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



 
     TURNING AN IDEA INTO LAW: MODERNIZING THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS

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

                                HEARING

                               before the

           SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS

                                 of the

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                             APRIL 28, 2022

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-18

                               __________

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

                                


                    Available via http:/govinfo.gov
                    
                    
                    
                              ______

             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
 48-603             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...............................................     2

                               WITNESSES

Mr. Noah Wofsy, Deputy Legislative Counsel, U.S. House of 
    Representatives
    Oral Statement...............................................     3
    Written Statement............................................     6
Mr. Kevin McCumber, Deputy Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives
    Oral Statement...............................................    11
    Written Statement............................................    13
Mr. Hugh Halpern, Director, Government Publishing Office (GPO)
    Oral Statement...............................................    25
    Written Statement............................................    27
Discussion.......................................................    38


     TURNING AN IDEA INTO LAW: MODERNIZING THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS

                              ----------                              


                        THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 2022

                          House of Representatives,
         Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:08 a.m., in Room 
210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Derek Kilmer [chairman 
of the committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Kilmer, Cleaver, Phillips, 
Williams, and Timmons.
    The Chairman. All right. 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.
    Thanks, everybody, for your patience as we dealt with 
technical difficulties. I have often joked that the name ``the 
Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress'' makes us 
sound like we are the IT help desk, and today we actually 
needed the IT help desk. And I thank our staff for figuring out 
the technology.
    I have really been looking forward to this hearing, because 
turning ideas into laws is at the core of what Congress does. 
It is where Members get to combine their representative and 
lawmaking roles by giving their constituents a voice in the 
policymaking process.
    I think Schoolhouse Rock got it right when the little bill 
on Capitol Hill explained it started as an idea from folks back 
home who decided they wanted a law passed. Of course, not all 
ideas for bills come from our constituents, but, in my 
experience, some of the most meaningful ones do.
    Every Member can tell you a story about a great idea that 
they got from a constituent and why that idea should be law. 
And I love those stories because they perfectly exemplify what 
we are here to do, which is to represent the views of the folks 
who we serve.
    While the ideas I get from my constituents are sometimes 
unique to the district I represent, there is often a thread 
that connects the idea to issues that span districts across the 
country. A great example is the Building Civic Bridges Act, 
which is a bipartisan bill I recently introduced, which now has 
10 Republicans and 10 Democratic cosponsors, including Mr. 
Timmons and Mr. Phillips. And it came from events in my 
district.
    We had a series of horrific attacks against faith-based 
institutions in our region, and an interfaith group came 
together for the purposes of fostering understanding and 
building community.
    And, after a conflict surfaced at a local YMCA, a group of 
community leaders joined forces to help build understanding 
across differences. And those groups sought resources from the 
Federal Government to support their bridge-building efforts but 
were told resources for this kind of work didn't exist.
    And, when that was brought to my attention, I wondered why 
our government supports this kind of work in other countries 
but not here at home. That didn't make sense to me, and so my 
staff and I dug into it and tried to figure out what we could 
do to help.
    And, working with constituents back home and some partner 
organizations who lead in the civic bridge-building space, we 
actually came up with the Building Civic Bridges Act, which 
would establish the Federal Government as a key partner in the 
deliberate effort to bridge divides and strengthen American 
democracy.
    Groups are doing this important work in districts 
nationwide, so an idea that originated in Washington's Sixth 
Congressional District with some conversations with 
constituents has the power to resonate with constituencies from 
coast to coast, and I think that is pretty amazing and a 
powerful testament to how representative democracy is supposed 
to work.
    Ideas are the sparks that ignite the legislative process. 
That is the fun part, but what comes next can sometimes be 
confusing and frustrating. Ideas need to be drafted into 
legislative text. Bills have to be assigned numbers and printed 
and introduced, referred to committee and referred to the 
floor. Every step of the way, different House offices and 
support agencies are involved to ensure that the bill text is 
accurate and accessible to the public.
    The behind-the-scenes work of turning an idea into a law is 
mysterious to most people, including Members and their staff, 
but it is incredibly important. And today's hearing is about 
shedding light on this highly specialized work and figuring out 
how to streamline and improve processes, and so I am looking 
forward to learning from the witnesses joining us today.
    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 here goes. 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 equal 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 XI will be permitted to do so following the period of 
extended questioning. Phew.
    All right. With that, I would like to now invite Vice Chair 
Timmons to share some opening remarks.
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Really appreciate you all being here today. I think, 
between the three of you, you have over 80 years of experience 
in this institution. We are doing our best to get this place to 
work better. Part of that is to help you do your jobs more 
effectively and more efficiently.
    I am--I was looking for the exact numbers, but I think, in 
the last decade, you have added a handful of attorneys and you 
have had a 20 percent increase in the number of bills that have 
been drafted. Obviously there is a resource issue, but I think 
there is also an understanding issue.
    I would imagine it would shock a lot of people the number 
of offices that don't fully understand the challenges that you 
all face, and trying to educate all the different Member 
offices to more effectively address our concerns while also 
keeping an understanding of the challenges that your offices 
face, I think, is very important. I think that is an area that 
we can really dig into.
    Technology is another thing. I think we have got to use 
technology at any place that we can to be more effective and 
efficient. And I look forward to hearing from you all on what 
you think we can change, what resources you need, what 
education we can provide to this institution to more 
effectively, you know, pursue the mission--pursue the mission.
    So thank you for being here today, and we look forward to 
your testimony, and we are going to have some good questions.
    Thanks.
    The Chairman. Okay. I would now like to welcome our three 
experts who are here to share with us their knowledge and 
recommendations for how Congress can improve and modernize the 
legislative process. This is a reminder that your written 
statements will be made part of the record.
    Our first witness is Noah Wofsy. Mr. Wofsy has served as 
the Deputy Legislative Counsel for the U.S. House of 
Representatives since 2018. Prior to this position, he was an 
assistant counsel and senior counsel within the Office of 
Legislative Counsel, where he has served since 1986.
    Mr. Wofsy earned his bachelor of arts from James Madison 
College of Michigan State University and his law degree from 
the University of Southern California.
    Mr. Wofsy, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

  STATEMENTS OF NOAH WOFSY, DEPUTY LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL, U.S. 
   HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC; KEVIN McCUMBER, 
 DEPUTY CLERK, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC; 
AND HUGH HALPERN, DIRECTOR, GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE (GPO), 
                         WASHINGTON, DC

                    STATEMENT OF NOAH WOFSY

    Mr. Wofsy. Thank you very much.
    Co-Chair Kilmer, Co-Chair Timmons, and members of the 
select committee, good morning. I am honored to speak with you 
today and share my thoughts on modernizing the legislative 
process, the process by which an idea becomes law. And I am 
especially honored to do so on behalf of my colleagues at the 
House Office of Legislative Counsel.
    For over 100 years, the office has provided professional, 
nonpartisan legislative drafting and related services to 
Members, committees, and leadership offices of the House. We 
are the ones who get the call when a Member says, ``There ought 
to be a law.''
    We are proud of our service to the House, especially during 
the challenging times the House has faced over the past several 
years. And I believe that the House is pleased with our service 
for no other reason than the simple fact that our business is 
booming. We must be doing something right.
    We share your interest in making the process more effective 
and more responsive to the needs of the House. And, indeed, we 
are uniquely positioned to discuss this process, because, in 
most cases, the proponent of an idea of a law will at some 
point ask us to turn that idea into actual legislative text.
    So, when we respond to a request to turn an idea into 
legislation, our goal is always to carry out our mission. And, 
as set forth in our charter, our mission is to assist offices 
of the House in the achievement of a clear, faithful, and 
coherent expression of legislative policies. That means that we 
cannot ourselves provide the policy; rather, we can only 
provide language to express the policy of the proponent of the 
legislation. In other words, we can't fill in the blanks.
    It also means that, for our drafts to express policy 
clearly, faithfully, and coherently, we need a sufficient 
understanding of the policy. And, in many instances, the 
request doesn't convey enough information, so we need to ask 
questions and begin an iterative process.
    And these questions may include questions about scope, 
administration, timing, and enforcement. And often the most 
important and the most complex issue to be addressed is the 
extent to which existing law already addresses the idea behind 
the policy and how the application and enforcement of existing 
law might be affected by the policy.
    And note that these issues apply even in the case of a 
request which consists of pre-drafted legislative text. If we 
don't know the policy intent which generated the idea that was 
behind the text in the first place, we have no way of knowing 
whether the legislative text accomplishes the goal of 
translating the idea into law.
    A bill may be drafted perfectly on a technical level, but 
if it doesn't fix the problem that inspired the idea behind the 
bill, it doesn't work. It is legally insufficient.
    And there are two other features of our office, which are 
also included in our charter, that help us ensure the integrity 
of the legislative documents that the House produces and 
considers. And what I mean by integrity is that anyone who 
encounters a document will know that the document reflects an 
accurate statement of the current state of the legislation 
involved.
    So the first of these features, we are required to keep our 
work product confidential. We take this very seriously. If we 
prepare a draft for any office of the House, we cannot share it 
with anyone else, no matter which side they are on, without the 
express consent of that office. Even if doing so could promote 
collaboration and efficiency, we can't do it, and we don't do 
it. So, if a document is under our control, Members and 
committees will know that it will not be disclosed without 
their consent.
    And, second, we work only for the House. We cannot provide 
drafting or other services to people from the outside, 
including lobbyists, constituents, or people from the executive 
branch, even if they are nonpartisan professional staff. We 
cannot prepare a draft or make changes to a draft without the 
express direction of the House client. Again, even if doing so 
could promote collaboration and efficiency, we can't do it, and 
we don't do it.
    So, if a document is under our control, Members and 
committees will know that the only changes which will be made 
to it are the changes that they alone authorize. And, as you 
keep these features in mind, remember that they don't 
necessarily apply to Members, committees, leadership, or their 
staffs.
    So, as I mentioned at the beginning of my testimony, the 
office has been extremely busy, so we have adopted policies 
which will expand our capacity to respond to requests. For 
example, we are sending more and more of the requests we 
receive for simple resolutions and reintroductions to our 
paralegals. We have expanded our recruiting, increased pay, and 
enabled flexible work arrangements. We have expanded education 
programs so that Members and staff will know more about the 
drafting process and the best practices for working with our 
attorneys.
    And we continue to explore developments in technology, 
building on existing initiatives with the Office of the Clerk, 
the Government Publishing Office, and other legislative branch 
organizations.
    So, in conclusion, thank you again for inviting me to speak 
on behalf of the Office of the Legislative Counsel. I have been 
with the office for over 35 years, and much has changed over 
that time. But what has remained the same is our commitment to 
turning the ideas of the House into law that works.
    And I look forward to answering your questions and to 
continuing the dialogue between our office and the select 
committee.
    Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Wofsy follows:]
    
    
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    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Wofsy.
    Our next witness is Kevin McCumber. Mr. McCumber has served 
as a Deputy Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives since 
2021. Prior to this position, he served in numerous positions 
in the House Office of Legislative Operations, including as 
chief, deputy chief, and assistant journal clerk. Mr. McCumber 
earned his bachelor of arts degree from the University of 
Colorado-Denver.
    Mr. McCumber, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

                  STATEMENT OF KEVIN McCUMBER

    Mr. McCumber. Chair Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, members of 
the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify about 
modernizing the legislative process.
    It is an honor to represent the Office of the Clerk before 
this committee alongside my colleagues from the House Office of 
Legislative Counsel and the Government Publishing Office.
    Our office pursues numerous diverse goals and priorities, 
and our primary function is supporting the day- to-day 
operations of the House.
    The committee members have my written statement, which 
includes an appendix that describes the bill introduction 
process. In short, legislative counsel drafts the legislative 
text, a Member or committee introduces it to the House, and 
Clerk staff process it and coordinate publication with GPO. GPO 
and the Library of Congress publish bill versions and related 
materials online at govinfo.gov and congress.gov, and GPO 
delivers paper copies to the House.
    I have four points to highlight for the committee about how 
an idea becomes law and the process for creating, amending, and 
publishing legislation.
    First, the House must manage both paper and digital 
workflows. Only recently has Congress added a digital layer to 
a centuries-old paper process. Traditionally, tasks related to 
preparing, managing, distributing, and preserving the House's 
official documents were confined to paper. Today, paper is 
still the official document of record, and we must also manage 
the electronic rendition and its related data.
    Second, Clerk staff, bound by House rules, traditions, and 
precedents, execute critical tasks. There are skilled and 
dedicated public servants behind each step of the legislative 
process. When you or one of your colleagues offers a floor 
amendment, our clerks read it from the rostrum.
    When you cast a vote using the Electronic Voting System or 
a well card, our clerks confirm those votes.
    When a committee meets, an official reporter, such as the 
one you see here today, covers the proceedings. We ensure your 
work is accurately recorded and made publicly available. We are 
bound by House rules, traditions, and precedents.
    Third, legislative branch staff rely on linked systems. The 
organizations represented here today interact daily and use the 
same tools to create and publish bills, resolutions, and 
amendments. GPO provides the composition engine that creates 
PDFs. We provide the XMetaL editing tool used by legislative 
counsel, committees, and our clerks.
    Experience has taught us that changes must be considered 
across the entire ecosystem. They cannot be considered in a 
vacuum. Any change may have unintended consequences for Members 
in both Chambers, as well as the more than 10 legislative 
branch organizations and agencies that support congressional 
operations.
    Fourth, nonpartisan support staff have ideas for improving 
how Congress works. I am sure Mr. Wofsy and Mr. Halpern will 
agree, together, we have seen immense change in this 
institution since we began our careers, yet there is more work 
to be done.
    As the committee is aware, the Clerk's top priorities are 
modernizing the Legislative Information Management System, 
deploying the eHopper and Comparative Print Suite applications, 
maintaining the Electronic Voting System, and redesigning the 
lobbying disclosure system.
    This is an exciting time for our office. As we work on 
these projects and other modernization initiatives, we value 
opportunities to think creatively about how to improve 
processes for Members and staff.
    In my written statement, I provide a few of our many ideas, 
including collaborative drafting tools, a Member office portal 
for submitting legislative documents, as well as amendments and 
appropriations requests, and a committee portal for scheduling 
official reporters, sharing required information for the 
Congressional Record, and submitting committee reports.
    In closing, I am proud to represent the 227 public servants 
who work for the Clerk of the House. Our organization has 
steadfastly supported the House in a nonpartisan institutional 
capacity for more than two centuries.
    The capability, commitment, and energy of Clerk staff are 
critical to maintaining and modernizing this great institution. 
Together, alongside Member offices, committees, and our 
legislative branch partners, we can make Congress more 
effective, efficient, and transparent.
    I look forward to our continued discussions and will be 
happy to take any questions you may have.
    [The statement of Mr. McCumber follows:]
    
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    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. McCumber.
    And our final witness is Hugh Halpern.
    Mr. Halpern has served as the Director of the Government 
Publishing Office since 2019. Prior to GPO, he held several 
leadership positions on Capitol Hill, including as director of 
floor operations for Speaker Ryan and staff director of the 
House Committee on Rules. He served in numerous other roles 
during his 30-year career in the House, including general 
counsel to the House Committee on Financial Services, the 
parliamentarian to the first Select Committee on Homeland 
Security. Mr. Halpern earned both his bachelor of arts and 
master of arts from American University. He earned his law 
degree from George Mason University.
    And, Mr. Halpern, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

                   STATEMENT OF HUGH HALPERN

    Mr. Halpern. Thank you very much.
    Chair Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, other members of the 
select committee, I am excited to appear before the select 
committee today along with my colleagues from the other support 
offices. While I am appearing today in my capacity as the 
Director of the Government Publishing Office, I also bring to 
the table the more than 30 years of experience as a House 
committee and leadership staff person.
    At GPO, I head an agency of more than 1,500 craftspeople 
and professionals, and that agency is responsible for the 
processing, publishing, and printing of an average of nearly 
300 measures each week that Congress is in session. My 
experience in both environments gives me insights into where 
there may be some pinch points in the process and some 
potential areas for change.
    Before I talk about GPO's process, it is important to 
highlight some of the structural issues faced by Members, 
staff, and those of us supporting the legislative process. Put 
simply, when our predecessors created our system of laws and, 
more importantly, how we update them, they made some really bad 
decisions.
    Those systems don't scale well, and particularly when they 
are coupled with modern technology, things like expressing 
changes in terms of instructions to an unseen clerk, using page 
and line numbers as the means of navigating legislative 
documents, and requiring authors to match typographic 
conventions to convey meaning. The complexity of these 
conventions creates even more complexity as we establish modern 
systems to draft legislation and make it available.
    With that as background, I am going to briefly summarize 
GPO's system for processing legislative measures.
    The process is still largely paper based and driven by the 
requirement that our final product match the paper manuscript, 
the official document of record. Bills are handled by GPO's 
Bill End unit in the proof room, and it is made up of 
experienced proofreaders and typesetters who are familiar with 
the particular issues that can arise with legislative text.
    If there is an electronic file, GPO's Bill End unit 
proofreads the output to ensure that it matches the manuscript 
introduced via the hopper or the eHopper.
    If not, we scan and OCR that document, and our markup 
session will manually add typesetting codes to the paper 
manuscript to be input electronically later in the process.
    GPO's Text Edit section then updates the electronic file, 
making any changes or corrections spotted by the proofreaders 
or inputting the instructions from the markup team. And then 
proofreading double checks to make sure that all changes were 
executed properly.
    When this process is complete, the electronic files and 
accompanying metadata are posted online while GPO's plant 
produces paper copies. This process generally works on a first-
in, first-out basis, and we aim to have a new measure online 
and in print within a week of receipt, although this can vary 
depending on volume.
    Before closing, I want to briefly discuss two ideas to 
address Member concerns about bill processing. To be clear, I 
am not endorsing either of these concepts but simply flagging 
possible risks should Congress decide to pursue either or both 
of these options.
    Some have suggested that Members be given the option to 
waive the proofreading process for measures drafted by 
legislative counsel. While this would definitely speed up the 
process, it would also essentially end the primacy of the 
introduced paper manuscript and instruct GPO to rely on the 
House's prepared XML file. Measures would be processed 
electronically, posted online, and printed, but without any of 
the usual quality assurance checks.
    While this is an easy change for GPO to execute, inevitably 
there will be some errors that would otherwise be caught during 
GPO's proofing process. It could also result in Members 
introducing measures just to correct errors or demanding 
expensive reprints.
    We are also involved in ongoing discussions regarding the 
development of Word templates that could be used by staff for 
simple drafting tasks and could be ingested into GPO's 
typesetting system through a web interface. While we are 
currently testing a similar model for committee reports and 
hearings, legislative measures are significantly more complex, 
and we are at least several years away from an option that is 
production ready and easy to use.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I stand 
ready to answer any questions you may have.
    [The statement of Mr. Halpern follows:]
    
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    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Halpern.
    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 to Vice Chair Timmons.
    So, you know, I have got a hundred questions I want to ask, 
but let me just start. Mr. Wofsy, in your written testimony, 
you pointed out some of your response to the Leg Branch 
Appropriations Subcommittee in terms of kind of, what do you 
need, right? And I think you hit on a few things--some 
additional funding to bring on more people and to be able to 
retain people; the use of the Staff Academy both for the folks 
who work under you but also for Member offices to be trained on 
how better to engage with Leg Counsel; and then technology.
    I am just curious how one--have those needs largely been 
met, or are they in the process of being met? Are there other 
things that our committee should think about recommending that 
would support the work you are doing in light of the 
overwhelming increase in demand that your office is facing?
    And then the other question, just relatedly--and there has 
been some discussion of this already--you know, one potential 
solution to reduce the strain on your workload would be just to 
expand who has access to legislative drafting tools. Curious if 
you--you know, who has--if you have thoughts on who has access 
and what your thoughts are about expanding that access? If Mr. 
Wofsy and perhaps Mr. McCumber may want to weigh in on that, 
too, but----
    Mr. Wofsy. Certainly. Let me address the first set of 
questions that you asked----
    The Chairman. Yeah.
    Mr. Wofsy [continuing]. Which I think I can tell you that 
there are things that have already been implemented, and there 
are things that we are going to continue to implement. For 
example, last--we have six new attorneys who are going to be 
joining our team this year, two of whom have already started. 
Four are going to be coming in the fall.
    We anticipate and we aim to do the same thing for this 
coming year with recruiting season, and we also anticipate 
hiring additional paralegals. I had mentioned that we use our 
paralegal team to help us out with simple things and to help us 
with a lot of kind of document generation things. They are 
excellent, and they are very, very helpful.
    We are also--I will tell you that we are very grateful for 
the Speaker's most recent pay order, and we are grateful to you 
and the select committee because, you know, I work with--as it 
turns out, I work with the select committee. My drafting area 
includes the things that you work on. And I remember, from the 
beginning, one of the things that you were very, very strong on 
was increasing staff pay, or at least allowing for the 
possibility of staff pay, especially senior staff, to be 
compensated more.
    That has already made a tremendous difference in our 
retention efforts. It is very, very helpful. And it--what we 
want is to see this keep going so that staff pay will continue 
to rise and that we will continue to retain our highly trained 
staff. The magical phrase of the high three has been batted 
around in our office quite a bit over the past year. That has 
been a terrific help.
    We are also, as I mentioned, trying out different 
arrangements where we can retain people by offering them the 
opportunity to engage in extensive telework. And we have 
people, in fact, who are working from very remote locations 
now, partly as a result of the pandemic but also partly as the 
result of family opportunities. We have one of our senior 
attorney's spouses has taken a temporary position very far 
away, and he is still able to work with us remotely and to keep 
doing that. That is something we can tell our people that we 
can do for them.
    So many of these things are already underway. What we need 
is, first of all, the continued funding to make it possible, 
and that--to my knowledge, the Appropriations Committee has 
been extremely helpful with that. They have been able to give 
us what we need. And then some of the other things that we are 
talking about today would also be a big help, and we can talk 
perhaps--I can get into greater detail if you would like about 
the education efforts that you had alluded to, as a way of 
basically reducing the pain ultimately.
    It expands our capacity when people come to us with a lot 
of the questions answered because we don't have to start off 
from square one. If people know how to use our office and the 
best practices for use in our office, they can come to us 
better prepared. So we look at this as a help us help you----
    The Chairman. Yeah.
    Mr. Wofsy [continuing]. Sort of effort.
    The Chairman. Do you need anything else in that regard? If 
you were on this committee and making recommendations in this 
space, do you feel like the Staff Academy has got it handled, 
or are there other things we ought to be looking at?
    Mr. Wofsy. I think the Staff Academy is a good start. I 
mean, I think that what--to the extent that you can--that there 
are specific things you can do to promote it and to encourage 
Members to have their staffs attend the Staff Academy sessions, 
and also to go to our internal website. That is another 
terrific source of information.
    I mean, when people go onto our website, they can see right 
upfront a sort of, before you contact us or before you begin, 
to list out some of these questions and some of the basic 
background information. We give people on our website basically 
a guide, a brief guide to the legislative process, where we 
talk about, for example, the Parliamentarians, Congressional 
Research Service. We give them links to these offices.
    We even have a basic guide to legislative drafting, which 
gives a very brief but still useful introduction to, what is 
the difference between a bill and a resolution, a bill that 
amends existing law versus a bill that is freestanding and just 
sits on its own? In other words, a lot of this material is out 
there now, and what we would like to see is staff take 
advantage of it.
    The most recent webinar that we had for what is called the 
Leg Counsel 201 class, which is the advanced class, I believe 
there were 80 people who signed up, of whom 50 actually 
attended. And I am--that is not bad----
    The Chairman. Yeah.
    Mr. Wofsy [continuing]. You know, because, as we know, who 
knows how your day is going to go on the Hill. You may think, 
``Oh, I am going to go to my webinar,'' and then, the next 
thing you know, you get a call, and ``I guess I am not going to 
go to that webinar.''
    The Chairman. Right.
    Mr. Wofsy. So I think 50 out of 80 is actually not a bad 
percentage, but we need to see more of that happening. To the 
extent that you can recommend to Members and the staff to do 
simple things, like look through our website, look at the 
Congressional Staff Academy--I mean, here is something else 
that is very, very simple that is sort of--it has driven me a 
little crazy, to be honest, in the past that when staff leave a 
Member's office and they don't tell their successors about the 
drafting that we have already been working on, and then the 
request comes in anew, sometimes maybe a year or so later, and 
we have to search through our--my aging memory cells to see if, 
``Gosh, this sounds familiar, where did--haven't I seen this 
before,'' and we have to start the process all over again.
    I mean, a simple recommendation to Member staff that, when 
somebody leaves, that to make it a policy to notify the leg 
director or the chief of staff about what they are working on 
with our office so that people will know how to pick it up and 
move forward.
    Small things, but to encourage the Members to take 
advantage of what is out there.
    The Chairman. Do you want to take a swing at the pitch 
about access to legislative drafting tools?
    Mr. Wofsy. Sure. It is a question really of what the House 
wants from a legislative document because the Member--if you 
can introduce a bill that says anything or does anything, the 
question is, will it work? Will it be technically sufficient? 
And legislative drafting is a craft, and we believe that the 
House is best served when people who are experienced in that 
craft are the ones who ultimately prepare the legislation.
    It isn't just a matter of the training that we receive, 
which is rigorous. When we have new people come in, they go 
through an extremely rigorous apprenticeship-type program where 
they learn all--the whole panoply of rules and procedures and 
techniques and how to ask all of these questions and how to 
work with our clients to make sure that we are giving them what 
they really want, what they really want, not necessarily what 
they write down on the page but what they are really trying to 
accomplish.
    I will also mention, as I did in my testimony, that we are 
covered by the attorney-client privilege so that, when people 
work with us, we are going to keep their work product 
confidential. I can't even mention the fact that somebody has 
contacted me, even if there is no bill draft provided, I cannot 
share the fact that somebody has reached out to me with anybody 
else.
    When other people do legislative drafting, they are not 
bound by those same confidences so that, if somebody else is 
going to produce a document, there is no way to guarantee that 
somebody is going to look at that document and maybe make 
mischief with it.
    The other--I guess the other thing, because we can talk a 
long time about all of this stuff, that somebody--one of my 
colleagues drew my attention to a Harvard Law Review article. 
This was about 10 years ago. Somebody was talking about how 
many lawyers work for the government, which--what a 
fascinating--how would you like to spend your career coming up 
with--that that was your research, that was your thesis? That 
is great. How many lawyers work for the Federal Government?
    And they came down roughly saying that, in the executive 
branch, there are maybe more than 20,000 lawyers. In the entire 
legislative branch, there are 500. So, if legislation gets 
enacted that is unclear, that is incoherent, that has technical 
issues, that leaves blanks, that can be subject to varying 
interpretations, if it gets enacted and if Members think that 
they are going to be able to direct how those blanks get filled 
in, how the law gets implemented--if the Members think that 
they are going to have a role in that process, they are wrong. 
The ship has sailed already.
    And who is going to make that decision? Well, that army of 
20,000 lawyers in the executive branch or perhaps in the State 
and local governments and private businesses, depending of 
course on who the subject of the legislation is. We think that 
the House is best served by taking advantage of professional 
legislative drafting services. You never know when something is 
going to move through the process.
    Myself and all my colleagues have had examples of things 
that we just kind of tossed off and said, ``Oh, sure, why not, 
let's try this,'' and the next thing you know, oh, my gosh--not 
that there is a signing ceremony necessarily but that there 
is--this thing is now enacted into law, and we are going to 
have to deal with it.
    The Chairman. So I--the last thing you said--and apologies 
to my colleagues because I want to make sure that they get a 
chance to throw in some questions here, but, I mean, just to 
press you on that a little bit, you know, there is, I think, a 
substantial amount of legislation that gets introduced where 
the person introducing it hopes that it will become a law. I 
think we are all pretty conscious of the fact there is also a 
fair amount of legislation where the person is trying to make a 
statement, not make a law, right?
    And, yes, I--and I know that might have----
    Mr. Wofsy. I am shocked. I am shocked. I am shocked.
    The Chairman. Politics in the Capitol.
    Mr. Wofsy. Shocked.
    The Chairman. Good God.
    So I guess the question is, might it make sense, given the 
overwhelming workload that you are facing, to at least broaden 
access for those things that are, you know, going nowhere?
    Mr. Wofsy. Well, possibly.
    The Chairman. I mean, it could save you guys some work, 
right?
    Mr. Wofsy. Maybe yes, or maybe no.
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Mr. Wofsy. Because what happens--what would happen--I can 
certainly envision that, if this were to happen, at a certain 
point, people are going to look at the bills that said people 
just wanted to just introduce them for the heck of it, and 
someone is going to say, ``No, I want to take this seriously.''
    The Chairman. Uh-huh.
    Mr. Wofsy. I--there could--again, you never know. The chair 
of a committee or a subcommittee may look at this, or perhaps 
is himself or herself the one who is introducing this and said, 
``Let's have a hearing on this,'' and then, when that happens, 
we are going to get the call to say, ``Okay, we know this 
doesn't really work.''
    The Chairman. Yeah. Now what?
    Mr. Wofsy. ``Can you clean it up for us?''
    The Chairman. Right.
    Mr. Wofsy. And it could be somebody other than the person 
who introduced it, and, in effect, that could make our workload 
even worse because we are going to start getting last-minute 
things to redo things that we never saw in the first place, and 
we are starting with a total zero null set of information 
about, what was the purpose of this? What is it trying to do? 
Who is responsible for this? And we are back to square one at a 
time when we are already doing our things.
    And the other thing is that I think we would quickly see 
the distinction among the Members of this is a good bill, and 
this is a bad bill. I mean, I am not saying good or bad or good 
or evil or something like that, but Members are going to 
quickly know, and they are going to become even more insistent 
that they are going to want our imprimatur, and they will come 
to us at the last minute and say, ``You know something? Wait a 
second. We are doing this, but now I am realizing that there is 
a problem.''
    And meanwhile, where were you 2 weeks ago----
    The Chairman. Right.
    Mr. Wofsy [continuing]. When we might have had a chance to 
work through the issues?
    So I am nervous about that there could be a boomerang 
effect on our office, that it may----
    The Chairman. Maybe Mr. Halpern wants to weigh in here, 
too. Then I will defer to my colleagues here.
    Mr. Halpern. Well, two points. One goes to an earlier point 
that I made, that the existing suite of drafting tools for the 
House are extremely complex. And, when I managed groups of 
attorneys or nonattorneys at several committees, they didn't 
want to use these tools because they were incredibly hard to 
learn. And that is largely driven because they have to account 
for all of the different drafting styles.
    Putting that aside, when I worked for the gentleman who is 
up on that wall and ran the floor for him, the one thing that I 
learned very quickly is ideas that start life as sort of a 
throwaway, Members suddenly become very, very attached to the 
words that are used to execute those ideas.
    So, at some point, the Speaker would often come to me and 
say, ``Member X is bugging me about their bill to do X, Y, or 
Z.''
    And I would look at it, and I am like, this? Really?
    And that is to say that the expertise that Noah and his 
colleagues bring to this is critically important to maintaining 
the standard and the preciseness that has characterized House 
drafting for my House career.
    There is actually a good example of this. So the rule--I 
think it may have gone away this Congress, but the rule that 
drove the comparative print project.
    The Chairman. Yeah.
    Mr. Halpern. So that was adopted very much ad hoc in the 
House Republican Conference where we were considering the rules 
package for that Congress. And, frankly, at some point, we 
realized we couldn't articulate reasons why we shouldn't do 
this any longer, and so we just said we are going to do it. And 
I had to come to my colleagues in the Clerk's Office and go, 
``We have got a year to figure out how we are going to do 
this.''
    But, if you look at the text of that rule, it is written 
differently than virtually every other rule literally in the 
book, and that was because that came from Mr. Posey.
    The Chairman. Uh-huh.
    Mr. Halpern. And Mr. Posey decided that is how he really 
wanted that constructed.
    And the several times we actually went back to him to say, 
``Hey, can we just update this to conform it to the style and 
the structure of all of the other Rules of the House,'' he was 
not enthusiastic about revisiting that.
    So that is just something to keep in mind----
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Mr. Halpern [continuing]. That the distinction that we may 
draw at the outset doesn't always hold when things start 
moving.
    The Chairman. Gotcha. Vice Chair Timmons.
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    In the last 10 years, you have gone from 32,000 drafts to 
48,000 drafts, almost a 50-percent increase in a decade. And 
you have added nine attorneys, less than 20 percent.
    Do you need more attorneys?
    Mr. Wofsy. Yes. Yes, we do. And we are starting to ramp up 
our hiring. There are several issues, of course, involved. 
First of all, we have lost some fairly senior attorneys over 
the past few years, just because of the natural--the lifecycle 
of an attorney, I suppose, is that, at a certain point, you are 
ready to go and do something else or simply retire.
    We had a colleague who had been in the office for 50 years 
who retired last year. And we have people who have similar 
links. So some of this is a matter of filling vacancies that 
were both expected but also unexpected.
    And the other thing also to keep in mind is that we want to 
expand as quickly as we can without overburdening our existing 
attorneys because the way that our office operates is that the 
training we provide--as I mentioned before, it is like an 
apprenticeship program. A new attorney is subject to review and 
oversight by two senior attorneys who control all the workflow, 
provide rigorous redlining and advice, and basically spend the 
better part of a year training somebody on how to do our job.
    That, of course, takes time away from the senior attorneys 
who are doing the training. So we have--we feel that we have a 
good balance.
    Now, if we are shooting to add six people, let's say, every 
year, with doing that, we will be able to keep our senior--
enough of our senior attorneys available to do their jobs and 
still provide the training and, at the same time, have more 
attorneys gaining more expertise, and we can start filling them 
in on the drafting teams that we use for the various areas of 
law that people specialize in, and they can start developing 
the specialization.
    Bottom line: Yes, we need more attorneys. We need more 
paralegals, too. I mentioned that they provide a terrific role, 
and they are fantastic, and they can help us a lot to sort of 
expand our capacity to be able to serve the Members.
    But, yes, that was a longwinded answer to a very short 
answer, which is yes.
    Mr. Timmons. After people work on the Hill for 2, 3, 4, 5, 
10 years, generally speaking, they can go downtown for a 50-
percent increase, minimum, sometimes 200-percent increase. Are 
you losing attorneys to--does K Street want your team, or is it 
not really a translatable skill set?
    Mr. Wofsy. Wow, I never thought of that before. What am I 
doing here? No.
    It is--you know, that is a really good question. I mean, I 
think that it is an--would be an unusual career path to do the 
K Street thing. I think that this--because we are nonpartisan--
I mean, I am just kind of going--I am making this up off the 
top of my head here, but I think, because we are nonpartisan, 
we don't have the same relationship with Members----
    Mr. Timmons. Okay.
    Mr. Wofsy [continuing]. And leadership and all that, that I 
think K Street values more than the ability to draft 
legislation. But there are certainly people who have gone off 
to work for--to work for law firms to do----
    Mr. Timmons. Sure.
    Mr. Wofsy [continuing]. Certain types of work.
    I think that, when people leave the office, it is almost--
it tends to be more for reasons of that they just don't--that 
they just--after a year or two, they realize they just don't 
enjoy the work. Maybe they want to be more involved in 
policymaking themselves because they have their own policy 
goals. And, as I say, we don't provide the policy. We provide 
the expression of other people's policy. So sometimes people 
leave for that type of reason.
    I don't--I don't see an exodus to K Street so much as our 
problem. Having said that, it is a lot easier to say that now 
that we have the--we have got the most recent pay order, and 
with the hope----
    Mr. Timmons. That was my next question.
    Mr. Wofsy. Yeah.
    Mr. Timmons. What percentage of your staff are maxed out?
    Mr. Wofsy. Oh, gosh. I would have to get back to you on 
that, but----
    Mr. Timmons. Yeah.
    Mr. Wofsy [continuing]. Let's just say quite a few. I mean, 
there were--and, God, I was one of them for many years. I--
there are at least--I should probably get back to you on that.
    Mr. Timmons. Okay.
    Mr. Wofsy. I don't want to give--but it was a considerable 
amount.
    Mr. Timmons. But a substantial number of your attorneys are 
maxed out?
    Mr. Wofsy. Yes. They were. Now they are not in the sense 
that the cap on the pay order was raised to such a level that 
we now have breathing room----
    Mr. Timmons. Okay.
    Mr. Wofsy [continuing]. Underneath to kind of give people--
continue to give people raises as they stick around, so they 
get--our raises or seniority based.
    Mr. Timmons. You mentioned teleworking. What percentage of 
your team teleworks?
    Mr. Wofsy. 100 percent at one point or another. I mean, 
we--I don't think that there is an attorney who does not 
telework at least 1 or 2 days a week.
    Our telework has been--I mean, it has been--I think it has 
been--I mean, we are going to pat ourselves on the back. I 
think it has been astonishing how we have been able to use that 
and that we were--we were very well placed to do so when the 
pandemic hit because we had been doing it since--well, it 
started--Hugh probably can remember--since the anthrax attacks 
after 9/11 that we--that the House realized that we need to be 
able to have people work remotely.
    And so, since then, at one level or another, we have done 
it. And it is a terrific help. It is a great retention tool.
    Mr. Timmons. There are different types of teleworking. One 
teleworking is being within a couple miles of the Capitol. The 
other one is being in a completely different area code where 
the cost of living is a quarter of what it is here. So how many 
of your team telework from afar?
    Mr. Wofsy. I would say three or four, or four or five at 
this point.
    Mr. Timmons. Is that something that you would--I mean, you 
know, 150-, $200,000 is fairly good pay here in D.C., but it is 
an enormous amount of money in South Carolina. So, I mean, do 
you have people--are you encouraging people that are kind of 
questioning their career path to consider moving further away 
where they have a better quality of life for less money?
    Mr. Wofsy. That is a great question. And that is actually 
something that we are starting to discuss among ourselves in 
the office because we have to--as with everything, we have to 
strike a balance. I mean, you know, I am an old school person, 
or I am just an old person period, and I see the value of 
people being together in the same place at the same time, and I 
know that there is a--obvious----
    Mr. Timmons. Zoom doesn't count?
    Mr. Wofsy. Not quite. I mean, you know, each of us have had 
our experiences with it, right. But I understand that there is 
a generational thing and that there are advantages, of course, 
to having people work remotely. If we did that, though, we 
would need to answer some very tough questions, that should 
people who, because of their location, will very rarely, if 
ever, be able to respond to some demand, which may come from a 
Member or committee, to show up in person, should they be 
compensated at a different level?
    In other words, should people who are staying here who are 
going to be more accessible in cases of emergency, should they 
be paid the same as somebody who will never be able to come 
here? These are just the types of issues that we would have to 
work through, and we are starting to talk about it, but----
    Mr. Timmons. One last question for the Clerk's Office. And 
this is for another Member that is not here. I am not as 
passionate about it as he is.
    The Electronic Voting System, security is obviously 
incredibly important. My understanding is it has got--it is its 
own system, right? It is not connected to anything whatsoever?
    Mr. McCumber. That is right, yes.
    Mr. Timmons. Multiple fail-safes?
    Mr. McCumber. That is right.
    Mr. Timmons. The question that was posed was, how could a 
Member's office, particularly a legislative director, maybe his 
chief of staff, be able to see whether and how that Member 
voted in a case of whether they got to the floor in time or 
not, or whether they are possibly talking outside and just 
about to miss a vote?
    Obviously, you can call the floor, and that is kind of 
cumbersome. We would not want to impact the security. I can 
imagine there is a way to determine whether and how someone 
voted should the House--should leadership want that to occur.
    Is that something that you all have investigated? Do you 
have a--if this is something that the Speaker says that we want 
to do, it is done? Can you just talk about that?
    Mr. McCumber. We scoped it out at a very high level when 
this conversation came up earlier this year, and it is very 
secure. There is a way to do it. A program could be written to 
use----
    Mr. Timmons. To look at the wall and see what----
    Mr. McCumber. Right out----
    Mr. Timmons. Yeah.
    Mr. McCumber. Right. Right out of the EVS system itself. 
But, you know, a program would have to be created. And I think 
they said, I mean, 9 months to a year to be able to get 
something in place.
    Mr. Timmons. And, obviously, you wouldn't want people to 
know how everybody voted? I mean, there are arguments on all 
sides, but you don't want to have--that would create problems, 
but just if a Member's office could tell if that Member voted 
or maybe even how that Member voted, I could see a value there.
    Mr. McCumber. That could----
    Mr. Timmons. It is doable?
    Mr. McCumber. That could potentially be one of the ideas in 
this Member portal with the new LIMS modernization that we are 
doing where the administrative rights could be granted to that 
Member's office to access that information.
    Mr. Timmons. Okay.
    Mr. McCumber. It is certainly possible.
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you.
    I yield back. Sorry.
    The Chairman. Mr. Phillips.
    Mr. Phillips. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    And thanks to each of you. I am grateful for what you and 
your offices do and wish more of our colleagues, frankly, could 
understand, myself amongst them, so I want to say thank you.
    I have always been taught to investigate best practices and 
implement them into the organizations to which I have been 
party. My question to each of you is, do you investigate those 
as they relate to best practices in legislative bodies 
throughout the country but also around the world? And, if not, 
is there an opportunity to create a mechanism by which we can 
identify those and perhaps implement ideas that have been 
attested in other legislative bodies?
    Maybe start with you, Mr. Wofsy.
    Mr. Wofsy. Sure. Our office does participate, on a formal 
and informal basis, with international organizations that bring 
together legislative drafters and people who do similar work 
all over the world. There is a particular group of the former 
commonwealth nations that has--from U.K.--who we are in 
constant touch with. We have had people actually spend time 
with us from South Korea, from the U.K. and like spent time 
with us, watched how we do our things. We have had--our 
attorneys have helped in the past with the emerging democracies 
to provide assistance. And some of our retired attorneys have 
done that.
    The pandemic has interfered with some of that, as you may 
imagine. Pre-pandemic, there was an annual conference of 
international legislative drafters that would be held typically 
here in D.C., and people would come from all over the world. We 
would put on--we would present papers and research findings and 
talk about best practices, about how we do things in our system 
of government, how they do things in their system of 
government, the roles of--for example, the equivalence of the 
Congressional Research Service in other countries.
    The pandemic has interfered with that. One of my colleagues 
is sort of our point person for these international 
organizations, and he is saying that there may be an attempt to 
have the conference start this fall. And typically we would 
have it here in D.C., and we would have several events, 
receptions, and get to know those people.
    So the answer is yes, absolutely. We are in touch with 
international organizations and other people who do similar 
work, and we want to learn from them, and they want to learn 
from us.
    Mr. Phillips. Wonderful. And, in your specific line of 
work, are there any States or countries that are particularly 
impressive relative to their efficiency in systems 
technologies?
    Mr. Wofsy. I am not sure----
    Mr. Phillips. If you aren't----
    Mr. Wofsy. I can speak to the technologies. We were very 
impressed with the Australians, who seem to have a very--it was 
more about how their offices were organized in terms of how 
they tackled various subject matter areas, how they would 
respond to requests. Obviously parliamentary systems are 
different because it is the government----
    Mr. Phillips. Of course.
    Mr. Wofsy [continuing]. That runs everything. So this--
there is the division between the branches, which, of course, 
drives a lot of what we do, is different. But we thought--but 
we were very impressed with them, and they were--I will also 
just say the Australians, they are fabulously entertaining 
people----
    Mr. Phillips. And there is that.
    Mr. Wofsy [continuing]. In their ways. So that was one 
example of the ways.
    Mr. Phillips. Thank you.
    Mr. McCumber.
    Mr. McCumber. So my predecessor was pretty involved in the 
Inter-Parliamentary Union, and I know that they got together 
often for an exchange of ideas, especially during the pandemic, 
best practices for what works for us, what works for them, how 
did we do this, how did we do that?
    I am not as familiar yet. Those haven't been an opportunity 
yet that have come up for me yet, but it is something that, you 
know--and similar, we are bound a lot by what the House--the 
rules and the traditions and the precedents, but where there 
are opportunities to improve in efficiencies, in the way we do 
things, we certainly take advantage of them.
    Mr. Phillips. Okay. Thank you.
    Mr. Halpern.
    Mr. Halpern. Thank you. GPO is about a billion-dollar 
government enterprise, operates very much as a business, and 
throughout all of our lines of business, we are constantly 
checking for what are the best practices around how we do 
things? But I think, to be more responsive to your question, I 
would actually like to go back to something I did when I worked 
for the House.
    So, probably about 10, 15 years ago now, I and some of my 
colleagues did the staff del to visit the European Union 
Parliament but, more importantly, the U.K. Parliament. And, as 
part of the discussion, we were talking with their clerks, who 
serve as the counterparts both of the folks in the House 
Clerk's Office but also our Parliamentarians.
    And, through that discussion--it was literally cocktail 
discussion. I pointed out that their documents looked a whole 
heck of a lot more modern than ours do despite the fact their 
parliament is roughly a thousand years older than ours.
    Mr. Phillips. Uh-huh.
    Mr. Halpern. And the deputy clerk I was talking to, she was 
like, ``Oh, yeah, like, 10 years prior, we just thought 
everything looked too Victorian, so we just changed it,'' and 
they printed on regular size paper, and they used color, and 
they used modern typefaces.
    So I came back kind of invigorated after that trip and met 
with the staff of what I affectionately refer to now as the old 
GPO. And, when I suggested, ``Hey, let's just start with 
printing hearings on letter size paper, let's just start 
there,'' and you would have thought I had asked everybody for 
their first-born child.
    Mr. Phillips. Whoa.
    Mr. Halpern. I left that meeting very frustrated.
    Fast forward, 12, 13 years, and they are, like, 
``Congratulations, you are in charge now.''
    The good news is we are at a bit of an inflection point 
with a lot of different things where we can consider some of 
those best practices. So one of the reasons that our documents 
look the way they do--and the Committee Report today is in 
basically the exact same format it was when GPO opened its 
doors in March of 1861.
    Mr. Phillips. Uh-huh.
    Mr. Halpern. It is to preserve on the economy of doing 
large offset printing. So that gets very expensive, so you want 
to compress your pages, have small type sizes to reduce your 
cost per sheet.
    Well, we have got a couple of things that are coming 
together. One is, in terms of actual printing technology, GPO 
has brought online seven digital inkjet printers, which are no 
longer dependent on the very expensive, very time-consuming 
pre-press process.
    Mr. Phillips. Sure.
    Mr. Halpern. Second, GPO is in the process of updating its 
composition engine, and the software that both offices use 
today and GPO is about 40 years old, and it is way past end of 
life. The new system is modern, works on modern standards, and 
is far, far more flexible.
    Mr. Phillips. Good.
    Mr. Halpern. So you take that new software stack, you take 
new output technologies, and you combine that with, frankly, 
the work that this select committee is doing, which is 
demonstrating a willingness to take a look at those practices 
we have had in place for hundreds of years and say, ``Hey, 
maybe we can do something differently?''
    Combine all of those things together, and I think we are at 
a good point where we could say--either the House, or the House 
and the Senate say, what do our documents look like? What is 
the design language we want to use? And how can we do this to 
make the information contained in those documents--because that 
is the key thing you are trying to transmit--how do we make 
that information more accessible?
    This committee took advantage of XPub, our new composition 
engine, for their final report last year. We hope we will be 
able to engage with you again this year on that. And we look 
forward to working with the Committee on House Administration--
frankly, anybody else who wants to come to us--to talk about 
how we can design a Committee Report for the next century.
    Mr. Phillips. Wonderful. And if I could just ask one more.
    So we are very much focused on inspiring collaboration and 
more cooperation, and one of the items we have considered is 
allowing for two lead sponsors on legislation, as long as they 
come from each side of the aisle. I would love your thoughts, 
each of you, on that subject, and whether or not there are some 
impediments that we should be aware of if we were to recommend 
that?
    Mr. Wofsy. I can--well, from our perspective, we are happy 
to work with anybody who wants to work with us. And when I 
mentioned--the issue is going to confidentiality, but if two 
people are working together----
    Mr. Phillips. Okay.
    Mr. Wofsy [continuing]. Then that is--there is no problem 
with confidentiality. So----
    Mr. Phillips. As long as they consent.
    Mr. Wofsy. Yeah. As long as there is consent, we are 
perfectly fine with that. Other than that, I think--I think, 
for us, it would be a very simple thing to do. I suspect in a 
way we are doing it--I mean, we are doing it already to some 
level. I actually am asked sometimes to draft bills that are 
going to be--that I am working with both sides of the aisle 
together on it, so----
    Mr. Phillips. Okay. Good.
    Mr. Wofsy [continuing]. That does happen.
    Mr. Phillips. Good.
    Mr. McCumber. If the House rules change and allow it, 
certainly something that we can--that is possible in our 
programming, yes.
    Mr. Phillips. Okay.
    Mr. Halpern. So let me put on my old floor hat for a 
second. And, you know, as my colleagues said, absolutely. From 
a GPO perspective, it really doesn't matter a whole lot from 
us.
    Mr. Phillips. Sure.
    Mr. Halpern. But when--speaking as somebody who worked on 
the floor for half of his career, the thing to be aware of is 
that raises your level of difficulty, even just a little bit, 
for some things. I always look at it from the perspective of 
what if it is the middle of the night and we have got to get 
something done really, really quickly? How do we effectuate 
that?
    Sometimes waking that Member up at 1 or 2 o'clock in the 
morning who sponsored that bill to say, ``Hey, the Rules 
Committee is meeting, and we are moving forward with this, 
that, or the other thing, we need to confirm with you if it is 
okay if we do this,'' that is hard.
    When you might have to do that with two Members, that just 
exponentially raised that bar. Now, that said, that doesn't 
mean you--that is not necessarily a complete argument against 
the idea. It is just----
    Mr. Phillips. Awareness.
    Mr. Halpern [continuing]. Going into the process eyes wide 
open and understanding the floor professionals recognize the--
that it is Members who own these things. Members own the 
amendments. Members own the bills. And we need to check with 
them and do those checks. So the more of those you add, the 
harder that sometimes becomes.
    Mr. Phillips. But, based on your wonderful experience, do 
you think that might be an incentive for a little bit more 
cooperation in the institution?
    Mr. Halpern. One can always hope.
    Mr. Phillips. Yeah. We get a lot of that. Okay. Thank you 
very much.
    The Chairman. We have got a couple of members who are 
joining us online, but they are both in markups, so the timing 
of the questioning is--we may get back to them.
    Let me ask a couple other questions. You know, we have 
heard from some committee staffs that have described some 
challenges with keeping track of legislation that has been 
referred to their committee. Again, I think because it is an 
email system, not a paper-based system, some committees have 
paid for the development of their own systems, but nothing is 
provided Housewide.
    Perhaps, Mr. McCumber, you can speak to the process as it 
exists now, and if you have got thoughts on potential solutions 
there?
    Mr. McCumber. Sure. So currently committees receive paper 
copies of the bills referred to them by GPO. Committees, there 
are options available to committees to be notified when a bill 
has been referred to them. Congress.gov offers alerts that 
staff can sign up for, and it sends an email when bills have 
been referred to them. They can also review the Congressional 
Record every day, where the bill introductions and referrals 
are located.
    But there is opportunity that we are evaluating within our 
LIMS modernization efforts to improve those communications and 
data transmissions to the committee. So our new LIMS 
modernization effort is going to be built in a way where we can 
more quickly update technology, add additional applications to 
it, and really help modernize some of the ways of the past, 
especially when it comes to this committee.
    The Chairman. Can I click on congress.gov and look at a 
committee and see what bills are sitting in there? Is that 
accessible on congress.gov now?
    Mr. McCumber. Yes.
    The Chairman. It is? Okay.
    Mr. McCumber. Uh-huh.
    The Chairman. The other thing I wanted to ask about was 
about congress.gov, the--you know, just the--getting 
information up on, you know, bill text and amendments and that 
type of thing. There is a sense that there is some delay in 
that. I think we have all, at one point or another, looked up a 
bill where it says, you know, text isn't available yet.
    Can you just help us understand if there are things that 
our committee could propose that might smooth out that process 
or address any of those delays?
    Mr. Halpern. So I will take that one. And maybe it is 
helpful to understand what our existing service level goals are 
and where we really ran into some problems.
    The Chairman. Sure.
    Mr. Halpern. So, as I mentioned in my testimony, we--our 
goal is to turn around a legislative measure that we get within 
a week. There are what we call the hot lists both the House and 
the Senate provide, and they are usually driven by floor 
action, and they are saying these are the things we need 
overnight. So they get prioritized, and everything else is sort 
of first in, first out.
    During the pandemic, we were forced to have the number of 
people we had operating in the proof room to work through 
bills. Keep in mind the--bills are not the only thing the proof 
room does. We produce both the Federal Register and the 
Congressional Record, which is like producing The Washington 
Post and The New York Times every single day. And they are 
amazing folks, and they are able to pull rabbits out of the hat 
all the time.
    But we had two sort of--we had a couple of issues in 
intention. One was, first, making sure we were able to distance 
people enough in that room so that nobody was going to get 
infected. But the second was to preserve capacity so that, if 
we did have an infection, we could recover. So we had only half 
of our staff operating at any one time.
    At its peak, we had almost 1,800 bills sitting in the bill 
section to be proofread and composed and put online and 
printed. Shortly--that was in May of 2021. Shortly thereafter, 
we were able to bring our staff back, and we were able to clear 
that backlog in about 3 to 4 months.
    And, now, the volume varies week to week depending on the 
Congress--what is in session, and how much business and those 
kind of things, but most weeks, there is only--there are fewer 
than a hundred bills left in the bill end at the end of each 
week.
    Obviously, as I mentioned in my testimony, if you eliminate 
that proofreading step, then it is just a capacity issue for 
us. So what happens is, if we are pulling a file that is 
provided to us by the Clerk, that they are getting from Leg 
Counsel, if we no longer take that step of comparing it against 
the paper copy and we just--we take that XML file as gospel, 
then it is really just a question of our printing and 
production capacity. The electrons move pretty quickly.
    Any bill that is less than 200 pages, we print on basically 
large office copiers. That is the fastest way for us to do 
that. If it is more than 200 pages, because of the binding 
limitations, that has to go to our full-blown digital presses 
and the bindery.
    But, if you eliminate that proofreading step, that is going 
to speed that up to some extent. But, as I mentioned in my 
testimony, you are going to increase your error rate. We catch 
lots of things every time we look at a bill. You know, as good 
as Noah and his colleagues are, they make mistakes, and part of 
our value add is we catch those stylistic or numbering mistakes 
or things like that, but things are very easy to catch.
    The Chairman. So let me just ask pointedly, do you need 
anything from us? I am not asking the question to bang on you. 
I am asking because, if there are things that can help smooth 
the process or reduce delays, we would love to recommend it to 
support the work you do.
    Mr. Halpern. I appreciate that. Because we, to some extent, 
self-fund, we have been able to sort of be on that leading edge 
of technology.
    The Chairman. Good.
    Mr. Halpern. The couple of things that are challenges for 
GPO is my workforce is older than the average Federal employee. 
Half of my agency will be eligible to retire in the next 5 
years. So finding that next generation of folks to do the work 
is critical for us and really one of our chief things.
    But, as we sort of proceed through this, we have a good 
dialogue with both our authorizing committee and the 
appropriators to make sure that we have got resources.
    Ultimately Congress is our customer, and you all just need 
to tell us what you want, and we will figure out how to deliver 
it.
    The Chairman. So one lesson from this hearing, if you are 
an attorney or working in printing and watching on C-SPAN 8 
right now, come work for Congress.
    Mr. Halpern. If you are a journey person book binder, call 
us.
    The Chairman. Yeah, there we go.
    Mr. Halpern. We literally need dozens of them, so yes.
    The Chairman. Mr. Cleaver.
    Mr. Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The first question: Do you believe that we are the three 
most significant Members of Congress since you have been here 
33 years--the three of us?
    Mr. Halpern. You certainly rank up there.
    Mr. Cleaver. Yeah, thank you.
    I am in Congress in no small part because I was in a TV 
debate. My opponent--at one point, we were told to ask each 
other questions, and I asked her how a bill became a law. And 
she couldn't do it on television.
    But what I still think we need to do, even if we know that, 
a part of the orientation of new Members, at least when I was 
coming in 18 years ago, we had no contact with the 
infrastructure of our legislative body. I mean, zero.
    Has there ever been workshops with or a dialogue with 
incoming Members so they would understand the system? And, if 
not, is there a reason not? And, if you think there would be 
value in it, I am certainly interested in that.
    Mr. Wofsy. I can tell you that, at least for this new--for 
the 117th Congress, the Legislative Counsel, my boss and I, 
were invited to give a presentation at the New Member 
Orientation, which is run by the Committee on House 
Administration. So we were able to at least introduce the 
Members to the idea that there is an Office of the Legislative 
Counsel and that we are the bill drafting and the legislative 
drafting advice experts of the House.
    At that time, there is only a limit that we can do in terms 
of just giving a presentation, mostly just making sure that 
they knew we existed and that they should feel free to contact 
us, call us, let us know if there was anything that--if they 
had any questions about how we do things.
    One other thing that I will mention--I don't know if this 
is exactly on point--is that some of the leadership, sometimes, 
on one side of the aisle or the other, at the beginning of a 
Congress, will hold an open dialogue meeting for new staff and 
Member offices to come and meet Legislative Counsel. And I have 
presented at those things before, where--this is not for the 
Members, but it is for the staff, again, even before they have 
started their jobs, to let them know who we are and give them 
just a basic introduction that, you know, we are here, we are 
here to help, and that we are available to them.
    I think that there are certainly more things that could be 
done to kind of provide this kind of information early on. 
House Administration, when it puts together its New Member 
Orientation, I think that they would--I never presume to speak 
for anybody, let alone House Administration or in some ways my 
bosses, but I think that they would be very interested and 
eager to kind of talk about how we could expand those 
opportunities.
    Mr. Cleaver. Anybody else?
    Mr. Halpern. Do you----
    Mr. McCumber. I would just add that the Clerk's Office, 
during orientation, meets with the new Members on the floor, 
gives an overview of the Electronic Voting System, reviews some 
of the positions on the rostrum, and then, most recently, 
through the Congressional Staff Academy, I believe the last two 
Congresses, we have put on a course together in conjunction--in 
coordination with the Parliamentarian's Office for committee 
clerks for what they need or what we need from them and how we 
can assist them to do their jobs better.
    And then, just this year, we launched a clerk course 
through the Congressional Staff Academy where participation has 
been through the roof, actually, where it is a 90-minute 
session on everything the Clerk's Office does, what we can 
offer you, and really establishes those relationships. And we 
get great feedback from those for how we can improve along 
those lines.
    Mr. Halpern. Well, I was actually on the panel that 
immediately followed Noah and Wade at New Member Orientation, 
but I was there in my former staffer hat. Not a lot of folks 
know what GPO does, and we would love folks to come visit so we 
can show you what we do.
    We are actually the only large-scale manufacturer here in 
the District, and we realize we are a little bit off the beaten 
path being behind Union Station, but we would love the 
opportunity to tell folks how we fit into the system. And, if 
folks want to come visit, we are more than happy to host.
    Mr. Cleaver. All right. Thank you very much.
    Obviously, there is some contact with incoming Members and 
their staffs. But those can be enhanced. I mean, all right. 
Thank you.
    The Chairman. Vice Chair Timmons.
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I want to follow up on electronic voting. So when did we 
start using this in the current system?
    Mr. McCumber. 1973.
    Mr. Timmons. Has it been changed at all since then?
    Mr. McCumber. So updates, the display boards that you see 
were installed in 2000--updated in 2010. The summary displays 
on----
    Mr. Timmons. What did it look like before?
    Mr. McCumber. It was like--plexiglass isn't--I don't 
believe it was plexiglass, but, like, sliding----
    Mr. Halpern. It was a laminate in front of fluorescent 
bulbs.
    Mr. McCumber. And so, when there was a membership change 
and they had to redo the alphabet, they would be up there 
moving everybody down or up to accommodate it, but now it is 
all the digital display.
    Mr. Timmons. Okay. I mean, it would not be challenging, if 
there was the will, to create an app and use the app instead of 
this, and probably even be more secure. Yeah, face ID on your 
cell phone. I mean, I am sure that there is a lot of 
traditional people here, but it is 2022. So, I mean, talk about 
how challenging that would be, assuming there is the will?
    Mr. McCumber. I can't really speak to the technology 
aspects of it, but, certainly, if that is what the Congress 
would direct us to do, that is certainly something that we 
could do.
    The Chairman. Can I pull that thread real quick?
    I mean, so we just had a hearing on continuity of Congress, 
right.
    Mr. McCumber. Uh-huh.
    The Chairman. In a world in which the House was 
inaccessible, do we have a backup plan?
    Mr. McCumber. Yes.
    The Chairman. What is it?
    Mr. McCumber. There are several mobile EVS systems that are 
available and kept updated.
    The Chairman. Okay. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
    Mr. Timmons. My understanding is that Natural Resources is 
the only committee that uses electronic voting.
    Mr. McCumber. It is my understanding, yes, sir.
    Mr. Timmons. How challenging would it be for other 
committees to adopt electronic voting?
    Mr. Halpern. I can actually take some of that question, 
because I was here when that decision got made. So I believe 
the chair at the time was Rob Bishop from Utah, and I think 
there are commercial systems out there that they can--that 
could easily be implemented. At the time, both us in the 
Speaker's Office and the Clerk's Office were sort of unwilling 
to take responsibility for that particular system.
    I think the one key thing to keep in mind--and I--again, I 
have done a lot of things over my career. So, if you remember 
the voting mishap that occurred in 2007, one of my jobs was I 
wrote the report that sort of detailed what happened there.
    Well, one of the key things to keep in mind is the EVS is 
not connected to the internet, and that is one of the key 
security features that it has.
    That is not to say that, you know, the really smart people 
in the Clerk's Office and in the outside world couldn't figure 
out a secure way to connect it to a broader network. But when 
you bring down the walls, when that system is no longer as 
isolated as it is, that security is going to go down. Not to 
say that you couldn't figure out other measures to build up 
walls again, but one of the key defenses wouldn't be there.
    Mr. Timmons. So I think about time a lot, because we have 
limited time, and we are rarely here. When we are here, we are 
overwhelmed. But, you know, when we have a bunch of amendments 
in committee, and we are voting in committee for hours--I mean, 
it can be hours. That is just really inefficient, and it takes, 
I think, 2 or 3 minutes to call the whole roll and vote by 
voice. And I just feel like--save a lot of time.
    Mr. Halpern. I don't disagree. And so there are lots of 
countervailing issues here. One is sort of the collegiality 
requirement, making sure that the folks are in the room. And I 
realize, with the pandemic, the House adopted proxy voting, so 
that is sort of its own question.
    Mr. Timmons. And, technically, you are only making sure my 
card is in the room.
    Mr. Halpern. I am sorry?
    Mr. Timmons. You are technically only making sure my card 
is in the room. I don't do that, but it has been done before.
    Mr. Halpern. Good floor staff will make--do their best to 
try and make sure that the card is with the right person.
    Mr. Timmons. Sure.
    Mr. Halpern. But--so you have got to make sure that it is 
you who is casting that vote. You know, the Constitution 
doesn't invest that power in your legislative director or your 
chief of staff or anybody else. It is in you.
    I think there is probably some room for some innovation 
within committees to speed up that process. I have ran a large 
number of committees. Financial Services had a huge number of 
members, and--it was my boss at the time--I guess it was the 
early 2000s--Mike Oxley, who went to Denny Hastert to ask for 
the ability to roll votes in committee because, prior to that, 
you didn't even have that ability.
    So I totally get it. I think there are probably some 
opportunities for innovation there. The one thing that I would 
argue for, as somebody who believes that data is important, is 
whatever systems that committees adopt, they should be using 
the same data standards that the Clerk and GPO and Leg Counsel 
use so that, as the Modernization Committee suggested, we can 
build that database of committee votes and have that 
information be interoperable and utilize that data in the 
future.
    Mr. Timmons. Last question in regards to time. We made a 
recommendation last Congress that we should travel less and 
work more. People have proposed the 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off 
calendar. Would that create any challenges for you all to 
continue performing at the level that you are currently 
performing at?
    Mr. Wofsy. It is hard to say. I think that there was--there 
is a sort of assumption that, when the Members are away, when 
they are back in the District or wherever, that the staff have 
a lot--that things slow down and that the workload kind of 
decreases. What I have--it is very--this is one of those things 
in which it is so dependent upon the particular Member office. 
It is so dependent upon the particular areas of law that the 
Member is concerned with, because there are many staff who say, 
``Okay, the Members are gone, now we can actually get our work 
done.'' In other words: Now I don't have the Member, you know, 
coming up to me with brilliant new comments and brilliant new 
ideas to distract me from the work that I am doing to try to 
get this bill drafted with Legislative Counsel. So there are 
oftentimes when the Members are gone that some of us are even 
busier.
    So it is very hard to make a generalization about that, 
other than our concern is that, if that process will help us 
help you--in other words, if they are taking advantage of the 
time to research things and to answer the questions and to 
engage in the iterative process, then whatever helps that is 
fine with us.
    Mr. McCumber. Yeah, there would be no concerns on our end. 
No.
    Mr. Halpern. Likewise, if congressional work drops off, we 
have other work for our folks to be doing, so----
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Go ahead.
    Mr. Cleaver. For the first time since I have been here, the 
MRA was increased very recently, I think to the delight of at 
least the members of this select committee. I am wondering if 
we would be in a better position of coming to you for help in 
legislation if Members had what the Senators have, which is a 
general counsel. Almost every one of them--maybe all of them--I 
have never met one who didn't have--they have counsel on their 
staffs who then interacts with you.
    I know you probably don't want to get into responses to 
suggest that you are supporting an increase in MRA, but I am. 
So if you can answer the question based on you trying to talk 
me out of it.
    Mr. Halpern. Do you want to take that?
    Mr. Wofsy. Okay. Great. So our--the thing that I was--that 
I would say would be that anything that encourages good people 
to stick around and to continue to gain an even greater depth 
of knowledge of the legislative process and of particular areas 
of law that they want to focus on, that helps us because, when 
I started, it was not unusual for the staff of Member offices 
to stick around for 5, 10, 15 years, and even more so with 
committee staffs.
    I think--let's--I want to bring the committees into the 
discussion because committees are supposed to be the experts on 
particular subject matter areas of law. And, when I first 
started, the people who worked on the committees were--on 
either side of the aisle, were people who had been around 
forever. And I learned as much from them as they learned from 
me.
    And anything that will get good people to want to make, if 
not a whole career, at least want to devote themselves to a 
greater indepth knowledge of the legislative process and of how 
an idea becomes law, anything that does that from our 
perspective is terrifically helpful for our office, and I will 
just make the statement: it is good for Congress.
    When I mentioned earlier about the 20,000 lawyers in the 
executive branch and 500 in the entire legislative branch, it 
strengthens Congress as an institution to carry out its Article 
I duties if the people who work for Congress know what they are 
doing.
    Mr. Cleaver. Thank you.
    Mr. Halpern. So, again, putting on my former House staffer 
hat, I would totally associate myself with everything that Noah 
said.
    When I was coming up in the late 1980s, early 1990s, the 
way that you learned around here was really by doing, and I 
have learned because my portfolio of issues happened to 
coincide with the head of the Office of Legislative Counsel at 
the time, and that is how I learned to draft. That is how I 
learned to navigate through a legislative document.
    I don't know that there are necessarily the same kinds of 
opportunities, so having--just having the ability to hire 
somebody with a law degree doesn't necessarily guarantee you 
that same outcome. It is having somebody who is smart and has a 
good background, but also has the opportunities to learn with 
Noah and his colleagues, with Kevin and his colleagues, and our 
other folks in the Parliamentarian's Office who are also very, 
very key to all of this.
    I think having folks who are willing to do the work and 
actually learn the intricacies of this very, very complex 
system are really key to delivering for the Members that we all 
work for.
    Mr. Cleaver. I have done the commencement at two law 
schools, so I know law, and I think it would be difficult for 
anybody to come, whether it is a staffer or Members, who is not 
going to learn on the job. I don't think that is possible up 
here--haven't been here for a while. And so I do think that--I 
mean, you can get one of the best lawyers coming out of 
college, and they are going to come up here lost because it is 
going to take time.
    But I do think, you know, that it may reduce your workload, 
but it also gives a higher level of confidence in the Member 
that, you know, when I want something done, I have got somebody 
who can do it, and then work with the institutional staff. You 
know, I just--I think it would work much smoother.
    And I thank you for all three of you agreeing with me.
    The Chairman. All right. I want to thank our witnesses for 
their testimony today. And, importantly, going off script for a 
bit, I just want to thank the people who work with you and for 
you. This place functions because of them, so thank you for 
that.
    Mr. Halpern, I also want to thank you for working with our 
committee on our report from the 116th Congress, and we look 
forward to working with you on this Congress. You and your team 
brought some terrific innovation to that report, and I think we 
are better off for it.
    Mr. Wofsy, I hope that this hearing didn't convince you to 
rethink your career choice, so thank you for being here.
    I also want to thank our--the members of our committee for 
their participation, including those who were able to join 
online.
    I want to thank our staff once again for pulling together a 
terrific hearing with some terrific experts. So thank you to 
our team.
    And, to the stenographer, I am sorry that we talked so 
fast.
    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 for witnesses to respond as 
promptly as you are able.
    Without objection, all members will have 5 legislative days 
to submit extraneous materials to the chair for inclusion in 
the record.
    And, with that, this hearing is adjourned. Thanks, 
everybody.
    [Whereupon, at 11:38 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]