U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

84–511 2003

CONSIDERATION AND APPROVAL OF THE IMPLEMENTING REGULATIONS FOR A STUDENT LOAN

REPAYMENT PROGRAM FOR THE HOUSE OF

REPRESENTATIVES

BUSINESS MEETING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOUSE ADMINISTRATION 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

Hearing Held in Washington, DC, July 17, 2002

(

Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION 

BOB NEY, Chairman 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

JOHN LINDER, Georgia 

JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California 

THOMAS M. REYNOLDS, New York 

STENY H. HOYER, Maryland 

Ranking Minority Member 

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania 

JIM DAVIS, Florida 

PAUL VINOVICH, Staff Director 

BILL CABLE, Minority Staff Director 

(1)

BUSINESS MEETING 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2002

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room 

1310, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Robert W. Ney 

(chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Ney, Ehlers, Doolittle, Hoyer, and 

Fattah. 

Staff present: Channing Nuss, Deputy Staff Director; Fred Hay, 

Counsel; Jeff Janas, Professional Staff Member; Bill Cable, Minority Staff Director; Matt Pinkus, Minority Professional Staff Member; Nuku Ofori, Staff of Representative Fattah. 

The CHAIRMAN. Today the Committee on House Administration 

is conducting a business meeting to consider and approve Implementing Regulations for a Student Loan Repayment Program for 

the House of Representatives. 

I just want to open today by touching on some background which 

lays the foundation for why what we are doing here today is important for the House of Representatives institutionally, and for all 

who work and serve here. The Executive Branch, the U.S. Senate, 

and several other legislative branch entities such as the Library of 

Congress, the Government Printing Office, and the Congressional 

Budget Office have all enacted student loan repayment programs. 

So this is not a precedent-setting move today. This is why it has 

wide approval. 

The intent of the these programs is to provide an incentive to attract and retain qualified employees to government service who 

would otherwise work in the private sector. Because so many Federal employers offer this benefit, the House has been left at a competitive disadvantage in this regard, especially when other agencies 

have implemented this as well as those on the other side of the 

Capitol. 

As a result, at our insistence, language authorizing the program 

in the House of Representatives as well as the necessary funding 

for the program is included in the fiscal year 2003 Legislative 

Branch Appropriations bill. I want to thank, Mr. Hoyer, his staff, 

our staff, members of the committee, everybody that had input for 

pushing this issue into the appropriation process, and we just 

wanted to thank you for that involvement. 

Here at the committee we have worked hard in total cooperation 

with the minority in drafting the implementing regulations that we 

hopefully will adopt today. Upon the adoption of these regulations 

2

at this meeting, the Chief Administrative Officer, Jay Eagen, will 

put in place the administrative procedures and a standardized 

agreement for the program as directed by our regulations that we 

create here today. 

Upon committee approval of that process, an explanation of the 

program and details for participation will be disseminated Housewide by this committee on behalf of the entire committee. This 

committee has been fully engaged from the inception of this process, and will continue to be as we work actively to oversee and participate in the administration of this program, and also, obviously, 

help Members through the informational process. 

I just want to take a moment, and hopefully this will alleviate 

some questions some people have, but take a moment to explain 

the substantive parameters of the program. Any Member, Chairman, head of an employing office, or an employee of the House may 

enter into a written service agreement under which direct payments shall be made by the CAO, on behalf of the employee, to 

repay the employee’s student loan indebtedness. 

Participation will be at the discretion of the Member, I want to 

stress, Chairman or employing authority. Payments will not be 

made from the MRA accounts, Members’ accounts, but it will come 

out of an appropriation that has been set but from a separately 

capitalized account administered by the CAO, Jay Eagen. The 

length of the agreement will be for 1 year with the option of additional 1-year agreements. 

With each agreement the employing office is agreeing to make 12 

monthly payments toward an employee’s student loan debt in exchange for 1 year, which is pretty simple. 

Termination of the agreement occurs when the employee’s full 

time employment terminates, upon no payment by the CAO because of a lack of funds available, or upon mutual agreement of the 

parties. Exceptions may be made by the employing office for illness, 

bereavement, or furlough not for cause. 

The employee must reimburse for all payments made under the 

agreement if they are terminated for cause or leave their employment voluntarily during the period of agreement. The employing office may waive the reimbursement requirement. 

There will be no payment for loans in default. An employee is not 

relieved from liability for payment of their loan. An employee has 

no right to continued employment or entitlement. Payments are not 

applied as earnings for benefit purposes, but shall be subject to 

withholding for income and employment tax obligations. 

Individual limitations on the amount of payment will be $500 in 

any one month, and $40,000 for all of the months. Student loan 

payment and compensation together may not exceed the Speaker’s 

Pay Order, which is standard practice here in the House. Specific 

payment amounts are determined by the employing office. So you 

can vary them, 5, 4, 300, whatever you want to negotiate out. 

The amount of funds available for the program will be, for a 

Member’s personal office, 2 percent of the average of your MRA, or 

approximately $20,000 annually. So when you start putting this together, you can have four people at $500 or you can have five people at $400, any combination depending on the needs of the individual. 

3

In the case of any other employing office, the amount will be 2 

percent made available to that office for salaries and expenses. Assuming full funding participation, this program could cost around, 

in the fiscal year 2003, about $14.6 million. 

Substantively, this program does not differ from the parameters 

in place for the Senate. Administrative differences do exist between 

the two programs to reflect institutional differences between the 

two Chambers. 

And with that, I wanted to again go ahead to take the time, I 

wanted to lay out basic guidelines for this. I do want to thank Mr. 

Hoyer and members of this committee, Mr. Hoyer and his staff, our 

staff, Jay Eagen and his team, as well as the Office of House Employment Counsel who have all provided valuable input into the 

process. 

I am going to close by saying I am convinced this program will 

provide Members and other employing authorities in the House of 

Representatives with an effective incentive at their disposal for the 

recruitment of highly qualified candidates for employment. In 

doing so, I believe we are strengthening the institution. 

And I just point out in closing we would be basically the only entity practically around this city that would not in fact have this, 

and I think it could make a difference when we are looking for good 

qualified staff to serve the constituents, committees, personal offices and do good things back home. So I think this just levels the 

playing field for us, and I think it is a great incentive. I think it 

is good for the sake of the House. 

With that, I will lay before the committee the Committee Resolution on approving the Implementing Regulations for a Student 

Loan Repayment Program for the House of Representatives. 

Mr. Hoyer. 

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. As it always 

is, it is a pleasure to work with you and staff. Our staffs worked 

together very cooperatively on this, and I thank you for moving 

these regulations so quickly. With the legislative appropriations 

bill that was passed, as you know, it may be on the floor tomorrow. 

As we have designed this program, it will serve the House by giving Members’ offices and committees, as you have explained, a valuable tool which with to recruit qualified employees and to retain 

employees. 

The House program will follow the form of programs in the Senate and other legislative agencies and the Executive Branch. As in 

those other agencies, in return for the loan repayment they will 

have to agree in writing to remain in their employment for a specified time, 1 year. If they fail to do so, they will have to repay the 

House. This procedure is one which is replicated in many other 

places. 

When Congress established the authority for the program over a 

decade ago, it took pains to advise agencies the program is to be 

used sparingly, only as needed to recruit and retain qualified persons. I would hope it would be used sparingly in the House as well 

to preserve its effectiveness as a recruitment and retention tool. 

The necessary steps toward authorization and funding for this 

program, as you have said, are in the pending Legislative Appropriation bill. Our action today will expedite establishment of the 

4

program by the CAO and permit us to have this program in place 

at the earliest possible date. 

Mr. Chairman, as always, I appreciate the opportunity to work 

with you, and as usual, it has been in a bipartisan, constructive 

fashion. And I did also want to continue to thank the staff which 

has worked very cooperatively and openly with my staff. 

I also want to acknowledge the constructive role played by Representative Barbara Lee. I know she has talked to you, Mr. Chairman. She talked to me. Last year, Barbara introduced a bill to extend this program in the House. She recognized the value of the 

program and worked tirelessly to promote it, help us to reach this 

point. It is my pleasure to work with her, and I urge the members 

of the committee to adopt the resolution. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Ehlers. 

Mr. EHLERS. Just a question on the implementation of the legislation. The previous speaker, the gentleman from Maryland, mentioned that this is already in the Leg Branch Appropriations bill. 

Is that authorization going to be permanent, or does it require additional authorizations for this committee for succeeding years? 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, this will be permanent. The funding would 

have to be renewed in order to practically implement the program. 

Mr. EHLERS. I wonder about the authorizing legislation. It would 

have been nice to have kept that, to bring that to the floor of this 

committee, and, you know, it would have been on suspension, and 

to retain clear authority here in the committee. 

I yield back. 

Mr. HOYER. If the gentleman will yield. Of course I have the dual 

capacity of serving on the Legislative Appropriations Committee as 

well as this. But, frankly, I am going to assure the ranking member on the Republican side that the committee, Mr. Taylor, was 

very interested that this committee was in fact in favor of it. I 

know he talked to our chairman, and obviously, I brought it to the 

attention in my discussion with the chairman to the committee 

that this was a program supported by our committee. 

So they were very concerned about the jurisdiction of this committee. 

Mr. EHLERS. If the gentleman will yield, I certainly understand 

that. But as someone who is a member of the only authorizing committee, there is always that—we have the authorizing, you should 

do the authorizing. And we recognize your perfect right and necessity to do it when you have to. 

But I am just saying it would have been nice as we were on 

record as having authorized it as the committee rather than rubber 

stamping what you have done. It is a minor point. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just jump in here for a second, and this 

applies to my part, not to Mr. Hoyer. Working with some of the 

people over there and particular staffers on Appropriations is like 

walking on a razor. Originally I had no problems to do a resolution. 

They opted not to do a resolution, maybe a signal to do this, this 

is directed toward my party. 

Finally, I got to the point where, you know, you don’t do games 

with a good part of our people. And I agree. And the resolution was 

good. I thought, well, we get it. We do sign off on this. So this is 

kind of a unique way for someone on our side of the aisle to get 

5

their signals straight. And I do agree. I am sensitive to stepping 

on toes, which they have done about 13 times on this particular 

piece of legislation trying to work it out this week. There are a 

wide variety of ways that we can work it out, and I promise you 

that we will one way or another. 

So I am sensitive to this. This is the way we did it just to get 

it for the benefit of our good staff. 

Mr. Fattah. 

Mr. FATTAH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was intrigued by the 

minutia of the legislative process, but I did have one question. And 

I would first like to add my voice to both the chairman and the 

ranking member’s comments at this time. This work is one of the 

most significant things that we have done around here in a very 

long time. 

But there is one point that I just wanted to ask. I know that in the Capitol Police program, it is up to $10,000 and this would be 

something less than that. But I assumed that ours with $500 a 

month is on par with the Senate? 

The CHAIRMAN. Exactly. It is on par with the Senate. 

Mr. FATTAH. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Capitol Police now, that would be a tuition 

reimbursement program if the force put it into their work. So they 

actually can choose. 

Mr. FATTAH. That is up to a thousand dollars. But I understand 

the differential and am not unsupportive of it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Doolittle. 

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, I congratulate you. I join with my 

colleague on the other side of the aisle here to lend my approval. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Chair recognizes Mr. Ehlers for the purpose 

of a motion. 

Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee resolution approving the Implementing Regulations for Student Loan Repayment for the House of Representatives be adopted. 

The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the motion. Those in favor say 

aye. Opposed nay. The ayes have it. The ayes have it. The motion 

is agreed to, and the committee resolution is adopted. 

I ask unanimous consent that members have 7 legislative days 

to submit material into the record, and for materials submitted to 

be entered into the appropriate place in the record. Without objection, the material will be so entered. 

Motion for technical and conforming changes: I ask unanimous 

consent that staff be authorized to make technical and conforming 

changes on all matters considered by the committee at today’s 

meeting. 

Without objection, so ordered. And having completed our business for the day——

Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I want to raise an issue that continues to trouble me. Recently, we had a meeting with representatives from the CAO’s office and the Post Office about the mail situation, to which I was unfortunately not able to be present. I was 

in a markup with the other committee, but I got a full report from 

my staff members. The Post Office assured us there was no mail 

held back, et cetera. Within a week I received a Christmas card 

which had been mailed in December.

6

I have been very patient with it, but this week I got a first class 

letter. It was mailed on May 24th. It was important business. I 

should have received it. The party sending it, not being familiar 

with the problems, had failed to fax me something. I received that 

letter which was mailed May 24th, I received it 2 days or 3 days 

ago. 

Also in the same mail was a letter from June 13th. Obviously we 

still are having problems, and I cannot understand how the greatest parliamentary entity in the world is expected to function when 

we cannot get our mail. It is simply unacceptable. I don’t know 

what has to be done. I don’t even know where the problem is. But 

clearly there are difficulties here. 

Incidentally, I even got a Priority Mail letter some 3 weeks ago 

now that had been mailed in March. Priority Mail. It took me several months to get it. I would seek your advice, Mr. Chairman, and 

the ranking member as well. What are we going to do about this? 

There has to be an answer. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just say this is an issue where I have literally got headaches from working on this for hours and hours. I 

got a piece of mail sent to me 2 weeks ago, and about a week before 

that the same thing. One of them was from January, and one from 

March. I have come to the conclusion that if we keep our current 

system, that no matter what we do, if we have five irradiation machines outside this building going full-time, that this is not addressing the issue of lost mail. If they are going full time, we are 

going to get it in 13 days. 

We are looking at a digital pilot program. I have been getting letters from members saying you are not going to open my mail. Well, 

we are not going to force anybody to do this pilot program. If it is 

successful and members want to do it, they can do it. If they would 

like to have 13 more days to open their mail, that is the way that 

it is going to be. There are some bugs to work out on that. So I 

don’t have an answer. Except on the backlog we are told we are 

somewhere close. By bar coding, it was sent to another place. They 

are fully now coming back. I have come to the conclusion that it 

has been somewhere and it is being found. That is the only answer. 

I don’t know if anybody else has experienced it the last 2 weeks, 

but I have experienced it. So we have met with the postal authorities. So I am hoping that old mail somehow is still flowing in. I 

have come to the conclusion that the current way that we are doing 

it is the best thing that we can do. Jay Eagen has no choice. The 

system completely went away, evaporated because a result of the 

anthrax. But I don’t know what we to do. I think that is a shame. 

That is why I have pushed for this pilot. 

Now, there is a lot of misunderstanding, and all of the staff comments I have read in Roll Call were I can’t have it printed. But 

they can push the button, it prints out in their office. So there is 

a lot of misunderstanding, but right now that is the only way. 

Mr. EHLERS. But, Mr. Chairman, if I may. That still wouldn’t get 

Ted Stevens’ smoked salmon here on time. It is hard to send that 

digitally. And there is a lot of things we get Priority Mail. 

The CHAIRMAN. We can do a virtual salmon tour. 

Mr. EHLERS. But the Priority Mail was a small envelope that 

contained a tie from someone, and they had sent it months ago. 

7

But I am sure they were wondering why in the world they didn’t 

get a thank you note from me until 4 months later when I explained what happened. The point is I am frankly—I am not faulting the House because I think the House is proceeding well. There 

is something wrong with the U.S. Postal system in the way that 

they are handling this problem. I don’t know what it is. I am not 

sure that they know. Whether they periodically are uncovering 

trailers, oh, that is right, we had this here, or finding bags of mail 

in the Brentwood Post Office, or what have you. 

But I know in our office, our e-mail is way up, but our U.S. Mail 

from constituents is way down, I would say almost a factor of 10 

to what we normally do. Does the public know that we have this 

problem and they are clearly not writing us, or are there letters not 

getting got us? We have no way of knowing. 

My advice to every one back home is if you want to send us a 

letter, send to it our district office. Don’t bother with Washington. 

Then the district office sends it here, not to this building but to our 

employees at home so that they can bring it in. That is the only 

way that we have been able to get a rapid response. 

The CHAIRMAN. A couple of our staff has done it. We look 

throughout the buildings. I have come to the conclusion that 

Pitney-Bowes is putting out every piece of mail that they get. That 

mail comes in, they get it out. But basically staff told me while 

they were in there, it was cleared out and then another trailer 

comes in of mail. They were looking through the mail and it is 3 

months old 

So our people are getting it out if it is getting out of them. Again, 

I don’t know if they discover, you know, a trainload of this, whatever it is. We will go until we get it. 

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I don’t know whether we have done 

this. But it might be useful if we would send out to the Members 

a request for examples, such as Mr. Ehlers gave here today, in 

preparation for another hearing similar to the one we had as to 

where we are. And we may not do that until—it may be late September or something to find out where we are before we leave here 

for the October recess. 

I am fearful to say I don’t think we are gong to get to adjournment in October, unfortunately. But so that we would have examples from Members of the kinds of things you are talking about, 

Mr. Ehlers, and then we would know that we would continue to follow this and monitor and be concerned about it, and then it would 

be material that we could use when we follow up with that. 

The CHAIRMAN. If there is no further business, the committee is 

adjourned. Thank you. 

[Where upon, at 10:30 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]

Æ