[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                   CONGRESSIONAL MODERNIZATION: A ROADMAP 
                              FOR THE FUTURE

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                       SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE 
                       MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS

                                 OF THE

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                           SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-23

                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Select Committee on the Modernization of 
                                Congress
                                
 [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]                               


                    Available via http://govinfo.gov                    
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
48-592                    WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
                  
           SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS

                    DEREK KILMER, Washington, Chair

 ZOE LOFGREN, California              WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina,
 EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri             Vice Chair
 ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              BOB LATTA, Ohio
 DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota             RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois
 NIKEMA WILLIAMS, Georgia             DAVE JOYCE, Ohio
                                      GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
                                      BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas

                            COMMITTEE STAFF

                     Yuri Beckelman, Staff Director
                 Derek Harley, Republican Staff Director
                            
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page

Chairman Derek Kilmer
      Oral Statement.............................................     1

Vice Chairman William Timmons
      Oral Statement.............................................     3

                               WITNESSES

The Honorable Catherine Szpindor, Chief Administrative Officer, 
    House of Representatives
      Oral Statement.............................................     4
      Written Statement..........................................     7
Dr. Casey Burgat, Assistant Professor and Legislative Affairs 
    Program Director, The George Washington University
      Oral Statement.............................................    14
      Written Statement..........................................    17
Ms. Diane Hill Senior Manager, Government Affairs, Partnership 
    for Public Service
      Oral Statement.............................................    21
      Written Statement..........................................    24
Discussion.......................................................    29

 
         CONGRESSIONAL MODERNIZATION: A ROADMAP FOR THE FUTURE

                              ----------                              


                     WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

                  House of Representatives,
 Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress,
                                                     Washington, DC
    The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room 
210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Derek Kilmer [chairman 
of the committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Kilmer, Cleaver, Lofgren, 
Perlmutter, Phillips, Williams, Timmons, Davis, Latta, 
Reschenthaler, Van Duyne, and Joyce.
    The Chairman. Okay. The committee will come to order. 
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess 
of the committee at any time. I now recognize myself for 5 
minutes for an opening statement.
    So, back in March of 2019, this committee held its very 
first hearing. The hearing's focus was on past reform efforts, 
so it is only fitting that as we meet today for the committee's 
last hearing our focus is on future reform efforts. We have 
come full circle.
    It is hard to believe that this committee will soon be one 
of those past reform efforts that we looked to for guidance and 
inspiration just 3.5 years ago. My hope is that we have given 
future reformers plenty to think about, not only in terms of 
the recommendations that we have passed, but in terms of how we 
have worked.
    I can't emphasize enough how the processes and norms that 
we have developed along the way have been key to our success as 
a committee. I think that our work methods deserve just as much 
attention as our work product. And I really hope future 
reformers take note of that because more folks recognize that 
it is possible for Democrats and Republicans to find areas of 
agreement, to collaborate in good faith, and to produce results 
on behalf of the American people the better.
    One of the biggest lessons I have learned over the past 3.5 
years is that if we want things to work differently, we have to 
be willing to do things differently. I know it is hard to try 
new things in a tradition-bound institution like Congress, but 
experimenting is absolutely essential if we are going to change 
anything.
    We didn't know if some of the things our committee tried 
would work. We were willing to experiment and find out. In 
fact, the reason that we are sitting here today in a roundtable 
format where we can all look each other in the eye and engage 
in substantive discussion is because the committee decided to 
try something new.
    Over 1 year ago, when the committee held its first 
roundtable hearing, we had no idea how it would go, but we took 
a chance and we haven't returned to the dais since, except when 
we had technical difficulties one time.
    Modernization requires the willingness to innovate, and 
that is what this committee has done from day one. I recall 
being at an Armed Forces Day dinner in my district a few years 
back and sitting with a senior naval officer. And he said, how 
is it going in Congress? And I said, man, it feels like trying 
to turn a battleship. He said, well, Derek, I used to captain a 
battleship. And he said, here is what I can tell you, targeted 
and strategic course correction over time make a really big 
difference.
     I say that because change doesn't happen overnight, 
especially in a place like Congress, but I think that the small 
changes over time can lead to the kind of cultural shifts that 
make a big difference. What started as a 1-year sprint for this 
committee turned into a 4-year marathon, and I am grateful that 
we were given the time to do the work necessary to create long-
term change. In fact, we are already seeing our hard work pay 
off as more than half of our recommendations have either been 
fully or partially implemented.
    This success is due in no small part to the hard work of 
the committee's implementation partners, including the CAO, who 
is with us today. By working closely with the CAO, the House 
Clerk, the Architect of the Capitol, among others, the 
committee was able to draft workable recommendations that our 
partners could successfully implement. This unique approach to 
developing and implementing recommendations is another 
committee innovation.
    While some of our successes are already apparent, there is 
a lot of work ahead, and it won't always be easy to determine 
whether some of our recommendations made a difference. 
Measuring success is tough when we lack the hard data we need 
to confidently claim that something actually did what it was 
supposed to do, but it is not impossible, and one of our 
witnesses today is going to help us think creatively about how 
to gauge the impact of our work over time.
    I frequently made the point that modernization should 
happen as a matter of course. Businesses and organizations 
build innovation and process improvement into their operations 
because they understand that evolving with the times is 
necessary in order to remain relevant.
    By relegating reform to something it does every few decades 
or so, Congress is consistently playing catchup. Outdated 
technology and processes slow the institution down, and that is 
a disservice to the American people. There are, however, ways 
Congress can make modernization an ongoing rather than 
occasional effort, and one of our witnesses today is going to 
present us with a few potential options for continuing the work 
that this committee started.
    The committee will use its--this is the wonky part. The 
committee will use its rules that allow for a more flexible 
hearing format that encourages discussion and the civil 
exchange of ideas and opinions. So in accordance with clause 
2(j) of House rule XI, we will allow up to 30 minutes of 
extended questioning per witness and, without objection, time 
will not be strictly segregated between the witnesses, which 
will allow for extended back and forth exchanges between 
members and the witnesses. Vice Chair Timmons and I will manage 
the time to ensure that every member has a full opportunity to 
participate.
    Additionally, members who wish to claim their individual 5 
minutes to question each witness pursuant to clause 2(j)(2) of 
rule 11 will be permitted to do so following the period of----
    Okay. With that out of the way, I would like to invite Vice 
Chair Timmons to share some opening remarks as well.
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Good morning, and thank you all for being with us. It 
really has been a wild ride. Three and a half years ago, I was 
appointed as the freshman on this committee, and I remember how 
happy I was when Leader McCarthy's office called and told me 
that. And Tom Graves had been a friend and mentor, and I was so 
fortunate to spend a year and then 2 years under his leadership 
and under the chairman's leadership.
    And I watched them work together. I watched them show me 
that Republicans and Democrats can be civil, can work together, 
and can try to make a positive impact on the institution that 
everyone loves. It has such a huge impact on the lives of the 
American people. It is so important that we do everything we 
can to make this place as functional as possible.
    So I was very pleased when the leader told me that I was 
going to be the vice chair. He didn't really have a lot of 
options. Everybody that was on the committee that was 
Republican had left, and Rodney can't have more committee 
assignments. It would be ridiculous to have his fifth or 
sixth--I don't even know what number it would be. But I have 
done everything I can to step into the shoes of Tom Graves. You 
know, I always remark, his hair is so great that I knew I could 
never live up to that. He just has the best head of hair.
    But, you know, I did my best to continue the leadership 
that this committee has had, and we were so fortunate to get a 
full 2 years. And I think we have made the most of it. And we 
have 4 months left, and we are going to continue to work hard. 
Obviously, this hearing is about what is next and how do we 
make sure that the recommendations that we have made and that 
we will make will be fully implemented. And while we will not 
be here in January, how can we maximize the likelihood that all 
of these recommendations get implemented.
    I know that we all have some ideas on that, and that is 
what we will be talking about, but I definitely think that this 
shouldn't happen every couple decades, and I definitely think 
that we shouldn't stop in January. So I look forward to hearing 
you all's thoughts on that.
    I will also remark, we just went on a congressional 
delegation trip to Brussels and to London. And, you know, we 
have--it was remarkable that--I actually think we are doing 
okay after that trip. Not that the EU and the U.K. are not 
doing a great job in their own way, but everyone has their 
dysfunction. Everyone has their challenges.
    The EU takes a week a month and goes 4.5 hours away by 
train to a different location to conduct their business, and I 
just was like, wow. And I thought we had it tough in D.C.
    But we learned a lot too. We learned a lot, and we are 
hopefully going to make some recommendations from what we 
learned from our parliaments in London and Brussels. So it was 
a very productive trip.
    I just want to say how--since this is the last hearing, I 
just want to say that it has been an honor to work alongside 
the chair. We have become friends, and I feel like we have made 
an impact, and we are going to continue to work hard for the 
next 4 months. And I can assure, as long as I am in Congress, I 
will work until every one of these recommendations has been 
fully implemented, and I think we agree on that.
    So, Mr. Chairman, I just say, it has been an honor. Look 
forward to the next 4 months, and I look forward to the hearing 
here today.
    With that, I yield back.
    The Chairman. Thank you. And appreciate your remarks and 
appreciate the partnership. I will wait until we get to our 
final markup before I say any valedictory remarks.
    I want to welcome our guests, but before I do, I want to 
welcome two particularly important guests today: Huck and 
Charlie are with us. They are the kids of one of our witnesses 
today. They are two of the most well-attired and well-behaved 
kids I have ever seen. So thank you for being with us, Huck and 
Charlie. And I told them, if things got boring, they should 
just like make a bird noise and I will try to pick it up a 
little bit. So--that was a joke though, Charlie, so don't 
actually make a bird noise, okay?
    All right. She gave me the nod.
    So I now would like to welcome our three witnesses who are 
here to share their thoughts on the future of modernization 
within this institution. Witnesses are reminded that your 
written statements will be made part of the record.
    Our first witness is a frequent flyer with the committee. I 
think you have now qualified for the free latte as well. We are 
deeply grateful for her service and work with the committee.
    Catherine Szpindor is the Chief Administrative Officer of 
the House of Representatives. She has served in this role since 
2020. Previously, she served as the CIO of the House.
    In her role, Ms. Szpindor is responsible for providing 
support services and business solutions to a community of 
10,000 House Members, officers, and staff.
    Ms. Szpindor, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

     STATEMENTS OF THE HONORABLE CATHERINE SZPINDOR, CHIEF 
    ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
   WASHINGTON, DC; DR. CASEY BURGAT, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AND 
  LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS PROGRAM DIRECTOR, THE GEORGE WASHINGTON 
  UNIVERSITY; AND MS. DIANE HILL, SENIOR MANAGER, GOVERNMENT 
   AFFAIRS, PARTNERSHIP FOR PUBLIC SERVICE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

         STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CATHERINE SZPINDOR

    Ms. Szpindor. All right. Thank you very much.
    Chairman Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, and the members of the 
Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, thank you 
for this opportunity today and many opportunities we have had 
previously to meet for the good of the institution. We thank 
you for trusting the CAO as a partner in making lasting 
positive changes so that Congress can run more effectively and 
efficiently.
    The mission of the nearly 800 CAO staffers is actually very 
simple: It is to make it easier for Members and staff to do 
their job as they serve the American people. We refer to this 
as ``Member Focused. Service Driven.'' Our varied and highly 
skilled staff work as ``One CAO'' to perform our services so 
you, the Members of Congress, can focus on your constitutional 
duties.
    Since January 2022, we have launched many new projects. I 
am highlighting a few of those today.
    The very successful CAO Coach program is addressing the 
need for more relevant and efficient training for House staff 
by hosting in-person and virtual courses and providing one-on-
one consultations to staff in Washington, D.C., and the 
district. In total, CAO Coach hosted 2,600 House staffers in 
these sessions.
    The CAO coaches and customer advocates launched the first-
ever bipartisan orientation program for new staff in February 
and developed the 2022 District Office Conference Program--also 
bipartisan--providing specialty training to over 800 district 
staff by position. We train staff on specific skills unique to 
the House and plan on continuing these offerings in the coming 
year. This team serves as an effective method in communicating 
CAO's services and products and how to access them.
    We continue to update and add new products to the House 
Human Resources Hub, which is quickly becoming an essential 
resource for managing office operations.
    The House Resume Bank is providing offices an easier and 
quicker way to find job candidates. Effective use of the Resume 
Bank has led to requests from chiefs of staff for more 
effective methods to attract diverse and talented applicants, 
and we tend--we will deliver.
    The House Digital Service team is committed to a ``build 
with and not build for'' philosophy for stakeholders to ensure 
products meet customer criteria. They are researching member 
committee office needs. This includes improvements to 
constituent services; legislative tools; office operational 
functions, such as a leave tracking software for Member 
offices; options for a legislative branchwide staff directory; 
and a common committee calendar portal to help reduce schedule 
conflicts.
    The CAO is conducting research on replacement options and 
cost estimates for a new House payroll system since the current 
system is nearing end of life. Through this project, we will 
modernize antiquated processes, automate manual procedures, and 
improve the payroll experience. Also, this will be an 
opportunity to consider transitioning to a more frequent pay 
cycle for House employees, a recommendation by the select 
committee.
    The Office of Finance is piloting an application employing 
electronic signatures to automate many of our administrative 
forms. The new system launches soon and provides House offices 
the ability to electronically prepare, approve, route, and 
submit payroll transactions. These transactions are validated 
in real time against House rules and regulations, providing 
considerable time savings to that office.
    To keep our promise to be ``Member focused, service 
driven,'' the CAO adopted a new strategic plan that is focused 
on understanding the needs of the Members and the staff, 
continuously improving our services and processes to meet those 
needs, and effectively analyzing and prioritizing our budgeted 
funds and resources to provide quality solutions.
    Additionally, the modernization account the select 
committee championed provides significant opportunity for the 
House to continue to transform services.
    Chairman Kilmer and Vice Chairman Timmons, the 
modernization momentum you created propels us forward and our 
future is clear. The CAO has integrated modernization into our 
overall operations. We are enthusiastic and deliberate in our 
plan to continue to meet the evolving needs of the Members and 
staff.
    I am grateful for your support, the great working 
relationship that we have with your staff, and look forward to 
responding to any questions you may have. Thank you.
    [The statement of Ms. Szpindor follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Szpindor, for your testimony 
and for your partnership.
    Our next witness is Dr. Casey Burgat. In addition to being 
the father of Huck and Charlie, Dr. Burgat is the director of 
the Legislative Affairs program and assistant professor in the 
Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington 
University. He previously served as a senior governance fellow 
at the R Street Institute, as well as an analyst with the 
Congressional Research Service, and executive branch operations 
in the Congress and judiciary sections.
    Dr. Burgat, welcome. You are now recognized for 5 minutes.

                 STATEMENT OF DR. CASEY BURGAT

    Mr. Burgat. Chair Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, and members 
of the select committee, thank you for the invitation to 
testify this morning.
    I like everyone here, I can imagine, followed the work of 
your committee closely since its inception. I know I speak for 
many in the reform community--Diane is going to echo this, I am 
sure--that we applaud all of your leadership on all of these 
topics, especially in these political circumstances. We applaud 
not only the committee's robust productivity, but maybe even 
more importantly, the example it has set about how it has gone 
about its work. It has been civil, it has been purposefully 
bipartisan, and it has been thorough. Thank you all for all 
setting this example.
    Right, Huck and Charlie?
    I was asked to focus my testimony on two primary questions: 
First, how my current and future congressional reform 
researchers measure the effectiveness of this committee's work, 
especially over time, and including the impacts of your nearly 
200 recommendations; and second, given that I have regularly 
tasked my students to research and propose recommendations for 
the select committee to consider, what common themes typically 
have come up in their proposals.
    Starting with the first question regarding your 
effectiveness. Some of your recommendations and resulting 
progress are quantifiable and, thus, can be studied as such. 
That part is easy. The impacts of increasing staff pay, 
diversity, internship accessibility, for example, can be 
measured and compared with Congresses that came before these 
changes.
    Other recommendations, however, are much more difficult to 
quantify. Goals such as encouraging civility within Congress, 
modernizing technology, improving constituent service processes 
don't come with clear measures or--and this is the important 
part--publicly accessible data. On many issues, the causal 
chain between the committee's recommendations to tangible 
outcomes will be long and precise and conditional on an 
infinite number of variables. And academics are allergic to 
those qualities.
    With that said, there are a host of types of measures that 
scholars may use to gauge the committee's effectiveness over 
time. Those who focus on legislative productivity and outcomes 
may look for changes in amendment and drafting activities. Does 
cosponsor action differ in numbers and networks, potentially 
cross-party counts, thanks to the electronic cosponsor 
recommendation and your civility efforts? Are Members more able 
to insert legislative text into bills because of the 
collaborative legislative drafting recommendation? Do Members 
and offices seem to work together more often after attending 
bipartisan onboarding and new Member orientations?
    These are things that we can kind of get at with proxy 
measures, though there aren't easily quantifiable data 
attached.
    On the oversight front, enterprising researchers can study 
whether more bipartisan oversight efforts, including 
identifiers like letters signed by both the chair and ranking 
member, are undertaken. And then should certain panels follow 
the select committee's lead in deliberations, such as this 
roundtable format, the bipartisan seating, foregoing the 5-
minute rule, studies can analyze differences and outcomes on a 
variety of deliberation measures. So things like what witnesses 
are called to testify; using text analysis of hearing 
transcripts to study what types of questions are asked, because 
there are infinite types of different questions to be asked; 
and how you all use your allotted time, will that change?
    And precisely because Members will be hard--measures will 
be hard to come by, its key researchers do not discount the 
importance of qualitative study as well. To fully understand 
why certain outcomes differ, there is no substitute for hearing 
directly from the source, Member or staff, of your thinking, 
motivations, and observations. This does mean, though, that you 
will all make yourselves available, your staffs available, and 
your data as available as possible so that we annoying 
academics who work on these questions can get some answers 
without having to bug you too much.
    Now, the second question about when assigning my students 
to submit reform proposals, what common themes have developed. 
Many students, unsurprisingly, want to focus on improving 
collaboration and civility between Members, staffers, and 
offices. Half want to use sticks, like fines and decrease 
resources for offenders; the other half want to use carrots, 
like access to the floor or maybe a civility plaque in the 
Capitol hallways. Almost all require Members to judge each 
other on their behaviors, which history has shown us over and 
over brings a whole host of challenges and implications.
    Students also commonly submit proposals to reform the 
budget process. Their reform ideas attempt to lessen the 
reliance on continuing resolutions, reinvigorating authorizing 
committees, improving budgetary oversight, minimizing deficit 
spending, and doing away with high-drama debt ceiling hikes. I 
bet you all would sign on to all of those things as well.
    But by far--and by far--the most common theme of student 
reform proposals speak to the overwhelming centralization of 
legislating power in leadership offices. It simply doesn't 
compute to my students that rank-and-file Members are commonly 
not involved in the legislative process and sometimes 
completely in the dark on policy negotiations and even 
legislative text until the final moments prior to votes. They 
can't understand why bills that would assuredly pass the 
Chamber won't get debated, let alone receive attention on the 
floor.
    After much discussion, they begin to theoretically 
understand how the current balance of power serves enough 
interests of enough Members, but they hate it. They don't 
understand it. They don't accept it. To them, many of the 
current processes are, in fact, antithetical to how a 
legislature is supposed to work.
    Their solutions to the problem are unbelievably varied, 
though. From pie-in-the-sky pledges that every Member read 
every bill before granting access--to granting floor access to 
every Member at least once per session. Increasingly, student 
reform ideas attempt to tackle the doom loop felt by many 
Members, particularly within the minority party. They think, if 
I don't see a reasonable path as a Member to the floor for my 
issue, and if leadership decides everything anyway, why would I 
spend my time, my energy, my staff resources legislating? 
Aren't I better off messaging and performing constituent 
service? Their incentive structure is hard to argue with.
    To address this, many proposals advance altering House 
rules and instituting automatic thresholds that guarantee 
subsequent actions, like a markup within committee or a vote on 
the floor. Ideas like reworking the discharge petition, 
identifying a certain magic number of cosponsors, of bipartisan 
cosponsors that would automatically trigger a definite path to 
the policymaking process, including access to the floor.
    In nearly all of these thoughts, though, students are quick 
to point out that leadership cannot be given a veto, can't even 
give them access to it. If the specific threshold is met, the 
Member receives the reward.
    I assume you have questions about this. I will save the 
rest for later, but thank you all again for the invitation to 
testify. And I would be remiss if I didn't take this 
opportunity to implore you to do everything possible to make 
this committee, in whatever format it can take, permanent. It 
matters.
    Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions.
    [The statement of Mr. Burgat follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Our final witness is Diane Hill, who is a 
senior manager at the Partnership for Public Service. She 
previously served as a Presidential management fellow at the 
Department of Housing and Urban Development, as a program 
analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, and as a 
legislative staffer for Congresswoman Lindy Boggs, Congressman 
Pat Williams, and Senator Bob Kerrey.
    Ms. Hill, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

                  STATEMENT OF MS. DIANE HILL

    Ms. Hill. Thank you, Chair Kilmer.
    Chair Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, members of the committee, 
thank you for inviting me here today to testify. Determining a 
future for the modernization movement that this committee has 
created is necessary and important.
    As Chair Kilmer said, my name is Diane Hill. I am a senior 
manager at the Partnership for Public Service, but I am 
privileged to be the coordinator for the Fix Congress Cohort, a 
community of 45 civil society organizations who align in a 
common purpose to strengthen Congress and make it more 
effective. We have been thankful and privileged to be able to 
work with this committee and want to thank you for all the hard 
work that you have done.
    Now, as you can imagine, being the coordinator for 45 civil 
society organizations who want to make a significant change in 
the world and make a difference, it is not easy to come up with 
a consensus about where we should go next with the 
modernization effort. So our recommendations today have a 
framework.
    Our first thing that we all do agree on is we want to make 
sure that the recommendations, almost 200 of them that you have 
worked so hard to put together, are implemented, while also 
identifying new areas for reform.
    Second, we believe that we need to continue efforts to 
bring the Senate into the modernization work. What you will 
hear from me today--thank you. That is such a hard one, but we 
are committed to it.
    With that in mind, we make the following recommendations, 
and as I stated, it is not easy to get consensus. So our first 
two recommendations are alternatives of where the modernization 
effort should be housed.
    Recommendation number one is to place modernization work 
within the Committee on House Administration either by 
establishing a new subcommittee or a commission. Giving the 
work to House Administration makes a permanent home with a 
committee that has significant jurisdiction over most of the 
recommendations that have come out of this committee. It also 
provides a space where hearings can occur and we can find, 
explore, and develop new recommendations.
    So there are two options we could do that within the 
Committee on House Administration. One is to create a 
subcommittee on modernization at the beginning of the next 
Congress. The makeup of that subcommittee would be all House 
Administration members. The second is to establish a 
modernization commission modeled on the structure of the 
Communications Standards Commission.
    While both are strong options--and you will see all the 
disadvantages and advantages of both in my written testimony--
the commission has the potential to be truly bipartisan. You 
could have Members of both party in equal numbers and also has 
the possibility of membership from the entire House of 
Representatives, as does the Communications Standards 
Commission.
    The second recommendation--and you will remember that this 
is an alternative to the first--is that we reauthorize the 
Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. As I agree 
with my colleague, Dr. Burgat, this committee has done such 
stellar work; it would be nice to have a permanent organization 
just like it. It has provided a model, a pathway for other 
committees to see how thorny issues can be explored fully and 
respectfully by Members who don't necessarily agree but are 
seeking ways to find common solutions.
    The makeup of this bipartisan committee brings together 
members of key committees who have direct jurisdiction over 
House operations: the Committee on House Administration, 
Appropriations, and the Rules Committee. The collaboration and 
communication between these three committees needs to continue 
and will fully support a modernization effort.
    Our third recommendation is to create a permanent 
modernization task force in addition to a Member-based 
solution, so this would be an add-on. The task force would be 
formed using the data task force as a model, made up of 
nonpartisan professional staff from across legislative 
agencies, including the Government Accountability Office, the 
Office of the Chief Administrative Officer, the Office of 
Diversity and Inclusion, the Clerk's Office, and the Sergeant 
at Arms.
    By pulling together professional staff who are able to 
serve across Congresses, Members would have an expert resource 
on modernization to both implement existing recommendations and 
develop new recommendations on an ongoing basis.
    And the fourth recommendation is to pursue a joint 
committee on the modernization of Congress. Ideally, 
modernization of Congress would include all of Congress. For 
that reason----
    [Audio malfunction.]
    Ms. Hill. Okay. No, I am still there. Okay. Sorry, I must 
have--my apologies.
    For that reason, the cohort supports creation of a joint 
committee on the modernization of Congress.
    While it appears that the Senate is not ready to take that 
step right now, we should be exploring that goal in the long 
term, and that way we can take on larger issues like budget 
reform which would help Congress regain its strength and 
footing as the first branch of government.
    I want to thank you again for inviting me to testify, but I 
also want to thank you most sincerely for allowing this 
community of civil society organizations to be instrumental in 
the modernization effort. We applaud the strong leadership, 
service, and results of the work of this committee, and we are 
grateful that this committee has been willing to stand by 
Congress as an institution, and we wholeheartedly support that 
effort.
    Thank you again, and I look forward to your questions.
    [The statement of Ms. Hill follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Hill. And thank you not just 
for your testimony but for your partnership and for the 
partisanship of the cohort. Thank you for that.
    I now recognize myself and Vice Chair Timmons to begin a 
period of extended questioning of the witnesses. Any member who 
wishes to speak should just signal their request to either me 
or Vice Chair Timmons.
    And I am going to be here the whole time, so I am going to 
let you all go first, assuming folks may have to leave. I know 
Chairwoman Lofgren is on via Zoom as well. I don't know if she 
has been elevated to participant.
    So I saw Rodney's hand go up first, so go ahead, Mr. Davis, 
and then I will go to you, Ms. Williams.
    Mr. Davis. This right there, Chairman Kilmer, is just great 
leadership, because he is going to be here the entire time. We, 
of course, like to come in and out, which makes Congress very 
functional, of course. But you recognized that I raised my hand 
first, and I really appreciate your leadership on that. I 
really do.
    The Chairman. I would like to appreciate your speed----
    Mr. Davis. Yeah.
    The Chairman [continuing]. Mr. Davis.
    Mr. Davis. Hey, in all seriousness, as somebody who has 
been on this select committee since its inception and as 
somebody who also, you know, has the role on House 
Administration, what Derek has done over the last two 
Congresses is miraculous. He has been able to really drive a 
bipartisan message to success.
    We have had tremendous successes last Congress and this 
Congress, recommendations being implemented through this 
process, and to have the leadership that Derek had in the 
majority to give then-Vice Chair Graves, now-Vice Chair Timmons 
somewhat equal status is unheard of. And this is the stuff that 
your students think Congress is about, and that is why it is 
great to use this select committee as an example. But as we all 
know, it is not the rest of Congress.
    And that is really due to your leadership and your team's 
leadership, Derek, and it wouldn't have been driven. 
Exceptional job as the chair, and, again, William, you know, 
exceptionally mediocre job.
    But I do want to say, I do want to say, in all seriousness, 
the list of recommendations that were implemented throughout 
this committee's process cannot be overstated. And I will say 
and argue that most of them happened before Perlmutter got on 
the committee, but, you know, we have slowly moved ahead. We 
can't stop that. And I am really interested in the 
recommendations of how to extend this process.
    Chair Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, and everybody on this 
committee knows where I stand. As a Member of the House 
Administration Committee, we should be tasked with implementing 
a lot more of these recommendations, and that to me is the most 
logical place for a permanent subcommittee on the Committee on 
House Administration to focus solely on making this institution 
better. Because that is the standing committee in the House 
that should be focused on making this institution better.
    We hear--when somebody says pie-in-the-sky discussions 
about how do we get the Senate to work, you know what, we could 
do that through joint interaction with the Senate Rules 
Committee. But let's make sure we highlight the fact that the 
discussions and the debates that we have here and the 
successes, they have got to continue. I am not going to 
continue. Ed is not going to continue. It is going to be up to 
those of you who are here in this institution to make sure that 
the great work these folks have put in and the staffers have 
put in isn't forgotten.
    I would like to see--and, look, as we plan ahead to what we 
call our roadmap to the majority, I have laid out my priorities 
to my hopeful successors that would create a subcommittee on 
modernization within the Committee on House Administration. 
Certainly hope to be able to populate that subcommittee. We 
might be able to get some more members on House Administration. 
But then House Administration has got to do its job, and that 
means we have got to have a continued focus from members who 
are on this subcommittee who may want to engage and be Members 
of the House Administration Committee, because that is where 
you can actually get a lot of these recommendations that are 
sitting, waiting to be implemented done.
    The low-hanging fruit is gone. It is going to be more 
contentious. But the committee process is the place to work it 
out, and I certainly hope it is done in a bipartisan way.
    Catherine, I want to thank you and your team for 
implementing a lot of our recommendations over the last 3.5 
years. I have worked with you as a staffer. I worked with your 
operation as a staffer years ago. You know I have my opinions 
on where things should be technologically, and I know you are 
moving in that direction, in spite of having John Clocker, who 
is sitting up in the corner as part of your team.
    Hi, John.
    Mr. Perlmutter. He is taking a shot at everybody.
    Mr. Davis. I wouldn't say it if I didn't love you, buddy.
    But in all seriousness, you know better than most how 
difficult it can be to have a ModCom and have a House 
Administration Committee pull you and your team in different 
directions.
    I want to ask you, let's say there is a subcommittee on 
modernization on House Administration. Is it easier then to 
have a single point of contact through that committee to be 
able to focus on implementing recommendations or do you think a 
better setup could exist?
    Ms. Szpindor. I think that certainly can be beneficial to 
us, as long as everyone is supporting the recommendations that 
are being made. I think that there has to be some type of 
structure there, I agree with you, because we have to know 
where to take our direction from overall. And I, you know, work 
closely with the House Committee on Administration, we have 
worked closely with you, but I think going forward, the most 
important thing that you have done, quite frankly, is given us 
an ability to get the information, get the direction that we 
need on some of these recommendations to be able to implement 
them.
    One of the primary things in any type of project that you 
try to do is making sure that your stakeholders are actively 
engaged in what you are doing. If you don't have that, it is 
very, very hard to get anything done. And quite frankly, I 
believe one of the reasons over the years we have sometimes not 
always proved successful in delivering solutions is because we 
didn't have that contact. We didn't have individuals there 
behind us helping us, championing us to move forward with that. 
And so however it is organized, we need that support going 
forward.
    Mr. Davis. You need that support, and that is my point. I 
am going to end with this. This place is set up to have a 
structure for final decisions. And this committee is great at 
recommendations, but the problem is, there is a next step, 
because House Administration has to approve a lot of those 
recommendations. So to me, let's get that finality in place 
that allows you, your teams, and the other officers to be able 
to know what their final direction is.
    We can have the discussions, the debates on what is going 
to work on that subcommittee on modernization. We can do the 
exact same things here, but we also, when it comes time for a 
vote and when that vote is had, a decision is final, and you 
and your team know what direction you have. That to me is the 
best way that we can move this institution forward and get some 
of these great ideas into House operations.
    So I want to say thanks. It has been a pleasure to serve 
with each and every one of you. I am humbled by the opportunity 
to be able to play a small role in making this place better. 
And I certainly know that as we move on, there is going to be a 
tremendous amount of activity of folks who are more interested 
in making Congress work because of the work that all of you are 
doing, but even--I want to say to my colleagues who have been a 
part of this, you guys are the future. You are the ones who are 
going to have to continue what we started here. And I am always 
here to offer advice, but we are going to be watching. And I am 
proud of each and every one of you, and thank you for giving me 
the opportunity to serve with you.
    I yield back.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    I know we have got Chair Lofgren on via Zoom. Let me call 
on her next.
    Ms. Lofgren. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I 
just had a few comments.
    First, I think the committee has performed a useful 
function for our democracy by suggesting ways to systematically 
improve the way Congress functions; and that we have done that 
in a collaborative fashion, in a bipartisan fashion makes it 
even better.
    I would just also like to thank our staff. The staff of the 
House Administration Committee and the Modernization Committee 
have worked together very collaboratively. It has really been 
seamless throughout this process. And as the chair and the 
committee know, as we have made recommendations in the 
Modernization Committee, we have been able to implement them. 
We haven't waited for a final report. We have gone ahead to 
implement many of the recommendations; in fact, some of them 
were in the works as the Modernization Committee was looking at 
them.
    Obviously, the House Administration Committee has the 
primary jurisdiction over the operations of the House, but it 
is not the only committee that could have jurisdiction over 
some of the things that we are looking at. Obviously, the 
Budget Committee comes to mind. That is a very large challenge, 
to see how that might be improved, as well as the 
Appropriations Committee where the chairman serves.
    I would just like to say that I am eager to work with you 
and all the members to make sure that the promising work that 
we have achieved this year doesn't get lost and that we 
continue in effort, whether it is either in the House 
Administration Committee or some other format. Obviously, we 
need to have a discussion not only on this committee but in the 
broader body about what is the best way to proceed, but it is 
valuable. And I think the leadership shown by yourself and the 
ranking member really stands out as helping the whole committee 
be successful.
    With that, I don't have additional questions, Mr. Chairman, 
but I do thank you for recognizing me and for the service that 
you have provided, along with all of the other members.
    I yield back.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Chair Lofgren.
    Next up, Ms. Van Duyne.
    Go for it, Ms. Williams. Thanks. Thank you.
    Ms. Williams. See how cooperative we are on this committee?
    Good morning, everyone.
    And, Ms. Szpindor, I know that Mr. Timmons is probably 
going to talk with you a lot about this when he gets to his 
questions, but this calendar that you talked about rolling out, 
the digitized calendar that could deconflict the schedules of 
Congress--like right now, I have a Financial Services full 
committee hearing that I am sure my chairwoman is wondering why 
I am not there as well, but we also had this committee hearing. 
And it never fails, every week that we have committee hearings, 
I either have this hearing along with T&I or this hearing along 
with Financial Services. So it was music to my ears reading 
your remarks and seeing that there was a plan to roll out a 
calendar that could deconflict some of the committee's 
schedules.
    And I am just wondering what that rollout looks like, and 
what is the timeline for something like that?
    Ms. Szpindor. Well, I will tell you, it is on one of our 
to-do lists to do. Our digital service group, which is taking 
that over to develop, is looking into it. But they don't have 
their project plan together or what they think is going to be 
the way in which they will do that.
    The digital service team was kicked off in February, and we 
have spent a number of months pulling together a team that can 
concentrate on having that one-on-one relationship with those 
individuals who are interested in that particular initiative, 
along with a number of others that they are looking into.
    So I can certainly provide updates on an ongoing basis. We 
are excited about it. It is something that Mr. Davis----
    Ms. Williams. So am I.
    Ms. Szpindor [continuing]. Mr. Davis brought up to me 
sometime ago, and we think there is an opportunity. We are 
using some new development tools and codebases that we believe 
will make this much easier to do, and----
    [Audio malfunction.]
    Ms. Szpindor [continuing]. Looking into what this means. 
And they are going to need to work with the Clerk's 
organization as well, so it gives us a chance to work with them 
to be able to get some of the information and everything that 
they need. And we have a very good working relationship with 
them, so----
    Ms. Williams. So we are not quite at a rollout phase yet, 
is what I am hearing.
    Ms. Szpindor. No. I wish I could say we were, but we are in 
the early stages of coming together with what that is going to 
look like, how it is going to work. And then we are using agile 
processes, which allows you to go in and start some early 
development on it and do some small steps to get something up 
and working, have individuals working with your staff and 
others to get individuals to look at what we are doing and then 
develop it. But we will get you a schedule as soon as we have 
one that we are prepared to tell you about it, but it is one of 
the ones that we are moving forward with.
    Ms. Williams. Thank you.
    The Chairman. I am going to call on Ms. Van Duyne next, but 
I do know--I think it was the Bipartisan Policy Center had just 
sort of a draft example of what block scheduling could look 
like. I don't think that deconflicts everything if you go that 
direction, and inevitably some committees will balk at being 
told when they can and can't do their hearings. But I think it 
would be better, right? I think it is a start from----
    Ms. Szpindor. Yeah.
    The Chairman. Because right now everything conflicts with 
everything. So----
    Ms. Szpindor. Yeah.
    The Chairman [continuing]. You know, as your office looks 
into that, I commend you to look at that just as a starting 
point.
    Ms. Van Duyne.
    Ms. Van Duyne. Well, I appreciate the fact that you have 
freshmen on this committee, because we really kind of get 
thrown--you know, I don't want to say the leftovers because 
that sounds really bad, but you know what I mean. When we have 
the number of committees that we are on, the number of 
subcommittees, because, you know, very few of us are on a 
committee, so we are on multiple committees, select committees, 
caucuses. How many committees are there? And then how many 
subcommittees are there?
    I am asking you because I have no clue. I mean, we have 
counted, but there seems to be ones that we don't know about. 
Do we have like an official number of committees and 
subcommittees?
    Ms. Szpindor. I am sure there is an official number. I 
don't know. I look through the CAO website all the time and 
house.gov and looking at all the--the listing of all the 
committees and everything. But with the subcommittees, I can't 
tell you.
    Ms. Van Duyne. That is how far off we are from actually 
rolling this out. I mean, I look at it from a college 
perspective and, you know, if we can have colleges that have 
tens of thousands of students and probably equal number of 
classes to be able to figure out so there is not overlap, we 
should be able to do it in Congress.
    Not only, I think, are we fighting with scheduling, but 
orientation I think is also really important. We are somewhat 
fresh off of that. I know it has been a year and a half, but we 
have got another class that is going to be coming. We came in a 
unique year. It was COVID. We were separated. Everybody wore 
masks. We didn't have events. But we also were separated from 
the beginning.
    You know, you had your Republican orientation, you had your 
Democrat orientation. It would have been nice, I think, if we 
could have actually have met all Members that were coming in 
and all of our class and have done events together. I think 
that would have been really great.
    Your point on not having bills and being rank-and-file and 
not knowing what we are voting on, it is not just rank-and-
file. A lot of times we are not getting bills until literally 
hours before we are expected to vote on them, and they are 
multiple hundred pages bills. I don't think--a business could 
definitely not work that way. A government should absolutely 
not work that way. You are going to have fights with leadership 
on that, because a lot of times they are adding details up 
until the very moment that they come out.
    How we can fix that, I don't know. I know that we have 
tried to have fixes in the past, you know, 24-hour, 48-hour, 
72-hour mark, but it takes very small handful to be able to 
kind of override those rules. So having potentially not just 
suggestions or ideas but hard, fast rules that we can count on, 
regardless of what party that you are in, or majority or 
minority, would be very helpful.
    I have got a question on CAO. How many resumes are we 
getting? Have you seen a decrease in the number of resumes over 
the last couple of years or have you seen an increase? How is 
that working?
    Ms. Szpindor. For----
    Ms. Van Duyne. For staff, for Capitol Hill staff.
    Ms. Szpindor. Well, you know, we have just started the 
Resume Bank that would allow staffers and anyone interested in 
a staff position to be sent to us to be added or added to the 
Resume Bank. Within the CAO, most of all of our recruiting is 
within the CAO, and for the Sergeant at Arms we assess our HR 
department, and also for the Clerk, if they need any 
assistance. But I really--I know for the CAO the number of 
resumes we get in, but for the Member offices, I could not tell 
you.
    I can tell you----
    Ms. Van Duyne. And I am asking that question because from 
across the board and pretty much every single sector, labor 
shortages have been an issue. Talking with my colleagues, it 
hasn't been an issue getting resumes into the office.
    So to your point that, you know, you have to pay more and 
you can, you know, keep people, the fact is that we will never, 
nor should we ever strive to compete with the private sector on 
pay. I think what we are able to give in experience and on 
being a market differentiator on a resume is incredibly 
valuable. But when we look at everything as being how much are 
you paying, I think we start running into problems.
    But have my colleagues had problems with people applying 
for positions in their office? District, without a doubt, but, 
I mean, on Capitol Hill.
    Ms. Szpindor. When we started the Resume Bank, which was 
our opportunity to give the Member offices a chance to review 
resumes of people who may be interested in staff positions 
within the offices, within the first week we had over 2,000 
submitted.
    Ms. Van Duyne. Yeah.
    Ms. Szpindor. And I know that subsequent weeks we got more 
thousands of resumes. So we hope that that is at least an 
opportunity for people to provide resumes that they can go 
through, have access to the Resume Bank and look at to see if 
there is someone there that would be a really good candidate 
for their office.
    Ms. Van Duyne. All right. Thank you very much.
    The Chairman. Due to scheduling conflicts, I know Mr. 
Cleaver is in a markup right now so I am going to call on him 
next.
    Mr. Cleaver. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I have Financial Services, Homeland Security, and 
Modernization right now. I left Homeland Security, which is one 
floor up, to run down here and gave some staff members my phone 
number so they could text me when they need me to come upstairs 
for a vote. And I think that is absolutely embarrassing for the 
United States of America to have a political body where all of 
the committees can literally be scheduled at the same time, and 
so I want to add my comments with those that were made earlier.
    But the college analogy may make some sense. Well, it does 
make sense. I don't mean to say ``may make.'' But the 
difference--because in the college system you enroll and you go 
there to make sure that you don't enroll in two classes that 
meet at the same time. And maybe--it is going to take a lot 
more time, but maybe that is what we need to do.
    I mean, during a certain period of time we ought to--I 
mean, the leadership and the bodies that make the 
recommendations on which committee we sit on, maybe that needs 
to be done early, early on, like the first couple of days when 
we are here because, you know, we just accept the fact.
    And I think it is bad for our image, because people, for 
example, they see Rodney Davis leaving and--well, but, I mean, 
they could--I mean, somebody in the public, well, he just 
doesn't want to be here at the meeting and he is leaving. You 
know, or when we leave, I mean, have to leave early; you know, 
people watching C-SPAN or in the committee hearing room, they 
don't know. They don't know how dumb this joint is.
    And so, you know, I think one of the things we need to 
flirt with with the brainpower, like you have, in the history, 
you know, there ought to be some kind of period when we first--
--
    [Audio malfunction.]
    Mr. Cleaver [continuing]. Where we enroll or, I mean, you 
can figure that out. You know, I can do that part. But I do 
know that that part needs to be done.
    And my final comment, Mr. Davis left, because I think--it 
may have been luck, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, it may have 
been luck that they put a group of people on here who actually 
want to make the place run better and smoothly and who--I mean, 
I don't know if we could have gotten better than Graves or 
Timmons, you know, as vice chairs. And I have said to the 
chairman publicly and behind his back that I thought this has 
been amazing. And I am upset even that Mr. Perlmutter is 
leaving. But I can get over that, but the other parts of this 
are really troublesome.
    So anyway, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will go back to 
Homeland.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Cleaver.
    And for those watching on C-SPAN, when Mr. Cleaver leaves, 
it is not that he doesn't care about the work of our committee; 
it is that he has to go vote in Homeland Security. So I hope 
you are watching and understand.
    I know Vice Chair Timmons wants to weigh in here, and then 
I will go to Mr. Phillips.
    Mr. Timmons. Before Mr. Cleaver leaves, I want to point 
something out real quick. He has three hearings right now 
because it is likely that we will not be here on Friday, and 
because of that, that makes tomorrow the fly-out day. We flew 
in last night. We got here at 6:30. We very well could be 
leaving tomorrow--who knows?--might, might not, but the 
committees know that, so they are scheduling everything right 
now.
    I always talk about the 2019 calendar. We were here for 65 
full days and 66 travel days. Sixty-five full days over 32 
weeks, so an average of 2 days a week. When you are here 2 days 
a week, then you might be losing a day because something 
happens on a calendar and fly-out is early, you are just going 
to have conflict.
    So while we are thinking about the calendar and the 
schedule and deconflicting everything, having a--having more 
days here and having a more predictable schedule as far as when 
we are here is a very important part, if not the most important 
part of the equation. I have more thoughts on everything else, 
but I will yield back.
    The Chairman. Mr. Phillips. And then I got Mr. Perlmutter.
    Mr. Phillips. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    And it only takes a few days of joining this institution to 
recognize that there is a distinct bias against both 
cooperation and improvement. And I will offer that I believe 
that is not just a competitive risk to the United States of 
America but a national security risk, and that is why I believe 
that this group, this work that we are doing is the most 
important work in the United States Congress. I believe this 
committee is the most important. And, frankly, it saddens me 
that it is somewhat of a metaphor for what is going on more 
broadly in our country and around the world, in that the most 
important work is ignored or dismissed, underappreciated, and 
some of the most trivial, unimportant is elevated in 
inappropriate ways.
    And I just want to celebrate both our chairs, my 
colleagues, the staff of this extraordinary committee, and our 
individual staffs who have made this possible and have actually 
made some meaningful change in an institution that surely needs 
it and, frankly, has restored some of my own faith in the U.S. 
Congress and our country. And I want to celebrate all of us for 
a minute. That is my thank you.
    My proposition is to somehow encourage us to work together 
and make some propositions for the next House rules package. 
And some of this can go through regular order, but we know how 
complicated that is, and we also know there is an absence of 
regular order in this institution.
    I would argue that we should put together some 
recommendations to whomever might lead the House in the next 
session of Congress and actually revise our House rules to 
implement some of these and try to embed culture of 
modernization. And I say that as someone who has great 
appreciation for conserving, conservation of what works and 
progressing on the issues and areas that we can do better, and 
I think that starts with changing the House rules package.
    I also encourage all of us to speak with leadership on both 
sides of the aisle to ensure that we elevate the very people 
that are mindful and bring that ethos to the institution, 
because without leadership, I don't think any of this will 
become successful.
    But my question to you, Doctor, and to you, Ms. Hill, just 
a simple one: If you could wave a magic wand--you both made 
recommendations, but if you could wave a magic wand, based on 
this conversation and your own recommendations, what is your 
most important of all your propositions--especially you, Ms. 
Hill, with a variety of them--what do you think we should do 
singularly to take the next step? I will start with you, 
Doctor.
    Mr. Burgat. I have wanted that wand for a long time.
    Mr. Phillips. Me too.
    Mr. Burgat. And your lead-up is exactly where I would 
start, and in this discussion about how this committee can 
continue in whatever format it could is important, and there is 
pros and cons to each. House rules package is the ticket. I 
mean, it is a singular vote at the beginning of Congress that 
not many people pay attention to, which for a lot of you is an 
opportunity. And you can make serious institutional, lasting, 
substantive changes with a singular vote at the beginning of a 
Congress. That is super important and a very attractive vehicle 
for this committee in particular.
    And so going back to the idea of House Administration, I 
get the logic of using that as the most logical place for these 
recommendations. I urge you to think about, though, the 
substantive changes that you will be limited in putting it in a 
place like that, including the things that you are frustrated 
with on a leadership centralization basis, right.
    So the downsize of House Admin is that you are still 
subject to the limitations and leadership prerogatives that it 
is. The access to the floor will be completely limited the same 
way it is in a lot of your other subcommittees and committees. 
And so, to me, it seems like the House Administration idea is 
to implement what has already been recommended. Great place to 
work. That is obviously where the jurisdiction lies. It makes 
sense there is going to be a turf war for it anyway. That is 
implementation of already passed recommendations.
    For the big, substantive, calendar-specific, all of the 
things that you--the non-low-hanging fruit, to Mr. Davis' 
point, those big institutional changes, I am a huge fan of 
using the rules package to create something bigger. And, again, 
the lack of attention to something like that in a rules package 
that big, I think it is an opportunity that not many people 
take advantage of. There is a way that you can set this up, 
probably in the mold of something like the Permanent Select 
Committee on Intelligence where you create this independence, 
right. And that is the key point: funding independence, staff 
independence, procedural independence that you won't get in a 
typical standing subcommittee. It just won't be available to 
you.
    So the magic wand there opens up just the opportunity for 
institutional change, and then it comes down to Members. It 
just does. And it always will in an institution like this. A 
lot of these things are Member-led decisions.
    The idea that Chairman Kilmer can take a step back and 
recognize someone four seats down, not only of the Republican 
Party, of the minority party, that is a decision. You can't 
write that into House rules. You can't write that into 
procedure. You can't legislate behavior. There is leadership by 
example that is all too often forgotten in just simple, small 
things, something he remembered and pointed out, the feedback 
loop of that is infinite.
    So rules package is my magic wand. I think it opens the 
most opportunity for big institutional change, not to discount 
the recommendations that have already been made. There is 
plenty more left to do. That is the best place to do it.
    Mr. Phillips. Thank you, Doctor.
    Ms. Hill.
    Ms. Hill. I have to say that I am grateful that Dr. Burgat 
is a member of the cohort that I am the coordinator of, because 
he certainly has the expertise in the issues that I don't have.
    If I had a magic wand, what I would do is I would start 
with that--probably the last point that he would make. I would 
renew this select committee, and I would renew it with the 
spirit which it started with 4 years ago, to provide the 
energy, the drive, take all the things that have been done so 
far now, have the recommendations be implemented. I would give 
the select committee more teeth, and I would open the ears of 
the Senate, quite honestly.
    You know, the work that we have to do over there for 
modernization of the whole Congress and the difference that we 
could make, if both Chambers could work together, would go a 
long ways, I think, in renewing Congress and giving us a 
stronger footing.
    I don't pretend to be an expert on all of the rules. My 
goal is bringing people together. But I do know this: People 
matter and how they behave matter. And this committee works 
well in part--what a treat to see all the members here today, 
everyone working together. Chair Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, 
you both bring such a strong leadership to this effort, and you 
open the door across committees. We need to see more of that, 
and if we could have a committee that exactly kind of modeled 
and continued to model this behavior.
    One of the reasons that that is so important is that 
committees don't have that option now. They don't see that 
model. They don't have anywhere else to go to know that it 
works.
    You can see from my bio that I started years ago, right. In 
the eighties I was on the Hill. I started in 1989 with 
Congresswoman Boggs. So from that time, she would not allow us 
to have computers. We had electronic typewriters until today 
when we are looking at how we can live stream events and town 
hall meetings, incredible difference. We need some Members that 
can lean into that, love it, and embrace it in the way that you 
do.
    Mr. Phillips. Thank you. And as a freshman in 2019, when I 
was handed a pager, I kept that on my credenza as a nice 
metaphor, and I no longer have it, so we are making progress.
    I want to thank you. And let me just close by thanking our 
chairs and our staff and my colleagues again, because it is not 
just the work that we are doing, but I think, most importantly, 
it is how we are doing it, and that starts with leadership, and 
I am grateful to all of you. Thank you.
    The Chairman. I want to call on Mr. Perlmutter, but before 
I do, you said add more teeth. Can you just double-click on 
that real quick before I call on Mr. Perlmutter?
    Ms. Hill. Yes. I think one of the things that you have done 
admirably and worked so hard on is rolling out recommendations 
to have them available and then implementing them. If this 
select committee had more teeth and a stronger way to do some 
of the implementation and the jurisdiction, I am thinking of 
some kind of mechanism.
    I listened to Ms. Szpindor talk about needing strong 
direction in terms of what they can accomplish at the CAO's 
office, and the strong direction can come from select committee 
working hand-in-hand with the Committee on House Administration 
if there is a mechanism built in to help do that. And I think 
the energy to make the change has come from the select 
committee. That has been my view, right, because I know the 
excellent professional staff on House Administration and the 
members. It is not that they don't want to make change; it is 
that sometimes other issues that are--they are having to deal 
with overshadow that. So if there is a way to influx those two, 
I would think that would be a really good idea.
    The Chairman. Thanks.
    Mr. Perlmutter.
    Mr. Perlmutter. First, I want to thank the committee and 
you, Derek, for allowing us to visit the European Union and 
parliament last week. Mr. Timmons, Mr. DeSaulnier, and I had a 
fantastic trip that I think will bring a lot of fruit to bear 
in terms of suggestions that we had and have about modernizing 
and improving the way this place functions by looking at other 
contrasting parliaments and legislative bodies.
    You know, a legislature is a--there is a tension between 
sort of norms and traditions that you had from the beginning of 
time, and we met with parliament, which basically is from the 
beginning of time. Then there is--then we sort of come into 
existence, the EU much later sort of on the spectrum. And we 
learned a lot. And what we learned was that we are not doing 
things too badly, but we can do a lot better by taking some of 
their ideas and suggestions.
    And to your point, Doctor, the rules package is the place 
you start. Probably in 2020, for me, the three most important 
votes I have ever taken in my career--and I have been doing 
this 28 years now between the State legislature and Congress--
was the election of the Speaker, the passage of the rule 
package, and the certification of the Presidential election. 
Those are the three votes I have taken, out of thousands of 
votes, that I consider to be the most important votes. But that 
rule package piece of this thing is key to how we manage our 
affairs, at least for 2 years coming.
    As you said, administration has to implement it, but the 
rules package really can establish where you are going with it. 
Luckily, you had the vice chair sort of leading this trip, we 
had a member of the Rules Committee, and we had staff from the 
House Administration to be able to really look what things can 
be done.
    And so, you know, this committee has been looking really in 
four areas: technology, personnel, campus, and member kind of 
relationships and how we relate to the institution.
    Because I agree with Mr. Phillips--and I disagree--I agree 
with Ms. Van Duyne on a lot of things, but I disagree with her 
on a couple things. We need to make sure that this House is as 
equal to the other branches of government, if not more equal, 
and to the private sector and to other countries, that we don't 
need to just hamstring ourselves for whatever reason.
    And one other place I disagree, and then I want to talk 
about one recommendation. I gave you 14 from my trip. But one 
other place I disagree with her, and I think that it is very 
important, that as a body, that we are competitive with the 
private sector; that just because I can go hire somebody 
doesn't mean that they provide services to the community that 
need to be done. And people learn that.
    If you were working for Lindy Boggs in 1989 to start off, 
you don't know anything, but you were there, you were hired, 
but then you learn. And then if you stay, you provide good 
services to the people that you represent.
    So I think retention is key, and we have--and I want to 
thank the vice chair here because he knew Ms. Szpindor had been 
so focused on making sure that we have good personnel and good 
staff and we retain good staff.
    Last thing I will say where I do agree, and it was Beth Van 
Duyne that sort of--along with Aubrey from House Admin that 
gave me an idea about orientation. All right. So one of the 
things that we are talking about, that you talked about, 
Doctor, is rank-and-file Members, we feel a little 
disenfranchised or we have lost--we want to be more empowered, 
you know, that the individual Member wants to be more 
empowered. We have some ideas about that.
    But one of the places, as a freshman coming in, you just 
won an election, you have got a million things going on, people 
coming at you from all directions. And you go to orientation, 
and even if they--we had had a joint orientation, it lasts for 
3 days, and you don't know half the questions to ask. So then 
you split into the parties, you don't operate really as a class 
again, you know, other than that 3-day orientation or 2 days or 
whatever it is.
    The suggestion that I am going to make that I think is a 
good one is that, later on, maybe 9 months out, a year out as a 
freshman class has gotten their feet under them and start 
having an idea of the questions to ask, that there be a second 
kind of orientation where, again, it sort of builds across the 
party lines kind of a class identity, as well as being able to 
ask--answer questions. You know, you didn't know what questions 
to ask in the first place, now you have got a better idea.
    And that came from Beth, from Aubrey, but then also the 
woman who runs the House of Commons, that they suffered under 
COVID just as we did and their new members coming in couldn't 
really be oriented in a way that allowed them to really 
understand when votes were going to be and all that.
    So we have made improvements, I think, a lot on the 
technology side. We have got a lot more to do. We have made a 
lot of improvements on personnel. Dean should have been on this 
trip because he could have seen some changes to the campus that 
would have made things more Member and user friendly that these 
other--that the parliament and you had.
    Member colleagues, scheduling thing, all of that and 
empowering Members, I will leave that to smarter people than 
me. And I want to just thank you, Derek, for allowing me to be 
part of this committee.
    The Chairman. And thanks for all you contribute to our 
committee.
    Vice Chair Timmons.
    Mr. Timmons. Thanks, Chairman.
    The Chairman. I will point out, Vice Chair Timmons is going 
to hit all the questions that I want to ask you too or most of 
them, so----
    Mr. Timmons. Like I said, we have been working together too 
long, too long.
    Mr. Perlmutter. And I am not leaving.
    Mr. Timmons. Oh, sure you are not. We spent too much time 
together last week, so probably sick and tired of me.
    So while I would--I can see arguments to try to extend the 
select committee, but I think we were extremely fortunate to 
get 4 years. We were only supposed to get 12 months, which was 
really only like 8 months, given the fact that in the calendar 
and we didn't really get up and running until March. So, you 
know, I think we have made a lot of great recommendations, made 
a lot of progress.
    So I do think that there is a lot of consensus around the 
Subcommittee on House Administration, and I do--I am not sure 
there is consensus on this idea. I am going to run through a 
couple things and ask for your feedback.
    You know, right now, there is only one Republican on each 
of the subcommittees, and, you know, I don't think that this 
subcommittee should have disparate numbers. I think if two 
Republicans, two Democrats, three Republicans, three Democrats, 
I think that would be good. It will ultimately be focused on 
implementation of previous recommendations from the select 
committee in preparation for the next select committee, and it 
would work closely with partners, cohort and such.
    So, I mean, the question then becomes, how often do we need 
a select committee? I think everybody agrees it is not every 30 
years. So then, is it every three, is it every four, is it 
every five Congresses? You know, I am not sure the answer for 
that, but I think we can probably find some consensus for it.
    And I think the beauty of the structure, the subcommittee 
would be focusing on implementation and on preparation, so when 
the next select committee comes around we hit the ground 
running. The select committee is just ready to go, most of the 
staff is already hired, there has already been a lot of pseudo 
hear--I am not sure if you would call it a hearing, but, I 
mean, they are readying material for the select committee and 
so it could ideally operate within 2 years and, you know, 
that's--this is another weird idea. Space shows value, so, I 
mean, if this is something we are serious about, I think it 
should have its own office space, and it should go from a 
subcommittee to the select committee, and it could just be its 
own space and we could actually maybe get a roundtable.
    In the EU and the U.K., literally everybody is--well, the 
EU had roundtables and the U.K. had a much better setup than 
this. That was a much more productive setup.
    But, again, I mean, if this is something that is important, 
and I think it is, I think finding a way to create continuity 
has value. Yeah, I really do think that having that setup going 
from a subcommittee to a select committee back and forth with 
three or four, five Congresses in between would allow planning 
to occur prior to the select committee to--the select committee 
can really just hit the ground running and maximize its use of 
time.
    So I will just put that back to you all. What thoughts do 
you have on all of that? Ms. Szpindor, what do you think?
    Ms. Szpindor. I think you have some very good ideas about 
that. From my perspective, I just want to make sure that for 
myself and my staff we are able to work through however this 
committee will evolve to be able to do our job based on what 
you are asking us, understanding what you ask us. Having the 
ability to sit down and talk with you about options, about how 
we are going to move forward with things, that is what is a 
need that my department has.
    So however it is structured, as long--whether it is going 
through the House Committee on Administration to someone or 
some other away, we have to be able to sit down and have 
constructive conversations with whomever is making 
recommendations and whoever is going to help us prioritize the 
work that we do, or at least review our suggestions for 
prioritization, because we do a lot of the prioritization 
ourselves. We have been traditionally sitting down with both 
sides of the House Committee on Administration, after talking 
to you, and reviewing those initiatives that we are going to be 
moving forward with.
    So we just need the assistance and the information. And I 
do agree that to make it a full recommendation that we can 
understand, having the bipartisan perspectives of having enough 
of the bipartisan individuals providing us information from a 
data-gathering perspective and planning of our projects is 
extremely beneficial. So thank you.
    Mr. Timmons. Dr. Burgat.
    Mr. Burgat. As with almost everything here, I think it is 
important to start to answer your question with a question of 
depends on what your goals are. What are your goals for this 
select committee? Historically, there has been several types, 
from minimally successful to overwhelmingly successful, and 
their goals differed from the outset, and I think that is 
important.
    Your point about the membership being important, 
particularly on the minority side, just to have one minority 
representative on the subcommittee, you can imagine, let alone 
if they are not even present, how overrun they could be. But 
even then you are still subject to the full committee's 
limitations and access to the floor and things like that. It 
will still be limiting what you can do.
    In terms of the question of how often a select committee or 
some version of this committee is necessary, I think it is 
important to point out that this committee started kind of 
behind the eight ball in a couple of different ways. It had 
been a long time since the previous one, and that previous one 
was one of those minimally successful ones, right. So you had a 
bunch of legwork to do to catch up to what that had been 
missing then.
    And then just the time period, the subject of the time 
period since that previous select committee and now has been 
the most biggest change we have ever seen across almost every 
single variable you can think of, technology included. So you 
had more to do because more had changed, and that pace of 
change isn't slowing down anytime soon either. So to try to 
systematize in fives Congresses from now, those--each period of 
those five Congresses, those 10-year periods are not going to 
be equal. You are going to basically try to fix what the last 
committee left behind and try to make up for.
    So if your goal is to proactively change the institution, 
you have got to be permanent. If your goal is to retroactively 
change what went wrong or what was leftover, then the 
systematized every so often can serve that purpose.
    Just as you mentioned the space equals value, that is 
absolutely true, from parking spaces to committee room space. 
So does permanence. So does permanence. It sets a tone, it sets 
a message--it sends a message that this is not intervally 
important to us, that we can just wait for the next one.
    I think we are at a point now with some of the most 
important institutional questions in a way that we haven't been 
in a long, long time that permanence speaks to the moment of 
now, that only then can you start to talk about the non-low-
hanging fruit, the civility, the ones that are tearing us out 
at our seams, the permanence of a committee like that, to say 
nothing of the independence that you can set up to make those 
changes, the teeth that you talk about, access to the floor, 
permanence in stature, that we don't just have to wait you out 
or wait your recommendations out, your independent funding 
streams, your permanent office space, all of those speak to the 
importance of the moment. And I think there is no more 
important moment than now to get at the types of questions that 
I think you all are trying to get at.
    Mr. Timmons. Ms. Hill.
    Ms. Hill. I would agree with Dr. Burgat again, no surprise 
on that. And what I have heard from you today, from members 
here, is that just modernization as a matter of course over 
time, waiting for extended periods isn't an option, right. That 
is one thing. And that this is the most important work going on 
in Congress today, making sure that everything--you are up to 
date, you are modernized, you have got the best staff. It will 
lead everything else.
    My organization, the Partnership for Public Service, our 
genesis and the reason we came about was to help the executive 
branch. The reason that we are here today is because we 
understand how vitally important Congress is to making the 
executive branch healthy. And that is why I have spent the last 
4 years at the partnership working on this very issue.
    I don't think--and I speak for myself, I have not put this 
question out to the cohort or received any kind of how often it 
should be, but if you think it is a periodic time, every 2 
years, every 4 years, I can see a cycle, Vice Chair Timmons, 
where we now have almost 200 recommendations, right. So to 
take--and that is why we--I framed my testimony in the way that 
I did.
    To take the next 2 years and put a primary focus on 
implementing those recommendations makes a good deal of sense, 
but in that timeframe, you need to still be looking at what 
needs to be changed next. We look at all the changes that can 
occur in a 2-year period, and you guys have worked through the 
most difficult of those times. There is just so much more 
coming at us today than ever before. I think we need to be 
prepared for the change.
    So I think we might cycle in that way to implement for a 
couple of years, while still looking at possible modernization 
ways--things that we need to do, and then 2 years after that we 
go hard at making new recommendations----
    Mr. Timmons. [Inaudible.]
    The Chairman. I think there is a country song that uses the 
lyric ``how can I miss you when you won't go away,'' and I am 
conscious that there is a little bit of that dynamic with this 
committee in that it was established for a year and here we 
still are. If you had asked me prior to this hearing sort of 
what I would do, I think I would set up a subcommittee on House 
Admin. Haven't checked with the leaders of House Admin about 
how they feel about that yet, but that is probably what I would 
do, and I would probably make it equal members and have them 
focus on implementation. And I would probably have our 
committee make a recommendation in that regard, and I would 
probably have us make a recommendation to say every three or 
four Congresses there ought to be something established to look 
at ongoing institutional improvement. I think it would make a 
decent point for just keeping it rolling.
    Having said that, though, you know, I think it begs the 
question, other than focusing on implementation, which is 
probably where House Admin and House Rules, the bulk of the 
work is going to happen through them, what other--you know, Dr. 
Burgat, you said your students want us to focus on how do you 
empower rank-and-file Members. I would argue, some of the 
recommendations we have made have been in that spirit, but--so 
let me ask you, you know, if you were setting the work plan for 
a select committee that got renewed next Congress, what would 
you have it work on?
    Mr. Burgat. Incentivizing legislating, almost--and with 
legislating, incentivizing bipartisan oversight. The problem 
there is that now you are involving incentive structures fully 
outside the Chamber, right, from how elections are run to how 
districts are drawn to the types of Members that you are going 
to get here, including this next freshman class. There is going 
to be one that ran diametrically opposed to the institution and 
won because of it. And not only are you going to be trying to 
welcome them into the conversation, they are going to be 
incentivized to stay out of it. That is impossible. That is 
sincerely impossible, and better you than me to try to--to help 
with that.
    But in terms of getting the ones--not everyone is like 
that. Not everyone is the flamethrower, and I think that you--
in conversations you can kind of discern who has some sort of 
issue that they want to get advanced. The problem is is that if 
they are told from the day they get here that access is only 
through a very few types of ways to get implemented, your 
legislative text, not every Member cares about every bill nor 
should they, but there should be a reasonable path, including 
on the minority side, a reasonable path that you know that your 
work will pay off. It may not include a lobbing pass, but just 
a vote, just a markup, just a debate, just an amendment. Those 
are ways that you will think twice about burning the bridge 
that you might have otherwise done.
    And I think that anything that you can do to incentivize 
that through rules, through--and it is always committees, 
always has been committees, and it always starts with the chair 
and ranking member setting those standards, offering those 
paths to legislative productivity is the be-all/end-all for me.
    The Chairman. Ms. Hill.
    Ms. Hill. Am I on now?
    Thank you for your question. I think one of the things that 
I would look at, I would look at--continue to look at the 
staffing issues that we are currently looking at. As I was 
listening to Dr. Burgat's testimony, I think those students 
that are in his classes that want those changes are our future, 
right. And they are not just our future as staffers and 
staffing, but they are our future as Members. And when they 
enter the institution--as we know, it is going to have to 
happen, right. Demographics are on their side--we need to be 
prepared for that.
    And those are some of the issues that we need to be 
considering. How do we make sure that as Members enter, they 
are prepared to serve their constituents, they are prepared to 
reach out in ways that they need to be able to do that, right.
    And, again, I think one of the recommendations I would urge 
you to make is that we do begin to have talks with the Senate, 
not even begin but before a joint select committee so that we 
know and send a signal to our friends in the other Chamber, we 
need to do something here.
    So I think the work is still yet to be done. I too, Chair 
Kilmer, agree with you about the Committee on House 
Administration may be a very good place to be doing that now. 
And I have to say that I speak for myself individually, because 
it seems like the timing is right. My fear in that is that we 
don't come back to these serious modernization issues in a real 
manner quickly.
    The Chairman. Would you do every three Congresses?
    Ms. Hill. I would do it every other. Every other.
    The Chairman. Dr. Burgat, do you agree with that?
    Mr. Burgat. I am fine with that. I think you can set the 
floor, a minimum of every X number, and then as necessary 
conditions arise jump to it and necessary conditions arise.
    The Chairman. Yeah. It is funny, I have thought a lot about 
this, right. And Chris, from Roll Call, thank you for being 
here. He asked, you know, so what did the committee not take up 
that you wish it had? And so I spent a lot of time thinking 
about this, and a lot of it is either things outside of our 
jurisdiction or things where it is tricky to get a two-thirds 
vote, right.
    I mean, if you asked me some of the things that are broken 
in Congress, I would say, you know, role of money, the way 
district boundaries are drawn, and the way Members are selected 
through primaries probably drive a lot of the kind of conflict 
entrepreneurship we see within the institution.
    I am not sure a select committee now, next year, or in the 
future is likely to take up those issues. Probably argue cable 
news and social media also contribute. I don't even know where 
to start on that, and I am not certain it is something that a 
committee like this could work on, but maybe it could. I don't 
know. It is certainly something I have been chewing on as this, 
you know, at least as we sprint to the last 4 months of this.
    I actually also think that one of the things that makes 
tricky this issue around schedule is the difference between 
where we are and where a college is. People are already 
enrolled in their class, right. You have got Members who are 
already on committee, and so deconflicting--even the challenge 
of block scheduling is you are either putting someone in a 
position of having conflict or having to give something up. 
Nobody wants to give something up when they have accrued 
seniority, so that does make it a little bit tricky.
    I think we could deconflict it more than it is right now, 
and so I am really pleased to hear that the CAO is working on 
that. I think we need some help, and the sooner the better, 
because as we roll into the next Congress, we are just going to 
have the exact same dynamic as you saw in this committee where 
members are in three hearings at the same time. So I think that 
is really important.
    I also, Ms. Szpindor, I wanted to get at just getting a 
sense of how you and your office tracks implementation of the 
recommendations that fall under your jurisdiction. You know, do 
you kind of have a checklist that you work off of or is it more 
ad hoc based on what members of your team have sort of 
prioritized and front burnered?
    And give us direction--I mean, I actually think we--I am 
going to make a statement and you may disagree with it. Like, I 
think we got better at working with your office over time just 
trying to vet things in terms of, okay, here is what we are 
actually thinking about, how could we word this in a way that 
is more implementable. But give us some direction as we make 
recommendations to future reform efforts, how might we best 
work with you on implementation going forward?
    Ms. Szpindor. Well, the answer is, yes, I have many lists, 
and those of my staff that are watching know I am a very old 
project manager from many days back, and I believe in planning 
and then executing the plan and having the expectations that 
you meet. So we do have a list. We use a product called ClickUp 
to track our projects, and we have regular meetings on a 
monthly basis where I sit down with my staff and others to 
review the projects and the status of the projects that we 
have.
    The modernization initiatives that we are working on are 
part of that. I ask questions about where we are. It tracks--
this tool tracks any issues that we are finding with that 
particular initiative. It tracks who the primary support person 
is for that initiative. So it is built into me to have tools 
that I can use to understand at any point in time where 
initiative may not be doing too well, and maybe we need to talk 
about it, maybe we need to add additional resources, maybe we 
need to look at what the funds are that we are actually 
allowing that individual to use to bring in some additional 
help.
    So we have a list, it is maintained, it is reviewed. It is 
the list that I review with the chiefs of staff and other 
members of the CHA. So we have all of your projects that you 
have requested that I have talked about in my testimony listed 
there.
    Do you mind if I ask you a question?
    The Chairman. Sure. We are a weird committee, so sure.
    Ms. Szpindor. I mean, we are trying to be more informal 
here. But I am listening to a lot of the things about the 
timing and how often some type of committee in some form should 
meet and everything.
    Being in technology, I know how rapidly everything changes, 
and I just want to make sure that--and it is things nobody--we 
all know how things have changed in the past couple of years. 
Okay. So how do we really maintain this momentum?
    I mean, we have got all of these initiatives that you all 
have brilliantly come up with, and we are working with you on, 
but it could be tomorrow, next week, or next month that 
something significant could come up that would require us to 
focus on that and maybe have to push some of these things to 
the background. So, you know, it is almost like every month 
there is something else coming out.
    So how do we stay current, I think, is the question I am 
asking, given the rapid change in our environment, in 
technology, in staffing, in everything going on in this world 
without there being some consistency along the road if we are 
looking at extending anything with this committee?
    The Chairman. I think each of you testified to the value of 
having these topics sit somewhere permanently, right. And I 
think the Subcommittee on House Admin, particularly in terms of 
the engagement with your office, is probably a good place to do 
it. I, again, say that without having talked to Chair Lofgren 
about that, but I have talked to Ranking Member Davis of the 
House Admin Committee, and he thinks that is a good idea. He 
has been pretty vocal about that.
    But I do think there is value in having some subcommittee 
or committee going to bed every night thinking about how are we 
working on implementation and waking up every morning focused 
on implementation.
    I also take to heart the comments that have been made 
about, you know, the need to continue engaging on these issues 
as issues come up. I just, my sense is, particularly since this 
select committee was extended four times the length it was 
initially envisioned, I am just not sure it is a likely outcome 
that it be made permanent. And so to me the next best thing is 
our committee making a recommendation, say, no more than, you 
know--or no less frequently than every three or four 
Congresses.
    The other thing I have thought about, and I don't know, Ms. 
Hill, I am actually kind of curious what the future of the 
cohort looks like, particularly if this committee expires. You 
know, one thought that I have had also--we haven't talked about 
this. Again, we are informal--you could establish a Fix 
Congress Caucus, right. And so people will self-select, getting 
back to the people proposition. It is a lot easier to engage on 
these issues with people who actually want to improve the 
institution. So you could set up something--you know, there is 
caucuses dealing with all sorts of issues. In the interim 
between the expiration of this committee and a new committee 
popping up, you could do that.
    Now, the challenge is, you know, that is only as good as 
the members of the caucus are committed to the work of the 
caucus, right. So you almost want to make sure that there is--
you don't want to staff it, you know, you don't want to have 
Members actually put some dough up to hire someone to run the 
show or dedicate a certain amount of their staff time to the 
work of that.
    I don't know your reaction to that. And, again, I am 
curious, if we set up something like that, does that make more 
likely the continued engagement of the cohort?
    Ms. Hill. I think--let me just take a step back from it, 
because the cohort is an interesting mix. Of the 45 
organizations, there are some who can lobby, there are some who 
can't. So some of those who can't provide--I want to give you 
this background. Some of those who can't provide expertise and 
guidance, and they feel very strongly that it is--and we all 
do--I think it is important to keep the cohort strong, right. 
And so we are in the process of determining how best to do that 
as this committee sunsets.
    But my impression as we have gone through this year, 
because we have started to talk about it early on in the year, 
just like my testimony today, we started to talk about this 
process way back in February, at which point we went through 
some discussions. And thank you to Vice Chair Timmons and your 
stated purpose of we are going to run to the wire, we put that 
on the back shelf.
    However, we haven't put on the back shelf the idea of do we 
stay together. Four years ago, there were members who were a 
smaller cohort. You know, they came together 2 years ago when 
we weren't sure that the select committee was going to be 
extended. It was a wonderful moment, I think, for the entire 
cohort as we were then able to sit around the table to gauge 
the closeness that we had and the trust that we had in each 
other and how we have grown, and that only has increased over 
the last 2 years.
    And what happened for us is, you have witnessed with the 
civility and collaboration working group that we had and the 
civic engagement working group. We not only pull members of the 
cohort to work on those issues to come up with recommendations 
for this committee, but we also pulled from other groups 
outside of the cohort, whether that is the bridging community 
or others who are extremely interested in the same issue.
    So I don't see the cohort going away. I see the cohort as 
continuing, and I am not sure what that--you know, how we will 
set that up. We are working on that now. But I think it is 
important that you know, whoever is working on this issue on 
modernization, that there is a strong contingent outside of 
Congress that is very engaged on these issues----
    The Chairman. Yeah.
    Ms. Hill [continuing]. And they care deeply about them.
    The Chairman. I really appreciate that. And that is 
probably a good point on which to end this discussion, unless 
anyone has anything burning that they didn't share that they 
want to.
    Okay. With that, I would like to thank our witnesses for 
their testimony today, and I would like to thank our committee 
members for their participation.
    I would like to thank C-SPAN for being here. Thank you.
    And for--Chris, thank you for showing up and following the 
work of our committee. We are clearly a viral phenomenon at 
this point.
    I also just want to shout out the staff of our committee 
for the great work that they do setting up amazing hearings, 
this being our last one. I want to just applaud their excellent 
work in setting this up. We can literally applaud them if you 
are up for it.
    We are not done. We have got a bunch of recommendations we 
still have to make, and so I am going to save my vicious 
attacks on Rodney Davis until we get through that markup. And 
my gratitude to the rest of the committee too, I intend to 
reserve for that.
    So, without objection, all members will have 5 legislative 
days within which to submit additional written questions for 
the witnesses to the chair which will be forwarded to the 
witnesses for their response. I ask our witnesses to please 
respond as promptly as you are able.
    Without objection, all members will have 5 legislative days 
within which to submit extraneous materials to the chair for 
inclusion in the record.
    With that, this hearing is adjourned. Thanks, everybody.
    [Whereupon, at 11:48 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]

                           [all]