is the request? It is the first time we 

didn’t get a request sheet. We are trying to keep a status quo and 

hopefully not a major cut sheet. But I will vote with Mr. Nugent 

to give you a percentage increase if you like; I don’t have any problem with that. 

But I also hate to lead by example, Madam Chairman. I hate to 

lead by example. But it is what it is. We have the cuts. Everybody 

is taking them, our staffs, our committees. 

The only thing I would have and I would probably—the only real 

question I would have with a whole lot of these committees is, can 

you function with a cut? Are you able to get quality people to come 

in? Are you able to keep people that are quality people when you 

are cutting their salary, while I am sure that they have friends and 

people they associate with socially or whatever are making more 

money than they are making and, on your committee especially, 

aren’t working the same hours? So that is the only issue and problem I have with all the committees that have come in front of us: 

Can you keep the staff that you have with them taking a furlough 

or a cut? Do you have the opportunity to even attract any other 

staff members that can do the work that needs to be done on these 

committees? 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. We are very proud of our staff, Mr. Brady. 

I will tell you I think they are probably the hardest-working people on the Hill, but they are also in demand in the City of Washington because of the skills they could bring to a better job with 

much higher pay. 

We have been very blessed so far because the people who work 

at the Rules Committee seem so dedicated to what they are doing. 

The hours that they keep, I think, would astonish a lot of people 

here. But I think we are going to see that, and I am greatly concerned about whether or not we are going to be able to keep really 

good people. We don’t know yet. I hope so, because I have never 

worked with finer people on both sides in our committee. The skills 

that you have on the Rules Committee I think are very unique. 

They understand exactly how the House works and all legislation, 

and they have institutional memories that are unsurpassed. We 

really want to keep them, and it is a very big concern that with 

larger cuts, we will have to make changes in staffing, and that 

would really be a loss I think to the House. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you. 

That is all I have, Madam Chair. 

The CHAIRMAN. The chair recognizes the gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Harper. 

Mr. HARPER. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

And thank each of you for the hard work that you do. I know 

that sometimes a thankless late-night job that you each have to do; 

you do it well, and I am very impressed with the staff on both sides 

and how you do that. 

At this point, are each minority, majority staff, are you fully 

staffed at this point? 

Mr. SESSIONS. We are. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Yes. 

Mr. SESSIONS. And I believe Ms. Slaughter is. 


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Ms. SLAUGHTER. We had a part-time vacancy last year, but we 

are fully staffed. 

Mr. SESSIONS. But once again, with a moving forward viewpoint, 

it would cause us to necessarily make changes in staff or in some 

other area, and that is the reality of where we are. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. And that would be difficult because, frankly, I 

really do believe that our staff, because of fact that they are so accomplished at what they are doing, a loss of any one of them would 

cause us some serious problems. 

Mr. HARPER. As you look at how to address the cuts that you 

may face, I am sure you will look at every other option first. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Yes. 

Mr. HARPER. Before that comes about. Is that what you are in 

the process of? 

Mr. SESSIONS. In fact, that is an insightful request and perhaps 

question to us. We believe very clearly, Mr. Harper, that a delay 

of things that we would take could at some point mean that our 

printer would be broken. And I think people learn around here, you 

just don’t go get another new printer. And we would have to do 

that to operate day to day every day. And so we wear through and 

believe we have, through not just Ms. Slaughter’s experience and 

staff experience, but our experience in understanding what is key 

and critical, and so there could be people laid off in order just to 

buy a printer to avoid costing more money later. Those are decisions that we are asking you to help us with also, and obviously, 

your answer will dictate that to us. 

And that is why we are trying to say, notwithstanding, I accept 

these on my personal side, I think we have done a good job, Ms. 

Slaughter, when she was the chairman of the committee, and Mr. 

Dreier, as he made choices. Now we are where we are. We believe 

in what you are doing, but we are trying to give you a hint into 

the decision making. You will be a part of that decision making by 

what you give us. 

Mr. HARPER. Thanks to both of you. 

I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair recognizes Mr. Vargas from California for any question 

he may have. 

Mr. VARGAS. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank 

you for the opportunity to be here. 

My question was going to be just simply about staff retention. 

And I think you answered it, unless you wanted to add anything 

to that, but that was my concern. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. It is just that a loss of these people with such 

skills that are so important to the House, it would not just be a 

loss to the Rules Committee but a loss to the House of Representatives. And as I pointed out before, I think this needs to be said 

again, they are very valuable outside the House. We can name people in very key spots in the City of Washington who had their experience on the Rules Committee. They are premium employees for 

people in Washington. 

Mr. SESSIONS. I think what Mrs. Slaughter has said, I agree 

with. I am entering now my 15th year associated with the committee, of being on the committee. And I will tell you that some of 


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the things we do is to talk people into or out of things they wish 

to do. But people seek information from both sides. They seek information about the best way to accomplish what they are trying to 

do. And a lot of times that is communication, and the staff level 

is very important. You don’t really remember everything, I don’t as 

a Member. But I know that, on both sides, we have the ability to 

work together and to remind each other what the past has been, 

what precedent has been set and how we can go about allowing 

each side, as they choose to operate within some parameters that 

do not embarrass a Member and likewise does not harm the institution that we serve. The betterment so that we are seen to the 

outside in a thoughtful way, that is what our senior leadership is 

about. 

And Mr. Vargas, I will tell you, it is probably never more apparent than Rules Committee because that is where the focus seems 

to come before a piece of legislation you know that will be on the 

floor. So both Ms. Slaughter and I are very concerned about how 

we temper our words with each other, the signals that I send her 

and the signals that she sends me; it has a lot to do with whether 

the team believes we are able to work together and that is directly 

related to the senior staff that we have at the committee. 

Mr. VARGAS. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

The CHAIRMAN. The chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Gingrey, a former Rules Committee. 

Mr. GINGREY. Madam Chair, thank you. 

I actually had a bit of an opening statement, and I will just submit that for the record. But I do want to thank you for calling this 

hearing today on committee funding for the 113th Congress. 

[The information follows:] 


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Mr. GINGREY. And you are right, Madam Chair, I had a very 

good one term on, unfortunately, only one term serving on the 

Rules Committee, and without question, I think the Rules Committee is one of the most important, if not the most important, 

committee in the House of Representatives because without it, we 

couldn’t function. The House of Representatives would not function 

without a strong minority and a strong majority. 

When you go to the Rules Committee, as all of us have done with 

our amendments from time to time and you think that all they do 

is argue and fuss and they sound like probably an all American debating club, each and every member of the Rules Committee is absolutely perfect in understanding the Rules of the House and articulating their side to a degree of excellence you won’t see anywhere else on any other committee. 

So I did want to commend Ranking Member Slaughter and 

Chairman Sessions for the great work that you do. 

I want to ask one question because this is—we are going have 

to come back with a resolution in regard to your budget and understanding it is probably bare bones and I am sure it is bare bones 

in considering the 12, 14 percent cut last year, and now we are 

looking at the sequester and an additional who knows how much 

percent cut. 

Let me ask you this, Mr. Sessions, in your testimony, you mentioned that, and I quote, ‘‘Costs that could be born more effectively 

by the Rules Committee will instead be shifted to the House and 

other legislative branch agencies at a much higher cost.’’ Could you 

provide examples of those costs and which types of activities would 

have to be shifted out of your committee on to one of the other committees? 

Mr. SESSIONS. Yes, sir, and thank you for the thoughtful question, because in fact, that is the essence of what I believe Ms. 

Slaughter and I believe is an essential service product of the Rules 

Committee. As you are aware serving on the Rules Committee, we 

may meet at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. We try to meet different 

times now to help in fact with the cost of the House overtime and 

other things that happen as a result of all the buildings need to 

stay open as we are open for business. 

If we and our services are impeded or delayed, computer delay, 

printer delay, receiving information, transmitting on a timely fashion following the Rules of the House, then that means that others 

have to bear a cost as a result of our mistakes or inefficiencies. So 

I am asking you, as you have carefully understood, if you allow us 

to do our bare bones service that we need to do without—with some 

understanding that if we fail in our mission, it may cost other departments, other areas of this business, an extensive amount of 

money that would eat up the $12,000 or $15,000 that we would 

have gotten a computer; if we are broken down one time with a 

printer or computer, we would have eaten that up just in one time. 

So I think we do have a job to do and would say to you if we cannot 

meet our basic services, others pay the burden. 

Mr. GINGREY. Ms. Slaughter, would you like to add? 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Yes, just to restate what Chairman Sessions 

said, if we don’t have the ability to do our job, what we would have 

to pay in overtime would be much more than giving us the budget 


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in the first place so that we are able to function. As you know, the 

House does not meet unless Rules has put something on the floor 

to work on other than suspensions. So we can really bring the place 

to a halt. It would be awful if we did that because of equipment 

failure because we did not have an adequate budget. So the costs 

go far beyond what our committee does; they affect the whole 

House. 

Mr. GINGREY. I thank both of you. I thank you for your great 

work. 

Madam Chair, I yield back. I think my time has expired. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

And the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. 

Schock. 

Mr. SCHOCK. Thank, Chairwoman. 

I don’t have any questions. I just want to add my praise and 

thanks to the good work you both do. It is an important committee 

to this institution and one that I don’t envy you to run, but—I 

think you laid out a good argument, a good case for your lean, 

mean budget being maintained. I think the challenge for this committee will be the sequestration affecting all of us how do we go 

about restoring a committee or a portion of your cut and what effect that has on the rest of the committees that come before us. So, 

anyway, I have heard you, and you made a good case, and I will 

follow the chairwoman’s lead on what we can do to help you out. 

Thanks for what you do. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mr. 

Nugent, also a member of the Rules Committee. 

Mr. NUGENT. Madam Chair, I appreciate your recognizing me. 

The opportunity to serve on Rules obviously has been an eye 

opener for me, to say the least. I am on my second term now going 

into Rules, and we see this all the time, particularly as it relates 

to getting a piece of legislation so the whole House has the opportunity to hear it, to debate it, whether it is on amendments or the 

underlying legislation. I myself have had to go down to the floor 

at 2:00 in the morning to bring a rule forward so we could actually 

debate it on the floor the next day. So when you talk about computers, everybody goes, well, everybody has a computer. But when 

you talk about the lack of equipment that we have, when we talk 

that we only have one printer, what would that do to us if that 

printer goes belly up? Obviously, it delays the proceedings, and we 

have all these other folks on queue ready to go, whether it is the 

Parliamentarian or security force or whoever, how do we get 

around that? 

Mr. SESSIONS. Well, first of all, let me say that I believe the committee effectively under Ms. Slaughter and Mr. Dreier well understood their basic mission, and with the money that was made available, there were normal and natural things that they knew they 

needed to do literally every 2 years because of a mentality of serving that customer. I think several years ago, we recognized as technology, I will use the word leapt forward or leaped forward, whatever is appropriate—if Virginia Foxx were here, she would be my 

English teacher—as it might be, as people have needs, we then 

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tomer service, and tried to then serve Members and other people 

that we have. 

We are now saying we made some changes in computers, in programs to enable people and now we are faced with basic services, 

so we are making you wander a mile in our sandals, and we are 

trying to say we have put off now buying that new printer that we 

first of all essentially did that had to take place right off the bat. 

And I think it would be a mistake for me to come up here and say, 

look, as a arch conservative, I believe everything we ought to do, 

we ought to fall in line; Chairwoman, you can count on us to be 

right there with you and to do what I believe a Member needs to 

do. As a chairman, I don’t want to argue we are more important 

than anybody. What I would argue is, it is not something that we 

believe we should put ourselves at risk for. We have tried to cut 

everything else out, and that is why we are saying to you, Mr. 

Nugent, if something went out at 2:00 in the morning, and by the 

way, things do happen bad at 2:00 in the morning—— 

Mr. NUGENT. Murphy’s Law. 

Mr. SESSIONS. It means it would delay everybody. We would have 

to get a computer person, reprogram things, get them out, simply 

to be ready to do work the next day. And in that process, it would 

mean perhaps tens of thousands of dollars as personnel were 

around watching us get our job done. 

Louise. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I couldn’t say it better. I think you covered that 

quite adequately. We really need to be funded so we can keep the 

House moving. 

Mr. NUGENT. Your funding level, obviously, is staff-intensive. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Yes. 

Mr. NUGENT. It is not a big staff, though. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. No. 

Mr. NUGENT. And I will tell you that whether it is minority staff 

or majority staff, they both do a fantastic job, but it really is the 

institutional knowledge. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Absolutely. 

Mr. NUGENT. How do you replace that? 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Let me tell you, as far as I am concerned, Hugh 

and Miles, who are the chiefs of staff, are the best on this Hill, and 

everybody recognizes that. We hear from other committees all the 

time. We are very helpful to other people in parliamentary proceedings and numbers of things that they were able to help them 

with. 

Mr. NUGENT. Well, without that parliamentary aspect of it, we 

don’t do our business as a House of Representatives. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. The House comes to a halt, absolutely. 

Mr. NUGENT. I want to thank both of you for your service, whether you are in the minority or the majority, it could be either way, 

but we certainly do appreciate both of you. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Well, we appreciate having you on the committee with us, and we sure appreciate having you here because we 

know you are going to plead our case. 

Mr. NUGENT. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 


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I certainly want to thank both the chairman and the ranking 

member for coming. Your testimony has been excellent, very poignant. And my last comment would be I certainly associate myself 

with all of the various remarks about the professionalism of staff. 

I know, Miles, certainly on your side, and on our side, there is 

always a steady line up behind Hugh, asking them this and asking 

them that about every rule that is going on here, so they are a valuable resource, not just for the Rules Committee but for the entire 

House. 

Ms. SLAUGHTER. And the fact that they are friends and that we 

all work together I think makes the committee work extraordinarily well. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Chairwoman, if I could ask, I have some talking 

points, some of which I covered, some of which have been made 

available to you, I know this committee, just like we do, goes into 

extensive deliberations, and you are trying to make tough choices, 

I would like to ask, if I could, to enter those into that the record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. 

[The information follows:] 


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Mr. SESSIONS. And I think if Louise, if she wanted to put hers 

in, it would allow you later, as you go back over and make tough 

choices, to remember us being here today and what we were trying 

to impart to you. And with great respect, both Louise and I, thank 

you for your time today. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you both very much. Appreciate it. 

Before we get to the Ways and Means, I would just ask unanimous consent to enter the following documents into the hearing 

record, which are a statement from myself, as the chairman of this 

committee, and a budget request materials that we have to submit 

as our own committee to ourselves really for the committee on 

House Administration. And without objection to the request, that 

is so ordered. 

[The information follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. The chair now welcomes Chairman Dave Camp 

and Ranking Member Sandy Levin from the Committee on Ways 

and Means. I would ask the official reporter to enter a page break 

into the record as we move on to the Ways and Means. 

The CHAIRMAN. Obviously, Ways and Means is the chief tax-writing committee in the House. Its jurisdiction extends to tax system, 

trade agreements, Social Security, Medicare. And its priorities in 

the 113th include comprehensive tax reform and implementation of 

recently passed trade agreements. 

With that, the committee would recognize the chairman of Ways 

and Means, Dave Camp from Michigan, the great State of Michigan. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. DAVE CAMP, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN 

Mr. CAMP. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and Ranking Member 

Brady, and members of the committee. 

I am here today to present the proposed budget for the Committee on Ways and Means for the 113th Congress, and I am joined 

by our Ranking Member Sandy Levin. 

As you consider how to allocate funding between the different 

House committees, I ask that you keep in mind the Ways and 

Means Committee’s past record of fiscal restraint and aggressive 

agenda that is before us this Congress. 

As the panel with jurisdiction over so many aspects of our economy, it is critical to consider how decisions made about committee 

budgets will affect our ability to advance the country’s number one 

priority, and that is strengthening the economy to generate much 

needed job creation. 

Assuring this committee has the resources to fill that mission is 

essential. In the 112th Congress, the Ways and Means Committee 

held 112 hearings, and 18 business meetings. Of the 68 major 

pieces of legislation that became law last Congress, more than 1 

out of every 4 of those laws came out of the Ways and Means Committee. That is just part of the story. 

As you know, much of the work is left to languish in the Senate. 

All told, the committee had 54 bills considered on the floor of the 

House last Congress, more than one for every week we were in session. Some of the major laws enacted include the repeal of the onerous 1099 IRS paperwork mandate, passage of three long-stalled 

trade agreements, reform of trade adjustment assistance and reform of the Federal unemployment program. 

We also began to lay the groundwork for comprehensive tax reform by holding over 20 hearings, public hearings, including 3 joint 

hearings with the Senate, the first in over 70 years, as well as 

work on discussion drafts to reform our outdated international tax 

system and the taxation of financial products by Wall Street—created by Wall Street. 

Both full committee and the six subcommittees will continue to 

be very active this Congress. The committee is going to focus on 

comprehensive tax reform, which is needed to make the Tax Code 

simpler and fairer and to strengthen our economy and to create 

more jobs and higher wages; international trade policy, issues to 

expand our opportunities to sell American goods and services 


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around the world, including a potential trade agreement with Europe, and completing work on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a critical counterbalance to China’s economic growth and dominance in 

the region; improving the Nation’s welfare and job training programs to advance job readiness and strengthen families; addressing 

entitlement reform to protect critical safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare; and vigorous oversight matters within 

our jurisdiction, including the implementation of Obamacare. 

The technical nature of the policies of each issue increases the 

staffing costs of the committee. Most staff have advanced degrees, 

whether it is in law, tax law, economics or public policy, as well 

as years of experience in and outside of government. Nevertheless, 

our staff is relatively small. The committee’s funding was reduced 

by approximately 13 percent last Congress, as a result 8 staff slots 

on the majority side are vacant. Further cuts would critically 

hinder our ability to conduct the aggressive legislative and oversight agenda I have mentioned. 

As for the minority’s budget, we have a long tradition at the committee of the minority receiving a full one-third of the entire committee budget and staff. In addition to receiving their allocation, 

the minority spends their money as they see fit without interference from the majority, and I will continue that practice in the 

113th Congress. 

I want to thank the chairman and members of the committee for 

this opportunity to present our budget request and justification for 

that, and I look forward to any questions you may have. 

[The statement of Mr. Camp follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair now recognizes the ranking member, the other gentleman from the great State of Michigan, Mr. Levin. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. SANDER LEVIN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN 

Mr. LEVIN. Great State. You describe us so well. Also, you described our jurisdiction very well, Madam Chair, as our chair of the 

committee has. 

As is no secret, we have differences on many issues, there is no 

difference about the importance of this committee, and you have 

described it well, Mr. Chairman. 

So I really have little to add, except to emphasize how there is 

an allocation to the minority. That has been true in this committee 

all the years I have been on, 26 years. And we do well with money 

that is allocated to us. 

Let me just emphasize the squeeze, we have three vacancies, and 

we are not able to fill them. At the same time, we really this session have increased work because of the problems confronting this 

country. And so I know you have a difficult job, you need to look 

at each committee and its work, and I hope very much that you 

will be able to do that and to essentially evaluate the work and the 

needs of each committee on its own. I am sure you will do that, 

so that we will be able to continue to function well in terms of an 

immensely talented staff. 

All of you really rely on our staff and when you have issues relating to taxes, health, trade issues, whatever, you call upon our staff 

as well as your own. And we need to be able to sustain and, if possible, expand by filling some vacancies. 

So thank you for hearing us, and both of us are here for my questions. 

[The statement of Mr. Levin follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate your testimony and your comments. 

And I would say to both of you, certainly myself, and I am sure 

every Member on our committee and in the House has had an opportunity to interact with your staffs and have always been unbelievably impressed with the professionalism and what a critical 

component they are of keeping the House running and making sure 

that all of our questions are answered. 

And as the chairman just pointed out, one of every four pieces 

of legislation came from the Ways and Means at the last session, 

so 54 bills. That is—I hadn’t realized it was quite that many, but 

it seems like every bill was coming out of Ways and Means. So I 

know you are very, very active. 

My only question would be from this particular committee, we 

really are trying to help with sort of some of the enterprise kinds 

of things that might be able to assist some of the other committees, 

utilizing new technology and that kind of thing. I am not sure if 

I am asking you a question, but if there is anything that we can 

do from our committee to assist you with duplicative kinds of 

things, we might be able to resource you a bit with, we certainly 

stand by in that regard as well. 

Mr. CAMP. Well, Madam Chairman, to the extent that we have 

been able to, we have tried to go paperless and use technology and 

particularly in the miscellaneous tariff bill process that was a big 

help to us. I think that there might be an opportunity if we could 

find a way for committee offices to use the House cloud, because 

that might possibly—we have obviously created our own internal 

cloud, but it might reduce, in terms of servers, backup systems, I 

think that is something I would like our staff to explore with 

House Administration as a potential for some savings in the future. 

The CHAIRMAN. You can be assured, Chairman, that our committee has taken a note, our staff has taken a note of that, and we 

will be in contact with your staff director as well and see what we 

can do. I am sure there is a way we can assist. 

Mr. LEVIN. I don’t have much to add on that. 

I think there is a very active, at times intimate, relationship between all the committees and the staff of our committee as well as 

Members. Just recently, you and I began to work on a matter of 

joint interest, and we just have a staff that is really available, not 

only to us but to everybody. And I hope you will just very much 

keep that in mind, I know you will, as you decide your difficult 

task. 

I hope—we know that some reductions are coming; there already 

have been some. I just hope you will keep in mind the salient activities of this committee, because your work is at stake, as well 

as the chairman and mine and all the members of the committee. 

The CHAIRMAN. The chair now recognizes the ranking member, 

gentleman from Pennsylvania. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you, Mr. 

Chairman, and Ranking Member Levin, for being here today. 

My question is the same that I have, it bothers me we have to 

do these certain cuts. You mentioned your staff. I know you have 

specialties, a lot of your staff people have to have specialties with 

what you do. Do you have a problem keeping them? And with getting all these reductions, because I am sure a lot of them, I know 


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a few myself personally, could make a whole lot more money someplace else with a whole lot less hours? And do you have a problem 

attracting them at the money that you have allocated to you that 

you can only afford to pay them? In other words, you have staff 

that may leave because they can’t—there is so much loyalty, I 

guess, for lack of a better word, that staff have toward each other, 

but when they are out there and mingling with peers and they are 

doubling and tripling the money that they make, they have to feed 

families, too. And then to keep them is one thing, and to attract 

other staff when you do have a vacancy and you can hire somebody, do you have that problem, trying to find somebody who will 

come in for the amount of money that we can pay them? 

Mr. CAMP. Well, your point is correct; many of the staff, first of 

all, as Mr. Levin has pointed out, we have an excellent dedicated 

staff who not only answer tax questions for members of the committee but for Members of Congress who are working on tax matters because of the highly technical nature of all of that. Many of 

them have advanced degrees and great experience. We have a 

number of long-time staff members on the committee, but you are 

correct, our committee staff do very well if they move into the private sector, and we do have that issue. 

The other point in terms of vacancies now is we have been anticipating sequester. Obviously, having been a member of the supercommittee, I knew this was coming. And so this is something we 

anticipated, but it is also very difficult to bring on very highly 

trained and educated people for a temporary spot. So I didn’t consider it fair to be hiring a chief economist when that slot might not 

necessarily be able to be there. So we have got these vacancies as 

a result of both last Congress as well as anticipating what may 

happen. But yes, our staff, as they go into the private sector end 

up doing several times more than the salary we pay them here. 

Mr. LEVIN. I will just add briefly to your excellent question, a lot 

of the staff, so much of it in my experience in 26 years, they stay 

because of their dedication. And there is a tendency in this country 

at times to criticize public service, but I think the test of their dedication is, for so many of them, they could leave and obtain—in fact, 

while we were in the other room, David and I were talking about 

somebody who left, and I was asking, how many times more was 

he earning than when he was working with us? And we chuckled 

and said, many times. And so there is a dedication here, and we 

need to be able to pay adequately so people stay as long as they 

can. When two, three, four kids come—we have a high birth rate 

on the Ways and Means staff it seems—and—— 

Mr. BRADY. I thought these people were spending a lot of time 

at work. 

Mr. LEVIN. No comment, but kids get older. We had someone on 

our staff, and kids have to go to college, and it costs a lot of money. 

So I think we need to be proud of our staff and to make sure there 

is an adequate structure of compensation. We know your job is 

tough. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, both, for the excellent job you do under 

the circumstances. 

Madam Chair, I have no more further questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. The chair recognizes Mr. Vargas from California. 


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Mr. VARGAS. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. 

My question was virtually identical to the ranking member, without the issue of fertility rates, but other than that, my question 

was, again, can you retain your staff? I know it is a very valuable 

staff, and I think the question was asked and answered, so I appreciate it. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. I want to thank both Chairman Camp and Ranking Member Levin for testifying here today, and we certainly, I am 

sure, the committee does recognize all of the legislation you put out 

in the past and sort of the unique challenges you face in the 113th, 

with comprehensive tax reform in particular, some of the things 

you will be working on, so we will certainly take all of that under 

consideration and appreciate your time here this morning. 

Thank you. 

The committee now welcomes Chairman Hensarling and Ranking 

Member Waters of the committee of Financial Services. 

We appreciate you both attending, and I ask the official reporter 

to please enter a page break, again, as we enter a new section. 

The CHAIRMAN. The House Committee on Financial Services certainly has jurisdiction over issues pertaining to the economy, the 

banking system, housing, insurance and securities and exchanges; 

additionally, jurisdiction over monetary policy, international finance, international monetary organizations and efforts to combat 

terrorist financing. 

In this era of financial instability, this committee will continue 

to legislatively combat ‘‘too big to fail’’ as well as any regulations 

that hamper Main Street and harm Americans. 

So, with that, I would certainly welcome you both to the committee. 

And the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas, the 

chairman of the Financial Services, Mr. Hensarling. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JEB HENSARLING, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS 

Mr. HENSARLING. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and Ranking 

Member Brady and the committee. 

Ranking Member Waters and I are pleased to appear before you 

today on behalf of the Financial Services Committee. 

You instructed us to come up with two different funding scenarios, one of which we take an 11 percent cut from the 2012 authorization to reflect sequestration; another representing a 5 percent increase over what was spent last year. 

I don’t necessarily come before you recommending either scenario, but to comply with your request. Certainly I believe that 

Congress must always lead by example in matters of budgeting, 

particularly as we face historic and unprecedented levels of national debt. 

Budgets are both about limits and priorities. I certainly recognize 

you have tough decisions to make in respect to both. I am mainly 

here to explain the priorities of the committee and discuss how we 

plan to allocate the resources to better serve taxpayers, investors, 

consumers and our members. 


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Madam Chair, as you point out, in a very real sense, the Financial Services Committee has jurisdiction over the entire U.S. financial system, including the banking system, our capital markets, 

housing, insurance, monetary policy and international finance. 

Among the agencies we oversee are the Federal Reserve, Securities 

and Exchange Commission, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and several 

components of the Department of the Treasury. 

It is well recognized the 2008 financial crisis was the worst since 

the Great Depression, and most believe that the underlying causes 

and solutions fall within our committee’s jurisdiction. Whether it is 

examining the role of government-sponsored enterprises in the lead 

up to the crisis or the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, these are 

important issues that must be addressed as we do everything in 

our power as a Congress to try to avoid another similar crisis. 

It speaks of the importance of the work of the committee that we 

do through the work of 33 Republicans, 28 Democrats and a few 

dozen committed staffers, whose salaries comprise the vast majority of our budget. Just like every American family has to prioritize 

their spending, so do we, and it is our goal to allocate our funding 

so we can do more with less. 

In preparation for anticipated cuts, we have combined two subcommittees to streamline the workload. We put off major equipment purchases and delayed repairs and other IT investments. We 

refrained from fully staffing the committee according to our plan, 

leaving many spots vacant until we know for certain what we can 

afford. However, there are certain functions that we believe would 

be unwise to shortchange, including sending more jobs-growth bills 

through the House, through this House committee, communicating 

with and listening to those who rely on our financial system, and 

conducting effective oversight. 

One of the committee’s signature achievements last Congress 

was delivering the bipartisan jobs act, which we believe will boost 

growth and help small businesses create jobs. I want to work with 

our members, both in the majority and the minority, and further 

bipartisan approaches to promoting economic growth and job creation. One of the best ways to find capital for small businesses is 

to unleash the capital that is sitting on the sidelines of our Nation’s small- to medium-sized banks and corporate balance sheets. 

We will use or committee resources to further identify legislative 

solutions that will allow for regulatory relief and economic growth 

that will help remove some of this logjam and get capital flowing 

yet against to our small businesses. 

Our committee must also fulfill its commitment to effective oversight. As I mentioned, the jobs act is designed to revitalize the creation of small business jobs. Our committee will be intently focused 

on overseeing the act’s implementation by financial regulators. 

We will, of course, continue our robust oversight of the DoddFrank Act. As you determine how to allocate resources among the 

committees, I would argue that Dodd-Frank is equal to the President’s health care law in that both are sweeping, historic, massive 

pieces of legislation that restructure key elements of our economy. 

While the Affordable Care Act expands across three committees 

of jurisdiction, the Dodd-Frank Act is almost exclusively within the 


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jurisdiction of the Financial Services Committee, and we will focus 

our energy and attention on proper oversight. In addition, the work 

of our committee impacts everyone who balances a checkbook or 

opens a banking account. Dodd-Frank includes a couple of thousand pages, 400 separate rulemakings that reach into every sector 

of our economy, every town, and every wallet. Virtually no one is 

beyond its reach, and not everyone can come to Washington to 

make their voices heard. 

In order to understand the full force of the legislation, we wish 

to make a concerted effort to reach out to people who are impacted. 

Under the leadership of my predecessor, Spencer Bachus, the Financial Services Committee convened hearings throughout the 

country to listen to the concerns of community banks and small 

businesses. Field hearings were held in Georgia, Wisconsin, Ohio, 

and other States. We believe these hearings were invaluable. They 

gave our members the opportunity to gather information that is not 

often gleaned on Capitol Hill. So increasing the number of field 

hearings, we believe, would allow our members to gather information on issues that are key to their consumers and constituents. 

Additionally, better use of technology and social media will allow 

us to listen more effectively to and communicate more effectively 

with Americans who are engaged as consumers or providers of financial services, as well as provide a renewed focus on member 

education so that our members will have the tools necessary to 

share the committee’s business in a more transparent way with 

their constituents back home. 

In closing, we are prepared to do more with less, but we also 

have a plan in place if additional resources become available due 

to what we believe are the priority areas of this committee’s jurisdiction. Our committee is already hard at work, and we look forward to a productive Congress and addressing our Nation’s challenges. And I appreciate, again, the opportunity to appear before 

you. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

[The statement of Mr. Hensarling follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. And the chair now recognizes the ranking member, the gentlelady from California, Ms. Waters. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. MAXINE WATERS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much. Good morning, Chairman 

Miller and Ranking Member Brady. I am pleased to join with 

Chairman Hensarling to testify before you today to discuss the 

budgetary needs of the Financial Services Committee. As ranking 

member of the Financial Services Committee, I am very concerned 

about any proposed reduction in the committee’s 2013 budget. 

Like Chairman Hensarling, I am new to this position. However, 

I have been a member of the committee since 1991, and over that 

time, I have seen just how important adequate staffing and resources are for fulfilling the mission of the committee. I am very 

lucky that I have a topnotch staff at my disposal. They are experts 

in financial regulation, housing and community development programs, monetary policy, and a host of other issues. 

However, I believe that additional staff and resources are necessary in order for the committee to adequately provide oversight 

of our financial markets and regulatory agencies. We are currently 

understaffed, with only 18 staff members out of a possible 28. The 

workload for these staff members continues to grow. I believe that 

additional staff members are needed to provide sufficient oversight 

of major statutes that are just in the process of implementation. 

These laws include the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups, that 

is the JOBS Act, and the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform 

Act. 

Dodd-Frank implementation will be of particular interest to the 

committee, as it involves critical rulemaking initiatives across 

nearly a dozen agencies, including the newly established Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau. Moreover, I believe that there are opportunities to work with the majority in a bipartisan manner on 

several issues, including regulatory relief for the Nation’s community banks. Additional resources would be helpful in achieving 

these goals. 

The minority receives one-third of the staff slots and total budget, with total control over both categories. You asked me to provide 

estimates of how the committee would allocate funds assuming an 

11 percent budget cut from the total budget authority in 2012, or 

a 5 percent budget increase over what the committee actually spent 

in 2012. An 11 percent budget cut would impede my ability to bring 

on additional staff, that is senior staff members, to support the 

committee’s legislative and oversight agenda. However, a 5 percent 

increase would allow for additional senior staff. 

In addition, I am aware that the majority intends to hold several 

field hearings this year. While the committee did not allocate funds 

for travel last year, this year we are allocating funds to allow for 

additional Democratic participation in any such hearings. 

With that, I will yield back, and I thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the chairman and the ranking member 

for their testimony. 

[The statement of Ms. Waters follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. And I am interested to hear you both comment 

about the field hearings. We did look at the amount of field hearings that you had in the last Congress, that the committee had, 

and can see that you are interested in plussing those up this time. 

So I appreciate the explanation from both of you about how important field hearings are to your committee. 

That is just an observation. I guess my only question would be, 

as we think about some of the possibilities of utilizing new technologies at all of our committees, when we had the Ways and 

Means here we were talking about some of the cloud computing 

and the availability that we might have from some of the House 

systems here, sort of the enterprise systems that we have within 

the House structure currently and whether or not our committee 

could assist you in any of those kinds of things as well, whether 

it is, you know, House-wide subscriptions or, as I say, cloud computing, some of these enterprise projects, if there is any possibility 

of us assisting you with resourcing in some of those areas as well. 

Mr. HENSARLING. And I am sorry, Madam Chair, was that a 

question or a statement? 

The CHAIRMAN. That is a question. Yes. I don’t know if you have 

anything in mind. If not, I guess I am just offering that up as we 

have our staffs discuss some of these possibilities, there may be 

some areas we can assist. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Well, Madam Chair, I would like to explore 

that possibility. And although I am not an IT expert, in speaking 

to our staff we believe there may be opportunities with respect to 

data storage where the House could be of greater assistance, and 

there could be some efficiencies that could be had there. I think 

that we have availed ourselves of the availability of House-wide 

subscriptions, some of which I guess would fall into the technology 

area. And we also, I know, purchase a lot of our equipment through 

the House telecommunications office. But we will continue to find 

if there are areas of efficiencies and savings that could be had 

there as well. 

Ms. WATERS. I, too, would be grateful for any assistance that we 

could receive from you as it relates to IT. I don’t know at this point 

what that is, but I do know, to the degree that we are able to expedite the tremendous responsibilities we have, we could use whatever assistance we can get. 

I may take this moment to tell you that I was just talking with 

the chairman as we sat outside of this hearing room and I talked 

about the possibility of more field hearings or work. And some of 

what I am talking about is not necessarily field hearings as much 

as it is getting out and understanding some of the systems on Wall 

Street and understanding some of the systems in Chicago. 

We are now confronted with the kind of technology where the 

trading is going on faster than the mind can understand. And this 

nanosecond trading that they are doing has caused some problems, 

and I think we are going to see more of that. But we really need 

to see this at work, and how it works, and what it is doing. And 

so some of what I am referring to in terms of field hearings really 

does have to do with systems, trading systems. And I think we 

really need to be in New York and Chicago, in the futures markets 

to understand and get a real handle on what is going on. 


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I also said to the chairman that I note that the New York Stock 

Exchange has been purchased by ICE, and I understand that there 

are some systems changes that are being made. I want to know 

what those are and I want to understand them better. Yes, we 

would like to have more assistance with IT if we can get it, and 

perhaps that will be helpful, but I want to go, I want to witness 

firsthand how some of these systems are working. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. The chair now recognizes the ranking member. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I just want to thank both of you for being here and the job that 

you do under tough circumstances with the bare bones and maybe 

getting cut a little bit more. My question is usually the same, but 

because I am in front of Mr. Vargas I get to ask it before he does. 

So I am going to just give back the balance of my time, and when 

he gets recognized in his order he will be able to ask the same 

question. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. The chair recognizes the 

gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Harper. 

Mr. HARPER. I just want to thank both of you for the hard work 

you are doing, the great staff. I know this is not an easy time, and 

you will deal the best way I am sure you can with whatever figure 

we do come up with, and wish you well. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Vargas, for his question. 

Mr. VARGAS. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And the ranking member has a reputation of being very generous to novices. So 

I appreciate it very much. Thank you very much. 

My question is with respect to retention of employees, and also 

attracting employees under the budget that you have and the projected budgets. I know that the people that work for you are very 

highly trained, and the opportunities that they have out in the private sector are significant, with a lot more financial gain for them. 

So what has been your experience and what do you anticipate with 

the budgets that you have proposed? 

Ms. WATERS. Well, if I may, I am very interested in bringing on 

more senior staff with backgrounds and experience particularly understanding the capital markets, and particularly trading. As I 

have began to delve into what we are attempting to implement 

with Dodd-Frank, it is clear that as we talk about transparency 

with derivatives, we need people who understand the complications 

of derivatives and the creative ways that derivatives are being 

used. 

When we delve into some of the new tactics of trading and the 

platforms that we are trying to understand, we really need people 

who have background and really who have experience. And so we 

desperately need this. And when we try and compete with Wall 

Street, with New York, with Chicago, what have you, for these people, it is difficult. It is very hard. But if we are to do a good job 

here, we have got to go after people, we have got to be able to pay 

them a decent salary. And our committee depends on knowledge, 

experience, and talent. 

Mr. HENSARLING. As I said in my testimony, Congressman, in 

anticipation of reaching the moment that potentially we could have 


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this sequester, in the original staff plan based upon the historic 

norms of funding, we did not fully ramp up our staff. So I am not 

so concerned about retention. I have concerns, again, that relative 

to the tasks that we fill or the responsibilities we have on what is 

probably oversight of the most sweeping law since the New Deal 

with respect to capital markets, credit markets, Dodd-Frank, in respect to the work, that we have to do everything we can to ensure 

we do not replicate the financial crisis of 2008. Yes, I am in full 

agreement with the ranking member, we want to ensure that we 

have staff that have expertise in what many members view as a 

fairly arcane area of legislation. That would be most helpful. Again, 

I don’t have your job. It is a difficult one in trying to balance relative priorities. But I hope we have made a case that, again, the 

responsibilities of this committee are immense, and relative to that 

challenge we believe that we are understaffed. 

Mr. VARGAS. Madam Chair, I guess I would simply comment that 

this is an area where I have a little bit of expertise. I was vice 

president at Liberty Mutual, as well as Safeco Insurance, and the 

law has changed dramatically and is changing dramatically, especially for large insurance companies, interestingly, too. And this is 

an area where I think that, I don’t know, I certainly would look at 

their budget in a way that, you know, with Dodd-Frank and the 

changes that are being made are substantial. 

Anyway, I would just make that as a comment. And I appreciate 

the work that you have done. And I think you have a lot of work 

ahead of you. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Would you care to join our committee with that 

expertise? 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate the gentleman’s comment. And I 

think it is true that this committee does have some rather unique 

challenges going forward. And I think this committee will certainly 

recognize that and be very aware of the comments and the presentations that you have both made this morning. And we are appreciative of that, and would excuse you. Thank you very, very much. 

Appreciate it. 

Mr. HENSARLING. Thank you. 

Mr. HARPER [presiding]. The committee now welcomes Chairman 

Kline of the Committee on Education and Workforce. 

Would the official reporter please enter a page break into the 

hearings record to begin a new section? 

Mr. HARPER. The Committee on Education and Workforce has jurisdiction over our Nation’s schools and workplaces. The committee 

oversees programs that affect hundreds of millions of Americans, 

from school teachers and small business owners to students and retirees. The committee’s priority in the 113th Congress is to build 

on the vital reforms set in motion during the past decade: pressing 

for enhanced flexibility and local control in education, modernization of outdated Federal rules that stifle job growth and innovation, 

and affordable access to health care, retirement security, and training for American workers. 

Chairman Kline, we welcome you. You will have 5 minutes to 

testify before the committee. And you are now recognized. 


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STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOHN KLINE, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA 

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

Brady, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear here to testify about our committee budget for 

2013. I understand that my colleague, Mr. Miller, is on the other 

side of the Capitol and trying to make his way over here. In 2012, our committee was allocated $7,812,094. This represented a 6.4 percent cut in 2012, with an overall 11.4 percent cut 

for the 112th Congress. We honored this cut by leaving numerous 

staff positions vacant on the committee. Our staffs took on additional responsibilities and expanded their areas of expertise. In late 

2011, we heard rumors of possible additional cuts for 2012, so we 

put caps on committee travel and committee printing. Due to our 

prudent planning, we only spent 82 percent of our overall committee budget. 

My message to you today is: Don’t punish the good actors. Don’t 

punish the good stewards of taxpayer dollars. We can only go so 

lean for so long. We are asked to testify today to both an 11 percent 

cut from our 2012 allocation and a 5 percent increase over what we 

spent in 2012. We recognize the fiscal challenges that exist across 

this country and we are willing do our part to contribute to fiscal 

responsibility. 

But I sit here today to warn you that drastic additional cuts to 

this committee would affect committee product. Mr. Miller and I 

have great aspirations for this Congress. We want to reauthorize 

the Workforce Investment Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Higher Education Act, and we also want to reform the 

multiemployer pension system. But all of this requires extensive 

committee resources. An additional 11 percent cut from our 2012 

allocation or a 5 percent increase from our 2012 actual expenditures spreads us too thin on the work we want to do to achieve the 

best legislative product and conduct the best oversight. 

In particular, deep cuts mean fewer site visits and fewer field 

hearings. Last year, my staff went on a site visit to a high school 

in West Virginia to see implementation of the new school lunch 

standards. They sat with the students and they ate chicken on a 

biscuit. These real world visits are helpful. They let us bust out of 

this Federal bubble and see what implementation looks like. It is 

the best way to see successes and identify challenges. 

I feel the same way about field hearings. Field hearings are a 

small way to take the Capitol on the road. They provide a firsthand 

look at the issues under our committee’s jurisdiction, such as employer-sponsored health care and workforce training. I hope the 

committee takes these important activities into account as they determine our budget. If we must choose between an 11 percent cut 

from 2012 allocation and a 5 percent increase over what we spent 

in 2012, we ask for an 11 percent cut from the 2012 allocation. On 

this, Mr. Miller and I agree. This treats all committees fairly and 

doesn’t punish the committees who, like us, were good stewards in 

2012. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I appreciate your time, 

and would be happy to answer any questions. 

The CHAIRMAN [presiding]. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 


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[The statements of Mr. Kline and Mr. Miller of California follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I guess my question is, we have been asking 

similar questions to the other chairmen and ranking members as 

they testified here about the possibility of our committee actually 

assisting you, resourcing you a bit with any kinds of new technology that might be able to be utilized your committee, whether 

that would be sort of the cloud computing, something, for instance, 

that Ways and Means was very interested in working with us on, 

or, you know, different kinds of subscriptions that can go Housewide, or various kind of duplicative kinds of things that might be 

happening at your committee that we could help you resourcing 

with so you would have a little more cash maybe to spend on your 

field trips or staffing levels or what have you. I am not sure if that 

is really a question, it is certainly an observation. If there is anything our committee can help you with, we certainly want to do 

that. 

Mr. KLINE. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. I took that as a question and an offer on your part which we would like to take advantage of. I mean certainly subscriptions are helpful. But, for example, you provide, the House provides the television coverage of our 

hearings, but don’t provide the closed caption coverage. And that 

would be enormously helpful to us, and particularly I would argue 

in our committee, where we have jurisdiction over IDEA, for example, it would be very, very helpful. We already spend money out of 

the committee budget for closed captioning. If that is something the 

House could take over, it would indeed be helpful. And so that is 

my response. 

The CHAIRMAN. Very good. 

Mr. KLINE. And I am urging the committee to help us with that 

if you can. 

The CHAIRMAN. I know that we are taking notes here about that. 

Mr. KLINE. I saw that, Madam Chair. I was very pleased to see 

it. 

The CHAIRMAN. And we will certainly take a look at that. The 

chair recognizes the ranking member. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to thank you for coming in front of us and doing the job that you do under some tough 

circumstances. Appreciate you being here. Thank you. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank the gentleman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Chair recognizes the gentleman from Mississippi, 

Mr. Harper. 

Mr. HARPER. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

And Glad to have you here, Mr. Chairman. Are there any special 

circumstances that we should be aware of that set the Committee 

on Education and the Workforce apart from other committees as 

we are looking at budgeting matters that you think we should be 

aware of? 

Mr. KLINE. I don’t anticipate any such special circumstances. I 

was aware of the committee’s interest in this and had a discussion 

with staff. I don’t think there is anything that falls under that category. We are going to continue to follow the aggressive agenda 

that we have shown for the last Congress and this Congress. But 

I don’t see a special circumstance. 


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Mr. HARPER. Well, I appreciate your good stewardship in the last 

Congress, and I know you will do the same this time. Thank you, 

Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank the gentleman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. We appreciate your testimony this morning. And we certainly will take it all 

under advisement, and we will get back with you. But we certainly 

appreciate the unique challenges that you face in your committee 

going forward and want to help resource you as we can. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

The CHAIRMAN. The committee now welcomes the chairman of 

the Transportation and Infrastructure, Mr. Shuster, and the ranking member, Mr. Rahall. We appreciate you both being here. 

We would ask the official reporter to enter a page break in the 

hearing transcript. 

The CHAIRMAN. And I would just say that as a member of the 

T&I Committee as well, I have often said that when I talk to my 

constituents about what happens on the T&I Committee, I say you 

can just think about the economics of our Nation as always follow 

the transportation grid. Whether it was the wagon trains going out 

West and the early part of the country opening up, and then the 

railroads came, and then the Interstates came, and now the aviation links are such a critical component, and shipping as well. And 

the jurisdiction that you have on your committee is very far-reaching, and I know you have some unique challenges this Congress. 

And the chair would now recognize the chairman for his opening 

statement. 

Mr. Shuster. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. BILL SHUSTER, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. SHUSTER. Well, I thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to be here today, and appreciate your kind words on the 

committee. I would also say, for 230 years, going back to our 

Founding Fathers, the commerce, the transportation link has been 

what has really connected this country physically. So we take it 

very seriously and look forward to working in this Congress over 

the next 2 years with a pretty big agenda. 

So thank you, Madam Chair and Ranking Member Brady. It is 

good to see you, my friend from Philadelphia. Members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear here today before 

you in support of the budget request for the coming fiscal year. The 

committee is committed to ensuring that every tax dollar goes to 

good use, both at the agencies we oversee and within our own offices. In an era of constrained budgets, we must focus on spending 

on those things that are necessary to advance our agenda. The 

greatest resource and greatest expense of our committee is our 

knowledgeable and experienced staff. The committee staff not only 

benefits our members, but also serves as a resource for the entire 

body. 

The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is looking forward to a productive 113th Congress. We have a lot of work to do. 

Our legislative agenda for the next 2 years includes addressing the 

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ment Act, reauthorizing of surface transportation programs set to 

expire next year, reforming passenger rail, and additionally we will 

seek to bring a FEMA reform bill to the floor. The committee has 

also developed a significant oversight plan. Last Congress, the committee passed major authorizations that now require oversight. As 

the current administration implements these laws, we will ensure 

that they do so in an efficient and cost-effective manner. 

Transportation programs are inherently partnerships with States 

and local interests. What is necessary to develop these programs 

with folks outside the Beltway is those partnerships. Surveying the 

country’s highways, waterways, railroads, seaports, and airports 

provide the committee with the context for our policies. It is our 

responsibility to educate the committee and the House on the national transportation system, and the travel allotment in the budget allows us to do so. Together with my friend and ranking member, Nick Rahall from West Virginia, we have compiled a committee funding request that is $773 below last year’s level. The 

level is about 5 percent above the previous Congress’ actual spending. Last Congress was the only one chaired by my predecessor, 

and because of his short tenure he made few staffing additions as 

he transitioned from ranking member to chair. This was reflected 

in his budget. 

With regards to the allocations of resources between the majority 

and the minority, we will continue to provide two-thirds of the personnel budget to the majority and one-third to the minority. This 

is consistent with previous Congresses. The majority and minority 

will continue to fairly share a budget for nonpersonnel expenses. 

Finally, Madam Chair, to bring up a subject you and I have 

talked about on the floor before, before I yield to Mr. Rahall, I am 

going to ask you all to hear me out on this, the Rayburn House Office Building, as you know, is sometimes very difficult to navigate. 

And I proposed to the chair that to make it more hospitable, to 

stencil the names of the corresponding streets onto the walls in the 

different hallways. I think you would not only help visitors but 

Members who get lost in that building. So again, I think to better 

navigate I propose that again to you. I think it would make this 

committee the hero of Congress. Because I have been around for 

12 years, and sometimes I walk out of those committee rooms and 

go, where am I? And there is no point of reference. So, again, I 

would propose that would make you all the heroes of Congress if 

you would help us get through the Rayburn Building. 

So again, thank you for providing this opportunity. I would be 

happy to answer any questions, and yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate that. 

[The statement of Mr. Shuster follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. And you know I am a lifetime boater, I always 

feel like I have a pretty good sense navigational-wide of where I 

am. I am in the Rayburn, I am always looking for my bread 

crumbs. And I do sometimes walk out and go, where am I? So I 

appreciate that—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. If you stencil those street names up there, you 

would know where you are all the time. 

The CHAIRMAN. And it is all about transportation, how we transit 

around the campus here, right? So with that, I would recognize the 

ranking member. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. NICK J. RAHALL, II, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA 

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you, Madam Chair, Ranking Member Brady, 

for this opportunity to be before you today. And I certainly appreciate your comments, Madam Chair, about the bipartisan nature of 

our Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, upon which you 

serve. We have worked bipartisanly together as well on National 

Guard legislation, giving them a seat at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

And both of us being recipients of the Harry Truman Award, the 

most prestigious award the National Guard gives out. And I am 

proud to talk with that wherever and whenever I go, and that was 

a bipartisan effort with you. 

During the last Congress, the committee minority was treated 

fairly. I controlled one-third of the budget for staff salaries and 

other matters such as equipment and supplies, where it dealt with, 

on a nonpartisan basis. And as Chairman Shuster, my good friend, 

has testified, we do not anticipate changing that under his leadership. And I do appreciate his efforts to reach out to the minority 

on this and so many other issues before our Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 

Now, you have asked House committees to submit two budget options, one which would provide for an 11 percent reduction from 

the current spending authorization, the other which would provide 

for a 5 percent increase from actual total expenses. In the event 

the 11 percent reduction option becomes final, I would have to reduce my committee staff salaries by $165,048, if the traditional 10 

percent of the budget is dedicated to equipment, supplies, and 

maintenance. 

To put that figure into perspective, Madam Chair and Ranking 

Member Brady, if that cut is applied equally across the board, each 

one of my staffers’ salary would be reduced by $6,877. As we all 

know, on Capitol Hill, in order for us to do our jobs for the American people, it is essential that we are supported by qualified staff. 

And it is a plus if they are seasoned and they have some institutional knowledge. 

In my case, my committee staff director, Mr. Jim Zoia, has been 

with me for 32 years. My committee chief counsel has served for 

20 years. I have two other staffers who have worked for the House 

of Representatives for 18 and 17 years respectfully. This type of 

seasoned staff not only serves us all well, it serves me well, but 

they well serve the entire T&I Committee Democratic Caucus. In 

each case, these staffers have had more than ample opportunity to 

leave House employment for more financially lucrative jobs in the 


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private sector. Instead, they have opted for continued public service. 

So I would hope that an 11 percent cut is not the route we would 

go for committee budgets. Again, I thank you for this opportunity 

to testify, Madam Chair and Ranking Member Brady, and be glad 

to respond to questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate that very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Rahall follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I actually had the staff pull out some of the detail that you had submitted in regards to some of your field hearings. And first of all, let me just say how appreciative I am of what 

you have come forward with, with the cuts and everything else. 

And I think most committees, I guess, but certainly T&I does have 

a necessity to get out into the field, so to speak, when you are talking about all the various States, I mean every State that we impact, and et cetera, et cetera. So I am just sort looking at some of 

the detail on that. 

And I guess my question is one I have been sort of asking some 

of the other chairs, and an observation or a question, if whether or 

not, with some of the new technology that is available, whether our 

committee can help resource your committee with various kinds of 

things. And if you don’t know the answer to that, I guess I am offering up our staff to work with your staffs about, like, cloud computing, some of the various things. I think apparently you have already got something a little different than cloud. But that is about 

to stop here on your lifecycle with that. I am not quite sure where 

it is. But at the expiration of that contract, that would be something we, I think, could really help you with and help with some 

of the expenses that you have on that. So some of the various services we have within our jurisdiction here to help you, we would like 

to be able do that if we can. So if you have any questions or comments about different kinds of equipment or technology we can 

help you with, we want to do that. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Sure. I appreciate it. Some of that we have to look 

into. I know teleconferencing would be something we could do more 

of, I think help us. When it comes to technology, I am not the person to ask. I can barely use my BlackBerry. 

But I also want to concur with Mr. Rahall on the 5 percent increase for us actually is, based upon last year, Chairman Mica gave 

back so much money, a 5 percent increase is not an increase in our 

overall budget, It is actually still less than it was last year. So, 

again, looking at our staffing needs. We are going to do probably 

18 field hearings this year, give or take. But the amount of oversight we have to do, we have to do oversight on the FAA bill, oversight on MAP–21. And when I look at, for instance, FAA, we have 

got between the two of us about 60 or so staff, and the FAA has 

got 47,000 people. So, you know, we are up against a behemoth 

when it comes to try to get information and do aggressive oversight. So again, it is something to consider. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yeah, and particularly so I think with sequestration, there has been a big focus on what is going on with the FAA 

and what is actually going to happen out there and the traveling 

public. 

Mr. RAHALL. I associate myself with the comments of Chairman 

Shuster, Madam Chair. And it is certainly a tremendous offer you 

have made, and it does merit further exploration. The chairman 

has mentioned the various oversights we have, and he has only 

touched the top of the iceberg. There is many, many other safety 

issues, especially for the traveling public, that we will have to address. And those are major concerns for all of us. 

The CHAIRMAN. Appreciate that. The chair recognizes my ranking member, Mr. Brady. 


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Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I just wanted to expand upon what you had said about the staff 

people. I have been asking the committees the same question. With 

the cuts that we had and the cuts we may be getting, but we don’t 

know what they may be, are you able to maintain—and it seems 

that you have because you have a lot of staff members that have 

been with you for a long time—but it is hard to maintain people 

with that institutional knowledge without paying them a decent 

amount of money. I am sure they can go out and get more money 

doing what they do on the outside rather than be here on the inside and on the Transportation Committee. And also do you have 

a problem with—asking both of you—do you have a problem maybe 

even attracting quality staff that would come to work for a small, 

you know, not a large amount of money anymore? That again that 

they can make more money on the outside. 

It is the staff driven that we all are, and I just think they are 

the ones that are getting the short end of all of this, and we are 

getting the short end by not being able to get qualified people to 

come to work for us, especially fields, especially in transportation. 

So, I mean, are you having problems keeping—you probably not, 

but they must be paying a heck of a sacrifice—or even attracting 

new employees? 

Mr. RAHALL. Well, Mr. Brady, I would say that, you know, we 

have a lot of people willing to work in public service seeking jobs 

every day. But what I am referring to, and you are as well, are the 

qualified institutional knowledge that is so effective here on Capitol 

Hill, those that have, like myself, I guess, been around for a few 

decades or so. And it is that institutional knowledge, the battles 

through which many staff have been through, conference committee negotiations, the give and take between the two bodies, the 

chemistry of the players involved and the bureaucracies involved, 

that is what is so important to us. 

So those that are seeking jobs that I referenced in the beginning 

of this response don’t have that knowledge. And, yes, they are willing to come and work for us at probably minimal wages, but the 

institutional people require larger pay, obviously. But even that 

larger pay that we pay them cannot compete with the private sector, and that is a tremendous draw downtown, K Street or whatever street you want to call it. When they come knocking on our 

staffs’ door, it is hard for many of them to turn that down. But they 

do, there are those that do, such as work on our T&I staff and on 

my staff. And they are the ones you just have to struggle to keep. 

And that knowledge is so important to the legislative process. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I would agree with Mr. Rahall. We have been able 

to attract good talent, smart people. But I think long term keeping 

them it becomes difficult because they can make more money on 

the outside. And having that institutional knowledge is absolutely 

critical. 

Mr. BRADY. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rahall, and thank 

you, Mr. Shuster. It is good to see you sitting there. I was very 

happy and proud to know a fellow Pennsylvanian was going to 

chair the Transportation Committee. But more than that, I am 

sure your dad is proud to have you follow in his footsteps. And they 

are tremendous size footsteps, sir. 


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Mr. SHUSTER. I am not even trying to fill them, I am just trying 

to get in and out of them. 

Mr. BRADY. And I am looking forward to seeing him hopefully 

Saturday night, and give him my best. Thank you. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thanks. 

The CHAIRMAN. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from 

Mississippi. 

Mr. HARPER. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

And thanks to each of you for the work you are doing. And I 

know that you have been good stewards of what we are attempting 

to do here. But as we are trying to set what the funding level will 

be for your committee for this Congress, are there any special circumstances that haven’t been discussed that you think we should 

be aware of that perhaps hadn’t been mentioned? 

Mr. SHUSTER. I just think our agenda is pretty significant. I 

know there is a lot of committees that have, but we have three significant bills we have to do, plus others that we are attempting. 

And then a pretty broad and large oversight, from MAP–21 to FAA, 

which I mentioned, which are the bigger ones. But as Mr. Rahall 

mentioned, there is a number of things that we have to have oversight over that we are aggressively pursuing, and having a pretty 

aggressive taking the Congress outside the Beltway, because especially what we do with partnering with States and locales, it is important for us to see firsthand. There is no substitute. I can read 

reports and I can have people tell me about it, but until you go to 

the Port of Brownsville in Texas and see the kind of operation they 

have there and the need for the dredging and the widening, and 

it is $3 billion to $4 billion of investment that will come that will 

help with the U.S. economy, that will help the State of Texas, I 

think it is important to see it firsthand. 

Mr. HARPER. Thank you. And I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thanks very much. And we certainly appreciate 

both the chairman and the ranking member being here. And we 

recognize the unique considerations and challenges that the committee has in the 113th here as we go into the budget year, particularly with the sequestration, the oversight responsibilities that 

you have. And you have laid out some certainly excellent arguments why we need to look at your request. And we certainly will 

give it every consideration. And we appreciate it. Thanks so much. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I will be happy to 

help you pick out the paint for that stenciling on the walls of the 

Rayburn Building. 

The CHAIRMAN. With that, the committee will be in recess for 2 

hours. We will reconvene at 2. Now, we have a vote series at 2. But 

I think we will just reconvene at 2. We will see what time they call 

the votes, and try to get her done here today. 

[Recess.] 

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come back to order, and the 

committee now welcomes Chairman Jeff Miller and Ranking Member Michaud on the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. And I would 

ask the official reporter to please enter a page break into the hearing to begin a new section. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Committee on Veterans’ Affairs recommends 

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ing to veterans’ benefits. The committee also has oversight responsibility of the VA, and of course the committee is the voice of Congress for veterans in dealing with the VA as well. Its priorities for 

the 113th Congress are to continue to make sure our veterans are 

afforded the very best and most effective care possible that helps 

their transitions to civilian life, make sure they are as efficient as 

possible, and to conduct vigorous oversight of the Department of 

Veterans Affairs so that it is meeting all the needs of our Nation’s 

veterans. And the committee is very appreciative of both of you 

coming, and at this time I would recognize the chairman of the 

Veterans’, Mr. Miller from Florida. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JEFF MILLER, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA 

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

and Ranking Member Brady. It is great to be back before you again 

to discuss the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs budget from 113th 

Congress. My good friend, Ranking Member Mike Michaud, joins 

me here at the table today. We have submitted our funding request 

forms for 2013 per your committee’s guidance on budget reduction 

amounts. As in the past, we have no choice but to find those savings from decreasing our personnel budget and continuing to combine and consolidate administrative responsibilities. And we will 

make some tough decisions on equipment purchases and travel 

should we receive a further cut. 

As you know, the committee has oversight over the entire Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as over various programs 

serving veterans at the Departments of Labor and Defense, sharing 

Arlington National Cemetery’s oversight and other matters. The 

Department of Veterans Affairs is the second-largest Federal agency, employing over 300,000 people, with a budget of roughly $140 

billion. Due to budget constraints, we perform our oversight role 

with only 25 of the committee’s 36 staff slots filled, 16 majority and 

9 minority. 

Further illustrating our lean operations at the committee, we 

currently have an Oversight and Investigations majority staff of 

only three. Adding an investigator as a fourth staffer is a necessity 

during this Congress, and I feel that we also are going to need to 

hire an additional person in our Health Subcommittee. We currently have only two staffers overseeing the Nation’s largest integrated healthcare system, and most member travel in concordance 

with the committee’s oversight duties falls within the Health Subcommittee’s jurisdiction, and that preparation falls to this very 

small staff. Additionally, the very high volume of health-related 

bills introduced in the House and requiring the analysis of this 

subcommittee warrants a third committee staffer. 

I am very proud that we did in fact return money last Congress, 

given the committee’s commitment to living within its means. We 

did not fully staff the majority to allow some flexibility within our 

budget reduction for any unforeseen circumstances and so that we 

would not find ourselves in the undesirable position of having to 

let people go. That does not negate the critical need that we have 

to fill the vacancies that I have previously discussed. 


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The full committee again has an aggressive oversight plan and 

has already engaged in oversight in several of the many areas that 

I have mentioned. As was the case last Congress, we hope to be 

able to afford each subcommittee chair and ranking member an opportunity to hold a field hearing on oversight matters that are important to their respective subcommittees. We will also be holding 

full committee oversight hearings as the need arises. This will require the retention of our extremely modest travel budget. 

The vast majority of the committee travel in which our members 

engage is actually funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs, 

the very agency over which we are charged with oversight. While 

this may seem ideal, it also puts the Department on advanced notice each and every time that the committee engages in an oversight visit. 

Now, turning to equipment, last year we upgraded one-third of 

our computers, using end-of-the-year available funds, but we will 

need to upgrade another third this year and then again in 2014. 

We also replaced a correspondence management system that has 

not been updated in 8 years and will cost us approximately $5,000 

a month for maintenance and support. The previous system was no 

longer technically supportable. 

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. In doing so, we have exercised 

extreme fiscal responsibility, and any further cuts will be challenging. But, in keeping with our practices of the past 2 years, we 

are anticipating and planning for those cuts. Madam Chairman, 

you have my assurance that we will continue to account for and 

stretch every dollar afforded to us as we out-stride the expectations 

placed upon this committee. 

My humble request for you and this committee is that our committee not be punished for our good stewardship of the taxpayers’ 

dollars. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today 

and would gladly welcome any questions that you may have. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

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


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The CHAIRMAN. And the chair now recognizes the ranking member, from Maine, Mr. Michaud. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MAINE 

Mr. MICHAUD. Thank you very much, Chairman Miller and 

Ranking Member Brady, for this opportunity to appear before you 

today to speak in support of the proposed budget from the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. I am pleased to join with Chairman Miller to support the proposed budget. We approach this effort, as we 

do everything in the committee, in a bipartisan manner, looking to 

what is in the best interest of our Nation and our veterans. 

I believe our proposed budget is a barebones budget. The committee has already been a good steward of resources afforded to us 

in the past. We have diligently reduced cost and achieved savings 

where we could while ensuring that the committee continues to operate on a sound fiscal footing. Much will be expected of this committee during this Congress. With our conflicts drawing to a close 

in Afghanistan, we must ensure that our returning servicemembers 

receive the benefits that they have earned in a timely fashion. This 

will require a lot of oversight and attention by our committee. 

In addition, almost all of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ 

major transformational initiatives are planned to come to fruition 

in 2015. This includes efforts to tackle the claims backlog, homelessness among our veterans, and deliver an integrated Electronic 

Health Record. As you can read in the newspapers, and if you can 

see from listening and watching our hearings that have been held 

so far, many of these initiatives do not seem to be going well. They 

are not making the progress in a manner that would make us feel 

comfortable on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee that the goals laid 

out over the next 2 years will be met. 

In a tight fiscal environment, among many competing priorities, 

veterans must remain one of our highest priorities. One important 

way to achieve this is to ensure that the resources we have provided to the VA are producing outcomes that we have intended. All 

of this will require an enormous amount of policy guidance and 

oversight by the committee, and it is essential that we have the 

necessary resources in order to meet our responsibilities. I believe, 

along with Chairman Miller, that our proposed budget provides 

those needed resources. 

On a final note, as you know, I became the new ranking member 

of the committee this year. Change often brings new direction and 

focus on our efforts on many of the challenges that we have in our 

veterans community, and I am extremely proud of the dedicated 

and effectiveness of the staff who have remained with us in and 

the new staff that I am bringing on board now. 

If your committee deems it necessary to effect cost savings by 

mandating across-the-board cuts, I ask you to take into consideration what effect that will have on personnel and take other actions to ensure that we have the necessary resources in order so 

that we can continue doing our work. For example, if cuts were 

made on the basis of actual expenditures for 2012, I believe this 

would have devastating impact on our committee. Our 2012 actual 

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tion of our resources requirements. If you look at, for instance, on 

our staff, at one point in time we had a 50 percent vacancy rate. 

We have hired several new staff members in the last month, but 

we still face gaps in areas such as oversight and investigations, one 

of the most critical functions, especially in the light of VA’s transformational efforts. Without the proposed payroll I will be forced to 

reduce salary and even lay off staff. 

While I understand the fiscal pressures faced by all of us and by 

our country, I respectfully request that you support our proposed 

budget level so that we can play our critical role and essential role 

in supporting those who have served this great Nation of ours. And 

with that, Madam Chair, I yield back. 

[The statement of Mr. Michaud follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I thank both the chair and the ranking member 

of the Veterans’ Committee for coming before us and laying out 

your case, and think you have made a very strong argument. I 

often think to myself that I think a society, quite frankly, can be 

measured in large part by how you treat the vulnerable amongst 

us. I always say seniors, children, and our veterans. And that particularly so, I think, with all of the brave men and women coming 

back. Any time any of us thinking we are having sort of a bad day, 

we could just take a stroll around the physical therapy ward in Bethesda and see what is happening there, or so many of our VA hospitals throughout the entire Nation. 

And I was sort of just looking at the detail that you all submitted 

here for your various field trips. And I guess I would just—field 

hearings, I should say—I should just applaud you for, I mean, 

every one of them is at a VA hospital somewhere practically, which 

is so important that you are able to get out there and see exactly 

what is happening there or at our cemeteries, national cemeteries 

for the VA, et cetera. I think those are very important things for 

you to be doing. 

And as we are looking through your budget, I also just want to 

say I think you are talking, Chairman, about how you upgrade 

about a third of your equipment each time. That is, I think, a very 

good way to, I mean, you can’t really do it all at one time, but when 

you do those kinds of things in that very practical manner it is a 

good way to upgrade equipment, I think. 

And the only thing I would say, I don’t know if this is a question 

or observation or just sort of throw something out to you, as you 

are looking at the possibility of utilizing new technology for the 

committee, where our committee may be able to help resource you 

a bit with various things, whether it is using cloud computing, even 

House-wide subscriptions, there are a lot of areas where you might 

be able to save a little bit, if you are not utilizing some of the various things. And we are really going to make a big push on trying 

to do different things here in-house that would save the committees, you know, duplicative kinds of fees, et cetera, so you can resource yourself with staff, making sure you keep, you know, particularly on a committee like yours, that you keep the kind of staff 

that you have the institutional knowledge, people that understand 

the systems, and the bureaucracy and the whole maze of what is 

the Veterans Administration, sometimes how important that is. So 

we want to help you there. If there anything at all that—— 

Mr. MILLER of Florida. No. I appreciate the suggestion as well. 

I believe that the House cloud is a great way to minimize space 

being used by some very large servers that are in our committee 

spaces, as well as utilizing a House-wide LexisNexis subscription 

if offered. We use LexisNexis quite frequently. And so I appreciate 

that and look forward to any help that your staff can give our staff. 

We appreciate it. And you will also notice on the field hearings that 

it doesn’t matter if it is a Democrat district or a Republican district, we will go. If it needs to be done, if we need to do a hearing 

in a specific facility, my ranking member and I have made an 

agreement that we will go wherever the committee is needed and 

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The CHAIRMAN. Appreciate that. And I would recognize my ranking member, Mr. Brady. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

And thank you for what you do. Unfortunately our veterans are 

getting larger and larger and larger, and we are trying to shrink 

to smaller and smaller and smaller. And I would also like to applaud you for your field trips, because you are telling our men and 

women that are in harm’s way coming back that we do care. And 

you are giving them a platform and a reason and be able to let us 

know just what is on their mind and be able to talk to 

congresspeople to show that they care. 

My question is that—and I heard that you have to lay people off 

or maybe maintain some people at a lower salary—well, when we 

have cut our staff it makes it difficult for them to be able to stay 

here because they can—and I know they are dedicated, they all 

are—but they can make much more money out there in the private 

sector doing what they are doing for us. So it is tough to keep 

them, and then we cut them, it gets tougher, and then, if you have 

to replace them, to find people with their expertise and you can’t 

pay them enough money to lure them back in and you lose that expertise that they have and it is hard to do that. 

So have you had that problem with people that I know they are 

staying on, but maybe it would be nicer to attract other people with 

the expertise, you know, the institutional knowledge, that you keep 

them instead of having them lured away to the private industry? 

And then hiring other people at a smaller amount of pay that they 

could probably make in the private industry. That is my problem 

when we do these cuts. And we are all staff driven, we are all staff 

driven, you know. And if we can’t attract the best and the brightest 

to do the most important work that we do, we have to take a look 

at that. So is there any problems, do you find that a problem when 

people are here, to keep them, and people coming in, to get someone with the right expertise? 

Mr. MILLER of Florida. The majority has not been as much of a 

problem. Obviously we were growing our staff when we took the 

committee over a couple of years ago. I know it was very different 

for the minority because they do have some senior individuals that 

have been there for an extended amount of time. But your comments are well taken. We do have a lot of very qualified staff that 

have serious expertise in their various areas, and I would not be 

surprised at all if they are not contacted on a weekly basis by outside groups trying to woo them away from Capitol Hill. I think we 

are both very fortunate in the fact that the folks we have on our 

staffs are very dedicated to the task that we have before us. But 

for us it hasn’t been an issue. I am sure it is a little different for 

the ranking member. 

Mr. MICHAUD. Thank you very much, Mr. Ranking Member, for 

that question. It is a little bit different for the minority. I have reduced staff salary already this year in anticipation of a freeze or 

a cut on our staff side. In addition, I was able to hire someone, 

brought in just actually this week, significantly below the standard 

salary for that position. It is a big concern that I have. When you 

look at VA, as you heard from the chairman, it is the second-biggest agency is in the Federal Government. And I am very pleased 


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to have the talented staff that we have on board. My new staff director actually was the deputy under secretary for policy over at 

the VA. She knows the VA system very well. She worked on the 

Hill as well. And she can get a job pretty much anywhere she 

wants to. 

Likewise, my new staffer that I just brought, who was the national service officer for the American Legion and the VFW and 

worked under Secretary Hickey, which when you look at the huge 

backlog claims that is out there, we need to know what VA is capable of doing and be able to change the direction and use the finite 

resources VA has. 

As I mentioned, I just came on board as ranking member this 

year, and I think we can do a lot more to make VA a lot more efficient, such as reorganizing the VA system. I have some ideas how 

we might be able to do that, but that is going to take staff time 

and energy because I am sure the VA probably will not be as responsive to those changes to make them more efficient. 

On the benefits, the Veterans Benefit Management System, yes, 

it is technology, a computer system, but you also have to look at 

policy changes and how can we improve that to help with that 

backlog, and that is going to take time, effort to do that, and that 

is why we need really good staff. And I am very concerned, since 

I have reduced salaries already this year among the minority. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, and thank you for all you do, and thank 

you for being here today. 

Madam Chair, I have no other questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman, and I thank you both 

again. And just talking about the VA hospitals, when we think 

about sort of the signature wound of this theater, the PTSD, and 

how many are coming home with that that have flooded our hospitals. And my husband is a Vietnam veteran and I have told him. 

In Vietnam you would have died with those kinds of injuries, but 

now because of the triage and the ability to get them to Germany, 

to get them to Bethesda within 24, 48 hours they live, which is a 

wonderful thing, but we have got to make sure that our VA hospitals are running to the very best of their ability to be able to 

treat these brave, brave wonderful patriots as they come back. We 

certainly appreciate your service and your staffs as well, and you 

have made a very good case here today, and we certainly, the committee, will take all of that under consideration. Thank you so 

much. 

Mr. MILLER of Florida. Thank you. 

Mr. MICHAUD. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The committee now welcomes Chairman Rogers 

of Michigan and Ranking Member Ruppersberger of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. And again the official reporter will please enter a page break. We are going to a new section. 

The CHAIRMAN. The House Intel is charged with the oversight of 

the United States Intelligence Community, which includes the intelligence and intelligence-related activities of 17 elements of the 

United States Government and the military intelligence program. 

And this committee just wants to welcome both of you gentlemen, 

and we look forward to your testimony, and we have reviewed what 


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you have submitted thus far and look forward to hearing a little 

bit more from you. And at this time I would recognize Chairman 

Rogers. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. MIKE ROGERS, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you, Madam Chair. And it is exceptionally 

good to see you there in the chair this year. Congratulations. 

I can go through the whole comments, Madam Chair, or I 

thought maybe I would just, you have my statement, maybe I 

would just cover a couple of quick points I think are important, and 

then, I know my ranking member, and we are completely on board 

together in this presentation, and then maybe take some questions 

if you have them. 

A couple of things I think it is important to point out on the committee. First of all, all of our staff, including our research and executive assistants, are required to obtain and maintain a top secret 

special compartmented information clearance. And because of the 

committee’s security requirements and restrictions, we are not able 

to supplement our staff with summer or academic year interns or 

law clerks, we just don’t have the same capability or flexibility of 

other committees. As you can imagine, this limits the hiring pool 

to those who have and are able to qualify for the highest security 

clearances and requires us to pay higher salaries. We hire program 

managers. We have very few junior staff on our committee. We hire 

individuals per program, FBI, CIA, NSA. On average they have 19 

years experience in the intelligence community, have the ability to 

get a clearance. So we can’t really bring them in at the lower pay 

scale, would not be fair, A, and we would not attract any of the 

candidates that we need to be professional staff to do this oversight. 

So the committee was able to absorb in the 112th Congress an 

11 percent cut. It would be very, very difficult for us moving forward at this point. So we tried to find efficiencies. We did, we 

think, find efficiencies, that we could kind of wring out some savings in the committee. But now it is getting to the point where we 

can’t staff every program that we have at the requirement that we 

would need, the requirement meaning the individual that has the 

right set of, A, clearances and, B, experience and capabilities to 

perform the function. So you can imagine if you are going to walk 

into the CIA, and FBI, and NSA, if you are going to have the credibility that you need, you need to have people who have the credibility to walk in the door. 

And just where we are heading from here and where we have already seen some slowdown, we are continuing our review on the 

Benghazi terrorist attacks and it is going slower than we want because we can’t apply the right personnel resources to the task. The 

follow-up investigation to the national security threats posed by the 

Chinese telecommunications companies is going to require more 

staff application which would take away from other programmatic 

needs. The review of the Intelligence Community support to the 

‘‘CFIUS’’ process. You and I know this better than anyone with the 

sale of A123 batteries to China. And if we don’t get this review and 

begin to incorporate intelligence concerns on these matters we are 


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going to lose more great American technology, that taxpayers paid 

for, to countries like China. 

Perform a comprehensive review of the recently proposed Defense Clandestine Service, which is intended to completely reform 

DOD’s human intelligence collection activities, we have lots of concerns. It is going to be manpower intensive. Pursue the passage of 

a cybersecurity-related information sharing bill, and establish a 

business advisory team to propose additional reform and integration of the Intelligence Community’s organizational and IT structure. 

So we need to do all of these things all at the same time. And 

right now we are not at our full capacity based on the limits that 

we have had by previous reductions. So at some point we begin to 

reduce our capability to do the required oversight of our committee. 

And I am all for cutting waste and I think we have stepped up to 

the plate. Matter of fact, the ranking member and I have found 

about $3 billion across the Intelligence Community that we have 

been able to save taxpayers over the last few years and still maintain a robust mission, and we have done that on a reduced committee budget. 

I do believe that the number that we have proposed today would 

at least allow us to fill all of the slots that we would be minimally 

required to move forward on the issues that I just talked about and 

then maintain current counterintelligence oversight operations, 

which we do now regularly, covert action, the most sensitive things 

our committee does on a regular basis, daily for staff, weekly for 

members, monthly and quarterly for the committee. All of those 

things still have to happen. And by the way, we are going to 

produce a budget authorization bill here and get it out on the floor 

in June. And it all happens at the same time. 

If you look at our numbers compared to other committees, I just 

don’t think it meets the priorities of national security if you are 

talking about reducing our ability to do that as we speak. So I respectfully submit that testimony, ma’am, and I know you have a 

lot of difficult challenges here facing where you put your resources. 

I hope you will consider the Intelligence Committee’s needs in the 

national security structure and the importance of our oversight in 

those deliberations. 

The CHAIRMAN. I Thank the chairman. 

[The joint statement of Mr. Rogers and Mr. Ruppersberger follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. And the chair now recognizes the ranking member. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF 

MARYLAND 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. A lot of what the chairman said I don’t 

want to repeat. I think the first thing in the last 2 years—6.4 percent, but now where we are in the world responsibilities Intelligence Committee we really need to—3.2 percent increase from 

2012. 

Now, what are the reasons for that? The Intelligence Committee 

does oversight of all the intelligence agencies and we also do the 

budget. We have right now one of the most serious issues before 

us, are cyber attacks from the Chinese. The Chinese have stolen 

billions of dollars from us in the last couple of years. Now, our committee and Chairman Rogers and I together have investigated the 

Chinese, we are calling the Chinese out, but there is a lot of sophisticated cyber attacks that are happening. 

We are worried about right now Iran, and we know cyber attacks 

are coming from there, destructive attacks, because Iran in my 

opinion is a robust rogue terrorist country, and they don’t like the 

United States. Very sophisticated, and the people that we have on 

our staff who oversee all of this have to be sophisticated, they have 

to have the top clearances. And they could go out and make a lot 

more money in other areas. So we can’t afford to lose people. 

We also are allowed as of this time, which probably is not enough 

based on all the things we are doing, 44 staff. We are 29 right now 

and we are really not asking for anything more, maybe 1 or 2. I 

just made a replacement as far as my deputy who oversees. And 

right now if this occurs I won’t be able to hire a deputy. We won’t 

be able to do the things we need to do. People on our staff go, they 

travel to the front line, Iraq, Afghanistans, the Pakistans and those 

different areas. So we are saying from a national security point of 

view it is very, very important that we allow to do the things we 

need to do. 

I think I can stop there because the chairman has addressed the 

issues basically. It is a priority of the national security and we feel 

we have maintained our budgets the last couple years. Also this 

committee, until Chairman Rogers and I have gotten into the leadership, for almost 7 years they weren’t able to pass a budget. This 

is important because the stakes are so high that we are able to do 

the correct oversight and that the agencies have the confidence in 

our committee to move forward. But if we don’t have the ability, 

with 29 people, to oversee the entire Intelligence Community. 

The other issue I want to get into, because people don’t talk 

about it a lot, and that is the issue of space. One of the reasons 

we are the most powerful country in the world is because of our 

space program. As a result of what the Russians did with Sputnik, 

that scared the United States and got us to worry about the Russians controlling the skies. So JFK put billions of dollars into 

space, and we have spent more on space, which is paying off now, 

than any other country. The Chinese are aggressively pursuing 

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velop a control program. We can’t let that happen, we can’t be 

weaker. Space and cyber and all these things come together. The 

average person doesn’t realize the GPS systems, all the things that 

are occurring. And that doesn’t even include the intelligence we are 

getting to see what North Korea is doing, seeing what Iran is 

doing, and all these other areas. 

So we are asking just for a small group. We are all fiscally responsible, we have cut billions of dollars. And again in the last 2 

years we have cut 6.4 percent. But where we are as a country now 

and where the threat is, we are asking for 3.2 percent over 2012. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you both. You made a very compelling 

case. And I think about you can have all the conventional armaments that you want, that you could possibly buy, but there is no 

second for human intel, there is just no second. And that was a 

very vivid demonstration, whether it was bin Laden or Saddam 

even. I mean, all of that was really human intel. 

In fact, let me also just compliment you, I am not just saying this 

because you are sitting here, but it is widely acknowledged 

throughout the Congress of how you two gentlemen have worked 

together in such a bipartisan way on our commonality there for national security through the Intelligence Community and what you 

have done there. But you just talk to any of the Joint Chiefs or 

anybody, you talk about what keeps them up at night, it is cybersecurity and the ability for them to be hacking in. And when you see 

some of our friends like China actually using their intel, their military and their intel, their intelligence, to take our intellectual property and various things, it is really quite disconcerting. 

So I think the kind of oversight that you are producing, and I 

appreciate the cuts that you have taken in the past, as you have 

pointed out, and as you are looking, and as going forward you do 

have some unique challenges I think on your committee and your 

priorities, like a cybersecurity bill and some of these various things 

that certainly this committee will take into account. You are a 

smaller committee, really, from your budgetary standpoint, et 

cetera. And like all committees really it is principally staff, your expenditures. 

But one thing that I would just sort of throw out, either as an 

observation or sort of an offer to you, if there is anything that our 

committee can do to assist you resourcing when you are utilizing 

on the committee some new technologies, whether that is cloud 

computing, whether it is House-wide subscription services, I mean, 

you can save really some dollars there that you could put into getting yourself a deputy and make sure you have the right people 

that you need on staff when you are hiring somebody at that level 

to be able to do the kind of oversight we have tasked your committee with. So if there is anything at all that our committee can 

do to assist you, have your staff talk to my staff and we certainly 

want to do that. 

Mr. ROGERS. Five bucks under the mattress, we will take it. 

The CHAIRMAN. And I know that is true about you. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. You kind of said what keeps you up at 

night. We kind of say a joke. Three things that keep us up at night, 

Mike and I, and we are also the gang of 8: spicy Mexican food, 


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weapons of mass destruction, and cyber attacks. Those are the two 

areas that are really difficult. But thank you for those comments 

and we appreciate it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. And I would recognize our ranking 

member. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, and thank you for being here today, appearing in front of us, and thank you for the job that you do. You 

have answered my question. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Do you have your mike on? 

Mr. BRADY. It is supposed to be on. Thank you. You can’t hear 

me? You can’t hear me say thank you? You want to hear it again? 

You answered my question about being able to hire quality people and then be able to keep quality people that are going to take 

a pay cut that are already hired. And I think that it is incumbent 

upon ourselves and this committee to make that point extremely 

hard as it pertains to your committee, because it is awful important. 

Thank you. And I have no other questions, Madam. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you both very much. Again, you have 

made a really compelling case and we are going to take everything 

you have said into serious consideration, do the very best that we 

can for you. 

Mr. ROGERS. On the IT front, we have made significant investment in technology. We are trying to find those resources where we 

can, but one of the problems we have on the IT front is we maintain both classified servers and unclassified servers. Our IT expense is actually higher than the average committee, there is only 

one other that I can think of that might even come close, that 

might be Armed Services, just because of the nature of the material 

that we have and the obligation to secure that material. So we do 

have that added cost that I don’t think was factored in originally 

when they designed the committee. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay, very good. Thanks so much, gentlemen. 

The committee now welcomes Chairman Issa and Ranking Member Cummings of the Committee of Oversight and Government Reform. Again the official reporter will enter a page break who are 

making the recordings there. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Committee on Oversight and Government 

Reform has jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, the government procurement process—if you could close those back doors 

there please, thank you—Federal personnel system, the Postal 

Service, and other matters. Its primary responsibility is oversight 

of virtually everything that the government does from national security to homeland security grants, from Federal workforce policies 

to regulatory reform, information technology, procurements at individual agencies, to government-wide data security standards. 

Again, I am sure in the 113th you are going to be look at rooting 

out waste, fraud and abuse, and those kinds of things. And we certainly look forward to both of your testimonies here today, gentlemen, as the committee takes into consideration the challenges that 

your committee is facing as we go forward. And with that the 

chairman would recognize the chair of the Government Oversight 

Committee, Mr. Issa. 


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STATEMENT OF THE HON. DARRELL ISSA, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I would ask unanimous 

consent that our joint statement be considered for both of us. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. 

Mr. ISSA. And I will be brief in summarizing. Madam Chair, as 

you know from your time on the committee, the Oversight Committee is unique in that we do not oversee a part of government, 

but in fact all of government. It gives us a unique relationship with 

73 inspectors general, the GAO, and particularly the ability to look 

for the kind of duplication and cross-agency waste that in fact is 

not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue, it is the result of decades of building infrastructure, whether it is 44 different programs 

to do the same thing but spread over multiple agencies, or in fact 

the stovepiping. For example, just in IT, information technology, 

we have $81 billion a year spent and yet we only have one CIO, 

one chief information officer in all of government that actually has 

budget authority. In agencies there were as many as 40-some individuals who have the term chief information officer with none of 

them having budget authority and none of them ultimately being 

accountable. 

Our committee over both Republican and Democratic chairs has 

found waste that is often as much as 1,000 times what our budget 

is, on our roughly $6 million budget, and we would ask that it be 

considered to be increased at a time in which what we are trying 

to do is find that waste, find that duplication, and in fact reverse 

it. 

Now, just to give some examples that both of us are aware of, 

we have found as a committee just today an example where one of 

our major Cabinet positions failed to even follow up until after the 

statute of limitations expired $415 million worth of overpayments, 

just one agency. That agency has a $2 billion reduction, and onequarter of it was not even pursued to try to get the reclaiming up 

until after statute of limitations expired. 

Earlier this month we became aware and worked jointly on a 

couple of States in which there were abuses under Medicaid. These 

were abuses in which the Federal Government was a willing participant in overpayments over a period of multiple administrations 

and nearly 2 decades. CMS, as the responsible party, was in fact 

going to negotiate and change over time payments on things that 

were supposed to be capped at $700 per person that we are paying 

as much as $5,700 per person, representing over $15 billion. 

We are not casting blame over anybody, but once discovered it 

was only through our committee’s hard work that we were able to 

save at least $600 million just in this 2-year period by ensuring 

that that overpayment stopped immediately. It is those kinds of 

things that cause you to make an investment in our committee. 

And in fact the reason that we worked hard to make sure we had 

a joint statement is this is the part we primarily offer you. We are 

a unique committee, we look for waste, fraud and abuse, and at a 

time in which you are trying to find win-wins, we can help provide 

them. 

The one point I hope we all have, and, Madam chair, you are 

very aware of this, we are not a spending committee, we are a savVerDate Mar 15 2010 00:49 Apr 25, 2013 Jkt 080285 PO 00000 Frm 00098 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B285.XXX B285

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ings committee, that is what we exist for. And we believe, just like 

the $2 billion that we invest in our inspectors general throughout 

government, that we save so many multiple times that, that any 

cutting back of the IGs is in fact, cutting back of us is in fact an 

opportunity to lose the very auditors that will guarantee you multiple savings. 

In closing, we see savings, we see opportunities. Our committee 

alone internally has managed to be able to do a great deal with 

less over the last 2 calendar years. I might note, though, there are 

some institutional changes that will be needed, such as going to 

VoIP rather than conventional phones. Going perhaps, and we have 

talked to your staffs, to per diem for many of the people who have 

government work being done on phones would cut our $80,000— 

just my side—$80,000 budget as much as in half by allowing us to 

provide similar reimbursement for government use on personal 

phones as we provide for government use on personal cars. That 

kind of change throughout Congress would represent millions of 

dollars a year in savings. 

As you know, currently only Members of Congress are allowed to 

have their phones, whether campaign or personal, on the House 

system. By definition, the secure question has already been answered by those personal phones being there, the dual use has 

been answered, but we haven’t facilitated that and dozens of other 

savings that we believe we could have. We would like to work with 

the committee to allow us and other committees to find similar savings, but we must ask that you not allow the audit committee to 

be reduced when in fact we can return you more than 1,000 times 

our budget. 

[The joint statement of Mr. Issa and Mr. Cummings follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair now recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Cummings. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. ELIJAH CUMMINGS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, Ranking 

Member Brady, other members of the committee. I am pleased to 

join my colleague, Mr. Issa, in our joint statement. And I just want 

to add a few things to what he has said. 

You know, just this morning, we had an interesting thing happen. We had the IG for the Department of Education come in. And 

it was so interesting how her situation sort of parallels ours. She 

basically said that because of the sequester and because of the cutbacks in her money, she can’t do certain—she said she has some 

criminal investigations she can’t even deal with. She doesn’t have 

the personnel to deal with them and can’t allocate people to do 

that. 

We have left some investigator positions open because we don’t 

have the money already. When I first came into this position, my 

employees took—most of them took a 5 percent cut. And that was 

2 and a half years ago. And the interesting thing is every time I 

come to these—not just this hearing, but I sit and I listen to what 

employees go through, you know, I think about the fact that these 

people come to work because they believe in government. I guarantee you, you ask your staff, those people sitting right behind you, 

them, those, they will tell you, it is not the money. It is not the 

benefits. It is because they believe in doing something for public 

service. And they want to make a difference. And we want to make 

a difference. 

And you know, Chairman Issa talked about the GAO, us just 

highlighting that, I guarantee you has had a phenomenal effect on 

every single agency. As a matter of fact, the President right around 

that time, remember, Chairman Issa, put out an order to reduce 

spending on these conventions; I think it was about 20 percent. Is 

that right? 

Mr. ISSA. Exactly. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And so it does pay for itself. 

The question is, I think it is a key question that we need to ask 

ourselves, are we going to sit back and let these things go on? In 

other words, not have the watchdog or have a watchdog with no 

teeth? Or are we going to try to do the things that are practical 

and that make sense to save the resources? 

And again, Mr. Brady, Ranking Member Brady, I had an opportunity to kind of listen in on the last hearing, we are losing experienced people. They don’t always tell you why they are leaving. But 

one of the words that I hear around here a lot is uncertainty. You 

know, when somebody is trying to raise their family, they figured 

out they are already sacrificing, they don’t know whether they are 

going to have to take a cut in their pay, whether their pay is going 

to be frozen, they are trying to figure out how they are going to 

pay the babysitter and all that, the last thing they want is uncertainty. 

And I realize that we are going through some very, very difficult 

times. But at some point, we have got to ask ourselves where does 


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the cutting get to a point where it basically becomes counterproductive? And I would plead with you to look at, not just our 

committee, but other committees so that Congress can do its job effectively and efficiently. It is one thing to have resources and spend 

them unwisely. It is another thing to have resources and spend 

them effectively and efficiently. 

Almost every single hearing that we have in our committee, I say 

to some point, I say it to my staff all the time, every action that 

we take should be done in an effective and efficient manner, period. 

And so I would just ask you to use that measuring stick when you 

consider the things that Chairman Issa said and things that I am 

saying and looking at what we are trying to do. 

Clearly, we have seen many cases, and I am sure you all have 

seen this, too, where because we mandate that witnesses, that people come before us, and maybe a subpoena or what have you, but 

one of the things that I have noticed and I know the chairman has 

noticed this, too, it is very interesting that so many changes happen just before the hearing. Folks come in, we may have been complaining for a year, and the next you know, because they know 

they are coming before us, the next thing we know, they have got 

all kinds of changes, things that we could not even legislate if we 

wanted to. 

And so again, I would hope that you would give consideration to 

our requests. And like Chairman Issa said, we actually need more 

money, not less. 

Thank you very much. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, both of you, gentlemen. 

I appreciate the ranking member making the statement people 

change just before they come before the hearing. It is amazing 

sometimes when the Sun shines in on what kind of behavior you 

find there. So your committee is an extremely critical component, 

really, of everything that goes on in government. And certainly 

during this time of trying to do more with less, it is very important 

that that kind of oversight is exercised appropriately to save taxpayers’ dollars and to root out some of this waste that we find and 

fraud certainly as well. I would just, sort of looking through some 

of the detail that you offered up here to the committee, staff, I was 

just asking them, I was looking, and I made this comment to some 

of the other chairmen as well, you know, in an age of technology, 

where always the staff is the overriding principal percentage of 

your staff budget, of course, your committee budget, is staff, but 

when we think about some of the emerging technology and various 

kinds of things that perhaps our committee could help your committee with. I was going to mention cloud, but it looks like you are 

already using the cloud computing. But then you do something a 

little differently with Web development, which is something perhaps we could help you with. I am not sure. But I am just sort of 

offering this up. If there is anything that we can do from our committee standpoint of things that you might be doing that are duplicative on the committee that would free up a little cash for staff, 

et cetera, we certainly want to make that offer and be happy to 

talk to you at length or in any ways that we can help you with. 

We have some various enterprise solutions that the committee has 


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been doing very aggressively. And we are going to really try to 

ratchet it up here on the committee as well. 

Mr. ISSA. And Madam Chair, two areas, one I already mentioned, 

if we could switch to a reimbursement system so that particularly 

light users but people who do need to be—we can’t mandate that 

private individuals spend money on behalf of the government. So 

when somebody has a requirement to be able to get House email 

or a direct voice contract, we only have one solution right now, 

which is to give them a government phone. If we were given the 

ability, like we do with an automobile, we don’t buy an automobile 

for everybody that uses it for official use. Changing the system so 

that you could have an appropriate reimbursement for their shared 

use of their personal phone would be huge for us. 

Like I say, it would be a big chunk of my $80,000; commensurately probably about $40,000 for the ranking member. And that 

goes over all the committees. 

Secondly, you did mention cloud computing. One of the inherent 

problems we have in the House, and I don’t want to disparage 

House Administration, your IT folks, but they have a ‘‘make the 

system bulletproof’’ mentality. So the Wi–Fi, which is top notch, 

doesn’t actually work that well, and it still causes people to use 

Mi–Fis and other technology. But also, we have no interactive capability. When we developed the Madison Project some time back, 

actually, I paid for it out of my personal pocket because there was 

no blog, if you will, no interactive capability possible within the 

House. 

One of the things that the House could do which could be a winwin is look at those .gov activities which do not have to be directly 

connected to the House system—in other words, our exchange system is deliberately behind a firewall with certain protections—but 

House activities, hundreds of them, including, to be honest, our 

personal Web sites, could all be bid out to any number of other 

services, and I don’t want to name names in here, but you know 

the various companies that specialize in it. 

At the same time, it would allow for products to be purchased. 

And I will just give you one example. I am using Amazon for a reason because they were before our committee. Amazon actually sells 

its services in minutes of use. So some examples where we have 

very little use but we need a site, they are much cheaper than we 

would possibly be because we are paying for incremental use. And 

they are scalable to a huge amount at the time that there is a 

hearing or something else. At least beginning the process of asking 

how much of it doesn’t have to be done behind infrastructure here 

would be helpful to us all. 

But at the end of the day, our problem is that we save you as 

much as a thousand times what we cost you, and part of it is because we leverage those 12,000 men and women of the Inspector 

General’s Office. We really implore you to hold us accountable but 

in fact to realize that the kinds of savings we give is often in the 

entitlements, which aren’t even subject to sequestration. If we save 

you Medicare or Medicaid money, it is money net saved in an area 

in which we don’t currently have any authority to reduce spending, 

except by reducing waste. 


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The CHAIRMAN. I really appreciate your idea about the per diem 

for the phones. I hadn’t really thought about that. But that is a 

very, very good idea. It is something we are certainly going to take 

a look at. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Just the outside vendor, you know, we are paying an outside vendor for Web hosting services. And, you know, 

your Web assistance team might be helpful to us there. We understand they are still working through the little kinks and whatever. 

But that would be helpful, Madam Chair. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Appreciate it. 

The chair now recognizes my ranking member, Mr. Brady. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you. 

Thank you both for being here today. And you made my point, 

and my question, are we attracting quality people? And when we 

attract the quality people, do we keep them, because we wind up 

cutting their salaries and they can make much more money elsewhere? So that is the point I keep stressing with every panel. 

Thank you. Thank you for being here. I have no more questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. 

Mr. ISSA. Doesn’t the freshman, Mr. Vargas, have a question? 

Come on, Juan, throw one at me, please. This is your first 

chance. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Vargas of California. 

Mr. VARGAS. Well, first of all, it is a pleasure to see you, Congressman Issa, from San Diego. It is an honor. 

My question is the question that the ranking member has already asked. I have been asking the same question. I apologize I 

wasn’t here earlier for your full testimony. But are we able to retain the excellent personnel that you have? And are we able to attract excellent personnel, knowing that they can go into the private 

sector and make multiples of what they are making in the committee? 

Mr. ISSA. Well, Mr. Vargas, the fact is that the ranking member 

said it very well, given a fairly stable budget and predictability, we 

can. We are always going to have the reality that, for example, the 

ranking member’s staff director was hauled away by the President 

when he got sworn in. I just lost my general counsel to the Leader’s 

office. I lost another chief individual to Senator McCain’s office. 

Mobility occurs here. 

But we do maintain, on both sides of the aisle here, we maintain 

some very good and dedicated people. But we have to be able to tell 

them with some certainty how we are going to work for multiple 

Congresses. Because most of my people didn’t come in with me. 

And I think the same is somewhat true of the ranking member. 

These are mostly career people. We have very few true political appointees. As a matter of fact, our head of all of our parliamentary 

activities and so on, she has transcended multiple administrations. 

She does a great job. Her team does a great job. That is one of the 

challenges. Career people, we want to maintain them. And particularly when you want to look at investigators who will investigate 

repeatedly areas like that. So it is a great question. 

We don’t need a lot more money. What we would say, though, is 

that every time you give us more money, we can show you, through 

our oversight and investigations, where we will uncover—a hunVerDate Mar 15 2010 00:49 Apr 25, 2013 Jkt 080285 PO 00000 Frm 00106 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B285.XXX B285

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dred times is an underestimate—as much as a thousand times. 

And the same is true of the IGs, very documentable about how 

much we actually find that leads to real recoveries. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. You know, I think that we can—there are always 

people coming along who I think want to move into government. As 

I said a little bit earlier, though, sometimes you don’t really know 

why people are leaving. 

And you know, one of the things I have noticed, Congressman, 

and I talk about this to my constituents, that a lot of people who 

come to us are taking a pay cut. And a lot of them—the reason why 

I am so adamant about defending public employees is because they 

tell me things like this, they want to feed their soul. And so they 

want to do something that is meaningful. They want to, at the end 

of the day, be able to look in the mirror and say, you know what, 

I made a difference for a whole lot of people. 

And I just think in fairness to them, those kind of people, we do 

need, as the chairman said, we need to provide some type of certainty. I am sure my employees now are just wondering, you know, 

what is going to come out of this hearing? Who is going to have 

to go? Are their paychecks going to be slashed? 

And I always try to keep in mind that a lot of these people are 

struggling. You know, I mean when somebody, one of my assistants 

was telling me what it costs for her just to have a babysitter—I 

mean, I don’t know if you know this, but a babysitter is almost as 

much as it costs to go to college. And so you have two or three kids, 

forget about private schools and things of that nature. 

So what I am saying is I think we owe them that. They have 

dedicated themselves to public service. They want to make a difference. They give their blood, sweat and tears to our Nation. They 

never get any medals, never get any awards. But the least thing 

we could do is give them some kind of certainty. 

Mr. VARGAS. Thank you. 

Again, it is a pleasure to see you. They are well trained I know 

when they go along. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank both the chairman and ranking member. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. That is why everybody steals them. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thanks so much, gentlemen, for your testimony. 

We certainly will take everything under advisement here. You 

made a very compelling case. Thank you very much. 

Thank you very much. The committee now welcomes Chairman 

McCaul and Ranking Member Thompson of the Committee on 

Homeland Security. And again ask the official reporter to enter a 

page break as we move into the next committee here. 

The CHAIRMAN. This committee was established in 2002. And it 

has jurisdiction to provide congressional oversight for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, certainly to help better protect the 

American people against a possible terrorist attack. The committee’s priorities for the 113th are to continue to prevent terrorist attacks on our homeland, secure our borders, protect against cyber 

attacks, manage the Department of Homeland Security with a 

business model approach, and to ensure our counterintelligence efforts are as effective as possible. And I am delighted to have both 


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of you gentlemen here before this committee, since I have an opportunity to serve on the Homeland Security Committee as well. 

And I certainly at this time recognize the chairman, Mr. McCaul. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. MICHAEL MCCAUL, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS 

Mr. MCCAUL. I thank you, Madam Chair Miller and Ranking 

Member Brady. 

I apologize for my voice. My five kids passed something onto me 

at home. I want to thank the members on the Committee on House 

Administration as well for the opportunity to testify before you 

today. 

You asked us to prepare three sets of potential budget allocations 

for the 113th Congress. The first represents a budget of actual 

funds spent in the 2012; the second an 11 percent reduction in the 

2012 authorized amount; and the third represents a 5 percent increase from actual spending in 2012. 

Before I address your requests, I would like to thank the committee for the funds the committee has already received to date, 

that we received in the 113th Congress. We recognize that in this 

current environment, every dollar we receive represents taxes paid 

by the American people. We are stewards of their money. And we 

are obligated to spend it wisely. And I am committed to doing so 

on this committee. 

Among our many responsibilities is an equally important obligation to oversee the Department of Homeland Security, which is the 

third largest department in the Federal Government, and help develop the laws and policies that guide DHS and help secure the Nation. I can think of few responsibilities more important to this Congress and this Nation. 

So I am here to express gratitude. I am also here to explain why 

we must not allow any further reduction in the committee’s funding. As you may know, during the 112th, the committee experienced a 14 percent reduction in its funding levels from the previous 

Congress. As a result, the committee’s majority and minority staffs 

had to reduce the number of its personnel, reduce staff salaries, 

left unfilled staff positions vacant, ended stipends for interns, and 

limited the committee’s travel and purchases in a fiscal way. 

Currently, the Committee on Homeland Security is operating on 

a budget below that allocated, and this is a very important point, 

below that allocated in 2006. Madam Chair, that was 7 years ago. 

And I would submit the threats are much greater today than they 

were 7 years ago. And at the same time, our current staffing levels 

include 15 additional personnel from the 2006 levels. 

You all know the oversight and legislative responsibilities of your 

respective offices and committee assignments. These efforts require 

significant resources if we are to fulfill our responsibilities in a 

meaningful way. As the new chairman on the committee, I feel a 

particularly strong obligation to ensure we fulfill these in as robust 

manner as possible. To that end, we are focusing on developing 

strong legislation in areas related to cybersecurity, border security, 

and DHS authorizations. We will continue and enhance the committee’s oversight of the department as a whole, with a particular 

emphasis on its management practices. This is a primary focus for 


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the committee. DHS is plagued with inefficiencies in its procurement processes, technology development, human resource practices, 

and general management. DHS lacks a permanent general counsel, 

inspector general, and a commissioner for Customs and Border Protection to just name a few examples of the vacuum in senior management levels. 

The situation is unconscionable. It needs to be addressed. I believe it is time that DHS start acting as more than just a holding 

company for 22 separate agencies. It is time for DHS to act and 

function as a unified department. Conducting the appropriate oversight and developing legislation to help DHS achieve that mandate 

is among my highest priorities. This effort requires sufficient staffing and resources to do so. Our people are our most precious assets, 

and the committee has an excellent staff on both sides. We may not 

always agree on policy all the time, but in a true spirit of bipartisanship, we make every effort to minimize the committee’s resources where possible. The committee has made every effort to 

limit its expenses. Indeed, we will soon return nearly $400,000 of 

our budget from 2012. But please do not punish us going forward 

for acting in a fiscally responsible manner. To limit our budget for 

2013 to the amount spent in the 2012 represents a reduction of 6 

percent from last year. An 11 percent reduction from our 2012 authorized budget represents nearly $850,000 in this committee’s 

budget. 

You will hear more specifically from my ranking member, Mr. 

Thompson, on how these reductions will impact the minority staff. 

But I can tell you, on the majority side, we already experience difficulty in offering competitive salaries. And we have lost a couple 

really good hires this Congress because of that fact. With further 

reductions in our budgets, we will have to continue to leave unfilled positions vacant, limit our ability to travel on committee business and conduct field hearings, and further limit our ability to replace aging office equipment and limit the purchase of necessary 

supplies, technology services, and other things. 

DHS includes nearly 225,000 personnel at 22 separate agencies 

operating across the Nation and across the globe. The department’s 

creation was an enormous undertaking, with huge management 

and programmatic challenges. Recognizing those challenges and 

the time it would take, the Government Accountability Office in 

2003 determined that the creation of the department would be high 

risk, meaning the potential for waste of taxpayer dollars was likely. 

A decade later, GAO has again concluded in its recently released 

biannual report that DHS remains at high risk in implementing 

key management initiatives critical to its mission outcomes. As the 

report noted, serious deficiencies still exist in how the department 

buys technologies to secure the homeland, manages its finances 

and data, and deals with low morale scores. 

To further highlight the need for rigorous oversight, in 2004, 

DHS had a budget of $39 billion. Now it has a budget at the department of $60 billion. Even the department’s most ardent supporters would not argue that it is where it needs to be. Much work 

remains to be done to ensure the department continues maturing 

and further enhancing the Nation’s security. Our committee has a 

total authorized combined staff of 75 to oversee the department. 


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And no matter how you slice it, those numbers are already pretty 

slim to do the committee’s work in an effective and meaningful 

way. 

Madam Chair and Ranking Member Brady, I thank you for the 

opportunity to speak with you today, and I am happy to answer 

any questions you may have. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. McCaul follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank the chairman. 

And I would recognize now at this time the ranking member, Mr. 

Thompson. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI 

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you very much, Chairman Miller and 

Ranking Member Brady, for this opportunity to talk to you about 

committee funding for 2013. 

In 2011, the Committee on Homeland Security’s budget was cut 

by 6.8 percent. Last year, our budget was cut again by 6.4 percent. 

Each year, those were between majority and minority, according to 

our two-thirds/one-third share. Yesterday, we learned that our 

2013 allocation would be further reduced by 8.2 percent or more 

than $200,000 for the Democrats. This cut would put the committee more than 20 percent below its funding level for the 111th 

Congress. 

After reducing the size of my staff, cutting salaries, streamlining 

office expenses, and curtailing travel, it is fair to say we are doing 

more with less. Last year, the committee worked hard to see that 

the Department of Homeland Security received adequate congressional oversight. We pushed for implementation of the hundred 

percent cargo screening mandate signed into law in 2007. We 

forced the agency to be more responsive to Member requests after 

Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast. We called for transparency 

within the Secret Service after its latest scandal. We also worked 

to improve our border security both on the southern and northern 

border, Madam Chair, and strengthened our cyber networks, work 

that will continue this Congress. 

These efforts and many others are taking place at a time when 

we must remain as vigilant as ever to protect the homeland. In 

order to do that, we need sufficient resources. I would like to be 

able to have staff to travel and not be limited to what they can 

learn in the confines of Washington, D.C. I would like to be able 

to replace aging equipment later this year. I would also like to remain a competitive choice for bright young staffers who have options for where they will work. Further budget cuts would complicate these goals. 

Thank you, again, Madam Chair and ranking member, for the 

opportunity to testify. And I look forward to answering any questions that you may have. 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate, gentlemen, both of you coming, and 

your testimony here today. And I appreciate how fiscally conservative the committee has been in the past, and your comments not 

to penalize you for showing that good stewardship of the resources 

that the House has given the committee over the past. 

One thing I would say, and I appreciate very much the chairman 

and both the ranking member mentioning some of your oversight 

responsibilities of the committee in particular. You think about the 

committee, really, and the Department of Homeland Security forming, after 9/11, 22 various agencies and is now one of the largest 

agencies within the government structure, and still I think both 

sides would agree probably not the best cohesive management 


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structure, so the oversight is very, very necessary. And I appreciate 

those kinds of things. 

One thing I had said to some of the other committees, and I 

think it is true with this committee as well, if there is something 

that we can do from the House Administration Committee, various 

kinds of enterprise projects that this committee has undertaken in 

the past and we intend to ratchet up now that may have application within the Homeland Security Committee for a whole raft of 

various things, for instance like the cloud computing. I was looking 

at some of the detail that you have given to the committee here. 

You actually, I think the committee right now is paying for private 

vendors for three different services actually that the House could 

possibly provide to the committee. So I am not so much sure if this 

is a question or something I am sort of throwing out there we want 

to work with you on. Whether it is cloud computing, systems management, and your Webcasting, and even archiving the videos. And 

the amount that the committee is spending on those kinds of services could be a couple of staff people I think even. So I am just saying perhaps there is something—and I may be reading it wrong— 

but as I look through some of the detail that we put here, I guess 

I am just offering if there is any area at all that the committee can 

assist you with, particularly as a new chairman while you take a 

look at all of these various things, we certainly want to be able to 

be in a position to do that, resource you as we can, certainly. 

Mr. MCCAUL. May I respond? 

Thank you for that offer. 

As you know, I am new to the chairmanship, so I am seeing this 

all for the first time, and I appreciate that offer, and I look forward 

to working, following up with you on that. 

In fact, when I asked about IT cloud, I was told the committee 

didn’t have that, although I know from my own cybersecurity background that the House had an IT cloud. So I don’t understand why 

the committees would be any different from that. And that is certainly something we can work on. 

The CHAIRMAN. Very good. I look forward to doing it. 

I would now recognize the ranking member. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Just to thank you for appearing before us and testifying. And 

myself and Mr. Vargas are on the same page. We have the same 

concerns in mind. So, with that, I would like to yield my time to 

Mr. Vargas to share our concerns. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Vargas. 

Mr. VARGAS. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, again, 

for your graciousness, Ranking Member. 

You really did answer my question. It was the issue of retaining 

personnel and also attracting personnel. I think the quote was that 

they are our most precious asset, is personnel. Then you did mention it has been somewhat difficult. I guess I would ask you to 

maybe expand a little bit on that. 

Mr. MCCAUL. Well, not to get into specific cases and names—— 

Mr. VARGAS. No. 

Mr. MCCAUL [continuing]. But we have one individual currently 

who has a very good background within the department, who 

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viser on management issues, which, you know, is critical to this department. We have to oversee the third largest department in the 

Nation. So we thought it would be smart to bring in someone with 

not only DHS background but real world business management experience to help us, you know, in addition to the GAO and the IG, 

look at the department to find inefficiencies and how we can save 

the department money so we can redirect its moneys and efforts toward high priority issues like cybersecurity or like border security. 

Right now, I mean, candidly, I had the interview, offered him the 

job. I thought he had accepted. He is now on the fence because of 

the salary. So that is just one specific example of several where we 

may lose really good talented individuals that could help this committee do its job. 

And let me say, you know, Mr. Thompson has been ranking 

member for quite some time on the committee. I am new as chairman. But you know, this committee has gone through a lot of growing pains. We have had to, you know, defend our jurisdictional 

boundaries when other committees want to take advantage of it. 

I don’t think we need turf wars after 9/11, particularly in the 

Congress. And we are just trying to do what this committee was 

originally designed to do and set up to do, and that is to protect 

the American people. And if we can’t do that, if we are hamstrung 

from a budgetary standpoint and we can’t fulfill that mission, it is 

not the department not doing it; it is the Congress not fulfilling its 

mission. And so I really appreciate you bringing up that question. 

Thank you. 

Mr. VARGAS. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Well, the retention of qualified staff, as well as 

the ability to bring on qualified staff, is essential to the work of 

this committee. And you can only do that with an adequate budget. 

You pay for what you get. And if we are looking to be rigorous in 

our oversight of this department, then we need the ability to have 

a competent staff to allow this committee to do its work. 

Mr. MCCAUL. If I could follow up just to your point again, the 

amount of money that I think—and Mr. Thompson and I are committed to the accountability issue. We may disagree on some 

things, but not many. We fervently agree on the accountability. 

The amount of money that we can save the American taxpayer by 

doing our oversight responsibilities appropriately would be far beyond the numbers we are looking at on these sheets. A $60 billion 

department, they have almost doubled in size since the inception, 

while this committee is going back to 2006 levels. So, anyway, 

thank you for the question. 

Mr. VARGAS. No, thank you very much for your answers. 

Thank you, Madam Chair, I appreciate it. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank both the chairman and ranking member. 

Gentlemen, you have made an excellent case. And again, I am 

personally well aware of what your challenges are, as I am very 

proud to sit on the committee and work with both of you. And it 

is a very bipartisan committee, works extremely well. But it has 

huge challenges ahead. And so I am appreciative of that. And we 

will certainly take everything you said under serious consideration 

here. Thanks so much. 

Mr. MCCAUL. Thank you so much. 


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The CHAIRMAN. The committee now welcomes Chairman Upton— 

didn’t mean to make you jump there, Mr. Chairman—and Ranking 

Member Waxman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. 

Again, the official reporter would enter a page break as we go to 

the next group here. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Committee on Energy and Commerce has jurisdiction over the Nation’s telecommunications, consumer protection, food and drug safety, public health research, environmental 

quality, energy policy, and interstate and foreign commerce. It 

oversees multiple Cabinet-level departments and independent 

agencies, including the departments of Energy, Health and Human 

Services, Commerce and Transportation, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Federal Trade Commission, and 

Food and Drug Administration, and the Federal Communications 

Commission, and on and on and on. 

I know I am missing a number of things. But this is a committee 

that has incredible challenges facing it in the 113th, as you exercise your oversight and new legislation, et cetera. There is so much 

of the legislation that does come to the House floor that emanates 

out of your committee. And this committee is well aware of that 

and has evaluated the testimony and the backup for all of that that 

you have already given to our committee. We certainly look forward 

to your testimony here today and appreciate your attendance. 

With that, the chair would recognize Chairman Upton. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. FRED UPTON, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN 

Mr. UPTON. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. 

I, too, apologize for my cold that I think I must have gotten from 

Mr. McCaul just passing through the door. 

You know, no one is immune from belt tightening, and our committee has taken our fair share of budget reductions and, obviously, will continue to do so. Like others, we absorbed a 5 percent 

cut from our 111th congressional level and another 6.4 percent cut 

in 2012. 

To absorb those cuts, we took a lot of steps. We left a number 

of senior staff vacancies unfilled. We have consolidated staff positions. We have made significant reductions in field hearings, site 

visits, all other types of travel. Reduction on many subscriptions. 

We have clamped down on office supplies. We purchased refurbished print cartridges. And we have moved to paperless hearings. 

I have told my members that they need to learn how to use their 

iPad. 

Those steps are also key to our planning for the 2013 budget. We 

prepared two budgets, as you requested, an 11 percent reduction 

from the 2012 authorized funding level, and a 5 percent increase 

over actual 2012 spending. 

Needless to say, absorbing an 11 percent funding reduction on 

top of the cuts that we took over the last 2 years would affect our 

work. But we are going to do our part. Mr. Waxman and I are committed to working together on the types of operational savings that 

we outlined. 

However, in an 11 percent reduction you will see that it cuts 

deeply beyond operations and into personnel costs and essential 


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functions. In contrast, any additional resources, for example, the 5 

percent increase over the 2012 spending, would be used for targeted spending that would increase our legislative output and support oversight and investigations, particularly going after fraud 

and abuse. 

We have many important issues on the docket for this year, supporting and overseeing a dramatic shift in the American energy resources, reforming Medicare and Medicaid, finally reforming the 

broken Sustainable Growth Rate for Medicare physician payments, 

oversight and legislative solutions for public health threats, monitoring implementation of the health care law, modernizing environmental programs, assessing the challenges and opportunities facing 

American manufacturing, and identifying solutions to spur job 

growth, reassessing how our government uses scarce spectrum resources, and engaging the private sector and government in our efforts to improve cybersecurity. 

I note that Mike Rogers from Michigan serves on our committee. 

That is just a sampling of our plans. So we are going to make 

the most of our resources allotted to our committee. 

I would be glad to discuss in greater detail any questions you 

might have, and yield to my friend, Mr. Waxman. 

[The statement of Mr. Upton follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank the chairman. 

And the chair now recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Waxman. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. HENRY A. WAXMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. WAXMAN. Chairman Miller, Ranking Member Brady, other 

members of the committee, I appreciate this opportunity to testify 

on the proposed budget for the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the 113th Congress. And I am pleased to be here with 

Chairman Fred Upton. We come with a united message. 

At the outset, I want to commend Chairman Upton for the fair 

way in which he has treated the minority last year. On our committee, the tradition has been that the minority gets one-third of 

the resources after accounting for shared employees. Chairman 

Upton has followed that tradition. He has allowed the minority to 

control how we spend our budget to meet the needs of our members. And I greatly appreciate the comity he has shown us in handling the committee budget. 

We both are committed to working together to reduce costs sensibly and to operate as efficiently as possible. Like the majority, we 

have also reduced subscriptions, cut back on office supplies and remain focused on making sure that every penny in our budget 

counts. 

I support the chairman’s proposal for paperless hearings, and I 

hope we can find additional ways to use technology to reduce our 

operating expenses. 

Despite our joint commitment to operate more efficiently, the big 

problem we are facing now is to meet our growing legislative responsibilities with a shrinking budget. We may disagree on the 

benefits of the Affordable Care Act, but the ACA is now the law 

of the land. The Energy and Commerce Committee is responsible 

for overseeing both the new health exchanges and the expansion of 

Medicaid. These two programs will dramatically expand our oversight responsibilities, yet we are being asked to do so with a 

shrinking budget and a smaller staff. 

We face the same problems in other areas of our jurisdiction. We 

have enormous energy challenges in the U.S. Yet, at the same 

time, we are being asked to respond to these growing challenges, 

our budget and staffing continue to be cut. Over the last 2 years, 

our budget has been cut by over 15 percent in real dollars. That 

may be pennywise, but it is pound foolish. 

On the minority side of the committee, we have 39 staff slots. 

But if we have to operate with an 11 percent cut, as contemplated 

in one of the budget scenarios you asked us to complete, we will 

be able to fill only 80 percent of these positions. There is no way 

we can do our job ensuring that the taxpayers are protected with 

one out of every five slots unfilled. 

And I want to give you some concrete examples. The committee 

recently received an enormous set of documents from the Food and 

Drug Administration in response to our bipartisan investigation of 

the circumstances surrounding a deadly meningitis outbreak 

caused by contaminated drugs from a compounding pharmacy. 

These injections have so far killed 48 people, sickened over 700 

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curred and what role FDA plays in ensuring the safety of compounded drugs. Ultimately, our investigation will be critical to the 

consideration of possible changes to the FDA law to prevent a repeat of this tragedy. 

At the same time, in the wake of the Newtown tragedy, the committee is examining mental health, mental illness, violent behavior, 

mental health treatment and research, and Federal programs that 

provide care for the mentally ill. The goal of this effort is to provide 

recommendations to reduce violence and improve and enhance the 

capacity of the Nation’s mental health system. Yet, on the minority 

side, we are going to be operating with only three professional investigators. That is not enough staff to meet these pressing responsibilities. 

I recognize that we are now living under the sequester. Our committee must do its part. But I hope you realize that further cuts 

to our committee would be counterproductive. The taxpayers need 

us to make sure our health, energy, communications, and consumer 

protection agencies are doing their job. Thank you for this opportunity to testify. And I would be happy to answer questions. 

[The statement of Mr. Waxman follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, both of you gentlemen, for your presence here today and the good presentation that you have made. 

I guess one thing, and I sort of asked this of some of the other 

committees, as well as the ranking member, you mentioned particularly about the possibility of utilizing additional technology to 

save a little bit of cash. Maybe you can use that money toward 

staff. And you are saying one in five is vacant at this point, which 

is pretty high. I understand that, considering the kind of challenges you are mentioning. You mentioned about the meningitis. I 

think Michigan had the highest death rate, actually, of those folks. 

It has been a front page story all over our area. So I am very appreciative of what you are saying there as far as the oversight and 

investigating those kinds of things. 

But I am not sure if I am asking you a question or just offering, 

certainly, anything that we can do from the House Administration 

Committee to assist E and C with various kinds of technology. If 

I could, just a couple in particular, I was looking at some of the 

detail that you had submitted to the committee here. There are a 

couple of different things where you are paying a private vendor for 

some things that we may be able to help you with. Whether that 

is Web site development or systems management, a couple of those 

kinds of things, possibly. If you are satisfied with what you are 

doing, that is fine. But there may be areas where we are able to 

resource you a bit. And we want to do that. This committee has 

been very aggressive from the former chairmen and ranking members certainly who have been here, but we want to really ratchet 

that up a bit, too, particularly now with sequestration and these 

kinds of very restrictive financial world that we are living in right 

now. We think we may be able to help some of the committees. So 

I just throw that out there. If there are ways we can help, we want 

to. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. UPTON. I would just note that improving the Wi–Fi system 

that we have on Capitol Hill would be of an enormous benefit. I 

know that when I sent the word out to our members at the end 

of last year that we were going to try to move to paperless hearings, so I brought my iPad in—and you know, we got some of the 

older Members in the House, the Dean of the House, John Dingell. 

We have got Ralph Hall, who will be 80—or excuse me, 90 years 

old on May 3rd—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, to be 80 again. 

Mr. UPTON. They are both in their 80s now and moving on, 

which is a good thing in terms of age, better than the alternative, 

but they have to use an iPad. And rather than printing—you know, 

we have 54 members on our committee—54 copies of the testimony 

of, you know, the two or three hearings that we have every day, 

it is a large resource. And so I brought my iPad in to do it the first 

time, guess what? I didn’t get a signal. Couldn’t get a signal in our 

hearing room from the service provider that I had. So improving 

Wi–Fi will be a big help, not only to just help reduce our costs but 

for our constituents who want to watch these hearings. We had a 

great one earlier today in Oversight on mental health issues. And 

again, being able to put that testimony on the Internet for anyone 

to watch as they watch C–SPAN to see what is being said is a treVerDate Mar 15 2010 00:49 Apr 25, 2013 Jkt 080285 PO 00000 Frm 00125 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B285.XXX B285

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mendous advantage. And at the end of the day, saves us a lot of 

money. So that would be a big help. 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate that. I am making a note as you are 

talking about it. We certainly will look into that. It is a very good 

point. 

Mr. WAXMAN. I want to point out that when we tried to update 

our Web sites, we went to HIR. They have terrific people there, but 

they were so backlogged, it took us 18 months before they were 

able to help us. And we had to go to a private vendor for that. So 

maybe some of your offers of support would be very helpful to us. 

And we welcome it. 

The CHAIRMAN. We appreciate that. As a new chairman, I am 

going to take a look at that as well. So we appreciate those comments, sir. Because really, this committee has done remarkable 

work in the past. We always say the largest room is the room for 

improvement for all of us, right? So we just want to be able to resource you as we can. At this time, I would recognize the ranking 

member, Mr. Brady. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to thank the chairman and ranking member for appearing here today and giving us 

your testimony. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. You done? Okay. All right. I am back here telling 

the staff, did you take notes of those comments that they made? 

So very good. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Excuse me. I have just been informed that I said 

it was an 18-month, it was a 6-month to a 12-month delay. So anyway. 

The CHAIRMAN. Still. 

Mr. WAXMAN. I don’t want HIR to—— 

The CHAIRMAN. I know. We all went 18 months, oh, my gosh. 

Mr. WAXMAN. I added them up. 

The CHAIRMAN. All right. But still we are going to take a look 

at that, because we want to—I mean, this is the Members’ committee, and the ranking member and I have had a lot of conversations about various things that we can do to help Members, majority, minority, and we want to be able to that. That is a long time 

to be waiting, 6 months, 12 months, right? We want to do better. 

So thank you. I appreciate both of you attending. Thanks. 

The committee now welcomes Chairman Royce and Ranking 

Member Engel of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Again, I would 

ask the official reporter to enter a page break as we enter a new 

section. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Foreign Affairs Committee jurisdiction relates to our foreign policy, war powers, treaties, executive agreements, the deployment and use of the United States Armed Forces, 

the enforcement of U.N. sanctions, arms control, disarmament 

issues, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and foreign 

assistance. 

The committee’s priorities for the 113th will be to continue to 

focus on the effectiveness of the U.S. foreign policy, the review of 

agencies and programs operating under permanent statutory authority, and the elimination of programs and expenditures that are 

inefficient, duplicative, or outdated. 


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So we certainly welcome both of you to the committee here. We 

have already looked at your testimony that you have entered and 

some of the background for the various resourcing that you are 

asking for, for your committee’s services. And this is an extremely 

important committee that you are the chair and ranking member 

of. We are well aware of that. 

So, with that, the chair would recognize the chairman, Mr. 

Royce, for his testimony. And we appreciate both of you gentlemen 

coming. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. EDWARD R. ROYCE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Chairman Miller. We appreciate your patience with this and this opportunity, and Ranking Member Brady. 

We appreciate it very much to talk about our work. 

I am the new chairman of the committee. My colleague, Mr. 

Engel, is the new ranking member. So we are new to the positions 

here, but not to each other, having served together for many years, 

and having spent much time together on a recent CODEL. I am 

confident that we will have the strong working relationship needed 

to be a very effective committee. 

Madam Chairman, as a Member who has always acted and voted 

in a fiscally conservative manner, I would like to commend the 

committee for taking a close look at how the 2012 committee funds 

were spent before considering our 2013 funding. Budgets are tight 

for all Americans, and we must continue to set an example of fiscal 

discipline. As a new chairman, I didn’t put together the 2012 budget. However, I have reviewed the numbers. And I believe that the 

committee was fiscally responsible. 

As you can see from the packet that we provided to your staff, 

for 2012, we spent 98 percent of our budget authorization. On the 

breakdown of actual spent, funds were put to sound use in the 

budget categories, and we responsibly returned a surplus of 

$157,000. So the past chairman was a good steward. 

In addition to being good stewards, we have an obligation to effectively carry out our committee’s responsibilities. And key among 

those is oversight of the State Department and other government 

departments and agencies and the grant programs that are funded 

with taxpayers’ money. So tens of billions of dollars are spent in 

these areas, and it is our job on this committee to make sure that 

it is all accounted for and that it is being spent judiciously. Following oversight, the committee plans on being extremely active 

legislatively, including producing bills to sanction Iran; and a bill 

to sanction North Korea; to reform the Broadcasting Board of Governors; to reauthorize the State Department; to increase our economic competitiveness by reforming export controls; and improve 

embassy security. Our investigative team continues to look at lessons learned from Benghazi. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of 

crises in the world demanding our attention. 

Field hearings are also important to the committee in terms of 

us meeting our responsibilities. Southern California is home of the 

Nation’s largest Taiwanese American population. With the restart 

of U.S.-Taiwan trade negotiations, a field hearing to hear from this 

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larly warranted. Seven committee members are from this area. And 

we plan on holding a similar field hearing in Florida to look at 

trade with Latin America. 

Another fact to consider is that we are a must stop in this Capitol for innumerable foreign officials, innumerable heads of state 

who come through here. And they want to come to the U.S. Congress and talk with committee members about U.S. relations with 

their home countries. We want to be there for them. And our leadership, frankly, expects us to be there to meet with them. And we 

recently hosted the U.N. Secretary General, an expense, but a 

worthwhile one here in this Capitol. Nearly 30 of our members attended. 

So my concern is that with a potential loss of 11 percent of our 2013 funding, that would be over $900,000 in 2013 alone. We will 

not be able to carry out these responsibilities in the manner in 

which they should be carried out. Strong oversight requires high 

caliber staff, with experience in intelligence, law enforcement, and 

private sector fields. I have attracted such staff; one individual 

with extensive CIA field experience and another with time spent as 

a major investment bank—as an investigator. These individuals 

took pay cuts to join our staff. And I would like to be able to retain 

them and attract others. 

But the committee currently has six unfilled positions that we 

will not be able to fill if we were to absorb an 11 percent cut. Also, 

in anticipation of budget cuts in 2013, we eliminated a subcommittee, a reduction of three majority subcommittee staff positions in so doing, as well as an administrative staffer. So we are 

working to reduce costs and streamline our committee’s organizational structure. 

I would also like to express my concern that the budget of this 

committee includes the salary and administrative expenses for the 

House Democracy Partnership, as well as the Tom Lantos Human 

Rights Commission. I believe that both of these entities should be 

funded independently. But for now, please account for the fact that 

our committee provides considerable support, funding, for these two 

groups. 

In conclusion, Member Engel and I are raring to go. We organized earlier than ever, have held several important hearings and 

last week introduced the Royce-Engel Nuclear Iran Prevention Act. 

We are asking you for the resources that we need to succeed. 

And I thank you, Madam Chairman, and I thank the ranking 

member as well. 

[The statement of Mr. Royce follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

And the chair now recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Engel. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. ELIOT L. ENGEL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you very much, Chairman Miller, Ranking 

Member Brady. 

Thank you for inviting me to testify. And I thank you for doing 

yeoman’s work and listening to everybody testify. I want to enthusiastically endorse everything that Chairman Royce has said. I 

couldn’t agree with him more. We are working together in a bipartisan manner. We both believe that foreign policy needs to be bipartisan wherever possible, and are working very hard to make it 

bipartisan in every way. 

Ed and I have already established a very good relationship. And 

I look forward to working with him as a friend and partner in the 

weeks and months ahead. So I endorse everything he had to say. 

As I said, I have always believed that foreign policy should be 

as bipartisan as possible. And we are working together to address 

a huge number of important and complicated issues, ranging from 

the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs to the civil war 

in Syria, the conflict in Mali, Chinese hacking of our computer networks, the transition in Afghanistan, and the list goes on and on. 

I think that we and our staffs get a lot done for the good of the 

country and the world. 

But our ability to do that will be severely undermined if we have 

to absorb yet another round of significant cuts to the committee 

budget. Already, as the chairman pointed out, in the past 2 years, 

we faced budget cuts of 5 percent and 6.4 percent. In each of those 

cuts, the Democratic staff was forced to take significant pay cuts. 

We also have three vacant staff slots that we aren’t able to fill as 

a result. 

Mr. ENGEL. With the further budget cut of 11 percent, staff 

would be forced to take yet another substantial salary reduction, 

even larger than those in the past 2 years. This will obviously hurt 

morale and cause experienced staff to leave for the private sector 

and make it harder to attract new talent. 

But even more importantly, further cuts will make it virtually 

impossible for the committee to conduct effective oversight at the 

State Department, USAID and other Federal agencies under our 

jurisdiction. I think we can all agree in Congress, no matter what 

party we are from, that our committee has this important work to 

do, the oversight of the State Department, USAID and other Federal agencies. 

Among the other things, these cuts would undermine our ability 

to ensure that every reasonable step has been taken to guarantee 

the safety and security of our diplomats. At the end of the day, this 

lack of oversight will end up costing the taxpayers much more than 

they will save in any additional reductions to or budget. 

Madam Chair, and Mr. Ranking Member, I think sequestration 

is bad policy. I voted against it, and I continue to believe that indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts are a terrible and counterproductive way to deal with our fiscal situation. I understand the 


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need to tighten our belts, just like millions of Americans have been 

forced to do. 

Over the past 2 years, our committee has done just that; we have 

cut through the fat and even the muscle, and now we are down to 

the bone. At this point, we are well beyond the point at which we 

can do more with less. If this happens, now we will have to just 

do less with less. And I would argue that bad for U.S. foreign policy 

and the prosperity and security of the American people. 

So, again, I thank you for inviting me to testify. I wholeheartedly 

agree with the chairman, and I hope you will take this under very 

serious consideration. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Engel follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I want to thank both gentlemen for appearing 

before the committee. We have looked at what you submitted to the 

committee and will continue to evaluate it, as we do in the overall 

for everyone. 

One thing I guess I was not aware of, I am having the committee 

take a look at here, that the chairman pointed out, I did not realize 

the House Democracy Assistance Commission is actually under 

your budget as well as the Lantos Foundation. I am not sure how 

much that costs the committee. I don’t know if you even know the 

answer to that right now. We are trying to look at it. 

Mr. ROYCE. We are providing staffing for that. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, that is a fantastic thing, but it could be 

quite labor intensive, I would think as well. I didn’t realize it was 

part of your budget. I am not sure what we can do about that immediately, but it does seem like it ought to be able to be broken 

out or something, it seems like it should be recognized as something that you have absorbed there. Although there are a lot of 

kinds of services that House Admin or whatever the whole House 

really does provide when you do that, I mean, whether it is the Library of Congress for some of these emerging democracies, et 

cetera, services through the Library of Congress or some of the various things that would be an assist. 

But certainly, I don’t know if I am asking you a question, but I 

am trying to absorb what you told me, and we will see what that 

means. 

I think what you have looked at as far as you mentioning some 

of these field hearings, I think those are very important things that 

you have identified. 

Mr. ROYCE. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. I would also say this, as early as today, I had 

a group in, some folks that were here for the AIPAC that talked 

about both of you gentlemen and how excited they are and the committee continuing a very bipartisan approach to some legislation 

that you mentioned that is coming out and how important it is 

with the challenges the entire planet is facing and how important 

it is your committee is taking a lead on some of those things. So 

I know you have incredible challenges this year. 

The only other thing I would say, again, I am not sure if it is 

a question or just something I want to throw out there for you that 

I mentioned in some of the other committees as well; this committee has a history of being on the leading edge of trying to have 

services that we can resource the various committees with and we 

really want to ratchet that up in various ways with utilizing new 

technologies, existing technologies, emerging technologies that can 

help the committee. I think you are already using the cloud computing, but we have some enterprise types of projects that we are 

trying to use. And I was just looking here, and I know that your 

committee actually switched to the House-provided Web site development just last month, so good. 

Mr. ROYCE. That is true, Madam Chairman. 

We are also moving to reduce printing costs by requiring members to use iPads to review hearing testimony and committee 

memos and suggested questions and so this will have enormous 

savings. You referenced the House Democracy Partnership and 


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Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. That share of our budget 

just for the salaries is $235,000 a year alone. So I appreciate you 

being sensitive to the fact that we do carry these additional costs 

for these additional purposes here within this budget and appreciate your consideration. 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate that. At this time, I would recognize 

the ranking member. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

And thank you, Mr. Chairman and ranking member, for appearing in front of us. My question is real quick; with the budgetary 

cuts, how much of a problem is it for you to be able to attract quality people to go to work for your committee? And how much does 

it affect you able to keep them working for your committee when 

you have people who come to work and, like you say and a lot of 

our chairman and ranking member say, that they do it because 

they have a passion and they want to be a public servant and want 

to help out. Well, that’s all well and good but that gets old pretty 

quickly. And then not only can’t you give them what they are 

worth or even give them a raise, now you are cutting their salary. 

So how hard is it to get quality people, and how hard is it to keep 

them? 

Mr. ROYCE. I think I can speak to that, because there is a tremendous feeling of patriotism—I am thinking for the moment 

about the individual with extensive CIA field experience, who came 

to work for us and took a pay cut to do it, because of the feeling 

she felt that these issues were so important, she wanted us to have 

her expertise. And indeed, to not be able to retain her, for example, 

would be a great loss to the committee. 

I think of the fellow who had the experience as an investigator 

with a major investment bank, who we are using on precisely the 

kinds of investigative work that this committee must succeed at, 

again, already taking a pay cut in order to take this job because 

it is important work he feels should be done for the United States, 

but at this point, those cuts have been implemented, and that is 

why we ask for your consideration. It is exactly the issue you 

raised. We want to make certain that those individuals who will 

make a sacrifice and come up here and work for reduced wage will 

stay with us. There is a question of how deeply we can cut. 

Mr. ENGEL. You know, obviously, as we said before, both Ed and 

I are new to being the leaders of our respective parties on the committee. My predecessor was Howard Berman, who, since I have 

been on the committee for many, many years, I watched his staff 

and was very pleased with the professionalism and how hard they 

work. I made a decision to basically keep his staff in tact because 

they do such an effective job and work for much less than they 

could easily get out—if they went to the public sector. And my 

worry would be that if some of them have to start leaving, which 

they will have to do having absorbed two cuts, then it is really 

going to be very difficult to retain them. And then, when you get 

new people, if you are going to get people that are going to be paid 

less, they are not going to be as experienced, and the whole committee will suffer at a time when the chairman and I are trying 

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mittee, probably almost more than any other committee, one of its 

very important purposes is to investigate the State Department 

and all the other agencies. If we lose the ability to retain good staff 

because of that, I think the committee work will be all that much 

poorer. 

Mr. BRADY. And when you lose them, you also lose their knowledge. 

Mr. ENGEL. Definitely. 

Mr. BRADY. Their institutional knowledge goes with it. 

Thank you. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you very much, both of you, thank you. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. I am going to look into this, and I don’t know if 

we can change it in the immediacy here, but I think your point 

about the various Democracy Assistance, et cetera, if you think 

about what is happening with our individual MRAs is whatever 

happens with the committees as well—I mean, the House, we took 

the 5 percent, and then we took the 6.4, and now we are taking 

8.2, we are below 2008 levels. At the same time, the executive 

branch has actually expanded their spending by 16.7 percent I 

think during that time. 

And I am only saying that in light of this particular thing. I 

think an argument could be made some of these salaries possibly 

could be paid for from the State Department budget, really. Would 

you have any comment on that, or you don’t have to comment if 

you don’t want to? 

Mr. ENGEL. No, I agree. And it is not only the executive branch; 

it is the Senate as well. If we don’t have the ability to retain good 

staff because we can’t pay them what they want to be paid, they 

will either gravitate to the private sector if they are just interested 

in making money, but if they want to stay in government, they will 

go to the Senate and to the White House. I think that leaves us 

all in the House of Representatives a lot poorer in more ways than 

one. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay, gentlemen. 

We really appreciate your time and attention to the detail. We 

appreciate your answers to the questions. We will give everything 

serious consideration, and we appreciate it very much. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. At this time, we are going to recess our hearing, 

and the committee will reconvene tomorrow at the appointed time 

and will continue. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 4:29 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 


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