    [House Hearing, 111 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                             ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING

    =======================================================================

                                    MEETING

                                   before the

                       COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                    HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, JANUARY 27, 2009

                                   __________

          Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration

                           Available on the Internet:
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                       COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION

                    ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania, Chairman
    ZOE LOFGREN, California              DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California
      Vice-Chairwoman                      Ranking Minority Member
    MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts    KEVIN McCARTHY, California
    CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas           GREGG HARPER, Mississippi
    SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
    ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama

                               Professional Staff

                     S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, Staff Director
                   Victor Arnold-Bik, Minority Staff Director

                             ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING

                                  ----------

                           TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2009

                      House of Representatives,
                             Committee on House Administration,
                                                       Washington, D.C.
        The committee met, pursuant to call, at 1:30 p.m., in Room
    1310, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Robert A. Brady
    (chairman of the committee) presiding.
        Present: Representatives Brady, Lofgren, Capuano, Gonzalez,
    Davis of California, Davis of Alabama, Lungren, and Harper.
        Staff Present: Liz Birnbaum, Staff Director; Jamie Fleet,
    Deputy Staff Director; Charles Howell, Chief Counsel; Matt
    Pinkus, Professional Staff/Parliamentarian; Kyle Anderson,
    Press Director; Kristin McCowan, Chief Legislative Clerk;
    Gregory Abbott, Policy Analyst; Victor Arnold-Bik, Minority
    Staff Director; Peter Schalestock, Minority Counsel; and Bryan
    T. Dorsey, Minority Professional Staff.
        The Chairman. I would like to call to order the Committee
    on House Administration for its organizational meeting for the
    111th Congress. A quorum of members is present, so we may
    proceed.
        At this first meeting of the committee in the new Congress,
    I would like to welcome back everyone on our side, who are all
    back, and I hope that we can all work together as we did in the
    last Congress. There are no changes on our side, but we have a
    new member on the Republican side.
        We will miss Mr. Ehlers as our ranking member. No
    disrespect to the new ranking member. He was an absolute
    positive gentleman, somebody whom I really, really enjoyed and
    somebody whom I got to know and whom I got to be extremely fond
    of. We did not always agree. We are not supposed to always
    agree. But we were never disagreeable. And he was a classy guy,
    an absolutely classy guy to work with. And we are not missing
    him in any bad way. He is still a Member of Congress, and we
    still will see him. And I will continue my great relationship I
    have with him.
        But we do have a new ranking member in Mr. Lungren, and I
    would like to welcome him as a new ranking member. We had a
    conversation. We agree on everything so far. Hopefully we will
    continue that, and I would ask him also if he would introduce
    his new member and for any remarks that you would like to make.
        Mr. Lungren. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank
    you for your indulgence.
        The Republican Conference had an honor this afternoon. We
    met with the President of the United States, and he stayed an
    extra 25 minutes to answer questions saying that the Senate
    could wait, which we all applauded wildly at. And I was seated
    towards the front, and the only way I could have left was to
    get up and walk in front of the President as if I was walking
    out. And I hope you will understand why I did not do that.
        So, again, I do apologize for our tardiness, but that was
    the reason.
        I would like to introduce and welcome our new member,
    Congressman Greg Harper, who was elected this past November to
    represent Mississippi's Third District, where he has spent in
    the past considerable time on election law issues.
        In 2001, he served as the Republican representative on the
    Mississippi Secretary of State's Election Task Force, and I
    believe that his expertise will help us on this committee.
        We do have Kevin McCarthy returning, and he will, again, be
    on our Subcommittee on Elections.
        And I thank the Chairman for his welcome, and I thank him
    for the spirit of bipartisanship that he has shown me over the
    last couple of years, in particular the last couple of months
    and especially the last couple of weeks when I have had this
    ranking member. We have had already, I think, enjoyable
    discussions, and we have had some additions on our committee
    staff, and we welcome the outreach from your staff as well.
        And we know there will be some issues upon which we may
    disagree, and there may be some strong partisan differences.
    But I would say at least 75 percent of the work in this
    committee is bipartisan. There ought not to be any
    misunderstanding of that.
        It is my hope--and you and I have discussed this--that we
    can work to make this an even more Member-friendly committee.
    And by that I mean not that we go outside the rules, but we try
    and delineate as clearly as possible what the rules are, and we
    make it clear to our membership, our fellow Members, what those
    rules are. And it is my hope that we can say yes far more than
    we can say no, so that Members may be able to work in very
    effective ways to do the job that they were sent here to do and
    to communicate with their constituents.
        And I know you share that. And so I very much appreciate
    that.
        As you know, one of my passions is security, and I look
    forward to working with the members on the other side of the
    aisle on making this, while it is a welcoming place, also an
    even more secure place because this institution is so important
    to our Nation, and we have every need to ensure that this is
    the case.
        And finally, I know by our rules, by the recently passed
    House Rules amendment requiring committees to conduct regular
    hearings on waste, fraud management, and abuse, that we need to
    do that as well. And I believe under our organization we can do
    that, and I will work with the chairman to ensure that we
    continue to do that.
        And I thank you for your indulgence, and I thank you for
    your spirit of bipartisanship.
        Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
        Anybody have anything to say on our side?
        For the record, if you don't mind, we were wondering if the
    President changed your mind on anything.
        Mr. Lungren. No, no. But we did sincerely tell him that
    every day he will receive prayers from our individual Members
    for his success and the success of our Nation.
        Mr. Chairman. Prayers and votes, I guess, are a little bit
    different.
        I need to make a few announcements.
        Pursuant to House Rules, I am appointing our distinguished
    colleague, the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Zoe Lofgren, as
    the Vice Chair of the Committee on House Administration in the
    111th Congress.
        Also, as we announced at the last meeting of the committee
    in the 110th Congress, we took two actions by poll of the
    committee members. First, we adopted a new rule allowing
    Members to post video clips on Web sites outside the House Web
    address. Second, we agreed to recommendations from the Florida
    13th Task Force to pay certain attorney's fees for our
    colleague, Mr. Buchanan. These fees were incurred in the
    successful defense of an election contest during the last
    Congress.
        And our first item of business, I would like to because
    of--not that we want to get out of our committee hearing,
    because everything is pushed back, there are other committees
    that are having markups that are extremely important. So I
    would ask, without any objections, that we could take our four
    issues en bloc. They would be Resolutions 111-1; 111-2; 111-3;
    and 111-4.
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        The Chairman. I do need to make another announcement. I
    would like to now appoint the gentleman from Texas,
    Representative Gonzalez, to be Vice Chair of the Subcommittee
    on Elections in the 111th Congress.
        Hearing no objections to taking the four pieces of business
    en bloc as one, are there any amendments for these four?
        Will the ranking member have anything to add to anything
    that we are doing with these four?
        Mr. Lungren. I thank the chairman for agreeing to some of
    the suggestions that we made and believe that we have no
    further amendments.
        The Chairman. I would then like to ask for all of those in
    favor to signify by saying aye.
        Any opposed? None.
        So ordered.
        Our four amendments, our housekeeping amendments, for the
    new 111th Congress of the Committee on House Administration
    have been approved.
        Anybody have anything to say in the majority? Anybody have
    anything to say in the minority?
        We welcome you, sir.
        We hope that you enjoy yourself.
        As my dear friend Mr. Lungren said, we are a Members'
    committee, and outside of getting any Member in trouble in any
    way, shape, or form, whether it be non-election or anything
    worse than that, we would like to try to help them, and I will
    continue to do that.
        Thank you all. This meeting is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 1:38 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]