FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL 

GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2016 

HEARINGS

BEFORE A 

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT 

APPROPRIATIONS

ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida, Chairman

TOM GRAVES, Georgia 

KEVIN YODER, Kansas 

STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas 

JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington 

MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada 

E. SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia 

JOSE ́ E. SERRANO, New York 

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois 

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania 

SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR., Georgia 

NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full Committee, and Mrs. Lowey, as Ranking 

Minority Member of the Full Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees. 

WINNIE CHANG, KELLY HITCHCOCK,

ARIANA SARAR, and AMY CUSHING,

Subcommittee Staff 

PART 6 

Page

Office of Management and Budget ...................................... 1

General Services Administration ........................................ 55

The Supreme Court ................................................................. 107

The Judiciary Budget ............................................................. 143

( 

U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 

97–155 WASHINGTON : 2015 
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky, Chairman

RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey 

ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama 

KAY GRANGER, Texas 

MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho 

JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas 

ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida 

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas 

KEN CALVERT, California 

TOM COLE, Oklahoma 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TOM GRAVES, Georgia 

KEVIN YODER, Kansas 

STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida 

CHARLES J. FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee 

JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington 

DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio 

DAVID G. VALADAO, California 

ANDY HARRIS, Maryland 

MARTHA ROBY, Alabama 

MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada 

CHRIS STEWART, Utah 

E. SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia 

DAVID W. JOLLY, Florida 

DAVID YOUNG, Iowa 

EVAN H. JENKINS, West Virginia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

NITA M. LOWEY, New York 

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio 

PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana 

JOSE ́ E. SERRANO, New York 

ROSA L. DELAURO, Connecticut 

DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina 

LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California 

SAM FARR, California 

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania 

SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR., Georgia 

BARBARA LEE, California 

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California 

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota 

STEVE ISRAEL, New York 

TIM RYAN, Ohio 

C. A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas 

CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine 

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois 

DEREK KILMER, Washington 

WILLIAM E. SMITH, Clerk and Staff Director 

(II)
(1)

FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL 

GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2016 

MONDAY, MARCH 16, 2015. 

OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET 

WITNESS

HON. SHAUN DONOVAN, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND 

BUDGET

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, good afternoon, everyone. The hearing will 

come to order. I thank you all for being here. 

Director Donovan, we welcome you to the hearing today. We 

know that you have been pretty busy with the pending budget resolution. We appreciate the time you have given us to be here to give 

your testimony and answer any questions. 

And the first thing I want to do is say thank you for having the 

budget submitted on time. I think that is the first time since 2010 

that has happened, so congratulations. And I hope that that bodes 

well for the upcoming budget season. 

Now, the OMB has a great responsibility of constructing a budget that reflects the President’s vision for our Nation, and because 

of this responsibility, I believe that your agency has an even greater duty to be judicious and be deliberate with your own budget request.

Today, I hope not only to have an informative discussion about 

your fiscal year 2016 appropriations request, but I hope that we 

can dive into some important policies and assumptions included in 

the President’s overall request for fiscal year 2016. 

Since 2010, this committee, under the leadership of the full committee chairman, Hal Rogers, has carefully worked to reduce discretionary spending by some $175 billion. However, in this same 

time period, we have seen mandatory outlays and net interest increase significantly. While we have made significant strides on the 

discretionary side of the ledger, our long-term economic and national security interests require continued deficit reduction and renewed efforts to reduce our national debt. 

And speaking of the debt, our statutory debt ceiling was reached 

yesterday, and the Treasury will once again take extraordinary 

measures to avoid default. But, at some point, these extraordinary 

measures become routine and ordinary. And I would caution the 

administration that this routine is not a comfortable one and remind you that S&P downgraded our country’s credit rating in 2013, 

in part because of that. So we expect you to use your influence with 

the administration to keep the country from going over the fiscal 

cliff.
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The demographic changes underway in this country mean that 

the benefits of Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare enjoyed 

today are bills that are going to be paid by our children and their 

grandchildren tomorrow. And so, regrettably, the President’s budget does not address the unavoidable question of how to distribute 

the economic costs of an aging population over generations. And to 

ensure the health of our economic future, we must rein in out-ofcontrol spending on the mandatory side of the ledger. And I hope 

you can explain how the administration plans to address these 

looming challenges. 

The fiscal year 2016 budget request includes large increases for 

both your operating account and your IT account. Your operating 

request is a 6.2 percent increase over fiscal year 2015. And I think 

you should think about, at a time when our Nation needs to continue to exercise fiscal constraint and restraint, that OMB should 

think about leading by example. 

Now, you are also requesting a $15 million increase in your IT 

account. And I appreciate the strides the administration has made 

to improve the use of IT resources across the government, increase 

efficiency, reduce waste, and identify savings. And so I would like 

to hear more about your plan to improve the digital services and 

prevent the kind of failure we saw with the rollout of 

healthcare.gov.

I would also like to discuss the role OMB plays in strengthening 

Federal cybersecurity. More and more, we are seeing threats to our 

national security via cyber attacks to our network and to our operating systems, so your role in guiding and coordinating cyber policy 

is increasingly important. 

In addition, OMB has a critical task of reviewing all Federal regulations to ensure that these proposed regulations keep pace with 

modern technology, promote the changing needs of society, and 

avoid duplicative and inconsistent policies. 

And, as you know, Senator Boozman, my counterpart in the Senate, sent you a letter recently on the Department of Labor’s proposed fiduciary standard, because we believe the SEC should move 

first in any rulemaking in order to address the issues of duplication 

and any confusion that would surround different standards of care 

for broker-dealers and investment advisors. So we look forward to 

hearing from you on that timeline of the proposed rule—as well as 

public input. 

And, finally, let me say that the way that the administration 

works with the Corps of Engineers to pick these so-called new start 

projects is something that I am concerned about. Because, after 

three consecutive fiscal years with no new starts, the fiscal year 

2014 omnibus allowed the Corps to initiate a limited number of 

new studies and new construction projects, but, unfortunately, the 

administration’s mismanagement of the fiscal year 2014 funds led 

the need for this committee to include more stringent guidelines for 

fiscal year 2015 funds. 

And yet it looks to me like the administration has yet again disregarded the congressional recommendations and appears to have 

used their own budget metrics for choosing new start projects. And 

I will ask you a question later on this to shed some light on the 
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criteria the administration used in the selection of the four new 

starts in the 2015 workplan as well as the new starts for 2016. 

So, again, let me thank you for being with us today. I look forward to hearing your testimony. 

And before that, let me turn now to Ranking Member Serrano for 

any questions or comments he might have. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you, Chairman Crenshaw. I would like to 

join you in welcoming Shaun Donovan, Director of the Office of 

Management and Budget, to this hearing. 

OMB plays a unique role in preparing the President’s budget and 

in making sure that agency budget requests are consistent with the 

President’s priorities. In addition, OMB monitors the implementation of government programs by reviewing their performance; coordinates and reviews all significant Federal regulations; and oversees crosscutting, governmentwide issues like IT performance and 

procurement.

In all of these areas, OMB improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the Federal Government as a whole. Because of this, your 

budget request, while somewhat small compared to other agencies 

under our jurisdiction, has a wide-ranging impact. 

Your request for fiscal year 2016 totals $97.4 million. This includes a relatively small increase of $5.7 million to help ensure you 

have the personnel and the tools necessary to meet these numerous 

responsibilities.

The President’s fiscal year 2016 budget, prepared with your 

counsel, creates a strategic plan that strengthens our economy and 

invests in working families by improving access to early and higher 

education as well as affordable health care, investing in our infrastructure, and partnering with local communities and business to 

create good-paying jobs and affordable housing. I commend OMB 

for your role in these efforts. 

Additionally, OMB plays a pivotal role in ensuring our Federal 

agencies and employees have the resources needed to do their jobs. 

Because of the sequester, Federal employees have had to shoulder 

a large portion of the budget cuts, and many Federal workers have 

sought better opportunities in the private sector. I am particularly 

pleased that the President’s fiscal year 2016 budget seeks to end 

the sequester in order to fund strategic investments that strengthen our competitiveness in the global economy. 

I am also interested in hearing about the current progress being 

made on the implementation of the DATA Act and how this subcommittee can be of help in providing the resources necessary in 

order for OMB to effectively comply with the statute’s reporting requirements.

I hope we will have a chance to discuss all these issues in further 

detail today. Thank you for your service and for appearing before 

this subcommittee, and I look forward to hearing about your priorities for fiscal year 2016. 

Thank you. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Director Donovan, you are recognized for your testimony. If you 

could keep that within a 5-minute range, that will give us plenty 

of time for questions. The floor is yours. 
4

Mr. DONOVAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Serrano, members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to present the President’s 2016 budget request for the Office 

of Management and Budget. 

I want to first thank this subcommittee for its work on 2015 appropriations. Over the last 2 years, you have provided OMB with 

resources to halt the furloughs and staffing losses that threatened 

our ability to meet our responsibilities at the high standards that 

Congress expects. Restoring capacity allows us to deliver more 

value for taxpayers through improved program management, 

smarter regulations, and more identified opportunities for savings. 

The bipartisan Murray-Ryan agreement allowed for critical investment in shared discretionary priorities, not just at OMB but 

across government, and contributed to stronger growth and job 

market gains. That is why the President will not accept a budget 

that locks in sequestration going forward and he will not accept a 

budget that severs the vital link between our national security and 

our economic security. 

Instead, the President has proposed a budget that builds on our 

economic and fiscal progress and ends sequestration, fully reversing it for domestic priorities in 2016, matched by equal dollar increases for defense. These investments are fully paid for with 

smart spending cuts, program integrity measures, and commonsense loophole closures. The President’s request for OMB is $97.4 million, a 6 percent increase over 2015. OMB plays a pivotal part in executing the President’s management, regulatory, budget, and legislative agenda and 

ensuring that the Federal Government works at its best on behalf 

of those it serves. 

The request supports an additional 22 full-time equivalents, allowing us to deliver more value through improved program management, smarter regulations, and additional identified opportunities for efficiencies and budgetary savings. This includes dedicating 

resources to new statutory responsibilities and initiatives that provide critical returns to taxpayers and are key priorities for this 

subcommittee, such as DATA Act implementation, procurement reform, and our open-data initiatives. 

With the request, OMB staffing would still remain roughly 8 percent below 2010 levels. 

I would like to highlight one area of investment in support of the 

President’s management agenda in particular: the need for smarter 

IT delivery and stronger cybersecurity across government. 

OMB is requesting $35 billion for information technology oversight and reform, or ITOR, to support the use of data, analytics, 

and digital services to improve the effectiveness and security of 

government systems. 

Since the inception of ITOR, agencies have reported $21⁄2 billion

in cost savings and avoidance resulting from OMB’s enhanced oversight and reform efforts. OMB and ITOR resources support OMB’s 

central coordinating role under FISMA to ensure agencies are effectively responding to cyber events. And, last year, ITOR was used 

to pilot the U.S. Digital Service, which has already saved the agencies millions of dollars and assisted with many of our toughest digital challenges. 
5

The 2016 request enhances oversight of agencies’ cybersecurity 

preparedness and expands the central USDS team at OMB to support standing up digital service teams at 25 agencies across the 

government.

Our efforts to help deliver a smarter, more innovative, and more 

accountable government extend to our regulatory responsibilities, 

as well. The administrationis committed to an approach to regulation that promises economic growth, competitiveness, and innovation while protecting the health, welfare, and safety of Americans. 

We continue to make significant progress on the retrospective review of existing regulations, eliminating and streamlining regulations to reduce burden and cost. Since 2010, agency retrospective 

reviews have detailed over 500 initiatives, saving more than $20 

billion in the near term. This work will continue to be a major 

focus for OMB. 

The responsibilities I have described here are in addition to the 

work with agencies to prepare and execute the Federal budget. And 

while some people think only about OMB’s efforts on behalf of the 

President’s budget, members of this subcommittee knows that 

OMB works with Congress every day to provide information and 

analysis and to respond to contingencies and unforeseen circumstances.

I want to close by thanking you again for the opportunity to testify today. It is a particular honor for me to serve in this role given 

the critical role that OMB plays and the talented individuals who 

work there. Supporting OMB and the work we do to make government perform better for the American public will continue to be a 

smart and necessary investment, and I look forward to continuing 

to work closely with this subcommittee to that end. 

Thank you. I would be glad to take your questions. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, thank you. 

[The information follows:] 
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Mr. CRENSHAW. Let me start the questions by asking—I mentioned in my opening statement about the Department of Labor 

and fiduciary standards. And you know that Senator Boozman and 

I wrote you a letter expressing our concerns. We think that there 

may be some unintended consequences with the rule that might 

harm low- and middle-income folks that are seeking financial advice regarding their retirement. And I know you are reviewing that 

proposed regulation. Let me ask you a couple of questions about 

that.

Number one, how can you make sure that we are not going to 

duplicate or there are going to be inconsistent regulations with 

what the SEC already does? 

Number two, will there be an opportunity for the public to have 

input into these proposed rules? 

And, number three, just give us a timeline. Is there going to be 

adequate time—if there is going to be public input, can we be assured that there is going to be adequate time to listen to whatever 

that input is? 

Could you answer those three questions? 

Mr. DONOVAN. Sure. And, Mr. Chairman, as you know, when a 

rule is pending at OMB, I am limited to some extent on what I can 

say about the specifics of that rule. 

What I can say in response to your questions is that, first of all, 

Department of Labor has specific statutory responsibilities that are 

unique in this area. And so it is important that they move forward 

on rulemaking but to do it in a coordinated way. And, in fact, they 

have had extensive consultation with SEC, who has provided technical assistance in this process. And so they are coordinating closely.

Second, we will ensure that there is a chance for input. As you 

know, there was an original proposed rule in 2010. There was significant input there, and there will be an opportunity for input 

again on this as the proposed rule is published and goes through 

the public comment process. 

On the timeline, I can’t give you specifics about that at this 

point, but obviously we will work closely with you and this committee to make sure you stay apprised as we move forward. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, thank you. This subcommittee also oversees the SEC, and we will ask them the same kinds of questions. 

Because often times at the Federal level there are overlaps, duplications, inconsistencies. And it sounds to me like maybe they have 

started on the right foot to try to coordinate this, but we will monitor that as it goes on. 

Let me ask a broader question, just about your overall operating 

budget. In your 2015 budget, as I understand it, there is money 

that—you were going to hire 30 new folks by the end of this year. 

And in your 2016 request, there is money for another 22 new hires. 

And the question becomes, is that something you can absorb? I 

mean, in a 2-year period, you are going to hire 52 new people as 

well as replace the people that are working there now that might 

leave for whatever reason. Do you know the last time you hired 52 

new employees in a 2-year period, and do you think that is something you can absorb effectively and efficiently? 
14

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, it is an important question. And, to be very 

specific, as we have been rebuilding from sequestration, thanks to 

the investments from this committee, we have actually hired about 

100 people over the last 12 months. Now, a significant number of 

those actually account for attrition; there is natural turnover. But 

it gives you a sense that we certainly have the capacity and that 

we are very focused on moving forward to hire, given the resources 

this committee provides. 

And, in fact, since the so-called Cromnibus was passed in December, that has given us the certainty for this year, and we have further ramped up our efforts to try to bring on line the people that 

the budget you passed for 2015 allows us to hire. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, because I think you know as well as anyone that what they call the 302 allocation that we will receive, 

302(b)s, we don’t know exactly how much money that we will have 

available, but more than likely it is not going to be a whole lot 

more money than last year. It could be less than 1 percent. We 

don’t know that yet. 

But when you ask for a 6.2 percent increase, you must know that 

that stands out in these tough economic times. And maybe—help 

me understand why OMB, as a model of efficiency, would need that 

kind of increase in today’s world? 

Most of the members of this subcommittee—in fact, all the Members of Congress have had their office accounts reduced by about 

15 percent over the last 2 years in an effort to lead by example. 

And so I would hope that that is something you consider, in terms 

of leading by example, as well. 

Tell us what you think about the fact that in these tough economic times you still need a 6.2 percent increase in your funding. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, let me try to break down a little bit what 

that 6 percent would go to. 

Almost half of that increase is things like cost-of-living increases, 

rent changes that we pay to GSA. So it really is just inflationary 

effects on our budget is about half of it. 

Most of the remainder is going to implement new responsibilities 

that we have. The DATA Act, in particular, is probably the largest 

of those—legislation, obviously, passed on a bipartisan basis last 

year that we worked very closely with Congress on and, we believe, 

can lead to some real improvements in the way we account for government spending across the Federal Government. But we are implementing that now, and it takes significant resources to do that. 

But there are others, like cybersecurity—recent legislation that 

was passed that increases OMB’s authorities there—that are important that we carry forward; privacy; a few others, as well. 

A smaller share of the remainder is really going to continue to 

rebuild some of the capacity that was lost. And, again, that is, we 

think, important given the enormous effect that sequestration had 

on OMB. 

But, to be clear, we are not rebuilding the full capacity. We have 

made OMB more efficient. And we would still end up—even if we 

got 100 percent of that increase that we have asked for, we would 

still end up 8 percent below the staffing level that we had in 2010. 

So we think we have been able to find ways to become more efficient.
15

Just the last thing I would say on this is that OMB is not 

unique. The President has obviously proposed that we increase investment on the discretionary side. I think you said in your opening comments, as well, that—I think there is pretty broad recognition, the real challenges we have in the long-run fiscal picture are 

not on the discretionary side of our budget; they are on the mandatory side. 

And so the overall structure of our budget more than pays for 

any discretionary increases that we have by lifting sequestration. 

We, in fact, not only pay for it; we achieve $1.8 trillion in deficit 

reduction over 10 years overall, largely through changes on the 

mandatory side and on the tax side. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, thank you. 

And now I would like to recognize Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Director Donovan, you have made it clear that the President will 

not accept a budget that reverses our progress by locking in sequestration.

What do you mean by that? Given your unique viewpoint on the 

entire Federal Government, what do you predict would be some of 

the severe and negative consequences if it gets locked in? 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, first of all, as I mentioned earlier, OMB 

saw, both in its own budget and its own agency but also across government, perhaps better than any agency what the effects of sequestration were the first time around, whether it was the furloughs that we had to take at OMB but also at many other agencies, but, more importantly, tens of thousands of children who lost 

their access to early education, tens of thousands of veterans and 

others who were made homeless again by the cuts to programs for 

homelessness and housing vouchers, and a range of other areas, as 

well, cuts to research and development and other types of investments, education and training, that are critical to our economic 

growth going forward. 

And those are the same types of effects that we are concerned 

would happen if sequestration goes fully back into effect again in 

2016, which is what would happen if we don’t enact some sort of 

agreement like Murray-Ryan to lift those sequestration caps. 

Mr. SERRANO. Well, my next question, you basically answered 

part of it, but, you know, we need you on the record on this. 

OMB did take a big hit—8 furlough days, more than anyone else. How does the $5.7 million increase or 6.2 percent over the fiscal 

year 2015 repair some of the damage that has been done? 

And that is our big concern, not—you know, because people are 

going to talk about growing the budget. But some of these situations are not growing the budget; they are just trying to get back 

to where you were a couple of years ago. 

How could we repair some of it? 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, for an agency like OMB, where our single 

most important asset and the vast, vast majority of our budget goes 

toward is our people. They are our most important asset, where, 

obviously, our most important job is to provide the critical analysis 

and work that the government needs to function effectively and to 

save money where it can. And that is really driven, most of all, by 

our career staff. 
16

And we did see not only furloughs, but we saw a drop in staffing 

to the lowest level in many decades at OMB. Staff morale dropped. 

And so we would invest a very small amount in training and other 

things to get capacity back up. 

But the single most important thing is to restore at least some 

portion of the cuts in staffing that we saw. We are currently 12 

percent below the level of staffing that we had in 2010. And even 

if we got the full request that we have put forward, we would still 

be 8 percent below the staffing level that we had in 2010. So it restores a portion of but not the majority of those cuts. 

Mr. SERRANO. Let me ask you a quick question on information 

technology. The information technology reform and oversight program that you implemented, I could go through the details of, you 

know, the success stories, and you could tell us about it very quickly, but my bigger question is: It seems to me that one of the first 

questions I heard asked when I got on Appropriations a long time 

ago was about how far the Federal Government was lagging in the 

whole IT area. Why are we still having this discussion? You would 

think by now—is it that whatever progress we made now has become old progress because it keeps changing? Or is it that we never 

made the progress? 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, I think the good news here is that we have 

made progress with the investments that we have made. But I will 

also say there is still a significant distance to go. 

What we have seen is both the quality of the way government 

contracts and implements technology improving, whether it is just 

on the basics of acquiring software but also on cybersecurity. At the 

same time, we are seeing that costs are going down, really for the 

first time, that we have started to bend the cost curve, if you will, 

on implementing information technology. And this ITOR account 

has been particularly important in that way. 

Just one example. We do now a Portfolio Stat system, we call it, 

where we meet with every agency on a regular basis and go 

through every one of their significant IT investments and really examine are they on track or not. And that is done through a centralized team at OMB in our Chief Information Officer’s office at OMB. 

We have achieved, at this point, about $21⁄2 billion of savings just 

through those Portfolio Stat sessions. So it has been a very important step, I think, one of many steps, in starting to move toward 

a much more efficient and effective IT structure for government. 

Mr. SERRANO. All right. 

Just very briefly, because my time is up—and you might have 

answered the question, but I need to hear it again. Is it that every 

time we make progress in this area it gets old and we have to catch 

up again? Or is it that we never really did everything we were supposed to do? 

Because it seems to me that at times there were folks out in the 

community who have better equipment than the Federal Government has sitting on their desk, you know, in their den or in the 

living room. Why is that happening, and how scary is that? 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, certainly, in the cybersecurity area I think 

is the place that perhaps we ought to be most concerned about 

whether we are keeping up. And the truth is that the pace of 

change, if anything, has accelerated rather than slowing down, 
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and, therefore, it constantly requires us to move forward, to put in 

place new technologies and new advances. 

And that is an area where we have proposed, in fact, across the 

entire Federal budget, a significant increase in focus and responsibilities, not only a 10 percent increase to about $14 billion overall 

on cybersecurity, but also the creation that we just announced a 

few weeks ago of a new—we call it CTIC, Cyber Terror Information 

Center, that is really bringing together all of the intelligence that 

we have across the entire Federal Government to make sure that 

we are staying ahead of whatever attacks we may be seeing across 

both the private sector and the public sector. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Rigell. 

Mr. RIGELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Donovan, I appreciate you being here very much. And I just 

noted in your bio that ‘‘Mr. Donovan has committed his life to public service focused on good government and smart investment,’’ so 

we are starting out on common ground on that. So I appreciate 

your service. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Thank you. 

Mr. RIGELL. I would like to understand more about what the 

President is proposing in this budget as it relates to cutting inefficient spending. I am really tossing you a softball here, but I really 

do want to understand the position of the administration on spending generally. I sought this office because of how troubled I am 

about our Nation’s fiscal trajectory. Walk us through that, and let 

me see how convincing you are on this point. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, overall, the budget proposes more than 100 

different cuts, consolidations, efficiencies. Some of those are 

straight reductions or eliminations of programs, but we have also 

done a range of things in the budget—for example, where can we 

consolidate programs or even entire agencies, whether it is on food 

safety or a range of other areas? So I think we have taken a pretty 

comprehensive look at where we can find savings and consolidations that streamline government. 

I think, as we all know, what has been the single most important 

driver of our long-term fiscal challenges is really around, as the 

chairman said at the outset, the demographics that we are facing 

and, in particular, healthcare costs. 

Mr. RIGELL. Right. 

Mr. DONOVAN. And that is an area where the budget is particularly focused. Not only have we seen the slowest growth in 

healthcare costs over the last 3 years that we have seen in 50 

years, but the budget goes farther. It includes, for example, $400 

billion in additional reductions to Medicare and Medicaid as part 

of a broader strategy to try to make sure that we build on the improvements that we have seen in the growth of healthcare costs. 

The last thing I would just say is that—you know, we have 

talked about discretionary and mandatory spending. We also believe that we have to take a close look at wasteful spending in the 

Tax Code, as well. And so we have a broad range of areas where 

we are proposing to make changes to our Tax Code that not only 
18

have substantial savings going forward but also, frankly, would 

contribute to our economic growth. Because there are many places 

in the Tax Code that they not only aren’t producing revenues, but 

they are adding to the inefficiency of our economic picture and with 

changes could actually encourage economic growth, as well. 

Mr. RIGELL. Okay. 

I want to change the topic for a moment and then talk about sequestration. Lifting it, certainly to a great extent, if not entirely, 

particularly for me because of its impact on defense, is a priority. 

So I would like to understand, if we are not successful in that 

effort—and I am not conceding that we won’t be, but walk through 

how sequestration would affect your budget at your office, the office 

that you are leading there. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, I am relatively new in this role. What I can 

tell you is the effect that sequestration had in 2013 meant that we 

had to furlough a substantial number of workers, we completely 

froze hiring. And it meant that OMB was unable to respond as 

quickly or as effectively as we should have been to a broad range 

of situations, whether it was government shutdown or a range of 

other situations. 

But I think the more immediate and important impacts of sequestration can be felt in our military communities. Don’t take my 

word for it; the Joint Chiefs have spoken out, I think, very effectively over the last few weeks that our national security would be 

put at risk by a return to sequestration. 

Mr. RIGELL. I share that view. 

Mr. DONOVAN. And, on the other side, I think the President has 

also made clear, as has Ash Carter and many others, that we can’t 

protect our national security simply by investing in the defense 

budget. Just to take a few examples, veterans’ care is on the socalled nondefense side of our budget. The Department of Homeland 

Security, which is critical to protecting the homeland, is on the socalled nondefense side of the budget. 

So, in many ways, even if you just focus on national security, the 

ability to protect the homeland depends on lifting sequester both 

for the Defense Department and the nondefense side of the budget. 

Mr. RIGELL. Thank you for your testimony. 

I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Quigley. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thanks, Director, for being here today—— 

Mr. DONOVAN. Thank you. 

Mr. QUIGLEY [continuing]. And your work. 

O’Hare Airport, often the world’s busiest airport, going back and 

forth I think with Atlanta, and O’Hare modernization, the result of 

which, while critical to the economic engine which is O’Hare, has 

brought in a whole new level of complaints and noise issues for my 

constituents.

In the meantime, the FAA has done considerable work preparing 

to do a noise metric study, back to 65 DNL, established some 30 

years ago—rather arbitrary, not based on any scientific data. A lot 

of new science out there is talking about the long-term health ef-
19

fects of prolonged exposure to such noise. But the FAA needs your 

help, quite frankly, to move forward for this multiyear study. 

Can you tell us where we are on that potential analysis? 

Mr. DONOVAN. Yeah. Congressman, first of all, let me apologize 

if there has been some delay in finalizing this study. We are actively engaged with the FAA in reviewing it, as we speak, and I 

am hopeful that we can bring it to conclusion quite quickly in the 

next few weeks. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Well, I appreciate that. 

So, for people watching at home know, it is not just that they are 

going to make planes quieter. It has nothing to do that, necessarily, 

off the top. What it can do, though, is increase the availability, the 

areas in which noise-proofing is required for houses and schools 

and businesses in our districts, reducing the noise significantly. 

Let me switch topics here—transparency in government. We 

have a bill that we have introduced that addresses this, but let me 

make it relevant to you. Right now, you require agencies—that 

they post their budgets and their justifications on their own Web 

sites within 2 weeks of submission, I believe. OMB has a lot of data 

on its central Web site right now, and I think you have made great 

strides in that area. 

Budget summaries and numbers are available in a central location, but the budget justifications, the critical ‘‘why do they need 

this money’’ portion of the budgets, is still scattered across hundreds of government Web sites. These justifications are often not 

available in any sort of a searchable, sortable format. Many are in 

formats, such as a PDF, that are hard for third parties to easily 

pull data from and information. 

I think it is important that we have some sort of central repository for this that places all agency budgets and their justifications 

in the common searchable, sortable, and machine-readable format. 

Can you tell me a little bit about your office’s efforts to get this 

kind of data in one place, in one accessible, usable format, if possible?

Mr. DONOVAN. Sure. And I appreciate your focus on this because 

it is a very important subject that doesn’t get enough attention, I 

think, in terms of the ability to make information available. 

For ourselves at OMB, we made a big effort this year to have, 

for the first time ever, all of the numbers associated with the budget available in a way that we made public. And, in fact, we had 

some very interesting—I don’t know if I would call them apps, but 

outside companies, programmers, and others come in and use that 

in ways to make the, sort of, Federal budget understandable in a 

way that it had never been before. And we are quite excited by that 

possibility.

So we are already starting to think—and this is a helpful suggestion—in terms of other places we might look and where you think 

would be most useful going forward for our next budget presentation. So we will take that as a suggestion that we could work 

with your office on and come back to you with some specifics about 

sharing the budget justifications more directly. 

I guess the other thing I would say is this is an area where the 

President has been particularly focused more broadly because there 

is so much government information that we aren’t sharing as wide-
20

ly as we could. And, in fact, that information can be a huge economic advantage to the U.S. economy. If you think about weather 

data, for example, and the way that that has created whole industries in the United States, it really is an important part of our 

Open Government Initiative. 

We have put 75,000 data sets out into the public realm since the 

President came to office, and that number is accelerating with recent open government initiatives. And so this is an area where we 

would love to follow up and work with you more closely. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. We appreciate that. And our office would be glad 

to work with you. Thank you. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

I would like to now recognize Mr. Womack. 

Mr. WOMACK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And, Mr. Director—— 

Mr. DONOVAN. Good to see you. 

Mr. WOMACK. And good luck to the Crimson. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Thank you. 

Mr. WOMACK. They have a tall order. 

Mr. DONOVAN. They do. They do. 

Mr. WOMACK. And should they be victorious, they most likely 

will meet up with my Razorbacks. Of course, we have to beat 

Wofford.

The real winner—— 

Mr. DONOVAN. So you are saying you are rooting for the Crimson, 

it sounds like? 

Mr. WOMACK. Well—— 

Mr. DONOVAN. I think we might be the better choice, given the 

alternative.

Mr. WOMACK. I am going to pass on that one. 

The real winner is my chairman down here, though, because that 

tournament is being played—that round is being played in his 

hometown. So the economy of Jacksonville, I think, is going to benefit greatly. 

I am glad Mr. Quigley brought up the issue of transparency. I 

want to talk about that for just a minute and probably for the time 

that I have. 

In 2009, there was a memorandum circulated regarding the 

President’s position on transparency, and so I want to kind of delve 

into that a little bit and, maybe for my own benefit, understand. 

When the agencies across the spectrum submit their budget requests, you go through it, triage it, and then you send certain information back to the agencies. I understand those are called passbacks; is that right? 

Can you walk me through the process real quickly on how that 

works; if I am an agency and I send you my budget, what I get 

back and how different it might be from what I submitted? 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, typically, agencies are working over the 

summer to produce their initial budget proposals. We get those 

around Labor Day. And then we work—and it is a back-and-forth 

process. There is lots of interaction and meetings and discussion 

with the agencies. 
21

But then typically around Thanksgiving, we would so-called pass 

back to the agency a sort of marked up budget with our response, 

where we are obviously balancing, you know, funds we have available and different policy choices between agencies to make those 

decisions. And then there is a so-called appeal period where they 

would come back to us with any appeals they have of the passback.

Mr. WOMACK. Well, back to the question of transparency, is that 

not a transparent process? In other words, can the public not track 

how this give-and-take is going between the agency and the OMB, 

back and forth? Is there some way that it could work better, to put 

a little bit more sunlight on it so that people can understand how 

the end game is actually being created here? 

Mr. DONOVAN. Yeah, I guess two things I would say on that. It 

is a very interactive process over a long period of time, so I am 

not—I would have to think about whether there were particular 

pieces or moments that would be most useful in the process. 

But I also—there is a longstanding tradition that, sort of, stafflevel interactions, whether it is on the budget side, the regulatory 

side, agency decisionmaking, are not public to, sort of, protect the 

directness and the, sort of, productivity of those exchanges. 

So we do, obviously, make a lot of pieces public at the point that 

there are decisions made, but not all of the internal decisionmaking 

and back-and-forth is public. And I think I would have some concerns about making everything public, in the sense that it might 

hamper honest back-and-forth between the agencies and OMB at 

times.

Mr. WOMACK. I know you are kind of new in this, but given the 

way this process works, the way you do your budget and the way 

we do ours—and we have a Budget Committee markup on Wednesday—and I do appreciate your testimony before the Budget Committee earlier—is there a better way to do this? 

And are you optimistic that we are going to be able to come to 

some kind of agreement? Because the numbers do not really match 

up all that well. I mean, we are still not in the same universe. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Yeah. Well, look, we are anxiously awaiting what 

I think we will see on Wednesday, both in the House and the Senate, the initial budget resolutions. 

And I guess I would say what makes me at least somewhat optimistic is that, on a bipartisan basis, Congress came together and 

passed Murray-Ryan, which is really the model that I think our 

budget builds on, which is to say recognizing that, as we have 

talked about earlier, sequestration is not allowing us to make the 

investments that we need to and that in fact discretionary spending is not the driver of our deficits in the mid to long term, that 

we ought to replace sequestration with smarter cuts and ways to 

raise revenue on the discretionary and the tax side, because those 

are really the places that are driving our deficits long-term. 

And I think what makes me hopeful is that there has been bipartisan agreement on that, and I think there has been bipartisan— 

many folks speaking out, as we just heard on this committee, on 

a bipartisan basis that we ought to look at changing sequestration 

and making the investments that we need to. 
22

Mr. WOMACK. Well, as they say, the devil is in the details, on 

how we solve the sequestration issue. I will just say this, and I 

have said it before in the Budget hearings, and I will say it again 

for the record here: that we are not going to appreciably change the 

trajectory of the course we are on right now unless and until we 

deal with the mandatory side of spending. And that is just—mathematically and actuarially, that is the truth. 

Our entire Congress, both sides of the aisle, and in a bicameral 

way, is going to have to recognize the true drivers. I have this one 

chart, Mr. Chairman, that I refer to a lot, and I will refer to it 

when I go home and have my meetings with my constituency. That 

piece in the red is the mandatory piece of spending. And you can 

see the downward pressure that is having on all of our discretionary spending. 

The issues before us right now have a lot less to do with discretionary spending than they do with the mandatory side. 

And, with that, I will get off my soapbox and yield back. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Bishop. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Mr. Donovan, for your appearance here. 

I would like for you to take just a couple of minutes to discuss 

an issue that is heavy on my heart. The House rules for the 114th 

Congress requires the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation 

to adopt dynamic scoring. There are some of us and many economists who believe that dynamic scoring relies on uncertain assumptions about certain policy changes. 

Can you just take a moment to talk about the downside and/or 

the benefits, if you see any, of this change to dynamic scoring, particularly in the context of the critical analysis that CBO, the Joint 

Committee on Taxation and OMB have to employ in order to save 

the government money and to create efficiencies in government? 

Mr. DONOVAN. So I would really say two things about so-called 

dynamic scoring. The first is—and I think the biggest concern that 

I would have is that it takes what are really very, very uncertain 

effects and uses those to score bills in a way that, frankly, I think, 

makes the budgeting process less accurate, less reliable, less precise.

Just to give you one example, CBO at one point—and I would 

say, CBO does currently look at, kind of, dynamic effects and reports on those, and we think that is useful to have that additional 

analysis. But it doesn’t actually use it to directly score the bills. 

When they did try to estimate the impact of a straight, acrossthe-board tax cut, there was such a broad range of potential impacts that it actually ranged from a negative impact to a positive 

impact. In other words, they couldn’t even quite tell whether that 

straight, across-the-board change in taxes was going to help or hurt 

the economy on a macro basis. 

And I repeat that to sort of show the depth of the uncertainty 

of these effects. And we think, in that kind of context, it is not a 

good thing for budgeting to be building those directly in. 

The second thing I would say, and it really follows from the first, 

but that dynamic scoring is only looking, typically, at these effects 

on the tax side and not on the spending side. And so, for example, 
23

if education or investment in infrastructure or other things might 

have impacts on our long-run economic growth, those are typically 

not considered or included, whereas a change on the tax side might 

be.

So it tends, in the way it is usually implemented, to sort of tilt 

the playing field, if you will, towards tax-side changes and away 

from other critical investments that we need to make to help economic growth. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much for your thoughts on that. 

Can you discuss the increased responsibilities that OMB has had 

as a result of the cuts in staffing that you have had since 2010? 

What knowledge, experience, subject specialties are you most in 

need of as you hire new staff? Which program activities will the 

new staff be allocated to, and what kind of knowledge or technical 

gaps will there be? 

Do you have challenges recruiting and retaining employees? Do 

you have flexibility to adjust the salaries of starting employees at 

a higher pay rate? Can you provide recruitment and retention incentives like student-loan repayment, for example? Can you discuss 

also your diversity efforts in terms of the workforce in your agency? 

Mr. DONOVAN. So one of the critical things in OMB’s request this 

year for fiscal year 2016 is our focus on information technology that 

I talked about before. And, in particular, the single biggest area 

that we are focused on is the implementation of the DATA Act, 

which is a new set of responsibilities for us. It, if implemented correctly and with the right resources, I think, has the potential to 

make government more transparent—where we spend our money, 

how we spend our money. 

The effectiveness of Federal spending can be significantly improved if we implement the DATA Act correctly, but it is a major 

undertaking. And so what we have proposed in the budget is additional staff. And, also, a million dollars out of the increase that we 

have proposed is for contracting to implement the DATA Act correctly.

So that is the single most important of the new responsibilities, 

in terms of impact on OMB’s budget. I would also point to, though, 

increased responsibilities and focus on cybersecurity as an area 

that is very, very important, as well as the effectiveness of our digital services. 

We have seen, actually—and this really goes to your point about 

attracting talent into government. We have been able to attract 

some remarkably talented engineers from Google and Facebook and 

a range of other leading-edge technology companies to come in for 

a couple years to government service. And they are already dramatically improving the quality of the service that we provide. 

Just to give you one small example, three engineers from the 

Digital Service went to work on the Veterans’ Employment Service 

and their technology at the VA. Within 3 months, a cost of 

$175,000, they had done work that the VA had expected to spend 

$25 million on over many years. 

And that is just one small example of the way this kind of investment in the staff that really are at the leading edge of technology 

could help not only improve government service to our veterans 

and many others but also to reduce costs over the long term. 
24

Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Graves. 

Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Director, good to see you. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Good to see you. 

Mr. GRAVES. Thanks for being with us today. You have a big task 

ahead of you, I know. 

I wanted to follow up on some of the chairman’s comments in regards to the DOL fiduciary rule. I know he has been very active 

on this issue, and I wanted to share with you a little bit about my 

views on it and how it impacts constituents in my district. 

I come from a very modest district, not very affluent whatsoever. 

And this is a very important issue, I believe, to everyone but particularly in northwest Georgia. 

And it seems to me that the administration is somewhat talking 

out of both sides of its mouth. The President, in one aspect, is encouraging middle-income Americans to save for their future, which 

I wholeheartedly support and think that is a very good idea, and 

everyone should be saving for their future to take care of themselves and their family, but, at the same time, making it nearly impossible for them to do so by supporting this rule and making it 

impossible for small firms to assist low-income to middle-income 

families to save for their future. 

That creates a tremendous dilemma. In one aspect, you are punishing low- to middle-income earners and benefiting the wealthy. 

And that is not something that I think is being embraced whatsoever in my district. 

And so folks in my district, they need more than a computer 

interface to make their decisions. They really need face-to-face 

interaction.

So I guess for us and as a committee and a panel here, what 

commitment can you provide to us that will ensure that the DOL’s 

fiduciary rule does not disproportionately harm low- to middle-income IRA holders and small businesses throughout the country? 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, as I said earlier to the chairman, I am limited in the specifics that I can go into on the rule because it is 

pending at OMB at this point. 

Generally, what I can say is it is obviously very focused on 

achieving the right balance of making sure that consumers continue to have access to advice but also protecting them, frankly, 

from advice that would harm them and hurt their ability to save 

over the long run. 

As OMB does with all regulations, we will be looking very carefully at the cost-benefit analysis to make sure that there are significant benefits from the rule. 

And I would only ask that you look carefully at the rule as it 

comes out. I think you will see that we have learned a lot from the 

public input that we got on the 2010 proposal and that the rule, 

obviously, after we propose it, will be open for comment, and we 

will be listening to what the public has to say. 

Mr. GRAVES. Well, we will certainly look forward to that followup. And let me just suggest that I think it is really important 

that all consumers have the opportunity to have advice and that 
25

that shouldn’t be limited nor taken away from them. And I think 

citizens have the ability to discern good advice versus bad advice 

and that limiting that option altogether, though, would be harmful 

to all consumers if they don’t have ability to save for their futures. 

If I could follow up on one second point, just going back to a 

hearing you had previously—and I know Mr. Womack was a part 

of that, and other friends on the Budget Committee. And you were 

asked by one of the appropriators, as well, Mr. Cole, if OMB had 

done a full economic analysis of the proposed fiduciary rule. 

Where are you in that process of supplying the Budget Committee and maybe, to some extent, this committee with a full economic analysis of the rule? 

Mr. DONOVAN. So, again, I am not going to comment on the specifics of exactly where we are in the process. What I can say is 

that, as we publish the rule, as a rule for public comment, we will 

have significant analysis of the costs and benefits that we will 

make public. 

Mr. GRAVES. So you continue to maintain that there will be a full 

economic analysis of the proposed rule when the rule is submitted? 

Mr. DONOVAN. Like with any other rule, OMB is responsible for 

an economic analysis that includes costs and benefits that we make 

available and look forward to public comment on that. 

Mr. GRAVES. Okay. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Yoder. 

Mr. YODER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Director, thank you for your testimony today. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Thank you. 

Mr. YODER. I do want to echo my colleague Mr. Graves, and 

Chairman—Mr. Crenshaw’s comments regarding the fiduciary 

standards, and I hope that you will do all that you can to ensure 

that we do a cost-benefit analysis, that we ensure that small- and 

medium-sized advisors—this doesn’t unnecessarily impact those 

folks locally who are trying to ensure that my constituents have 

every opportunity to invest and grow their retirement funds, that 

they don’t lose those options, and we don’t actually cut against the 

very purpose of the stated rule. So I just echo their comments and 

hope that you will know that many of us are concerned about the 

impact on regular folks at home and those advisors who are small 

folks in our districts. 

I wanted to also continue the conversation you were having with 

Mr. Womack regarding the budget projections, the administration’s 

plans to cure long-term structural deficits, and what your thoughts 

may be on how we can work together to solve some of the great 

fiscal challenges plaguing Washington, D.C. And I think no matter 

what party you are in, certainly we have to be aware that our 

country is in a deep well when it comes to our national debt, and 

that it continues to grow. And I think only in Washington, D.C. 

would folks pat themselves on the back when the deficit is only a 

half a trillion dollars a year. 

We know it has been much higher than that. It was over one trillion, closer to one and a half trillion when I came into Congress 

and many of—Mr. Womack and many others in my class came into 
26

Congress. And so progress may be occurring, but we are certainly 

nowhere where we need to be, and it looks like it may get worse 

over the next years. CBO’s most recent 10-year forecast projects 

the deficit will be more than $1 trillion again before 2025, and the 

national debt will be over $27.3 trillion. 

I have asked repeatedly in meetings at home, and roundtables, 

and town halls, how many Americans or how many people in the 

room would like to see the deficit go to $27 trillion. Strangely, not 

one hand goes up. And so the entire country doesn’t like the direction we are taking fiscally in this country, and don’t like the projections that are before us. 

And so I guess when looking at the President’s budget submission and as we get ready to work on ours this week, what is the 

administration’s position? Does their budget ever balance, and at 

what point—in what year does it balance? 

Mr. DONOVAN. So the aim that our budget had, which has been 

consistent throughout the President’s term, is to meet two key fiscal tests. First, that we bring deficits below 3 percent of GDP, 

which is widely recognized as the right fiscal standard, and in fact, 

is well below the average of our deficits over the last 40 years. Our 

budget would do that in every one of the 10 years of the window. 

Second, it takes what is currently, and you just referred to this, 

CBO shows debt increasing as a share of GDP, to stabilize that 

debt and start to bring it down over the 10-year window. Our budget achieves that goal as well. It is a total of about $1.8 trillion in 

savings, and it really does it through three key areas: healthcare 

savings, which is the single most important thing that we can do 

to drive down our deficits long term; second, looking for ways to 

change our tax code to lower our wasteful spending in our tax code; 

and, third, immigration reform. In fact, one of our big challenges, 

to go to the chairman’s point at the outset, is our demographic 

challenge.

We have over time more and more retirees per worker in the 

country, and immigration reform is one of the most important 

things we can do to start to rebalance those demographics. CBO 

says that immigration reform would save almost $1 trillion over 20 

years, and even more in the out years. And so those are the three 

key strategies we would pursue. 

Mr. YODER. Well, and I appreciate the President submitting his 

budget on time and putting ideas on the table. I do think, and I 

agree with my colleague Mr. Womack, that the elephant in the 

room, or the issue that is being ignored continues to be the mandatory spending. And it doesn’t just have an impact on the deficits 

as they continue to grow. And I notice you say in a quote just this 

week, ‘‘The President’s budget provides official projections for 

spending, revenues, deficit, and debt with the 10 years, reflecting 

the President’s proposed policies, including ending sequestration, 

investing in growth opportunity, and reducing deficits and debt.’’ 

And I think the deficits don’t—they don’t see a reduction in terms 

of GDP. I think you may be correct in terms of historic averages, 

but we continue to increase that debt nearing $25, $26, $27 trillion. 

So even with those sort of rosy projections, I do believe our deficits 

continue to grow. 
27

And so I think that is a bit of a misstatement. And it goes to the 

point that Mr. Womack is making regarding mandatory spending. 

It has an impact just not only on deficits as a whole and our debt 

as a whole, but it has an impact on where we invest. And I note 

that if you look to the 1960s, we were spending 32 cents out of 

every dollar on investments and only 14 cents out of every dollar 

on entitlements. Yet when you get to 2030, that number, by some 

estimates, is 61 cents out of every Federal dollar. So I think whether you are a fiscal conservative and you are concerned about the 

debt and the interest payments that Americans will be paying, and 

by some estimates $1 trillion a year by the end of the next decade 

just in interest payments alone, we all should be concerned about 

that.

But regardless, if you want to invest in education or transportation or research, that won’t occur when that group of entitlement 

spending continues to grow at such a rapid rate. And so, I would 

look further in the questioning today and in the President’s efforts 

to address that topic for your statements to really take that on because it is something that we are going to have to work on with 

both parties. 

Mr. DONOVAN. And let me—I think I was agreeing with you that 

mandatory spending is critical, and in fact healthcare costs and— 

and really making progress on healthcare costs is the single-most 

important piece of bringing down mandatory spending, and, in fact, 

I think the good news there is that over the last few years, because 

of the improvements that we have seen, partly due to the Affordable Care Act, CBO now projects we are going to spend over $200 

billion less in 2020 on Medicare and Medicaid than they thought 

just a few years ago. And so continuing to push in that direction, 

particularly on healthcare spending, is the single-most important 

thing we can do—— 

Mr. YODER. Well, I think we would all—Mr. Chairman, I will 

wrap up my questions here—I think we would all agree it continues to balloon in an out-of-control way that cannot be sustained. 

And so while we appreciate the President’s submission, we have a 

long way to go, and in order to get relief on sequestration and in 

order to invest in other priorities, we are going to have to still continue to find ways to reduce our mandatory spending because it is 

going to impact everything we do in this town. 

And with that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. And, members, I think we have time 

for another question—round of questions if you have them, and I 

do. And I would like to start—I mentioned in my opening statement about the Corps of Engineers and how they do studies and 

we call them New Starts, and then your agency is tasked with 

choosing which New Starts to move forward with. 

And before you got where you are, there had been some series 

of mismanagement, in 2014, about which projects were meeting 

qualifications, what the standards were. And so this Appropriations 

Committee got involved in 2015 and put in what I would say are 

pretty reasonable goals and guidelines as to how you go about picking those projects that are eligible as New Starts. But it appeared 

that in 2015 you didn’t really look at all the new guidelines that 

were put in place and kind of used your basic budget guidelines. 
28

So tell us how, like, for instance, in 2016 what kind of standards, 

guidelines, are you going to use in terms of picking New Starts? 

Mr. DONOVAN. So just to start, Mr. Chairman, this is an area 

where the Army Corps has lead responsibility. We provide oversight, as we do with most agencies around the Federal Government, but it really is the Army Corps’ methodology and their decisionmaking. What they are using, and our understanding, and certainly we could follow up to discuss this further with you if 

youwould like, is that they did incorporate all of the requirements 

of the law from 2015 in their decisionmaking. 

What they have done is to, given the very limited number of 

starts for—pick the projects that provided the highest cost-benefit 

return based on the methodology they used. And as I said, I 

think—from our perspective, they did incorporate the 2015 requirements as they did those reviews. 

So at this point we don’t have any plans to have a different 

methodology for 2016, but, again, we would be happy to follow up 

with you both to discuss this more broadly and also, as we talked 

about before, the specifics of how we could work with the Jacksonville Port to ensure that they have a project that has the potential 

to be more cost effective based on the way the Army Corps looks 

at it. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. I just want to be sure—as you point out, there 

are a lot of ports around the country, including JAXPORT, which 

is my district in Jacksonville, Florida. They rely heavily on designation as a New Start. And I would encourage you all, maybe the 

Corps as well, to—the cost-benefit analysis is just one of the four 

or five criteria that were laid out in the omnibus last year, and 

want to encourage you to make sure you look at all of those criteria.

And then also you mentioned the Jacksonville port. Do you, for 

instance, give recommendations? Do you give guidance to a port 

like that that didn’t become eligible for a New Start, as a how they 

might better—as you look at the criteria maybe help them understand where they could do better under those guidelines? 

Mr. DONOVAN. We would be happy to do that. The Army Corps 

is the best sort of place to be able to give that kind of feedback, 

but we often will do that with the Army Corps to make sure that 

we understand places where it can—a project can improve in terms 

of its scoring in cost-benefit analysis. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Because that is why this committee set forward 

those guidelines, so that they would all be considered. And we just 

want to be sure that they are following through on what this Appropriations Committee has decided to do. 

Let me ask you—a lot of people have talked about IT. Mr. 

Serrano had a question on this, Mr. Bishop talked about it, and we 

have appropriated money so you can have the oversight and reforms. And by most accounts, the administration has done a pretty 

good job. You have had some successes, as I mentioned in my opening statement, and I was reading that maybe you can report savings or avoiding over almost $3 billion in IT costs. 

But I was reading also this analysis that was done by what they 

call the International Association of IT Asset Managers, and they 

found that Federal agencies spend about $36,000 per Federal em-
29

ployee to make sure that all this IT works well, and the private 

sector spends about $5,000 per employee. And in your request you 

have got $15 million. That will bring the total for IT up to $35 million. And that is a pretty big increase. It might be difficult for us 

to maybe provide you those funds. 

But it is clear that just spending more money, you would know, 

we all agree, just spending more money doesn’t solve the problems. 

And you have talked a lot about the bright smart people you have 

coming, but if you look at the numbers, you are asking for 71 additional staff. That is a huge increase. I mean, you have got 41 people, as I understand it now, and so you add 71, you have had a 

200 percent increase in the staffing. 

And I know you have responsibilities, but if you are finding these 

bright smart folks that can come in, then do you really need all 

that many people, if you can find bright smart people, that that 

might be better than having a whole lot of people that aren’t as 

bright and smart as that handful that you are looking for. So tell 

us about that. Because that is a pretty big increase in—and I know 

you are doing better, but 200 percent in one year, that is a lot— 

that is a big increase. Tell us about that. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, first of all, what I would say is I think it 

is very important to look at this in perspective of the over $80 billion that we spend a year in the Federal Government on IT, and 

frankly, the thousands and thousands of people who work on IT 

across the Federal Government. 

What we are talking about, because you are looking at it just as 

part of this sort of ITOR category, it is a substantial increase. We 

think it is justified because the early results from what we have 

been doing on ITOR have had real positive impacts and much bigger cost savings. I talked about this USDS example, $25 million in 

savings from $175,000 of time and investment spent by the team. 

So we actually think this can have a big, big impact on savings. 

And, in fact, we have already started to see, if you look at contracting costs, those costs start to come down, really, for the first 

time in more than a decade. And so I think we are making progress 

in those places. 

One of the things, frankly, that we have learned and that we are 

starting to implement on the IT side, that we have learned from 

the private sector, is the way that they manage their IT. And part 

of the problem, frankly, is that we act too much right now like 

many, many different agencies as opposed to one Federal Government. The number of licenses we have on particular software products, the way that we buy our hardware, whether it is, you know, 

laptops or desktops or hand-helds, we buy them often with multiple 

contracts across many agencies as opposed to a single Federal Government, where we can really get the economies of scale. And so 

one of the things that we are implementing with these new resources would be a significant expansion of what we call category 

management.

It is a strategy that the private sector uses extensively. In fact, 

the U.K. Has recently put it into effect. They are already saving 

between 10 and 15 percent on their contracting costs in IT. And we 

think it is a very promising direction to go, to take what we are 

currently doing and expand it significantly. We would be happy to 
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talk to you more about the specifics of that, but we really do think 

we have the potential to drive the way the Federal Government 

uses IT to a much better place much closer to the private sector 

with these investments. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, as I asked you earlier about the—on the 

operating side you want to hire 52 new people in this 2-year span. 

Here you are going to hire 71 new people in 1 year. Is that possible? Can you go find 71 folks that—in a year that are going to 

do the things you need to do? 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, the large majority of those would be through 

this digital service model, where they are coming in for 2 years. 

And what we have seen, frankly, and we have—we could show you 

a list of names at this point, the demand is—surprised even us, 

and this is why we felt like we needed to jump on it. Because we 

have been able to do extensive recruiting, and to really get fantastic talent from tech companies, this felt like an opportunity to 

scale it up quickly because of the interest that we are seeing. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In fiscal year 2015, the 

omnibus incorporated report language directed funds be made 

available for additional permanent staff within the Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator. This was done to address a concern that especially in periods such as the one we just 

experienced, when there is no confirmed head of the office in place, 

important work like coordinating voluntary efforts to reduce online 

copyright infringement goes by the wayside. 

What progress have you made in staffing up this office? This was 

a concern of this committee last year. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, I am very happy to report that Danny 

Marti, our coordinator, was confirmed by the Senate last week, and 

I don’t actually have a start date for Danny. I don’t know if anybody else does, but we are hoping he starts very quickly to be able 

to lead that office. 

We also do have included in our request for 2016 a very small 

number of staff for that office to be able to increase the focus that 

we have on privacy issues. Obviously, the work that we have both 

on infringement of intellectual property, but also protecting the privacy of that property is very, very important. And that is an area 

where we think we need to focus as well. 

Mr. SERRANO. Now, are you getting a pushback from anywhere 

in private industry or any other place or in government itself, in 

order to carry this out? Because this is a very important task. 

Mr. DONOVAN. It is. And Congressman, as you know, there can 

be tensions in the steps that we take to protect Americans, whether 

it is on cybersecurity or in other areas, and authorities that may— 

law enforcement agencies may wish to pursue with our efforts to 

balance that with protection of privacy for American citizens, for 

our companies, and otherwise. And so this is an area where we are 

constantly looking at and making sure that—and this is one of the 

reasons why OMB’s role is so important as we sort of—our classic 

role is to have oversight and sort of to balance the industry—the 

interests of agencies across the Federal Government. This is an 
31

area where we do have to sort of work through the potential conflicts that there may be between security and privacy at times. 

Mr. SERRANO. Let me ask you a question that may not affect you 

at all, but maybe you could give the committee a sense of where 

this is going to play out or how it is going to play out. 

For over 50 years we have had this policy on Cuba which seems 

to be thawing now, and I certainly have been on the side of ending 

it totally. One of the issues that doesn’t get any attention is the 

fact that for over 50 years people have been dancing in this country 

and singing songs, and other artwork has been looked at that has 

been put together in Cuba years ago, and not a penny because of 

the relationship in royalties, went to any Cuban artists or their estate or their relatives or whatever. Is that something government 

will be involved eventually if somebody lays a claim to that? Or is 

that the, you know, ASCAP and the Association of Songwriters and 

Composers? Because every time you hear Mambo Kings or whatever, watch it on TV, no one got a penny in Cuba for that money— 

or for that music. 

Mr. DONOVAN. You know, it is a fascinating question. I am a big 

fan of the Buena Vista Social Club and a range of other sort of rediscovery of Cuban music. But the truth is I honestly don’t have 

a clear answer on that. What I would love to do is get back to you. 

More generally, I can say that a lot of our efforts on trade, for 

example, are focused on trying to make sure that there are enforceable protections for our intellectual property in other countries. 

And so I would definitely imagine that this will be a focus of our 

negotiations and discussions going forward, but I can’t tell you specifically the effect on music. And I would be happy to ask my staff 

to follow up and figure it out and get back to you. 

Mr. SERRANO. Sure. And the part I would like to know is really 

will government play a role—will our government play a role at all 

or will this be left over to the, you know, to the music associations 

and so on—because we are talking about a lot of money. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Yep. 

Mr. SERRANO. A lot of money going into the Cuban economy, if 

you will. Anything new that you can tell me on that note? 

Mr. DONOVAN. March 23 Danny Marti will be starting as our intellectual property enforcement coordinator. 

Mr. SERRANO. That is great. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Exciting news for us. 

Mr. SERRANO. That is great. 

Let me just ask you a question. On OMB’s retrospective regu- latory review of look-backs has created a savings of more than $20 

billion and calculated net benefits of $200 billion. Tell us more 

about this work, because this is an area where there are large 

numbers, and it seems like a small question, but the numbers indicate that it is a more important question than we would think. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, early on in the administration the President 

asked OMB, and specifically our Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, OIRA, to work with agencies to take outdated or ineffective regulations, either take them off the books or change them 

so that we could save money for American consumers or businesses, State and local governments, and improve the way regulation works. And what we have seen out of that is about 500 dif-
32

ferent completed initiatives from agencies that, as you said, in the 

short run saves about $20 billion and over the longer run substantially more than that. 

Since I started last summer, we have redoubled our efforts on 

that. We have engaged with all the agencies across the Federal 

Government. We have also gone out to stakeholders and asked 

them the places where they think we could make the most progress 

on this regulatory look-back. And we are finding, whether it is 

things like improving the lives of truckers across the country by 

limiting their paperwork and the way that they have to report, to 

a range of other areas that in individual terms may not be huge 

things that will end up on the front page of newspapers, but when 

you look at them all together, they are having a real impact on the 

everyday lives of Americans. 

And I think this is something the President is very excited about, 

and we are going to—you will see more of this, literally, in the 

coming days. We will have more reports out from agencies on the 

next stage in this regulatory look-back to improve the way we regulate.

Mr. SERRANO. That is great. 

So Chairman, let me end by making more of a statement than 

a question, although I want you to keep it in mind, Mr. Director. 

But going back to Cuba again, another issue that is really important, in my understanding, and I have no documented proof, is that 

when we broke relations over 50 years ago, there were a couple 

hundred if not over 1,000 Cubans who went daily to work at Guantanamo base, and then they would come back into the other Cuba, 

if you will. Most of those people, or a lot of them, might be dead. 

Some may be alive. Some spouses may be alive. Something tells me 

these were Federal workers. Obviously, they worked for us. Something tells me not a penny of pension was ever paid, you know, and 

this is again another issue that as we begin to thaw out this relationship, so that we may have to pay attention to all of these 

things because there are a lot of dollars that was supposed to be 

in Cuba that are not there now. And I know a lot of people will 

oppose that, saying: Oh, no, no. Not a penny, but, you know, why 

do I suspect that not a single person got a pension from the Federal Government after we broke relations? Keep that in mind. 

Thank you. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. I think there is a lot of unanswered questions 

about that whole issue, including the claims that a lot of folks have 

against the Government of Cuba. 

Mr. SERRANO. Exactly. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. So that will all, I am sure, get washed out. 

Mr. Womack, do you have any other questions? 

Mr. WOMACK. Just a couple of final things. 

First of all, Director, thank you again for your testimony today. 

I want to talk about the do-not-pay portal for just a moment, designed to reduce and eliminate improper payments—I think it is a 

great idea. Frankly, I am a little surprised that more people are 

not talking about it. I know it is low-hanging fruit, but I think it 

is a step in the right direction for the office. 
33

Regarding do not pay, I understand that it has not received guidance on contracting with third party private-sector businesses. Is 

there a reason that is taking so long? 

Mr. DONOVAN. To be honest, I am not—I can’t answer that question directly. I would be happy to work with my team and—— 

Mr. WOMACK. I would like to have—— 

Mr. DONOVAN [continuing]. Get back to you, yep. 

[The information follows:] 

As a matter of copyright law, foreign songwriters whose music is played on overthe-air broadcasts in the United States, for example, are generally entitled to be 

paid for those performances. These payments may be collected by collective management organizations (CMOs) in the U.S., and with respect to foreign rights holders, 

those funds may be distributed via reciprocal arrangements with a foreign-based collective management society. We understand that there is at least one such group 

in Cuba. As a result of the present day embargo on Cuba, however, it is our understanding that U.S.-based CMOs may not be able to enter into reciprocal agreements 

with their Cuban counter-part(s), and vice-versa, and as a result, rights holders in 

both countries may face certain difficulties in effective licensing and royalty collection at the present time. As our relationship with Cuba evolves, and trade normalizes over time, we will need to review how the systems work and how best to support reciprocal arrangements for the effective licensing of music between the U.S. 

and Cuba. 

Mr. WOMACK. I would like to have that. And then finally, early 

in your testimony when discussing sequestration, and we all have 

our opinions about sequestration, but you made a comment that 

just kind of sticks with me. You said, and if I didn’t understand 

this right please correct me, but you talked about how from a personnel standpoint the office became much more efficient, that you 

learned to practice some kind of efficiency. That is kind of what 

stuck in my head. And I assume that was regarding Federal agencies across the spectrum, or maybe it was just confined to OMB, 

I don’t know. 

But if that is true, then how can we be so against a concept like 

the Budget Control Act that was designed to account for the raising 

of the debt ceiling and to cut dollar for dollar certain types of Federal spending? Why did it take sequestration to force the Federal 

Government to practice efficiency? As you know, I am an ex-mayor, 

and every day that I went to work as mayor I looked for ways to 

force the people that worked within the city’s infrastructure, that 

I had jurisdiction over, to find a way to do the things that we were 

supposed to do and get the very best value for it. 

Now, I know the Federal Government is a much bigger entity 

than the city of Rogers, Arkansas, but why did it take sequestration to force the Federal Government to practice efficiency? 

Mr. DONOVAN. Well, I guess if I either said that or implied it 

through my comments, then it wasn’t what I intended, because I 

think my view would be that the opposite is true, that the problem 

with sequestration was that—— 

Mr. WOMACK. Well, you said that you learned through the sequester, that first year of sequestration, before Ryan-Murray, that 

you learned—the Federal Government learned to be more efficient 

from a personnel standpoint. 

Mr. DONOVAN. I think over a number of years we have found 

places within OMB to be able to make adjustments and to be more 

efficient in certain areas. We have other areas where we have 

grown and we actually need to grow because we have greater re-
34

sponsibilities. I think the problem with sequestration is that it was 

these kind of mindless across-the-board cuts as opposed to smarter 

cuts.

In really picking areas to focus on, that we should be growing, 

and other areas that we should be shrinking, and so the effects 

that we saw directly from sequestration really were to cut things 

that made sense to cut and cut things that didn’t make sense to 

cut, and in fact, more of the latter rather than the former. And so 

I think the impacts that we saw—and I can certainly talk about 

it from the HUD point of view was, you know, veterans ending up 

back on the streets even though we knew that was going to cost 

us more money in the long run and a range of other things that 

really were both—had bad human consequences but also bad fiscal 

consequences.

I think the right way to make cuts is to do it in a measured, 

thoughtful way that really, you know, takes out of the system inefficiencies. But the problem with sequestration is that it was not 

that kind of approach. It was kind of this across-the-board approach that really did hurt the government’s ability to function effectively.

Mr. WOMACK. Well, to that, we will agree. I am a big believer 

that the sequestration is a mindless approach, a lazy man’s way to 

effect some kind of budgeting outcome when it should be a much 

more targeted, much more thoughtful, much more tactical approach 

to cutting spending. 

But I will say this at the risk of sounding like a broken record— 

I continue to say it over and over again—if we think that we are 

going to—if our goal is to convince the American public that we are 

going to achieve some kind of fiscal sanity, if you will, only on the 

discretionary side of the budget, the public is going to be terribly 

misled, we will woefully disappoint them, because it simply is not 

going to happen under the construct that we have today. 

And with that, Mr. Chairman—— 

Mr. DONOVAN. We can agree on that as well. 

Mr. WOMACK. And I thank the director again for his testimony 

here today. 

Mr. DONOVAN. Thank you. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. And Mr. Serrano, I think, has no further questions. I don’t have any further questions. 

So we want to thank you for taking the time to be here. Thank 

you for your testimony. And you have got a big job, and we wish 

you the best as we go through this appropriation season and the 

budgeting season, and again thank you for your service. 

This meeting is adjourned. 
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TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 2015.

GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION 

WITNESS

DENISE TURNER ROTH, ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, this meeting will come to order. I want to 

welcome everyone. And just to let you-all know, this is a busy time 

for the appropriators. I just came from a Defense Appropriation 

Subcommittee hearing, which is still going on, and I imagine a lot 

of the members on both sides of the aisle are in the middle of other 

meetings, so they may be coming and going during our time together, but we will see. 

But I want to wish everybody a happy St. Patrick’s Day. I think 

everybody is somewhat blinded by the green tie that my ranking 

member is wearing. 

Mr. SERRANO. O’Serrano. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. O’Serrano. Welcome everyone. I want to welcome 

Acting Administrator Roth to the hearing today. You have been on 

the job now for a little less than a month? 

Ms. ROTH. Yes, yes. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. But who is counting? We are happy to have you 

before the subcommittee today. 

Ms. ROTH. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. The General Services Administration is often referred to as the Federal Government’s landlord, but the GSA’s mission goes well beyond providing office space and managing property. Agencies across the Federal Government rely on GSA to assist 

in their procurement and their acquisition needs. They depend on 

the GSA to deliver effective and economical technological solutions, 

and in a time of shrinking budgets and scarce resources, we think 

your role is all the more important, and we on the committee expect you to be a leader in finding savings and driving efficiencies 

in your own budget. 

The subcommittee has pressed the GSA to make better use of its 

existing portfolio of buildings and shrink the Federal footprint 

through a reduction into GSA’s inventory of leased and owned land. 

Now, you know, in the last several years, we have seen a reduction 

in staffing across the Federal Government, so it follows that we 

should see a reduction in space requirement. The 2015 omnibus 

provided you with $70 million for space consolidation activities, and 

I look forward to hearing from you today on how you intend to use 

the funding to shrink the GSA building inventory, particularly in 

regard to the many vacant and underused buildings in your portfolio.
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Now, your 2016 request has an increase of 1.13 billion over fiscal year 2015 in the Federal buildings fund, and that is $560 million 

more than the rental payments that you receive. I understand you 

want to provide a level of service that your customers are paying 

for, but a 12 percent increase to construct new buildings and perform maintenance may be a little bit unrealistic in these difficult 

fiscal times. We have a responsibility to the American taxpayer to 

be judicious, and deliberate, and that is their tax dollars, and so 

we want to make sure that you only budget for the highest priority 

projects and not merely match your budget with the level of rent 

that you collect. 

Remember, the Federal Government is your customer, but your 

investor is the U.S. taxpayer, and your job is to be as good a steward of the taxpayer dollars as you can. This is the first time in 

many years that GSA has submitted a 5-year capital investment 

plan, and I think that is an important step forward in managing 

the portfolio in a more prudent and productive way. That will provide more transparency to stakeholders and taxpayers, and I am 

curious to learn about what additional benefit you believe is derived from requesting an advance appropriations of nearly $10 billion for fiscal year 2017. 

So once again, welcome to you, Acting Administrator Roth, appreciate your service, and look forward to your testimony. So now 

I would like to recognize the man in the green tie, Mr. Serrano for 

any opening statement he might like to make. 

Mr. SERRANO. My tweak this morning, Mr. Chairman, was that 

growing up in New York, I learned one thing, that on this day, we 

are all Irish. So that is a big party down there as you know and 

everywhere else. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to join you in welcoming 

the Acting Administrator of the General Services Administration, 

Denise Turner Roth, before our subcommittee. With the recent departure of GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini, the GSA is entering a time of transition, and Ms. Roth is leading the way. 

The GSA has undergone significant change in the past few years. 

Some in response to scandal, and some in response to the changing 

needs of the Federal Government. The budget request for the General Services Administration in fiscal year 2016 attempts to continue these changes while providing some much-needed investment 

in federally-owned facilities around the Nation. This year, GSA 

proposes significant new construction and repairs and alterations, 

including several significant repair projects in my hometown of 

New York. However, this new construction pales in comparison to 

the amount spent on the rental of space by the Federal Government. As many of you know, I have concerns about our efforts to 

ensure a better balance between leased and owned properties, so 

I hope to discuss this with you further today. 

However, GSA is not just asking for appropriations for this fiscal 

year. The request also asks for significant advance appropriations 

which this committee has found problematic in other areas in the 

past. Given the current climate here, I think it will be difficult to 

fulfill that request. I would also be interested in discussing with 

you the ongoing problems that the Puerto Rico Federal Courthouse 

project in San Juan has been experiencing with their renovation 
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project. I know that there have been efforts to get the project back 

on line in terms of the timeframe and cost, but I remain troubled 

that this project has gotten so off track. 

Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not mention the specter of sequestration that is once again looming over us. GSA was badly 

hurt by sequestration last time, with significant construction and 

repair projects left languishing. This in turn hurt private sector job 

growth since many companies that otherwise would have contracted with the Federal Government were unable to do so. 

I hope that we can find a sequester solution that avoids these 

harsh problems and continues our economic growth. As I said last 

year, GSA is the Federal Government’s landlord, architect, facilities manager, procurer, and supplier. In all of these diverse roles, 

GSA plays a critical role in ensuring government efficiency and effectiveness. I look forward to discussing how your fiscal 2016 budget accomplishes these goals, and I know you have all our answers 

gathered in this last month. 

Ms. ROTH. Yes. Thank you. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. And so Acting General Services Administrator Roth—— 

Ms. ROTH. Yes. 

Mr. CRENSHAW [continuing]. We look forward to hearing your 

testimony. If you could keep it in the range of 5 minutes. Your full 

testimony will be submitted for the record, but the floor is yours. 

Welcome.

Ms. ROTH. Thank you, sir. I appreciate being here. Good morning, Chairman Crenshaw, Ranking Member Serrano, and members 

of the committee. My name is Denise Turner Roth, and I am honored to be here today serving as the Acting Administrator of the 

U.S. General Services Administration. Over the past year, I helped 

implement many of the changes and reforms. We have refocused 

GSA on its core mission. We remain committed to delivering the 

best value in real estate, acquisition, and technology services to the 

government and the American people. 

In participation with you, I will remain dedicated to building on 

the progress GSA has made. While we are proud of our progress, 

GSA still faces significant challenges. For the past 5 fiscal years, 

the vital link between the rent GSA collects and the amount GSA 

can reinvest into our assets has been broken. To properly maintain 

the Nation’s public buildings and to make critical infrastructure investments, we need to restore this balance. 

Today I would like to highlight GSA’s efforts to provide greater 

transparency, efficiency, and savings through the commonsense investments proposed in GSA’s fiscal year 2016 budget request. We 

have developed a long-term plan for investment that outlines priorities for renovations and new construction, including courthouses 

and land ports of entry. These projects are spread across the Nation covering 32 states from Florida to Alaska. However, executing 

this plan is not possible without stable funding. GSA’s fiscal year 

2016 request allows us to start delivering on this long-term capital 

plan.

In addition, we have a request for advanced funding of the Federal Buildings Fund for 2017. We are also requesting to invest 
58

$564 million from previous rent collections in support of our infrastructure priorities. In fiscal year 2016, GSA is particularly focused 

on upkeep and renovations in our existing inventory. Unfortunately, GSA’s major repair and alterations accounts have also suffered from significant cuts over the past 5 fiscal years. As a result, 

the backlog of repairs needed continues to grow while the cost and 

urgency of these repairs continue to increase. 

GSA is also requesting funds to deliver critical new investments. 

For instance, GSA is requesting $380 million as part of the enhanced plan for the DHS consolation at St. Elizabeth’s. This funding will allow DHS to move out of costly leased space and into consolidated offices on the campus. GSA fiscal year 2016 and 2017 requests would allow us to meet DHS’ mission, needs, and stay on 

track to complete the facility. This budget also requests more than 

$250 million for our appropriated accounts, as well as $13 million 

to begin preparing for the next presidential transition. 

While GSA seeks to make the investments vital to America’s future, we also continue to focus on executing reforms to improve 

oversight, streamline administrative functions, strengthen accountability, and enhance transparency within our agency. Our inspector 

general—in partnership with our inspector general, we will continue to maintain our vigilance and take whatever actions are necessary.

The men and women of GSA have made great progress in refocusing this agency on its important mission. The President’s fiscal year 2016 budget request will allow GSA to continue our work 

and give our partners and the American people the services and 

support they need. I look forward to working with this committee 

to continue our progress. 

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today, and 

I am happy to answer your questions. 

[The information follows:] 
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Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, thank you very much, and let me start the 

questions with a question about the Federal Buildings Fund. 

You know, you talk about spending all the rent that you collect 

from Federal agencies, and you have got a long list of construction 

projects. In 2014 and 2015, we gave you a lot of money. Now in 

2016, when you request 1.1 billion more than you received last 

year, and that is $564 million more than the rental payments you 

take in, that is a big, big increase. I want to find out how you 

prioritize projects—how do you decide which projects you want to 

do when you say we would like $1.1 billion more than we got last 

year? What goes into your thinking when you prioritize projects 

that go on your list? 

Ms. ROTH. In terms of our budget request overall, and as we talk 

today, I think you will hear this as a consistent theme. We are 

looking at our portfolio both in terms of what we are tasked to 

manage, both what the needs are today as well as what we look 

at going forward. And so we think that this budget request really 

represents where we are in terms of where the capital needs are 

and how we will manage going forward, and that also explains the 

2017 advance appropriations request, because our effort and our 

focus is how are we making the best decisions today to help to 

manage them and plan for the portfolio going into the future. 

Certainly, our process in terms of how we decide what projects 

go on the list and how we prioritize them is based on a number 

of things, but not the least of which includes what the market conditions are, what the returns are on those potential investments, 

how ready the project is to go forward. And you mentioned consolidation, lease consolidation and the ability to reduce the cost we are 

paying in lease payments is something that is an important factor 

that we weigh as well. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, in 2014, you had an increase of $1 billion. In 2015, it was another $1 billion for new construction repairs. 

How do you handle those large increases? 

Ms. ROTH. I think that we have done a good job trying to be clear 

on what projects are coming forward and how we are utilizing 

those dollars to help with the portfolio that we are managing. So 

that projects that you are familiar with in terms of DHS, that has 

been important with the committee support for us to be able to 

move forward with. That effort is just an example, and certainly 

the list goes on. But in terms of how we use the funds, our focus 

is really working with the committee to understand what the funding levels are and ensuring that we use those funds to the best of 

our ability to manage the portfolio. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Do you kind of say this is our rental income, so 

we will just spend it all as opposed to saying what are our real priorities, and then, do you ever think about actually reducing rents? 

I mean, I want to be sure that it is not just ‘‘here is our money, 

so we will spend it’’, as opposed to saying ‘‘here are our priority 

projects and we will fund those’’, and then we look at the rental 

income and maybe it is more, maybe it is less, and maybe there 

are things you can do there. Does that enter into your thinking? 

Ms. ROTH. Well, the truth of the matter is the inventory and the 

portfolio itself of assets that we manage are extensive, and so there 

are probably more needs than we can fund in 1 year, and so the 
67

needs just continue to grow, either from past repair needs or needs 

that are coming forward. So it is not so much the, okay, we have 

this dollar level and so let’s find projects until we meet to that level 

as much as here are all the needs, and ultimately having to meet 

those needs. 

I understand the committee has a job to do, and at the end of 

the day, what we are trying to bring forward is a full understanding of what the portfolio needs are, how we are trying to plan 

for those needs and where we are going and trying to be clear and 

transparent about if we receive dollars, how we are utilizing them 

and what the expectations are. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Gotcha. Thank you. Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I mentioned in my 

statement, Ms. Roth, sequestration had devastating effects on GSA 

in 2013, and that specter looms over us once again. The President’s 

budget assumed that Congress would deal with sequestration and 

continue to make investments to ensure the continued growth of 

our economy. If Members of Congress truly support construction 

jobs and seek economic benefits from Federal projects, then they 

need to look no further than GSA. What would be the effect on 

your agency if Congress does not turn off sequestration? 

Ms. ROTH. Well, sequestration certainly has an impact on overall 

levels that are available for funding, and so when agencies’ budgets 

have been reduced or compressed in terms of their funding levels, 

we see an impact in terms of the funding that they are able to either augment as a part of a project or be able to enter into projects. 

In the past, some of our efforts have helped or tried to help with 

these efforts such as our ability to help with furniture in IT within 

space, but ultimately, with all of the projects, as funding is—as the 

pressure created at the top, it definitely pushes down, and we feel 

that as a response. 

Mr. SERRANO. And so you are telling me that you deal with it 

as it comes, but you don’t—there is no panic right now at GSA that 

a continued sequestration would devastate, like some agencies feel 

would devastate them, because there are agencies that come before 

us, and tell us we can’t take another year of sequestration. 

Ms. ROTH. Well, and I think what we see is that, as agencies 

have that pressure, this space becomes less of a priority, and the 

reality is, with—as we get people into better space as well as consolidate leases, we do see true dollars in savings, and that is a return. So while we are basically responding to the needs as well as 

trying to manage our portfolio with our funds, but the funds that 

we receive, the Federal Buildings Fund itself is not necessarily 

compressed by sequestration, but the ability and activity levels of 

the other agencies does have an impact on the choices they make 

and in the work that we are doing. 

Mr. SERRANO. Right. Let me ask you about the Puerto Rico courthouse that I mentioned before. GSA began work to modernize the 

Clemente Ruiz Nazario Courthouse in 2010. This project has been 

plagued with delays that have interrupted the day-to-day business 

at a busy Federal courthouse that is critical to the functioning of 

the criminal justice system in Puerto Rico. 

In October 2014, I wrote to the then-administrator highlighting 

my concerns with the management of this project. I received an 
68

agency response from Associate Administrator Lisa Austin, that 

frankly left me unsatisfied that GSA has a plan to move this 

project to fruition. 

Ms. Roth, what is the timeframe to finalize the scope of the 

project with the new contract? And let me make the statement I 

make at all hearings, and the chairman hears it all the time. No 

matter how much people tell us they treat them equally, the territories are treated differently. You know, in many cases they get 

what is left over in the Appropriations Committee, and it is always 

a battle. I hope GSA, which functions a little different than other 

agencies, doesn’t get caught up in the same thing. These are American citizens living under the American flag with a Federal courthouse. Notice I didn’t say a Puerto Rico courthouse, a Federal 

courthouse, which means it is part of the family, and sometimes it 

is just forgotten, Virgin Islands, Guam, Samoa, and all the rest. 

So while I ask for a question on the issue in general, specifically 

I always put in the fact that territories should be treated equally, 

notwithstanding the fact that they are not States. That is another 

issue. That is about voting in presidential elections. That is about 

Members of Congress. That is not about sharing from the American 

resources.

Ms. ROTH. Yes, sir. And our focus and intent is to treat all partners equally, and certainly we have tried to do that, and it has 

been unfortunate that we have had some of the challenges we have 

had with this project. I will tell you, even in the role as Deputy Administrator, I was aware of this project. We have a regular update 

with our buildings team in terms of some of the key priorities, and 

this is a project that is discussed frequently. 

I can tell you that it is being given the attention from our buildings commissioner on a regular basis, and we are keeping very 

close on understanding what the timelines are and the expectations 

with the current developer that is on the project, and making sure 

that the timelines are being met. I can definitely follow up with 

you and your staff regarding the phasing that we have today because I know that letter was from late last year, but I can assure 

you that this is a project that it is unfortunate that the timing— 

that the efforts did not work with the previous developer that we 

had in place, but I know that it is on a better track now. 

Mr. SERRANO. Right. What I would like you to do, and I am not 

one who asks for commitments because I know that things change. 

Once you have a scope and an estimate of cost, is it possible to get 

a commitment from you from the agency to alert the subcommittee 

of the new requirements and cost, even if it is mid-budget cycle, 

you know. And also, finally, how much of the original appropriations for this project remains, or will GSA need to fund a new scope 

of the project with additional appropriations? 

Ms. ROTH. Yes, sir. We will definitely follow up with an initial 

report, and then we can keep reporting back and updating that 

overall scope in terms of keeping you aware of what the timeline 

is and the turnaround expectations are. 

Mr. SERRANO. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Bishop. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. Again, welcome, Ms. Roth. 

Let me just follow up on something that Mr. Serrano referred to 
69

earlier having to do with the safety and security of courthouses. In 

my district, the Federal courthouse in Columbus, Georgia has been 

ranked as one of the worst Federal courthouses with respect to security over the past several years and has not yet been approved 

for renovation due to funding constraints. 

In fiscal year 2015, $20 million was appropriated to fund the Judiciary Court Security Program, and in 2016, GSA is again requesting another $20 million to address the serious security deficiencies. 

I run into my local Federal judge frequently. He is very, very frustrated every time I see him, whether it is at the post office, the golf 

course, or in a restaurant. He is frustrated with the security concerns. So if you could just give us a little follow-up of how you are 

going to prioritize, I would appreciate it. 

But I do want to pursue another line of inquiry. Like the more 

than 90 agencies that are associated with the National Industries 

for the Blind, Georgia Industries for the Blind, which is 

headquartered and has two manufacturing locations in my district, 

works to provide employment opportunities for people who are 

blind. They manufacture and sell products and also provide services for the Federal Government through the AbilityOne Program. 

Over the past year or two, AbilityOne has experienced some challenges in its work with GSA. 

These challenges have become significant enough that last September, I helped lead a bipartisan letter signed by more than 60 

of my House colleagues, which was sent to the former Administrator in which we asked several questions about markups on 

AbilityOne products, and whether or not GSA and its authorized 

dealers were complying with the law that Congress created 75 

years ago, the Javits-Wagner-O’Day Act. There have been many exchanges back and forth between Congress and GSA, but I have two 

important questions I would like to ask you on behalf of my Georgia constituents who are blind. 

First, the GSA markups on AbilityOne products seem to have 

spiked over the last few years with some of the markups exceeding 

100 percent to 200 percent or higher. It is my understanding that 

the markups have somewhat been reduced as you have closed down 

depots or warehouses and moved to a different delivery system, 

which we understood justified the increases in the markups. Now 

that they have been reduced, I would like to know when all of the 

imposed markups on AbilityOne products will finally be lowered to 

reasonable levels so that Federal agencies are once again paying a 

fair and reasonable price and more products are being sold and 

more jobs for the people who are blind are being created. 

And the second question is based on recent reporting by the GSA 

Inspector General where GSA authorized the vendors to continue 

to sell, in violation of Federal law and regulation, the commercial 

equivalents of AbilityOne or SKILCRAFT products, which are 

known as ‘‘essentially the same’’ products. The Inspector General 

has reported that the GSA has identified and tracks repeat offenders, but no contract language is present in the contracts that penalizes the firms for engaging in illegal practice. 

So as the new head of GSA, can you tell us what corrective actions you will take to halt the practice once and for all, and ensure 
70

that no more of your authorized dealers are selling ETS to Federal 

agency purchasers at a detriment to our AbilityOne constituents? 

Ms. ROTH. Thank you, Congressman, for that question. Our relationship with AbilityOne and persons with disabilities is very important, and working with the small businesses in the industry 

that they help to develop is a very important relationship that we 

have. And we do serve on their commission as a part of that to 

really understand both how they interface with Federal Government and as well as the opportunity for how we can improve relationships with other agencies outside of GSA, so it is a very important relationship. We did achieve and are experiencing reductions 

in the markups as a result of the disclosures—the closures of the 

distribution centers, and that was something that was an important both consolidation effort for the organization as well as realignment of how we were delivering on our mission. But as I said, 

it is a very important relationship, so it is something that we keep 

and will continue to look at. 

In general, with our acquisition services, they are a fee-for-service organization, and so the work that they do does have some level 

of markup, but I appreciate your point in terms of ensuring that 

it is not an extreme number and having extreme level and impact 

on the returns for those working with AbilityOne, for example, in 

this case. 

And also certainly with the contract language, if there is opportunity, I am not aware, as I sit here, the work that we have done 

thus far, but I can say for certain that we have been looking at our 

contracts in terms of how is the language situated so that we are 

managing and creating opportunities, and we will continue to look 

at that. But as you bring this up today, I will make sure that we 

take a specific look here. That I am informed about the specific 

look here. 

[The information follows:] 

GSA follows Judiciary preferences when selecting projects for the Judicial Capital 

Security program. The Judiciary identifies security deficiencies at court occupied facilities as part of their Asset Management Planning process and also through security evaluation site visits. 

After the Judiciary identifies locations with security deficiencies, a Capital Security Study that identifies possible solutions to address those security needs is then 

developed by the Judiciary in coordination with GSA and the U.S. Marshals Services.

GSA provides feedback based on a review of the various alternatives developed 

in the studies for addressing the security deficiencies along with the preliminary 

cost estimates. The Judiciary determines the preferred security improvement plan 

resulting from the study for each location. The Judiciary then provides their order 

of priority of projects 

Within 30 days of the funding appropriated to GSA for the Capital Security Program in a given fiscal year, GSA submits a courthouse security spend plan, with 

an explanation for each project to the Appropriations committees in the House of 

Representatives and the U.S. Senate. After submitting the spend plans, GSA executes the prioritized projects after further development and refinement of the preferred concept within the constraints of the specific courthouses and the available 

funding.

Mr. BISHOP. We will give you an enforcement stick. 

Ms. ROTH. Okay. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. 

Ms. ROTH. Sure, sir 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Amodei. 
71

Mr. AMODEI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Madam Administrator, does your agency have a protocol in place 

or policy or anything else like that to notify Members of Congress 

when you are planning on doing something in their district? And 

let me tell you why I am asking. My district doesn’t have a large 

GSA footprint, but I noticed in the old post office, the Federal 

building in the town I live in, there was significant, that I can see 

by driving by, was relandscaped, and so I am just curious as to how 

that process works to say we are going to Carson City, Nevada to 

a Federal building, not the post office; we are going to spend money 

on landscaping; here is how this rose to the top or whatever to be 

more familiar with that since that property has been discussed, at 

least informally, in the past, about whether there is a better footprint for the Federal Government, office space there, that sort of 

thing, and so that is the background. 

Is it possible to place a request for saying, hey, whenever you are 

doing something in District 2, not that we want to get into your 

business, but just in an informative sense say, hey, here is what 

we have got going in northern Nevada, just in case you have any 

questions or somebody asks you about it? 

Ms. ROTH. Well, and first let me say I don’t see it as getting in 

our business because I think that we have worked in very close 

partnership with the committee, and so I definitely operate on the 

level of more informed, everyone is better off. So the—we have regions, obviously, across the country, have 11 regions, and we have 

the opportunity to understand what our priorities and work that is 

coming forward. And certainly we can have our regions, which will 

be closest to the activities that are coming forward work closely 

with your office as well as our congressional office. 

Mr. AMODEI. That would be great. It is Region 9. If you can have 

somebody say here is what we have got on our radar scope for your 

particular district, and by the way, here is the background on what 

we did with respect to that Carson City property. 

Ms. ROTH. Yes, sir. 

Mr. AMODEI. That would be great. Also, last year, through the indulgence of the chairman and the committee members, and also a 

couple of the other committees, we put—we were able to put language in the appropriations bill that talked about a bias against resort cities. And you guys, to your credit, didn’t have it in writing 

like the Department of Justice did, but nonetheless, our concern 

was not, hey, hold conferences and stuff like that at my district. It 

is please just make value to the taxpayer the thing. And so if the 

outfit had the word ‘‘resort’’ in its name or it was, in fact, at a jurisdiction where gambling was legal or something like that, if you 

are holding a conference or doing something that it is like, hey, if 

the best value happens to be in Reno or Lake Tahoe or wherever, 

then please make it on the best value of the taxpayer. 

I want to thank the chairman, again, publicly for his indulgence 

and the committee members for their support of that. And I don’t 

want to kick the dead horse about the Hawaii stuff, but it is my 

region, and the only reason I want to sensitize you to it is, is when 

something like that happens, I know that the human nature is we 

got to go find the most nondescript place we can find, and we got 

to do something just short of pitching tents, and so we go through 
72

all of these optics drills to make it look like you folks are being responsible with your money. 

And so when I see this, I cringe not because I don’t like Ruth’s 

Chris, although with my complexion, Hawaii is not a good place to 

be. But it sets us even farther back on trying to say, listen, if going 

to Lake Tahoe is the best value, then you should go there, because 

that is something then we will be able to say look what happened 

in Hawaii. 

So all I would say is, I would ask, first and foremost, I hope that 

we are making sure that to the extent that we do conferences, travel, that sort of stuff, that we are still looking for the best value to 

the taxpayer, wherever that is, and that we are renewing our efforts to avoid these appearances which set the whole hospitality industry back. 

Ms. ROTH. Yes, sir, and I appreciate that. In terms of—let me 

just step back and say when I came on board in March of last year, 

it was primarily to focus on the reform activities that we have undertaken in the organization overall. And so certainly, the attendance to conferences as well as travel in general has been a part of 

that. And the approach that we have taken is trying to be clear 

on—to the organization of what the expectations are as well as 

what travel they are doing and why. Our real focus is ensuring 

that the travel and activity, whether it be for conference or otherwise mission related, that it is mission related and that we can tie 

it back to this activity means that we get this type of return for 

either the staff person or the work that they are responsible for. 

And to that end, we put in place travel plans that each of the 

office leads report up to, so we have a very structured process, and 

in part, it is to not appear nor have the sense of being selective in 

the work that we do. We want it to be very clear on here is what 

the expectation is, here is how it works throughout the process, 

and then be able to report that and be transparent on it. 

Certainly, I was certainly concerned the moment I saw the item 

and the headlines regarding the travel to Hawaii, and something 

that we are being sure of is was that travel a group session related 

to the mission and how can we reinsure that we are providing parameters of expectations of when people travel, how frequently they 

travel, things of that nature. But I appreciate your point, and we 

are sensitive to that point as well. 

Mr. AMODEI. And I appreciate that, and I would just close with 

this, are you comfortable with the fact that whether the best value 

happens to be in New York, Florida, you know, wherever, that 

there are no discrimination policies presently in your travel policies 

that say you are not going to Reno, you are not going to Atlantic 

City, you are not going to Miami Beach, all that stuff where it is 

perceived as a resort thing, what I would like to know is your opinion is do we have any of those biases still in the agency or are we 

looking at what the cost is? 

Ms. ROTH. Our concern is cost and mission related, as well as we 

do encourage our employees to look for alternatives that if it is better for the group to come together via video teleconferencing as opposed to travel, that is our priority. And I do talk about travel as 

I move around the organization, and I visited all of our regions, 

and so being clear on what the expectation is is something that we 
73

are asked about regularly, so I don’t think there is a sense of a bias 

in the organization around certain locations, and we try to be 

clear——

Mr. AMODEI. Great. 

Ms. ROTH [continuing]. With the staff on that when the question 

comes up, because, of course, it does come—you know, this item is 

in a certain location, is that okay? We want to encourage that everyone is making their decisions based on value, but as well as the 

mission and how we are—the return that we are going to get as 

an organization and whether there is alternatives to traveling overall.

Mr. AMODEI. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Yield back. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. I want to ask you about consolidation. We reduced spending $175 billion, so that means you got a 

smaller work force and that ought to mean that you need less 

space for people to go to work. And recognizing that, in our omnibus bill, we put $70 million for you to work on consolidation, and 

we put in the omnibus bill that we said only spend this money if 

you are going to truly save money. 

Obviously, you got to spend money to consolidate things, but at 

the end of the day, you want to be saving money. And so, can you 

tell us what you have done so far with that $70 million? How are 

you going to use that to do the consolidation, and can you point to 

true savings that are going to result from that? 

Ms. ROTH. Yes, sir. And we will be sending a spend plan to you, 

I believe, later this week that will outline some of the projects that 

are in progress, but when—what we are able to look at, and as we 

look at consolidation opportunities, we are looking for getting the 

best value in terms of whether it is consolidating multiple agencies 

to one location, or if it is bringing in one sole tenant, but bringing 

in their other leases. 

And so we will be able to outline for you, both in terms of what 

those projects are, but as well as what lease reductions that will 

lead to and what annual savings we are expecting. 

Our efforts overall is just that in terms of as we identify what 

projects as well as identifying which projects makes sense for consolidation. It is getting the sense of will we find savings by consolidating, can we utilize existing properties, and what will be the cost 

tradeoff between upgrading these properties and moving these 

leases into the same location, but we will definitely send that to 

the——

Mr. CRENSHAW. So you will be able to tell us that this is how 

much space that you saved? 

Ms. ROTH. Yes. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. And give us a number it reduced, I mean, if that 

is the case. It would seem to me if you are going to reduce your 

spending on space, you are going to have less space, so you can say 

this is how much less space we have, this is how much money we 

are saving, and I hope it is more than $70 million, because that 

is what you are going to spend to save the money. 

Ms. ROTH. Save the money, yes, understood. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. When we will get that report? 
74

Ms. ROTH. The spend plan will be coming up later this week. It 

would be this week. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. And then, all right, but this year, I think the re- quest was for $200 million for consolidation. 

Ms. ROTH. Yes. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Do you have a—do you put the spend plan in 

place before you ask for the money, or do you just ask for the 

money and then when the money comes, you say, well, let’s write 

a plan to show how we are going to save money? 

Ms. ROTH. So we look for projects that are pending or we understand from agencies they may be interested in going into a consolidated space. One of the things that are necessary, and we are seeing that with DHS, is that those agencies have to take the step of 

being aggressive with their square footage, for example, as an opportunity. With the steps of that nature, it allows for us to take 

enough space with DHS, we will get 3,000 more people into that 

location. That is what we are looking for. 

So we get a sense, and we know, just throughout the year as we 

are working with agencies, which are ready to bring in leases, 

which have done the work to either have the policies internally, 

and there are a number of them, understanding that this is where 

the savings, the cost savings for much of them are coming from. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. But you don’t know if for example when we get 

that spend plan, will it give us a bottom line number. This is—we 

have $70 million, this is how we are going to spend it, and this is 

the space reduction. 

Ms. ROTH. Yes, sir. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. And then the $200 million, you don’t have a plan 

yet. We are to assume that you are going to spend the 70 million 

wisely and end up with an overall savings, and then if you ask for 

$200 million, you will give us a spend plan that says after we 

spend 200 million extra dollars, at the end of the day, we are going 

to save more than that, hopefully some great multiple of that. 

When do you write the plan? When do you write the plan how you 

are going to spend the $200 million that is going to save whatever? 

Ms. ROTH. They happen in tangent. And I can tell you that we wouldn’t come with the $200 million request if we hadn’t seen successes that we have seen in recent years with other plans that we 

have on the table or the work that we have done. But yes, we will 

be able to tie both the square footage current usage with the proposed change in usage as well as this dollar savings from the savings of the lease, and we are always looking for the same level of 

return of investment that we are getting more out of it than we are 

having to put into it, because otherwise, it would not— 

Mr. CRENSHAW. We look forward to hearing that. Let me change 

the subject. Let me ask you about the FBI building. Your predecessors have come before us, and that is a big, big undertaking. I 

mean, you are going to build 2.1 million square feet of office space 

out somewhere, and you are going to exchange the FBI building. 

Ms. ROTH. Yes. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. And that is very, very complicated. And one of 

the things I think the Inspector General said a couple of years ago, 

maybe in 2013, the IG didn’t really see the kind of policies and procedures in place to really carry that out in an effective way. Where 
75

you are in that process? How did you decide, for instance, did you 

just say we are going to go out to the FBI building, we are going 

to exchange that, and somehow we are going to build 2.1 million 

square feet of office space somewhere. The concept is you will get 

enough money from the FBI building to get 2 million square feet 

of new space in exchange for building what has got to be for a 

whole lot of money. 

Now, for instance, when is the last time you had the FBI building appraised? 

Ms. ROTH. So in terms of our approach overall to all of our portfolio, we are looking for where is the best opportunity. Do we have 

properties that are sitting that do not—— 

Mr. CRENSHAW. I know, but let’s talk about the FBI building. 

Ms. ROTH. Right. And so with the FBI building, in particular, it 

is not meeting the needs of the FBI currently, and so that is how, 

in part—— 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Do you have any idea how much it is worth? 

Ms. ROTH. That is something that the market sets. Certainly we 

do appraisals of our properties, but considering the fact that we are 

in a competitive market right now where we don’t want to show 

our hand, as it were, but this process—— 

Mr. CRENSHAW. But have you had it appraised? 

Ms. ROTH. We have had it appraised. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Of late. You can’t tell us what that is? 

Ms. ROTH. I am not sure. The last appraisal was probably prior 

to 2013 or 2013 may have been the date, and I can certainly follow 

up with the committee. But let me just say overall, our effort and 

focus is that this process is going to really set the value for this 

building. We are in a—currently, in terms of—we are in phase 1, 

and we are having a selection of potential developers that we are 

narrowing down to currently. And from that process is really going 

to tell us the value of this property in terms of what the market 

is willing to bear and cover for it. We don’t know if there will be 

a delta. We are—our hope is that it will not, but, of course, that 

is what we are looking for is to cover the cost of replacing that 

building.

Mr. CRENSHAW. So how did you decide you needed 2 million 

square feet? That is what you decided? That is what you need for 

FBI people? 

Ms. ROTH. As we look at—as we work with our tenants as well 

as our partners, we look at what their needs are and get an understanding. In terms of the FBI, they are not able to fit—I think it 

was the number 52 percent of those who should be in headquarters 

are not able to fit there because of that location. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. But you have an idea—you are in the process of 

picking, I think, three developers, right? Or you pick three sites, 

and you are going to pick a developer that is going to say—we 

could sell the property and use the money and go build a new 

building, or we can exchange it, but the concept is the same thing. 

Ms. ROTH. Yes. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. You say, look, we have got a really valuable 

piece of property, and we are going to end up with some new office 

space, brand new out somewhere else, but you want to hopefully 

make sure that you kind of get even-steven. In other words, you 
76

don’t want to spend twice as much money as your building is worth 

to build a new building? 

Ms. ROTH. Absolutely not. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. So where are you in the process? You are farther 

along. I am very concerned that that is so complicated. I want to 

make sure, and I have told your predecessor, make sure you all 

have the ability in-house or get some people to figure it out because 

a lot of people would love to be involved in that deal. 

You know, in Great Britain, we sold our embassy. We are building a new embassy, and we sold the embassy for more than we are 

going to spend on the new building. That is a good deal. 

Ms. ROTH. Yeah. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. And so I hope at the end of the day, when you 

have this new facility out there somewhere, that you won’t come 

to us and ask for some more money because it wasn’t a great deal 

in terms of what the FBI building is worth. That is why I think 

it is important that you kind of keep up with the value of that visa-vis the value of what the new office is going to be. 

Ms. ROTH. As well as us being transparent and open with the 

committee and members about the process as it is happening, so 

we have—we are in a process of narrowing down the developers, 

and this fall, I think, we might be in a place of actually being able 

to make an award, but we will continue to inform yourselves and 

staff about where the progress is and how it is coming forward. 

That is a concern of ours as well. We definitely want this project 

to have a return that is a good return so that we can go and do 

other good projects the same. This is an important project for us, 

and so we definitely take that in—— 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Keep us posted. That would be great. 

Ms. ROTH. Yes, sir. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Maybe—I didn’t see Mr. Quigley come in. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Up to you. 

Mr. SERRANO. Oh, no, no, no. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Whatever. 

Mr. SERRANO. Go ahead. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sorry I was at the sister subcommittee meeting, THUD, so glad to be here now. 

Ms. Roth, as you know, the Federal Government is the largest 

property owner in the world. Obviously many of these properties 

are underutilized, not utilized at all, while requiring a lot of maintenance and security expenses, for example. But last year, this subcommittee, the GSA was unable to state that it had an up-to-date 

accurate inventory for all its real property owned by the Federal 

Government. I was troubled that since then, we determined that 

GAO has updated its a high risk series for the sixth consecutive 

Congress, Federal real property management was on the list. So I 

guess the same question, does GSA have an up-to-date accurate inventory of all Federal real property owned by the Federal Government?

Ms. ROTH. Yes, sir, and thank you for that question. Obviously 

that is something that we have been working on quite a bit, and 

what we have been able to do is improve in terms of the data sets 
77

that we are asking agencies for and what they are reporting, and 

so as that gets better, then I think our data and reporting will get 

better. Certainly for GSA we have been able to provide that list, 

make it public, put it on a Web site, and that is what we want to 

be able to achieve with all of the Federal agencies, so we continue 

to work through that. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. What is it going to take to get it all done? 

Ms. ROTH. I think part of it is very much the quality of the data 

that is going in and understanding what assets each of the agencies actually are responsible for. Certainly there are many and numerous agencies throughout the Federal Government that are responsible and own agencies beyond—own property beyond GSA, 

and so it is working with them to help with the quality of their 

data and their reporting. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Do we know how many real property and land inventory databases exist in the Federal Government? 

Ms. ROTH. As I sit here, I don’t know databases, but I can certainly get back to the committee with that. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. How difficult would it be to get it into one database some day? 

Ms. ROTH. I will tell you that we—and especially in the past year 

that I have been here, we have been using technology quite a bit 

to help us improve in terms of our delivery of services to the American people and the public just in general, so I think that our technology understand—how we understand technology now and our 

ability to use that to help improve our database is much better 

than it has been in the past. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. And the final part is once we—how are we doing 

improving getting rid of surplus property, in your mind? 

Ms. ROTH. In terms of surplus property, I think that there is always room for improvement, but I think that some agencies are 

doing better than others. And again, it is part of understanding 

what their—what is in their portfolio as well as how to dispose of 

it and ensuring that they have the talent and skill set internally. 

We certainly are in due help when asked, but it is something that 

we continue to work on with agencies. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Final question. Is there anything we can do to encourage them more than we already are to get rid of the surplus 

properties?

Ms. ROTH. I think that the support of the committee has been 

important. One of the things that we do see in terms of portfolio 

managers is, is the reality, is their ability to be able to hold onto 

revenue or something of that nature that comes from the sale of 

property may be an incentive that they currently don’t have. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Right. 

Ms. ROTH. And—but there are a number of strategies such as 

that that might be of help, and we can certainly follow up and have 

a discussion with the staff regarding that. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. I think that has been an ongoing concern that 

to manage all that property, that we have a list of it so we kind 

of know then and you can help us when you dispose of property, 

all those kind of things. So I appreciate it, Mr. Quigley. Let’s go 

to Mr. Yoder. 
78

Mr. YODER. Oh, sorry. How are you? 

Ms. ROTH. Good, sir. Thank you. 

Mr. YODER. Thank you for coming to our hearing today. Thank 

you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to echo the sentiments of Mr. Quigley 

related to the real property issue. He and I both raised this issue 

in previous hearings. I raised it the last couple of years, and one 

of the things I can’t answer for my constituents is what we own. 

My constituents can’t go to a map and look at it and see what government owns in the Third District of Kansas, what property may 

be idle, what property may be—we overpaid for, and so it is a real 

disconnect between the assets the government owns and our constituents holding us accountable because we have no way to properly display to our constituents what we own. Congress doesn’t 

know all the property our government owns. 

So I want to just reiterate some of the points that Mr. Quigley 

had and just engage in that dialogue a little further. You know, we 

don’t know how many golf courses we own, for example, or how 

many parking garages we own or how many hotels we own, and 

so I am encouraged that since we brought this up a couple of years 

ago that the GSA has acknowledged this is a priority and is working towards resolution, and I appreciate your comments in that regard.

I did note that we were able to make a nice Pinterest, I guess 

slide, that shows the budget request, so certainly I know where 

GSA is capable of using technology in a way that could help us understand what our requests are, can do the same thing for our 

property. Obviously it is a much bigger undertaking. 

Are you familiar with the letter that MAPPS sent to the administrator of the GSA in January of this year? MAPPS is the Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors. 

Ms. ROTH. I apologize. I am not familiar with this specific letter. 

Mr. YODER. Let me just tell you what the letter is. Maybe you 

will be familiar with it, and maybe you could respond. MAPPS has 

actually offered their private set of surveyors and mappers, they 

have actually offered to help the GSA categorize all their property. 

It says, ‘‘MAPPS stands ready to assist GSA with the development 

of a current accurate geo-enabled inventory of all Federal real 

property assets. They would be pleased to work with your staff to 

discuss the available services, technology standards, and specifications that will meet GAO’s expectation and comply with congressional instruction.’’ 

And so I would be interested to know if you have considered 

using outside private parties to help in this effort, particularly experts that have a history of being able to categorize large amounts 

of information like this? 

Ms. ROTH. So at this point, just to step back, GSA has placed our 

properties on a map and have made that available, and so we do 

have that, and certainly we have the real property database that 

we report out, and the last one was from fiscal year 2013. 

With that being said, as I was commenting earlier, some agencies 

are further along than others in being able to both report on their 

data as well as to manage that. So to the extent that there are 

other external efforts that are available, we certainly are open to 

exploring what makes sense, and—but we continue to work with 
79

the Federal Real Property Council as well as OMB to really try and 

have heard the message that—of getting that list clean as well as 

made available. 

Mr. YODER. But you would agree that if a constituent or even our 

office wanted to create a geolocation list of Federal property that 

is owned in the State of Kansas, that would be very difficult to do, 

given the resources made available by the GSA? 

Ms. ROTH. Currently, in terms of the information that you are receiving that GSA collects from the other agencies, it doesn’t give 

the full picture, and I understand that that is certainly what Congress wants, and that is something that we are trying to—— 

Mr. YODER. I would say it doesn’t even give a partial amount of 

the picture. And if you look at the language that was added to the 

Appropriations Act passed last year, it says ‘‘GSA is charged with 

compiling the Federal real property profile. Numerous studies have 

found that this profile contains a significant amount of inaccurate 

information. The committee is outraged that the Federal Government cannot provide an accurate accounting to the American people of all the property that it owns. 

‘‘The committee expects GSA to work with agencies across government to improve the data contained in this report and improve 

transparency to the American taxpayer. Within 90 days of the enactment of this Act, GSA shall report to the Appropriations Committee on steps taken to improve the quality of the profile.’’ 

Has the GSA reported to the committee as required by the Act? 

Ms. ROTH. My understanding is that we have been reporting to 

the committee, but regardless of that, to your point, it is not quality data, and it is not allowing for that geospatial map that I think 

the committee is looking for. So our ability to continue to improve 

in that regard, and if there are private sector entities that could 

help with that, I do think that is something that we should explore. 

So just the point is, even—whatever we are applying it today is not 

meeting our expectations nor yours, and we will continue to work 

on that. 

Mr. YODER. I appreciate that response, and I would encourage 

you to make this a top priority. I would encourage you to look at 

third parties that have an expertise in this issue. I would encourage the GSA to respond to the letter to MAPPS if they haven’t; and 

if they have, to provide the committee with a response to that letter. And to provide this service to the American people not only creates an opportunity for our constituents to have more engagement 

on what we are doing here, but it also would make our jobs—make 

us more capable of reducing the Federal real estate portfolio in a 

way that could save taxpayers money, reduce the debt, and we 

can’t engage in that unless we have the information. 

So this is a critical first step to this committee being able to do 

its job, and for us being able to do our job to our constituents to 

give them the information that they need to hold us accountable. 

And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you for your 

testimony.

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. Let’s go to Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me, before I go on 

to a question I had set to go, just back up something that the chairman said. We are concerned that what is happening with the FBI 
80

building, which is not described in detail in the budget request, and 

the concern is that it will diminish oversight of this project by this 

committee, and I join the chairman in that. And I would like to ask 

you, Ms. Roth, has GSA ever used its exchange authorities for a 

project this large before? 

Ms. ROTH. This is among one of the largest projects. I am not 

sure that any other has met this level. But with that being said, 

and I understand at this stage, there isn’t a role for the committee 

to play. However, we do think it is very important to have your 

buy-in and comfort with the project as well, so we will continue to 

inform the staff, as well as the committee, of the activities that are 

occurring and can have that, I think they are meeting regularly already, but that is an important role. 

Mr. SERRANO. Just a correction, and I do it in a friendly way. 

There is always a role for the committee to play. And after all, we 

are the only committee that is in the Constitution, I think. Right? 

One of the few. There is a role for us to play. 

Ms. ROTH. Absolutely. I apologize, sir. 

Mr. SERRANO. It helps our relationships if we understand that. 

Also, just to give you a story, I remember a few years ago, we had 

an agency come before us and say don’t give us any more money. 

We don’t need any more money. And we had never heard that in 

my 40 years in government. It turned out to be the agency that 

wasn’t watching Wall Street do what they were doing, and so we 

would like to have oversight. But let me get back to my favorite 

and most difficult subject because I don’t understand it. The leasing versus the purchasing. You know, the American dream is to 

own, not to rent, so why would government be any different, and 

how much money do we spend on leasing? And I see that you have 

$5.5 billion in leasing of privately-owned space. What are we doing 

to remedy that? And is your ultimate goal to bring leasing down, 

or is it the agency’s ultimate goal? I am not going to put it on you. 

You have been there a month. But is the agency’s ultimate goal to 

bring leasing down? 

To me, it is much better to know that that building belongs to 

us and that building belongs to us because once it belongs to you, 

you could always sell it to make money; and, you know, the folks 

on the other side believe that the best way to save money is by cutting the budget. I disagree. I think it is also by growing the budget 

to investments. And for us to be leasing, which is more costly than 

building, I just don’t get it. So where are we headed in that? 

Ms. ROTH. As we approach our portfolio—— 

Mr. SERRANO. Or is the committee not being paid attention to on 

that subject? 

Ms. ROTH. No, sir. I regret every word of that. Absolutely. As we 

approach our portfolio, we are looking for certainly the best value 

for housing for the agencies that we are working with, but I think 

that you have seen GSA be more proactive year over year in terms 

of helping agencies see the value of both consolidating leases as 

well as us being very stringent in our efforts to improve on the assets that we have as well and make them available and being 

smarter about how we are utilizing them. 

So using the square footage of space in different ways, I think 

has been an important step as well. So at the end of the day, you 
81

know, data tells us that owning and having agencies and property 

that is owned is a better value overall. Sometimes that is not available, and that is the unfortunate part at times when that is the 

case, but we do have a preference in terms of own. It is just not 

always available. But what we have been working on is trying to 

reduce the cost of annual lease payments through improvement of 

owned facilities as well as consolidation efforts. 

Mr. SERRANO. Right. A quick follow-up on that because I know 

there are some other folks that should be given a chance to ask 

questions. Maybe it is just one of those questions where you have 

to turnaround and ask somebody behind you, and I understand 

that. How did that mind set come into being? When did this start 

that we should be leasing rather than purchasing? 

Ms. ROTH. I am not sure anyone behind me actually knows that 

either, but I don’t know the answer to that. What I do know is as 

we are approaching our portfolio today, we have been very focused 

on where are our assets across the country because as you point 

out, it hasn’t been profitable for us or creating a return on the investments that the American public is paying, and to your point in 

terms of the costs that we pay into the buildings that we are maintaining as such. 

So we do have a preference and a focus on how do we make the 

best value out of the properties we have use of today, and ensure 

that they can meet the needs of the workforce as we are planning 

for today and into the future. 

Mr. SERRANO. Okay. Mr. Chairman, and my comment was just 

correct. It wasn’t meant to question your respect for the committee. 

Ms. ROTH. Thank you. 

Mr. SERRANO. I have a feeling that people who have English as 

a second language, as I do, pay more attention to every word than 

native speakers. I will get off the hook that way. 

Ms. ROTH. Thank you. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. Let’s go to Ms. Herrera Beutler and 

then to Mr. Bishop and then to Mr. Womack. 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I 

am on the OIG Web site, and I was hoping you could help me understand something. Is Federal Acquisition Service under your jurisdiction?

Ms. ROTH. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. Okay. So are you familiar with—it is 

dated March 13. It is from the Assistant Inspector General for Auditing, Office of Audits. It is titled to Commissioner Sharp with regard to major issues for multiple-award schedule pre-award audits. 

Are you familiar with this? 

Ms. ROTH. Just that it was coming out. We were expecting it last 

Thursday, and we have had some initial conversations about it. 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. I wanted to bring specifically for the 

record and to your attention, because I wasn’t familiar with your 

overall budget, you are requesting flat funding. Correct? 

Ms. ROTH. No, in terms of the Federal Acquisition Services, that 

is an area that is self-funded. 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. No, no. I am talking about your budget, 

GSA’s, are you asking for a flat fund, or are you asking for an increase?
82

Ms. ROTH. GSA is asking for an increase in its budget over 2015. The total budget request is for $10.6 billion, and it includes an increase over the rental payments that we actually bring in. We are 

also asking for about $9.9 billion for 2017. 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. Okay, which is a sizeable sum. This 

doesn’t obviously address that whole thing, but there is a piece 

here that I think might be helpful in recouping some of that cost. 

I wanted to bring this to the attention of the chair. It just came 

out, so I don’t think everybody has had a chance to go through it. 

But there are three or four main points that the IG has said for 

the past 3 years he has issued—how long have you been in this 

role? Probably not the last 3 years? 

Mr. CRENSHAW. The last 3 weeks. 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. So this is not your last 3 years, but for 

the past 3 years, they have been issuing major issues memoranda, 

and I think he just felt that there were some recurring issues that 

needed to be addressed, and I wanted to make sure you were aware 

of them. Especially as you are asking for an increase in budget, 

this looks like a good area to dig into. When they were going 

through the acquisition audits, there were four main points he 

found. First was for over three-quarters of the contracts that they 

audited, contractors provided the commercial sales practices disclosures that were not current, not accurate, and/or complete to support their prices. Half of the audit—another bullet point—half of 

the audited contractors supplied labor that did not meet the minimum educational or experience qualifications as required by GSA 

for contracts. And over a third of the audited contractors did not 

have adequate systems to accumulate and report scheduled sales, 

and many contractors improperly calculated their iostats for remittance to GSA. And then fourth point he has here is contracting offices are not fully achieving cost avoidances identified by the preaward audit. 

So what he found was there is about, he goes through a few different numbers, but in the same year: We recommend the price 

and discount adjustments that, if realized, would allow for over 

$1.6 billion in cost avoidances and additionally over $2.7 million in 

recoverable overcharges. 

To a scale of what you are asking, that is a fraction of what you 

are asking for in an increase, but I would argue, you know, the 

best part of $2 billion is worth going after. And so I guess I wanted 

to ask how much and how closely you worked with the IG to identify these areas where you can improve the system’s flow with regard to who is doing what and recoup some of this money. I guess 

I want to get a feel for what kind of a priority it is for you to kind 

of walk—because I feel like they are doing the work of that. You 

just get to take their recommendations. Might as well take advantage of it. 

Ms. ROTH. Right. I appreciate that question. The IG and the role 

of the IG and our partnership with them is very important to us, 

and we actually meet on a pretty regular basis, at minimum 

monthly, but frequently are in discussions, either directly or between staff regarding a number of items. So, yes, their role in 

terms of helping us evaluate and research the production of effort 

and how it is actually performing has been very valuable. This is, 
83

and as it was brought to my attention, and as Commissioner Sharp 

looked at the draft of what he was expecting to come out, we definitely had concerns, and there were some opportunities as you 

pointed out for work and improvement there. And I think that we 

need to take that more than under advisement, but actually apply 

a work plan to it, be clear about what the milestones are, and set 

about implementing those efforts. 

There have been some efforts that I know that they have started 

already. I am not fully aware of all of those pieces but this is something that we are taking very seriously. And to your point, it not 

only tells us about where cost savings are available, but also where 

potentially we are not meeting, or those we are working with aren’t 

meeting our policies, and that is problematic. 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. Absolutely. Is it possible to ask as you 

put together—I don’t know whose team is here, but as your team 

is putting together that work plan, that you could keep my office— 

I don’t need to know step by step in detail. I just want to know 

as its moving, especially as you are coming back to us and the 

team is coming back to us asking us to increase your budget, I 

want to also make sure that we are recouping where we can and 

should be. 

Ms. ROTH. Understood. 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. Thank you. I appreciate it, and welcome 

to the job. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Yeah. Actually in the real numbers, it is about 

$1 billion, $100 million in addition. And every year, like 2014 and 

2015, it is about a $1 billion more. I think to her point is you 

wouldn’t have to ask for an increase if you just recouped what was 

missing. But I am sure you are working on that. Mr. Bishop. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. Agriculture/agribusiness is 

the largest economic sector in the Georgia economy, and our State 

has lots of utilization and collaboration with USDA. It is my understanding that GSA is planning to transfer almost 300 financial operations staff members to the Department of Agriculture. I would 

like to hear about when this transfer is to take place. Is it on 

schedule? Will the transfer of these personnel be permanent or 

temporary? What is the purpose of the transfer? How will the staff 

become assets to USDA? Will GSA experience any disruption in its 

operations, the functions that these current GSA people are now 

performing, and what are the end goals of the transfer in terms of 

efficiency to both GSA and USDA? 

Ms. ROTH. Thank you, Congressman, for the question. The effort 

between GSA and USDA is really borne out of GSA’s efforts to really focus in on its missions of infrastructure and technology and acquisition. What we found is that we had a financial services area, 

a line of business in which we were providing services for other 

agencies, but in reality, it was not the main part of our mission as 

an organization. USDA has had a very mature, financial services 

area within its organization, and so this move is actually taking 

the financial services team that has been working at GSA and 

transferring them to USDA. It is actually a move of people as well 

as technology. It will be effective March 22, and thus far, it is 

working well, and we are on time. 
84

With that being said, it is a large move. It is one that we need 

to continue to watch closer, but in terms of just overall, why we 

are doing this, it is a part of our effort to continue to focus on really what is the mission of GSA and get back to that mission. 

Mr. BISHOP. And, of course, USDA has had challenges dealing 

with IT and the financial aspects of its mission also, and you have 

got staff that actually have skill sets to do that—— 

Ms. ROTH. That is right. 

Mr. BISHOP [continuing]. That you are not fully utilizing. 

Ms. ROTH. That is right. Ultimately, if we were going to continue 

with this effort, we needed to invest primarily in the IT segment 

as well as some level of staff potentially, and it just didn’t fit with 

the mission of what we were doing, but these are a specialized 

team that will continue to work the same as they move over. 

Mr. BISHOP. Will that result in a reduction of your budget? 

Ms. ROTH. Yes, it has, and it is reflected in the budget. 

Mr. BISHOP. So it is a permanent transfer of that division? 

Ms. ROTH. Yes. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Womack. 

Mr. WOMACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Administrator 

Roth, thank you for being here. I want to talk for just a moment 

about the Green Building Certification System used by GSA. I 

know you have two options, Green Globes and LEED. Some in the 

construction material industry have expressed concern that their 

products, proven safe and efficient, used by millions of people 

around the U.S., are being precluded from LEED certification because they contain vinyl, plastic, or other materials that anti-chemical advocates deem harmful, when in fact, many of these materials 

have provided great advances in environmental performance, energy efficiency, and occupant safety. So as the GSA is undergoing 

a regular analysis of reestablishing its partnership with LEED— 

and I understand you do that every 5 years—can you tell me if you 

have received any comments from the public on the Federal register portal on this issue? 

Ms. ROTH. My understanding is we do have comments that are— 

we are receiving comments now. I am not certain if we received 

comments on this particular item; however, I wouldn’t be surprised 

if we were. 

Mr. WOMACK. If LEED were to go down this path, if we can 

agree—or at least I will maintain that they are on a path of overregulation and extreme environmental activism—do you anticipate 

that there could come a day when GSA would cease to accept the 

system as a valid Green Building Certification System? 

Ms. ROTH. I think we have to continue to remain open to what 

is the best system to support the agencies, whether it is LEED or 

it is something else, and that is what our regular evaluations of 

that process is. So I think that we have to approach each process 

in terms of an evaluation of how it is working with fresh eyes. 

Mr. WOMACK. Do you have a personal thought on it? 

Ms. ROTH. In terms of the LEED certifications, the work that I 

have been familiar with and the work that we have done at GSA 

has really focused on the energy savings, and so it hasn’t really 

factored in as much the materials. So in terms of just overall, if 
85

there is a benefit that we are not getting, I want to see us get those 

benefits. And if there is a way to work with private sector to ensure 

that those are coming to the table, that is what I think is important.

Mr. WOMACK. But if you could conclude, and I am not trying to 

speculate that that is a conclusion that you would come up with, 

but if one could reasonably conclude that this is a form of activism 

that is being used in a very prominent program, I am going to ask 

you again, do you consider extreme activism in the evaluation of 

these criteria? 

Ms. ROTH. I think extreme activism and anything that is going 

to isolate out a group, whether it be this case with LEED in this 

example, or something else, is problematic. So that is not something that we are looking to have as part of the agency. We want 

to be able to understand that we are getting benefits in selling 

green-related activities, whether it is from the light bulbs to the 

roofs, and we want to get benefits out of that. So if there is extreme 

activity that is happening and it is not benefiting us, that is not 

something that we will support. 

Mr. WOMACK. Okay. I would like to thank you for including the 

John Paul Hammerschmidt Federal Building and the U.S. Courthouse in the list of priorities in fiscal year 2017, and would like to 

get some more details. I know my office would like to get more details on the proposed exterior and structural repairs for that facility, so if your organization could communicate back, that would be 

one that we would leave for the record. 

Finally, I want to talk about the FBI headquarters. I understand 

that the plan is to basically trade a new site well beyond the central city center for the present site, and it is my understanding 

that the RFP is for a smaller building. Is that right? 

Ms. ROTH. The RFP at this time, I am not sure that that has 

been made clear. What we are at the place of is trying to get—we 

are narrowing down a list of potential developers, and they are 

going to then turn around and give us a sense of what type of 

project——

Mr. WOMACK. So let me ask you, what is driving the need for the 

relocation? And if it is related to the inefficiency, building problems 

or the present location, then help me, because I understand this 

new facility is going to be $1.5 billion or something in that regard—the most liberal estimate of the value, as I hear it, of the 

present location, is around $500 million. So we are talking about 

a pretty sizeable difference here. What is driving the need to relocate?

Ms. ROTH. Well, the process itself is what is going to give us a 

sense of what the value we should expect to get out of the current 

FBI building, as well as the new location and the cost thereof. We 

will get a sense of the proposals that are brought forth. But in 

terms of the need that brought us to the table on this discussion, 

it really has been FBI’s need of having a new facility. The facility 

that they are currently in is not meeting their needs. And that 

was——

Mr. WOMACK. That doesn’t help me. I am asking specifically. 

What do you mean it doesn’t meet their needs? If you were telling 

me that it is not big enough, and they are going to have to have 
86

additional space, and they don’t want to split a campus or something like that, I would understand that. But I see this is not a 

space issue. In fact, the new building is probably going to be smaller, but that aside, what is driving that need? 

Ms. ROTH. Well, I mean part of it, at least according to our understanding with the FBI is 52 percent of the people who should 

be in the headquarters are not able to be there because of how the 

building is shaped and how it is designed internally. The future 

space could be smaller, but certainly we are using a utilization of 

the footprints of properties in different ways now than we were in 

the past, so we are finding ways in which we are putting more people into smaller square footage, so that is quite possible as well. 

But I think at this point, we are just at a place of where we are 

going to get back a sense of who are the potential developers to do 

this work, and then get a sense of what those plans would look 

like.

Mr. WOMACK. Is it possible that they will keep the current location and will look at maybe a remodel or some other kind of a restructure process there, or is this a foregone conclusion that they 

are going to move? 

Ms. ROTH. Well, in terms of their process, it took two paths in 

first identifying potential, narrowing down potential sites, and then 

separately potential developers; and then the sites would be married up with the developer. So the way it is set now is not to go 

into the same location. 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. Would the gentleman yield for a second? 

Mr. WOMACK. I would be happy to yield. 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. I am not following this line. I always ask 

this question, but why—was it because it structurally was deficient? Is it unsafe? Can it not be retrofitted to meet new technologies that are necessary? Just a simple why? 

Ms. ROTH. I don’t know specifically here. I can say that generally 

when we approach these jobs, it is a matter of understanding what 

is available for the property that is there, and so it is quite possible 

to look at a property and say that the costs of retrofitting it or the 

improvements that are necessary won’t give us a good return in 

terms of building new or utilizing another space. That is how—— 

Mr. WOMACK. Was it assumed that the present location, inadequate as the building is for the current needs of the FBI—we can 

stipulate to that—I am not sure I can, but for the sake of the argument—was it assumed that finding a location outside the primary 

city center area would be of economic value that they could build 

a new facility out there, give them what the FBI wants, the new 

building, and trade it for the value of the property where it currently is; and it would be an even trade, that that would drive 

some of that decision? 

Ms. ROTH. Certainly there is a number of factors including the 

economics of it that go into putting forth these potential exchanges. 

We were saying earlier this would be the largest exchange of its 

nature, and so we will have a sense coming out of this process really what the market is willing to bear. But, yes, in terms of what 

we were looking for here overall is a new location for—well, a new 

building for FBI. The site process narrowed down the location, and 
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that is what has us having to check around Maryland or Virginia 

versus the existing location. 

Mr. WOMACK. Mr. Chairman, I don’t have a real good, warm and 

fuzzy feeling on this particular project. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Just so you will know before you got here, we 

had an extensive conversation about this because, for instance in 

London, we are selling this very, very valuable piece of property on 

Berkeley Square, which I hate to see us lose, but because of security issues, we are building a new embassy across the river. But 

we are selling the valuable piece of property in Berkeley Square for 

more than we are going to spend building a new building. And that 

is a good concept. And I had asked her earlier if the concept is that 

we have got this valuable piece of property downtown, and somebody can build a facility that houses everybody and is more modern, et cetera, et cetera, without having a big gap in between. 

I told her we really didn’t want to hear her agency come back and say, well, you know, we are $1 billion short on the new building. So the concept is that it ought to be an even trade. As I said 

to her, I think it is very, very complicated, and I have asked over 

and over again, and she is going to tell us what the latest appraisal 

is, because I think you ought to be appraising that from time to 

time, and you ought to be assessing what the new one is going to 

cost. And then you can tell us more if it is going to be kind of, as 

I said, even Steven. That is a good concept. But just to build a new 

building and trade somebody for some valuable piece of property 

downtown, I don’t want us to come out on the short end of that 

stick. So she is going to keep us aware of that. 

Mr. WOMACK. Prepare yourself. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you for your concern. Yes. 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. This I am also positive is not under our 

jurisdiction, but who is talking about building the new facility for 

the Secret Service, the new White House for their training? Whose 

committee does that go to? They were going to make a proposal 

today. The Secret Service is requesting $8 million or so to build a 

replica of the White House to better help them train. So it is obviously not you. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Probably Homeland. I would think it is Homeland.

Mr. SERRANO. A replica of the White House? 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. A replica of the White House so that 

they can train them. 

Mr. SERRANO. They should just keep away from the fences. 

Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. You know, I was going to offer that, but 

that is not our committee. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. And just in passing, there will be a day when the 

West Wing gets fixed up when whoever the President is doesn’t 

mind moving out. So far, no one wants to move out. I think everybody has had a chance to ask. Let me just ask one last question. 

This gets into my original question in terms of priorities. Now, there is $160 million to buy the Red Cross Building that 

you would like. Now the State Department is in there, I know, and 

I think part of the concept is the State Department is going to have 

$155 million, and you got $160 million, and so you have got a $315 

million building that you want to buy. I guess I am just curious, 
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why is that a big priority? I mean, for instance, what if the State 

Department doesn’t get—if they are going to buy half of it, what 

if they don’t get their $155 million? What if you don’t get your full 

$160 million? Is that going to save money? Why is that up on your 

priority list? 

Ms. ROTH. This would be a consolidation effort. DHS is currently 

in multiple leases across the city, and this would be an opportunity 

to consolidate their leases overall, so that is primarily what makes 

this a priority project. In terms of if we don’t receive the funding, 

obviously plans will have to change and look at other alternatives, 

but ultimately, this is what brings the project to the table. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Is the State Department in there now? 

Ms. ROTH. Yes, in part, yes. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. And then some other people will go in there as 

well.

Ms. ROTH. Other State Department leases actually. They would 

be able to fold all of their leases in there. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. That is like when I ask you what are we going 

to do with the $70 million in consolidation, you don’t necessarily 

have to spend all that $70 million, but this is the kind of consolidation you are trying to bring about. You think if you spend $350 million, put everybody in there, at the end of the day we are going to 

save money? 

Ms. ROTH. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I want to say—Pat cautions me on 

this—but I am pretty sure that they are paying about $12 million 

in leases annually across the city, and they will be able to go into 

this facility and reduce those leases. And so that is why we would 

look at an opportunity of that nature, just for example. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. I think unless anybody has any further questions, we want to thank you for being here today. You 

have got a tough job, especially for being here 3 weeks. And keep 

up the good work. Thank you so much. This meeting is adjourned. 
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MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2015. 

THE SUPREME COURT 

WITNESSES

HON. STEPHEN G. BREYER, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE, SUPREME COURT OF 

THE UNITED STATES 

HON. ANTHONY M. KENNEDY, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE, SUPREME COURT 

OF THE UNITED STATES 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, this hearing will come to order. 

First of all, let me welcome Justice Breyer and Justice Kennedy. 

Thank you for being here today. I know both of you have testified 

before our subcommittee in times past, and we appreciate you coming back and being with us here again today. We all look forward 

to this time to have an exchange. Not often does the legislative 

branch and the judicial branch get to talk to each other. So we look 

forward to that. 

I think all of us know that a fair and impartial judiciary is very 

much a cornerstone to our democratic system of government. And 

so the fact that you are here today I think is important. I think 

the work that you do is obviously very, very important, and not 

only do you resolve disputes between individuals but also between 

the executive branch of the Federal Government as well as the legislative branch. And, to do that, you need the respect of the citizens, and I think you have that. I think you also give respect to 

the citizens and their view of what is right and what is fair. And 

that is important as well. 

So I think today’s hearing is important because we do have a 

chance to talk to each other about issues that are important. 

Now, one of the things that I want to commend you all for is 

your work to try to help save money. Everybody knows that government needs money to provide services, but of late, we are trying 

to make sure that every task of government is completed more efficiently and more effectively than it ever has been before. Money is 

limited, and you are to be commended for the work that you have 

done to try to save the taxpayers’ dollars. I noticed that your request this year, $88.2 million, is almost $1 million less than you 

requested last year. And I can tell you my fellow members up here 

don’t see that happen very often when an agency comes in and 

asks for less money than they received the year before. So we 

thank you for that. 

I know you have done some cost containment initiatives dealing 

with technology, dealing with personnel, and it has paid off. And 

I know that there are some small increases, a part of that overall 

reduction, that are basically inflationary themselves. 

So, Justice Kennedy, Justice Breyer, we look forward to hearing 

from you about the resources that you need and any other comments you might have about the judiciary in general. And we are 
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going to pledge to you to work as best we can to make sure that 

you have the resources necessary to carry out your constitutional 

responsibility. And, once again, thank you for the work you have 

done to try to save money and be efficient and effective. 

And, in closing, just let me say on a personal note, I am from 

Jacksonville, Florida, and we have something there called the 

Chester Bedell Inn of the Court. It was one of the first Inn of the 

Courts established in Florida. And every year they have a special 

occasion on Law Day, and I wanted to let you know that they will 

be requesting one of the members of the Supreme Court to come 

in 2016 to be there for that celebration in Jacksonville, Florida. So 

I hope you will be on the lookout for that invitation. I know they 

would love to have you there, and I would certainly welcome the 

honor to introduce you to Jacksonville, Florida. 

Mr. WOMACK. The chairman has no shame. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. And that has nothing to do with your budget request. And so we look forward to hearing your testimony, but, first, 

let me turn to the acting ranking member, Mr. Bishop. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Ranking Member Serrano would very much have liked to have 

been here today. But he could not, and he sends his sincerest 

apologies. I am here in his place, and I would also like to warmly 

welcome you both, Justices Kennedy and Breyer, to our subcommittee.

As has been said in the past years, this is one of the rare opportunities for our two branches of government to interact. Because of 

this, our questions sometimes range beyond strict appropriations 

issues. And, as our Nation’s highest court, many of us look to you 

for important insights into issues affecting the Federal judiciary as 

a whole, which can be especially critical in such difficult and challenging budget times as we are experiencing. 

We have to be careful not to allow anything to affect the ability 

of our Federal judiciary to hear cases and to dispense justice in a 

fair and a timely manner. We have to be sure also to provide the 

Supreme Court, as both the final authority on our Constitution and 

the most visible symbol of our system of justice, with sufficient resources to undertake not just your judicial functions but your public information functions as well. 

So we look forward to your testimony and whatever we can do 

to make sure that we have a strong independent, well-funded judiciary, we want to do that. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you, Mr. Bishop. 

And now let me recognize first Justice Kennedy for any remarks 

you might like to make. We will put your written statement in the 

record. And if you could keep your remarks in the neighborhood of 

5 minutes, that will give us some time to ask questions. But, again, 

the floor is yours. 

Justice KENNEDY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Bishop, Congressman Womack. Thank you for your welcome and your greeting to Justice Breyer and to me, and we bring 

our messages of greeting from our colleagues. 

With us today—I will just go in the order of where they are seated—are Jeff Minear, who is counselor to the President, and—or 
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Counselor to the Chief Justice; and Kevin Cline, who is our budget 

and personnel director; and Pam Talkin, who is the Marshal of the 

Court; Scott Harris, who is the Clerk of the Court. 

And is Patricia here with you as well? We have Kathy Arberg 

and Patricia Estrada from our Public Information Office. 

As you indicated, Mr. Chairman, we are always very careful, 

very cautious, about budgetary expenditures. And, as you well 

know and as the committee well knows, the budget of the Supreme 

Court is just a small part of the budget for the courts as a whole. 

And the budget for the courts as a whole is a very small part of 

the United States budget. 

And in I think a day you will hear a presentation from Judge 

Julia Gibbons of the Sixth Circuit on the budget for the judiciary 

as a whole. And this is of immense importance. She does a marvelous job for the judiciary, and spends many, many days and 

weeks on this subject. And the budget for the Federal judiciary as 

a whole—it is important I think for the Congress to realize—is not 

just bar judges. There are 7,900 probation and pre-sentencing officers. And this is cost-effective because this keeps people on supervised release so that they are not in custody, and this is a huge 

cost saving. Quite without reference to the human factor, over the 

years in the Federal system, we have a very low recidivism rate for 

those who are on release. It is high if you look at it as one-third, 

but it is quite low compared to the States. So this is cost-effective. 

And the Federal courts as a whole, Mr. Chairman, are a tangible, 

palpable, visible, clear manifestation of our commitment to the 

Rule of Law. When people from foreign countries come, as judges 

often come, and they see the Federal judicial system, they admire 

it. They are inspired by it. And they go back to their countries and 

say that this is a nation that is committed to the Rule of Law. And 

law is part of the capital infrastructure. You can not have a free 

economic system without a functioning legal system. And so what 

you do is of immense importance, and we appreciate it. 

As to our own budget, as you indicated, Mr. Chairman, overall 

we have a decrease in our own court operations and expenditures. 

We have almost exactly a 1 percent—little over a 1 percent increase—and that is for mandated increases for inflation and salary 

increases that are mandated. And over half of that we have absorbed by cost-cutting in the court. So we have absorbed over half 

of the mandated increases within the existing framework that we 

have.

The Court is planning to have, in the year 2016, an electronic filing system so that all of the papers that are filed with the Court 

will be on electronic filing. We waited in part until the district 

courts and the circuit courts could get on that system so that we 

could then take it from them, but of course this also includes filings 

from State courts and from prisoners. We think this may require 

an increase in personnel by one or two people. We are not sure. 

The pro se petitions, of which there—I don’t know, it is in your materials—probably in the area of 6,000 a year. These are usually 

handwritten, prisoner handwritten. When this is put on electronic—an electronic retrievable transmission—system, you will 

have a database from which scholars and analysts can look at the 

whole criminal system, both State and Federal, and make compari-
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sons. How many—what are the percentage of cases where there is 

a complaint on inadequate assistance of counsel, or search and seizure, or a Batson violation. And so this will be a database that will 

give us considerable data for scholars so that we can study our system.

We are, of course, prepared to answer questions about the specifics, but, once again, let me thank you for the honor of being here. 

My colleague Justice Breyer and I are pleased to answer your questions.

[The information follows:] 
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Mr. CRENSHAW. Justice Breyer, you are recognized. 

Justice BREYER. I would simply reinforce what my colleague Justice Kennedy said and what you said, Mr. Chairman, and you are 

here. And I think that is a very good thing. 

So are we because I think our biggest problem is not necessarily 

the budget, but it is right similar to yours, which is how do you 

get the American people to understand what their institutions are 

about. And, in our case, we are not up in some heaven somewhere 

where we decree things from on high communicating directly with 

some mysterious source, that we are part of the Government of the 

United States. 

And you are actually interested in the mechanics of how we 

bring this about. Good. It means we are not totally off on our own. 

And try to explain to people what we do, as you then try to explain 

what you do, and you say, We are part of you, and, you know, you 

are part of us, and that is talking to the people of the United 

States.

So I am glad to have even a little opportunity to talk about our 

institution and how it works, and I am glad you are interested. 

Thanks.

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, thank you very much. 

Justice KENNEDY. Mr. Chairman, I just might mention the Inns 

of Court, which you alluded to, was the idea of Chief Justice— 

former Chief Justice—Warren Burger. He loved all things English, 

and he wanted to replicate this structure in which judges and attorneys and law professors and law students have dinner twice a 

month and talk about common issues. And he did it with Judge 

Sherman Christensen of—the late Judge Christensen of Utah. And 

Cliff Wallace also assisted him, and it has been remarkable. It 

costs the government no money. And, in Jacksonville, Florida, and 

in Sacramento, California, in Boston, they have Inns of Court. And 

it has made a tremendous difference. People thought, oh, this is 

kind of an interesting idea. It has made a real palpable, tangible, 

visible difference in the civility that we have within our profession. 

It has been a remarkable, remarkable achievement. It was Warren 

Burger’s idea. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. That is great because it really is there to promote civility, to boost professionalism, and they are doing certainly 

a great job. 

As we begin the questions, I can’t help but recall the last time 

you all were here, I asked you how the Court decides who they are 

going to send over to testify before us, and I think, Justice Kennedy, you replied it is based on merit. And so you are back again. 

Good job. 

Let me ask you, one of the things that I know there had been 

a lot of work being done on the building and grounds. And, over 

the last 10 years, I think this committee has spent or appropriated 

about $120 million to, for the first time since 1935, do some upgrades, and so I just want to ask for a kind of an update on how 

all that work is done. The facade was redone, I guess north and 

south. Is that all complete? At one time, there was a big hole in 

the ground next door, but since I have been by of late, everything 

looks really nice. Can you just give us an update on all of the work 

that has been done? And is that completed and finished? 
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Justice KENNEDY. The $120 million appropriation for the project 

for refurbishing of the building is completed. We came in under 

budget. And the project has been closed and has been very, very 

successful.

Incidentally, the original cost for that was—the original estimate 

was $170 million. And I talked with your predecessor when I got 

the message, and he said, I think we have got a problem. I said, 

I think it sounds too high to me. We hired our own architect and 

worked with him. And, in fact, my recollection is that he did most 

of his work pro bono. And from the architect that we hired—he was 

from the University of Virginia, taught architecture there—we got 

it down to 120, and the building came in under that. 

There were some contract claims. One of the problems was the 

windows. If you look at our windows on the court, there are these 

lovely windows. So to replace the windows, which we had to do, 

they measured. They measured the bottom for the width of the 

window, and then the height, but they didn’t know that it is not 

a rectangle. It is a trapezoid. So the window at the top is slightly 

smaller, and that is to give it perspective. It was a brilliant architecture. And so that was about a $15 million mistake, which we 

were not going to pay for. But that is the kind of thing that comes 

up in the building. 

And it is finished. We had to replace all the wires, all the air conditioning. We had the air-conditioning system from 1938, and when 

it broke, there was a fellow that was retired in West Virginia. We 

sent a police car to get him, you know, and we said we better fix 

this. And so that has been done. 

The facade is a different project. That is the—some of the marble 

was actually falling off. The time has not been kind to the marble 

on the building. And so we are still in progress. The entrance, the 

west side of the building, is finished, but the north and south and 

the east have yet to be done. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Gotcha. Let me ask you, and we will have time, 

I think, for a round of questions or two. The whole security issue. 

You know, the world is—seems to be getting more dangerous, 

whether it is internationally or whether it is domestically. And I 

know from time to time the Supreme Court hears controversial 

cases. And I know that you spend about $18 million a year on security—primarily with the Supreme Court Police, and I just wanted 

you to tell us, is that adequate? And, for instance, if you hear a 

or are going to hear maybe a highly charged case, do you have to 

increase security during the time those hearings takes place? 

Just give us an overall view of how you see—because I was just 

in Jacksonville this morning with the folks in the Federal courthouse, and that is a concern to them in these difficult economic 

times to make sure we have adequate security for a lot of people 

that are in public service. But give us a little update on how—is 

that all being funded? Is that all being taken care of in terms of 

security?

Justice KENNEDY. It has been. A few years ago, we projected that 

we needed more than we ultimately asked for, but we are now satisfied that we have the right number. 
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Yes, of course, in high-profile cases or when threat assessments 

are going up, we have increased security, but we can do it all within our existing staff. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Bishop is recognized. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. 

When you were last here, we discussed the very real impact of 

sequestration. Unfortunately, we still need to discuss that. I think 

most people think of Federal grants and programs where you are 

able to dial back operations. But it is not the case with the Federal 

judiciary. Courts have a constitutional responsibility, and you cannot control the scope of your jurisdiction, and you have already undertaken strict cost-cutting measures prior to sequestration. 

I know you can’t answer for the entire judiciary, but what do you 

see as the continued effects of sequestration? What concerns do you 

have if sequestration is continued? 

Justice KENNEDY. I have not heard the testimony for the other 

agencies that come before you, and maybe they all say that we are 

all unique; you can not have any sequester for us. So I do not want 

to just repeat the argument that you hear all the time. 

But a few things. Number one, we can not control our workload. 

It is controlled by forces and factors that are beyond our direction. 

Number two, we have a tradition, as the chairman indicated, of 

being very prudent and very cautious. With us, if there were cutbacks, it would mean delayed processing time of cases, and it could 

mean compromises in security. With the courts in general, it is 

much more significant. As I indicated, we have 7,900 probation officers, and if they are laid off, that means more people are in prison 

at a greater cost. So sequestration actually works backwards. 

Justice BREYER. Yeah, I agree. At some point, you cut back 

enough and keep going, you will discover that, unfortunately in the 

United States, there are crimes. And people are arrested, and they 

are supposed to be tried. And you need a judge, and you need a 

jury, and you need a courtroom. And the alternative is not to have 

the trial. If you don’t have the trial, the person has to be released, 

and there we are. And so there is a minimum. And if you go toward 

that minimum and beyond it, you will deprive the country of the 

services that basically are needed to run the Government of the 

United States in this area. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. 

I applaud the Court’s ability to find savings in its budget. Your 

total fiscal year 2016 request for salaries and expenses and buildings and grounds does represent a discretionary decrease of 1.1 

percent from fiscal year 2015. It looks like this is a combination of 

the construction work being completed and savings from nonrecurring costs that are associated with implementation of your 

new financial system. 

Are there program increases you are delaying but you still feel 

would be beneficial at some point? 

With regard to implementation of your new financial system, I 

understand you are leveraging resources from the executive branch 

and the Department of Interior, specifically in the area of payroll 

and financial tracking. I understand that this move has reduced 

your reliance on contract employees, and it seems to be a great step 
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toward efficiency. Do you find that you are getting the same level 

or an improved level of service? Would you recommend this to 

other agencies that are looking to reduce their costs? 

Justice KENNEDY. Well, I am not enough of an expert to recommend it to other agencies, but our staff tells us it is working 

very, very well. They like it. They like it better than the outside 

contractors, and it is much cheaper. We are in partnership with an 

agency in the Department of Interior, and it—which has some similarities to us, and it has been—it has been the source of—it has 

generated most of the savings that we have had over the last few 

years.

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Justice KENNEDY. Part of the question, Congressman Bishop, we 

are not holding back on anything other than we do have this projection that we may need two more people because of the electronic 

filing that we are going to put in place in 2016. 

Mr. BISHOP. I must remark, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, that the answers from our witnesses are so succinct and to 

the point and concise. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Yeah. We don’t—not only do we not get people 

requesting less money; we don’t get people that speak clearly and 

concisely. So congratulations on both fronts. 

Now I would like to recognize Mr. Womack. 

Mr. WOMACK. I wish they were all this way. 

Justices, once again, it is a great honor to have you before us. 

We always look forward to hearing your commentary. And I am 

specifically interested in the IT piece of what is going on at the Supreme Court. These technology changes are happening so fast, so 

fast that we get further and further behind, I think, in trying to 

keep up with what technology ought to be able to do for us. And 

so I am interested in knowing just how well the IT upgrades are 

going.

In listening to your testimony, Justice Kennedy, I got to thinking 

about our friends over at the VA and the DOD. They are having 

such a difficult time coming up with a platform that can serve a 

very special group of people to our country, our veterans, and being 

able to get these two systems to talk to one another—do you encounter any of that kind of conflict within the judicial realm in 

dealing with matters of information technology? 

Justice KENNEDY. My guess is, and Justice Breyer is much 

more—is more well versed in this than I am, my guess is that, by 

comparison with many other agencies, our problems are predictable. We know there is going to be a trial with a plaintiff and a 

defendant. We know there is going to be an appeal with an appellant and an appellee. We know there may be a petition with a petitioner and a respondent. So the universe of problems is rather wellknown and rather predictable. We do not have to project for uncertainties to the extent—nearly to the extent that other agencies 

do—and our system, the legal system, lends itself very well to the 

electronic technology. 

Justice BREYER. In my own mind, I classify three different things 

this technology can do. 
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One that you heard about, and that is the budgeting, for example, and things that are technological, and there they have made 

advances in getting together with other agencies. 

The second, which is coming along and is slower to develop, is 

the ability to file briefs and opinions and other things electronically, which is helpful to the lawyers and it is helpful to the public 

because they can get it instantaneously. Now, that takes some 

time, but I think it is going along satisfactorily. And I think that 

most of the other court systems, we have this already in many 

forms. So it can plug into ours without too much trouble. 

The third, which is a little more open-ended—and I put more 

weight on it—is, can we use our technology to inform the public 

about what we are doing, particularly through our Web site. And 

I was talking to people from SCOTUS Blog. I mean, they do the 

same kind of thing, and that is not so easy to do, and we put in 

a Web site, but the question is, will they use it. Will people find 

out? Will schoolchildren find out? Will some teacher say, Hey, I 

want to know about this case. I know how to do it. I get on the 

Web, and I tell my class. Fabulous, if we can do that. I got some 

figures, and we don’t—it is hard to calculate what it is. 

We had, according to this, we have in a year 271,530,850 hits, 

but I wasn’t sure what that meant. I mean, is that a lot or a little? 

It sounds like a lot to me. It said 75 million a month, but how do 

you measure it? And then we tried to get some comparative figures. 

It says, well, the White House is way up there, maybe with 1,000, 

whatever they are. Rank 1,000, 2,000, maybe. And you are about, 

you know, maybe 8,000 or 5,000. And we are about like 10,000. 

And the inspector general is like 2 million or something. So it 

seemed that there is interest in getting this information. 

And how to develop that in a way that is useable over time and 

encourages the average American to find out, I think that is a big 

project. And I think it will require a lot of experiment back and 

fourth, and I think, as I said, you are in it as much as we are. 

Mr. WOMACK. No question. 

Justice KENNEDY. I think also, Congressman, it is just anecdotal, 

it is only a tentative hypothesis. But I think electronic information 

has reduced the number of appeals that we have because lawyers 

who are trying a case can just push in Batson rule, who has presumption, and immediately comes up an answer, the latest cases. 

If there is a conflict, it comes up. I think that this is easier for lawyers and judges to find the law. 

Mr. WOMACK. With the time that I have remaining, and I know 

I am about out of time, at the risk of getting into a philosophical 

discussion, I have some very strong feelings about our capacity to 

deal with people given our current prison and local jail overcrowding. It goes all the way from our county levels to the Federal 

system, and it seems to me that our country continues to struggle 

with what to do and how to manage—you just can’t build enough 

incarcerating facilities to deal with the population. It is such an expensive thing. I was at an event Saturday night in my own district 

and one of the county judges remarked to me that there is a chance 

that their jail is going to be shut down. The opportunities or the 

solutions to these problems seem to be fewer and fewer. So I kind 
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of consider myself in the camp of we are going to have to start 

prioritizing how we deal with this. 

And the supervised piece that you spoke of, Justice Kennedy, 

about the probations and those kinds of programs is just a very invaluable tool to our country in helping manage just how many people we have behind bars at a given time. So I will just throw it out 

on the table and yield back my time. 

Justice KENNEDY. I think, Mr. Chairman, that the corrections 

system is one of the most overlooked, misunderstood institutions 

and functions that we have in our entire government. 

In law school, I never heard about corrections. Lawyers are fascinated with the guilt/innocence/adjudication process, and once the 

adjudication process is over, we have no interest in corrections. 

Doctors know more about the correction system—and psychiatrists—than we do. Nobody looks at it. 

California, my home State, had 187,000 people in jail at a cost of over $30,000 a prisoner. Compare the amount that they gave to 

schoolchildren, it was about $3,500 a year. Now, it is a difference. 

This is 24-hour care, and so this is apples and oranges in a way. 

And this idea of total incarceration just is not working. And it 

is not humane. The Federal Government built—what do they call 

them—supermax prisons with isolation cells. Prisoners—we had a 

case come before our court a few weeks ago, the prisoner had been 

in an isolation cell, according to the attorney—I haven’t checked it 

out—for 25 years. Solitary confinement literally drives men mad. 

Even Dr. Manette had his workbench and his cobbler’s tools in 

Tower 105 North—and even he lost his mind. And we simply have 

to look at this system that we have. 

The Europeans have systems for difficult, recalcitrant prisoners 

in which they have them in a group of three or four. And they can 

stay together as a group of three or four, and they have human 

contact. And it seems to work much better, but we haven’t given 

nearly enough study, nearly enough thought, nearly enough investigative resources to looking at our corrections system. In many respects, I think it is broken. 

Justice BREYER. Just one thing because I want to focus on one 

word that I think you said, which to my mind is the direction of 

an answer, and that is the word ‘‘prioritize.’’ Fine. Who will do the 

prioritizing? Do you think you can do it here? You proceed crime 

by crime. I mean, no matter what crime you chose, you will find 

individuals who committed it in a way that seems to deserve little 

and some maybe who deserve a lot. And you can’t look at it individually.

You want to have mandatory minimums? I have said publicly 

many times that I think that is a terrible idea. And I have given 

reasons, which I will spare you. If you want individual judges to 

do it—always, completely—you run the risk of non-uniformity. And, 

therefore, we have set up rule commissions, sentencing commissions, and then mandatory minimums. 

So it a huge topic. And is it worth your time and effort or mine 

to try to work out ways of prioritizing? I think it is. I think it is 

a big problem for the country. And so I can’t do anything more in 

the next minute or 30 seconds or 2 seconds, than just say I like 

the word ‘‘prioritize.’’ I hope you follow up it up, and I hope you 
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do examine the variety of ways that there are of trying to prioritize 

and then work out one that is pretty good. 

Mr. WOMACK. I thank the gentlemen. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Rigell. 

Mr. RIGELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And, Justices, I join my colleagues, all of my colleagues in expressing our appreciation for the work that you do, for serving on 

the Court, and for your being here today. This is going into my 

fifth year serving in the House of Representatives. It is my first 

year on Appropriations. And, really, to have seen this on my calendar and to know this was coming up, I considered it, as Mr. 

Womack said, just an honor to be here and have you here with us 

today.

I would like to visit the topic of the electronic case filing system. 

I would suppose, now, I am not familiar with it, but if we are going 

to electronic, that that would mean that at present it is a physical 

document that is being received by the Court? You can elaborate 

on that if you would like, but then was any of this commercially 

available? Or was this like written exclusively for the Supreme 

Court, the software that we will be pivoting to? Justice Kennedy? 

Justice KENNEDY. I can not answer that. The lawyers have available to them commercial systems for filing their—for filing their 

briefs and so forth. So they are out there, and there is some competition. There is some competition there. 

So far as the court side, how does the court manage it, I am not 

sure that there were outside contractors or not. 

Justice BREYER. I just learned from Jeff Minear, he said we developed it all in-house. 

Mr. RIGELL. Okay. All right. That is helpful. 

Justice Breyer, I noted and was intrigued and appreciative of 

your comments discussing your desire and really the Court’s desire 

to get the work of the Court out to the American people and to engage them in this. 

Is there a designated effort, a continued effort, and to the extent 

that you are familiar with it—and, by the way, I actually thought 

it would be your staff—some of your staff would actually—and I see 

that they are here with us—but to see the two of you actually engaging the committee, I think, is laudable. I respect and appreciate 

that.

You may not be dialed in on all the nuances of it, but the effort 

to revisit the Web site to keep it fresh and perhaps, to use the term 

that is so often being used now, to develop an app, you know, for 

the Supreme Court, and maybe there is one and I just need to be 

educated about it, but this idea of engaging the American public, 

I applaud you for this. It needs to be done because we only have 

a healthy republic if our fellow citizens are engaged and knowledgeable about what is taking place. 

So could you comment on that just a little bit? And you can run 

with it if you would like to. Either one of you. 

Justice BREYER. Well, I mean, it is my favorite topic. 

Mr. RIGELL. Okay. 

Justice BREYER. But it is particularly hard for us. You at least 

can say, you know, we disagree about a lot of stuff in Congress, but 
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there are elections to resolve it. We have to say, why should nine 

unelected people be making decisions that affect you in an important way? And, by the way, half the time we are divided; half the 

time we are unanimous. But when we are divided, say, 5/4, 20 percent of the time, somebody is wrong. So these decisions might not 

be right, and they affect you, and they are important. Why should 

you support an institution like that? We have answers, and so did 

James Madison. So did Alexander Hamilton. So did John Marshall. 

Okay? So there are answers, but people are busy, and will they 

take the time to listen? Okay. 

Annenberg Foundation has a whole series of films and teaching 

devices. Justice Kennedy gave a speech about this years ago which, 

in part, led to Justice O’Connor developing iCivics, and iCivics has 

millions of hits and is trying to do the same thing. They are trying 

to, in Boston, at this moment—well, in one week—they will open 

Senator Kennedy’s Institute. And what that is is a model of the 

Senate. And there are little handheld computers, which will make 

you the Senator, if you are a school kid, and will then give you 

problems, and you will learn how the Senate works. And maybe 

that will go out over the Internet to classrooms, and they need one 

for the House. 

Mr. RIGELL. Outstanding. 

Justice BREYER. And so, gradually, I think, and am very enthusiastic, that it is possible to use the devices that we have now—— 

Mr. RIGELL. Oh, yes. 

Justice BREYER [continuing]. To teach. When Antonin Scalia and 

I have, as we have done, go to Texas and talk to a large number 

of school kids and they get interested and they see that we have 

differences of opinion that are not personal, and they see that the 

agreement is more important than the differences, fabulous. 

Mr. RIGELL. Yes. 

Justice BREYER. And so there you see the enthusiasm in my 

voice, but—— 

Mr. RIGELL. I love seeing the passion. 

Justice BREYER. I think it is a great and necessary task. 

Justice KENNEDY. One of the things we found, Congressman, is 

that the information revolution has put law professors back into 

the fore. It used to be that we relied on law reviews to comment 

on cases. And the law review would take about a year for the law 

review article to come out. 

But now we have commentary within 24, 48, 72 hours of a Supreme Court case by experts in cybersecurity law, in criminal law, 

in constitutional law. And these are available, first of all, to the 

legal profession and the academy, but, second, to people that are 

generally interested. There are blogs on the Supreme Court. And 

there are, as I indicated, blogs on different subjects. They are quite 

detailed. They are quite interesting. My law clerks read them a lot. 

I, frankly, don’t read them, but the availability of information, and, 

as Justice Breyer indicated, the interest of the citizen and the ability of the citizen to get it is really increasing remarkable because 

of the information revolution. 

Mr. RIGELL. Yes. Thank you both. Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, thank you. 
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You know, when you talked about educating the public, the question always comes up, people suggest that maybe the Court should 

televise oral arguments. That people could see firsthand what goes 

on. And I know the Court has historically rejected that. I think it 

was Justice Sotomayor, before she went on the Bench, thought it 

would be a good idea to televise oral arguments. And then, once 

she was on the Bench, she changed her mind and thinks it is not 

a good idea. 

So I just wondered, do you sense any change? Do you think there 

will be a day when oral arguments will be on the television? Do 

you think that is good or that is not good in the context of educating the folks? Could you all comment on that. 

Justice KENNEDY. The question, do I think there will be the day, 

it sounds as if we are more or less behind the times. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. No. It is just a matter of, you know, history. I 

mean, today you would probably reject that. 

Justice KENNEDY. If you had English-style debating, debate and 

you were handed the topic and you had to be either pro or con, you 

could make a lot of good arguments for television in the courtroom. 

Number one, it teaches. We teach. We teach what the Constitution 

is. We teach what rights are. We teach what responsibilities are. 

We are teachers. So why don’t we go on the television? 

And it would be very good for lawyers who are preparing to— 

have not been before us before, who want to see the dynamic of an 

argument.

And it is open. The public could see that we spend a lot of time 

on patent cases and railroad reorganization cases and so forth and 

so that we have a technical commitment. And they could see, we 

hope, an argument that is rational and respectful. 

When we are in disagreement, our institution—our institutional 

tradition—is not to make our colleagues look bad. It is to make the 

institution look good. And part of that is the way we conduct oral 

arguments. We are concerned that the presence of a TV camera, 

the knowledge that we are going to be on TV, would affect the way 

that we behave. And it is an insidious dynamic for me to think that 

one of my colleagues has asked a question just so that he or she 

could look good on TV. I don’t want that dynamic. We would prefer 

the dynamic where we have a discussion in which we are listening 

to each other, in which we are listening to counsel, and we think 

the television would detract from that. 

So you could make good arguments either way, but we—I think 

I can speak for most of my colleagues—do not think television 

should be in the courtroom. We have audio available, and the transcripts are available. 

The press does a very good job of covering us. The press has the 

advantage. They know 3, 4, 6 months in advance what the issues 

are. They can prepare the background. They can have pictures of 

the litigants and so forth. And then they are all ready to write the 

story depending on what we write. So we have good press coverage 

as well, but I think the cameras in the courtroom are not a good 

idea.

Mr. CRENSHAW. Justice Breyer? 

Justice BREYER. No. He states the problem. But, by the way, the 

oral argument is like 2 percent. I mean, most of what we take in 
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and most of the decisionmaking is on the basis of written briefs. 

Now, the first thing that if the public saw that on television, they 

would think that was the whole story. It is not. It is a tiny part. 

Second thing they would think—and because it is true of human 

nature and it is a good thing about human nature—we relate to 

people we see. We relate to them more than a word on paper or 

a statistic. That is nice. It is good. But in the two people who are 

having their case in the Court, there isn’t like one is a bad one; 

one is a good one. And we are not deciding, really, on the basis for 

them. We are deciding a rule of law that applies to 300 million people who aren’t in the courtroom. That is invisible on television. 

But then when you come down to it, I am fairly, I guess, impervious to making myself look ridiculous to getting an answer to a 

question that I can best focus by giving some ridiculous example. 

And he knows that I do, he is saying. All right, and they do, and 

the reporters are used to it, and they say, Oh, God, but nonetheless, I will do it. 

Now, my friends in the press, some of them tell me, You see if 

you do that the first time that somebody takes that ridiculous thing 

out of context and puts it on the evening news, particularly someone who is not one of our regulars and doesn’t really understand 

what is going on. 

Now, all of that kind of thing is the kind of thing, despite the 

good arguments the other way, that make us cautious and that 

make us conservative a small ‘‘c.’’ We are trustees for an institution 

that had a long existence before us, and we sincerely hope will 

have a long existence after. And the worst thing that any of us 

feels he or she could do is to hurt that institution, and that makes 

us awfully cautious. 

Now, all that is the psychology at play. And you say, will it eventually happen? Yeah. Sure. Because a generation will grow up that 

just, unlike me and unlike him, doesn’t even know what it was like 

before things like that took place, but I think that is the best explanation that is in my mind as we both—— 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, thank you for that. And I am not one who 

has called for having TVs in the courtroom, but I know somebody 

wanted to ask that question. So I thought I would just ask it. 

But let me ask you about the Web site just real quick. You mentioned all those hits that you are getting, and I know when you had 

the healthcare arguments, I understand there was just a whole lot 

of interest in that. Did the Web site hold up pretty well? Did it ever 

crash like some of these other Web sites from time to time? 

Justice BREYER. Just as we have occasional problems like anyone 

does, but they are not that many, and they are few and far between.

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Bishop. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, 

for asking the question that I wanted to ask about transparency in 

the Court and televising the proceedings, and I appreciate your answer very much. 

As in past years, our ranking member Mr. Serrano and I continue to be interested in the increase in the number of minorities 

that are selected for Supreme Court clerkships. Those are prized 
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positions for youngsters coming out of law school. I know that there 

has been an initiative in place at the Federal judiciary to help recruit minorities into clerkship positions. Do you think that those efforts are beginning to bear fruit at the district and appellate levels? 

And are there similar efforts under way at the Supreme Court? 

Justice KENNEDY. I think they are beginning to bear fruit, and 

we are conscious of it. The district courts and the courts of appeals 

are a little bit more open in part because they are around the country and they take from local schools. Some of us tend to take from 

the Ivy League schools. And not that they are without their pool 

of——

Mr. BISHOP. Minorities. 

Justice KENNEDY [continuing]. Of minority applicants, but we are 

conscious of it. And it is important, and it is a valid, valid question. 

Justice BREYER. When I started on the Court, I don’t know the 

figures in lower courts, but, I mean, in my own case, it might have 

started out that I had to look, you know, especially hard. I don’t 

now. I mean, it is just—it is not a problem. I don’t think it is— 

I mean, at least in my case. Maybe that has been luck. I don’t 

know, but it seems to me if it is at all—if I am at all typical, the 

problem has diminished significantly, really significantly. And I 

could try to do some counting, but I can’t in my head. You know, 

I think of the individual people. 

Justice KENNEDY. In 2014, we had 15 percent minority clerks on 

the Supreme Court. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. 

Let me move to another subject area. I know that, at previous 

hearings, we have discussed the possibility of applying the Judicial 

Conferences Code of Judicial Conduct to the Supreme Court Justices to make recusal decisions by the Justices more transparent 

for the public. 

Currently the Code of Judicial Conduct applies to all of the Federal judges but is only advisory for Supreme Court Justices. 

Do you have any thoughts on the proposals for changes to that 

since we last discussed the issue, I think last year? Do you believe 

that the Code of Judicial Conduct should apply to Supreme Court 

Justices and that recusals should be more transparent? 

Justice KENNEDY. You prompt me to go back and do some research, but my first response to your question is that recusals are 

largely governed by statute and by principles that are not necessarily part of the Code of Conduct. 

Now, there is an argument that the reason for recusals should 

be more apparent. I am not sure about that. In the rare cases when 

I recuse, I never tell my colleagues, Oh, I am recusing because my 

son works for this company, and it is a very important case for my 

son. Well, why should I say that? That is almost like lobbying. So, 

in my view, the reason for recusal should never be discussed. It is 

obvious sometimes when company A is before the Court and our financial disclosure indicates that a Judge owns a stock in company 

A, and so that is fairly obvious. 

Justice BREYER. Add one thing—two things. 

One is, we all have or access to the volumes of the Judicial Code 

of Ethics. And having been there for some time now, 20 years, I 

would say I have not seen an instance of recusal by me or anybody 
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else where the Judge doesn’t make sure it is consistent with the— 

you know, the problem is consistent with the Judicial Code of Ethics. So it did say—well, it is advisory as opposed to compulsory is 

words. It doesn’t really show—make a difference in practice. Now, 

well, why not? What is it I am nervous about? Why not just say, 

Hey? I am nervous about this: The Supreme Court is different from 

a court of appeals and a district court, and that is true, by the way, 

with television, too, interestingly enough. Why is it different here? 

Because in the court of appeals, if I recuse myself—or in the district court—they can get another judge. Judges are fungible. They 

are not in the Supreme Court. You can’t get a substitute. And I 

wouldn’t say there is any lawyer in the country who would do this, 

but it is logically conceivable that a lawyer might sometime think 

of the idea of bringing up an issue in order to have a panel that 

is more favorable. I know no such lawyer. But it is conceivable. 

And, therefore, I think we have to be careful because, unlike those 

in the lower courts, I can’t think, Well, in case of doubt, just recuse 

yourself if it is a close case. No. I have a duty to sit as well as a 

duty not to sit. 

And, moreover, I have a lot on my schedule. I have a lot to do, 

as do you, as do others, and trying to make this into some kind of 

big issue I would prefer not because, I mean, I would think no is 

the answer. I have to make those decisions. I will make them as 

best I can. I will do it according to the code of ethics. And, so far, 

I have been able to that, and I don’t want it to become an issue. 

And all that leads me to say, No, I don’t want to have to give my 

answers if I don’t want to, and I have to—it is a personal decision. 

I will follow the code and that, I think, is the best way to run this 

institution.

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Womack. 

Mr. WOMACK. Only one more question, looking for insight here. 

To the credit of the Justices, they get out in our country and they 

speak quite frequently to different organizations. I know Justice 

Scalia has been in my district once already this year and I think 

he is coming back in a month for another presentation as a guest 

lecturer.

In many cases, you gentlemen are talking to law students and 

people that aspire someday maybe to sit where you sit. What 

trends are you seeing? In the medical community, I understand 

that we are having trouble finding private care physicians, just the 

general type of family practice physician. Most medical students 

now are specializing, because that is where a lot of the money is. 

But what trends are you seeing in our law schools with regard to 

the new lawyer as it were? Is the legal community blessed with a 

pretty good crop of young talented minds, or are there any trends 

there that you can share with me that would raise any concerns? 

Justice KENNEDY. I am not sure. My own background was private practice in a small town, which I found immensely rewarding. 

Now the paradigm for most law students is they think of their career as a huge firm where they specialize, and the idea of counseling and meeting with clients and taking individual cases one by 

one is no longer the paradigm that they look forward to. 
129

I sense a change in this. The law schools are concerned about 

costs. There is a big argument whether there should be 3 years of 

law school; maybe cut it back to 2 years, which I would not applaud. I think that would be a bad idea. But there is a real cost 

factor. And I try to tell students that law can be immensely rewarding as an ethical undertaking, not just as a way to make a living. And I think these young students are beginning to be conscious of that. I hope. 

Mr. WOMACK. Any insights, Justice Breyer? 

Justice BREYER. I don’t have a lot of insight into that. You have 

to ask the dean of the law school. 

Judging from my law clerks, there is no deterioration of quality. 

I mean, they are great, and I hear the same complaints from the 

deans that Justice Kennedy does. Money. Suddenly, maybe in certain areas, they price themselves out of the market. And maybe 

that means that you have fewer people who are applying, and overall things like that adjust over time. 

Specialization, major problem. Major. It is so complicated. 

When my dad went to law school, he studied contracts, torts, 

property. You know, the five traditional subjects, and they may 

have added tax and con law by the time I got there. And now they 

have everything under the sun, and that is because there is a demand for everything under the sun. So there we are. How do we 

do that? Luckily, I do not have the difficult job of being a dean of 

a law school. I have probably what is an easier job. 

Justice KENNEDY. One of the things that is happening in law 

schools is they do have almost custom-made programs, so that you 

can take a degree in law and astronomy, law and medicine, law 

and the press, law and music, law and the performing arts. And 

this is good. This enables other disciplines to influence what is 

being taught in the law school, but it is a complicated world out 

there.

Justice BREYER. I mean, I say personally, because having now 

grandchildren, I mean, the cost of this stuff is amazing. And what 

are we going do about that? I don’t know. I don’t know. It is a problem.

Mr. WOMACK. Finally, Mr. Chairman, I think I say this every 

year these two gentleman are before us, but having a wife that has 

been a trial court assistant at the state level for 30, gosh, I don’t 

know, 34, 35 years now, I have a great amount of respect for the 

enterprise that these gentlemen represent. 

And once again it is a great honor to have you back before us 

here today. 

And I yield back. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Rigell. 

Mr. RIGELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And my final question, I am going to take us back just a little 

bit. Justice Kennedy, I was intrigued by your remarks early on, 

and you referenced, I am not sure if it is an organization or a process like a dinner that has really had an impact perhaps on the staff 

or the Court itself or those who are around the Court, and I don’t 

know anything about it. 
130

But I do know that where we are as a Nation that in some ways 

we are off the track, and as much as caustic tone often has overtaken the public square, and it makes it difficult to discern and 

identify the facts, and then to come to some common solutions for 

some of these challenges that we face as a country. 

You seemed excited about it, and I would like to hear more about 

it. Civility is not weakness. And so I would like to hear more about 

it because you are really bullish on it. 

Justice KENNEDY. The Inns of Court were the specific subject 

that the chairman had mentioned, and these exist in most major 

cities and small towns around the country, and they consist of a 

group of lawyers, judges, law students, law professors. They get together and they put on programs, how to cross-examine an expert, 

a medical expert, how to give a closing argument in a criminal 

case, and so forth; how to make an argument to a court of appeals. 

And then the judges and the attorneys and the law professors 

and the students sit down and have dinner together, so the judge 

isn’t some remote person. He is telling the attorneys how they can 

do a better job. The attorneys are telling the judge how the judge 

can do a better job 

Mr. RIGELL. Okay. 

Justice KENNEDY. And it has been a remarkable influence for 

more civility in our profession. 

Mr. RIGELL. Is this a relatively recent development or has it been 

around decades and decades? 

Justice KENNEDY. I would say 30 years. I would say for 30 years. 

When Chief Justice Burger mentioned it I thought, well, it is a 

good idea, a little bit visionary. But it took off like a rocket. He was 

right.

But this whole idea of civility. We are judged around the world 

as the guardians and the trustees of freedom, and the verdict of 

freedom is still out. People are looking at us. They are looking at 

our democracy. They are looking at our civic discourse. They are 

looking at our commitment to rationality and to progress. And I am 

not sure they always see the right thing. 

Mr. RIGELL. I share that. 

Justice KENNEDY. The Athenians, ancient Athens, Periclean Athens, took an oath, Athenian citizens took an oath. And the oath 

was that they would participate in civic affairs in a rational way 

so that Athens will be more beautiful, more splendid, and more free 

for our children than it is for us. And Athens failed because they 

failed to obey that oath. 

Mr. RIGELL. It is instructive. 

Justice BREYER. One, I have been there for a period of 20 years. 

I have probably attended an awful lot of Conferences of the Court, 

and we have had some pretty controversial cases, and I will tell the 

law students, whoever listens, I would say in that time, I have 

never once, never once heard a voice raised in anger in that Conference. I have never once heard any judge in that Conference say 

something mean or denigrating of somebody else. It is highly professional.

I say to law student, ‘‘We get on well personally, and we disagree 

about things. So you want to win your case, don’t get emotional.’’ 

‘‘Oh, why not?’’ 
131

‘‘Why not? You will lose it, you know.’’ 

People say, ‘‘Oh, how emotional you are.’’ But that is the law. 

That is lawyers. And maybe it actually works better when you 

treat people as individuals who have different ideas. 

Okay. So that is the general. Then the question is, how do you 

get that across? How do you get that across? Well, if you are being 

very practical, I have already said, we have Annenberg trying to 

do that through storage, we have iCivics, we have the Carnegie Institute for Education, we have the Kennedy Institute, we have 

probably dozens of others. So you get behind them. 

And what can you do with those films? Get Ken Burns. Say, Ken 

Burns, why don’t we have a set of 10 films, and the first is the 

story of the Cherokee Indians where, contrary to law, they are driven into Georgia, out of Georgia and into Oklahoma, the President 

of the United States doing that despite the Supreme Court. 

Let’s have General Eisenhower, President of the United States at 

that moment, taking those 1,000 paratroopers from Fort Bragg and 

flying them into Little Rock so those black children can go into that 

white school. 

Let’s go through a few cases that illustrate very dramatically and 

visually what it means to live in a society of 310 million different 

people who help stick together because they believe in a rule of 

law. And a rule of law means the opposite of the arbitrary. And you 

are part of that just as much as we, all right, and so are they. You 

say part, yes, all right. 

So there is a lot that can be said, and there is a lot that can be 

done, and I could not agree with you more on the importance of 

doing it. 

Mr. RIGELL. I thank you both. 

My time has expired. 

Justice KENNEDY. We tell people—— 

Mr. RIGELL. Yes. 

Justice KENNEDY [continuing]. Congressman, when Justice 

Breyer and my colleagues go to events with students, we say, 

‘‘Look, the Constitution doesn’t belong to a bunch of judges and 

lawyers and law professors. It is yours. It is yours.’’ Some of the 

great Presidents weren’t lawyers. They were great guardians of the 

Constitution.

And institutions have to remember this. Institutions have their 

own visibility, their own reputation, their own duty to inspire others to believe in the system of democracy, these three branches of 

government we have. And as my remarks indicated earlier, when 

we have disagreements in difficult cases our mission is to make the 

court look good, not to make our colleagues look bad. 

Mr. RIGELL. Thank you very much. I do appreciate the comments.

And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. It reminds me of what Benjamin Franklin supposedly said after the meetings were taking place as our country 

was getting started. And I understand a lady asked, ‘‘Sir, what 

have you given us?’’ And Benjamin Franklin said, ‘‘I have given you 

a republic, if you can keep it.’’ And here we are 200 years later. 

Let me ask a quick question. I have read, Justice Kennedy, from 

time to time, and I don’t know if it is still the case, but you had 
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expressed some concern about the increasingly politically charged 

issues that are now being heard and decided by the Supreme 

Court. Can you explain what that concern is? And does Justice 

Breyer share that concern? 

Justice KENNEDY. It is not novel or new for Justices to be concerned that they are making so many decisions that affect a democracy. And we think a responsible, efficient, responsive legislative 

and executive branch in the political system will alleviate some of 

that pressure. 

We routinely decide cases involving federal statutes, and we say, 

‘‘Well, if this is wrong, the Congress will fix it.’’ But then we hear 

that Congress can’t pass a bill one way or the other, that there is 

gridlock.

And some people say, ‘‘Well, that should affect the way we interpret the statutes.’’ That seems to me a wrong proposition. We have 

to assume that we have three fully functioning branches of the government that are committed to proceed in good faith and with good 

will toward one another to resolve the problems of this Republic. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Kind of the same thing. 

Mr. Bishop, you have another question. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief. 

I notice that the Court’s caseload is much lower compared to previous years. The current range of cases is literally half of what it 

was 10 years ago. Does the Court have a target number of cases 

that you target each year? 

And let me just go back to another subject. You talked about the 

new crop of young lawyers coming out of law school. I went to law 

school because I saw the law as an effective way of promoting social change. I came out of law school in 1971, and I was a part of 

the civil rights movement in interpreting the Civil Rights Act of 

1964. And so I am very sensitive to the way that the law can be 

used to perfect social change and has been in the way the Constitution has evolved. 

But there are reports from judges all across the country that the 

recession has not only caused a spike in the number of pro se litigants in civil cases, but has negatively affected the parties themselves and the courts. 

Do you believe that our justice system loses its effectiveness 

when citizens are unable to afford legal counsel in cases with 

stakes involving family, shelter, and livelihood? If so, can you perhaps give us some thoughts of how the problem can be remedied 

with more resources being allocated to pro bono or to legal aid services?

My major piece of litigation of civil rights was on behalf of 6,000 

African American inmates in the Georgia State Prison who were in 

a desegregated system occupying the same space as 4,000 white inmates, and it was certified as a Rule 23 class action case. Judge 

Alaimo decided it in the Southern District of Georgia back in the 

1970s, which resulted in a total change of the criminal justice housing system and the system as a whole, relieving overcrowding. 

It was brought pro se, and I happened to be a cooperating attorney associated with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. I handled 

that case, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, as a pro bono firm, 

backed it up. So it was at no charge to the litigants. But there are 
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not that many of those kinds of opportunities in there with the economic recession and with pro se litigants, particularly on civil 

cases.

How do we deal with that in terms of making sure that our justice system really is not turning on the capacity and the financial 

resources of the litigants? 

Justice KENNEDY. As to just number of cases, the first part of 

your question, is there an optimal amount that we strive for. We 

take the cases where we think our guidance is needed. As you 

know, we wait for courts of appeals or state supreme courts to be 

in conflict. And optimally we probably should have about 100 cases 

a year. When I first came, we had something, 160, 180. It was just 

far too many. 

The cases we do get now, I think anecdotally, I haven’t seen 

studies on it, are somewhat more difficult. Patent cases, we had a 

case, I think it was two terms ago, on the patentability of DNA. 

I read all summer long about it to try to understand it. It ended 

up Justice Thomas wrote the opinion, a very good opinion. 

So I think our cases are more technical. And the 78 cases that 

we had last year exhausted us. But optimally we could handle, I 

think, about 100. But we wait, because we wait until our guidance 

is needed. 

On the broader question of representation in civil cases, I saw 

some numbers in which the number of unrepresented parties in 

civil litigation is actually increasing because of some of the factors 

you mentioned. The Congress has enacted bankruptcy laws which 

are, I think, well suited to a modern society. The bankruptcy reform statutes are good. And so I don’t think there is any real problem in the bankruptcy area. Our bankruptcy judges are just very, 

very good. So that system, I think, is working. 

But in the area of standard civil litigation, I think there is a 

problem with unrepresented parties, and law schools can and probably should do more, and they should focus again on the small 

cases, not big firm stuff. 

Justice BREYER. I had a couple of things. 

On the number of cases, there is a big decline beginning really 

in the late 1980s. Now, the way we select cases, almost, almost entirely, almost, not completely, but almost entirely is you look to see 

if the lower courts have come to different conclusions on the same 

question of federal law. Now, they do or they don’t. And if they do, 

we will probably hear it. And if they are not, we probably won’t. 

Now, there are other things, holding a law unconstitutional, et 

cetera, but that is the main thing. So I have not noticed any tendency whatsoever to try not to take cases. Rather, Sandra used to 

sit there, O’Connor, and say, ‘‘We have got to take cases.’’ Now he 

does it, ‘‘Can’t we take some more cases?’’ 

So the conflicts are less. Now, why? And my own explanation, 

which has no particular validity, is that you have seen in the 1970s 

and 1980s, what you saw, from the 1960s when I was a law clerk, 

1960s, 1970s, 1980s, on, tremendous civil rights laws, statutes of 

all kinds, Title VII, a civil rights revolution, a revolution beyond 

that in the way that the first 10 Amendments apply to the States. 
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Well, for a lawyer every word in a statute and every new major 

case is a subject of new argument. You pass statutes with 50,000 

words, you will get 50,000 cases. 

Now, suddenly there has been in Congress a kind of increased 

legislation and major statutes, and those statutes are long and they 

have many words. So we can predict whether I am right or not, because if I am right—there is a lag, you see there is a lag because 

they all have to—5 years, 7 years from now we will see the number 

of cases in the Supreme Court growing because those words will be 

capable of different definitions and judges will have reached different conclusions. Now, I don’t know if that is right. It is a theory, 

okay.

On the representation, I did look at some numbers a few years 

ago. We are way behind compared, say, to England or to France. 

And part of it is in England there is an appropriation, and I don’t 

know where it is on your list, and that is a problem. And in England, by the way, where they had a very good legal representation 

system in civil matters, they are running under budget pressure, 

and the lawyers who are in this field are all worried that there are 

cuts, and there are. 

In France, they have a different idea, which is sort of interesting. 

The bar itself provides a lot more free representation than here, 

but there is a price to be paid. The price to be paid is that the individual lawyers and the bar will be ruthless in segregating the 

sheep from the goats. 

So if you go to a lawyer you will get your free representation if 

you can’t afford it at the cost of having him and/or her and his colleagues, you see, going through your case and making a ruthless 

decision about whether they think they really can win it. But the 

result of that is the people they think they have a good shot, they 

will get the free representation, much more even than in England. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, thank you. 

And I think it is important to recognize that the significance of 

the work that you all do is certainly not proportionate to the budget that you submit every year. But we do thank you for the work 

that you do to make sure that you are spending the money wisely. 

And thank you for being here. I think we all appreciate your wisdom and your insight. I know I always learn something. 

And on a personal note, I want to thank you publicly. A couple 

of years ago, when we had concluded most of the business, I was 

troubled by a quote that I had read in law school that I didn’t know 

who the author of the statement. It always struck me as interesting because it went like this: Versatility of circumstance often 

mocks a natural desire for definitiveness. 

And I asked, since we didn’t have anything else to do, I asked 

you two gentlemen who said that and where, and I think Justice 

Breyer said, ‘‘Why don’t you google it?’’ And I said, ‘‘I already did.’’ 

But when you think about that statement, I think Bob Dylan 

might have said it differently. He wrote a song called, ‘‘Things 

Have Changed,’’ and I can understand that a little better. 

But the good news is that because of the cooperation of you two 

gentlemen, I now know that Felix Frankfurter said that, and he 

said in the case called Wiener v. U.S. or U.S. v. Wiener. That was 
135

interesting because I think President Eisenhower was the President and he wasn’t supposed to do something, but he did it anyway, and therefore Felix Frankfurter said that versatility of circumstance often mocks a natural desire. So he did what he wasn’t 

supposed to do, and Justice Frankfurter said it very well, things 

have changed. 

So I always learn something. We thank you so much. It is an 

honor for us to have you before us. Thank you for the work that 

you do for this country. And this meeting is now adjourned. 
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(143)

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 2015. 

THE JUDICIARY 

WITNESSES

HON. JULIA S. GIBBONS, CHAIR, COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, JUDICIAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED STATES 

HON. JAMES C. DUFF, DIRECTOR, ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE OF THE 

UNITED STATES COURTS 

CHAIRMAN CRENSHAW’S OPENING STATEMENT

Mr. CRENSHAW. The hearing will come to order. 

And, first, let me welcome some judges and managers from the 

court units around the country, sitting out back there somewhere. 

You are here, and we appreciate you all being here. 

And I will announce to our witnesses today that I have spent 

some time in Jacksonville, Florida, with some of your colleagues on 

the Federal court, so they paved the way for your testimony today, 

and we look forward to that. 

But let me just say good morning to Judge Gibbons, good morning to Director Duff, and thank you for appearing before the subcommittee today. 

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Go ahead. 

Mr. SERRANO. I also want to join you in welcoming the judges, 

because I understand there is one here from the Eastern District 

of New York, Judge Italiano. Incredible name for a Puerto Rican, 

‘‘Italiano.’’ But I just wanted to say hello. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Great. Great. 

Judge Gibbons, this is the 11th time that you have appeared before this subcommittee. That is an impressive batting average, and 

we appreciate your service and willingness to meet with us. 

Now, Director Duff, welcome back to you. This is your second 

stint as Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, 

but this is your first appearance before the subcommittee since 

your appointment in January. 

So we are glad you are both here, and we thank you for being 

here.

The work of the judiciary is critical to the preservation of our Nation’s fabric, where each of the three branches have different responsibilities and checks on each other. Americans depend on an 

open, accessible, well-functioning Federal court system to resolve 

criminal, civil, and bankruptcy disputes. Now, the courts must 

have the trust and respect of the citizens of our country; that is the 

way the Founding Fathers set it up. 

In addition to the judiciary’s other work, you have probation and 

pretrial officers. They are performing critical public safety missions 
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by supervising more than 200,000 offenders that are living in our 

communities and defendants as well. 

As you know, the Federal Government continues to operate in an 

environment of limited resources. However, we will try to ensure 

you have the resources needed to accomplish your important mission. Over the past few years, you and your staff have worked 

closely with us to make sure that the judiciary receives increases 

to address only your most critical needs. And I thank you for your 

efforts to reduce costs during these challenging financial times. 

The judiciary’s fiscal year 2016 budget request proposes a discre- tionary spending increase of $264 million. That is a little less than 

4 percent. And I can tell you, that is a whole lot less than the IRS 

when they ask for 18 percent or GSA when they ask for 12 percent. 

So we appreciate your stewardship. 

But the budget resolution reported by the House Budget Committee just last week only contemplates about a one-quarter-of-1- 

percent increase in total discretionary spending. But that is the job 

of the Appropriations Committee, to take the money we have and 

make the right choices, right priorities. So we want to work with 

you, want to work with the Ranking Member Serrano to make sure 

that we can identify any savings and then still provide you with 

the resources you need to fulfill your constitutional duties. 

So I appreciate the important work that you do. Glad you are 

here today. 

And now I would like to recognize my good friend, the ranking 

member, Mr. Serrano, for any comments he might have. 

RANKING MEMBER SERRANO’S OPENING STATEMENT

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to join you in welcoming Judge Gibbons and Director 

Duff back before the subcommittee. As you said, Judge Gibbons 

may hold the record for appearing before us or any subcommittee 

in Congress. And while Director Duff was away for a while, he 

couldn’t stay away. We just drew him back, and here he is again. 

So welcome back to both of you. 

The Federal judiciary as a third branch is an integral part of our 

constitutional democracy, but it cannot properly function without 

the support of this committee. We have all seen the problems that 

sequestration caused for our Federal court system, our pretrial and 

post-release probationary services, and for our Federal defenders, 

among others. 

Thankfully, Members of both sides of the aisle have realized this 

and have worked to restore the services and personnel lost by the 

Federal judiciary due to sequestration. Last year’s appropriations 

bill, for instance, included an increase of $182 million over the 

prior year’s appropriations. And your budget request for fiscal year 

2016 continues to work to rebuild and invest in the future of our 

court system. 

However, as we consider this request, we are confronted with the 

same problem which caused such difficulties for the Federal judiciary just a few years ago: sequestration. It is in the best interest 

of the Federal court system, the American public, and our constitutional protections that we avoid repeating the damaging impact it 

had.
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As you know, I am also interested in ensuring that our Federal 

defenders have sufficient funding to perform their important constitutional role that has been assigned to them. Most defendants in 

Federal criminal trials depend upon the assistance of Federal defenders, but the FD offices were highly impacted by the last round 

of sequestration, with numerous days off and staffing cuts. I understand that the Federal judiciary has been in the process of reviewing the appropriate funding levels for our defenders, and I hope 

that we will see the results of that analysis soon. 

I am a strong believer in the procedural guarantees that our 

Constitution provides: access to a fair and speedy trial and the 

availability of counsel in criminal cases for those unable to afford 

it, to mention just two. But beyond that, the Federal judiciary 

plays an important role in pretrial services, in determining sentencing guidelines, and in reducing recidivism through probationary services. It is up to this committee to ensure these promises 

and protections, constitutional and statutory, have meaning. 

Once again, we welcome you, and I look forward to your testimony.

And let me just ask you to consider this. Since I played a judge 

on ‘‘Law and Order’’ once, am I a member of the bar now or—okay. 

Don’t answer. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. You are not eligible for the pension. I know that. 

Mr. SERRANO. I am not sure I am eligible for this pension either. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you, Mr. Serrano. 

And now, Judge Gibbons, we will turn to you for your opening 

statement. If you could keep it in the range of 5 minutes, that will 

give us some time for questions. The floor is yours. 

JUDGE GIBBONS’ OPENING STATEMENT

Judge GIBBONS. Chairman Crenshaw, Representative Serrano, 

Representative Bishop, in view of the scheduled votes and limited 

time availability today, I think I can do better than 5 minutes. I 

am going to dispense with a conventional opening statement and 

give you more of a laundry list of priorities for 2016 and the high 

points of ongoing cost-containment efforts. 

Thank you for recognizing the group of court executives here 

today for a meeting of the Budget and Finance Advisory Council. 

They make budget recommendations to the Director, and back 

home they do a great job of running the courts smoothly. 

I also want to say a big thank you for the 2.8 percent increase 

we received for 2015, one that is enabling us to put the effects of 

sequestration behind us. 

For 2016, we ask for a 3.9 percent increase. A 3.2 percent increase is required to maintain current services. The rest of the request is for limited, targeted enhancements that will help us contain costs down the road or meet other important judiciary and 

public goals. 

We strongly endorse GSA’s requests for $181.5 million to build 

a new courthouse in Nashville, the judiciary’s top space priority, 

and $20 million for the Capital Security Program. 

Among our ongoing cost-containment efforts are space reduction 

that will reduce our space footprint 3 percent by the end of 2018, 
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our progress in promoting shared administrative services in the 

courts, and certain ongoing IT efforts. Our requested enhancements include $19 million to pursue national hosting of IT systems that should save local courts money. 

Enhancements that serve the public good include a $6-per-hour 

rate increase for panel attorneys representing indigent defendants 

and $15 million to enhance public safety by training more probation officers in evidence-based practices. 

In conclusion, as always, I emphasize to the Committee the 

unique constitutional role of the courts in our free society and that 

all of our duties are derived from the Constitution and statute. 

I ask that you make part of the record the statements of other 

judiciary entities on whose behalf we submit budget requests. 

I look forward to answering your questions. 

[The information follows:] 
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Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you very much. 

Director Duff, the floor is yours. 

DIRECTOR DUFF’S OPENING STATEMENT

Mr. DUFF. Thank you, Chairman Crenshaw, Representative 

Serrano, Congressman Bishop. I, too, will provide very brief opening remarks in light of the time constraints. Our extended remarks 

we would submit for the record, please. 

In January, I did return to be Director of the Administrative Office. I want to publicly thank Chief Justice Roberts for the privilege 

of working with our Federal judiciary again and the privilege of 

working with you again on the problems and the challenges that 

confront the judiciary. 

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts was created by Congress in 1939, and it was created to assist the Federal courts in fulfilling their mission to provide equal justice under the law. The AO 

provides support to the Judicial Conference and its 25 committees 

as well as to more than 30,000 judicial officers and court employees, some of whom are in the audience here today. 

I join Judge Gibbons in thanking the committee for the 2.8 percent appropriations increase we received in 2015. 

We are also very appreciative that the 2015 omnibus bill included 1-year extensions for 10 temporary district judgeships 

whose authorizations expired in 2015. If Congress does not take action on the judiciary’s comprehensive judgeship needs, we urge you 

once again to include 1-year extensions for these temporary judgeships in your 2016 bill. 

I echo Judge Gibbons’ support for funding that is included in 

GSA’s 2016 request for a new courthouse in Nashville and $20 million for the Judiciary Capital Security Program. 

Cost containment continues to be a primary focus of the judiciary. We are very grateful that your committee recognized the judiciary’s efforts in that regard in last year’s appropriations, and we 

hope you will recognize it again this year. 

Some cost-containment initiatives, however, do require changes 

to existing law, which we have suggested, and we appreciate that 

the 2015 omnibus bill included one of those provisions. There are 

several additional reforms—perhaps we will address some of those 

in questions this afternoon—that have been endorsed by the Judicial Conference, as well, that, if enacted, would produce additional 

savings in the long run. 

For 2016, the Administrative Office’s appropriation request totals 

$87.6 million, which is a 3.8 percent increase over 2015. This represents a current services budget only. There are no additional 

staff or program increases requested by the Administrative Office 

of the U.S. Courts. 

That concludes my opening remarks, and we would be happy to 

answer any questions that you may have. 

[The information follows:] 
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Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, thank you very much. 

SPACE REDUCTION

Thank you all for your sensitivity to the timing of the votes that 

may occur. Please don’t let the lack of attendance here reflect on 

the importance of the work that you do. This is a very, very busy 

time, and there are lots of committee meetings going on at the 

same time. 

I think you do such a good job of preparing your budget and dealing with some of the fiscal issues and the cost containment, that 

you don’t generate a whole lot of controversy. You should have been 

here yesterday when the Federal Communications Commission was 

here, and it was a very lively discussion, a lot of controversy. I 

think they should take it on the road and sign up with MSNBC 

and probably increase their ratings, you know, after yesterday. 

But the Supreme Court was here earlier this week, and I complimented them, we all did, because they submitted a request that 

is less than last year’s. And I told them, we don’t often get people 

requesting less than they got the year before. We also don’t get 

that many witnesses that are clear and concise in their answers. 

So I think you fall in that category, as well. And so I think this 

could be certainly a very important hearing, but we appreciate the 

work that you have done ahead of time. 

So let me just start talking about the rent. I think it is a billion 

dollars that you have to pay in rent. I had a conversation with the 

folks in Jacksonville, and they have a Federal building, courthouse 

that was built for $84 million. And times have changed, and now 

a new courthouse costs almost three times that much. 

But they are working on their space reduction, and you are doing 

it, as well. Give us an idea of some of the things you are doing to 

kind of decrease the need for all that space. 

Judge GIBBONS. Well, currently, we have a national policy in 

place. It is a 3 percent space reduction goal by the end of 2018. At 

the end of the first year of that, we are basically on target to meet 

our goal. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Now, how do you achieve that? How do you 

make that happen? 

Judge GIBBONS. Well, the other part of our national policy is a 

‘‘no-net-new’’ rule. In other words, if you acquire space, you have 

to give up space. That doesn’t apply to something like a new courthouse, but it applies otherwise. 

Third, each circuit has had to submit a plan for space reduction. 

They have all done that. That is the blueprint for how each circuit 

is going to get to the reduction goal. 

We are mindful, of course, that at the same time we are reducing 

space our rent goes up. So where we end up at the end of the day 

is a bit uncertain. But we will be better off than we would have 

been if we hadn’t done it. 

There are many things that a court or a circuit might identify 

as ways in which it could reduce its rent bill. One is through the 

Integrated Workplace Initiative, which really designs new workplaces that occupy less space and that take advantage of the reality 

of technology and the reality of telecommuting. Probation and pre-
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trial services officers, for example, can use technology and be away 

from the office much more than they used to be. 

Courts have done some creative things. I am really proud of the 

fact that, in my circuit, the library gave up all its space and moved 

into space that the clerk of court had previously occupied, which 

was vacated due to electronic filing. As it worked out, the floors 

were already reinforced because of all those heavy files that they 

used to hold. 

That is just an example of all the creative kinds of things courts 

are doing. They have been unbelievably cooperative. We are really 

fortunate that everybody appears to be on board and working toward a common goal. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, that is great to hear. And we oversee and 

fund the GSA, so maybe we will talk to them about the high rent 

that they have been charging you, see if we can help you there. 

BUDGET DRIVERS AND COST CONTAINMENT FOR DEFENDER SERVICES

One other quick question, on defender services. I know that is expensive, and there is a $41 million increase there. Tell us, why 

does that—I mean, there has always been an increase there—why 

does that happen? And are there things that we can do, you all can 

do to kind of save in that area? 

Judge GIBBONS. We are working on some things. The increase in 

the Defender Services account is really based on the same things, 

for the most part, that drive the increase in the Salaries and Expenses account: rent, increased benefit costs, COLAs if there is a 

COLA for the executive branch, general inflation, just all the 

things that are cost drivers. 

[The information follows:] 

[CLERK’S NOTE.—Subsequent to the hearing, Judge Gibbons provided the following additional information:] 

The fiscal year 2016 appropriations request for Defender Services is a net increase 

of $41.1 million over the fiscal year 2015 appropriated level. The increase is composed of two elements: a $1.8 million program increase to raise the non-capital 

panel attorney hourly rate by $6 per hour and a net increase of $39.3 million for 

various adjustments to base needed to maintain current services. The adjustments 

to base can be further broken down into the following components: 

• +$15.8 million for standard adjustments to pay and benefits; 

• +$3.2 million for increases in space rental costs and other inflationary adjustments;

• +$5.0 million for high threat trial requirements; 

• +$40.0 million needed to maintain FY 2015 service levels due to an anticipated decline in non-appropriated funding (i.e., unobligated balances); and 

• ¥$24.7 million to reflect a small increase in projected federal defender organization caseload and a larger decrease in projected panel attorney caseload. 

Of course, if there is a panel rate increase, that would increase 

the cost in that area. But panel attorney representations are projected to decline. Caseload affects defenders and will affect them 

more so when the new work measurement formula is in place. 

In terms of things we are trying to do in that area to contain 

costs, we are implementing electronic vouchering, which ought to 

really enable us to keep a better handle on requests for panel attorney payments. We are encouraging the defenders to do some of the 

same sorts of things we are encouraging courts to do, such as look 

at space reduction, shared services, and those kinds of things. 
192

They have done some things independently that involve working 

with the Justice Department to decrease the cost of electronically 

maintained discovery. We have case budgeting positions, and we 

will have them pretty soon in nine of the circuits. They help with 

budgeting on mega cases, but, in my circuit, our case budgeting attorney is also enormously helpful in reviewing vouchers that aren’t 

mega cases but just seem kind of high for one reason or another. 

So those are some of the things that we are doing in that area. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Great. Well, thank you very much. 

Mr. Serrano. 

IMPACT OF SEQUESTRATION ON THE JUDICIARY

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I was taken by your comments about taking the FCC show on 

the road. I can tell you, as a strong supporter of net neutrality, 

that it may be playing at a court near you pretty soon, you know. 

I suspect that it will be taken up that way. 

As brief as you can because of the time restraints—first of all, 

let me say that what you saw last year is the respect that we have 

for the third branch. We may disagree on things, but when it comes 

to the judiciary, I believe both parties understand the constitutional role you play and how you have to be protected and helped 

in every way to accomplish that role. 

Judge GIBBONS. We are deeply appreciative of that and the support both of you have given. 

Mr. SERRANO. That is why I said it, so you could say that again. 

Judge GIBBONS. We are deeply appreciative. 

Mr. DUFF. I echo Judge Gibbons’ comment. 

Mr. SERRANO. Next year she will say it in Spanish too. 

Very briefly, the hit that everyone took with sequestration, notwithstanding what happened last year, if sequestration stays 

around, what effect did it have, very briefly, and what effect will 

it have? 

Judge GIBBONS. If sequestration occurs again, of course, we are 

not sure at what level it would be, but let’s assume a level that is 

commensurate with the 2013 levels. I have some figures here that 

tell us what the impact would be. 

We would have to reduce staffing by 520 positions, or a total of 

260 FTE. We would have to defer paying panel attorneys for a 

month. We would have to defer about half of our equipment purchases that we would make for court security. That would be a reduction of about $22 million. There is another cost in the court security account, which I am a little fuzzy on right now. It must have 

to do with reducing court security officer hours. 

So those are some of the things that would occur. We could continue to pay fees of jurors, we believe. 

The reason it is so devastating is because we need 3.2 percent 

for current services. If you take us back not only to a hard freeze 

but back beyond that, the effect is pretty quickly devastating. 

Mr. SERRANO. Uh-huh. 

Mr. DUFF. I would just add, Congressman Serrano, that the 

courts perform extraordinarily well in a crisis. They respond to crisis very well. We are very well equipped to do that. But a sequestration impact has the effect of a constant crisis. I don’t think the 
193

courts really could sustain the workload that would be imposed on 

them under those kinds of annual constraints. 

Judge GIBBONS. Actually, Representative Serrano, I think it 

would be even worse than I just told you because I think what I 

just gave you were the hard freeze figures, not the sequestration 

figures.

So, we are talking about funding levels way below a hard freeze. I think it would be something like $700 million in total below a 

2016 current services appropriation, which doesn’t give you the 

specific account figures. 

[The information follows:] 

[CLERK’S NOTE.—Subsequent to the hearing, Judge Gibbons provided the following additional information:] 

As indicated in the transcript, the impacts cited in Judge Gibbons’ remarks are 

those associated with freezing fiscal year 2016 funding at the fiscal year 2015 level. 

A return to the fiscal year 2013 post-sequestration funding level would represent a 

cut of $500 million (7.4 percent) below the judiciary’s fiscal year 2015 enacted level 

and a cut of $700 million (10.2 percent) below a fiscal year 2016 current services 

level.

The Salaries and Expenses account would be reduced by $552 million (11 percent) 

below a current services level, resulting in the projected loss of 5,000 judiciary employees—25 percent of current on-board staff—in clerks of court and probation and 

pretrial services offices, or the furlough of employees in those offices for 63 days per 

person (or some combination of both). Further, non-salary operating costs would be 

slashed 33 percent. 

The Defender Services account would be cut by $70 million (6.6 percent) below 

a current services level, forcing the judiciary to defer panel attorney payments for 

approximately two months. 

The Court Security account would be cut by $62 million (11.6 percent) below a 

current services level, resulting in cuts of $22 million (50 percent) to security systems and equipment and $40 million to contract guard services, equal to a reduction 

of 26 work days per court security officer position. 

IMPACT OF FISCAL YEAR 2015 FUNDING ON DEFENDERS

Mr. SERRANO. Let me briefly, just because my time is going to 

run out—on the public defenders, one of my favorite folks that I 

talk about, how much did the 2015 budget make up some of the 

pain they have suffered before? 

Judge GIBBONS. They have not hired this many, but we have the 

funds for them to hire within a few employees of the number they 

had at the end of 2012. They had something like 2,763 FTE, and 

we can get them back to 2,713, I think. 

[The information follows:] 

[CLERK’S NOTE.—Subsequent to the hearing, Judge Gibbons provided the following additional information:] 

Federal Public Defender Organizations (FPDOs) ended fiscal year 2012 with 2,764 

FTE. Then sequestration occurred, and FPDOs lost about 400 FTE as a result. 

There were substantial additional losses among the grantees in the Community Defender Organizations (CDOs). 

Since reaching their lowest staffing level of 2,358 FTE in March 2014, FPDOs 

have hired a net increase of 198 FTE, reaching a total of 2,556 FTE as of March 

8, 2015. While this is still below the staffing levels assumed in the fiscal year 2015 

financial plan, hiring will continue throughout the fiscal year and FTE levels will 

continue to increase accordingly. The financial plan assumes that FPDOs will utilize 

2,713 FTE in fiscal year 2015. 

Funding provided by Congress in fiscal years 2014 and 2015 made these staffing 

increases possible (as well as staffing increases at the CDOs). In addition, new funding has allowed the judiciary to avoid deferrals of panel attorney payments and to 

discontinue the temporary, emergency panel attorney rate cut that went into effect 

after sequestration. 
194

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Bishop is recognized. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. 

COOPERATION BETWEEN THE JUDICIARY AND GSA

The President’s budget requests $181.5 million for a new courthouse in Nashville. It is only the second time in 6 years that the 

President’s budget has included funding for a project in the Judicial Conference’s 5-year courthouse construction plan. The Nashville project has been on the 5-year plan for nearly 20 years, and 

there seems to be a disconnect between the judiciary and the executive branch in this regard. 

How does the judiciary work with GSA to identify funding priorities and to ensure that these funds are requested and, if appropriated, are utilized in the most reasonable and efficient manner? 

Does there need to be a shift in jurisdiction to ensure maximum 

effectiveness and efficiency in that regard? 

Judge GIBBONS. Well, I think if you asked most judges if they 

think the current system is an ideal one for good government, the 

answer would be no. On the other hand, we do work well with GSA 

on a day-to-day basis on many, many fronts. We have to. They 

have to work well with us. 

But it is sometimes hard to get our priorities to the top of the 

list of their priorities because they have many other priorities. It 

took a great deal of effort and a great deal of working together to 

get the Nashville courthouse as the first courthouse construction 

project requested since 2010. 

So there would have been a time when we might have answered 

your question about restructuring with, ‘‘Oh, yes, we would like to 

have authority to build and maintain our own courthouses.’’ We are 

smart enough today to know that, with limited resources and with 

the fact that we don’t have personnel or other capabilities to go 

into the building management business, restructuring it is just not 

realistic for anybody in light of the circumstances. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. 

CAPITAL SECURITY PROGRAM

In my district, the Federal courthouse in Columbus, Georgia, has 

been ranked one of the worst Federal courthouses with respect to 

safety over the past several years. In fiscal year 2015, $20 million 

was appropriated to fund the Judiciary Court Security Program. I 

understand that this funding will support projects in Columbus as 

well as in Monroe, Louisiana, and Texarkana in Texas and Arkansas.

When are these projects expected to be completed? Can you 

elaborate on the progress that has already been made on improving 

the security at some of our older courthouses using this funding? 

What do you expect to accomplish in this area over the next year? 

How will you prioritize the projects in order to make the best use 

of the appropriated funds? 

Mr. DUFF. In part, the security initiatives that we have undertaken have been in recognition that courthouse construction is 

going to be limited in these times of budget constraints. 
195

Recognizing that some courthouses face security challenges that 

need to be addressed whether or not a new courthouse can be constructed, we have reprioritized and carved out instances, such as 

the courthouse in Columbus, Georgia, for special attention on security needs. We are working very closely with GSA to identify those 

courthouses that have security needs above and beyond new courthouse construction needs. 

[The information follows:] 

[CLERK’S NOTE.—Subsequent to the hearing, Director Duff provided the following additional information:] 

Security deficiencies at court occupied facilities are identified as part of the judiciary’s Asset Management Planning process and also through security evaluation 

site visits conducted by AO staff. 

AO staff develops a preliminary list of court occupied facilities where alterations 

and construction of building-specific security items in a Capital Security Program 

(CSP) project would improve the level of security provided for judges, employees, 

and the public. A Capital Security Study that identifies possible solutions to address 

those security needs is then developed in coordination with GSA and the U.S. Marshals Service. A Capital Security Study provides the preferred security improvement 

plan and a cost estimate for the project. Funding for approved projects is provided 

through the GSA budget. 

While the CSP may address the security deficiencies in a building, it does not address situations where a facility has both security deficiencies and insufficient functional operational space. In those circumstances, the only resolution is to build a 

new courthouse or annex that satisfies the court’s needs. 

Again, I will reiterate that we are very pleased that the President included in his budget funding for the construction of the 

Nashville courthouse. That is needed on every front. 

But the security challenges that are faced in specific courthouses 

are being addressed in a prioritized way. We are fairly pleased 

with the progress that is being made on renovations to improve security. We have worked closely with GSA in that regard. 

Judge GIBBONS. Representative Bishop, my information shows 

that the Columbus courthouse, in particular, is a project for this 

fiscal year. It is to cost $6.7 million. The security deficiencies that 

would be addressed have to do with enclosing a sally port, adding 

elevators for prisoners and judges, and reconfiguring and constructing new corridors. 
196
197
198

Judge GIBBONS. Before a project like this is approved, we do a 

study to determine the most feasible alternative and the preferred 

plan and cost. We do a prioritization, working closely with GSA 

and the Marshals. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. 

I think my time has expired, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Serrano has a quick comment. 

Mr. SERRANO. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I want to clarify something. 

I can’t believe that I misread the note in front of me that was given 

to me, and they were talking about Judge Vitaliano, who is a person that I have known all 41 years that I have been in public office. 

And I wanted to make sure that he understood that, when I saw 

the face, I said, oh, my God, it is my friend from 41 years ago. 

Thank you. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Now Mr. Yoder is recognized. 

Do you see any friendly faces out there? 

Mr. YODER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the latitude. 

Mr. SERRANO. I don’t think he is 41 himself. 

TEMPORARY JUDGESHIPS

Mr. YODER. I wanted to highlight—first of all, thank you for coming to the committee. 

Good to see Judge Gibbons. I know you have been before us a 

number of times. 

Administrator Duff, thank you for being here, as well. 

Each year, we deal with the issue related to temporary judgeships. And I noted in your testimony you highlighted this issue 

again. One of these temporary judgeships happens to be in my district, and so we are always watchful and concerned and worried 

and making sure that the committee and chairman and everyone 

is aware of the importance of these temporary judgeships. 

And should we not extend them in the appropriations bill and a 

vacancy were to occur, the position would evaporate. The caseload 

wouldn’t evaporate, the workload wouldn’t evaporate, but the position would overnight. And so it is a tenuous situation to be in. 

And I note there are maybe nine districts total, positions like 

that, that are around. You might clarify. But I just think it is a 

tremendous stress to put on these folks to have to worry about this 

and to come up each year and for our committee to keep doing this 

work.

And so I thought if you might just expound upon that point a 

bit—I wanted to highlight it for the committee; I know it was in 

your testimony—and maybe suggest what probably is an obvious 

long-term solution to this issue. 

Mr. DUFF. Well, the ultimate long-term solution is the creation 

of a new judgeship. Where we have temporary judgeships, we have 

asked for permanent judgeships in 9 of those 10 districts. 

We also recognize the budget constraints that accompany the creation of a new judgeship. So, in the short term, what we would ask 

the Committee is, if the funding is not available for the creation 

of new judgeships where our statistics demonstrate they are clearly 

justified, that the temporary judgeships be extended. Because, as 

you pointed out correctly, if they are not extended, the workload 
199

doesn’t go away. It just doubles up the work for the other judges 

in that particular district. 

So, in 9 of the 10 districts with temporary judgeships, we have 

asked for permanent judgeships. By ‘‘we,’’ I mean the Judicial Conference of the United States at its March conference, just a couple 

of weeks ago. If permanent judgeships can’t be created, we would 

ask that the temporary judgeships be extended. 

You also correctly point out that it is difficult for staff to wonder 

what is going to happen. So for planning purposes, it is good to 

know whether these temporary judgeships are going to be extended 

as soon as we can. 

Mr. YODER. It seems to me that the only reason we haven’t been 

able to fix this is internal scoring rules that Congress uses that 

would say if you extend them permanently, now it has a 10-year 

budget impact, but if you extend it year to year, it only has a 1- 

year impact, which is a budgetary gimmick that occurs in Washington that has little relevance to people outside of these rooms 

that we debate policy in, and it does have an impact on people who 

are doing the work back home. So it has a negative impact on people at home, and it has no benefit here, other than a scoring issue, 

which is created by our own interior rules. 

So I would love to see those extended. And I believe the committee will keep extending the temporary ones, therefore having 

the same budget impact if we made them permanent anyway. 

COSTS OF LITIGATING NEW LEGISLATION

The other issue I wanted to raise is one that sort of came up yesterday. And my good friend of at least 39 years, Mr. Serrano—I am 

39 years old—brought up earlier that he is a strong proponent of 

net neutrality. And one of the issues that came up yesterday is the 

cost to government and the system to defend net neutrality and an 

estimate of what that might be, litigation costs. 

And I just wonder, you know, we have had Dodd-Frank, we have 

had the Affordable Care Act, we have had a number of bills that 

are being litigated extensively in the courts. And I wondered if the 

court ever looks at the cost of litigating a new law and if we could 

estimate how much traffic we create with legislation that either 

isn’t written properly or isn’t, you know, well established or just 

has a lot of things that need to be sorted out by the courts. 

Judge GIBBONS. We do, of course, look at workload figures and 

weighted caseloads, and we, of course, know that certain kinds of 

litigation create a great deal of work for the courts. 

Some legislation we do get involved in opposing if it has a direct 

impact on us. For example, we have a position with respect to immigration reform legislation, in that we don’t want additional resources given to the Department of Justice that will impose many 

additional burdens on the judiciary. 

But for legislation where the impact is less apparent, we don’t 

want to involve ourselves politically by saying, this is going to 

cause us a lot of hassle. Another area we have had some thoughts 

is sentencing reform. 

We are affected by whatever litigation occurs, but we don’t get 

involved on that basis. It is very selective. It tends to be legislation 

that we could take a position on appropriately. 
200

Mr. DUFF. I would add, Congressman Yoder, that I was here 40 

years ago, when I first started working in Chief Justice Burger’s 

office. It is hard for me to believe it has been that long. But Chief 

Justice Burger at one time proposed a judiciary impact statement 

so that every law passed by Congress—much like an environmental 

impact statement—had to be accompanied by a judiciary impact 

statement just to show the budget impacts of new laws on the 

courts. I don’t think it was embraced, but it is a good idea. 

I appreciate your mindfulness about it, because legislation does 

have an impact on the courts and it affects our budgets in the long 

run. But Judge Gibbons is right as to our own analysis of that. 

Mr. YODER. Well said. I appreciate your testimony. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. SERRANO. 39? I have ties older than you. 

Mr. YODER. I didn’t get a birthday card from you this year either, 

so——

ROLE OF THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE IN JUDGESHIP CREATIONS AND

EXTENSIONS

Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Rigell is gathering his thoughts. 

Let me point out one thing is, in terms of temporary judgeships, 

we typically fund those, and we are from time to time criticized. 

That is kind of an authorizing issue. Ultimately, to create new 

judgeships, we have something called a Judiciary Committee, and 

they are the ones that have the jurisdiction to create those. And 

so those that think we need more judges, you direct your thoughts 

to them. 

I think there is also the question of the confirmation of Federal 

judges that linger from time to time, and what that means is people that are there are doing a whole lot more work. 

But I think that the temporary judgeships we recognize are important, and I think historically we have funded them on this committee. But to create those new ones, the Judiciary Committee is 

going to have to step up. 

PRIORITIZATION OF SECURITY UPGRADES

Let me ask, we talked a little bit about security in the context 

of new courthouses, but there is $20 million in your budget for security. And that is obviously very important. In today’s world, you 

know, no telling who is watching on TV and decides they don’t like 

one of the Federal judges. 

But around the courthouses, the security that you put in, not so 

much a new courthouse, but if you are going to upgrade security, 

how do you go about deciding that? Because it is important. But 

do you look at that really closely to say these are things that we 

really need to do to make sure we have the security that we need? 

Judge GIBBONS. When there is a capital security project, first, 

the Administrative Office identifies a list of needs based on surveys 

it has done of the courts. Then there is a plan that is done, an architectural and engineering plan, that shows the feasibility of using 

a smaller, less costly plan as opposed to building a new courthouse 

or an annex or something to take care of a problem. 
201

They look at feasibility, how we go about doing it, and cost. Then 

there is a decision made about whether to implement that, and 

that is made by the judiciary in combination with GSA and recommendations of the Marshals. We have a list of the projects. The 

Columbus project that Representative Bishop referred to is one of 

those for 2015. 

[The information follows:] 

[CLERK’S NOTE.—Subsequent to the hearing, Judge Gibbons provided the following additional information:] 

Security at federal courthouses is governed by a number of guidance documents 

and standards. For security systems and equipment, the U.S. Courts Design Guide 

and the U.S. Marshals Service Requirements and Specifications for Special Purpose 

and Support Space Manual discuss the planning and design of courthouse security 

and describe the types of security equipment that are necessary and appropriate for 

court facilities. For court security officers (CSOs), the Marshals Service maintains 

a CSO staffing standard that is the basis for determining how many CSOs a district 

needs and the specific guard posts that should be staffed in a facility. Within these 

guidelines and the available financial resources, the Marshals Service has the responsibility to prioritize requirements and make operational decisions about the 

adequate level of security at each federal court facility. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Gotcha. And I notice in the budget request there 

is $7 million for, I guess, security systems, and there was a $2 million savings that you all had kind of realized, which helps a lot. 

And, again, we appreciate your efforts to be effective and efficient. 

GSA RENT VALIDATION

Let me ask you, we kidded about the GSA; you know, they 

charge you rent. You are one of the biggest tenants that GSA has. 

Do you ever kind of wonder how they decide what the rent is? How 

do you see that relationship with GSA in terms of what they 

charge you? 

Judge GIBBONS. This is not the product of a formal Conference 

position. It is not the product of anything the Budget Committee 

has formally considered. 

Many within the judiciary do question whether the rates charged 

by GSA are not far above market rates, and—— 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Do people actually do market studies from time 

to time and say, gee—— 

Judge GIBBONS. We may have done some. Jim would be aware 

of that. 

I will say we, from time to time, move people into leased space, 

partly because of cost. Now, as we are vacating space in courthouses, we are seeking to move some people from leased space back 

into courthouses. But I am not sure whether the savings comes 

from the lesser rent or from the fact that we are reducing the 

space.

Director Duff can probably tell you more about the—— 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, and, also, how do they deal with you all? 

Do they explain—I mean, you have to prepare your budget, and 

you have to know what your rent is going to be. Are they good 

about communicating with you in terms of what is going on from 

day to day? 

Mr. DUFF. Mr. Chairman, we have developed much-improved relations with GSA over this very issue, because we did expose what 

we thought were overcharges. GSA admitted to those on further re-
202

flection and study. They are cooperating with us right now on an 

overall review of rents charged to make sure that they are indeed 

market rate and not inflated rates over the market rate. 

So we have come a long way on those very issues. We did expose 

some overcharges, frankly, which they graciously admitted, and we 

are working better with them now. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, keep it up, because we want you to get 

your money’s worth. 

Judge GIBBONS. One of our early cost containment efforts on 

space was our rent validation effort. We are now doing a much 

broader effort in full cooperation with GSA to validate services in 

every area. It is going very well. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Great. 

Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, that is a great point you bring up. 

And I had a personal experience where I wanted to lower my district office rent so I thought of moving to a GSA building. They 

were going to charge me more than I was paying where I am, so 

I didn’t move. And I had no way of arguing with them. 

STUDIES OF THE DEFENDERS PROGRAM

On the issue, again, of defender services, I also understand that 

you are undertaking a study of the defender system and developing 

a rigorous database assessment of staffing needs. Is there a 

timeline for the release of that analysis? 

I assume that you will support any needed funding to implement 

the recommendations of the staffing study so that whatever the 

data requires can be employed properly. 

Judge GIBBONS. That really encompasses two things: one, the 

work measurement study that is underway, and two, a larger study 

we are undertaking of all programs under the Criminal Justice Act. 

As for work measurement, the study will be complete this summer. This is the only information we have at this time, but initial 

indications are that it will not reflect that staff would need to be 

reduced nationally. 

When the Judicial Resources Committee is ready to take it up in 

June, they will figure out what to do about implementation and 

what their recommendation will be. That will be approved by the 

Judicial Conference in September. 

We will have to make a decision in July about whether the new 

formula should be incorporated into the 2017 budget request. That 

is also subject to conference approval. Then the Executive Committee of the conference, which approves the financial plan, will 

have to make a decision whenever an annual budget is enacted 

about how, if at all, to incorporate the new formula. 

So that is where we are on that. I would expect that we will use 

the new formula, but it is premature to say exactly how the implementation will play out or what the full results will be. 

Jim can address the study. 

Mr. DUFF. The second part of this is a Criminal Justice Act review that we are undertaking. The last such review of the Criminal 

Justice Act was conducted between 1991 and 1993, so it has been 

quite a while since we have done this. 
203

The Chief Justice is appointing a committee, and it will be composed of judges, defenders, and criminal justice attorneys. That 

committee is being assembled right now, as a matter of fact, to 

take a full review of how we might make improvements or suggest 

improvements to be made in defender services. Defenders are going 

to be very involved in this study. 

That has a 2-year timeframe built into it. We hope to have conclusions and recommendations to the Congress at the end of 2 

years.

Mr. SERRANO. Okay. Thank you. 

THREATS AGAINST JUDGES AND COURT PERSONNEL

Let me take a little time here. When I was chairman of this committee, when my party was in the majority—it seems like a million 

years ago. And we have a great chairman now. We get along very 

well.

One of the big issues that he brought up was the security issue. 

I would like to take that to another step. At that time, there 

seemed to be a lot of threats going on and so on. Has that decreased? Has it remained the same, the threats against judges or 

attacks on court personnel which were taking place in those days? 

I mean, it wasn’t a very safe place to be, in many places, for the 

judiciary.

Mr. DUFF. We are always mindful of security, and we are not immune to attacks. We are, I think, in the same category as Members 

of Congress and other high-profile public figures. We have taken 

steps. We have coordinated very carefully with all relevant security 

agencies. We are doing the best we can with the funds that we 

have and—— 

Mr. SERRANO. But if we were to ask you, give us a report, you 

know, a written statement on what the conditions are, are there 

more threats now? Are there more attacks by people who, you 

know, are angry in a courthouse or something? 

Judge GIBBONS. The U.S. Marshals could tell us that. I think 

they keep up with it. It seems to me, during the 30-plus years I 

have been a Federal judge, that it has been pretty much constant 

that there are some threats. I don’t know if I could identify a time 

when I feel like the threats have been more or less, but the Marshals might have a different view. 

[The information follows:] 

[CLERK’S NOTE.—Subsequent to the hearing, Judge Gibbons provided the following additional information:] 

Threats against federal judges are addressed by the U.S. Marshals Service. As a 

result, the judiciary does not maintain its own data on such threats and cannot 

draw independent conclusions about trends in the threat level over time. 

Upon request, the Marshals Service reviewed the threat environment over the last 

five years and reported that, in its assessment, threats against Marshals-protected 

judges have remained stable over that period. 

Mr. SERRANO. All right. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

Mr. Rigell. 

Mr. RIGELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 
204

CHOOSING BETWEEN GSA SPACE AND THE COMMERCIAL MARKET

Judge Gibbons, Mr. Duff, thank you very much for being here 

today. And, you know, our judicial branch is widely respected, certainly far more than the institution that I am privileged to serve 

in and even, indeed, the Executive branch. So I appreciate the good 

work that you are doing. 

And I was a bit late here today, but I had five Gold Star Moms 

come by my office. And they were invited by House leadership because the President of Afghanistan was here and these mothers 

lost their sons in Afghanistan. 

And so it was just a poignant reminder to me, of course, of the 

heavy price that has been paid for our freedom and just really the 

privilege that we have to be here today and to work out our differences and try to resolve these problems in our representative republic here. 

So I thank you for being here and for your testimony. 

Now, to the point, let’s pick up on the commercial real estate. Do 

you feel like, Mr. Duff, that you have the running room that you 

need, the flexibility to choose GSA space or to go outside into the 

commercial market? And could you walk us through that concisely 

and let us know if you got the type of decisionmaking authority 

that you need? 

Mr. DUFF. I think our relations with GSA are improving. I think 

the leadership within GSA is working hard with us to recognize 

where we have difficulties and challenges. 

We are undertaking, as Judge Gibbons testified earlier, space reduction initiatives to reduce our rent. If you look at our overall 

budget of approximately $7 billion, about $1 billion of that is in 

rent. If the trends continue on rent increases, that is going to eat 

up more of our budget. 

Mr. RIGELL. Right. 

Mr. DUFF. We are trying to avoid that happening, and that is 

really what is driving our initiatives to reduce our footprint within 

the buildings. 

We have looked elsewhere, where we have needed to and where 

we think it is untenable or unsustainable to work under the GSA 

rent configurations. 

[The information follows:] 

[CLERK’S NOTE.—Subsequent to the hearing, Director Duff provided the following additional information:] 

Under the terms of the Public Buildings Act, GSA has the authority to lease space 

on behalf of the judiciary. As a result, the judiciary does not and cannot lease space 

independently in the commercial market. 

In terms of flexibility, I would say it is fine for now, given the 

improving relations with GSA. That wasn’t the case in my first tenure, although we worked on it. 

Mr. RIGELL. I am encouraged to hear this, and I applaud—I am 

sure it is a result, in part at least, of constructive engagement with 

them and talking to them, communication, right? 

Mr. DUFF. Exactly right. 

Mr. RIGELL. Okay. 

Mr. DUFF. I think that the key to successful government, frankly, 

is communication. 
205

Mr. RIGELL. Right. And so I applaud that. 

And I know this is a shared value of the ranking member and 

others, and so if we can make a dollar go further and help you out 

in any practical way, please let us know. 

SENTENCING REFORM

I want to transition to Judge Gibbons, and I am actually going 

to toss you a softball here. And it is not for lack of preparation, it 

is not, but it is more to really understand how we might make 

some constructive changes here in Washington that will help us to 

be a safe society and, at the same time, not incarcerate any more 

people for any 1 day longer than we need to. 

And it is a wide topic with the time that I have remaining, but 

if you would, just—and I am sure you have some thoughts on this. 

What would you want us to consider on these larger issues about 

corrections generally, which, of course, don’t get the attention generally that is needed? Please. I think you understand the question. 

I hope so. 

Judge GIBBONS. Well, I gather that what you are asking goes 

really to the various proposals about sentencing reform—— 

Mr. RIGELL. Yes. 

Judge GIBBONS [continuing]. And correctional policy. 

The judiciary has positions on a number of the various proposals 

that have been introduced. There is a group of initiatives we support, coupled with some we oppose, plus a set of resource concerns. 

I am going to try to run through those quickly. 

Mr. RIGELL. And let me know if there is one on there that you 

really like. 

Judge GIBBONS. Well—— 

Mr. RIGELL. I mean that. It would be helpful to me. 

Judge GIBBONS. Well, the judiciary has for a long time strongly 

supported the elimination or reduction of mandatory minimum sentences. We have supported a modest expansion of the safety valve, 

which provides the ability to go below a mandatory minimum in 

certain situations. 

We have supported the reduction of the difference between the 

way crack and powder cocaine are treated, and we have supported 

retroactivity of that change. 

Mr. RIGELL. Let me pause for a moment. 

Judge GIBBONS. Okay. 

Mr. RIGELL. The crack and powdered issue. Now, I thought that 

we had done some work—— 

Judge GIBBONS. You have. 

Mr. RIGELL. Okay. 

Judge GIBBONS. And we supported that. 

Mr. RIGELL. Is that not enough? 

Judge GIBBONS. Well, there is a retroactivity bill that I don’t 

think has passed, and so that is still a remaining issue. 

Mr. RIGELL. Are you willing to kind of go out there and let us 

know what your personal view is on that? I am going to press you 

just a little bit, but if you are willing. 

Judge GIBBONS. I am not one of the judges who chafes most at 

a deprivation of some discretion in sentencing. It is up to Congress 

to make the rules. But I think it has been demonstrated over a pe-
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riod of time that the original congressional assessment of the adverse impact of crack cocaine as opposed to powder just didn’t turn 

out the way Congress thought. 

Mr. RIGELL. And I share that view. Okay. 

Judge GIBBONS. So that is my personal take on it. 

Mr. RIGELL. Okay. So that might lead us to at least reconsider 

with maybe a bias in favor of this legislation and—— 

Judge GIBBONS. You have already reduced the crack-powder disparity to some extent. 

Mr. RIGELL. That is right. 

Judge GIBBONS. Whether there would be another reduction appropriate, I am not really prepared to say without reviewing the 

issue again. In terms of applying the reduction retroactively, the 

Judicial Conference has supported retroactivity. 

Mr. RIGELL. Thank you. 

Judge GIBBONS. The final thing we support is the amendment 

that precludes stacking of Title 18, Section 924(c) violations. That 

is carrying or using a firearm during or in connection with a drug 

trafficking crime or a crime of violence. 

Mr. RIGELL. Okay. You have answered my question directly, and 

I appreciate it. And you have given me enough that I can wrestle 

with this on my own privately and perhaps, you know, with some 

followup to your offices. 

[The information follows:] 
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Judge GIBBONS. Well—— 

Mr. RIGELL. But I think that there is a sense within Congress 

just generally—it is not the top of the list. We have the budget and 

other things that we are struggling with, but something has to give 

here, I think, in a constructive way. I mean, thoughtful and wise 

reform on the corrections side. And I think that at least the Members that I know are open to this conversation. So what you have 

shared with me today has been helpful. 

Mr. Chairman, I see a red light over there, so I thank you, and 

I yield back what time I don’t have. Thank you. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you. 

CONCLUDING REMARKS

We are getting ready to vote, but because of the clear and concise 

answers as well as the clear and concise questions, we are able to 

finish our work here today. 

Let me thank you all for being here. And a special word of 

thanks to the folks that are here for the Budget and Financial Advisory meeting. You are doing a good job of advising these folks, 

because you have been very efficient and effective. We all know 

that government needs money to provide services, but right now 

being efficient is more important than ever before. 

So thank you for what you all do as an advisory group. Thank 

you for bringing that message to us and the work that you do. It 

is very, very important. 

And I know Mr. Serrano wants to say goodbye to somebody. 

Mr. SERRANO. No. 

I just want to thank you for the work that you do, for coming 

here, all of you for the work that you do. 

But I did hear something today, Mr. Chairman, that I can’t end 

the hearing without saying that it troubles me a little bit. I don’t 

think we, as Members of Congress, should legislate with any concern about how much litigation may cost. Our role is to legislate, 

and if people don’t like it, then they can sue. Or you can go along 

with the President’s program and don’t sue on anything, which is 

not going to happen. 

But I think it may have a chilling effect. To give you an example, 

we have a rule, as you know, in the House that says that when you 

put in a bill you have to say what part of the Constitution that bill 

will affect. I was tempted once to write ‘‘that part that says that 

I am a legislator, and I can legislate,’’ but that would have been 

sarcastic to some people. 

So I appreciate what the courts go through. I appreciate that 

lately a lot of what has been legislated will be litigated. But let’s 

be thankful that we live in a democracy where I can legislate and 

then the courts can decide whether it is right or wrong. That 

makes sense, rather than say, it is going to cost too much, so don’t 

do that. 

But thank you so much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you all. 

This hearing is adjourned. 
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W I T N E S S E S 

Page

Breyer, Hon. Stephen G., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court ..................... 107 

Donovan, Hon. Shaun .............................................................................................. 1 

Kennedy, Hon. Anthony M., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court ................ 107 

Roth, Denise, Turner ............................................................................................... 55