[Senate Hearing 117-818]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 117-818
         
 
           LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2023

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

                                HEARINGS

                                BEFORE A

                          SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

            COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                                   ON

                           H.R. 8237/S. 4720

AN ACT MAKING APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH FOR THE FISCAL 
         YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30, 2023, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES
                               __________

                        Architect of the Capitol
                      Congressional Budget Office
                    Government Accountability Office
                          Library of Congress
                 United States Senate Sergeant at Arms
                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
         
         
                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]         


       Available via the World Wide Web: https://www.govinfo.gov
                               __________
                               
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
46-668  PDF               WASHINGTON : 2024   

                               
                      COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

                    PATRICK LEAHY, Vermont, Chairman

PATTY MURRAY, Washington             RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama, Vice 
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California             Chairman
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois          MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky
JACK REED, Rhode Island              SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
JON TESTER, Montana                  LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire        LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon                 ROY BLUNT, Missouri
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware       JERRY MORAN, Kansas
BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii                 JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin             JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut      SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West 
JOE MANCHIN, III, West Virginia          Virginia
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland           JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico          CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi
                                     MIKE BRAUN, Indiana
                                     BILL HAGERTY, Tennessee
                                     MARCO RUBIO, Florida

                   Charles E. Kieffer, Staff Director
           Shannon Hutcherson Hines, Minority Staff Director

                                 ------                                

                 Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch

                   JACK REED, Rhode Island, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut      MIKE BRAUN, Indiana, Ranking 
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico              Member
PATRICK LEAHY, Vermont, (ex-         RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
    officio)                         MARCO RUBIO, Florida

                           Professional Staff

                             Jessica Berry
                             Hannah Chauvin

                     Margaret Pritchard (Minority)
                        Lucy Gardner (Minority)

                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                                hearings

                        Wednesday, May 11, 2022

                                                                   Page

Architect of the Capitol.........................................     1
    J. Brett Blanton, Architect of the Capitol:
        Prepared Statement of....................................    24
        Statement of.............................................    23

Congressional Budget Office......................................     1
    Dr. Phillip Swagel, Director, Congressional Budget Office:
        Prepared Statement of....................................     1

United States Senate Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper.............     1
    Karen Gibson, Sergeant At Arms and Doorkeeper of the Senate:
        Prepared Statement of....................................    12
        Statement of.............................................    10
Questions for the Record.........................................    41

                        Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Government Accountability Office.................................    43
    Gene Dodaro, U.S. Comptroller General, Government 
      Accountability Office:
        Prepared Statement of....................................    54
        Statement of.............................................    51

Librarian of Congress............................................    43
    Dr. Carla Hayden, Librarian Of Congress:
        Prepared Statement of....................................    47
        Statement of.............................................    46
                              ----------                              

                              back matter

List of Witnesses, Communications, and Prepared Statements.......    99

Nondepartmental Witnesses........................................    77

Subject Index:
    Architect of the Capitol.....................................   101
    Congressional Budget Office..................................   101
    Government Accountability Office.............................   101
    Library of Congress..........................................   101
    United States Senate Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper.........   101


 
                    LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2023

                              ----------                              


                        WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 2022

                                       U.S. Senate,
           Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations,
                                                    Washington, DC.

    The subcommittee met at 10:02 a.m., in room SD-192, Dirksen 
Senate Office Building, Hon. Jack Reed (Chairman) presiding.
    Present: Senators Reed and Braun.

 ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL, CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE, AND THE SENATE 
                            SERGEANT AT ARMS


                 opening statement of senator jack reed


    Senator Reed. Good morning. I will call the hearing to 
order.
    The subcommittee comes this morning to discuss the 2023 
budget for the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee.
    I look forward to continuing to work with Ranking Member 
Senator Braun and the Distinguished Members of the Subcommittee 
in crafting responsible funding legislation that supports the 
Legislative Branch.
    Today we have with us the Architect of the Capitol, Brett 
Blanton, and the Senate Sergeant at Arms, General Karen Gibson. 
I thank you for joining us here today to testify.
    The Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Phillip 
Swagel, was also scheduled to join us but cannot because he is 
in medical quarantine due to COVID-19. We wish him well and I 
ask unanimous consent that his written testimony be placed in 
the hearing record.
    [The statement follows:]
 Prepared Statement of Phillips Swagel, Director of the Congressional 
                             Budget Office

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    Senator Reed. Let me begin by thanking the women and men of 
your agencies that serve and protect the Capitol and Senate. 
Your agencies play key roles in ensuring that our physical 
space here on the Capitol Campus is safe - not just for Members 
of Congress and staff, but also the millions of visitors who 
are eagerly returning after 2 years as we reopen - and that our 
``virtual'' security--our cyber space and IT infrastructure - 
are also secure.
    During the COVID-19 pandemic, both the Senate and the House 
have continued to meet, which means many of your employees have 
had to show up in person for work. They have provided the 
Capitol Campus with enhanced cleaning, PPE, food services, and 
critical IT enhancements for remote work. And then the January 
6 attack on the Capitol happened, adding a whole new way in 
which we must think about and approach security while 
maintaining an ``open campus'' environment so that all people 
can visit and share this special place.
    We want to make sure the Senate Sergeant at Arms and the 
Architect of the Capitol have the tools needed to continue 
keeping us safe and to keep up with both known and emerging 
threats. But balancing openness with security needs is not 
cheap, and both of your 2023 budget requests clearly reflect 
that.
    The AOC's budget increase for security account alone is an 
eye-popping $637 million. I know this mainly reflects the need 
for adequate facilities and infrastructure support for the 
Capitol Police as they add more sworn officers, analysts, 
contracted security guards, and safety equipment; and the 
recommendations from the Physical Infrastructure Security 
Assessment of the Capitol Campus completed earlier this year.
    However, this subcommittee will want a full accounting of 
those projects and why we need them if we are to provide the 
funding.
    The Senate Sergeant at Arms seeks an increase of $4 
million, including 10 new staff, to support the physical 
security of Senators and staff in and around the Capitol as 
well as in their home States. This is understandable given that 
threats against members increased by a 107 percent last year.
    General Gibson, I want to know how the SAA is making sure 
Senators and their staff know how better to use the Protective 
Services you provide.
    This subcommittee has to make difficult decisions on 
funding, reforms, mission, and operational structure, and 
physical security messages that directly affect our agencies 
and the Capitol Campus.
    We want to make sure we find the right solutions. It will 
be up to us to provide you with the tools you need to implement 
those changes and hold you accountable for implementing them 
successfully.
    I'd also note that the U.S. Capitol was designed to a safe 
accessible place for Americans to come together to witness and 
participate in our democracy, but if officials continue to 
inflame the public with irresponsible rhetoric and outrageous 
and false conspiracy theories, then our country and taxpayers 
pay a steep price and some of that price tag is reflected in 
this elevated budget request.
    Clearly security enhancements are needed, but all the 
security personnel and equipment in the world won't be enough 
to defend our institutions--and our democracy - if this 
corrosive rhetoric continues and incorrect rhetoric continues.
    While we do not have a broader budget agreement yet for 
fiscal year 2023, we do know the legislative branch is not 
insulated from that debate. Hopefully we'll have a top line 
number soon from Chairman Leahy and Vice Chairman Shelby so we 
can consider and move bipartisan appropriations bill.
    And with that, I'd like to turn to my Ranking Member 
Senator Braun. Senator Braun, please.

                    STATEMENT OF SENATOR MIKE BRAUN

    Senator Braun. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. 
Blanton and General Gibson, for being here. I look forward to 
crafting something that's going to make sense.
    Your responsibility, Architect of the Capitol, is for the 
maintenance of the grounds and office buildings. The Sergeant 
at Arms is responsible for a full range of functions, from 
emergency preparedness to telecommunications.
    As members of the Capitol Police Board, you both play a 
significant role in the security decisions made around the 
campus.
    Congress provided $300 million last summer in the Security 
Supplemental for upgrades and we funded a number, a number, of 
priority security-related projects in the Omnibus bill.
    The supplemental funding was on top of substantial 
increases to the Legislative Branch agencies in fiscal year 
2022, a 12 percent boost over 2021.
    Of course, we know there were extra-normal circumstances, 
but this has to be taken in the context that our economy 
generally just grows one and a half to two and a half percent a 
year, and if you're not kind of in line with that, you're going 
to run into problems in the long run.
    Mr. Blanton, you're requesting a significant funding 
increase in fiscal 2023. As we consider these requests, it's 
important that we make wise investments tailored to the most 
likely threats.
    In addition to security, you're both responsible for daily 
maintenance and operations. For hundreds of years, the American 
people have had the ability to freely visit these buildings. 
I've been here a little over 3 years, and part of the beauty of 
being here not only as a Senator or Representative or 
especially the public is that ability to migrate freely and, of 
course, we won't go over the reasons why, but I think that 
everyone here that works here and especially the public that 
wants to visit it would appreciate that we get this thing back 
to normal.
    I sent a letter to Senator Schumer at the beginning of 
April urging him to do so. I was a strong supporter of Senator 
Haggerty's resolution to reopen the buildings, which the Senate 
passed unanimously in March.
    It's past time to fully reopen the Capitol to the way it 
was before COVID. COVID obviously was a hopefully once-in-a-
century challenge. We learned a lot about it. Most of America 
is moving in a way that we know we're going to have to live 
with it. We've learned a lot about it, and we should have never 
thrown caution to the wind in navigating through it, but we are 
where we are. So I think we need to move on.
    Majority Leader Schumer's insistence on keeping COVID 
restrictions in place has real consequences for staff in this 
building, and the Americans who would like to freely flow 
through it I think are wondering about it as well.
    Both of you are involved in reopening the Capitol, and I 
look forward to discussing in a way that has common sense to do 
so beyond where we are currently.
    Fiscal year 2023 requests for all Leg Branch agencies is 
over a billion dollars more than 2022. 20 percent increase, 
seven to eight times the increase in what our net economic 
growth is going to be. You look at the first quarter, we 
actually fell a little bit.
    I don't want to use statistics based on aberrations of the 
last 2 years, but in the long run, it needs to be more in line 
with what we can afford.
    As we look to fiscal year 2023, we must evaluate how these 
resources are going to be spent, and ideally it should be done 
in the process of a real budget consideration. I'm on the 
Budget Committee. It's kind of a useless appendage out here 
since we haven't used it in over 10 years. That is a head 
scratcher to most Americans because you couldn't get by without 
it.
    We ended up bumping spending through an Omnibus bill that 
took it up nearly six percent, and again that's about three 
times the growth of our economy.
    We don't do budgets anymore. We need to get back into that, 
especially for something as important as this. We've got to 
address these structural issues for the future of the country, 
for our kids and our grandkids. The system has got to work 
differently. This is just one small part of it.
    I look forward to working with Chairman Reed here to where 
we at least on what we do maybe set the example for the other 
areas of Appropriations and come up with something that makes 
sense for the American public. Thank you.
    Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Senator Braun.
    Now I will ask our witnesses to both offer their opening 
statements, approximately 5 minutes. Your written statements 
will be made part of the record.
    Let me begin with General Gibson.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL KAREN H. GIBSON, SERGEANT AT ARMS, 
            SENATE SERGEANT AT ARMS AND DOORKEEPER OF 
            THE SENATE
    General Gibson. Thank you.
    Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Braun, Members of the 
Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify in 
support of the Sergeant at Arms fiscal year 2023 budget 
request.
    I want to begin by thanking you for supporting our fiscal 
year 2022 request, to include the Business Continuity and 
Disaster Recovery Fund, whose resources will enable the 
Sergeant at Arms to respond to unanticipated business needs, 
whether supporting State Offices in the aftermath of a natural 
disaster or providing support in a communications degraded 
environment.
    I understand my fiduciary responsibilities to our taxpayers 
and remain committed to transparency in all expenditures.
    My team has made steady progress in strengthening our 
physical and cybersecurity posture, pressing forward to 
modernize systems, and enhancing our operational effectiveness 
and service support to the U.S. Senate.
    I am grateful for a strong working relationship with the 
U.S. Capitol Police, the Architect of the Capitol and his team, 
and with my counterparts in the House of Representatives.
    Allow me a moment to highlight just a few examples of the 
SAA's recent work:

  --Together with the Secretary of the Senate, we developed a 
        consolidated Senate Operations Center or SOC. In 
        coordination with the Capitol Police Command Center, 
        the SOC provides a single point of entry for 
        information, situational awareness, events tracking and 
        queries, and communicating with the Senate community.
  --We are working to further enhance the SOC, but their 
        situation tracking, community messaging and support to 
        Senate leadership and other decision-makers already 
        represents a vast improvement over past practices.

    In terms of network communications and cybersecurity, next 
month we will complete migration from a legacy data center to 
two modern data centers, providing two resilient and 
geographically separated centers to ensure the availability of 
Senate networks during the most disruptive potential events for 
years to come.
    We are also expanding and modernizing the services we 
provide the Senate community. We will open a Passport Office 
for Senators and staff in the Hart building in June and are 
already offering notary services at the Post Office in the 
Dirksen building.
    Printing, Graphics and Direct Mail, PGDM, is pioneering an 
online storefront that will enhance customers' ability to 
create, proofread and submit graphic print orders remotely. 
This new software will better enable order tracking, will give 
offices the ability to save frequently ordered items, and 
provide a modern look, feel, and functionality to printing, 
graphics, and direct mail consumers.
    These are but a few of the advances made possible by the 
resources you provided during fiscal year 2022. Thank you.
    For fiscal year 2023, we request $285 million, that's 
approximately 3.5 percent more than our request for fiscal year 
2022, and 992 positions to directly support Senators, their 
staff, and constituents.
    This request reflects an increase of $9.7 million and 35 
additional positions. We seek $5 million in no-year funding to 
upgrade audiovisual equipment in committee hearing rooms and 
$6.3 million to support recently authorized fellowship 
programs.
    Within the fiscal year 2023 budget, we request $4.8 million 
in new funding to strengthen IT continuity programs. These 
funds will enhance the Senate's contingency readiness through 
capabilities such as CMS, Crisis Management Suite kits that 
provide secure deployable communications in an emergency. The 
funds will enable us to purchase satellite phones for State 
offices, providing a reliable contingency communication 
platform in the event cellular communications are unavailable, 
as was the case last year for 11 State offices during the wake 
of Hurricane Ida.
    This budget will also enable our CIO, Chief Information 
Officer, and cybersecurity teams to modernize aging IT systems 
and remain steadfast in defending communication networks both 
at the Capitol Complex and in State offices against 
increasingly sophisticated and aggressive cyber adversaries.
    Of the 35 additional positions requested, 10 will support 
the Senate's Chief Information Officer, reinforcing the 
resiliency of IT systems, improving the quality of online 
applications and services that are developed for Senate users, 
completing the Unified Communications and Collaboration 
initiative, and expanding our capacity to respond to Help Desk 
requests and equipment needs.
    Ten positions directly respond to the growing number of 
threats that are communicated against the Capitol and against 
Senators themselves. These new hires will coordinate with the 
Capitol Police as well as local, State, and Federal law 
enforcement partners to improve our threat intelligence and 
information-sharing and to coordinate additional law 
enforcement support when needed for Senators in transit or in 
their home districts.
    The last 15 positions will provide operational support to 
the Senate community and the Sergeant at Arms' greatest 
resource, its people. These positions support the continued 
demand for the Employee Assistance Program which, thanks to 
your support, remains a free and confidential resource, 
promoting personal resiliency among Senate employees across the 
nation's time zones. Within our Office of Human Resources, 
requested funding will better position us to recruit and retain 
a talented, productive, and inclusive workforce. One position 
provides an additional proctor for the Page Program and another 
ensures our acquisition workforce and contracting officers 
achieve necessary training certifications.
    In sum, the additional FTEs will further strengthen our 
security, support much-needed modernization, and provide better 
support to the thousands of employees who sustain the Senate's 
functions.
    I will close by saying that the Sergeant at Arms has 
accomplished much in the past year but we are just getting 
started, particularly with multiyear modernization and security 
initiatives. I remain deeply impressed by the professionalism 
and commitment of the women and men I am honored to lead and am 
tremendously proud of their contributions. With your support, I 
look forward to sharing many more accomplishments in the year 
to come and stand ready to answer your questions.

    [The statement follows:]
               Prepared Statement of Hon. Karen H. Gibson
    The Office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms (SAA) respectfully 
requests $285,052,000 and 992 Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) in 
appropriations for fiscal year 2023. This is a 3.5 percent increase 
over the fiscal year 2022 proposed budget and an increase of 35 FTEs.
    In my second year as SAA, I am pleased to share with you how we 
have made steady progress in strengthening our operational readiness 
and our plans to further improve the safety and security of the Senate, 
as well as our work on new initiatives to increase support to Senate 
offices.
                           capitol operations
Senate Recording Studio (SRS)
    The fiscal year 2023 budget includes a request for $5,000,000 in 
no-year funding to enable the SAA to replace audiovisual equipment and 
systems in Senate Hearing Rooms at, or near, the end of its serviceable 
life. The Senate Recording Studio has a role in monitoring, maintaining 
and repairing the audio-visual systems in all hearing rooms across the 
Senate campus. The SRS plans to make targeted replacements of three to 
four systems per year as they age. The SAA is working towards several 
targeted replacements in fiscal year 2022 and fiscal year 2023, 
including systems in SH-216. At the same time, the SAA is working with 
the AOC on an ongoing program for the complete renovation of hearing 
rooms, starting with SD-342. This ongoing effort to renovate hearing 
rooms will continue in fiscal year 2023 and require a permanent budget 
base increase of $5,000,000 per year. To date, the SAA has completed a 
targeted replacement of broadcast cameras in SD-106 and the full 
renovation of the Commerce hearing room (SR-253), the Intel Hearing 
Room (SH-219), and the Senate SCIF (SVC 217).
    Our request also includes funding for ongoing support of Recording 
Studio services to Senators, and committees. During calendar year 2021, 
the Senate Recording Studio broadcast 1,167 hours of gavel-to- gavel 
coverage of Senate floor proceedings and recorded the proceedings for 
subsequent archiving. Since the first fully remote hearing on April 27, 
2020, the Senate Recording Studio has broadcast 919 remote or hybrid 
hearings enabling Senate committees to review bills, conduct oversight, 
issue reports, and hold hearings despite pandemic constraints. They 
also produced 700 television and 1200 radio productions enabling 
Senators working in DC to communicate with the constituents and news 
outlets at home. Further, the SRS provided broadcast and recording for 
the 2021 Presidential Inaugural Ceremony, three Lying in State/Lying in 
Honor ceremonies and, of course, January 6, 2021.
    Priorities for the SRS consist of the replacement of critical 
infrastructure within studio spaces including video switching, routing, 
and audio mixing systems installed in CY08 which is now near or in some 
cases past the end of its serviceable life. These replacements ensure 
the SRS provides exceptional support in each of its functional areas.
Appointment Desk
    Level funding is requested to support the network of Appointment 
Desks located on the first floor of the Capitol, in the basements of 
the Russell and Hart buildings, and in the Capitol VisitorCenter (CVC). 
During fiscal year 2019, the most recent non-pandemic year, the 
Appointment Desk processed approximately 205,000 visitors. Of these, 
more than 120,000 visitors were in the Capitol complex for official 
business or a meeting with a Senator or staff. The remaining 85,000 
visitors consisted of staff-led tours that were processed through the 
Russell Appointment Desk. In addition, nearly 30,000 international 
visitors relied on the CVC Appointment Desk for Senate Gallery Passes 
and information. Although the pandemic required a significant 
curtailment in operations beginning March 2020, required support will 
steadily increase in fiscal year 2022 and into fiscal year 2023 as the 
Senate returns to normal operations.
    During calendar year 2021 and into calendar year 2022, the 
Appointment Desk staff provided auxiliary staff support to the New 
Member Suites post-election and the Impeachment trial; reopened desks 
to Official Business Visitors; created templates for daily schedules of 
Official Business Visitors to share with USCP; created and implemented 
new policies to allow for limited staff-led tours including 
registration and scheduling; and developed a plan for the possibility 
of three additional appointment desks in the Senate Office Buildings.
    During fiscal year 2022 through fiscal year 2023, the Appointment 
Desk will train staff on use of the new software and efficiently assist 
Senate offices in registering and welcoming official business visitors.
                    chief information officer (cio)
Cybersecurity
    The CIO is requesting an additional two FTEs for the Cybersecurity 
department. The SAA proactively defends the Senate network daily 
against advanced cyber threats. The Cybersecurity Department has 
successfully mitigated critical events and ensured the security of the 
Senate due to the dedicated staff and sophisticated technologies 
deployed on the Senate network. To build on these successes, the CIO is 
requesting two FTEs to support the analysis process by analyzing open-
source, commercial and government threat intelligence data to assist 
with determining the extent of threats, identifying indicators of 
compromise, and drafting threat intelligence reports to make risk-based 
decisions.
    For fiscal year 2023, we will be focused on our five main lines of 
effort: Cybersecurity Resilience Assessment Methodology, Office 
Cybersecurity Resilience Assessment Methodology, Insider Threat, 
Awareness, and Cloud. The development of the Cybersecurity Resilience 
Assessment Methodology was completed, and we are now finalizing the 
testing of the standardized methodology to ensure it is effective and 
efficient. Next, advanced cybersecurity resiliency assessments for 
Senate offices and committees will be conducted, which includes 
coordinated penetration tests, vulnerability assessments, and advanced 
phishing assessments, among other actions. The CIO will concentrate on 
mitigating risk associated with the potential insider threat, through 
education and technical means. The CIO will mature the Cybersecurity 
awareness campaign in collaboration with other agencies. Finally, gaps 
in cyber and privacy security will be evaluated as it relates to cloud-
based services and other technologies.
Process Management & Innovation
    The CIO is requesting an additional $731,000 and three FTEs to 
execute our hybrid cloud strategy framework to provide access to modern 
and secure line-of-business applications and services In fiscal year 
2023, the CIO will build on and adopt software-as-a-service (SaaS) 
solutions to enhance office productivity, communications, and 
collaboration capabilities. The CIO will also expand investments in 
other cloud infrastructure, platform services, and associated 
automation, management, and monitoring tools to increase responsiveness 
to emerging business requirements, and to opportunistically move or 
build applications, websites, and services in the cloud.
    The SAA supports a lot of custom software development to meet the 
unique needs of the Senate. To support this effort, and to ensure a 
pipeline of talented staff, the CIO is requesting the three apprentice 
FTEs for the custom software development team. This team is responsible 
for creating some of the most impactful software applications such as 
Quill, Otis, eFinancial Disclosure, Calendar+ and Office Application 
Manager to name a few.
    In January 2022, the department released the latest enhancements to 
Quill, a web-based application for House and Senate member and 
committee offices to manage letter workflow, with over 90 percent of 
offices enrolled in Quill. Staff use Quill to create letters for their 
Senators to sign and invite other offices to co-sign. Since its 
release, over 1,700 letters have been authored with over 20,000 co-
signers' signatures applied in Quill. This application has modernized 
the process to so that letters can be finalized and sent to industry, 
legislators, leadership, and others in a fraction of the time and staff 
resources previously required to complete this process.
    This team is currently engaged in development of a Security Portal, 
where security-related alerts and information from dozens of sources 
are consolidated and made available to allow the SAA to inform Senators 
of security-related matters. Additionally, the team is developing 
applications for offices to request security-related assistance from 
the SAA. The applications replace paper and email-based processes to 
address security concerns regarding events, hearings, and incidents 
occurring across the Senate and state offices.
Technology and Communications Resiliency
    The CIO is requesting $4,783,000 for this department. The 
Technology and Communications Resiliency Directorate oversees the 
engineering, implementation, and operations for the Senate's IT 
Continuity and Disaster Recovery Programs. This includes management of 
the Senate's radio infrastructure, communications security (COMSEC), 
emergency communications, mobile command vehicles (MCVs), satellite 
communications, datacenter continuity, and support for National 
Security Special Events (NSSE). Over the past year, the BCDR team 
implemented functional testing for DoD Mobile Classified Capabilities 
(DMCCs), satellite phones, radios, and Wireless Priority Service/
Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (WPS/GETS) to improve 
the ability for users to communicate during a disruptive event. Future 
efforts will seek to enhance testing for new capabilities such as 
FirstNet which is a resilient cellular communication's capability.
    Within the fiscal year 2023 budget, the funding will allow for the 
enhancement of the Senate's IT and communication's enterprise, which 
includes the geographic disbursement of technical assets across the 
country to further develop our Continuity of Operations (COOP) and 
Continuity of Government (COG) posture. This also includes building 
more robust communication's capabilities, to include Cellular on Wheels 
(COW) and Crisis Management Suite (CMS) kits for secure communications. 
This funding request also includes the acquisition of satellite phones 
for Member offices, extending the Unified Communications and 
Collaboration (UCC) implementation to COOP sites, and implementing a 
wireless infrastructure to expand network connectivity at COOP 
locations.
Communication & Technology Innovation
    The CIO is requesting an additional $150,000 and one FTE in this 
department. This increase in funding is for expansion the digital 
signage within the Hart, Dirksen, and Russell office buildings. 
Currently the signage is available in seven locations, and we are 
planning to add this signage to 56 new locations over the next 5 years. 
The expanded digital signage system will display wayfinding information 
and emergency notifications, in addition to existing directory 
information and hearing schedules. Additionally, the new digital 
signage will connect to the Joint Emergency Mass Notification System 
(JEMNS), to enable another mechanism to ensure staff are informed 
during a disruptive event.
    The additional FTE is requested to lead technical editing and 
marketing efforts for the CIO. This will improve how the CIO 
communicates technical information to non-technical staff, as well as 
the CIO's overall marketing and communication to the Senate. These 
types of communications include policies, notices, the ``CIO Weekly 
Bulletin,'' and communications on all CIO projects and services.
Enterprise Applications
    The CIO is requesting $4,704,000 and two FTEs to provide enhanced 
support for existing systems and to expand technology modernization 
efforts. In fiscal year 2022, several new initiatives were started to 
modernize applications using modern cloud-based applications, such as 
ServiceNow for Help Desk services requests, Kronos for time and 
attendance, and Cornerstone for Human Resource recruiting, learning, 
and staff career management. These new applications require equipping 
current staff with new skills. The requested FTEs will provide the 
resources to rearchitect our approach, and train SAA CIO staff to 
support these modern cloud technologies. This technology will also 
increase features and functionality available to our users and reduce 
contractor support. The funding request includes additional funds to 
expand cloud-based applications used to provide essential services to 
internal SAA offices and other customers as well as enhancements to 
TranSAAct, Asset Manager, and the Technology Catalog.
Enterprise Operations
    The CIO is requesting $5,375,000 in this department. The SAA had 
traditionally operated two legacy data centers, which provide network 
connectivity and centralized IT support of the virtual environment for 
Senate data and applications. In 2020, we refined the data center 
modernization strategy to include a transition to two geographically 
separated and modern colocation facilities to enhance the resiliency of 
critical IT services delivered to the Senate.
    This funding request is to provide and operate the physical and 
virtual infrastructure that supports most applications and systems that 
run in the data centers. This includes funds for software licensing for 
on-premises virtual infrastructure and container platforms to 
accommodate planned growth, and also includes funds for consolidation 
of existing office applications, such as Constituent Services Systems 
into the enterprise. As such, there will be enterprise capacity 
expansion required to support these systems that were previously 
distributed among resources in the offices. These funds will also be 
used for the new enterprise storage and backup systems and reflects the 
transition from traditional capital investment to annual costs for 
deployed capacity. Finally, this funding provides for the operational 
costs for cloud Infrastructure contracts in support of the hybrid cloud 
strategy. All these efforts directly contribute to ensuring that all 
Senate IT services will be resilient and available when needed.
    Lastly, in fiscal year 2023, the migration to the new Unified 
Communications and Collaboration (UCC) system, which will replace the 
existing telephone system will be completed. This will create a mobile, 
collaborative, secure, and unified environment that is easy to use and 
intuitive for the end-user. The SAA, along with a leading UCC 
integrator, designed a system that supports communication and 
collaboration anytime, anywhere, and on any connected device. This 
includes voice messaging, voice-to-text transcription, video 
integration, conferencing, common directory, Contact Center, mass 
notification, and enhanced 9-1-1 connectivity. The UCC implementation 
focuses on five key priorities: security and privacy, systems 
integration, collaboration, mobility, and user interface and self-
service. Because the legacy telephony system must remain operational 
throughout the migration process, fiscal year 2023 costs include 
licensing, support, and maintenance for both the new UCC components and 
the legacy components.
Technology Governance & Budget
    The CIO is requesting $550,000 and two FTEs. The funding increase 
supports year four of a five-year plan to ensure adequate funds are 
available to support the Senate IT needs through the Economic 
Allocation Fund (EAF). EAF supports the acquisition of hardware and 
software for the DC and state offices. The additional two FTEs will 
include project management support for the newly developed Project 
Management Office, to enhance project management services for the CIO, 
and to better support large scale projects for the Senate. The other 
FTE will be used to develop policy, procedures, and technical 
documentation for the Senate.
                executive office acquisitions department
    An increase of one FTE is requested for a Senior Procurement and 
Contracting Specialist in Acquisitions. This additional position will 
manage procurement activities for the Senate and will prepare long-
range acquisition plans, develop solicitations, manage source 
selections and evaluate proposals for award and develop Independent 
Government Cost Estimates, competitive range determinations, source 
selection decision memoranda, limited competition justifications, and 
other supporting documentation. This new position is critical to the 
development of quality and timely procurements planned by the 
Acquisition Division to support the Senate.
    During calendar year 2022, the SAA restarted an online training 
program to ensure that SAA employees who function as Contracting 
Officer Representatives are trained and supported in their work. 
Dedicated training has also been extended, and will be added to annual 
performance objectives for SAA staff who do technical evaluations of 
contracts.
                   employee assistance program (eap)
    An increase of $103,000 and four FTEs is requested in fiscal year 
2023 for EAP, which offers a variety of emotional, behavioral, and 
work-related support as well as wellness resources and services to 
Senate staff, their family members, Senate Pages, and interns. The 
Senate EAP's mission bolsters resiliency, helps ensure psychological 
readiness, and attends to the overall employee and organizational 
wellness.
    In calendar year 2021, the EAP met the increased demand for 
services as a result of both the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the need 
for overarching trauma response by hiring two EAP full-time (FT) 
counselors, providing telehealth and onsite support services, 
delivering customized trainings to requesting Senate offices, extending 
the contract of a contract counselor, and creating an innovative, 
interactive website through which Senate staff can access information 
and contact the EAP more effectively. During this time, more than 68 
percent of Senate staff accessed EAP services across 94 percent of 
Senate offices. This is nearly a 30 percent increase in programmatic 
utilization from 2020. Additionally, 324 employees took an online 
mental health screening; 3,875 employees attended an EAP training 
activity; and 1,711 employees accessed resources for personalized 
information and referrals addressing childcare, parenting, adult care, 
aging, education, legal concerns, and/or financial issues.
    For fiscal year 2023, we are requesting additional resources to 
meet the continued increase in demand for EAP services. We are looking 
to hire two additional counselors whose schedules are able to 
accommodate increased demands for services across the country. These 
counselors would provide confidential emotional and behavioral support 
services for Senate employees and their immediate family members 
through a HIPAA compliant virtual platform. We have also identified a 
need for a full-time administrative specialist to assist with 
scheduling, program coordination, contract management, and referrals. 
The primary mission for this position is to alleviate the 
administrative duties from counseling staff. Finally, EAP has seen an 
increased demand for wellness services such as the popular Weight 
Watchers program, meditation programs, and the maintenance of the EAP 
website which contains on demand wellness and mind care resources.
    The intent of these EAP requests is to minimize barriers to care 
and meet the needs of the Senate community by enabling employees to 
access services in a multitude of ways.
                            executive office
    An increase of two FTEs is requested to support the Executive 
Office's focus on messaging to the Senate community. We need to hire a 
technical writer to assist with internal and external communications. 
In 2021, the SAA began weekly bulletins to all offices and committees 
highlighting information for the coming week: demonstrations, 
announcements, door schedules, food service, training classes. A 
quarterly newsletter called The Chamber also debuted in 2021, and 
allows the SAA to highlight innovations, new offerings, and provide 
information to the community regularly. We also created a weekly CIO 
round up of technical announcements. We are gratified at the positive 
response to these publications. For fiscal year 2023, our goal is to 
work to ensure that SAA policies and procedures speak in one voice, and 
are updated regularly. We also publish a monthly newsletter called The 
Source for SAA employees and this, along with quarterly town hall 
meetings, is our mechanism to announce new policies, highlight the 
excellent work done by SAA teams, and inform our large workforce. We 
also need to hire an Executive Assistant for the Executive Office to 
help coordinate our work, our deliverables, and to assist with 
scheduling and with the many projects in progress within the Executive 
Office.
                    human resources (hr) department
    The increase of seven FTEs is needed to support the additional 
staff we have added to the SAA's roster in recent years. Among the 
requests are a Deputy Director, Diversity Officer, two Human Resource 
Administrators who will work to train and support SAA managers, and to 
train and support newly hired SAA staff. We need to hire a Wounded 
Warrior Fellowship Administrator, and we need two HR Technicians to 
support HR's focus on modernization.
    During fiscal year 2021, the Senate Placement Office received 1,038 
requests for recruitment assistance from Senate offices and processed 
43,441 resumes from applicants seeking Senate employment. This 
represents a three-fold increase in resume traffic from the preceding 
fiscal year. A similar increase in hiring needs across the SAA led to 
the purchase of a Talent Acquisition System which should be implemented 
this summer. This will change the way offices post job openings, and 
will allow application packets to be viewed online instead of in 
printed packets. Interviews can be scheduled through the Talent 
Acquisition System and onboarding of new staff is also handled through 
the same system. Human Resources hired a new Placement Office Manager 
and transitioned SAA recruitment under the Placement Office umbrella. 
The Human Resources team implemented the SAA's new hiring policy which 
gives hiring managers 100 days from a staff member's departure to the 
onboarding of the replacement. This has decreased the length of time it 
takes to fill vacant positions.
    As soon as the Talent Acquisition Program is operational, Human 
Resources will begin implementing a new Performance Management system 
across the SAA, and will be implementing a complementary compensation 
management and succession planning system as well. This effort will 
require dedicated and sustained support from our Human Resources team.
    The SAA also requests $6,277,000 for the McCain-Mansfield 
Fellowship Program and the SFC Sean Cooley and SPC Christopher Horton 
Congressional Gold Star Family Fellowship Program for the Senate, 
established by S.Res. 442 and 443, respectively. Conversations continue 
with the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of 
Representatives for the joint operation of the programs.
    The additional FTEs requested for fiscal year 2023 will support the 
SAA's endeavors to ensure a productive, fair, and equitable workforce 
throughout the SAA, and will allow us to meet our responsibilities in 
the administration of the new Fellowship Programs.
                              page program
    We request one additional FTE to provide additional supervision of 
Senate Pages. The Senate Page Program provides an opportunity for high 
school juniors from across the nation to witness the legislative 
process firsthand while learning the value of public service. In 
September 2021, the program welcomed pages back to the Senate after an 
18-month suspension due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Page Program 
developed a robust pandemic management plan requiring routine testing, 
masking, and other precautions, which resulted in few pages testing 
positive for COVID-19. Page Program staff provided comfort care and 
meals for those pages who became positive. The Page Program provides 
supervision of Pages 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Proctors have 
expanded responsibilities and hours of work due to COVID-19 management 
and increased support of Pages. This FTE will allow us to provide an 
additional proctor for increased supervision.
    In addition, Webster Hall is preparing to undergo extensive 
renovations that will cause the Page Program to need to relocate both 
the residence and the classrooms for about a year. The Architect of the 
Capitol is working on a facilities plan, to include the costs of this 
relocation of the program.
    office of security, emergency preparedness & continuity (osepc)
Senate Operations Center (SOC)
    We request $716,000 and one additional FTE to support the SOC which 
serves as the information and situational awareness hub for the entire 
Senate community. The focus of the SOC serves to relay information on 
mission-critical Senate and Capitol complex activities, daily security-
related events, drills and exercises, messaging, information sharing, 
and coordination. The SOC works with other Congressional and NCR 
operations centers to gather and share information, develop a common 
operating picture, and provide decision support to the Sergeant at Arms 
and Senate leadership. The SOC acts as the clearinghouse for 
information during emergencies, ensuring critical information is 
coordinated and shared with stakeholders and staff.
    Additionally, the SOC develops situation reports and briefing 
materials related to ongoing emergency events. The daily, non-emergency 
mission of the SOC is to maintain visibility on daily events, provide 
facilities operating status, and share routine information on 
activities affecting the Senate and Capitol complex as well as the NCR 
and Senate state offices.
Emergency Preparedness (EP)
    Emergency Preparedness requests one additional FTE to support the 
creation of emergency action plans, to support and train Office 
Emergency Coordinators, plan emergency exercises, and develop new and 
updated training classes. The mission of the SAA's Emergency 
Preparedness team is to educate, train, and exercise emergency plans 
and procedures to ensure Senators and staff are equipped with the 
necessary knowledge, skills, and tools to prepare for, respond to, and 
recover from a variety of emergencies.
    We updated over 200 Emergency Action Plans in calendar year 2021. 
These plans provide information such as detailed evacuation routes, 
elevator locations for the mobility-impaired, and office-specific 
procedures for evacuation, shelter in place, relocation/internal 
relocation, and escape hood use. Emergency quick cards are available 
for staff to attach to their badges. For the remainder of fiscal year 
2022 and fiscal year 2023, we will streamline the Emergency Action Plan 
process by moving it to an online application. We will also digitize 
the emergency quick cards so staff can access them via their Senate 
devices.
    We assisted 26 Senate offices and committees complete their 
Continuity of Operations (COOP) plans, strengthening the Senate's 
ability to continue performing its essential functions during and after 
disruptive events. We also remained focused on working with offices on 
their pandemic response, answering questions and tracking office 
staffing levels throughout the pandemic.
    In the past year, approximately 1,700 Senate staff attended virtual 
or self-paced EP training. New to our virtual training portfolio is the 
self-paced Escape Hood and EP training. For fiscal year 2022 and fiscal 
year 2023, we plan to create virtual self-paced trainings on Active 
Shooter, Office Emergency Coordinator responsibilities, Personal 
Preparedness, and mini life-safety protective actions videos. This 
Congress, we have conducted large scale life-safety training exercises 
evacuation due to an internal threat (fire), and evacuation due to an 
external threat (airspace intrusion).
    Staff in the Senate Child Care Center, Webster Hall, and the Postal 
Square building participated in a Shelter in Place exercise simulating 
an active shooter by following their procedures listed within the 
Emergency Action Plan for this event. We also conducted training in the 
Senate Chamber to review and reinforce the execution of our Chamber 
Protective Actions. The exercise covered Chamber procedures during an 
external threat, an internal threat (shelter in place), evacuation, and 
relocation to the CVC Briefing Center.
    For fiscal year 2022, we will offer Chamber Protective Actions 
training to Senators and key Senate staff such as Staff Directors and 
Legislative Directors who spend a great deal of time on the Senate 
Floor. This 15-minute training will educate key personnel within the 
Chamber of the life-safety procedures, emergency equipment locations, 
and when and how to use the emergency equipment.
    In 2022, a new individual accountability tool will be implemented, 
replacing the current Remote Check-In application. This will allow 
every Senate staff member to account for their whereabouts during an 
emergency. The tool we will be using sends emails and text messages 
that staff can simply reply to in order to let their office know that 
they are either away from campus, or safe on campus, or enroute to the 
office gathering places.
Security, Planning & Police Coordination (SPPC)
    We request one additional FTE to coordinate law enforcement support 
for the Senate community. Our efforts during calendar year 2021 
included coordinating 1,076 Senate campus access requests including 
security coverage for 634 committee hearings and 83 Senate-specific 
security support requests, such as security sweeps and security 
modifications of office space. Further, SPPC partnered with USCP to 
support 24 residential security assessments for Senators. This team 
also conducts Security Awareness Briefings for Senate offices.
    Real-time situational awareness is maintained through the Command 
Center Duty Representative stationed in the USCP Command Center. We 
maintain a presence in the Command Center whenever the Senate is in 
session, and during normal business hours during recess periods. The 
SPPC monitored approximately 791 security events through this program 
in 2021.
Risk & Threat Management
    We request three additional FTE to support an expected increase in 
Senator-specific requests throughout fiscal year 2023 similar to the 
significant increase in personal security requests observed in fiscal 
year 2021 following the events of January 6. These additional personnel 
are needed to increase engagement with law enforcement and the 
intelligence community and obtain information needed to make 
operational decisions, as well as support additional core functions 
such as Law Enforcement Coordination for Senate events held throughout 
the country, as well as an open-source threat monitoring. These FTEs 
will participate in offsite taskforce meetings and assignments focusing 
on trends regarding domestic and international incidents, as well as 
threat information related to Senators, their families and the US 
Capitol complex.
    SAA collaborates with USCP and other law enforcement agencies to 
ensure appropriate notification and communication with specifically 
targeted Senators and staff while continuously monitoring, evaluating, 
and conducting vulnerability, risk, and threat assessments to determine 
and apply suitable security measures and protective operations 
coverage. In 2020 and 2021, we tracked, monitored, and updated Senators 
and staff on almost 600 active criminal threat cases compared to only 
154 in 2019, a 400 percent increase. In 2021, we discovered over 505 
comments of concern, which were referred to USCP, resulting in more 
than 134 criminal threat violations.
Member Outreach & Security Coordination (MOSC)
    Of the three FTEs requested for Risk & Threat Management, one FTE 
will provide increased security support to Senators and staff in the 
District of Columbia (DC) and state offices. Support includes security 
assessments and law enforcement coordination for public and private 
events; law enforcement notifications for identified rest overnight 
locations; escort coordination at airports, train stations, and other 
mass transit locations; enhanced residence patrols; overseas travel 
assessments and coordination; tools for off-campus safety and reporting 
procedures; SAA security training initiatives; and overall security 
posture enhancements.
    MOSC engaged in active outreach and discussions regarding active 
threats and criminal cases directed at Senators and staff, as well as 
weekly reinforcement messages to Chiefs of Staff, Administrative 
Managers, State Directors, Chief Clerks, and Schedulers regarding 
campus safety initiatives. Additionally, MOSC participates in security 
awareness briefings for Senate office staff alongside USCP 
counterparts.
    Each effort is undertaken by MOSC to ensure Senators and their 
staff receive the necessary guidance, tools, and support when planning 
and attending national public events. We provide offices with a final 
product highlighting the overall threat level, specific areas of 
concern, and local law enforcement contact information. Through this 
extensive outreach initiative, MOSC has completed approximately 300 law 
enforcement coordination and assessment requests, 813 law enforcement 
escort and travel notification requests, and 25 rest overnight 
notifications and enhanced patrols during the first half of fiscal year 
2022. The total number of travel escort support jumped from 200 
requests in 2020, to over 1,600 in 2021. This represents an 800 percent 
increase, and we are on track to exceed those total requests in fiscal 
year 2023. The SAA will benefit from an additional specialist by 
ensuring Senators' fluid schedules and security requests are handled in 
a timely manner, beyond core business hours.
State Office Operations
    We request $470,000 and three FTEs to support a proposed expansion 
of the Federal Protective Service Protective Security Officer (FPS PSO) 
program. This expansion will extend federally contracted security 
guards to select commercial state offices. The proposed FPS PSO 
expansion will provide on-demand, event, or threat-based security to 
select commercial state offices. This support would be available with a 
48 to 72-hour response time for offices that are pre-enrolled in the 
program (enrollment requires landlord approval, staff training, and 
confirmation of FPS PSO availability to support in the requested 
market). Our request supports a minimum of one-third of commercial 
offices for a 2-week period every year.
    In addition, we request funds to reimburse FPS for conducting 
facility security assessments (FSAs) at commercial facilities housing 
state offices across the country. This proposed assessment program will 
identify potential security risks in commercial facilities, allowing 
the SAA to mitigate them through the installation of customized 
countermeasures or the removal of unsuitable offices from the SAA 
portfolio. This request covers one-third of existing commercial spaces 
and facilities, with the plan to repeat the request annually and 
complete all initial reviews by calendar year 2026. After the initial 
reviews, security assessments will occur for each new commercial space 
and facility or if the Senator maintains the space over a period of one 
term (6 years).
    We appreciate the Committee's support in fiscal year 2021 to 
adequately fund the state office rent program, reimbursement to the 
General Services Administration (GSA) for Federal occupancy agreements, 
and standard increases in FPS security costs for Senate offices housed 
in Federal buildings. The SAA works closely with commercial landlords, 
the GSA, and the FPS to ensure Senator's operational and security 
preparedness needs are met in their state offices. As of February 
2022,we supported 458 state offices for rental payments; renovations; 
installation, maintenance, and monitoring of physical security 
measures; and emergency supplies and security preparedness planning and 
training.
    In calendar year 2021, the SAA completed 99 unique state office 
projects coordinating construction, security, furniture, equipment, and 
delivery of IT services. This higher-than-average workload was the 
result of considerable backlog related to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions 
throughout the country. We are again anticipating a high number of 
projects, as we move into an election year and support numerous 
transitions. Our success in managing the State Office Operations 
portfolio hinges on our close and collaborative working relationship 
with Senate staff, commercial landlords, and our Federal partners.
    We remain committed to ensuring the safety of Senators and staff, 
and leaning forward to provide customized security systems, monitoring 
services, and enhanced office security construction designs to state 
offices without affecting Senate office budgets. Currently, over 98 
percent of state offices have adopted some level of SAA-recommended and 
funded security enhancements.
    In calendar year 2021, we provided initial physical security 
enhancements for 11 state offices and enhanced existing security for 18 
others. Maintaining state office security systems in good working order 
is a priority, and to support this effort our team conducted over 593 
service calls to address issues, conduct inspections, and recommend 
improvements in state offices.
    We believe that EP training and familiarity with security equipment 
equates to higher levels of compliance and readiness. In calendar year 
2021, the State Office Operations team offered twice-monthly emergency 
preparedness webinars and worked closely with USCP on state office 
SABs, offering both onsite and virtual options due to ongoing COVID-19 
related travel restrictions. Our team also introduced two new training 
classes: Security and Emergency Preparedness Review and Unwanted 
Activity in State Offices. Since the deployment of these new courses, 
431 Senate state staff have participated in training and detailed 
security reviews. This represents a greater than 300 percent increase 
in attendance over the last calendar year. Our focus on state office 
readiness remains a high priority as we move into fiscal year 2023.
    In addition, we remain focused on assisting state offices 
contending with the operational impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 
calendar year 2021, State Office Operations worked closely with state 
offices around the country, ensuring they had the resources needed to 
continue operations and serve their constituents. Since the pandemic 
began, our team has coordinated 189 enhanced cleanings of state offices 
(many as a result of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 exposures). We 
focused on efforts to make facilities safer by helping offices assess 
floor plans to better plan for staggered staffing. We funded and 
coordinated furniture relocation and the procurement and placement of 
133 plexiglass partitions to support social distancing. State Office 
Operations reorganized its existing supply program to include an 
expanded inventory of COVID-19 supplies in partnership with the AOC. To 
date, we have provided nearly 162,000 face coverings and distributed 
thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer, as well as sanitizing wipes, 
disinfectant spray, and nitrile gloves to state offices. Most recently, 
our team led efforts to distribute over 4,000 COVID-19 rapid home test 
kits to state office staff. Our State Office Supply Program will 
continue in calendar year 2022.
Access Control and Transportation--ID Access
    We request one additional FTE to allow us to hire an identification 
specialist. The Senate ID Office issued 17,600 new and updated 
Congressional and Press identification badges to 14,700 customers in 
fiscal year 2021, including Senate staff, support personnel, and 
credentialed media. We anticipate our fiscal year 2022 volume to 
increase in support of greater security measures at the Capitol complex 
and state offices. The ID office is working to support various 
capabilities, as outlined in the Homeland Security Presidential 
Directive (HSPD) 12, including digital signatures in fiscal year 2022.
    The SAA has started the evaluation process for upgrading badge 
production software to replace end of life system. Smartcards used for 
digital signatures in the Senate financial management system have been 
offered to all Senate offices, committees, and support offices. We are 
actively researching additional uses for Smartcards, such as point of 
entry, email encryption and two-factor secure remote network access in 
fiscal year 2022.
Access Control and Transportation--Parking Operations
    The SAA purchased new permit printers and tablets to enhance onsite 
customer service in fiscal year 2021. In fiscal year 2022 and fiscal 
year 2023, we will purchase additional handheld devices and the 
necessary software for these devices to instantly identify vehicles by 
scanning permit barcodes or license plates, capturing photos, 
documenting, and printing parking violations and any other associated 
issues.
Access Control and Transportation--Fleet Operations
    The SAA operates the Senate Daily Shuttle service, and provides the 
Senate with emergency transportation and logistics support. The SAA 
fleet includes trucks, vans, buses, SUVs, electric vehicles, 
handicapped-accessible vehicles, and Segways. Due to COVID-related 
reductions, the SAA Shuttle Service resumed in September of 2021, 
transporting more than 1,800 passengers through December 2021. Levels 
are expected to increase as Senators and staff are vaccinated and 
return onsite. In addition to staff regularly sanitizing vehicles, the 
SAA has procured anti-bacterial air filters for passenger buses. Fleet 
Operations plans to exchange several obsolete vehicles for leased 
vehicles saving funds for the Senate.
                           support operations
Printing, Graphics & Direct Mail
    While we are not requesting additional funds this year for 
Printing, Graphics and Direct Mail (PGDM), this department plays a role 
in constituent mail and newsletters, printing Floor Charts, document 
digitization and preservation, logistics, and secure offsite transfer 
of Senate material.
    PGDM is focused on providing services to Senate offices that 
enhance the customer experience and respond to customer needs. They 
will roll out an innovative Storefront in the summer of 2022 that 
enhances the customer experience of ordering services from PGDM, and 
streamlines back in processing, saving time, money, and supplies.
    One of our most successful pandemic innovations is digitization of 
incoming constituent mail and 81 Senate offices are using this service. 
For the next iteration, PGDM has begun to research indexing technology 
that will allow staff to use keywords to search for digital mail 
quickly. The other successful pandemic innovation remote flag 
processing. PGDM continues to innovate this process and is working with 
stakeholders in the Secretary of the Senate, the House of 
Representatives, and the Architect of the Capitol to streamline the 
process of ordering, flying and shipping flags. As of March 2022, 87 
offices have participated in remote flag processing.
    In fiscal year 2021 and fiscal year 2022, PGDM implemented a 
digital inkjet press, allowing for personalized designs, while lowering 
the cost of materials and reducing setup time. This new technology has 
drastically improved productivity while accommodating the demand for 
smaller, more frequent print requests.
    PGDM recently implemented a heat press that will generate 
professional quality products such as table coverings to provide Senate 
offices with better visibility at Town Hall meetings and other events. 
Since February 2022, six Senate offices have requested custom printed 
table coverings. PGDM anticipates requests for this service to increase 
in fiscal year 2023, as the heat press portfolio of services is 
gradually built out in response to the needs of the Senate community.
Senate Post Office
    Level funding is requested to support the Senate Post Office. The 
Senate Post Office staff screens and delivers mail and packages to more 
than 180 locations within the Capitol complex, while providing a 
messenger service to multiple locations throughout the Washington 
metropolitan area. In fiscal year 2021,the Post Office safely processed 
and delivered more than 7.1 million incoming mail items, while 
intercepting 19 suspicious mailings that required an immediate response 
by the USCP. We prevented delivery of an additional 1,569 mailings 
bearing characteristics with the intent to disrupt Senate business and 
requiring further scrutiny by USCP.
    During the pandemic, we established a free forwarding service for 
state offices. Working in conjunction with the United States Postal 
Service, this free forwarding service has assisted with the safety of 
staff during the pandemic and enabled Senate staff to quickly obtain 
constituent mail and promptly respond. The Senate Post Office sorts 
mail for 81 Senate and Committee offices and delivers this to PGDM to 
be digitally imaged and returned to the office electronically.
    With support of the Secretary of the Senate, and approval from the 
Senate Rules Committee, the Senate Post Office will begin accepting 
passport applications in the summer of 2022. The Senate Post Office has 
been approved, by the State Department, to be an official Passport 
Issuance Office through their Special Issuance Passport Program (SIPP). 
We will soon be able to offer official travel and tourism passport 
services for Senate members, staff, and their immediate families. 
Beginning this month, the Senate Post Office offers notary services to 
the Senate community, augmenting services provided by the Disbursing 
Office.
Facilities Management
    Level funding is requested for the Facilities Management services 
to provide oversight of facility projects throughout the Capitol 
Complex and offsite facilities. During fiscal year 2021 and fiscal year 
2022, the Facilities Management team conducted a workplace study for 
SAA staff and contractors. The goal remains to more efficiently use the 
amount of space provided within the Senate office buildings and 
accurately gather requirements for additional space, as the lease of 
the Postal Square building nears its end. The study collected data of 
all SAA employees and onsite contractors, as well as Secretary of the 
Senate (SECSEN) staff located at Postal Square. This encompassed 
surveying 14 buildings and collecting work statuses for over 900 
individuals. Recommendations were provided to classify some spaces as 
shared, either in a hot or hoteling configuration, and reassign other 
spaces, to best utilize all allocated space. Facilities Management 
looks to finalize a space reservation system, to provide staff with the 
ability to reserve space within areas that best suit their requirements 
when onsite. The requirements for leased space are being reviewed and 
the group looks to work with the AOC and GSA to identify locations that 
would accommodate onsite staffing levels.
Photographic Services
    Level funding is requested in fiscal year 2023 to provide photo-
imaging services for Senate offices and committees. The SAA 
Photographic Services team manages and maintains a unified digital 
photo browser application that provides Senate offices a secure, 
accessible archive of all photos accumulated during a Senator's term in 
office. Currently, the photo browser contains more than 1.4 million 
photo image files. Having surveyed Senate offices, Photographic 
Services has begun the procurement of a new photo browser, which will 
be more modern and customer friendly. This will give the Senate 
community access to a unified repository of photographs with the 
ability to order a preexisting or uploaded image. In fiscal year 2021, 
our staff covered 1,864 assignments, photographing nearly 54,000 
images, producing more than 18,000 photo prints, and coordinated 
scanning for end of term archiving of more than 84,000 photo images for 
Senators leaving office. We are providing the same level of service in 
fiscal year 2021 with consistent funding.
Joint Office of Training & Development
    Level funding is requested for The Joint Office of Training & 
Development. The Joint Office of Training & Development provides 
training, coaching, and professional development to Senate staff. 
During fiscal year 2021, Training & Development was able to provide 
remote training classes while continuing to offer development 
instructions to individual Senate offices. The office provided 270 
online classes and facilitated 173 conversations, one-on-one coaching, 
and consultations. The office interacted with 4,332 Senate staff 
through these services. In fiscal year 2023, the office will design and 
implement additional online resources for training through the new 
Cornerstone software suite of tools, which will allow Senate staff to 
optimize efficiencies across departments working on performance, 
learning, compensation, and succession. Once the initial training is 
complete, the office will focus on providing multimodal learning tools 
that enhance staff productivity within the learning-portal of the new 
Cornerstone software suite.
    The mandated Health Promotion section provides activities and 
events for the Senate community that promote healthy living. Each year, 
this section coordinates and hosts the two-day Wellness Fair, which 
supports on average 3,000 participants. The fair offers health 
promotion activities, such as screening for glucose, cholesterol, and 
blood pressure; exercise demonstrations; and seminars on topics 
including healthy eating and cancer prevention.
    Although the pandemic restrictions forced the Senate Wellness Fair 
to be cancelled in fiscal year 2021, we are investigating options to 
expand online wellness to Senate staff in fiscal year 2022, while also 
providing access to onsite wellness resources and activities.
    Health Promotion coordination with the American College of Surgeons 
(ACS) and the Stop the Bleed Coalition provides vital bleeding control 
training for DC Senate staff. ACS cancelled the in-person training in 
2021 and will look to offer a virtual training for Senate staff in 
fiscal year 2022, and a planned return to in-person training in fiscal 
year 2023.
                               conclusion
    Thank you for your support of the SAA and for the opportunity to 
discuss the SAA's fiscal year 2023 budget request. This budget remains 
focused on my three primary lines of effort--hardening the Senate's 
physical and cyber security, developing innovative solutions to 
modernize the Senate, and strengthening our support to the operational 
needs of the Senate community. With this strategy driven budget, we are 
prepared to proactively plan for future events.

STATEMENT OF J. BRETT BLANTON, ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL
    Mr. Blanton. Thank you, Chairman Reed, Ranking Member 
Braun, and Members of the Subcommittee.
    I do thank you for your support for our fiscal year 2022 
budget, as well, and the opportunity to testify today.
    In particular, I appreciate the leadership and long hours 
by the two lead staffers for the subcommittee, Majority Clerk 
Jessica Berry and her counterpart Margaret Wiles.
    During these last 2 years, we have faced unprecedented 
challenges. Every day I'm struck by the commitment and talent 
of our hard-working employees. Day and night, rain or shine, 
AOC employees are serving Congress and maintaining the 
treasured buildings and grounds around the Capitol Complex.
    AOC's budget request seeks support for critical measures to 
ensure the safety of Members of Congress, staff, and visitors 
across campus. United in our shared mission and goal, we are 
constantly coordinating with Chief Thomas Major and the Capitol 
Police to keep the campus safe.
    As a member of the Capitol Police Board, I am grateful for 
the strong collaboration with my partner here General Karen 
Gibson as well as General William Walker on the House. 
Together, we are aligning resources to reflect our shared 
priorities.
    While some security challenges are more visible than 
others, we are working continuously on physical security 
improvements. At the same time, the AOC also seeks resources to 
continue rapidly responding to unplanned critical security 
events.
    In the area of cybersecurity, the AOC needs continued 
support to safeguard our networks and utility systems from 
malicious threats. The AOC's budget also reflects essential 
life safety projects to protect everyone who works and visits 
here.
    There are areas of our aging infrastructure that are 
hundreds of years old. One critical area is the very serious 
and pressing need to address utility tunnel repairs. 
Deteriorating concrete and high-pressure steam piping 
components need immediate repair to reduce the risk of tunnel 
failure. These repairs are urgent for life safety, to avoid 
interruptions of electrical, water, steam, and communications 
services across the Capitol for an extended period of time.
    As this Committee knows, delayed funding has consequences. 
We must take immediate steps to address deferred maintenance 
and infrastructure repairs across the Capitol Campus.
    In addition, we are requesting resources to train and 
prepare AOC staff to respond to emergency situations, including 
natural disasters, and other life safety emergency events.
    While security and infrastructure improvements are a top 
priority, I also remain focused on transformative change within 
AOC. We need to cultivate and maintain a safe and positive and 
productive work environment where people have the necessary 
skills, training, equipment, and support to succeed.
    AOC employees are constantly working across the campus to 
maintain these treasured buildings and grounds. This strong 
work ethic reflects the cultural transformation happening 
across our agency during these tough times.
    We are working constantly to reconcile the cost of historic 
preservation with the pressing modern demands. Across the 
agency, our team of exceptional professionals is working 
tirelessly to upgrade our capabilities and facilities.
    To achieve our mission, we need adequate resources to meet 
the technological, space, sustainability, and accessibility 
needs of a 21st Century workforce.
    With the Committee's support, we can ensure the success of 
Congress, the Supreme Court, and the library of Congress.
    Looking ahead, I remain optimistic and determined that we 
will carry out the legacy of perseverance and patriotism that 
these historic buildings and grounds inspire of all who visit 
here.
    On behalf of the Architect of the Capitol staff, I thank 
you for your support and look forward to answering your 
questions.
    [The statement follows:]
                 Prepared Statement of J. Brett Blanton
    Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and members of the 
Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to present the Architect of 
the Capitol's (AOC) fiscal year 2023 budget request of $1.67 billion.
    Crowned by the magnificent Dome, the U.S. Capitol is the center of 
the Capitol campus, as well as a widely recognized icon of the American 
people and their government. The building's origins go back to our 
nation's early years. Pierre Charles L'Enfant designed the city of 
Washington with the U.S. Capitol Building at the center, and President 
George Washington approved the building's original design in 1793.
    As the nation has grown so has the U.S. Capitol: today it covers 
more than 1.5 million square feet, with over 600 rooms and miles of 
corridors. It has been burnt, rebuilt, extended and restored. Today, 
the AOC is committed to preserving L'Enfant's legacy and to ensuring 
that the U.S. Capitol endures as one of the most architecturally 
impressive and symbolically important buildings in the world.
    As this Subcommittee knows, the AOC is working constantly behind 
the scenes to support the day-to-day operations of Congress, the 
Supreme Court and the Library of Congress. Carrying on traditions of 
unique craftsmanship and ingenuity, the AOC is responsible for the 
operations and care of more than 18.4 million square feet of 
facilities, 570 acres of grounds and thousands of works of art. There 
are 30,000 people working across campus every day, and more than 2,200 
AOC employees work around the clock, serving in diverse roles to 
maintain and preserve the buildings and grounds.
    Working together, the AOC team is committed to providing a safe and 
inspiring experience for visitors as well as those who work here. The 
AOC's daily success relies upon the exceptional professionalism and 
hard work of our staff.
    I would like to extend my appreciation for the Subcommittee's work 
to achieve the bicameral, bipartisan Consolidated Appropriations Act of 
2022. The Subcommittee's support for the AOC's work is truly 
appreciated, and I commend the efforts of the Legislative Branch 
Subcommittee Members and staff for their ongoing support of the AOC's 
work and goals.
    As we move forward from the incredible challenges over the last 2 
years, I would like to work with the Subcommittee to identify areas 
where multi-year funding will enable us to be more efficient and 
effective in the planning, design and execution of ongoing 
improvements. Otherwise, we may face vulnerabilities associated with 
the deterioration and deferred maintenance of these historic buildings 
and treasured grounds. As I have testified previously, delayed funding 
has consequences.
    This budget proposal reflects changing programs and resource needs. 
The AOC's funding request seeks resources for campuswide architectural 
and engineering design; project, property and construction management; 
planning and development for buildings and major projects across the 
Capitol campus; procurement, including major construction contracts; 
congressional move designs; information technology; financial 
management; legal services; and management of historic preservation and 
sustainability programs.
    AOC employees need to have and maintain the necessary skills and 
equipment to achieve our mission on behalf of the American people. 
Moreover, we are seeking support for efforts focused on our employees' 
well-being and professional development. In addition, we are requesting 
resources for new strategic initiatives like AOC University, an effort 
to expand training and professional development opportunities for 
staff.
    To achieve our shared goals, we need this Subcommittee's support to 
maintain a positive, productive and safe environment for AOC employees 
as well as all who work and visit here. Across the board, the AOC is 
focused on recruiting and retaining critical staff to accomplish this 
important work and, accordingly, our fiscal year 2023 budget request 
includes necessary funding to maintain a sufficient workforce.
    We need to work together to adopt a long-term and comprehensive 
approach for planning, design and completion of major projects. 
Finally, this request reflects agencywide efforts to transform the 
Capitol campus by implementing a more predictive and effective approach 
to facilities maintenance.
               i. prioritizing physical security projects
    As this Subcommittee knows, physical security across the Capitol 
campus is a top priority. In close and continuous coordination with my 
counterparts at the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) and the House and Senate 
Sergeants at Arms, I am working tirelessly to make the Capitol campus 
as safe and open as possible.
    The AOC's fiscal year 2023 budget request demonstrates an emphasis 
on security needs throughout the Capitol campus and, accordingly, these 
prioritized projects constitute a significant portion of our budget 
request, reflecting the urgent and significant recommendations of the 
comprehensive physical security assessment completed by the AOC on 
behalf of the Capitol Police Board. Working with this Subcommittee, as 
well as my partners on the Capitol Police Board, we must address the 
top priorities arising from this assessment.
    While some projects can be executed swiftly, the complexity of 
others demand greater planning, consultation and design.
    To that end, the AOC is requesting proportionate funds to support 
and complement the USCP's increased operations and allow for full 
implementation of programs to address pressing security needs. This 
budget demonstrates the interdependence of the AOC and USCP security 
improvement projects.
    For example, the AOC seeks funding to improve direct communication 
lines with USCP related to incident management, security responses and 
coordination. In addition, the AOC is seeking funding to support 
emergency response, security and resilience requirements of the AOC's 
life, health and safety responsibilities to the Capitol Police Board. 
In addition, the requested funds provide necessary support for exigent 
requirements and special events that arise unexpectedly. At the same 
time, the AOC is requesting resources to provide rapid response support 
to unplanned critical security events as well as rapidly deployable 
security elements.
    In addition, the AOC is requesting resources to address a finding 
by the AOC's Inspector General regarding Emergency Management Training. 
With this requested funding, the AOC will be able to train and prepare 
AOC staff to respond to emergency situations, including natural 
disasters or other life safety emergency events. The budget request 
also reflects the AOC's ongoing efforts to improve cybersecurity and to 
protect our networks from any intrusion by malicious threats. The AOC 
maintains continuous 24/7 monitoring to detect and respond to any cyber 
incidents.
    Finally, this request reflects the AOC's increased responsibility 
to acquire and maintain pandemic response materials.
    We know our work is essential for the safety of Members and the 
staff working on the Capitol campus, and we are dedicated to ensuring 
continuity of operations. With the Subcommittee's full support, the AOC 
can fulfill its responsibilities to support our partners. With adequate 
resources, we can keep the campus safe and secure.
    ii. tackling aging infrastructure with technological approaches
    I am continuing efforts to bring transformative change across 
campus by deploying modern tools to tackle the challenges of aging 
facilities and infrastructure. Over the past 2 years, the pandemic has 
affected costs of all major projects in the form of supply chain 
shortages, raw material cost increases and increases in competition for 
skilled labor.
    The AOC's capital budget request is focused on projects with 
immediate urgency. Project funding will support the lifespan of the 
facilities as well as address critical needs ranging from preserving 
priceless artwork to replacing roofs, installing emergency generators 
and improving campus security. The AOC's priority projects reflect 
identified needs. These are well-documented areas where the period of 
useful life has already been exhausted or is approaching its end.
    Looking ahead, we are working on solutions that will improve 
predictability of maintenance needs and create efficiencies to save 
taxpayer dollars. With this approach, the AOC can mitigate future costs 
associated with deferred maintenance requirements.
    With the Subcommittee's support, the AOC is already launching a new 
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system that will provide a thorough 
asset management strategy to inform work priorities and provide for 
data-driven fiscal decisions and prioritization. Specifically, EAM will 
serve as a new tool to aid decisionmaking about operating, maintaining, 
and renewing building and infrastructure assets such as machinery, 
vehicles and construction equipment. With sufficient resources for 
ongoing implementation, EAM will allow the AOC to manage maintenance-
based strategies proactively, mitigate obsolescence, restore 
reliability, reduce long-term costs and forecast resource requirements.
    EAM will also maximize return on investment while enhancing 
decisionmaking priorities. I am committed to implementing a 
disciplined, consistent approach to annual inspections and anticipating 
key infrastructure lifecycles.
    Every day we work to preserve our historic and aging infrastructure 
for the benefit of future generations. At the same time, we are working 
tirelessly to upgrade our capabilities and facilities to meet the 
technological, space, sustainability and accessibility needs of a 21st-
century workforce, some of whom are working in 19th-century buildings.
             iii. supporting safety standards and solutions
    The safety of everyone on the Capitol campus is a top priority. The 
budget request reflects prioritization of projects based on imminent 
needs. Life and safety issues, as well as components that are beyond 
their service life, are high on the list. The AOC manages safety, fire, 
environmental, code compliance and facility safety programs across the 
Capitol campus. We serve as the main point of contact for external 
regulatory agencies for occupational safety and health, fire 
protection, accessibility, and environmental matters. The AOC budget 
also includes the Office of Attending Physician as a service offering 
medical surveillance and support of health units on campus.
    The AOC's fiscal year 2023 budget request includes funding for 
several life and safety related projects. Fire alarm and sprinkler 
system upgrades in the U.S. Capitol and other critical areas around the 
Capitol campus will address code deficiencies, reduce the risk of 
system failure, and improve facility safety for building occupants.
    For example, we have requested funds to replace key fire alarm 
components in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Similarly, we have 
requested funds to upgrade the fire alarm system in the Library of 
Congress' James Madison Memorial Building and the sprinkler systems in 
the John Adams Building.
    Another critical area is the very serious and pressing need to 
address utility tunnel repairs. Within the utility tunnels, 
deteriorating concrete and piping components need immediate repair to 
reduce the risk of tunnel failure. These repairs are urgent to avoid 
interruptions of electrical, water, steam and communications services 
to the Capitol campus for an extended period.
    In this area and others, we continue to dedicate time and attention 
to training, safety procedure review and communications, and 
supervision of our workforce to ensure they are operating in the safest 
manner possible across the entire campus. A critical component of this 
effort is ensuring that all staff have access to the proper personal 
protective equipment (PPE). PPE used by AOC employees is as diverse as 
the jobs they perform. From hard hats to insulated tools, PPE helps 
keep employees safe. Most commonly, AOC employees rely on safety 
glasses, safety shoes and hard hats. But there are many not-so-common 
items that our employees depend on to keep them safe. Our arborists 
need specialized gear compliant for safe arboricultural operations, 
including fall-resistant harnesses and safety helmets. AOC painters 
wear full face respirators, gloves, head socks and lab coats to protect 
lungs, eyes and skin as well as bump caps to protect their heads when 
working in tight spaces or near ceilings. At times, these expert 
professionals must also wear light-adjusting, ballistic-proof safety 
glasses to protect against paint and UV light that provides support for 
employees like stone masons, sheet metal mechanics and painters who 
switch between indoor and outdoor work.
    In addition, AOC electricians must wear 100 percent cotton uniforms 
to prevent melting of fibers in the event of an arc flash. Metal 
buttons, grommets or zippers must be avoided to circumvent shock 
hazards, and employees must work with insulated tools such as 
screwdrivers, ratchets, pliers and electrical hazard rated safety boots 
and leather gloves to avoid workplace injuries due to shock, 
electrocution or other hazards. When working around high voltage, AOC 
employees must wear ear plugs, safety glasses and special suits.
    All of these efforts, as well as extensive monitoring and reporting 
on medical surveillance, demonstrate the AOC's deep commitment to safe 
standards and environments for all employees and visitors.
                   iv. senate priorities and programs
    Working with the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules & Administration, 
the AOC is beginning a multi-year program to renovate hearing and 
committee meeting rooms in the Senate office buildings. As part of this 
collaborative process, the AOC will develop a comprehensive schedule 
for the hearing and committee room renovation program. Each hearing 
room renovation will require approximately 1 year to complete, with a 
plan to renovate two hearing rooms under construction at one time. With 
this endeavor, the AOC will strive for the greatest efficiencies 
beneficial to the entire Senate community.
    After substantial time is allowed for consultation, planning and 
design, this renovation program will achieve important infrastructure 
upgrades; install advanced lighting, audiovisual and HVAC systems; 
enlarge the daises to support current committee sizes; and address 
accessibility as well as current fire and life safety codes.
    The program will also prioritize historic preservation, updating 
the rooms' carpeting, furniture and finishes while ensuring that the 
rooms remain true to their original architectural intent. This 
important and long-term effort will benefit from the AOC's new Building 
Official program, a group of dedicated experts ensuring stakeholders 
follow the same set of established building codes and consistent 
processes for permitting.
    I am also well-aware of stakeholders' concerns to address the 
limited capacity of the existing Senate Employees' Child Care Center 
(SECCC), especially at the infant and toddler levels.
    A congressionally directed study, completed in April 2021, 
presented alternatives that would increase the capacity of the SECCC at 
alternate locations. Working with this Subcommittee and the U.S. Senate 
Committee on Rules & Administration, the AOC is exploring cost 
estimates for the potential scope of work. Throughout this planning 
process, the AOC will continue to work closely with this Subcommittee 
on planning, pre-design activities, timelines and cost estimates.
    Concurrently, at the Subcommittee's request, the AOC will provide 
support and technical expertise for a report on an additional Senate 
office building. To achieve the goals of this effort, the AOC is 
already seeking input from this Subcommittee as well as the U.S. Senate 
Committee on Rules & Administration on the space requirements. A 
critical element of the planning process will be an updated space needs 
assessment to develop program requirements for the new facility. While 
there seems to be a strong consensus about the need for space, the 
planning process will provide clarification about the specific types of 
spaces required as well as inform the necessary design process.
    Since substantial time has passed since a new building was 
completed on campus, the design and construction of any new facility on 
the Capitol campus would be a major project spanning a multi-year 
period. At the same time, necessary and planned improvements to 
existing Senate office buildings would still need to take place.
    Accessibility also remains a significant priority, with 
accessibility considerations incorporated into every project. This 
Subcommittee's support enabled the installation of an accessible lift 
on the Senate floor last year. As another example, part of the U.S. 
Botanic Garden Conservatory Security Upgrade Project will include the 
installation of automatic door openers to improve accessibility.
    The Senate Office Buildings jurisdiction recently completed the 
second sequence of the Russell Exterior Envelope Repair and Restoration 
Project. This multi-phase project is designed to preserve the exterior 
envelope of the historic Russell Senate Office Building, including its 
exterior stone, wood windows and glazed doors. The second sequence of 
the project focused on the south and east sides of the building, with 
the area directly facing the U.S. Capitol finishing shortly before the 
2021 Presidential Inauguration. The AOC's work will restore the 
stonework and window restoration on the final sequence of the project, 
which includes the west side of the building and the Rotunda area.
    In addition, the ongoing Russell Courtyard renovation will address 
several accessibility issues so that everyone in the Senate community 
can enjoy this renewed green space. The full renovation of the Russell 
Courtyard will be completed and fully opened this year. While providing 
a refreshing and accessible outdoor area for senators, staff and 
visitors, this project is also integral to the AOC's commitment to 
preserving historic stonework across the Capitol campus.
    The AOC is working hard to provide modern and functional office 
space to offices across campus. For example, the Hart Senate Office 
Building provides offices for 50 Senate offices, three committees and 
several subcommittees. All Member suites received modular walls and 
furniture between 2003 and 2008, and Senate committees received modular 
walls and furniture between 2007 and 2011. As part of our effort to 
renovate aging furniture and improve workspaces, the AOC plans to 
replace modular furniture in 50 Member offices and 15 committee spaces 
over a 16-year period.
    The AOC is continuing efforts related to the Mountain and Clouds 
sculpture by Alexander Calder in the Hart Building. Mountains and 
Clouds was the last work of Calder (and his only work with a separate 
mobile and stabile). It was originally designed as a mountain-shaped 
floor installation and four oscillating clouds suspended from a single 
shaft from the Hart Building roof.
    The AOC has completed the parameters study to establish safety 
standards for possible fabrication and installation of a new Clouds 
portion of the sculpture. Presently, the Calder Foundation is 
developing an official proposal for the re-creation of the Clouds 
mobile that will be sent to the Senate Commission on Art for 
acceptance. If approved, the AOC will help facilitate the installation 
of the Clouds mobile, provide engineering information and act as a 
building consultant.
    While private funds will be used for the fabrication and 
installation of any new mobile, the AOC will require adequate resources 
to support the design, fabrication, establishment of engineering 
parameters and oversight of installation.
    In the fiscal year 2023 budget request, the AOC requested 
substantial funding to address the 26 air handling units (AHUs) in the 
Hart Building. In December 2012, a design was completed for replacement 
of the AHUs. Unfortunately, funds provided in fiscal year 2020 for the 
project's first year had to be allocated to emergency contingency 
expenses. Presently, the AOC is conducting a redesign to update 
previous drawings, provide further refurbishment details and phasing, 
mitigate risks, and provide an updated Independent Government Cost 
Estimate for the project.
    In doing so, the AOC is seeking a cost-effective solution for this 
identified need. Refurbished AHUs will have the same expected life span 
of 20-30 years at approximately a third of the cost of replacement. 
Refurbishment will also have less impact on the Senate community, along 
with a shorter construction duration.
    As a further initiative to improve services to the Senate 
community, the Senate restaurant master plan study will set forth a 
plan for a food service program which will transform current eating 
spaces into a dining experience representative of the history, heritage 
and prestige of the Senate. The study will also recommend facility 
modernization concepts that will increase operating efficiencies, 
improve the business model, and provide more convenient service for 
customers through the implementation of technological advancements, 
including online ordering and remote pick-up.
    There are nine food service operations in the Senate office 
buildings and on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol Building. The 
Senate kitchen and dining areas cover approximately 36,500 square feet 
of space. The AOC is requesting $8.1 million in the fiscal year 2023 
budget for the first phase of restaurant modernization, which includes 
the design of all food service outlets in the Senate office buildings.
    In a companion request, the Capitol Building jurisdiction is also 
requesting $40.2 million in the fiscal year 2023 budget for 
modernization of Senate food service outlets in the U.S. Capitol 
Building. Funding will cover the redesign and construction of all food 
service outlets in the U.S. Capitol Building.
    Throughout the U.S. Capitol, the AOC seeks to maintain compliance 
with fire and life safety codes, to avoid potential hazards to building 
occupants as well as the building's historic art and architecture. 
Kitchen equipment, fixtures and interior finishes have reached the end 
of their lifespan, requiring constant maintenance. This project will 
combine the food service venues on both levels into a consolidated, 
efficient food service venue on the basement level, with the ground-
floor kitchen exclusively supporting the Senate Dining Room. New 
equipment, fixtures and finishes will support popular menu offerings, 
allow for new offerings and increase service efficiency.
    Increased labor is necessary to effectively address the needs of 
outdated kitchen infrastructure. For instance, the existing exhaust 
system jeopardizes the safety of building occupants, the U.S. Capitol's 
priceless art and architecture, and the efficiency and quality of food 
service on the Capitol campus.
    The AOC is also working with partners at the Senate Recording 
Studio to upgrade the rooms' audiovisual equipment since the current 
equipment is not designed for multimedia presentations or video 
conferencing.
           v. sustaining our commitment to future generations
    We are doing all that we can to adopt best practices to reduce the 
environmental impact of Senate operations. Across campus, the AOC is 
focused on sustainability and energy conservation efforts that 
prioritize resource conservation. In fact, over the last 15 years, the 
AOC has reduced its energy intensity levels by 50 percent, reducing 
energy requirements and ultimately saving taxpayer dollars. Through its 
practices, the AOC sequestered 700,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, saved 
nearly 8 million gallons of water, and saved over 250,000 kilowatt-
hours of energy on an annual basis.
    The AOC's Senate team is pursuing certification with the Green 
Restaurants Association. This process will demonstrate our ongoing 
efforts to ``green'' our operations by using transparent, science-based 
standards. Working with the food-service contractors, the Senate 
restaurants will be even more environmentally sustainable in energy, 
water, waste, food, chemicals and disposables.
    The agency has also coordinated with its food service providers to 
reduce plastic waste with a wide range of approaches. We have reviewed 
every aspect of the service to find ways to improve our practices. In 
the Senate, the use of Styrofoam has been eliminated completely. In 
addition, we have adopted compostable straws and eliminated the use of 
single-use plastic straws. There is also greater use of wax paper 
instead of plastic, and we have transitioned certain beverages from the 
product line to large cans instead of plastic bottles. A similar effort 
was made to ensure that milk could be available in bulk containers.
    As another way to encourage individual practices around consumption 
and waste, the Senate has continued its modest discount program for 
anyone that brings their own container for coffee. In addition, we have 
eliminated use of portion-controlled products (i.e., ketchup packets) 
and replaced offerings with condiment wells wherever possible.
    At the same time, the AOC continues to improve recycling programs, 
not only for personal use inside facilities but also on construction 
sites. For example, the AOC diverted 10,000 tons of construction and 
demolition debris from the landfill, recycling 98 percent of all 
construction debris generated. We also continue to implement 
sustainable groundskeeping practices such as reducing water demand by 
capturing runoff and using native plants and perennials.
    In the Senate office buildings, the AOC has proposed a formal study 
of waste and recycling operations by conducting a multi-phase pilot 
with interested senators and committees. The pilot will collect waste, 
recycling data and client feedback. With this information, we can make 
informed decisions about effective recycling bin configurations, waste 
collection tools and options for post-consumer compost collection.
    Throughout the Senate office buildings, the AOC seeks to improve 
the waste and recycling program by increasing recycling rates; creating 
consistent waste and recycling bin standards; promoting awareness on 
waste separation; improving AOC collection efficiency; and decreasing 
clutter and tripping hazards of excess bins in workspaces.
    This project also aligns AOC operations with industry best 
practices by instituting centralized collection bin placement of all 
waste and recycling material. In doing so, the AOC will evaluate and 
analyze the impact of centralized collection bins on recycling. We will 
also examine behaviors by measuring recycling rates before and after 
implementation. To implement the most effective solutions, the AOC will 
gather participant feedback specific to recycling collection to 
understand occupants' experiences of different collection 
configurations and to assess feasibility of centralized collection in 
office and committee spaces. In addition, the AOC will engage with 
recycling champions to identify gaps in recycling program 
communications as well as the most effective methods to disseminate 
information.
    Beyond this initiative, the AOC will evaluate resource requirements 
for post-consumer composting collection in offices and dining spaces. 
As directed by this Subcommittee in 2021, the AOC is developing a 
formal study to assess the feasibility of restarting post-consumer 
composting in the Senate buildings, which was terminated previously. 
The study includes a multi-phase pilot program and third-party 
analysis, culminating in a report of recommendations, anticipated 
resource requirements and prospective benefits to the Senate. The AOC 
will evaluate the resources and authorities required to add post-
consumer composting to the current waste management program in both 
public spaces and private offices in the Senate buildings. We will also 
analyze the benefits of key aspects of the larger waste management 
program, including collection methods, labor allocation and resource 
use.
    For example, the pilot program will contrast baseline waste 
management processes with several small-scale pilot phases to assess 
real-world impacts of four specific variables: bin location 
configurations, waste collection procedures, post-consumer composting 
collection in designated pilot offices and post-consumer composting 
collection in dining spaces. Baseline and piloted processes will be 
evaluated through several qualitative and quantitative methods, 
including waste sampling, surveys, and measurement of resource 
allocations for waste collection and transport.
    Subsequently, third-party analysis will validate baseline and pilot 
data; observe and analyze procedural changes; and recommend options to 
improve waste management efficiency and restart a post-consumer 
composting program in the Senate buildings. The AOC expects to begin 
the pilot program soon.
    The AOC is also pioneering new practices at the U.S. Botanic Garden 
(USBG), a treasured public institution. With the Subcommittee's 
support, we seek to continue the USBG's Urban Agriculture Program, 
which provides educational resources, training for veterans, capacity 
building programs with other public gardens, and educator professional 
development programming. In a short period, this program achieved 
demonstrated success to support communities facing food access 
challenges.
    In addition, the USBG is requesting funding to complete the design 
phase of the Production Facility Renewal Project. With resources for 
substantial renovation and renewal of this critical support facility, 
the USBG can continue to achieve key goals related to horticulture, 
operations and maintenance, education and outreach, and sustainability.
    Looking to the future, the AOC will begin work on an updated 
Capitol Complex Master Plan, which will serve as a foundational 
document for master planning over the next 20 years. With the 
Subcommittee's support, the AOC will be able to engage in necessary 
planning for the future. This report will set forth a robust vision for 
tomorrow's generations.
               vi. pandemic procurement and preparedness
    While all of us look forward to better and healthier days ahead, 
the COVID-19 pandemic is still impacting our operations and projects. 
As the Congress labors day and night, AOC employees are working nonstop 
to keep the entire campus clean, sanitized and well maintained. From 
day one of this pandemic, the AOC team has worked very closely with the 
Office of Attending Physician. The AOC was designated as the 
legislative branch purchasing agent for PPE and provides weekly 
inventory updates as part of ongoing work to ensure that there are 
adequate and authentic supplies. In addition, the AOC has ensured the 
specialized cleaning of spaces throughout the Senate office buildings 
whenever it has been needed. In response to a request from the Senate 
community earlier this year, the AOC worked diligently to procure at-
home COVID testing kits that were distributed widely to Senate staff 
working in D.C. offices. Taken together, these efforts reflect the 
AOC's comprehensive effort to promote a healthier work environment for 
all.
    As the Subcommittee is aware, school group tours have returned to 
the U.S. Capitol. As we plan to welcome even more visitors back, we are 
excited to launch the CVC's Exhibition Hall Redesign Project later this 
year. This project aims to provide visitors with an engaging 
environment to learn about the legislative process and democracy. We 
look forward to welcoming students of all ages to this wonderful new 
space.
                            vii. conclusion
    While I remain committed to ongoing improvements in our daily 
operations, the AOC has already made significant progress on 
transformational efforts.
    Across the board, I am committed to leading the agency in long-
term, strategic planning that will prepare the campus for the next 
century. With your ongoing support, we can protect and preserve this 
cherished institution as well as all of those who serve here.
    Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of our fiscal year 2023 
budget request, and I look forward to the opportunity to address any 
questions.

    Senator Reed. I want to thank you very much, Mr. Blanton, 
and let me now ask a few questions and then recognize Senator 
Braun.
    Both of you play critical roles in the security of the 
Capitol from different perspectives. Both of you sit on the 
Capitol Police Board. So we are now 17 months past January 6.
    How have you changed your posture and mission on security 
and protection? How have you had to adjust your own roles, and 
how are the agencies working together? Let me start with 
General Gibson and then Mr. Blanton.
    General Gibson. Thank you, Senator Reed. I would begin with 
some of the work that we've done together as part of the 
Capitol Police Board.
    Our first priority last year, in alignment with the 
hearing, study, and recommendations from the Rules Committee, 
was to select a new Chief of Police, and I think Chief Major 
has done a superb job in beginning to transform the department.
    Some of the other work we did was associated with revising 
our Manual of Procedures for the Capitol Police Board, work 
that had not been addressed since a GAO study of 2017. As a 
result, we have begun to conduct our business in a manner that 
is far more transparent, inclusive, and we are responsive, and 
we are formalizing and memorializing deliberation and decision 
in a way that was not previously done.
    We have supported the department's efforts to increase 
recruiting and retention, which is very critical to our ability 
to reopen the Capitol in the way that it was opened prior to 
the pandemic of 2020. We have worked closely with the Capitol 
Police and Physical Security Working Groups and also with the 
Office of the IG to get at some of those shortcomings.
    I'll leave it to the Architect to talk about some of the 
prioritized physical security enhancements that we've 
identified. I will mention that we've built and sustained some 
strong collaborative relationships with other entities, like 
the Secret Service, the FBI, Metropolitan Police, Department of 
Homeland Security, and others to ensure that we have a common 
understanding of the threats that we face here in the National 
Capital Region.
    Internal to the U.S. Senate and the Sergeant at Arms, I 
previously mentioned standing up the Senate Operations Center 
together with the Secretary, not as a separate and competing 
operations center from the Capitol Police Command Center, but 
as one that is complementary. I think this concept has 
demonstrated an ability to much better track events as they are 
occurring and to more efficiently communicate with the Senate 
community.
    We are also looking to revamp the training we provide, such 
as emergency preparedness, life safety, and continuity 
training. We want to get beyond the in-person training that 
periodically occurs, and to make sure that it's also available 
on-demand, and online for those who want to refresh their 
knowledge at any time.
    I've mentioned in my opening statement some of the things 
that we would like to do in terms of enhancing our ability to 
track the threats to Senators and their families, particularly 
in light of the dramatic increase in threats that you 
mentioned. Our goal is to deliver a clearer understanding to 
Senators, provide recommendations, and conduct outreach so 
there's a full understanding of the security suite available to 
them to enhance their personal security or the security of 
their families.
    Senator Reed. Thank you. Mr. Blanton, please.
    Mr. Blanton. Thank you, and I want to echo the comments 
about the Capitol Police Board. It has truly been a 
transformative year for the Board and it was needed and I want 
you to understand that we have a great team now and are working 
on some great initiatives.
    I also wanted to say that with the funding we received last 
year in the Security Supplemental, it's going to go a long way 
to protecting the Capitol Campus. We spent the last year 
utilizing in-house designing and planning resources in order 
for us to be able to maximize the amount of actual product that 
we were going to put into the security measures as opposed to 
using those funds by having a contractor have to design it.
    In addition, we had our Comprehensive Physical Security 
Assessment and the biggest outcome of that Physical Security 
Assessment, besides the projects and the dollars, and I realize 
they're expensive, is the fact that we now have agreement of 
Security Standards on the Capitol Campus. That's something that 
we had not had previously, and it's very important for everyone 
to know that we have standards now to maintain the safety for 
members, staff, and visitors.
    Internal to the organization, we also took a really strong 
look at our Emergency Management Program in conjunction with 
the work done by the Capitol Police and the Capitol Police 
Board for the drills with the Sergeant at Arms.
    We had to really realize that in an emergency situation, 
many times AOC's work begins after the drill actually is over 
and so then we had to really focus on how are we responding 
when everybody can evacuate a building and now we need to make 
sure we get people to come back in and so we're focusing our 
training on that aspect of the emergency response.
    Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much.
    General, you mentioned the coordination with local 
authorities. Can you--and again I think I'll commend you, and 
the Sergeant, the Architect of the Capitol and local 
authorities for the recent incident involving the truck 
demonstrations--but are there other steps that you must take to 
improve coordination?
    General Gibson. Thank you for that question, Senator. I 
think that while the strong relationships we have built, both 
with domestic agencies and local law enforcement require 
continued sustainment to keep those relationships strong, there 
is an understanding within the law enforcement community at the 
Capitol that imminent threats, like the trucker convoy, remains 
very strong.
    One area specifically where we do need increased support, 
and I thank you for the language that was in the National 
Defense Authorization Act, is in the area of cybersecurity.
    What we've found is that policies for sharing intelligence 
between the Executive and Legislative Branch are written 
entirely with legislative oversight in mind without having 
previously considered that there might be people in the 
Legislative Branch, such as our cyber-security teams, that need 
to make operational decisions in real-time.
    And so, thanks to that language, our collective counsel 
teams have begun work with the Office of the Director of 
National Intelligence to re-craft some of the policies that 
would allow intelligence-sharing for operational requirements, 
separate from oversight, and my greatest priority would be for 
cybersecurity so we can have immediate communications with our 
Cybersecurity Operations Center instead of having to run those 
types of threat reports through legislative liaison channels. 
Thank you.
    Senator Reed. Thank you very much.
    Senator Braun, please.
    Senator Braun. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    So, of course, the Capitol has been basically shut down 
since the pandemic. We currently are in Phase 1 where school 
groups can come in through office buildings. Phase 2 is 
supposed to begin on May 30 and that means that school groups 
and maybe pre-identified groups can enter through the Capitol 
Visitor Center.
    Is that still definitely going to happen on May 30? That's 
just around the corner. General Gibson.
    General Gibson. Thank you for that question, Senator, and I 
appreciate the opportunity to address the phased reopening.
    I, too, am eager to reopen the Capitol in the way that it 
was before the pandemic and share the beauty and history of 
this building with the American public and foreign visitors.
    The limiting factor right now is not COVID-related but, 
rather, an insufficient number of Uniformed Police Officers to 
man the many positions associated with the Capitol Visitor 
Center. To answer directly your question, yes, we do anticipate 
entering Phase 2 as planned.
    Senator Braun. On May 30.
    General Gibson. On May 30, yes.
    Senator Braun. Okay.
    General Gibson. The shortcoming of officers is due to three 
principal factors. One, increased attrition in 2020 and 2021, 
largely due to the pandemic, January 6 and the aftermath of 
January 6, and the bubble due to the large number of officers 
who joined after 9/11, becoming retirement eligible.
    Second, a lack of recruitment due to the Federal Law 
Enforcement Training Center being closed during the pandemic. 
So, we had a larger than normal attrition and no recruitment 
offset.
    And the third is an increased number of policing posts, 
some of which are associated with ongoing repair to damage that 
was done in 2021. So increased attrition, no recruitment, and 
increased policing requirements, all contribute to the 
shortfall of trained officers.
    The Capitol Police Board has been working with the Chief on 
a get-well plan that includes offering retention incentives and 
updating pay schedules and increasing recruiting efforts.
    We've also begun to bring on contracted Capitol Security 
Officers to augment the Uniformed Force at some of the 
secondary positions, places like the Library of Congress, the 
Botanical Gardens, and parking garages. This allows us to put 
more USCP officers in the Capitol Visitor Center and eventually 
the Senate galleries. Also, with the Federal Law Enforcement 
Training Center reopening, we've had a new class of 
approximately 115 recruits who recently joined and seven 
additional classes are scheduled for fiscal year 2022.
    So that's the get-well plan, but it does not allow us to 
immediately reopen to the extent that we would like because 
there are significant posts that are associated with the 
Capitol Visitor Center and in and around the Senate floor.
    We do anticipate entering Phase 2 as planned and I would 
offer that, in addition to the school groups, we remain open to 
staff-led tours in the Capitol. We look forward to expanding 
further to the extent that we can as additional police staffing 
allows.
    Senator Braun. So Phase 2 is scheduled on time. It's just a 
little under three weeks.
    General Gibson. Right.
    Senator Braun. So Phase 3, let's just call that back to 
normal, which to me that should be the real aspiration.
    General Gibson. Yes.
    Senator Braun. I think it would beg the question has there 
been any imminent threat? January 6 obviously being the focal 
point. You mentioned truckers earlier. Many wonder how 
palpable, how real that threat is, and would you care to 
discuss--you mentioned--have the truckers done anything during 
that issue to where it impacted the Capitol or was that just on 
the roadways in the city?
    General Gibson. Certainly. I'll address that in two parts, 
first the trucker convoy and then, more generally, threats as 
we see them to the Capitol.
    As for the trucker convoys, I think we were able to learn a 
great deal from the example in Ottawa where the Parliament was 
essentially besieged. As soon as we began to see that situation 
evolving in Canada, the Capitol Police and others started to 
talk to their counterparts in Ontario to gain an understanding 
of what was occurring and to develop a plan with the rest of 
the local government and law enforcement entities in the D.C. 
region to counter any similar activities should it occur.
    It was largely traffic-related, but it did impose a 
significant manpower cost initially for the Capitol Police as 
they were required to man additional posts.
    Senator Braun. Did you erect fence during that stage? 
Because that's a really costly and timely process. I'm just 
curious.
    General Gibson. We did not erect fencing.
    Senator Braun. Okay.
    General Gibson.
    Senator Braun. You did enough to where you learned from 
what happened in Canada----
    General Gibson. Absolutely.
    Senator Braun [continuing]. And so was there any other 
incident that you'd call an imminent threat, other than that?
    General Gibson. Yes, I would actually. When I think of 
threats, and I'll set aside cyber threats, which are daily, but 
in terms of physical threats to the Capitol, State offices, and 
Senators, I would say the most likely threat is always lone 
actors, individuals, whether those with mental health issues, 
like we----
    Senator Braun. But I know that, but were there any?
    General Gibson [continuing]. Yes, April 2, August 19, and 
October 5 of last year.--In fact, we had a fatality on April 2, 
August 19 was the gentleman who parked his truck outside the 
Library of Congress and threatened to blow up the Library of 
Congress, and October 5, when another gentleman in a truck who 
refused to move it from in front of the Supreme Court.
    Senator Braun. And that would have been out of character 
with what happens routinely in prior years?
    General Gibson. No. I think that that is something
    Senator Braun. Well, and you don't need to--what I'm saying 
is generally it looks like, just from my observation, we've 
gotten back into a rhythm where we've learned a lot from the 
incident, even with averting the truckers from maybe impacting 
the Capitol, and I just think there's a strong kind of err on 
the side of caution, especially since our heads are up.
    I mean, we're attentive to it, to get back into where we're 
erring on the side of Phase 3 or what was happening before all 
of this.
    So, what is the timeline in your mind of where we get it 
back to where it was before?
    General Gibson. Sure. I would defer to the Chief, but I 
think he anticipates that it will not be until 2023, until we 
have enough of the new recruits on the force to open and man 
the positions in and around the Capitol that were manned in 
2019.
    Senator Braun. And is the workforce--this will be my last 
question before I hand it back over. Is the workforce--how 
close is it with the new recruits to where it was pre-January 6 
number-wise?
    General Gibson. I didn't come prepared, Senator, with those 
numbers. We can easily get them.
    Senator Braun. I'd say with the additional over hundred 
that you've brought on that it's got to be close to where it 
was, and then it's a question of how you manage that risk of 
getting back to where we were before and that you know you're 
going to add more individuals over time. I would personally 
like to hear when in 2023, if you could say January versus 
December, that would be good for the country and for the people 
that work around here. Thank you.
    Senator Reed. Thank you, Senator Braun.
    Let me begin Round 2. Mr. Blanton, your request includes 
$500 million in construction projects recommended by the 
Physical Security Assessment of the Capitol Campus. It also 
includes a $100 million for the design and construction of 
screening vestibules for the Capitol and Senate and House 
Office Buildings. These are significant amounts of money.
    General Gibson, in your role on the Capitol Police Board, 
feel free to comment as well. But to the extent you can share 
with us what security construction projects are considered to 
be the most important and urgent to the campus so we can have a 
sense of priorities?
    Mr. Blanton. Thank you, Senator, for that question, and I 
will----
    Senator Reed. Would you bring your microphone a little bit 
closer?
    Mr. Blanton [continuing]. I will say that we are going to 
provide you within the next couple of weeks a fidelity, a very 
high fidelity list of projects that are prioritized from one to 
N.
    In general, I would say that the completing of the exterior 
doors and windows to meet the standard that we have developed 
as part of the assessment would be the highest absolute 
priority.
    Senator Reed. In looking at these projects, there's always 
a tension and a balance between security and aesthetics, for 
want of a better term. So this doesn't look like a fortified 
zone. It looks like the Capitol of the United States.
    So in fact things like the anti-scale fencing up around the 
court today obviously detract from the historic vision of the 
Capitol.
    Have you been able to balance those successfully and I 
would assume we would obviously increase the costs of the 
project to do so?
    Mr. Blanton. Yes, I'll say that's actually one of the 
specialties of my Chief Security Officer that does the security 
projects. I always say that a good security project is 
something that you don't recognize. You don't realize it's 
there.
    We have artisans that can take the historic nature and 
preserve that while still having the doors or equipment look as 
if it did when it was originally installed and I would 
reference--I know it's not on the set-aside, but I would 
reference the work we did at the Speaker's Lobby on the House 
Chamber where there's brand-new doors look exactly like the 
original doors but they're now rated.
    Senator Reed. Thank you very much.
    The issue of the personnel and, General, you spoke about it 
in terms of the major factor, it's also related to the type of 
security infrastructure you have to have. If you've got more 
personnel, then presumably you need more infrastructure and 
that's another question of balance.
    Has that been taken into consideration by both of you in 
terms of your overall plan, the number of personnel you and the 
Chief need, and the facilities you're building? I'll start with 
you, General.
    General Gibson. Yes, Senator, I would say it is, which is 
why we are requesting 35 additional FTEs. A high number of 
those will go to our Chief Information Officer and to our 
Physical Security/Operational Security Teams.
    Senator Reed. And with respect to the Visitor Center, you 
pointed out that that's a major issue in terms of the personnel 
drains. My assumption is that you're not expanding the number 
of personnel in the Center, you just don't have----
    General Gibson. And actually it's----
    Senator Reed [continuing]. The numbers.
    General Gibson. Senator, it's not me, it's the Capitol 
Police.
    Senator Reed. Capitol Police.
    General Gibson. When the Capitol Visitor Center is open, it 
requires some number of officers, and I don't want to speak for 
the Chief, but I believe it's in the range of 50 to 70 officers 
to man the Capitol Visitor Center----
    Senator Reed. Thank you.
    General Gibson [continuing]. As it was in 2019.
    Senator Reed. So we're not----
    General Gibson. It is not an increase.
    Senator Reed [continuing]. We're not enhancing the number, 
we're just----
    General Gibson. No.
    Senator Reed [continuing]. Simply trying to get back----
    General Gibson. We're trying to get back to 2019.
    Senator Reed [continuing]. To 2019 which was the norm that 
we thought at that point.
    This is an area you've touched upon and I don't know if you 
can add further details, but part of your request, General, is 
for additional resources for the protection of Senators, staff, 
both here and at home.
    Can you further elaborate on, you know, the monies you 
need, how you're going to spend them, and the threat?
    General Gibson. Thank you, Senator. That is an area where 
we seek to increase the number of personnel and it would be 10 
personnel, 3 of them specifically for State operations, and 3 
of them for threat tracking together with the Department of 
Homeland Security, Capitol Police, and other agencies, in order 
to do liaison and information-sharing with the Senators and 
their officers, increase understanding of the security kit 
available to them, and to ensure we have adequate security at 
State offices, not just here at the Capitol itself.
    Senator Reed. And with respect to State offices and State 
locales, it'll be a coordinated position. You'll be using local 
law enforcement presumably as the actual physical security 
personnel.
    General Gibson. Absolutely, Senator. It is very rare when 
that's been the reason for a plus-up of Capitol Police. It is 
typically law enforcement liaison per the Senator's request. It 
is always at their request that they may want augmented 
security at an event or if we've had a heightened spike of 
threats against a Senator.
    Sometimes we coordinate with law enforcement support, again 
at the Senator's request to have additional drive-bys of 
residences. We also provide physical security. The Capitol 
Police do physical security assessments of the residence and 
make recommendations for ways in which a Senator and his or her 
family might be better protected.
    Senator Reed. Thank you.
    Senator Braun. Thank you. Mr. Blanton, so I think our 
restaurant operations within the Capitol have been hurt 
significantly because we haven't had any people here. That 
again was one of the highlights, I think, of some visits, 
especially when Senators would be able to take folks into the 
dining room and so forth, but general traffic is just way down.
    I think that they are getting some type of help through the 
end of the year, and that's why I think it's important if 
2023's the target for normal that we need to really aspire to 
get there then, otherwise that will rise again as an issue.
    What is the health and status of the restaurant services 
currently? And rather than have to put a stipend, enhanced help 
in there, I think that fixes itself, saves the taxpayers money, 
and we have services that I think the public appreciate back to 
normal--what's the status currently?
    Mr. Blanton. So due to COVID and the restrictions in the 
building, the revenue from the restaurants at one point was 
down 90 percent. It has since rebounded 37 percent above that, 
but there's----
    Senator Braun. That means it's still off around 60 percent 
or so.
    Mr. Blanton [continuing]. Yes, and they are still 
hemorrhaging money. There is a delta between what the Senate 
expects the restaurants to be able to deliver and the cost for 
the services that they are providing.
    Senator Braun. Have you calculated what Phase 2 reopening 
will do for the restaurants?
    Mr. Blanton. So right now, it will do more for the CVC 
restaurant than it would be for the restaurants in the Senate 
buildings because it's just pure amount of traffic coming in 
and sitting down and eating.
    We spent the past year working with the Senate community on 
a restaurants master plan and in this actual budget, we have 
$8.1 million for the Senate side to redesign their restaurants 
and $41 million on the Capitol Building to re-envision the 
kitchens for the Senate Dining Room so they'd be more 
efficient.
    Senator Braun. And that's all good. So you've eliminated 
the COVID as a reason for whatever the current status is. It'd 
just be general security concerns, correct?
    Mr. Blanton. As the Sergeants at Arms said, it's the 
concern with the number of police personnel to open up the CVC. 
I can say from a business continuity perspective, I would love 
to have the two million plus visitors a year back because that 
will make a----
    Senator Braun. So COVID is endemic. We're all going to be 
dealing with it from government to business with everything 
we've learned from it. There's no imminent threat, other than 
the others that you cited that may happen now and then during a 
normal year.
    I just think that everything I'm hearing, we're kind of 
erring on the side of maybe this thing occurring deep into 
2023, and I believe that's not an aggressive enough goal, and 
it begs the question will those basic services that we were 
using before be able to hang on without more government help.
    So let me move to another concern, fencing. I see that 
there's $6.4 million there, and is that a fee that we're paying 
to the fencing company regardless of whether we use fencing or 
not? Is that kind of like just a contingency fee, and would it 
cost us any more than that, say, if you had to put fencing up 
seven or eight times in a year versus once or twice? Explain 
the $6.4 million.
    Mr. Blanton. So the fencing budget is a combination of a 
readiness fee so that we can have the fencing available to be 
installed within 24 hours and an expectation of the number of 
installations that we would do the fence for large events.
    Senator Braun. And is there another cost in addition to it 
once you'd actually have the need for fencing to put up on some 
occasion?
    Mr. Blanton. Yes, you pay for the labor now for the 
contractor who's installing the fencing.
    Senator Braun. You're kind of reserving the ability for 
$6.4 million to have them on call, you said within 72 hours?
    Mr. Blanton. 24 hours.
    Senator Braun. 24 hours. Okay. Again, that may in the big 
scheme of things here not sound like a lot of money. In most 
places that is a lot, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't have 
some type of holding fee for it, but again this is above and 
beyond what we would have ever done before, and I think you're 
going to need to find that proper balance and not maybe 
generalize based upon what did occur. I'm assuming this would 
be an annual fee that we'd need to renew each year?
    Mr. Blanton. Yes.
    Senator Braun. Okay. Keep me informed, keep us informed 
here on this Committee, and again I think that that is 
something that we've got to be careful with because we're 
building in another cost that I wonder, especially as we can 
taper away from it over time, whether it's necessary.
    This may not mean much, but I'm going to mention it because 
it's maybe symptomatic, emblematic of how the place runs in 
general. Inspector General review found that the Architect of 
the Capitol had reimbursed $38,529 in unallowable costs to a 
contractor over in the Cannon Building, including items such as 
baby gifts, florist costs, and business cards. While this is, I 
guess, chump change in the big scheme of things here anymore, 
it's concerning that there were so many unallowable costs that 
were reimbursed and the renewal project, by the way, is a $182 
million in total over budget to begin with.
    You care to comment on either the being over budget that 
much or the fact that somehow 38 grand slipped through in what 
should have been caught fairly quickly before it got 
reimbursed?
    Mr. Blanton. Yes, Senator. So I'll address the 38,000. 
Remember, this is a program that is $900 million. So it is 
small and our goal is zero obviously, but the bulk of that 
money was reimbursed in previous phases of the contract and we 
have since received a credit back from the contractor for the 
unallowable costs.
    In the current phase, it was only $1,550 worth of 
unallowable costs that we did receive a credit for.
    Senator Braun. Would that normally be caught by an 
Inspector General review or would that normally--do you have 
protocols in place where your own auditors or accountants would 
try to find that before it had to be caught at the last resort?
    Mr. Blanton. So ideally it's during the invoicing process, 
but as you may guess, in a $900 million program, the invoices 
are large and sometimes things slip through.
    We have set much more rigor involved in our invoice 
processing which is why the number in this phase is so low 
comparatively.
    Senator Braun. I would agree with your proportionality. I 
think the $182 million over budget would be a much more 
concerning figure.
    Thank you for the answer.
    Senator Reed. Do you have any additional questions, 
Senator?
    Senator Braun. I'm good.
    Senator Reed. Thank you very much then.
    There could be and likely additional written questions that 
we'll submit to you and ask you to respond, but this concludes 
the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee hearing 
regarding fiscal year 2023 Funding for the Architect of the 
Capitol, the Senate Sergeant at Arms, and the Congressional 
Budget Office.
    I want to thank Mr. Blanton and General Gibson for their 
testifying today.

                     ADDITIONAL COMMITTEE QUESTIONS

    The hearing record will remain open for 7 days, allowing 
Members to submit statements and/or questions for the record 
which should be sent to the subcommittee by close of business 
on Wednesday, May 18, 2022.
    The next hearing of the subcommittee will be held on 
Wednesday, May 25, at 3:30 p.m., in S-128 of the Capitol when 
we will hear testimony from the Chief of the U.S. Capitol 
Police, the Librarian of Congress, the Comptroller of the 
Government Accountability Office regarding the fiscal year 2023 
budget request.
    [The following questions were not asked at the hearing, but 
were submitted to the agencies for response subsequent to the 
hearing:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                          SUBCOMMITTEE RECESS

    Senator Reed. Until then, the Committee will stand 
adjourned. Thank you much.
    [Whereupon, at 10:54 a.m., Wednesday, May 11, the 
subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene subject to the call of 
the Chair.]



         LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2023

                              ----------                              


                        WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 2022

                                       U.S. Senate,
           Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations,
                                                    Washington, DC.

    The subcommittee met at 4:15 p.m., in room SD-138, Dirksen 
Senate Office Building, Hon. Jack Reed, (Chairman) presiding.
    Present: Senators Reed and Braun.

                  GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE AND
                          LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

                 OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED

    Senator Reed. I call the hearing to order. Good afternoon. 
The subcommittee will continue its efforts for the fiscal year 
2023 budget for the Legislative Branch Appropriations. I am 
joined by our Ranking Member, Senator Braun. I look forward to 
working with him and the distinguished Members of the 
Subcommittee in crafting a responsible fiscal year 2023 funding 
legislation that supports the Legislative Branch.
    Today we have with us the Library of Congress, Dr. Carla 
Hayden, and the Comptroller General of the United States, Gene 
Dodaro. Welcome, and I thank you for joining us today. The 
Library and GAO are critical to making sure that Congress 
serves the American people well. They help Congress, supporting 
us in our basic responsibilities to be informed and educated on 
behalf of our constituents.
    So I want to begin by thanking the women and men of your 
agencies who work very hard every day to make sure that 
Congress can perform its Constitutional duties and that we use 
taxpayer dollars responsibly. The past few years have been 
difficult. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress has 
continued to meet. This means we have asked your employees to 
show up for work, either in personal or remotely, to help us do 
our jobs.
    Then the January 6 attack on the Capitol happened, changing 
how we must think about and approach security while maintaining 
an open campus environment so that all people can visit and 
share this special place. But these challenges didn't stop the 
Library and its agencies, and the GAO from delivering for 
Congress and for the American people. CRS ramped up its science 
and technology analysis capacity to prepare and update 
thousands of new products to inform Congress on COVID-19 
related Details.
    GAO has been hard at work auditing the trillions of dollars 
provided by Congress, the Government wide response to the 
pandemic, including the American Rescue Plan Act, and the 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. And GAO has churned out 
numerous flash reports in response to the January 6 attack on 
the Capitol. The agency worked tirelessly to respond to 
Congressional inquiries, conduct oversight, and provide 
valuable recommendations to the United States Capitol Police, 
the Architect of the Capitol, and the Capitol Police Board on 
much needed reforms and security upgrades.
    The Library intensified its public outreach to include a 
variety of virtual events, webinars, and workshops so that 
researchers, teachers, parents, and especially our children 
could still access and learn from its rich and diverse 
collections. The Library also sacrificed a major collection 
storage construction project so that we could cover 
unanticipated and unmet costs from the pandemic and the January 
6 attack on the Capitol campus.
    We need to make good on our promises and make it a priority 
to refund that project in our fiscal year 2023 bill. We want to 
make sure that your agencies have the tools needed to gradually 
reopen and responsibly resume normal operations. Congress owes 
it to your employees not only to provide the resources needed 
to do their jobs, but also to meet any new demands or 
innovations identified in the pandemic.
    That means continuing to make critical investments in IT 
modernization, cybersecurity, and collections, and staffing up 
your science and technology analysis and auditing teams. As 
Congress's independent and nonpartisan watchdog, our demands on 
GAO for audits and evaluations of Federal agencies to root out 
waste, fraud, and abuse while improving governance efficiently 
only grow greater and more complex.
    Your request reflects a return to optimal pre-sequester 
staffing levels and is the result of multiple years of careful 
investment and prioritizing by both your agency and Congress. I 
look forward to hearing from Comptroller Dodaro on how we can 
continue to build on the progress in fiscal year 2023, and how 
GAO aims to recruit and retain a talented and diverse 
workforce.
    And as we welcome back visitors and look to a brighter 
future, I want to hear from Dr. Hayden on the progress of the 
Library's visitor experience initiative. This is an exciting 
public, private partnership that will make the Library's 
treasures more accessible to students, researchers, and 
visitors to the nation's capital for generations to come.
    We do not yet have a broader budget agreement of fiscal 
year 2203, but I hope in the coming months this committee can 
unveil a strong appropriations bill that will support the needs 
of your agencies and the rest of the Legislative Branch. And 
now let me turn it over to my Ranking Member, Senator Braun. 
Senator Braun, please.

                OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MIKE BRAUN

    Senator Braun. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Dr. 
Hayden and Mr. Dodaro, for being here. It is our second 
Legislative Branch hearing. Look forward to working with the 
Chairman to get things fleshed out. Dr. Hayden, I participated 
in the Veterans History Project Workshop with you in April, 
where we discussed how veterans and their families can engage 
with the Library of Congress.
    The Library is doing important work to preserve the 
personal stories of American veterans. I think that is 
important. As we discussed a few weeks ago, I am pleased with 
the progress you have made in opening the Library of Congress 
back up to the public. Frankly, you have made a lot more 
progress and we have had here in the Senate, and for that you 
should be commended. Reopening the buildings on and around 
Capitol Hill to the public must be a top priority to the 
Committee.
    The Senate has lagged behind virtually all of America in 
reopening and getting back to normal. When we shut our economy 
down a couple of years ago, we are now dealing with the ripple 
effects from that in terms of high inflation and other things. 
We ought to at least get the buildings of the people back open 
to the people.
    Dr. Hayden, you are asking for $871 million in change, a 
3.9 percent increase over the fiscal year 2022 enacted level. 
That is definitely more sober than most of the requests I have 
seen come in from other parts of the Government. Remember, an 
economy, when it is robust, grows maybe 2 to 3 percent. We 
should never be growing this place with the results that we 
produce for more than what the economy is growing. That ends up 
with unsustainable debt and it is not a good long term business 
plan.
    We will look at your request very carefully. Mr. Dodaro, we 
have had the chance to talk many times about how the Federal 
Government works in terms of spending more than we take in. 
Mentioned just a little bit ago we were around $18 trillion in 
debt when I got here a little over 3 years ago and now we are 
$30 trillion in debt. We have got a blueprint for our country, 
for our kids, let's look at it that way, to live by that puts 
us $45 trillion in debt. We have become a country of consumers 
and spenders.
    And many of our geopolitical opponents out there or 
otherwise--you know, they believe in things, were investing and 
saving. And as a result, they probably don't run chronic 
deficits like we do. We have got to be careful. You can get 
beyond the point of no return. And when the budget that we have 
got as a blueprint in 10 years shows that we are spending as 
much on interest, and we are underestimating inflation and 
interest in that budget, as we will either on domestic 
discretionary spending or defense spending, look out, 
Americans, that is going to be a rough ride.
    This is a small part of what we do, the smallest 
appropriations category. But I think it needs to be consistent 
with what it is going to take, I think, to turn this juggernaut 
around, from running into the ditch very hard and it has got to 
start somewhere. You can at least show where we are getting 
some type of return on our investment. I think in 2021 alone, 
GAO's work yielded $66.2 billion in financial benefits.
    Hardly any other part of the Government where what you do, 
you can say, is actually saving money. Not a lot when you look 
at the big scheme of things, but it is at least doing the right 
thing. It is the right dynamic. You are asking, I think, for a 
12 to 13 percent increase. If there is one place where we ought 
to be spending more, it ought to be in a place where we get a 
decent return on investment.
    I trust that whatever we do give to you, it will be spent 
well. I would like just even symbolically to see that be reined 
in a little bit because we need to practice what we preach. I, 
again, look forward to working with the Chairman to get through 
this and hopefully to get it done on a timely basis. The 
American public deserves it.
    Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Senator Braun. Now I 
will ask the witnesses, beginning with Dr. Hayden, to give a 
brief opening statement of approximately 5 minutes to allow 
adequate time for questions. The written testimony of each 
witness will be printed in full in the hearing record. Dr. 
Hayden, you are recognized, please.
STATEMENT OF DR. CARLA HAYDEN, LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS
    Dr. Hayden. Thank you. Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Braun, 
for this opportunity to provide testimony in support of the 
Library's fiscal year 2023 budget. Yes, 2 years ago, the 
Library had to close its doors as the pandemic began. However, 
we moved quickly and successfully to adopt new and innovative 
approaches to serving Congress and the American people 
virtually under unprecedented conditions.
    And in fact, the pandemic accelerated our ongoing efforts 
to engage the public virtually and share our collections and 
services in new and exciting ways and allowing us to reach more 
people across the nation. And thanks to the dedication and 
innovation of our workforce during the past year, mission 
critical services, including the Congressional Research Service 
and the United States Copyright Office, were able to operate 
largely as normal.
    The Library did produce a full year of exciting virtual and 
hybrid programing, including the 21st National Book Festival. 
And with the Congressional support and private philanthropy, we 
continued to work toward unveiling the Library's enhanced 
visitor experience in phases, beginning with the opening of a 
treasures gallery in late 2023. I would like to express my 
gratitude for the ongoing support that this Committee and the 
entire Congress provides to the Library.
    In particular, our high priority needs in fiscal year 2022, 
such as the new Library collections access platform, L-CAP. 
That is the heart of our Library operations. Replacements for 
the Library's outmoded electronic security system and the 3G 
cellular system. And a cloud based office productivity suite 
for all Library employees. I come before you today to discuss 
the Library's fiscal year 2023 request of $871.8 million, an 
increase of 3.9 percent over the enacted fiscal year 2022 
appropriation.
    This request includes $30.8 million in mandatory pay and 
price level increases, and the balance of the increase 
represents critical program investments necessary to meet our 
mission. With new and modern IT infrastructure in place, thanks 
to your support, we are now using continuous innovation and 
delivery to ensure that we are constantly optimizing and 
modernizing the technology used to meet the Library's mission.
    The cloud has become an important part of IT planning at 
the Library and the fiscal year 2023 request seeks to establish 
a dedicated cloud management program that will enable us to 
integrate our cloud solutions with our traditional IT 
infrastructure. The Congressional Research Service needs to 
adapt and optimize its integrated research and information 
system, IRIS, using commercially available cloud based tools.
    And this request is critical to enable CRS to track 
Congressional requests, manage data and analysis, and 
facilitate the development and distribution of CRS products to 
Congress. We are also seeking funding to continue stabilizing 
and optimizing our financial infrastructure, which is essential 
to all of our Library operations.
    And this includes funds for increased Legislative Branch 
financial management system hosting and application management 
costs. This is a request made by the Library on behalf of eight 
Legislative Branch agencies that all benefit from this valuable 
and cost effective shared service.
    The 2023 request also includes funding for phase two of the 
Enterprise Planning and Management Program and for the 
Library's Cost Management Center of Excellence. To modernize 
and optimize payroll operations, we are requesting funds to 
implement a new integrated personnel and payroll processing 
system managed by the Department of the Interior's Integrated 
Business Center.
    The Copyright Office seeks to expand its data analysis 
capacities in economic research, fee, and cost analysis, and 
statistics in order to make better informed decisions about its 
fees. This request is fully funded with Copyright Office's 
offsetting collections. And as we prepare to unveil the 
Library's enhanced visitor experience, we are requesting funds 
to add additional visitor engagement staff, which will support 
the expanded public spaces in the Jefferson Building.
    We expect to see a significant increase in visitors in the 
next 3 to 5 years, and this additional staff will ensure that 
everyone has the best possible experience. So in closing, the 
Library's 2023 Congressional budget justification continues a 
sequence of strategically planned modernization efforts 
throughout the institution.
    And with the support of Congress, we will continue to 
strengthen our capacity to carry out our mission. Thank you, 
and we look forward to your questions.

    [The statement follows:]
 Prepared Statement of Hon. Dr. Carla Hayden, The Librarian of Congress
Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and Members of the Subcommittee,

    Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony in support of 
the Library's fiscal year 2023 budget.
    The Library of Congress has built one of the largest collections of 
human knowledge ever assembled in support of our mission to engage, 
inspire, and inform the Congress and the American people with a 
universal and enduring source of information and creativity. My top 
priority as Librarian of Congress remains expanded user access to the 
Library's resources and services. We are an authoritative source of 
knowledge that enriches the American people in countless ways. We 
constantly strive to find new ways to share our extraordinary riches 
with the nation.
    Two years ago, the Library had to close its doors as the pandemic 
began. We moved quickly and successfully to adopt new and innovative 
approaches to serving the Congress and the American people. I am 
pleased to report that we continued to make progress in sharing more of 
the Library's collections, programming, and staff expertise beyond the 
four walls of the Library. In fact, the pandemic accelerated our 
efforts to engage the public virtually and share our collections and 
services in new and exciting ways, allowing us to reach even more 
people across the nation. In fiscal year 2021, with the support of the 
Congress, the Library continued to build the collections and engage 
users. The Library reduced the cataloging arrearage by 1.2 million 
items, created online resources, reopened reading rooms, welcomed 
visitors and researchers, and resumed the Surplus Books Program, among 
many other activities. The Library's Center for Learning and Engagement 
produced a year full of exciting virtual and hybrid programming, 
including the 21st National Book Festival. Essential services, 
including the Congressional Research Service and the United States 
Copyright Office, were able to operate largely as normal. The National 
Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled implemented a long-
awaited change that made it easier for people with reading disabilities 
to enroll for services. With congressional support and private 
philanthropy, we continued to work toward unveiling the Library's 
enhanced Visitor Experience in phases, beginning with the Treasures 
Gallery in late 2023. The Library also reached an important milestone 
during the pandemic, with over 7.5 million items under inventory 
control in its preservation facility at Fort Meade and a new collection 
storage module completed. In another significant marker, for the first 
time, the Library's production information technology foundation exists 
fully outside of the Capitol Hill campus. With the completion of the 
Library's Data Center Transformation effort, the Office of the Chief 
Information Officer (OCIO) is now hosting the Library's more than 100 
production IT systems and nearly 90 petabytes of data across a modern 
hybrid hosting environment.
    Today, the Library holds nearly 174 million physical items, 
including special collections consisting of audio materials, maps, 
moving images, sheet music and much more. A single copy of our digital 
collections requires 26 petabytes of storage--that is roughly the 
equivalent of 13 trillion pages of printed text. If you piled up that 
many pages, you could reach the moon more than three times with these 
stacks of stored knowledge. The material on the Library's websites 
alone totals five petabytes.
    Over the last year, approximately 2.2 million Preservation actions 
were performed on items in the Library's physical collections, with a 
further 3.4 million pages of materials prepared and shipped to vendors 
for preservation reformatting services. The Library responded to 
730,562 reference requests from Congress, the public, and other Federal 
agencies, including direct use of CRS reports. The Copyright Office 
issued over 403,771 copyright registrations and recorded 8,252 
documents containing 961,291 titles. Library web sites recorded more 
than 178 million visits and nearly 618 million page views. We 
circulated more than 21.5 million copies of braille, audio and large 
print items to patrons, via the National Library Service for the Blind 
and Print Disabled and its network of State and local libraries. 
Moreover, even with pandemic restrictions, the Library welcomed nearly 
30,000 in-person visitors.
    The Library also continued direct services to the public with 
programs like the Veterans History Project which collects the stories 
of our Nation's veterans and Teaching with Primary Sources, which 
allows teachers in local school districts to create curricula and 
develop apps using the Library's digitized primary sources.
    I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the ongoing and 
remarkable support that this committee and all of Congress give to the 
Library. In particular, I appreciate the funding you have provided in 
fiscal year 2022 to meet high-priority needs such as the new L-CAP--
Library Collections Access Platform--that is the heart of Library 
operations; replacements for the Library's outmoded Integrated 
Electronic Security System and the 3G Cellular Distributed Antenna 
System; and installation of a cloud-based office productivity suite for 
all Library employees.
    I come before you today to discuss the Library's fiscal year 2023 
appropriations request. This budget request reflects the resources 
needed for us to sustain the Library's mission of service to Congress, 
access to the creative record of the United States, and stewardship of 
the cultural heritage of the American people. The budget request is 
aligned with the goals and objectives of the Library's Strategic Plan: 
Expand access, enhance services, optimize resources, and measure 
impact. To advance these strategic goals, the budget requests 
additional resources for several new or expanded programs. All of the 
requests are in support of the Library's mission and vision that all 
Americans are connected to the Library of Congress and invest in a 
vibrant future for this institution.
    The Library of Congress fiscal year 2023 budget request is for 
$871.8 million, which represents a 3.9 percent increase over the 
Library's fiscal year 2022 enacted appropriation. This request includes 
$30.8 million in mandatory pay and price level increases. The balance 
of the increase represents critical program investments necessary to 
fulfill the Library's role and to sustain continuous technology 
innovation and delivery; continue stabilization and optimization of the 
financial infrastructure; expand active engagement with visitors to the 
Library; and strengthen data analysis expertise in life cycle costing 
and cost estimating as well as data analysis for evaluating and setting 
Copyright fees.
    The fiscal year 2023 budget continues many of the strategic 
modernization and optimization efforts the Congress has supported in 
recent years for the Library. As I am sure other government agencies 
are experiencing, rapidly evolving technology and public expectations 
have required us to adjust, and in some cases expand, multiyear efforts 
that are underway to enhance the IT and operations of many of the 
Library's service units. The budget request also addresses staffing 
gaps that have arisen as a result of absorption of mandatory pay and 
price level increases. It builds staff capacity we must have to respond 
to technological advancement and addresses skills in areas such as data 
analysis and cost estimation that are required to meet the Library's 
fiduciary responsibilities.
        sustaining continuous technology innovation and delivery
    As I have reported before, at the Library, we have fundamentally 
rebuilt our technology foundation. The large investment in Library IT 
over the last few years is already paying dividends. As the Nation 
continued to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Library's more 
robust IT infrastructure allowed us to sustain remote operations for 
the majority of the Library's workforce for the entire fiscal year. It 
also paves the way for ongoing efforts to expand and enhance the major 
IT systems that support the Library's business operations and its 
digital offerings to Congress and the public.
    Most importantly, we are not merely updating existing applications 
and systems. We have completely re-envisioned how we manage and use 
technology at the Library. With new, modern IT infrastructure in place, 
we have stabilized our operations and we are moving to a model of 
carefully constructed continuous innovation and continuous delivery to 
ensure that we are constantly optimizing and modernizing the technology 
needed to meet the needs of Congress and the American people.
    As in the private sector and other government agencies, the cloud 
has become an important part of our IT planning at the Library. Its 
ability to quickly scale services to meet changing needs and its 
capacity to support accessibility and collaborations across a wide 
range of users are powerful tools that are essential as we continue our 
digital transformation. As we mature our use of the cloud at the 
Library, we are following the Federal ``Cloud Smart'' strategy, which 
calls for cloud solutions to be integrated with our traditional IT 
infrastructure to seamlessly support our business needs.
    Of course, greater use of the cloud comes with some challenges too. 
The Library requires specialized resources to properly implement and 
administer cloud services and ensure that we can make the most of our 
cloud operations. The Library's request for a dedicated Cloud 
Management Program will provide OCIO with the expertise necessary to 
ensure essential cloud management practices, monitor cloud-based 
applications for compliance and security, coordinate development of 
advanced IT solutions, and ensure maximum value from existing IT 
infrastructure.
    The Library must also continue to mature its IT planning, project 
management, and governance to sustain the pace of digital 
transformation and the growing demand for new and enhanced technology 
to support services to Congress and the Nation. Audit findings from the 
Government Accountability Office and the Office of the Inspector 
General have reinforced the need for the Library to mature its IT cost 
estimating, schedule management and quality review practices, and 
improve OCIO's ability to meet Federal standards and industry best 
practices for IT project management. The Library's fiscal year 2023 
request includes in-house expertise and contract support to respond to 
the significant volume of pre-planning project-related activities, 
project challenges, and evolving audit recommendations.
    The Congressional Research Service also seeks, in partnership with 
OCIO, to adapt and optimize its Integrated Research and Information 
System (IRIS) in a technology landscape that changed dramatically since 
its initial planning and procurement in 2018. This request is critical 
for the completion of the initial IRIS configuration using commercially 
available cloud-based tools to meet specific CRS requirements for 
authoring and publishing, content management, and congressional 
relations management, while insuring integration with CRS legacy IT 
systems and research tools. It will also establish and staff a 
sustainment and development program, using the continuous innovation 
and continuous delivery (CI/CD) model employed for major Library IT 
systems, including Congress.gov. IRIS will significantly improve the 
manner in which CRS analytical staff author and publish reports and 
memoranda, manage data and tacit knowledge, and maintain timely and 
functional analytics on products and services. CRS IT systems must be 
up-to-date to meet congressional needs.
 continuing stabilization and optimization of financial infrastructure
    A stable and optimized financial infrastructure is essential to 
everything the Library does. A necessary shift to the cloud for the 
Legislative Branch Financial Management System (LBFMS) added workload 
in financial reporting, and an unintegrated personnel and payroll 
system also need prompt attention.
    The Library's Financial Systems continues to manage hosting of the 
LBFMS as a shared service for the legislative branch. The LBFMS funding 
model, and support provided by the Congress, are essential to the 
success of the initiative. Sharing a financial system and consolidating 
some financial management tasks save the Legislative Branch more than 
$3.3 million annually, across the eight participating agencies.
    However, with the migration of the LBFMS to the cloud, funding 
challenges exist because system hosting and application management 
costs exceed the $1.06 million annually received from the Congress. The 
increased cost has been pro-rated among LBFMS agencies and covered by 
the Library's funds. At the request of the LBFMS Steering Committee, 
comprised of representatives of the partner agencies, the Library 
requests funding to cover the $700,000 increase in the cost of hosting 
and operating the system in the cloud. The Library's intention is to 
maintain consistent year-to-year funding requirements for both the 
Library and our partner LBFMS agencies cost share, so that all can 
better plan for LBFMS costs for future years. The eight Legislative 
Branch agencies cross-serviced through the LBFMS believe the most 
efficient method to address the additional costs is for Congress to 
provide the funding directly to the Library for LBFMS operations, 
rather than increase each agency's budget by a prorated amount and then 
have the Library charge each agency separately. The Library cannot 
unilaterally cover the increased costs from its budget.
    Stabilization and optimization efforts continue to meet challenges 
in financial reporting. Important improvements have been made, 
including hiring the Library's first comptroller. The Library also 
recently received its 25th consecutive unmodified audit opinion. 
However, Financial Reports (FR) now has an increased workload to 
support the Library's cross-servicing partners and to meet expanded 
Department of the Treasury reporting requirements. Continued 
stabilization and optimization of the financial reporting functions are 
important not only to fulfill the Library's external reporting 
requirements, but also to meet FR's responsibility for setting 
accounting standards and preparing Library of Congress regulations and 
process directives, which ensure that the Library has good internal 
controls that are tested and validated throughout the year. The request 
includes FTE to address additional accounting workload and reporting 
responsibilities, as well as contractor services to update and create 
essential financial reporting and financial system documentation, 
procedure guides, and training materials.
    The Library also requests funding to implement an integrated and 
optimized personnel and payroll processing system. Currently, staff 
must enter data in different legacy systems, causing leave balance 
discrepancies and issues resulting from manual payroll and personnel 
action request reconciliation, and the use of manual forms causes 
errors. It also presents challenges with retirement package tracking, 
making it difficult for retirees to get the information they need. This 
request would shift the Library's personnel and payroll processing 
service provider from the National Finance Center system to the 
Department of the Interior's Integrated Business Center (IBC). A full-
scale migration to the IBC personnel and payroll system will result in 
significant cost avoidance and mitigate the lost time currently devoted 
to correcting problems in a non- integrated and non-automated system.
        expanding active engagement with visitors to the library
    The Library is reimagining the visitor engagement model to meet the 
changing needs of audiences in a post-pandemic world. Visitor 
operations will increase dramatically with the opening of the Treasures 
Gallery, the first phase of the Visitor Experience, when it opens in 
fall 2023. The Library expects to welcome more than 2 million visitors 
annually in the next 3 to 5 years, compared to 1.6 million in 2019. The 
Visitor Experience will add 12,000 square feet of public space to the 
Library. Funding is requested to add staffing for the Library's Visitor 
Engagement Program, which will support the expanded public space and 
will enhance the active engagement and safety of visitors, including 
your constituents, and the use of the Jefferson Building and the 
collections.
 strengthening data analysis expertise in life cycle costing and cost 
     estimating as well as in evaluating and setting copyright fees
    In concert with efforts to stabilize and optimize its financial 
infrastructure, the Library requests funding for the second phase of 
the Enterprise Planning & Management (EPM) initiative, which will 
enable the strategic use of the Library's planning and operational data 
as a catalyst to drive more effective decisionmaking and improved 
performance of Library projects, programs, and investments. Phase two 
is the next step in implementing an integrated planning process and 
maturing a Cost Management Center of Excellence, which will pilot new 
cost estimating and data analytics capabilities by establishing the 
staff expertise and processes necessary to optimize cost management. 
Subsequent requests will include a new technology platform to replace 
legacy systems nearing the end of their useful lives.
    Finally, the Copyright Office seeks to expand its capabilities in 
economic research, fee and cost analysis, and statistics funded fully 
with Copyright Office offsetting collections. There is a mission-
critical need to establish expertise in economic research and analysis 
specific to issues of copyright and the impact of fee changes on 
participation in the copyright system. The Office must also improve its 
capacity to perform cost and fee analysis and to manage, validate, and 
report on the statistics and metrics that affect its costs, revenue, 
and fee analysis. These capabilities are crucial for the Office to 
manage its operations effectively and to better demonstrate to the 
Congress, its users, and other stakeholders that it is using an 
evidence-based process for evaluating and setting fees, which currently 
make up approximately 50 percent of the Office's annual budget.
    In closing, the Library's 2023 Congressional Budget Justification 
continues a sequence of strategically planned modernization efforts 
across the enterprise. With the strong support of Congress, the Library 
continues to optimize and modernize operations and technology to 
strengthen institutional capacity to carry out the mission undeterred 
by changing realities. Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and Members 
of the Subcommittee, thank you again for supporting the Library of 
Congress and for your consideration of our fiscal year 2023 request.

    Senator Reed. Thank you, doctor. Comptroller General, 
please.
STATEMENT OF HON. GENE DODARO, U.S. COMPTROLLER 
            GENERAL, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
    Mr. Dodaro. Good afternoon Mr. Chairman, Senator Braun. It 
is a pleasure to be here to discuss GAO's budget proposal for 
fiscal year 2023. I want to first thank the Committee for its 
past support for our work. I believe we have provided a good 
return on investment of the money you have given GAO over the 
last 5 years. We have averaged a return on investment of $158 
back to the Government for every $1 invested in GAO.
    In addition, we have averaged over 1,300 other benefits to 
the Government, such as improvements in public safety and 
better efficiency and effectiveness of Government operations 
and programs. In addition to our normal array of work that we 
do on a regular basis to support 90 percent of the committees 
of the Congress, we have undertaken some special assignments 
on, as the Chairman mentioned, the extra spending on the COVID-
19 pandemic. We have issued 10 Government-wide reports that 
examine the full breadth of the COVID experience and track the 
Federal spending. We have also issued over 100 individual GAO 
reports on specific pandemic-related areas.
    We have made about 280 recommendations, including 15 
matters for Congressional consideration. I testified before the 
Senate in March about 10 of these recommendations for improving 
transparency and accountability of not only COVID spending, but 
all Federal spending, reining in improper payments and dealing 
with a growing problem of fraud, particularly in the pandemic 
programs.
    In the high risk series, we have added two new additions.
    The last time I was here, I talked about adding drug misuse 
across Government, and a need for greater Federal leadership. 
Since then we added HHS leadership and coordination of public 
health emergencies to the high risk list. There are still not 
clear definitions of roles and responsibilities. There is 
miscommunication, challenges that haven't been fully met, and 
data collection issues, among others. I am concerned about the 
preparations to deal with future public health emergencies.
    We also recently added the unemployment insurance program. 
It has been subject to a lot of fraud, and it is also badly in 
need of transformation for the 21st century. The program needs 
to adapt to a different type of economy and workforce. The 
State systems are antiquated and are not up to the challenge.
    In addition, we do an annual report on overlap, 
duplication, and fragmentation in the Federal Government. The 
Administration and the Congress have acted on 74 percent of our 
approximate 1,300 recommendations. So far that has produced 
$552 billion of financial benefits to the Government. I expect 
that amount to continue to grow into the future.
    Now we are asking, as Senator Braun mentioned, for an 
increase in our funding and that will go to five important 
areas. One is science and technology. Science and technology is 
becoming ubiquitous to all aspects of the Federal Government's 
operations. We have been asked to take on the responsibilities 
of the former Office of Technology Assessment.
    We have done technology assessments of artificial 
intelligence in health care, one for drug development, and 
another on diagnostics, such as one on forensic algorithms. We 
also did technology assessments of Operation Warp Speed's 
development of the vaccines and defense navigation 
capabilities. We have many other assessments in the works on 
topics such as, regenerative medicine, and carbon management.
    Our second priority area for funding is cybersecurity. We 
have an expert cybersecurity team.
    We are getting inundated with requests for cybersecurity 
work, not just for evaluations of information systems, but also 
for weapon systems and critical infrastructure systems that 
span the full breadth and scope of our economy, both inside and 
outside the Federal Government.
    Our third priority area is defense or the national security 
enterprise, which include work related to threats and 
competition from China and Russia as well as the war in 
Ukraine.
    I expect many more requests in the defense arena.
    Our fourth priority area is health care. It is the fastest 
growing part of the Federal Government's budget. There is $148 
billion in improper payments in Medicare and Medicaid alone for 
2021. We have and will continue to do work on prescription drug 
pricing as well.
    The fifth priority area is infrastructure. There are 35 
mandates in the Infrastructure and Jobs Act for GAO, and 7 more 
in the fiscal year 2022 Consolidated Appropriations Act. We 
need some additional funding to help us carry out those 
responsibilities.
    Mr. Chairman, you mentioned recruiting and retaining 
people. We have hired over a 1,000 people since the pandemic 
started. We are very effective in attracting and retaining 
talent.
    We are on track to meet 99 percent of our FTE goals for 
this fiscal year. Moreover, GAO was ranked number one in best 
places to work in midsize agencies last year. I am very proud 
of our record. We have no problem recruiting and retaining 
people. We just need your continued support. I know you will 
take careful consideration of our request and I appreciate the 
opportunity to be here today.

    [The statement follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
       LIBRARY OF CONGRESS--SECURITY COORDINATION POST JANUARY 6

    Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Comptroller General.
    Dr. Hayden, after January 6, the security situation changed 
dramatically. That is probably an understatement. How have you 
changed your--how are you collaborating with the Capitol Police 
and other agencies, and any adjustments in addition to those 
that you have made?
    Dr. Hayden. The Library has worked closely with the U.S. 
Capitol Police. And in fact, we hosted the National Guard 
personnel right after January 6. And we have been continuing 
with helping with limited entrances to our facilities so that 
they have additional personnel to take care of the things that 
they need to.
    And we also were very appreciative of the funding that we 
received in fiscal year 2022 for two major things that were in 
the work, but the need was reinforced on January the 6. One, 
cellular communications. We needed to upgrade to 5G from 3G, 
and the Capitol Police and the Architect of the Capitol staff 
had difficulty, significant trouble, maintaining communications 
in the Library buildings during the events.
    And immediately after that, funding has been appropriated, 
and we are implementing that. And the other was our physical 
security and video surveillance. The events on January 6 
reinforced the importance of that request that was funded last 
year. And Library cameras, for instance, if they had been 
sufficient and updated, they would have been able to provide 
more visibility around the perimeter, the Library's Jefferson 
Building is directly behind the Capitol, and more high 
resolution video data would have been available.
    And so with this new security system, we are replacing the 
monitors, all of the things that go with it, plus life cycle 
improvements so that we can keep up with the technology that is 
also being implemented. You did mention funding that was 
deferred for our high priority preservation in module seven was 
used for security purposes and we sincerely hope that it will 
be reinstated.
    Senator Reed. Thank you. Comptroller General, after the 
January 6 attack, you issued five reports on aspects of the 
attack from additional actions needed to better prepare a 
Capitol Police coordination with the Federal agencies. What do 
you consider to be the most important recommendation, and are 
they being implemented to your satisfaction?
    Mr. Dodaro. Not yet. All 11 recommendations we made were 
still outstanding. We received some resistance from DHS about 
updating their requirements and explanation of how to designate 
something a special event ahead of time.
    I will continue to follow up with them on this issue. The 
other recommendations draw on two areas that I think are 
equally important. One is the physical protection of the 
Capitol building and having comprehensive risk assessments 
done.
    We have heard from the US Capitol Police. We really haven't 
heard from the Capitol Police Board yet in terms of what they 
are doing. The other area of recommendations were related to 
training for the police. More realistic training and training 
on the use of force is needed. All the recommendations, I 
believe, are important, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to see 
fuller and quicker implementation.
    Senator Reed. Thank you very much. And let me direct your 
question to both you. Senator Braun touched upon it.

                 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS--LIBRARY REOPENING

    Senator Reed. What are your plans, Dr. Hayden, about 
reopening, fully reopening? Where are we, or where are you, I 
should say?
    Dr. Hayden. Well, the Library began reopening actually in 
September of 2020 just for electronic research. People had to 
make appointments. The reading rooms opened in June and July of 
2021 and the general public in July of 2021. And we worked 
closely with the Capitol Police. And we also are very fortunate 
in terms of our health services staff.
    So we have 98 percent of our staff members vaccinated, 
there are regular health screening, and then we establish timed 
entry passes for the public, and that has been very successful 
because we can monitor the number of people in the buildings, 
and we can also issue passes the same day.
    These are free passes, and it helps us in case of an 
emergency, for instance, if we have to contact people and say 
that for--or anything, that we are able to do that. So we have 
expanded our information kiosks. We had virtual docents and 
volunteers that could stay at home but also give guidance and 
talk to visitors, and that we are going to continue because 
that was very successful.
    So with the staff members that were able to roam around and 
help people, but also those timed entry passes have been very, 
very helpful.
    Senator Reed. Thank you. And Comptroller General, your sort 
of quick assessment of your reopening process?
    Mr. Dodaro. For the last decade, we have had a very robust 
telework arrangement. Staff could work up to 66 hours of the 80 
hours, 2 week pay period remotely. Most information is now 
digitized in an electronic format, allowing the work to be done 
remotely, and teleworking helps us recruit and retain the 
caliber of people that we need. But we have people back now 
full time in the offices working with classified information.
    We are coming up with a future of work plan in GAO, in 
which we will continue to have a robust, telework arrangement. 
We are going to have some remote options. We found during the 
pandemic, for example, that by offering remote options we could 
recruit interns--and we recruit about 200 interns every year--
from areas across this great country of ours that weren't close 
to a GAO facility.
    And it really helped us to diversify and get a better pool 
of applicants for our positions. So we are going to have a 
remote option for our employees in the future, along with a 
telework option, and an in-person presence. But everybody will 
be here when Congress needs us to be here for meetings and 
things of that nature, and they will be on site at the agencies 
when they need to be to do the work. I think we have a proven 
track record over the last decade and also during the pandemic 
that we can operate in this way.
    To have the caliber of workforce that we need it is 
essential that we retain people. Our attrition rate is only 6 
percent. During the pandemic it was only 5 percent. We put a 
big investment in our people to train them, and we need to have 
institutional knowledge. You need to retain the people in order 
to do that.
    Senator Reed. Thank you very much. Senator Braun is 
recognized, and then we will have a second round.
    Senator Braun. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We talked earlier 
about the current debt that we are in as a country, around $30 
trillion. And might point out that the last time we were this 
far in debt would have been coming out of World War II. That 
was a generation that would be appalled at where we are at now. 
They were savers. They were investors. Paid all that debt off 
from World War II. And it was probably the equivalent of 
around, in today's dollars who knows? It might be more than 
what we have got.
    Nevertheless, they paid it off and built the interstate 
highway system, a very capital intensive project. That is 
reflective of how we built our status as a country across the 
world. Generous in helping rebuild our enemies into trading 
partners, and now end up doing things that just don't make 
sense in terms of a solid financial posture into the future. 
You know, they call it the modern monetary theory, where annual 
deficits and cumulative debt don't make any difference anymore.
    You seem to be the one bright spot within our Federal 
Government that, to the extent you can, reins things in. Would 
you like to comment about where you think we will be if we stay 
on that course? Even doing all of this seems to be a moot point 
if we don't get it done on a timely basis. And it still 
incorporates now with President Biden's blueprint for our 
country over the next 10 years, another $15 trillion in debt, 
averaging $1.5 trillion a year. Where does that take us?
    Mr. Dodaro. We are basically on an unsustainable long term 
fiscal path. At the end of 2021 debt held by the public was 
already about 100 percent of the GDP. Absent any fiscal change 
in policy, our simulations show that this ration could rise to 
over 200 of GDP within the next 40 years, and it will continue 
to go up absent that change. By 2035, we could be paying $1 
trillion a year just to service our debt and interest. And I 
think that is a problem.
    There are also short term issues, such as Social Security 
funding and, Medicare Part A funding, where we are going to hit 
a wall within the next decade for both of those programs. That 
is going to force us to come to grips with the size of the 
benefit levels and to deal with those programs. I am also very 
concerned about our interest rate exposure into the future.
    I have issued an annual report on the nation's fiscal year 
for the last 6 years. Even before the reports, I was talking 
about the nation's unsustainable fiscal path for a long time, 
because you could see this coming due to demographic shifts and 
the rising costs of health care, which are the main drivers of 
this issue. I have also called for a change in how we set the 
debt limit. The debt limit, right now, does nothing to control 
the debt.
    Rather it makes markets nervous about whether we are going 
to raise the limit in time to make timely payments. People 
avoid Treasury securities that might mature around that period 
of time. It disrupts the liquidity in the secondary market. It 
doesn't do anything for us, except create an opportunity to 
talk about this issue, but it rarely produces enough change to 
alter the long term trajectory. I am very concerned about how 
we set and use the debt limit.
    Senator Braun. I am going to put a budget out here in a 
couple of weeks that will do what Americans should expect of 
us, and that would balance the budget over 10 years. And it 
takes political will. It takes discipline if we are going to do 
it. And you mentioned the two programs that most would look to 
the Federal Government to be healthy, to be there would be 
Medicare and Social Security.
    And I hope the American public knows and in 4 years, we 
will have depleted every penny. We have paid into the Medicare 
trust fund. And will we do something ahead of time? We will 
probably let it run into the ditch and then borrow money to 
backfill the shortage because it be close to 15 to 18 percent 
benefit cuts.
    Social Security, we have known actuarially for decades, and 
that will be a bigger issue, and we have been paying into that 
since the Depression. All of that will be gone. It does take 
some serious consideration. We seem not to do it. I am just 
hoping that we wise up here quickly.

           LIBRARY OF CONGRESS--WELCOMING VISITORS POST COVID

    Senator Braun. Dr. Hayden, when you were talking earlier 
about the Library of Congress getting back open, what 
percentage of your normal activities would you say you are back 
to in terms of what--you mentioned, a few of them that are back 
up and running again. Where are you at pre-COVID compared to 
pre-COVID now?
    Dr. Hayden. I would have to say that we are at least 80 
percent back, and that is basically with the number of visitors 
who are coming in. Before COVID, we had approximately 2 million 
visitors per year coming physically into Library facilities. 
And so now with the timed entry, we have capacity for about 
6,000 people daily. If anyone comes up and they don't have the 
pass, we give them same day passes.
    We just left the building, the Thomas Jefferson building 
today and there were school groups and tour groups. We really 
are seeing the increase in visitors. When the Capital Visitor 
Center opens, in fact staff from the Capital Visitor Center 
have been on detail to the Library helping us with our plans 
for increased visitor attendance, and when that opens we 
anticipate that we will be very much in demand.
    Senator Braun. Well, I wish the capital and the folks in 
charge of it, you know, would be as kind of good at getting 
back to normal as what you have done in the Library of 
Congress. I get complaints often from folks not only from 
Indiana but across the country that why aren't we back closer 
to normal?
    I know that the Capitol Police, they have got some concerns 
as well as leadership currently in the House and Senate. And I 
think that that needs to be at least where we are at. You say 
you are back to 80 percent of normal. We need to be much closer 
to that than where we are. And I do have a few more questions. 
I yield back.
    Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Senator Braun. Both Dr. 
Hayden and the Comptroller General, how are you coping with 
inflation in this budget and going forward for your agencies?

               LIBRARY OF CONGRESS--MITIGATING INFLATION

    Dr. Hayden. Well, in terms of the Library, in every cycle, 
we plan for it, and we use the CBO inflation rate that is used 
by all of the Legislative Branch agencies. And that current 
inflation rate is about 8.3 percent and the Library used 4.6 
percent for pay and a CBO rate of 2.8. Our budget is 65 percent 
pay. And some units, for instance, are CRS is 90 percent pay. 
We see the costs escalating in contractual labor, with some of 
the hard to fill categories that OPM has even identified, 
contract specialists and IT.
    What we do to mitigate inflation is a combination of 
things. We slow down hiring and backfills - though sometimes 
that hinders us from ever backfilling because the costs have 
been shifted to other areas. We de-scope and delay some 
contracts when we can. And if necessary, we would consider more 
severe methods, furloughs and RIFs and we haven't had to do 
that and slowing down certain programs.
    One aspect that we are concerned about is we talk about the 
visitor experience, for instance, and the Fort Meade module. We 
have already been told by the Architect of the Capitol that we 
will probably see significant increases in costs. Supply chain, 
all of these types of things. So that is what we are watching 
very closely, working with them on value engineering, on these 
projects.
    Fort Meade, there is not much more we can value engineer 
there, but the visitor experience has more opportunities there. 
But that is our one concern that it is hard for us to control.
    Senator Reed. Thank you. Comptroller General, please.
    Mr. Dodaro. 85 percent of our costs are personnel costs. So 
we are always concerned about whether we are getting enough 
funds to cover the cost of living increases that Congress 
ultimately authorizes.
    We also have performance based pay as well, and then 
benefits go up each year as well. These increase always factor 
into what size of workforce you can have and how many people 
you can hire. Now, the other two main costs outside of pay are 
IT and building costs. For our IT, we are on pace with our 
modernization effort in which we are moving to the cloud to 
save costs over the long run.
    And we have to make sure we invest what we need to for 
computer security purposes to protect our information and all 
the information we gather from other agencies across the 
Federal Government. That is always a top priority. We also need 
to modernize our content management systems for our audit 
documentation. Our systems is over 30 years old.
    We are trying to modernize it, but the pace of that 
modernization will be dictated by how much money we receive and 
what the pace of inflation will be going forward.
    The other main cost outside of pay is our building. We own 
our headquarters building. And in the past what we have done 
due to constrained budgets is defer maintenance on the 
building.
    We have over $80 million in deferred maintenance costs 
right now. We are trying to have a plan to fix that problem 
over time. And so, what we will do is pace it with the amount 
of money that we have over the period of time. It is all we can 
do--we will prioritize the investments; for example the blast 
protections on our windows, particularly around the first 
floor, is a high priority.
    We have a daycare center on the first floor and I want to 
make sure those children are protected. So I want to make sure 
we upgrade the blast protection on the windows on that floor. 
Our building is one complete block so it is very exposed to the 
streets.
    Senator Reed. Let me follow up Comptroller. A somewhat 
related question. You have a high retention in your workforce, 
you have an extremely capable workforce. You prove it every 
day. You are talking about the challenges to our IT systems.
    Other Federal agencies have, I am--my observation is that 
workforce shortages and problems with very old IT. Have you 
been asked, or have you done an assessment of different 
agencies throughout the Federal Government? And can you give us 
sort of the worst, the best?
    Mr. Dodaro. Yes. First of all, on our high risk list, we 
have human capital management across the Federal Government. We 
have had it on that list since 2001. I am very concerned about 
the State of the Federal Government's workforce. There is a lot 
of critical skill gaps.
    Of the 36 areas we have on our high risk list, plus the two 
new areas we added this year, about 24 are on there in part 
because of critical skill gaps in those areas. So we have 
problems. I think the Defense Department does probably one of 
the better jobs of recruiting and retaining people. But even at 
DOD there are cybersecurity skill gaps and acquisition 
workforce skill gaps. NASA and Department of Interior also have 
skill gap problems; for example, Interior has problems 
retaining sufficient staff to oversee and manage oil and gas 
operations.
    Another Government wide high risk area is IT acquisition 
and management. I don't think the Federal Government gets a 
fair return on it's almost now $100 billion a year invested in 
IT. A lot of improvements need to be made in that area as well.
    And so we work every day to try to get better practices in 
place, to get a better return on our investment from the IT 
funding that is provided to agencies. I think, everybody is in 
need of improvement in that area.
    Senator Reed. And those improvements would presumably 
increase productivity significantly.
    Mr. Dodaro. Oh, absolutely. And also increase computer 
security, Senator. I mean, one of the biggest problems we have 
now is we are still carrying legacy systems that are decades 
old, that were never designed to build security into those 
systems. It is like a millstone around our neck from a computer 
security standpoint.
    Senator Reed. Well, I can recall learning basic as a plebe 
at West Point, and computer security was making sure you didn't 
drop the box of cards, and that is a program. So with that, let 
me recognize Senator Braun.
    Senator Braun. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You mentioned 
earlier, Comptroller, that there was fraud in our extended 
unemployment insurance benefits. I would like to point out that 
I think we spent nearly $800 to $900 billion in total in that 
neighborhood, about the same amount that we did back in 2008 
and 2009.
    So it is just to have a comparison of how much money we 
spent navigating through COVID, $4 trillion, I think, due to 
the uncertainty of the CARES Act and so forth. And then another 
$3 trillion, and I think mostly we didn't need, that generated 
a lot of what we are wrestling with now.
    On the fraud associated with the extended unemployment 
benefits, I have heard estimates anywhere from $70 billion to 
$250 billion. I mean, these are unbelievable numbers. And then 
the PPP loan program. I hear a lot about that as well. How much 
is your agency weighing in on it and what can you tell us about 
it?
    Mr. Dodaro. Yes, well, first we placed the SBA emergency 
loan programs on the High Risk List in 2021. Both the Paycheck 
Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan 
program were fraught with problems. SBA wasn't able to get an 
opinion on their financial statements because they couldn't 
support the balances on their financial statements. I had 
trouble getting the attention of the SBA early in the pandemic. 
I was very concerned about those two programs from the outset.
    On the unemployment area, there are a lot of problems. We 
have been asked the question of how much fraud has occurred? 
And of course, that won't be known for years because you got to 
go through a legal process before it is determined to be fraud 
at the end. But it is a significant amount of money. There 
are----
    Senator Braun. Over $100 billion, would you say?
    Mr. Dodaro. I hesitate to give a guess.
    Senator Braun. I think the Labor Department estimated $70 
or $80 and said it could be up to 2 to 3 times that much, so.
    Mr. Dodaro. Well, sometimes these estimates get conflated 
with improper payment estimates.
    Senator Braun. We will get to that in a moment.
    Mr. Dodaro. Yes so it is really not clear. We will be 
issuing a report that will clarify these differences between 
fraud and improper payments and give the Labor Department 
estimates of fraud and improper payments, to include estimates 
developed by the Department itself and by the Inspector 
General. We are working on this report now.
    Senator Braun. Good. And I would love to hear that amount 
when you get it fleshed out, even in the long run, when we get 
to the real figures. And I think that whenever we do something 
like this, I think the American public was appalled by that 
much. But when you spend that much and you do it that quickly, 
there is going to be some of it. But these figures are an 
abomination if they are even close to true.
    Mr. Dodaro. Yes. I was very disappointed with SBA and 
Labor. We worked with Congress on a 2016 law called the Fraud 
Reduction and Data Analytics Act. The act reflected best 
practices and a framework to prevent fraud from occurring in 
the first place. SBA and Labor were slow off the dime in 
implementing this law and weren't prepared as well as they 
should have been before the pandemic.
    So part of the legislative recommendations that I have made 
to the Congress is to put a better spotlight on how agencies 
are preparing to prevent fraud. Because if with these numbers 
being what they could be, the rule of thumb is you are only 
going to get about 10 percent back of----
    Senator Braun. It is not a good collection rate.
    Mr. Dodaro. No, it is not. And the longer it goes----
    Senator Braun. Before we run out of time because I have a 
question for Dr. Hayden as well. But while we are on the 
subject of improper payments, I about fell out of my seat when 
you told me back, I think in 2021 that there were $281 billion 
of improper payments. That, again, is a figure so large.
    How can any entity make that many improper payments and not 
be able to mitigate it somewhere along the way? And would you 
explain to me and the American public how you come up with $281 
billion worth of improper payments?
    Mr. Dodaro. Yes. Well, first of all, I want to make it 
clear, that is not a complete estimate. There are a number of 
programs that didn't even make an estimate. And I believe----
    Senator Braun. So it could be more?
    Mr. Dodaro. Oh, it definitely is more. The question is how 
much more. There are 86 programs that made estimates at 16 
different agencies. 26 of those programs had rates in excess of 
10 percent. This is----
    Senator Braun. Like wrong amounts that----
    Mr. Dodaro. Overpayments----
    Senator Braun. Wrong payee, all that kind of stuff?
    Mr. Dodaro. Yes. Some of it is underpayments, but that is 
less than about 10 percent of the total estimate.
    Senator Braun. This is netting out in terms of overpayments 
or improper pay----
    Mr. Dodaro. It counts both. These count both.
    Senator Braun. Okay.
    Mr. Dodaro. But the amount of underpayments--which is a 
problem, too, means somebody who should have been getting the 
money, wasn't getting the money. We certainly found that in the 
unemployment area. Payments weren't made in a timely manner in 
addition to the issues of fraud.
    So there are problems on both sides of the equation-that is 
over- and underpayments.
    The Medicaid program had over $98 billion in improper 
payments in 2021. Unemployment insurance had over $78 billion 
in 2021. These two programs drove the big increase between 2020 
and 2021. Regarding Medicaid, I have been concerned about the 
accuracy of the estimates, particularly for Medicaid's managed 
care portion, which is accounts for about 50 percent of 
programs spending. The estimate for managed care does not 
capture all program risks. So this problem is bigger than it 
even appears.
    Senator Braun. I need to get to Dr. Hayden. And just so the 
American public knows, we spent, back in 2021, somewhere 
between $4 and $4.5 trillion. Big numbers. $281 billion was an 
improper payment. That is a big percentage of our total 
expenditures.

             LIBRARY OF CONGRESS--VETERANS HISTORY PROJECT

    Senator Braun. Dr. Hayden, when it comes to the Veterans 
History Project, we've been supportive of it over the past 
several years. Can you share some of the activities you have 
been working on over this past fiscal year and what you have 
planned for 2023 when it comes to the Veterans History Project?
    Dr. Hayden. Thank you for that, Senator, because we have 
been able in the last year to work with 63 Members of Congress 
directly with opportunities for workshops. In fact, you were 
part of that in your State. And training volunteers. We have 
also had promotional videos that Members of Congress have 
participated in, and we have also been able to expand our 
virtual and live programs.
    The role of veterans in farming, for instance, was very 
popular. And also how veterans cope with PTSD and using the 
power of music. So these are some of the customized programs 
and the live events. And we just signed a memorandum of 
agreement with the VA Center for Women's Veterans, and we are 
going to expand programing with that, and also capturing the 
voices of veterans who helped with disaster relief first 
responder stories, including pandemic, for instance, the USS 
Mercury and the Comfort.
    We are getting their stories from those veterans, and also 
Haitian relief and disease outbreaks like Ebola. So that is 
another area that we are really expanding and making sure that 
we work with the gold star families as well. That legislation 
was passed and that has been a real opportunity for us to use 
with our virtual programing as well.
    Senator Braun. Very good. Keep up the good work. And Mr. 
Chairman, I have one short question----
    Senator Reed. Please go ahead.
    Senator Braun. And then it will be the end of my questions 
for the day. Back in 2019, we did get across the finish line 
the Payment Information Integrity Act. And I think it was based 
upon the first conversation we had. Has that been a tool that 
has been helpful, and do we need to do more?
    Mr. Dodaro. That tool has been helpful. It has caused 
people to make better estimates. Part of this problem is that 
there are not good estimates made in a lot of cases. Some 
programs don't estimate at all. There should be estimates for 
all high risk programs.
    So it has helped quite a bit. What we need to do more is 
get the CFOs more engaged in the process. Right now it is the 
program people who make the estimates and monitor the 
corrective action plans. And to some extent that is kind of 
like monitoring your own work. There are not enough financial 
people involved.
    Secondly we need to keep the IGs involved in those areas. I 
have legislative suggestions. I will be happy to provide----
    Senator Braun. Please bring those to our office and we 
would be happy to flesh those in the legislation. We certainly 
need the effort to be made. Thank you.
    Mr. Dodaro. Yes, sure.
    Senator Reed. Thank you, Senator. Thank you very much. This 
concludes the Legislative Branch Appropriations subcommittee 
hearing regarding the fiscal year 2023 funding for the Library 
of Congress and the GAO. And I want to particularly thank Dr. 
Hayden and Comptroller General Dodaro for your, not only your 
testimony today, but your efforts every day and those of your 
colleagues at the Library of Congress and GAO.
    Thank you very, very much.

                     ADDITIONAL COMMITTEE QUESTIONS

    The record will remain open for 7 days, allowing Members to 
submit statements and, or questions for the record, which 
should be sent to the subcommittee by close of business on 
Wednesday, June 29, 2022.
    [The following questions were not asked at the hearing, but 
were submitted to the agencies for response subsequent to the 
hearing:]
    No questions were submitted.

                          SUBCOMMITTEE RECESS

    Senator Reed. At this point, the Committee stands 
adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 5:10 p.m., Wednesday, June 22, the 
subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene subject to the call of 
the Chair.]


 
         LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2023

                              ----------                              

                                       U.S. Senate,
           Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations,
                                                    Washington, DC.

    [Clerk's note.--The subcommittee was unable to hold 
hearings on nondepartmental witnesses. The statements and 
letters of those submitting written testimony are as follows:]

                       NONDEPARTMENTAL WITNESSES

    Prepared Statement of the American Association of Law Libraries
Dear Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and Members of the 
subcommittee:

    Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony on behalf of the 
American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) in support of the Fiscal 
Year (FY) 2023 budget requests of the U.S. Government Publishing Office 
(GPO) and the Library of Congress.
    AALL is a national organization representing more than 3,500 law 
librarians and legal information professionals. AALL members work in 
many library settings, including law schools and law firms; federal, 
state, and county governments; and Federal and State courts. Law 
librarians and legal information professionals rely on resources and 
publications provided for free by the GPO, the Library of Congress, and 
the Law Library of Congress to support the legal research needs of 
students, attorneys, self-represented litigants, and members of the 
public.
    AALL thanks the subcommittee for its support of the prior year's 
funding requests of the GPO and the Library of Congress. Past funding 
has allowed the GPO and the Library of Congress to develop innovative 
partnerships with Federal agencies and law libraries to digitize, 
preserve, and provide public access to primary legal materials, 
including the United States Code and the Code of Federal Regulations. 
Partnerships between law libraries, the GPO, and the Law Library of 
Congress promote access to justice by making legal materials easier for 
legal researchers and the public to find, understand, and use. Recent 
funding has also enabled the GPO and the Law Library of Congress to 
create new public resources including legal research guides and online 
trainings on a variety of government information topics that are 
helpful to legal researchers, such as how to find Federal legislation 
on Congress.gov and how to track Federal regulations.
    AALL supports the FY 2023 funding requests of the GPO and the 
Library of Congress because this funding will allow these agencies to 
continue to build valuable partnerships with law libraries and other 
stakeholders, pursue digitization initiatives, and expand projects that 
provide greater access to current and historical legal information in 
print and online. We urge the subcommittee to approve the FY 2023 
funding requests of the GPO and the Library of Congress.
           funding for the u.s. government publishing office
    The GPO produces, organizes, authenticates, disseminates, and 
preserves official Federal legal information and government documents 
for the public. Approximately 200 law libraries partner with the GPO 
through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) to provide public 
access to legal materials in print and online. Law librarians and legal 
information professionals also frequently use the govinfo website to 
support the legal research needs of law library patrons.
    With the subcommittee's support of the GPO's past funding requests, 
the GPO has increased access to electronic Federal information through 
the FDLP; partnered with libraries to digitize, preserve, and provide 
public access to core legal materials and government publications; and 
added new public collections of primary legal materials to govinfo, 
including digitized historical volumes of the United States 
Congressional Serial Set which are now available to the public at no 
cost for the first time.
    AALL urges the subcommittee to approve the GPO's FY 2023 funding 
request of $130.9 million. The request will provide the funds the GPO 
needs to make Federal Government publications available to Federal 
depository libraries in digital and print formats. AALL is supportive 
of the goals of the GPO's new task force to study the feasibility of an 
all-digital FDLP, which comes at a time when some law libraries are 
updating their collection development policies to select more 
electronic resources because of changing patron preferences due to the 
COVID-19 pandemic or for other reasons.
    The GPO's funding will also be used to develop the govinfo website, 
which provides free public access to official publications such as 
bills and statutes, Federal regulations, and Federal court opinions. We 
are excited about the GPO's plans to collaborate with Federal partners 
and libraries to add more information to the govinfo website. Adding 
information such as historical agency documents and Congressional 
reports and hearings to govinfo will promote the principles of open, 
equitable, and reliable public access to legal information that are 
described in the AALL Guiding Principles for Public Access to Legal 
Information on Government Websites (AALL Guiding Principles). AALL is 
proud that GPO endorsed the AALL Guiding Principles in May 2021, and we 
appreciate the GPO's plans to further develop govinfo.
                  funding for the library of congress
    The Law Library of Congress provides legal research services and 
public access to an extensive collection of foreign, comparative, 
international, and United States law. Law librarians and legal 
information professionals at academic law libraries and public law 
libraries often refer patrons to the Law Library of Congress for its 
unique collections of legal materials in print and online, including 
the digitized United States Statutes at Large dating back to 1781, 
official foreign legal gazettes, and Spanish legal documents from the 
15th to 19th centuries.
    The subcommittee's approval of past funding for the Library of 
Congress and the Law Library of Congress has enabled the Law Library to 
digitize, preserve, and provide the public with access to many 
collections of legal materials from the United States and other 
countries. The Law Library of Congress' current project to digitize and 
ingest its legal reports on foreign, comparative, and international law 
topics including cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and data 
protection is especially helpful to law librarians and legal 
information professionals because these reports analyze laws in many 
countries and link to primary sources. The Law Library of Congress' 
extensive collections of print and online foreign official gazettes 
dating back to the mid-19th century are also very useful to law 
librarians and legal information professionals because many of these 
materials are not available at other law libraries.
    AALL urges the subcommittee to support the Library of Congress' FY 
2023 funding request of $871.8 million, including $17.6 million for the 
Law Library of Congress. This request will lead to increased access to 
the Law Library of Congress' collections of legal materials.
    The Law Library of Congress' FY 2023 funding request will 
accelerate progress on the digitization of additional volumes of the 
United States Congressional Serial Set in partnership with the GPO and 
the digitization of the United States Supreme Court Records and Briefs. 
These publications are important to legal researchers and will become 
even more useful once they are digitized and available for free. The 
funding request will also allow the Law Library to continue to 
reclassify legal materials in its collection to make these materials 
more accessible to the public and to protect important print materials 
contained in storage.
                               conclusion
    AALL appreciates the opportunity to provide written testimony in 
support of the FY 2023 funding requests of the U.S. Government 
Publishing Office and the Library of Congress. Please let us know if we 
can provide additional information as you develop the FY 2023 
Legislative Branch funding bill.

    [This statement was submitted by Diane M. Rodriguez, President]
                                 ______
                                 
             Prepared Statement of American Bar Association
Chairman Reed and Ranking Member Braun:

    I am Reginald Turner, President of the American Bar Association 
(ABA), which is the largest voluntary association of lawyers and legal 
professionals in the world. I am pleased to submit this testimony on 
behalf of the ABA to urge your strong support for the FY 2023 budget 
request of the Library of Congress. As consumers of the resources of 
the Library and Law Library of Congress, we cannot overstate the value 
of these unrivaled world-class institutions to Congress, the legal 
profession, American business, academia, and the public. We appreciate 
your support for the much-needed funding increase that the Library of 
Congress received in FY 2022, and we respectfully request that you fund 
the Library's FY 2023 budget request in its entirety.
    As you know, the Library of Congress is requesting a modest 
increase for FY 2023 over its FY 2022 enacted appropriation. That 
increase would, among other things, fund the completion of key 
projects, increase the Library's resilience against cybersecurity 
threats, and improve public access to the Library's physical and 
virtual collections, an increasingly important function as the country 
emerges from the COVID-19-related quarantine. The proposed increase 
would also help provide necessary support for the Law Library of 
Congress, and it would help the Copyright Office to improve its ability 
to manage, validate, and report on the metrics that affect its user 
fees that comprise half of its budget.
    Founded by Congress in 1800 as its research arm, the Library of 
Congress is the oldest Federal cultural institution in the Nation. Over 
its history, the Library has grown into an unparalleled public resource 
of staggering proportion, housing more than 168 million items in 90 
collections, including books, periodicals, film, and audio recordings. 
Similarly, the Law Library of Congress, authorized by Congress in 1832, 
has grown from its modest beginnings to become the world's largest 
repository of legal materials, including more than 2.9 million legal 
volumes and periodicals.
    The magnitude of these priceless collections in both size and 
significance to our Nation and to the world cannot be overstated. Their 
immense scope creates unique challenges, including managing their daily 
growth and administration. These are our National treasures, and the 
funding required to keep the Library of Congress and Law Library of 
Congress running at full capacity is a wise investment of taxpayer 
dollars.
    We know through our 90-year collaboration with the Law Library that 
it supports all three branches of government with complex foreign, 
comparative, and international research and guidance. In addition, the 
executive branch's reliance on the Law Library's foreign law expertise 
is steadily increasing, as is the number of requests for legal opinions 
from Federal executive branch agencies.
    The Law Library's contributions to Congress during the current 
pandemic have included over 550 reports on many different subjects, 
including many involving national security and issues of comparative 
law relating to government operations in emergency situations. The Law 
Library conducted research, prepared reports, and collaborated with 
Federal officials at numerous agencies including the Department of 
Homeland Security, Department of State, and Central Intelligence Agency 
(CIA). Responding quickly to the war in Ukraine, Law Library foreign 
law specialists provided important country-specific information to 
congressional and CIA staff. In addition to supporting Congress and the 
executive branch, the Law Library also has continued to leverage 
technology to increase its contributions to the judiciary, the public, 
and the legal profession through webinars offered through its Legal 
Research Institute; expanded access to digitized materials; and 
continued operation of services such as ``Ask a Librarian,'' its In 
Custodia Legis blog, and Congress.gov.
    The Law Library remains committed to fulfilling its mission of 
serving Congress and the Nation through the priorities outlined last 
year, including preserving hard copies of legal materials, further 
developing access to these materials online through digitization, and 
strengthening staff expertise in foreign law and collection 
stewardship. Another important priority is modernizing the Law 
Library's facilities by replacing its third quadrant of compact 
shelving, which has become dangerously unusable and houses a 
significant portion of the world's largest and most comprehensive 
collection of international, foreign, national, and comparative legal 
resources. The Law Library of Congress must also address the critical 
area of cybersecurity to protect congressional and other high-value 
digital assets within the Law Library. We strongly support these 
priorities. Because the Law Library does not have an independent line 
item in the Federal budget, one of the best ways to ensure adequate 
funding for these priorities is by fully funding the Library of 
Congress' overall request.
    In closing, we respectfully urge you to grant the Library of 
Congress' funding request for FY 2023 in its entirety. We appreciate 
the support you have shown for the Library of Congress and Law Library 
of Congress and hope you will continue to find the means to protect and 
enhance the value of these treasures built over the past 220 years for 
all Americans, now and for generations to come.
    Thank you for your consideration.
                                 ______
                                 
           Prepared Statement of American Library Association
Chair Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and Members of the subcommittee:

    On behalf of the American Library Association, thank you for the 
opportunity to submit this testimony regarding Legislative Branch 
Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2023. We respectfully request the 
Committee's support for the Library of Congress and the Government 
Publishing Office, which provide important services to libraries and 
residents nationwide.
                          library of congress
    The Library of Congress not only serves Congress, but also delivers 
important benefits for libraries across the country and the American 
public.
    After several years of investment in the Library's Visitor 
Experience Initiative, the first phase is expected to open in fall 
2023. Carrying through on these investments will highlight the 
Library's unique collections and inspire millions of visitors to learn, 
create, and innovate.
    The Library's services also reach far beyond its walls through 
programs such as the National Library Service for the Blind and Print 
Disabled, which serves readers nationwide who cannot see print or 
handle print materials. The service supports a network of regional 
libraries, such as the Rhode Island Office of Library and Information 
Services' Talking Books Library and the Indiana Talking Book & Braille 
Library, and is expanding delivery of specialized eReaders to more 
efficiently and effectively serve braille and talking book users.
                      government publishing office
    The Government Publishing Office provides essential information to 
America's businesses, legal system, and researchers.
    Through the Public Information Programs of the Superintendent of 
Documents, the Office provides Federal publications in digital and 
tangible formats to 1,113 libraries nationwide through the Federal 
Depository Library Program, as well as cataloging and indexing of 
Federal publications to improve public access. The program supports 
Americans' access to these publications--including Federal laws, 
regulations, and reports--through participating libraries, such as the 
Indiana State Library and the Westerly Library in Rhode Island.
    In addition, the Office annually collects and provides access to 
thousands of new Federal publications to its free online repository, 
govinfo.gov. To preserve these important documents of our republic, GPO 
manages a cooperative preservation program with libraries across the 
country.
                               conclusion
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify before the subcommittee in 
support of the Fiscal Year 2023 requests of the Library of Congress and 
the Government Publishing Office. We ask for the subcommittee's support 
in meeting the requests for these important national programs that 
serve Congress, libraries, and the American public.

    Sincerely,

    Gavin Baker
    Deputy Director, Public Policy and Government Relations
    American Library Association

The American Library Association (``ALA'') is the foremost national 
organization providing resources to inspire library and information 
professionals to transform their communities through essential programs 
and services. For more than 140 years, the ALA has been the trusted 
voice for academic, public, school, government and special libraries, 
advocating for the profession and the library's role in enhancing 
learning and ensuring access to information for all.
                                 ______
                                 
   Prepared Statement of Bipartisan Policy Center Action (BPC Action)
Dear Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and members of the 
subcommittee:

    The Bipartisan Policy Center Action (BPC Action) and our affiliate 
organization Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) have actively engaged in 
strengthening the capacity of our country's governing institutions and 
building a Congress that is responsive to a diverse nation. BPC Action 
and BPC believe that if Congress is to effectively govern, it must have 
the ability to operate effectively and efficiently. Given this 
challenge, we understand the critical importance of ensuring that the 
legislative branch has adequate resources and direction to support this 
mission.
    BPC Action's testimony builds on our ongoing work with the Senate 
including our work to support the Senate subcommittee on Legislative 
Branch Appropriations' mission. Their work and diverse recommendations, 
aimed at improving the workings of the legislative branch, including 
administrative responsibilities, civility and collaboration, staff 
retention, and science and technology capabilities, are critical to 
improve the daily functioning of the House. Regarding Fiscal Year 2023 
(FY23), we would ask that the subcommittee on Legislative Branch 
Appropriations consider the following recommendations to further 
increase congressional capacity.
    Promoting civility and collaboration.--BPC Action's core mission is 
to foster bipartisanship and uphold the best policy proposals from both 
parties with a pragmatic approach. This means we must push for more 
ways members and staff can collaborate on legislation and policy 
priorities. This can be achieved in a multitude of ways, including 
promoting civility, collaboration, and leadership in party by directing 
the Architect of the Capitol to explore bipartisan co-working spaces 
for staff.
    Expanding connectivity and technology availability.--For years, 
civil society organizations have worked with committees and members on 
Capitol Hill to foster bipartisan conversations and relationships. From 
presenting research to best practices, these groups have been a vital 
source of information and have created a forum to promote policy 
recommendations to help the American people. To continue these efforts, 
resources should be used to provide information on organizations and 
resources members can utilize to participate in facilitated 
conversations with the goal of fostering common ground.
    1.  Establish a web portal with staff contact information for the 
House, Senate, and congressional support agencies to enhance the 
exchange of information. The portal should contain a directory with 
standardized indicators of issue areas and committees connected with 
each staff member.
    2.  Develop and deploy new technology tools to better enable 
Members and staff to identify policy areas of common interest on which 
to collaborate.

    Focusing on engagement regarding near- and long-term advice by GAO 
(Government Accountability Office).--Over its history, the GAO has 
provided critical support through its audits, legal options, program 
evaluation, technology assessments, and other activities. Despite the 
tremendous governmental benefits, the agency's capabilities have been 
limited in keeping pace with the expanse of the Federal Government's 
programs and expenditures. The GAO's work to provide essential 
'oversight, insight, and foresight' requires ongoing vigilance to 
support Congress' core functions.
    1.  GAO and other support agencies must take steps to ensure that 
their products, services, and outreach are designed to adapt to and 
meet the customer needs of an evolving Congress. This is especially 
true in terms of timely responses to members' and committees' enquiries 
to the Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) Team. In 
the near term, we urge the GAO to direct additional staff to address 
responses to congressional requests.
    2.  In the longer term, the GAO should provide additional attention 
to the ``foresight element'' when considering issues that are 
fundamental to impacting longer-term trends and how Congress should be 
prepared to respond. This horizon-scanning focus within the STAA on 
health, defense, information technology, climate, and other vital 
issues is crucial and requires more attention by the agency.

    Continuing the GAO audits of congressionally directed spending from 
members.--The subcommittee should provide report language direction to 
the GAO to allow them to review and audit members' community project 
funding requests for FY23. If such requests are included in the 
appropriate, final subcommittee bills, then the GAO will likely need 
such approval to continue to examine these additional requests beyond 
FY22.
    Ensuring accessibility.--Changes to the Capitol complex can be a 
challenging undertaking, but it is important to modernize the space 
just as much as the governing body. BPC Action supports removing 
accessibility barriers in the Capitol Complex and believes a directed 
study is necessary to explore what would help staff, members, and the 
public with accessibility needs.
    Our organization looks forward to continuing to engage with the 
subcommittee as the FY23 process continues. BPC Action recognizes the 
challenges you face to ensure that funds and statutory direction is 
provided for the legislative branch are targeted to address a 
multiplicity of critical needs.

    [This statement was submitted by Michele Stockwell, Executive 
Director]
                                 ______
                                 
                 Prepared Statement of Demand Progress
Dear Chair Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and Members of the Committee:

    Thank you for your continuing stewardship of Senate operations 
during these challenging times. This testimony encourages you to 
further improve access to bills and amendments considered on the Senate 
floor. Specifically, I urge you to bolster timely access within the 
Senate to the full text of legislation and amendments being considered 
on the floor and to improve the tools through which the text can be 
analyzed. Furthermore, I encourage the contemporaneous publication of 
bills and amendments considered on the Senate floor to the public. 
These recommendations implicate the operations of the Secretary of the 
Senate, the Government Publishing Office, and others.
    In making these recommendations, I am aware of the geometrically 
increasing responsibilities placed on the support offices and agencies 
that manage the legislative workflow, notably the Secretary of the 
Senate, Senate Office of the Legislative Counsel, the Parliamentarian 
of the Senate, Government Publishing Office, and the House analogues. 
Efforts to improve the transparency of legislative activity should be 
coupled with improved workflow and efficiency that lessen the burdens 
placed on these offices. Accordingly, it is appropriate to consider the 
full processes by which legislative information is managed in the 
Senate and elsewhere.
    The Congressional Record provides the most complete public source 
for information for bill text and amendments. However, it is published 
after the conclusion of legislative proceedings and thereby provides a 
retrospective look at what happened. In circumstances where bills or 
amendments were offered on the same day they were considered, there is 
no systematic concurrent public availability of the text with the 
deliberations.
    The legislative information website Congress.gov provides a user-
friendly resource for bill text for congressional staff and the public 
alike. For various reasons, at times it can take days or weeks for the 
text of legislation to be available on Congress.gov, and publication 
may occur after a measure has been considered by the Senate. The 
Government Publishing Office noted in recent testimony that, on 
average, it takes a week for introduced legislation to show up online, 
and at the height of the pandemic there was an 1,800 bill publication 
backlog that took several months to resolve.\1\ Furthermore, 
Congress.gov does not include the text of Senate floor amendments, but 
instead provides a hyperlink to the Congressional Record, which is not 
as user-friendly.
    The Senate maintains an internal website available only to 
individuals with a Senate IP address that provides significant 
contemporaneous information about pending bills and amendments.\2\ This 
internal system publishes only the first hundred or so pages of a 
measure and the text is internally published as image PDFs. These 
practices add a level of difficulty to reviewing the entire text of a 
measure and searching and analyzing its contents.
    By comparison, the House of Representatives, which operates under 
significantly different rules, publishes the full text of legislation 
to be considered on the floor and all proposed amendments thereto on 
public websites prior to consideration.\3\ Generally speaking, the 
legislation is published both as a PDF and as an XML file, the latter 
of which contains important bill metadata. The House-run websites 
provide the best official resource for timely access to this 
information, although in time it becomes available in the Congressional 
Record and on Congress.gov. In addition, the House's comparative print 
project uses this data to make it possible for some--and soon all--
staff to see in real time how a proposed amendment would modify a bill 
and how a proposed bill would change the law. One limitation to the 
House's approach is that most users start their search for legislative 
information at Congress.gov, which publishes only a subset of this 
information.
    It would be superfluous to address in this testimony the strengths 
and limitations for internal stakeholders of the current Senate 
amendment tracking system. With respect to external stakeholders, the 
current system creates unequal access to information, whereby those 
with connections to Senate offices can at times gain access to 
information more readily than those who do not. While some information 
asymmetries are inevitable, privileged access to public business that 
currently is the subject of floor debate should be minimized to the 
extent practically possible.
    Congressional offices, the public, and the press need greater 
assistance with tracking and accessing bills and amendments being 
debated on the Senate floor. In our modern era, this suggests 
contemporaneous online availability of the text of legislation and 
amendments and improved archival access. I encourage the Senate to 
consider a multi-pronged approach.
    First, I suggest a review of the current mechanisms the Senate uses 
to publish legislative information internally, the fitness and 
adaptability of technologies used in the House, and an exploration of 
technologies and tools currently employed inside the Legislative branch 
(such as Congress.gov) as well as those in other legislatures (such as 
the UK Parliament).
    Second, I suggest an examination of the extent to which the text of 
legislation and amendments printed in the Congressional Record also are 
contemporaneously published on Congress.gov, and an exploration of the 
various points in the legislative process where bill text and 
amendments exist in final form.
    Third, I urge a review of the Senate legislative workflow to 
facilitate an improved understanding of whether greater efficiencies 
can be brought to bear on that process. In doing so, it would be 
productive to sound out a wide variety of perspectives from internal 
and external stakeholders. Establishing a working group to surface and 
evaluate these perspectives may yield outsized benefits to the Senate, 
just as the work of the Legislative Branch Bulk Data Task Force is an 
ongoing boon for the Legislative branch.
    Taken together, this should result in a deeper, shared 
understanding of the current processes, ongoing efforts to address 
these issues, and the identification of potential improvements that are 
implementable in the short-term as well as possible enhancements to the 
system over the long-term. The perfect should not be the enemy of the 
good, and steady progress would be most welcome with respect to 
improving public availability of legislative information with an eye to 
its publication in interoperable, structured-data formats.\4\ We expect 
the Legislative Branch Bulk Data Task Force would be an invaluable 
sounding board concerning building a robust system that can endure and 
be extended over time.
I encourage you to consider inclusion of the following report language:
  --Improving Accessibility of Senate Legislation: The Secretary of the 
        Senate will create a working group to investigate and provide a 
        report within 180 days of enactment to the Appropriations 
        Committee and the Senate Rules Committee, which shall be 
        published online by the Secretary within two weeks of 
        submission, concerning potential issues and possible approaches 
        to develop and implement a timely, centralized, publicly-
        available repository for Senate bills and amendments set for 
        consideration on the Senate floor. In doing so, consideration 
        should be given to providing that bills, amendments, and other 
        related documents are publicly available prior to or 
        contemporaneously with their consideration by the Senate as 
        well as publication of that information in a structured data 
        format such as United States Legislative Markup (USLM).
  --The Senate Accessible Legislation Task Force should be led by the 
        Secretary of the Senate and include the stakeholders she seems 
        appropriate. In formering her recommendations, the Secretary 
        should consult with relevant Senate leadership, committee, and 
        member offices; relevant Senate support offices and agencies; 
        equivalent House leadership, committee, personal, and support 
        offices; members of the Bulk Data Task Force; members of the 
        Legislative Branch XML Working Group; the Government Publishing 
        Office; the National Archives and Records Administration; 
        public stakeholders, including publishers, users, and experts 
        on legislative data as well as repositories of legislative 
        information; select national legislatures from around the 
        world; and others as appropriate. The Secretary should also 
        examine the House document repository docs.house.gov, the House 
        Rules committee website rules.house.gov, and third party free 
        and paid services that publish information about Senate 
        legislation.
  --The report should address the feasibility and costs of upgrading 
        the current system used by the Senate, developing a new system 
        inside the Senate or in collaboration with Legislative branch 
        partners, using or extending the House's system as is or with 
        modifications, and doing so with the focus of ensuring that 
        Senate bills and amendments are publicly accessible online for 
        years to come. Furthermore, the Secretary should factor in the 
        extensibility of such a system to incorporate technology 
        similar in purpose to the House's comparative print project as 
        well as to potentially extend to hosting documents and media 
        that relate to the various stages of deliberations, including 
        in committees. The Secretary should also make recommendations 
        concerning facilitating internal and external stakeholder 
        engagement regarding the planning, implementation, and 
        operation of this and successor systems, including drafting a 
        continuing mission statement for the Senate Accessible 
        Legislation Task Force after the delivery of the report. 
        Finally, the Secretary should address how her recommendations 
        improve the workflow and efficient management of legislative 
        information.

    Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Testimony of Government Publishing Office Director Hugh 
Nathanial Halpern before the Select Committee on the Modernization of 
Congress Hearing entitled ``Modernizing the Legislative Process'' 
(April 2022), https://modernizecongress.house.gov/imo/media/doc/
GPO_TESTIMONY_
Modernizing%20the%20Legislative%20Process.pdf.
    \2\ The website is the Amendment Tracking System, available at 
ats.senate.gov. According to the Congressional Research Service, ``ATS 
is a web application that displays images of submitted and proposed 
amendments to legislation pending before the U.S. Senate. Amendments 
are available on ATS approximately 15 minutes after the Bill Clerk 
receives them.'' See Policy and Legislative Research for Congressional 
Staff: Finding Documents, Analysis, News, and Training (2019), 
Congressional Research Service (R43434), https://
www.everycrsreport.com/
reports/R43434.html.
    \3\ The text of legislation scheduled to be considered on the House 
floor is published at https://docs.house.gov/floor/and prior notice of 
legislation expected to be considered is published by the House 
Majority Leader. The text of amendments to legislation scheduled to be 
considered on the floor is published by the House Rules Committee at 
https://rules.house.gov/legislation.
    \4\ The United States Legislative Markup Schema already in use by 
the Congress would easily satisfy this request. See https://github.com/
usgpo/uslm.

    [This statement was submitted by Daniel Schuman, Policy Director]
                                 ______
                                 
                 Prepared Statement of Lincoln Network
Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and Members of the subcommittee:

    My name is Dan Lips. I am head of policy at Lincoln Network. I 
respectfully urge the subcommittee to fully fund the Comptroller 
General's budget request of $810 million for the U.S. Government 
Accountability Office (GAO) for FY2023 (an increase of $91 million or 
12.7 percent).\1\ Fully funding this request would allow the 
Comptroller General to increase GAO's staffing by 100 FTEs. In addition 
to providing funding, I respectfully urge the subcommittee to consider 
ways to increase GAO's return-on-investment through several reporting 
requirements aimed to leverage its nonpartisan oversight to achieve 
taxpayer savings and other government improvements.
    The Comptroller General estimates that GAO's annual return-on-
investment has been $158 to $1 over the past 5 years. During that 
period, GAO's work resulted in more than 1,300 program and operational 
improvements. Overall, GAO's work has resulted in more than $1.2 
trillion in financial benefits since 2002.\2\
    But these positive financial contributions for the Federal 
Government are only the tip of the iceberg of what GAO could accomplish 
if the nonpartisan watchdog agency had additional resources and its 
recommendations were implemented in a timelier manner. For example, GAO 
States that there are 4,681 open recommendations as of May 27, 2022, 
including 416 priority recommendations. The latter recommendations 
could ``save large amounts of money'' according to GAO.\3\
    How much could be saved if GAO had more resources and agencies 
acted upon its recommendations in a timely manner? The answer is likely 
tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars. For example, my review of 
nonpublic data showing GAO's financial accomplishments from 2002 to 
2019 found that more than 200 of GAO's recommendations have resulted in 
more than $1 billion in financial benefits during that period.\4\
    Fully funding the Comptroller General's FY2023 budget request will 
increase GAO's capacity to conduct nonpartisan oversight and improve 
government operations for Congress and American taxpayers. In addition, 
Congress should explore other ways to increase GAO's return on 
investment. In the report accompanying the FY2023 funding bill, the 
subcommittee should include reporting requirements to identify how 
Congress could achieve taxpayer savings and other government 
improvements by leveraging GAO's nonpartisan oversight.
    First, the Committee should direct the Comptroller General to 
report to Congress about the feasibility of setting deadlines for 
Federal agencies to implement open recommendations. According to GAO's 
2021 performance and accountability report, GAO's 4-year implementation 
rate for recommendations made in FY2017 was 76 percent.\5\ That is 
below GAO's target of 80 percent. Moreover, only 45 percent of GAO's 
recommendations made in FY2019 were implemented within 2 years.\6\ 
Improving the timeliness of this implementation rate and helping GAO to 
achieve its goal of 80 percent implementation within 4 years would 
drive significant taxpayer savings and government improvements.
    In 2015, Deloitte published an analysis of past GAO reports and 
examined the issue of the timeliness of implementation. Authors Daniel 
Byler, Steve Berman, and William D. Eggers explained that,

        ``GAO could address this issue by setting target completion 
        dates for implementing each recommendation and then making 
        real-time data available to the public showing how long it is 
        taking each agency to implement GAO recommendations.'' \7\

    Congress should require the Comptroller General to study and report 
on the feasibility of establishing target completion dates for open 
recommendations and publicly tracking the status of agencies' 
implementation to improve transparency and government accountability.
    Second, the Committee should instruct the Comptroller General to 
report to Congress recommendations for curbing improper payments by 
establishing a ``permanent analytics center of excellence'' within the 
oversight community. In March 2022 testimony, Comptroller General Gene 
Dodaro explained that Federal agencies reported making $281 billion in 
improper payments in FY2021.\8\ This was an increase of $75 billion in 
improper payments made compared to the prior fiscal year.
    GAO has issued several recommendations for how Congress and Federal 
agencies could curb improper payments. In addition, GAO's Science, 
Technology Assessment, and Analytics team has been developing 
technology solutions to improve payment integrity. The Comptroller 
General recently described ``10 ways to improve oversight of emergency 
relief funds and future Federal spending.'' \9\ He recommended that 
Congress establish ``a permanent analytics center of excellence to help 
the oversight community better identify improper payments and fraud.'' 
To help address the annual $271 billion and growing problem of improper 
payments, the Committee should require the Comptroller General to 
provide a report to Congress with specific recommendations to curb 
improper payments including by establishing a permanent analytic center 
of excellence within the oversight community.
    Third, the Committee should ask the Comptroller General to provide 
a report to Congress with a blueprint for how the Government 
Accountability Office could use a more substantial funding increase to 
expand its oversight, enhance GAO's technical capabilities and create 
additional taxpayer savings and other government benefits. While the 
Committee and Congress have provided GAO with funding increases in 
recent years, the Government Accountability Office continues to operate 
below its historic funding and staffing levels. Specifically, budget 
reductions in the 1990s resulted in significant staffing and budget 
cuts to GAO's operations. If GAO was funded at the same percentage of 
discretionary spending as it was in the early 1990s, its budget would 
be more than $1 billion today.
    In 2022 and beyond, additional funding for GAO could be used to 
enhance the agency's information technology systems and capabilities. 
Such investments could serve as a force multiplier for the entire 
organization's work by improving productivity, expanding the work of 
GAO's Innovation Lab, and protecting sensitive information.
    Since GAO routinely returns more than $150 in financial benefits to 
taxpayers for each dollar that it is provided, Congress should 
recognize the substantial taxpayer savings and other government 
improvements that could be made if GAO fully recovered from the 1990s 
era budget and staffing reductions. In its FY2023 report, the 
subcommittee should require the Comptroller General to describe how GAO 
would expand its staffing and operations if its budget was increased to 
more than $1 billion, or more. Specifically, it should explain what it 
could accomplish and its estimated return on investment should its 
funding be increased by $100 million, $200 million, $300 million, or 
more, and the annual rate at which it could absorb such an increase. 
This report should include a description of how a larger GAO could 
improve oversight and governance, achieve taxpayer savings, and deepen 
its responsiveness to members of Congress. GAO should also explore 
whether there are alternative funding models that might be appropriate 
to support its work.
                               conclusion
    The funds that Congress appropriates to the Government 
Accountability Office are among the best tax dollars that the 
government spends on behalf of the American people. GAO regularly 
reports a return-on-investment of more than $150 to $1. In FY2023, the 
Committee should fully fund the Comptroller General's budget request 
and require the Comptroller General to report to Congress on new ways 
that the Legislative Branch can leverage GAO's nonpartisan oversight to 
make the Federal Government work more efficiently for taxpayers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-22-900396, Fiscal 
Year 2023 Budget Request (2021), https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-
900396.pdf.
    \2\ U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-22-4SP, Performance 
and Accountability Report Fiscal Year 2021 (2021), https://www.gao.gov/
assets/720/717654.pdf.
    \3\ U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-21-591PR, Priority 
Open Recommendations: Department of Transportation (2021), https://
www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-591pr.
    \4\ Dan Lips, ``Reviewing the Data: How GAO Saves Taxpayer 
Dollars,'' Lincoln Network, September 2021, https://lincolnpolicy.org/
2021/how-gao-saves-taxpayer-dollars/.
    \5\ GAO, Performance and Accountability Report Fiscal Year 2021, 
op. cit.
    \6\ Ibid.
    \7\ Daniel Byler, Steve Berman, and William D. Eggers, 
``"Accountability quantified: What 26 years of GAO reports can teach us 
about government management,'' Deloitte Insights, February 2015, 
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/analytics/text-
analytics-and-gao-reports.
html.
    \8\ U.S. Government Accountability Office, Emergency Relief Funds 
Significant Improvements Are Needed to Ensure Transparency and 
Accountability for COVID-19 and Beyond (2022), https://www.gao.gov/
assets/gao-22-105715.pdf.
    \9\ U.S. Government Accountability Office, ``GAO Urges Action: 10 
Ways to Improve Oversight of Emergency Relief Funds and Future Federal 
Spending,'' March 2022, ``https://www.gao.gov/press-release/gao-urges-
action-10-ways-improve-oversight-emergency-relief-funds-and-future-
federal-spending.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                 ______
                                 
   Prepared Statement of National Association of Latino Elected and 
                      Appointed Officials (NALEO)
Dear Chair Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and Members of the Legislative 
Branch Appropriations subcommittee:

    Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony concerning our 
request for the creation of a Senate Office of Diversity and Inclusion. 
We are a cross-partisan coalition of organizations concerned about 
strengthening the diversity of staff that support the work of the 
United States Senate.
    When the 117th Congress was sworn in, it made history as the most 
diverse congressional class our Nation has ever seen. Despite this 
historic moment in our country's history, top Senate staffers do not 
often reflect the makeup of the constituencies they serve, including 
staffers of racial and ethnic minority groups, veterans, and people 
with disabilities. An August 2020 report from the Joint Center for 
Political and Economic Studies revealed that people of color account 
for nearly 40 percent of the population of the United States, but only 
11 percent of top Senate personal office staff.\1\
    This shortfall reflects a fundamental problem our government has 
with ensuring that the full spectrum of America's backgrounds and 
experiences is represented by congressional staff. These discrepancies 
are particularly troublesome in the wake of an increasing number of 
elections that continue to produce diverse congressional makeup. In 
addition, research has found that inclusive staffing is associated with 
many positive benefits, including creativity, innovation, objectivity, 
productivity and positive working environments.\2\
    Congressional staff provide indispensable assistance and 
irreplaceable institutional knowledge to senators as they conduct their 
legislative, oversight, and constituent services duties. Nevertheless, 
low staff pay is a barrier to entry into the senatorial hiring 
pipeline, inadvertently biasing the hiring pool towards those 
individuals with sufficient financial resources to supplement their 
salaries. In addition, low pay creates incentives for experienced staff 
to depart the Senate to the Executive branch and private sector, which 
have significantly higher average salaries. These two factors, working 
in tandem, impact staff diversity.
    In 2019, the House of Representatives took a major step toward 
addressing diversity and created its Office of Diversity and Inclusion 
(OD&I) in its Rules package at the start of the 116th Congress,\3\ 
which may serve as a useful model for the Senate. House Rules required 
the OD&I to develop a diversity plan,\4\ which addresses:

    1.  policies to direct and guide House offices to recruit, hire, 
train, develop, advance, promote and retain a diverse workforce;
    2.  the development of a survey to evaluate diversity in House 
offices;
    3.  a framework for the House of Representatives diversity report; 
and
    4.  a proposal for the composition of an Advisory Council to inform 
the work of the Office.

    House Rules also require the OD&I to submit an annual demographic 
and diversity report. The study involves surveying House staffers to 
determine their demographic characteristics (e.g., race/ethnicity, 
gender, military status), and analyze how demographic diversity within 
the House of Representatives compares to that of private sector 
organizations and the broader Federal Government. Furthermore, the OD&I 
proposed it oversee the undertaking of the House's annual compensation 
and diversity study, in part to record staff job satisfaction, benefits 
and compensation satisfaction, and perceptions of their workplace 
diversity climate. These suggestions are reasonable, and we commend 
them to you.
    The purpose of gathering and publishing this information on staff 
diversity is to strengthen the pipeline of capable and diverse staff 
hired and retained by the Senate by providing information about the 
current stay of play. This will let us know how the Senate is doing as 
an institution and suggest where further improvements can be made. It 
is not intended to draw public attention to the operations of any 
particular office, nor should it intrude upon the privacy of any 
individual.
    We urge the committee to appropriate funds for the creation of its 
own OD&I Office. The House established the OD&I as an independent 
office, reporting directly to the authorizing committee, and has seen 
immense success in its operations and information gathering. We do not 
have a perspective on where to situate a Senate OD&I, although there is 
value in having it be more visible and independent because that would 
assist with its mission of supporting the hiring and retention of 
capable, expert, diverse staff.
    Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony to the committee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ See, ``Racial Diversity Among Top Staff In Senate Personal 
Offices'' p. 2. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies 
(August 2020). https://jointcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020-
Senate-Report-Draft_08-21-20-5AM.pdf.
    \2\ Dutton, Jane E. and Robert B. Duncan, ``Strategic Issue 
Diagnosis and Creation of Momentum for Change.'' Strategic Management 
Journal 8, no. 3 (1987): 279-295; Wiersma, Margarethe F. and Karen A. 
Bantel, ``Top Management Team Demography and Corporate Strategic 
Change.'' The Academy of Management Journal 35, no. 1 (March 1992): 91-
121; Maddock, Su. ``Change You Can Believe In: The Leadership of 
Innovation.'' The Whitehall Innovation Hub, Sunningdale Institute, 
National School of Government. (April 2009) https://
www.researchgate.net/publication/
264541467_Change_you_can_believe_in_the_
leadership_of_innovation.
    \3\ See, H. Res 6 (116th), section 104(d) (p. 40), https://
www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-116hres6eh/pdf/BILLS-116hres6eh.pdf.
    \4\ See, Section by Section Analysis of H. Res 6 (116th Congress), 
House Rules Committee p. 11 at https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/
20181231/116-HRes6-SxS-U1.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                 ______
                                 
           Prepared Statement of National Security Counselors
    Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and members of the Legislative 
Branch Appropriations Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to 
submit this written testimony.
    The Government Accountability Office plays a critical role in 
Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch. Unfortunately, that 
role may be stymied when it comes to the Intelligence Community 
(``IC''). Despite the fact that, by statute, GAO already has the 
purview to conduct oversight of all Federal agencies \1\ and has since 
its creation in 1921,\2\ the IC has, with a few exceptions, insisted 
that it is not subject to such audits since its inception. This 
effectively deprives Congress of one of the most effective tools in its 
arsenal, especially at a time when the activities of the IC present 
some of the most pressing needs for robust oversight in the Executive 
Branch. I respectfully recommend that Congress take steps to 
conclusively validate GAO's jurisdiction in such matters.
    In response to the IC's recalcitrance, some Members of Congress 
have periodically attempted to resolve the matter over the past few 
decades. For instance, then-Congressman Leon Panetta introduced a bill 
in 1987 called the CIA Accountability Act to officially clarify GAO's 
authority vis-a-vis the Central Intelligence Agency (``CIA'') and the 
IC as a whole.\3\ Unfortunately, it was not enacted. In 1988, GAO 
attempted to conduct an investigation ``[i]n order to evaluate whether 
`information about illegal activities by high level officials of other 
nations may not be adequately considered in U.S. foreign policy 
decisions,''' leading the National Security Council to request an 
opinion from the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel which 
has been cited ever since:

        We therefore conclude based on the nature of the GAO request 
        that the subject of the GAO investigation is the Executive's 
        discharge of its constitutional foreign policy 
        responsibilities, not its statutory responsibilities. The 
        subject is thus not ``a program or activity the Government 
        carries out under existing law,'' and it is beyond GAO's 
        authority under 31 U.S.C. Sec. 717(b) . . . 

        In addition to the infirmity in GAO's statutory authority to 
        pursue this investigation, we believe that GAO is specifically 
        precluded by statute from access to intelligence information. 
        In establishing by law the oversight relationship between the 
        intelligence committees and the executive branch, Congress 
        indicated that such oversight would be the exclusive means for 
        Congress to gain access to confidential intelligence 
        information in the possession of the executive branch.

        This intelligence oversight system has been codified at 50 
        U.S.C. Sec. 413. That section sets forth requirements for the 
        Director of Central Intelligence, the heads of all other 
        Federal agencies involved in intelligence activities, and the 
        President to inform the Congress through the intelligence 
        committees (and in some circumstances the Speaker and minority 
        leader of the House of Representatives and the majority and 
        minority leaders of the Senate) of intelligence activities.\4\

    Over two decades later, this fight was still underway. When an 
amendment to the FY2010 Intelligence Authorization Act (``IAA'') sought 
to reaffirm GAO authority, it prompted a veto threat in the form of a 
letter from Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter 
Orszag,\5\ which Acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro thoroughly 
refuted, demonstrating that ``[n]either the language of section 413 nor 
its legislative history provides support for this position'' and that 
the IC's resistance ``has greatly impeded GAO's work for the 
intelligence committees and also jeopardizes some of GAO's work for 
other committees of jurisdiction, including Armed Services, 
Appropriations, Judiciary, and Foreign Relations, among others.'' \6\
    Despite Mr. Dodaro's testimony, the enacted law took a middle-of-
the-road approach, stating that clarification was necessary but 
deferring to the Executive for that clarification, instructing the 
Director of National Intelligence (``DNI'') to ``issue a written 
directive governing the access of the Comptroller General to 
information in the possession of an element of the intelligence 
community.'' \7\ The DNI, for his part, issued Intelligence Community 
Directive 114 the following year, which reluctantly admitted that GAO 
had some authority to investigate the IC, but adopted a severely 
restrictive interpretation of the scope of that authority:

        Information that falls within the purview of the congressional 
        intelligence oversight committees generally shall not be made 
        available to GAO to support a GAO audit or review of core 
        national intelligence capabilities and activities, which 
        include intelligence collection operations, intelligence 
        analyses and analytical techniques, counterintelligence 
        operations, and intelligence funding. IC elements may on a 
        case-by-case basis provide information in response to any GAO 
        requests not related to GAO audits or reviews of core national 
        intelligence capabilities and activities.\8\

    In other words, GAO can investigate anything involving the IC that 
the Intelligence Committees cannot, which amounts to basically nothing. 
Moreover, this is not an academic dispute: in response to a question 
about this matter from Congressman Yoder in 2018, Mr. Dodaro explained 
that this remained an ongoing controversy, although the situation is 
minimally better than it was before 2010:

        Mr. YODER. Do you need additional support from Congress--
        Mr. DODARO. Yes.
        Mr. YODER [continuing]. Or direction to the intel agencies to 
        make sure they are aware that this is an authority you have?
        Mr. DODARO. Yes, that would be helpful.\9\

    When Mr. Dodaro testified before the House subcommittee in 2019 
regarding GAO's FY2020 budget, Chairman Ryan again asked him about this 
matter, and Mr. Dodaro again remarked that GAO needs ``the cooperation 
of the Intelligence Community'' because GAO ``ha[s] more difficulties 
when the request comes from non-intelligence committees,'' concluding, 
``I think we could do more, particularly in the management area, and in 
the investments that are made, in that area, whether there's good 
return on the investments in all cases.'' \10\ And in his testimony 
before that subcommittee in 2020, Mr. Dodaro testified, ``It's the same 
status as it was last year. Congress could work with the Intelligence 
Committees to provide better direction to the intelligence agencies to 
cooperate with us.'' \11\
    In fact, however, even the involvement of the Intelligence 
Committees is not sufficient to overcome the IC's reliance on ICD 114 
to obstruct meaningful GAO access. In a meeting in 2019 with staffers 
from the House Legislative Branch and Defense Appropriations 
subcommittees, a member of the Defense subcommittee's staff dismissed 
the need for reform, arguing that IC components do not refuse GAO 
requests for information if GAO was acting pursuant to an Intelligence 
Committee request. That presumption is unfortunately false. One need 
only consider the example of AR 13-5, the internal CIA regulation which 
implements ICD 114. This regulation directly addresses the question of 
how the Agency should respond to a GAO request for information when GAO 
is acting under the direction of an Intelligence Committee:

        As a general rule, if GAO makes a request on behalf of or to 
        obtain information responsive to a tasking by an intelligence 
        oversight committee, the [Point of Contact (``POC'')] will 
        ensure that the CIA response to GAO does not contain 
        information prohibited in paragraph b.(2)(c)(3) above.\12\ The 
        response to GAO shall indicate that information responsive to 
        the tasking, but not authorized for release to GAO under the 
        provisions of ICD 114, shall be made directly available to the 
        requesting intelligence oversight committee. The POC shall 
        prepare an additional response for the intelligence oversight 
        committee that contains information responsive to the committee 
        request, but not authorized for GAO access.\13\

    In other words, if GAO asks CIA for any information which would 
fall under the jurisdiction of an Intelligence Committee, CIA will 
simply refuse to cooperate, but if an Intelligence Committee tasks GAO 
to make the request, CIA will still refuse to provide the information 
to GAO, but instead will send the information directly to the relevant 
Intelligence Committee. In neither situation does GAO receive the 
requested information.
    GAO possesses significantly more resources and institutional 
expertise in certain kinds of Executive Branch investigations than even 
the most robust committee staff, and there is frankly no reason for 
this arbitrary restriction on its authority. Congress gave the 
Executive Branch a chance to establish reasonable limitations which 
balanced the Executive's legitimate interests with one of the most 
important functions of Congress-effective oversight. Instead of 
crafting a reasonable policy, the DNI memorialized the IC's original 
hard-line position.
    I recommend this subcommittee include language to remove any doubt 
concerning GAO's audit power over the IC by advancing a measure that 
reStates Section 335 of the FY2010 IAA, as engrossed by the House of 
Representatives in February 2010.\14\
    Not only would taking such a measure resolve a longstanding 
problem, but it would be revenue neutral, since it would not require 
GAO to take on any more responsibilities than it already has; it would 
only open the universe of matters it may investigate. When one 
considers the fact that the number of GAO employees with Top Secret/
Sensitive Compartmented Information (``TS/SCI'') clearances is higher 
than the combined number of staffers employed by both Intelligence 
Committees, it is clear that these artificial restrictions on GAO's 
authority are causing Congress to expend more financial and manpower 
resources to accomplish less oversight over a significant portion of 
the Executive Branch. In a time of crisis, when agencies across the 
Government are spending vast amounts of time, money, and resources to 
combat a once-in-a-century threat, it is more important that ever that 
GAO be able to investigate allegations of governmental waste, fraud, 
abuse, and violations of law wherever they may be found. It is time for 
Congress to assert its prerogatives to protect its oversight 
capabilities over all agencies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ See 31 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 712, 717, 3523(a) (GAO has authority to 
investigate each ``department, agency, or instrumentality of the United 
States Government.'').
    \2\ Budget and Accounting Act, Public Law 67-13, 42 Stat. 26, June 
10, 1921 (``All departments and establishments shall furnish to the 
Comptroller General such information regarding the powers, duties, 
activities, organization, financial transactions, and methods of 
business of their respective offices as he may from time to time 
require of them.'').
    \3\ H.R. 3603, available at https://fas.org/irp/eprint/panetta-
1987.pdf.
    \4\ Investigative Authority of the General Accounting Office, 12 
Op. Off. Legal Counsel 171 (1988).
    \5\ Letter from Orszag to Feinstein of 3/15/10, available at 
https://fas.org/irp/news/2010/03/omb031610.pdf.
    \6\ Letter from Dodaro to Feinstein of 3/18/10, available at http:/
/www.pogoarchives.org/m/co/dodaro-letter-to-intel-committees-
20100318.pdf. Mr. Dodaro concluded that reaffirming GAO's authority in 
this area ``would prove beneficial both to the conduct of oversight by 
the intelligence committees and to the efficiency and effectiveness of 
IC operations.''
    \7\ 50 U.S.C. Sec. 3308.
    \8\ ICD 114(D)(4)(b), available at https://www.dni.gov/files/
documents/ICD/ICD_114.pdf.
    \9\ Legislative Branch Appropriations for 2019: Part 2, Fiscal Year 
2019 Legislative Branch Appropriations Requests, Hearings before the 
Subcomm. on the Legislative Branch of the House Comm. on 
Appropriations, 115th Cong., 2d Sess. 310 (Apr. 25, 2018) (testimony of 
Comp. Gen. Gene Dodaro) (testifying that GAO has been able to 
investigate peripheral matters in the IC such as ``a facilities area'' 
and contract management in the last few years).
    \10\ Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3WU2uZMlyk.
    \11\ Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaRnD62qun4. Mr. 
Dodaro's testimony last year reiterated the same point, see https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PQWaMSJG7Y.
    \12\ That paragraph reads: Information that falls within the 
purview of the congressional intelligence oversight committees 
generally shall not be made available to GAO to support an audit or 
review of intelligence collection operations; covert action; 
intelligence capabilities related to national intelligence activities; 
counterintelligence operations; intelligence analysis and analytical 
techniques; intelligence sources and methods; or intelligence budgets 
or funding; (including records or expenditures made under the authority 
of 22 U.S.C. 2396(a)(8) or 10 U.S.C. 127, 7231 and 50 U.S.C. 403j(b)).
    \13\ CIA, AR 13-5: Comptroller General Access to Information in the 
Possession of the CIA, Sec. (b)(3), available at http://docs.house.gov/
meetings/AP/AP24/20200304/110517/HHRG-116-AP24-Wstate-McClanahanK-
20200304-SD001.pdf.
    \14\ Available at https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr2701eh/
pdf/BILLS-111hr2701eh.pdf.

    [This statement was submitted by LiKel McClanahan, Executive 
Director]
                                 ______
                                 
         Prepared Statement of Preservation Technologies, L.P.
                                 issue
    The Fiscal 2022 budget for the Library of Congress included 
language regarding the mass deacidification program budget request: 
``Preservation of the Collection.-The Committees recognize the Library 
currently has over $2,000,000 available through September 30, 2022, for 
the purposes of the de-acidification preservation program. Upon the 
exhaustion or expiration of those funds, whichever comes first, the 
Committees will evaluate the need for the continuation of the 
program.'' The funds allocated for the mass deacidification program 
will be exhausted before the end of this September. This testimony is a 
request to continue funding for this program for fiscal 2023.
                          request to congress
    We respectfully encourage Congress for Fiscal Year 2023 to 
reinstate the mass deacidification line item as was included in Fiscal 
Year 2021 for $3.0 million with the intention to focus on the 
preservation of the remaining high value acidic titles expected to stay 
in the Library's collections and for newly acquired acidic material 
upon receipt by the Library.
                             justification
    The Library of Congress has been a world leader in the development 
and use of mass deacidification for preventive preservation of acidic 
collections. The Library has used mass deacidification to preserve more 
than five million acidic books and nearly 20 million acidic documents 
in the past 22 years as part of a 30-year plan to preserve up to 7.5 
million books identified as candidates for treatment. Acidic books have 
pages that contain residual acid from the paper making process. The 
acid turns the paper brittle, sometimes in just a matter of decades. 
Deacidification is a chemical process that neutralizes the acid in 
paper, thereby extending the useful life of books and documents by 
hundreds of years. Institutions across the country benefit by using 
this technology to preserve their collections.
    The focus of the deacidification program has been to preserve 
important book collections documenting American history, family 
genealogy, literature, law, science, rare foreign titles, and nearly 
all sections of the Library. Documents preserved from the Library's 
Gold Manuscript collections include the NAACP archives including Martin 
Luther King, Jr.'s papers and also the Federal Writers Project, part of 
the depression era Works Progress Administration (WPA) featuring 
authors like Eudora Welty and William Faulkner.
    The Library proposed for FY 2021 to stop the deacidification 
program and reassign the budget to other activities. The Library is 
stopping the program too suddenly when there are still several hundred 
thousand high value books and millions of manuscript pages considered 
as top priority for preservation, and in a way that will ultimately 
hurt the preservation programs of other important institutions. 
Concluding the program by a controlled reduction is in the best 
interest of the Library and its collections. Stopping the program cold 
jeopardizes collections, jobs, and the long term preservation of books 
and archives across the Nation.
    As justification for closing the program, the Library has asserted 
that storage at Fort Meade is more cost effective than deacidification. 
This plan is flawed for several reasons:
Reduced temperature storage is not the same as deacidification.
  --Reduced temperature storage slows but does not stop the chemical 
        reaction between acid and paper. The acidic paper will still 
        age much quicker than alkaline paper no matter how it is stored 
        and at any temperature. Deacidified paper will last 3-5 times 
        longer than acidic paper under all storage temperatures, and 
        the benefit of deacidification is further enhanced if stored at 
        lower temperatures.
  --All modern paper is produced in an alkaline process. 
        Deacidification turns the older, acidic paper into alkaline 
        paper. To achieve the life extension equivalent to alkaline 
        paper, whether stored in the current stacks on the Hill or in 
        new storage at reduced temperatures, the acidic paper still 
        needs to be deacidified.
Cold storage is not a practical solution.
  --The Library has consistently reported on the significant quantity 
        of important acidic material remaining in their collections--
        more than 2 million books and millions of documents--that would 
        benefit from deacidification. Paper is acidic because of the 
        method of production, and acidic materials are distributed 
        throughout the collections in the Library. To send the 
        remaining millions of acidic books to cold storage requires the 
        Library to do what we are already doing--search for these books 
        one by one to extract them from the collections. Then they must 
        send them to perpetual cold storage instead of deacidifying and 
        returning them to stay with their collections.
  --The other method would be to send entire collections into cold 
        storage as a way to make sure the acidic books are protected. 
        The projected cold storage capacity will not have nearly enough 
        space to allow this option.
  --Neither method is practical. The Library has not indicated how to 
        deal with the remaining millions of acidic books and over what 
        time schedule. It should be clear that a significant quantity 
        will remain on the Hill for the foreseeable future continuing 
        to weaken from acidic attack.
Cold storage is not a guaranteed solution.
  --There are cost and energy policies to consider. Using cold storage 
        to slow the rate of deterioration only works if the paper is 
        stored in cold conditions forever, incurring higher energy and 
        maintenance costs. It is easy to envision a future situation 
        when the temperature in the storage facility will be increased 
        either to save costs and/or to reduce energy consumption driven 
        by climate change, energy policy, or simple budget 
        requirements. The point is that deacidification fixes the 
        problem today for life. Cold storage reduces the problem only 
        as long as the storage temperature is cold.

    The Library needs to continue the Fort Meade storage module program 
because it is out of space for proper storage of its collections. 
Reducing the temperature is better for all paper, but cold storage is 
not a ``quick fix'' to eliminate the need to deacidify the collections.
    The current modules at Fort Meade are already near their storage 
capacity and still the stacks in the Capitol Hill complex are full. 
Construction of new modules has been delayed by budget concerns. The 
Library has testified that the rate of construction of new modules at 
Fort Meade is unable to keep up with the acquisition rate of new 
materials. This means the collections stored on the Hill will continue 
to exist in roughly the same quantity and storage conditions for the 
foreseeable future. Those acidic materials kept in the storage on 
Capitol Hill for the next 20 years will be losing 100 years or more of 
usable condition.
Recommendations to Congress:
    Preservation of the most critical acidic books and unique 
manuscript materials via deacidification should remain a priority for 
the Library. Mass deacidification is the most effective and lowest cost 
program for preserving the Library's acidic materials. For the past 20 
years, Congress and the Library of Congress have been making the 
financially responsible decision to use deacidification as the primary 
method of preservation for our acidic collections. The best policy 
would be to finish the program as originally envisioned. Recognizing 
that the Library has other priorities, and it desires to retire the 
program, we believe the best course is to allow for a controlled ramp 
down rather than a hard stop to the program.
    1.  We respectfully request Congress reaffirm its strong support 
for mass deacidification and direct the Library of Congress to continue 
the program of mass deacidification to preserve the Library's unique 
manuscript collections and the remaining high value acidic books.
    2.  We respectfully request Congress restore the line item for mass 
deacidification and appropriate an amount of $3.0 million to fund this 
program of mass deacidification for one additional year with the 
intention to preserve the remaining ``Top Priority'' books as quickly 
as possible to give maximum benefit to the collection before retiring 
the program.
    3.  We respectfully request Congress to consider that cancelling 
the deacidification program now would have a significant negative 
impact on research institutions outside the Library. The Library is the 
largest customer for deacidification services and establishes the 
standards and the market for this technology for other institutions. 
Current estimates are that 90 percent of culturally important materials 
held outside the Library on acidic paper are at risk of loss and not 
available in digital or other means of access. Programs to preserve 
these materials are underway but not yet sufficiently developed. 
Cancelling the Library's program effectively eliminates the 
availability of the service to other institutions.
                               who we are
    Preservation Technologies, L.P. is the recognized worldwide leader 
in this field with the only technology capable of meeting the standards 
for preservation by deacidification set by the Library of Congress. 
From its headquarters location just north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 
Preservation Technologies provides preservation services, equipment, 
and supplies to institutions throughout the U.S. and internationally. 
In 2017, the company won the President's ``E'' Award for Export Service 
presented by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

    [This statement was submitted by James Burd, CEO]
                                 ______
                                 
         Prepared Statement of Project On Government Oversight
    Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and Members of the Senate 
Appropriations subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, thank you for 
the opportunity to submit testimony on closing the gaps in legislative 
branch inspectors general coverage and coordination. I am Liz 
Hempowicz, director of public policy at the Project On Government 
Oversight (POGO). POGO is a nonpartisan independent watchdog that 
investigates and exposes waste, corruption, abuse of power, and when 
the government fails to serve the public or silences those who report 
wrongdoing. We champion reforms to achieve a more effective, ethical, 
and accountable Federal Government that safeguards constitutional 
principles.
    Inspectors general (IGs) provide independent, professional, and 
nonpartisan oversight over various government operations, helping to 
uncover evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, and malfeasance. The inspector 
general system that was established for the executive branch in 1978 
has largely been a success. Similarly independent watchdogs are also 
uniquely positioned to provide objective oversight of legislative 
branch components.
    The COVID-19 pandemic and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol 
laid bare the urgent need to increase coordination across Congress and 
its agencies related to cyber security and information sharing. 
Currently, congressional information and technology is too often 
managed on an ad-hoc basis and in multiple silos. The legislative 
inspector general community is not immune to those challenges.
    Within the legislative branch, there are a number of information, 
technology, and cybersecurity gaps in inspector general coverage. There 
are currently five inspectors general situated within legislative 
branch agencies: the inspector general for the Library of Congress, the 
inspector general for the United States Capitol Police, the inspector 
general for the Government Accountability Office, the inspector general 
for the Government Publishing Office, and the inspector general for the 
Architect of the Capitol.\1\
    However, significant offices remain without oversight, including 
the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, Office of Attending 
Physician, and others. Additionally, while the rules of the House 
establish an inspector general for the House of Representatives, there 
is no similar inspector general overseeing the work of the Senate.\2\
    And even when individual watchdogs are in place, gaps in the 
legislative inspector general system can limit their efficacy. There is 
no coordinating council for legislative branch inspectors general that 
enables information sharing and the creation of best practices 
standards, as the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and 
Efficiency (CIGIE) does for executive branch IGs.\3\ Perhaps most 
importantly, current legislative IGs may lack sufficient independence 
to best enable rigorous oversight.\4\
    With all of this in mind, I urge the Appropriations Committee to 
request the Government Accountability Office to produce a report 
examining the gaps in independent oversight within the legislative 
branch inspector general system. Specifically, the report shall 
determine these gaps, identify conflict areas and offices that are not 
covered, and make recommendations around structures and best practices 
to properly protect IG independence within the legislative branch, 
using the executive branch as a model where it may be helpful. In doing 
so, I would encourage the GAO to consult with CIGIE and other internal 
and external stakeholders with expertise around inspectors general. 
Given the urgency around these issues, I would recommend the committee 
ask for such a report to be published no later than 180 days after the 
passage of the Fiscal Year 2023 Appropriations Bill.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to submit this testimony.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Ben Wilhelm, Congressional Research Service, Appointment 
Methods for Legislative Branch Inspectors General, IN11763 (September 
28, 2021), 2, https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/2021-09-
28_IN11763_00e696b72ee4f22f53ad6b5af75c55e7e2721847.pdf.
    \2\ Rules of the House of Representatives, 117th Cong., Rules II-
III (February 2, 2021), https://rules.house.gov/sites/
democrats.rules.house.gov/files/117-House-Rules-Clerk.pdf.
    \3\ 5 U.S.C. App. Sec. 11 (2022), https://www.law.cornell.edu/
uscode/text/5a/compiledact-95-452/
section-11.
    \4\ To give executive branch inspectors general the requisite 
independence, the Inspector General Act of 1978 includes a requirement 
that inspector general nominees are selected ``without regard to 
political affiliation and solely on the basis of integrity and 
demonstrated ability in accounting, auditing, financial analysis, law, 
management analysis, public administration, or investigations"; a 
prohibition against the head of an agency from interfering in IG 
investigations; and a dual reporting structure where an inspector 
general reports to both the agency head and to Congress. 5 U.S.C. App. 
Sec. 3 (2022), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5a/compiledact-
95-452/section-3; Kathryn A. Francis and Michael Green, Congressional 
Research Service, Federal Inspectors General: History, Characteristics, 
and Recent Congressional Actions, R43814 (July 20, 2016), 5, 7, https:/
/www.everycrsreport.com/files/20160720_R43814_
c8b393d645313cc24a2b7a1bb8c1cb4abe072ccd.pdf; Restoring Independence: 
Rebuilding the Federal Offices of Inspectors General: Hearing before 
the House Oversight and Reform Committee subcommittee on Government 
Operations, 117th Cong, 1, (April 20, 2021) (testimony of Liz 
Hempowicz, director of public policy, Project On Government Oversight, 
https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/
Hempowicz%20Testimony.pdf.

    [This statement was submitted by Liz Hempowicz, Director of Public 
Policy]
                                 ______
                                 
                  Prepared Statement of Thomas Susman
    Introduction. Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and Members of 
the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony 
addressing the need to enhance public access to Legislative Branch 
information. My name is Thomas Susman, and I am testifying today in my 
personal capacity. I'm no stranger to either the Legislative Branch or 
to transparency: I served on the Senate Judiciary Committee and various 
subcommittee staffs for over 12 years and am currently on the boards of 
a number of organizations whose mission is to enhance public access to 
government information, including Open The Government, the National 
Freedom of Information Coalition, and the D.C. Open Government 
Coalition. By way of background, as a Senate staffer I helped shepherd 
through the post-Watergate amendments to the Freedom of Information Act 
in 1974 that largely created the law we know today and have been 
involved in access-to-information matters ever since.
                               background
    The Federal Advisory Committee on the Freedom of Information Act, 
appointed by the Archivist of the United States and comprised of an 
equal number of government and private sector representatives, adopted 
the following recommendation \1\ by unanimous vote in November 2020:

        Congress should adopt rules or enact legislation to establish 
        procedures for effecting public access to legislative branch 
        records in the possession of congressional support offices and 
        agencies modeled after those procedures contained in the 
        Freedom of Information Act. These should include requirements 
        for proactive disclosure of certain information, procedures 
        governing public requests for records, time limits for 
        responding to requests, exemptions to be narrowly applied, and 
        an appeal from any initial decision to deny access.

    Congress has, in many ways, historically been the most transparent 
of the branches and in recent decades has taken additional steps to 
increase public access to its work. Every congressional committee has a 
website that contains bills and hearing transcripts, and every House 
and Senate member has a website replete with information about the 
member's positions, speeches, activities, and bills. Congressional 
leadership offices publish details of the legislative agendas, and 
Congress.gov provides online access to bills and legislative histories. 
Congress has in many ways already taken steps to embrace transparency 
in recognition of its importance to the public.
    The legislatures of many States and foreign countries have long 
been fully subject to the requirements of their access-to-information 
laws. However, you will note that the recommendation quoted above does 
not propose that the U.S Congress be subject to the Federal Freedom of 
Information Act (FOIA); it recognizes and respects unique features of 
the Legislative Branch and the special relationships that members have 
with each other, with staff, and with constituents, as well as the 
potential constitutional issues that application of the FOIA might 
implicate. There are still, however, a number of steps that Congress 
should take to enhance public understanding of legislation and the 
legislative process, to improve accountability of some of its offices, 
and to make its records more readily available to the public and media.
    The case for greater transparency.--There is no principled reason 
why the public's right to know should not apply to support offices and 
agencies of the Congress, discussed in greater detail below. Most of 
those offices perform functions similar or even identical to those 
performed by executive branch entities that are fully covered by FOIA, 
such as law enforcement (Capitol Police); auditing, buildings and 
grounds maintenance (Architect of the Capitol); inspecting and 
adjudicating (Government Accountability Office); budgeting 
(Congressional Budget Office); publishing (Government Publishing 
Office); enforcing rights (Office of Congressional Workplace Rights); 
maintaining the library (Library of Congress); and performing research 
and drafting reports (Congressional Research Service and Law Library of 
Congress).
    It is not just their functions that these legislative branch 
entities have in common with their executive branch counterparts; they 
are funded by the same taxpayer dollars that pay for executive 
agencies, and they often have the same or greater impact on the lives 
of individuals, the viability and profitability of businesses, and the 
activities of all levels of government and all the political 
subdivisions in our Nation. While confidential aspects of the lawmaking 
process may merit special consideration, the routine work of government 
does not.
    Some of the congressional offices and support agencies understand 
this message. The Government Accountability Office, although not 
legally subject to FOIA, has adopted ``FOIA-like'' regulations. GAO 
acknowledges that ``While GAO is not subject to the [FOIA] . . . GAO's 
disclosure policy follows the spirit of the act consistent with its 
duties and functions and responsibility to the Congress.'' GAO reports 
and an array of other GAO resources are available online. And the U.S. 
Copyright Office is fully subject to the FOIA and has adopted 
regulations implementing the procedures for administering its 
requirements.
    I'd like to highlight two support agencies where Congress has 
expressed concern in the past regarding public access to information 
and where this Committee should press forward toward requiring that 
information be more readily available to the public.
    U.S. Capitol Police.--A call for greater transparency of the U.S. 
Capitol Police (USCP) began before the events of January 6, 2021. 
Congressional appropriators inserted language in the House report on 
the 2021 Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill calling for ``USCP 
Information Sharing'' as follows:

        While the USCP is not subject to the [FOIA]  . . .  the 
        Committee encourages the USCP to develop a policy and procedure 
        for the sharing of information that follows the spirit of the 
        Freedom of Information Act. This policy should be consistent 
        with, and not interfere with, USCP's primary function of 
        protecting the Congress.

    The Joint Explanatory Statement echoed this refrain:

        USCP Information Sharing.--The Department is encouraged to 
        continue increasing its efforts to communicate with Members of 
        Congress, congressional employees, and the public about events 
        occurring around the Capitol complex in a manner that is 
        consistent with and does not interfere with its primary mission 
        of protecting the Congress and the legislative process.

    After January 6, 2021, the calls for greater public access to USCP 
information increased, and last year congressional appropriators once 
again, this time in more forceful terms, included language in the House 
report of the 2022 Legislative Branch Appropriations Bills, which 
directed:

        USCP Information Sharing.--While the USCP is not subject to the 
        Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) (5 USC 552), the Committee 
        directs the USCP to develop a policy and procedure for the 
        sharing of information that follows the spirit of the Freedom 
        of Information Act. This policy should be consistent with, and 
        not interfere with, USCP's primary function of protecting the 
        Congress.

    The Joint Explanatory Statement repeated the call for information 
sharing:

    USCP Information Sharing.--The Department is encouraged to continue 
increasing its efforts to communicate with Members of Congress, 
congressional employees, and the public about events occurring around 
the Capitol complex in a manner that is consistent with and does not 
interfere with its primary mission of protecting the Congress and the 
legislative process.
    Police departments across the country are waking up to the value of 
increasing transparency; it may be time for a wake-up call for the USCP 
in next year's appropriations bill with clearer and even stronger 
direction to USCP to move forward with a FOIA-like information access 
regime.
    Congressional Research Service.--The Congressional Research Service 
(CRS) of the Library of Congress has been producing informative reports 
for decades. And the public--also for decades--has been denied direct, 
full access to that body of taxpayer-funded knowledge. Yes, there has 
been significant progress, made at the direction and encouragement of 
this committee. But there is still a long way to go. Historical CRS 
reports need to be proactively available to the public online. They are 
already digitized by-and-large, so the next step of providing the 
public access to all these reports is but an easy one--and one that 
Congress should mandate. This is not a call for public availability of 
confidential CRS reports, but rather the ones that already can be 
shared with any staffer who asks. For a model of what can be 
accomplished, look to the Law Library of Congress, which undertook a 
digitization and online publication effort for its Legal Reports, with 
thousands of reports now online from the 1940s forward and with efforts 
to publish additional historical reports on the internet that continue 
on a rolling basis.
    Proactive disclosure.--Beyond CRS reports, there are other sets of 
records that should routinely be made available to the public without 
the need for a request. Examples include the following: Legislative 
Branch inspectors general reports; Congressional Budget Office 
conflicts-of-interest disclosure forms; Legislative Branch budget 
justifications and semiannual reports; and unclassified reports from 
agencies to Congress. Some of these documents are already published 
online, but that practice should be consistent and universal.
    Conclusion and recommendations.--In proposing to expand access to 
Legislative Branch records--both through FOIA-like procedures and 
through proactive disclosure on a congressional website--I am mindful 
that there may be a need for redaction of specific information that may 
involve disclosing classified matters, revealing ongoing criminal 
investigations, or constituting a clearly unwarranted invasion of 
personal privacy. Every access regime respects the need to protect 
certain categories of information. In addition, there may be 
circumstances that are unique to the legislative branch that would 
require further investigation prior to implementation.
    Accordingly, I encourage the Committee to charge the GAO, which has 
the most robust FOIA-like process, to make recommendations for applying 
a FOIA-like process to congressional support offices and agencies. This 
analysis should exclude the personal, committee, and leadership offices 
in the House and Senate. I recommend the following report language:
    Public Records Information Sharing for Legislative Agencies Based 
on FOIA Advisory Committee Recommendations.--Within 180 days, the 
Government Accountability Office shall make recommendations to the 
House and Senate Legislative Branch Appropriations committees, the 
Committee on House Administration, the Senate Rules Committee, and 
publish on its website recommendations concerning the creation and 
implementation of a uniform public records request process for 
congressional support offices and agencies modeled after the Freedom of 
Information Act and inspired by the recommendations of the FOIA 
Advisory Committee. In constructing an implementation plan, the GAO 
shall consult with the FOIA Advisory Committee, experts on the Freedom 
of Information Act, representatives of civil society and the press, 
affected congressional offices and agencies, and others as it deems 
fit. The GAO shall recommend statutory language and regulations to 
implement a public records request-and-appeals process that vindicates 
the public's right to know to the maximum extent practicable, sets 
standards for information that an agency should proactively disclose, 
establishes uniform processes and standards to all congressional 
support offices and agencies, and provides for independent review of 
agency determinations consistent with our constitutional framework.
    Congress has come a long way in opening its proceedings and records 
to access by the public. But its work is not complete, and this 
subcommittee has the jurisdiction and authority to press forward to the 
next level of legislative transparency.
    I appreciate the opportunity to present this testimony.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Recommendation 2021-01 available from the National Archives 
Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) at https://
www.archives.gov/files/ogis/assets/fac-rec-2021-01.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                 ______
                                 
                   Prepared Statement of Verdance LLC
    Chair Reed, Chair Leahy, Ranking Member Braun, Vice Chair Shelby, 
and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to submit 
testimony on establishing a Task Force to study how and whether 
Congress should create a Congressional Digital Service.
    My name is Alex Prokop, and I am a public interest technologist. I 
was a software engineer on the team that rebuilt HealthCare.gov in the 
wake of its technology failure. In 2020 and 2021, I had the opportunity 
to serve the House Select Committee for the Modernization of Congress 
as a digital service fellow under Chairman Kilmer and Ranking Member 
Graves. Last year, I founded a company called Verdance to pursue the 
mission of making government digital services more adaptable, 
efficient, and effective.
    Over the past 2 years, Congress has made laudable technology 
improvements. The Senate Sergeant At Arms developed the e-signature 
tool Quill that now is successfully deployed in both chambers, making 
digital signatures on sign-on letters commonplace. Additionally, the 
Senate has successfully implemented remote and hybrid hearings. The 
Senate should build on this progress and position legislative branch 
technology for transformational change.
    I urge the committee to establish a Congressional Digital Service 
Task Force, which also has been recommended by the House Select 
Committee on the Modernization of Congress.\1\ The purpose of this task 
force would be to assess and evaluate the technology challenges across 
the entirety of the Legislative branch, to evaluate the various 
approaches to ensuring Congressional technology evolves at a healthy 
pace and meets Congress's institutional challenges, and to make 
recommendations on how best to constitute a Congressional Digital 
Service that serves the entirety of the Legislative branch.
    The list of potential challenges for a digital service team is 
long, but here are a few:
A Congressional Digital Service could act as a bridge to create 
        software tools shared by chambers and offices.
    The Senate, House, and support office and agency technology 
ecosystems are almost completely fractured. Even for broadly comparable 
needs, the Senate and House develop their own solutions. The rollout of 
Quill was one bright moment of successful technology collaboration. A 
properly empowered Congressional Digital Service would ensure that 
Quill is an exemplar of things to come, and that Congress can share and 
co-develop technology between the chambers and offices where 
appropriate, creating cost savings and increasing productivity.
A Congressional Digital Service could develop a unified cloud services 
        strategy for the Congressional technology ecosystem.
    The Legislative branch currently lacks a consistent and mature 
approach to cloud hosting of software systems. Cloud hosting offers 
many cost and efficiency savings over on-premise services and will 
unlock the development of new, productivity-increasing tools, which is 
why the private sector and many executive branch agencies have long ago 
moved many of their systems to the cloud. Despite some progress, 
Legislative branch offices and agencies have yet to widely adopt cloud 
hosting services as a leading choice for new systems. A Congressional 
Digital Service could consult with offices and develop a unified cloud 
strategy--it is unlikely that one will come to exist otherwise.
A Congressional Digital Service could assess unserved committee 
        technology needs.
    Committees have inconsistent support concerning putting together 
their technology toolset. While there are bespoke projects, so far 
there is not yet a comprehensive look across committee needs to 
discover where the biggest common pain points and potential solutions 
are. A Congressional Digital Service could spearhead such an effort and 
uncover tools to save taxpayer dollars and streamline committee 
operations.
A Congressional Digital Service could help fill gaps in legislative 
        processes that are currently unsupported by digital tools.
    The absence of digital tools supporting some Congressional 
processes wastes valuable staff time and causes avoidable errors. House 
Majority Leader Hoyer and Leader McCarthy sponsored a Congressional 
Hackathon in April 2022. At the hackathon, a team of Congressional 
staff and technologists outlined a list of technology gaps. A 
Congressional Digital Service could identify those gaps on an ongoing 
basis, and ensure that the right bridges are built between offices to 
handle them.
A Congressional Digital Service could create a standing, high level 
        technology capacity to support Congress in times of crisis.
    Investment in a modern digital service organization will give the 
Legislative branch needed standing capacity to solve urgent 
technological needs as they arise. The U.S. Digital Service was 
established in the wake of the HealthCare.gov crisis, and serves as a 
non-partisan home for expert technologists in the executive branch. The 
injection of talent it provided has kept many tech issues from reaching 
front-page status across both Democratic and Republican 
administrations. Last year, many compared the launch of CovidTests.gov 
to the launch of HealthCare.gov. Where the latter was famously unusable 
for weeks after launch, the former delivered on its promises from day 
one, and did not suffer downtime or major glitches. When the urgent 
need arose, expert U.S. Digital Service staff was already in place to 
connect the dots between organizations to handle it. Congress will face 
such moments in the future, and a Congressional Digital Service would 
bolster this branch with needed high-level technology capacity.
    Since the U.S. Digital Service was started in 2014, many States and 
cities have started their own digital service offices. These digital 
service organizations are not cure-alls, but on balance and over the 
long term we have seen government technology capacity increase 
dramatically since 2014 as a result of digital service offices and 
initiatives. If properly constituted, empowered, and funded, a 
Congressional Digital Service could play the same role in the 
Legislative branch. We believe the committee should create a task force 
composed of internal and external stakeholders to study how to properly 
constitute a Congressional Digital Service and make recommendations to 
you.
    We recommend the following report language to accomplish this 
purpose:

        Congressional Digital Service Task Force.--Congressional 
        operations depend upon technology, but the Legislative branch 
        is often insufficiently empowered and coordinated when it comes 
        to purchasing technology and providing technological services. 
        The Executive branch responded to similar operational 
        challenges by creating the U.S. Digital Service, which hires 
        technologists to build tools that make government work better 
        for the American people. We note with favor the recent creation 
        of the Congressional Digital Service within the House's Chief 
        Administrative Office. A more expansive, sophisticated, and 
        coordinated approach to the provision of technology and 
        technological services across the Legislative branch would help 
        members better serve their constituents.

        To address these and other questions, the committee directs the 
        establishment of a Congressional Digital Services Task Force 
        composed of staff representatives of the Secretary of the 
        Senate; the Senate Sergeant at Arms; Member, Committee, and 
        Leadership offices; the Library of Congress; the Congressional 
        Research Service; the Government Publishing Office; the 
        Government Accountability Office; and such other congressional 
        offices as may be appropriate and invites the participation of 
        public stakeholders and representatives from appropriate 
        offices in the House to examine these and any additional issues 
        it considers relevant and to provide a report to the committee 
        within 180 days that also shall be made publicly available.

    Thank you once again for the opportunity to provide testimony to 
the Committee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress--116th 
Congress Recommendations, 95th recommendation https://
modernizecongress.house.gov/116th-recommendations.

    [This statement was submitted by LiAlex Prokop, Founder]

       LIST OF WITNESSES, COMMUNICATIONS, AND PREPARED STATEMENTS

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

American:
    Association of Law Libraries, Prepared Statement of the......    77
    Bar Association, Prepared Statement of.......................    79
    Library Association, Prepared Statement of...................    80

Bipartisan Policy Center Action (BPC Action), Prepared Statement 
  of.............................................................    81
Blanton, J. Brett, Architect of the Capitol:
    Prepared Statement of........................................    24
    Statement of.................................................    23
Braun, Senator Mike, U.S. Senator From Indiana:
    Opening Statement of.........................................    44
    Statement of.................................................     9

Demand Progress, Prepared Statement of...........................    82
Dodaro, Hon. Gene, U.S. Comptroller General, Government 
  Accountability Office, Statement of............................    51

Gibson, Hon. Karen H., General, Sergeant at Arms, Senate Sergeant 
  at Arms and Doorkeeper of the Senate:
    Prepared Statement of........................................    12
    Statement of.................................................    10

Hayden, Hon. Dr. Carla, The Librarian of Congress:
    Prepared Statement of........................................    47
    Statement of.................................................    46

Lincoln Network, Prepared Statement of...........................    84

National:
    Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials 
      (NALEO), Prepared Statement of.............................    86
    Security Counselors, Prepared Statement of...................    87

Preservation Technologies, L.P., Prepared Statement of...........    90
Project on Government Oversight, Prepared Statement of...........    92

Reed, Senator Jack, U.S. Senator From Rhode Island, Opening 
  Statement of 




Susman, Thomas, Prepared Statement of............................    93
Swagel, Phillips, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, 
  Prepared Statement of..........................................     1

Verdance LLC, Prepared Statement of..............................    96


                             SUBJECT INDEX

                              ----------                              

                                                                   Page

                        ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL

Additional Committee Questions...................................    40
Architect of the Capitol.........................................    23
    I. GPrioritizing Physical Security Projects..................    25
    II. GTackling Aging Infrastructure with Technological 
      Approaches.................................................    26
    III. GSupporting Safety Standards and Solutions..............    26
    IV. GSenate Priorities and Programs..........................    27
    V. GSustaining our Commitment to Future Generations..........    29
    VI. GPandemic Procurement and Preparedness...................    30
                               __________

                      CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE

Additional Committee Questions...................................    40
Answers to Questions for the Record..............................    41
CBO's Appropriation Request for Fiscal Year 2023.................     2
    Enhancing Transparency.......................................     5
    Figure 1--Components of Requested $3.7 Million Increase......     4
    Strengthening Responsiveness.................................     4
    Table 1--The Congressional Budget Office's Major Products, 
      Calendar Years 2021 to 2023................................     5
                               __________

                    GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

Additional Committee Questions...................................    75
Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Request..................................    54
    Concluding Remarks...........................................    62
    GAO's Mission................................................    65
    Highlights from FY 2021 and Recent Results...................    60
    Table 1: FY 2021-2023 Summary of Resources by Program........    56
                               __________

                          LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Additional Committee Questions...................................    75
Continuing Stabilization and Optimization of Financial 
  Infrastructure.................................................    50
Expanding Active Engagement With Visitors to the Library.........    50
Library of Congress:
    Library Reopening............................................    67
    Mitigating Inflation.........................................    70
    Security Coordination Post January 6.........................    66
Strengthening Data Analysis Expertise in Life Cycle Costing and 
  Cost Estimating as well as in Evaluating and Setting Copyright 
  Fees...........................................................    51
Sustaining Continuous Technology Innovation and Delivery.........    49
    Veterans History Project.....................................    73
    Welcoming Visitors Post COVID................................    69
                               __________

          SENATE SERGEANT AT ARMS AND DOORKEEPER OF THE SENATE

Additional Committee Questions...................................    40
Capitol Operations...............................................    12
Chief Information Officer (CIO)..................................    13
Employee Assistance Program (EAP)................................    16
Executive Office.................................................    16
Executive Office Acquisitions Department.........................    16
Human Resources (HR) Department..................................    17
Office of Security, Emergency Preparedness & Continuity (OSEPC)..    17
Page Program.....................................................    17
Support Operations...............................................    21

                                 [all]