[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING
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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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50-203 PDF WASHINGTON : 2009
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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
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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.]