[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 77 (Friday, June 17, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 17, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
         THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON THE REORGANIZATION OF CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentleman from California 
[Mr. Dreier] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, I have taken out this special order this 
afternoon as Members prepare to return to their districts, to ask a few 
of my colleagues who served through calendar year 1993 on the Joint 
Committee on the Reorganization of Congress to join me in and continue 
a special order that we had the night before last which was led by the 
ranking member of the Committee on Rules, my friend, the gentleman from 
New York [Mr. Solomon], who unfortunately cannot be here this afternoon 
but who wanted us to continue talking about the very important work of 
the Joint Committee on the Reorganization of Congress and the need to 
proceed as expeditiously as we possibly can to get to this House floor 
a package which will bring about meaningful reform of this institution.
  A few minutes ago, when we were discussing the program for next week, 
I chose to again today, as I did last week, ask the representative of 
the majority when we can anticipate the reform package here on the 
House floor. When the Joint Committee on the Reorganization of Congress 
was established in August 1992, it was put into place as a committee to 
last for 1 year and 1 year only, and it was very unique in that it was 
the first time in nearly 50 years, since 1947, when the work of the 
Monroney/LaFollette committee was completed, that a bipartisan, 
bicameral, equal number of Republicans, equal number of Democrats, 
equal number of House Members, equal number of Senators, a committee to 
put into place to deal with overall reform of this institution.
  The thing that appealed to me about the work was that it was to be a 
committee that was actually going to go out of existence. And that was 
very unique because, as we found in our work on the committee, there 
are not too many committees around this place that do their work and 
then go out of existence.
  But the Joint Committee on the Reorganization of Congress did in fact 
go out of business on December 31 in 1993, and we did complete our work 
in committee. But unfortunately we have not seen here on the House 
floor an opportunity to look at, to ruminate over, to discuss, debate, 
and vote on the provisions that were considered in this package.
  I think if one looks at all of the items that were addressed in that 
work of the joint committee, there were many things that need to be 
changed. Some things in the package are good, but on an overall basis 
this is an extraordinarily weak package, and my counterpart on the 
committee, the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hamilton] indicated to me 
that he would report out a measure that would call for a very generous 
rule allowing virtually all of the 25 amendments that we considered in 
the joint committee, at least the 8 subject areas that we debated 
there, and defeated amendments on, to be voted here on the House floor.
  Unfortunately, while we were told that we would see it in the fall of 
1993, before the committee went out of existence, they said it would be 
in the early spring of 1994, late spring, and now we are here in the 
summer.
  Last week I was told by the whip that we would have the package 
considered following the 4th of July district work period. Today we 
were told by my friend, the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer], that 
we will have it considered at some time because discussions are taking 
place among some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
  So it is our hope that we will be able to actually get something to 
the House floor so that the demand the American people made for the 
meaningful reform of this Congress can actually take place.
  There were more than a few very hardworking members of that joint 
committee and many of our Members testified before the joint 
committee--a total of 243 witnesses, 37 hearings--one of the hardest-
working Members who focused a great deal on the issue of congressional 
compliance is my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Allard], 
and I am happy to yield to him at this point.

                              {time}  1350

  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. Speaker, I could not help but be taken by the 
gentleman's emphasis on the fact that we were a committee that got in 
and did our work, and we got out, as we were originally set up to do, 
and we had a year of really focused hard work, and I recall, when we 
reached towards the end of our deliberations, there were actually some 
Members in the Congress that thought we ought to go and continue to 
remain as a committee, and I think the gentleman, and myself and some 
others said, ``You know, that's not why we were set up.''
  Now we have done our work, and we have dissolved ourselves as a 
committee, and now the burden is on the House, and the committees that 
are reference committees here in the House, and the leadership, to get 
this to move forward so that the time we spent as a committee was well 
spent, and I would be very disappointed, as one member of that 
committee, if we did not get something up on the floor here where we 
can talk about some of the very meaningful reform.
  I really appreciate the fact that the gentleman brought up that we 
were a committee that got our work done and then quit existing as a 
committee, and one of the criticisms that I ran across, even in my own 
district, as my colleagues know, is: ``There in Congress you set up 
another committee to address your problems, and nothing ever gets 
done.''
  Well, Mr. Speaker, this committee did its work, and now it is up to 
the leadership of the House to bring this forward.
  Mr. DREIER. I yield to the gentleman from Cape Girardeau, MO.
  Mr. EMERSON. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Allard] 
has just said something that has sparked my interest here.
  As my colleagues know, as we began our deliberations on the Joint 
Committee on the Organization of Congress, one of the first witnesses 
to appear; indeed I believe he was the first witness, was the Speaker, 
who, in a very fine rhetorical statement, admonished the committee. He 
said, in order for us to proceed, the majority should think, put itself 
into the position of the minority, and the minority should put itself 
in the position of the majority in order to understand the problems 
that the majority faces in moving legislation. I found myself in the 
course of the deliberations of the committee thinking very often as 
though I were a member of the majority, and I rather liked the feeling, 
and I think it may be that we are going to have to become the majority 
before we are going to be able to move meaningful reform in this House.
  Mr. Speaker, both gentlemen are correct. We reported our measure last 
November. It still has not received any real attention in the House. It 
has been languishing, and I have begun to question, as one who dealt in 
good faith throughout this whole process I have begun to question, 
whether or not there really was a good faith intent to effect reform or 
if we just had this committee for the purpose of talking about it but 
doing nothing about it.
  Now let me just repeat for emphasis. I think it was a very wise 
statement, very wise admonishment, that the Speaker gave us, that the 
minority should think like the majority in order to appreciate their 
problems and the majority should think like the minority. I think that 
reality is probably going to have to occur before we are really going 
to get this job done. We are going to have to become the majority in 
order to accomplish real reform.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. 
Emerson], my friend, for his very helpful contributions there, and I 
will say that I, like my friend from Cape Girardeau, look forward to 
becoming part of a majority, but we would like to be able to reform 
this place in a bipartisan manner before that happens, if we possibly 
can.
  At this point I yield to my very good friend from Long Beach who, 
while not a member of the Joint Committee on the Organization of 
Congress, was, in fact, one who provided me with a great deal of input 
because of the tremendous historical perspective that he has had on 
this institution, having worked here for years, my very good friend, 
the former president of Long Beach State University, the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Horn].
  Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Dreier], my colleague, and I congratulate my colleagues who have worked 
so hard this last year on the effort to try and reform the institution, 
and I say to the gentleman. ``I particularly praise you, David, as 
chairman of the effort on behalf of the House Republicans, as 
cochairman of the committee. You have done a terrific job.''
  I am reminded of the La Follette-Monroney committee and the 
differences between this committee and that. In 1946, when Mike 
Monroney, Democratic Congressman from Oklahoma, Phil La Follette, 
Republican Senator from Wisconsin, were head of that joint committee, 
it was a true bipartisan effort just as my colleague's has been 
structurally and just as Democrats and Republicans on that committee 
want real change. The difference, however, is very simple. That was 
also a Democratic Congress, I might add, the 79th Congress. The 
difference is very simple:
  The leadership support was given to the work of that committee. 
Everett Dirksen was then a Member of the House of Representatives. He 
was a key Republican in making sure those recommendations in a 
bipartisan way passed a Democratic controlled House, and the Democratic 
leadership at the time did not fight every reform.
  And the problem here is my colleagues have all done wonderful work, 
but we really have not had the help and the push of the central 
leadership of this Chamber. They might well have met with the 
committee, and they might all have advised my colleagues to think like 
the other side, and that is wonderful, but now the exercise is over, 
and there has been no reform in this century the equal of the La 
Follette-Monroney reform which was then implemented because the next 
Congress turned out to be the Republican 80th Congress.
  Mr. DREIER. If I can reclaim my time, I just want to reconfirm the 
statement that my colleague makes, and that is, when we went into our 
markup just before the adjournment at Thanksgiving 1993, we had roughly 
25 amendments that were offered by our side in the hopes that we would 
gain bipartisan support that we sought, and on six, six tie votes, six 
Republicans voting against six Democrats, 25 of our amendments were 
defeated, demonstrating that what began as a bipartisan effort ended up 
being extraordinarily partisan.
  My friend is absolutely right; I would be happy to further yield.
  Mr. HORN. I just think, if we are going to get something done, I 
agree with my friend, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Emerson] and 
say, ``You're going to need basic change in the House where the 
majority is committed to reform. Right now you have got the majority in 
a holding pattern because they have dominated the Chamber for 40 years, 
and the attitude is: Who needs reform? We're happy. We don't know why 
you people aren't happy.''

  I can speak for my freshman colleagues, many of whom are reform 
minded, and all of whom are at least somewhat reform minded. Many of 
them have been in key roles of leadership in their own legislature: 
President pro tem, majority leaders, so forth. They cannot believe the 
Chamber they have come to. This is the citadel of freedom.
  This is the large Chamber, granted. But, my heavens, committees with 
overlapping jurisdictions that are laughable compared to what they 
ought to be. It is something that La Follette-Monroney consolidated at 
one time, has become un-consolidated in the 1970's with the 
proliferation of subcommittees and all the rest of it.
  But what my colleagues find lacking is just little simple things like 
a master calendar, like structuring subcommittees within the full 
committee so we have meaningful work assigned at least to one of every 
two committees we have, and, if the committees can work so they are 
scheduled on, let us say, Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday for 
their hearings, we would not be caught, as I was one day, with the 
three committees of the four I am on, on subcommittees, two full 
committees, are all meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the morning.
  There is a simple way to deal with it. They have dealt with it at the 
State legislative level. There is no reason we cannot deal with it at 
the House level.
  Mr. DREIER. I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] for his 
helpful contribution, and I would argue that with 266 committees and 
subcommittees between the House and the Senate it is obvious that the 
best way for us to deal with this is to try and reduce the number of 
committees and subcommittees so that we do not have these extraordinary 
demands for time which leave Members to simply go to a committee 
hearing, demonstrate their presence, stay for no more than 5 or 10 
minutes, and then leave and go and demonstrate their presence in 
another committee hearing.
  So, Mr. Speaker, my friend is absolutely right, and I thank him for 
his contribution.
  At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
[Mr. Walker], my very good friend, the chief deputy whip who worked 
long and hard with us on our work on the joint committee.
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for having yielded, 
and I thank him for taking this special order on congressional reform.
  As my colleagues know, one of the things that really should disturb 
us as Members of Congress is the fact that recent public opinion polls 
have confirmed again that Congress is still held in very low esteem by 
the American people. In fact, the most recent polling data is as bad as 
it was a couple of years ago in the midst of the check-kiting scandal 
which demonstrates that the public believes that Congress has done 
nothing to try to reform itself after a series of mind-boggling 
scandals.

                              {time}  1400

  The reason why the public can feel that way is they are right. We 
have not done very much. Oh, we cleaned up the bank situation a little 
bit. We did manage to get a professional into the Post Office after 
that erupted. The reform that we did in terms of appointing a House 
Administrative Officer has, in fact, been undermined by the higher ups 
who run the Congress by not giving that Administrator all of the powers 
that he was supposed to have in the beginning and, in fact, undermining 
his authority in some of the places where the power was turned over to 
him, so that that one has not worked very well.
  Then the procedural reforms, the things that were supposed to be done 
to clean up the legislative process, were assigned to a bipartisan 
committee that was supposed to give us a blueprint for reforming how 
the House conducts itself. That has turned into an effort which is 
being buried in back rooms of the Congress at the present time.
  Mr. DREIER. If I could reclaim my time, I would like to ask my 
friends and my colleagues on the Joint Committee and my friend from 
Long Beach if he would like to, as we were the other evening, talk 
about some of the areas where we focused specific attention.
  One of the key items, of course, has been proxy voting whereby 
Members of Congress are able to have their votes cast when they are not 
even in the room. We know it is a violation of the law, the rules of 
the House certainly, to have your voting card used by someone else 
here, yet in committee it is used over and over and over again. I 
wonder if my friend from East Petersburg might spend some time talking 
about this issue of proxy voting where he spent a great deal of time.
  Mr. WALKER. That is one of the more disturbing patterns that has been 
built up over the years, in large part because of the practices the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Horn] referred to. We have gotten 
ourselves into such a bizarre committee pattern in the Congress that we 
now justify people not showing up at committee because the schedule is 
so bizarre. So if they are not going to show up, you have to have some 
kind of way to conduct the business. So we have put into place a 
practice that allows people to vote without being there.
  In most cases in the country, people who do not show up for work, 
that is a bad thing. Here it has gotten to be a practice where some 
people regard it as a good thing. As a matter of fact, it extends the 
power of committee chairmen to be able to sit there with a whole sheaf 
of votes in their hands and conduct the practice kind of regardless of 
what else is going on in the room.
  It is horrendous to watch in committee meetings situations where the 
people in the room, having listened to the arguments presented on an 
amendment will vote one way only to have their vote reversed by a group 
of proxy votes that are cast against the will of the people who are 
actually there and voting. It makes for very bad legislating. It makes 
for a kind of situation where the House is not being a truly 
representative body and, in fact, it is a body designed strictly for a 
handful of power brokers who want to use proxies as a way of retaining 
their power. It is an outrage, I would say to the gentleman, and it 
ought to be corrected.
  Mr. DREIER. Absolutely. If I could reclaim my time, there are many 
people here who say if we were to eliminate proxy voting, it would not 
work. My response to that clearly is, ``Baloney.'' I sit on the 
Committee on Rules. If I am not up there on the third floor casting my 
vote, my vote does not count at all. No one can carry my proxy up there 
because we do not allow proxy voting. If one sits on the Committee on 
Appropriations, proxy voting is not allowed on the Committee on 
Appropriations.

  Mr. WALKER. The Committee on Appropriations is the most powerful 
committee in the House. They do not allow proxy voting.
  Mr. DREIER. Exactly.
  Mr. WALKER. Why? Because they expect the people to be there doing the 
business of the country when they are making their fundamental 
decisions. That should be the case for every other committee. If we are 
going to join these committees and we are going to be a part of the 
work, we ought to be expected to be there when the votes are taking 
place. The fact is that what Members will say is, ``I can't possibly be 
there with all the committee assignments.'' Fine. Then let us cut the 
committee assignments. Let us reduce the number of committees and 
subcommittees so people can be there doing the business. That can be 
done, too.
  Mr. DREIER. The other evening the gentleman from New York [Mr. 
Solomon] talked about the fact that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs 
does not allow proxy voting. On that Committee on Veterans' Affairs, as 
he said, virtually every measure comes to the House floor under 
suspension of the rules. Why? Because every member of that committee 
has been able to work and have input in the final product which has 
emerged from that committee.
  I should also say, interestingly enough, that in our Joint Committee 
on the Organization of the Congress, we did not have proxy voting.
  Mr. WALKER. That is right. People had to be there because they know 
there were likely to be a lot of tie votes, so it forces people to show 
up at the meetings. It is exactly the pattern that we want to have 
happen.
  Mr. ALLARD. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DREIER. I am happy to yield to my friend, the gentleman from 
Colorado [Mr. Allard].
  Mr. ALLARD. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I was struck by the comments for our fellow colleague, the gentleman 
from California [Mr. Horn], who talked about his experiences and what 
happened in State legislatures. We talk about proxy voting. There is 
one thing that frequently we do not run across in State legislatures. I 
know in the legislature I served in, again, one had to be there to cast 
his vote. We know that works. It contributes to the accountability. It 
makes people feel good about their elected body.
  I just wanted to make that point while we were on that discussion.
  Mr. DREIER. The gentleman is absolutely right.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Cape 
Girardeau, MO.
  Mr. EMERSON. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from 
California, for yielding.
  The gentleman from Pennsylvania in his comments on proxy voting 
raises another issue of reform needing great attention, and that is the 
committee structure, most especially the subcommittee structure.
  I do not necessarily think that we have too many standing committees 
of the House, although I think some modification in their jurisdiction 
should occur. But we certainly do have far too many subcommittees of 
the committees of the House that operate in conflict one with another 
in a scheduling way. Very often the committees in a scheduling way are 
operating in conflict with the activities here on the floor of the 
House.

  Yesterday was probably the busiest day of the week here in the House 
of Representatives. We had a couple of very important appropriation 
measures on the floor; we had instructions to conferees on the crime 
bill. Yet the committees of the House were meeting intently yesterday 
afternoon. We were in the Committee on Agriculture in a markup of a 
bill having to do with the reorganization of the Department of 
Agriculture. The fact of the matter was that we would get very well 
focused there in the committee and be making some progress when the 
bells would ring and we would go piling out to run to the floor of the 
House where we would have to focus here, losing our focus there, and we 
did this a number of times yesterday afternoon.
  I rather felt like most of my day had been spent running back and 
forth across the street. Of course, some productive things were 
achieved, but not as well as they could be. Of course, all of this 
brings into focus the need for a master schedule of the House of 
Representatives. We all serve on at least two committees, most of us 
do, depending on what the committees are, and a variety of 
subcommittees. We need to be here on the floor very often listening to 
the debate. I think with the use of modern technology, we could have a 
system of scheduling that would permit us in our committee 
responsibilities, our subcommittee responsibilities, and our 
responsibilities on the floor of the House to be much more deliberative 
and to have the opportunity better to participate in these different 
fora.
  After all, we are the highest deliberative body in the country, 
indeed probably in the world, and because of a lot of these arcane 
practices, we are not, in fact, as deliberative as we ought to be.
  Mr. WALKER. If the gentleman would yield to me for a moment just to 
make one point, we had a huge screw-up on the floor here today where 
the Committee on Ways and Means is working hard on the health care 
bill, which most of us regard as one of the major measures for the 
Congress, and evidently misunderstood the bills for a vote, and most of 
the Committee on Ways and Means missed a vote on the House floor. It 
was on a motion to rise, It is not going to kill their voting record in 
terms of the substance of the vote particularly, but nevertheless they 
are going to show up as being absent on a vote when they were over 
there working doing a major bill. It is all because we have this major 
committee doing major legislation while there is another major bill, an 
appropriations bill, being debated on the floor. The schedules that we 
run are absolute absurdities, and it is created by an absurd structure 
that allows it to happen in the first place.
  When we tried to get to those issues, we kept getting knocked down 
time and time again in the reform committee. It needs to be brought to 
the floor and discussed thoroughly.
  Mr. DREIER. I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Long Beach.
  Mr. HORN. I think you both make an excellent point in the 
relationship between action on the floor of the full House and the 
various committees of the House. I have talked to a number of committee 
chairmen in the majority party about this, would it be possible for us 
to get back here on a Monday, have floor action maybe Monday, Tuesday, 
and Friday and committee action on Tuesday afternoon, all day 
Wednesday, perhaps Thursday.

                              {time}  1410

  The argument made by most of the chairs, who know a lot about human 
behavior in both parties, is that unless we have votes on the floor, 
the members of their committee will not return to Washington. They will 
stay in their district. You have to have something that forces them to 
come here and do their duty. Being absent too often on the floor is one 
thing that compels you to do your duty.
  Mr. DREIER. Again, proxy voting allows Members to stay in their 
districts.
  Mr. HORN. You have the point that the gentleman from Missouri makes, 
which is we run back and forth, losing time. I was in one of those 
hearings yesterday, the Joint Subcommittee on Government Operations, in 
there from 9:30 to 1:30. I had to leave before the last witness. We 
came over to the floor, I don't know how many times.
  We were on the great issue, which is very important, of fresh versus 
frozen chickens, since a lot of frozen chicken is sold in California as 
fresh when it really is not. We had some excellent witnesses, the 
secretary of agriculture from California, Wolfgang Puck, the great chef 
in California, and yet we are leaving to answer rollcalls. Two of my 
freshman colleagues, one Democrat, one Republican, put a pedometer on 
one day. Each clocked between 5 and 7 miles going back and forth around 
here. That is a tremendous waste of legislative time.
  Mr. DREIER. But we do have some very healthy Members because of that.
  Mr. EMERSON. If the gentleman would yield, you raise an excellent 
point. The proxy voting issue, if we eliminated it and required voting 
in person by rollcall in committees, and made the weight of rollcall in 
committee equal to that to which they are regarded here on the floor of 
the House, that would give Members the incentive to be here.
  Plus we must say this also: Our job is to represent our people. We 
are elected to represent our people in the Congress of the United 
States. I do not know how we have arrived at the mentality that unless 
the House is actually sitting, that there is nothing to be done in 
Washington.
  Actually, probably far more of the important work gets done in 
committee than gets done here on the House floor.
  Mr. ALLARD. I would like to thank the gentleman for yielding. Talking 
about our scheduling, it was brought up legitimately that proxy voting, 
getting people to attend their committees, again, the number of 
committees gets to be a problem as far as scheduling is concerned.
  If I remember correctly, in the report that we reported out of our 
efforts on organizing Congress, we had a mechanism in there where we 
could begin to reduce the number of committees. We limited the number 
of committees that Members could serve on. Then we also said if those 
committees failed to meet with a certain number of Members on that 
committee, that the Members had voted, so those who did not meet those 
membership requirements would cease to exist. In effect, we were saying 
the Members of this body would vote by selecting which committees they 
were to serve on. If the interest was not there for the committee, 
despite what the chairman's personal feelings were, and obviously there 
is not a chairman that did not want to keep that power, then that 
committee would have to go. I think that made a lot of sense. I am real 
disappointed we do not have that coming before our body.
  Mr. HORN. If the gentleman would yield a minute, I wanted to finish 
up on what Mr. Emerson said for a minute, with one idea that might 
help. If we published in the Congressional Record the votes on each 
issue in committee, as we publish the votes before the full House of 
Representatives and the actions of the Committee of the Whole on the 
State of the Union, you would have a greater level of consciousness as 
to who is around here doing the work.
  Being on a number of committees that have 25 and 30 people, I can 
tell you there are usually 5 or 6 of us, divided maybe 3 and 3, that 
are sitting there with the chairman and the ranking Republican 
listening to the witnesses and doing the work. And I think it would 
help if we published in the Congressional Record all those committee 
votes, which you do not have any other way of knowing what the votes 
are in committee, unless the trade press on a particular committee 
publishes them. It seems to me the American people have a right to know 
what their Representatives are voting on.
  Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, my friend has just pointed to one of the 
very beneficial aspects of the report that has come from the Joint 
Committee on the Organization of Congress. We, in fact, do have a 
provision which calls for regularly printing the votes in attendance 
for committees in the Record.
  I should say today there is nothing to prevent that at all. In fact, 
regularly when I or my colleagues, Mr. Solomon, Mr. Quillen, or Mr. 
Goss are managing the rules on the House floor here, we print in the 
Congressional Record the votes that have been cast in the Committee on 
Rules, and that can be done today. But under the recommendation which 
came from the joint committee, we do, in fact, call for a regular 
printing of those votes in the Congressional Record. I think that is an 
important reform.
  Mr. WALKER. If the gentleman would yield, it seems to me we ought to 
talk about one other thing, too, that is very much on the minds of the 
American people, and that is the whole issue of congressional 
compliance, forcing Congress to live under the same laws other people 
live under, and particularly to live under the laws we pass for other 
people.
  That was something that was the subject of much discussion in the 
Joint Committee on Organization. It is one where I think there was 
unanimity of agreement among the committee that we were going to have 
to deal with that issue. We did not always agree on exactly the 
substance of how it would happen, but I think both Republicans and 
Democrats came to the conclusion that was something that had to happen.
  That is a part of the package and is something that by preventing the 
package from coming to the floor, we would not ever get to. What we 
hear by way of rumor is that some of our friends on the Democratic side 
might want to separate out that issue, because they understand that the 
country is concerned about it, bring it to the floor, call it 
congressional reform, and do little else.
  Well, I suppose that would be a step in the right direction, but the 
fact is that what they are also talking about is something that is very 
weak. They are talking about one more set of discussions about whether 
or not we can do it. Many of us feel as though it is time for Congress 
to make very clear to the American people that we intend to live under 
the laws that we pass for other people to live under.
  Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I do so to disagree 
with my friend from East Petersburg.
  Mr. WALKER. Shocking.
  Mr. DREIER. Well, it occasionally happens.
  I happen to believe very strongly that Members on the other side of 
the aisle who are supportive of establishing an office of compliance 
which would make recommendations back to us as to what regulations we 
might consider imposing on ourselves, are simply using that as an 
excuse to claim they support congressional compliance when they really 
don't. And that is what I found during the debate that we had when we 
were in our markup.
  There are many people who do not believe that Congress should have to 
comply with the laws that we impose on the American people, and more 
than a few of them would argue that because of, as my friend has said, 
the tremendous uproar out there among our constituents who are 
regularly saying, you in Congress should be forced to comply with the 
laws that you impose on us, they feel that pressure. So they want to 
hold up this extraordinarily weak provision for congressional 
compliance.
  When we had our hearing up in the Committee on Rules just a few weeks 
ago, I got into a disagreement with my counterpart, Mr. Hamilton, who 
was saying that he believed that if we were to implement this package, 
which established an Office of Compliance that would make 
recommendations, that we would have to comply with OSHA. But in fact 
that is not the case at all. There is nothing in there that says we 
would have to comply with the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which 
has imposed tremendous regulations and forced small businesses out of 
existence.
  So what he said is that he hoped that the Office of Compliance would 
recommend that we comply with OSHA, and that we would do it. The fact 
of the matter is, this has loopholes and creates a tremendous 
opportunity for Congress to continue to exempt itself, and it is so 
weak that if they try to bring forward a compliance provision which 
simply includes what came out of that committee, I would be compelled 
to oppose it, because I do not believe in any way that that moves us in 
the right direction.
  Mr. WALKER. If the gentleman would yield further, the gentleman has 
corrected me. He is right. I was wrong. We are not dealing with 
anything that the House could possibly pass and consider as real 
reform, and I thank the gentleman for putting that correction on the 
record.
  Mr. DREIER. I have to do that once in a while.
  Mr. HORN. If the gentleman will yield, I stress that this is said 
facetiously and humorously. If we had to apply and comply with OSHA or 
EPA, the first thing they would do is come here and close the Longworth 
House Office Building. The result would be at least $1 billion or $2 
billion required to house what we now house in the Longworth House 
Office Building.
  That is exactly what small business collectively and large business 
in this country, and I might add universities, because I had plenty of 
OSHA inspectors at California State University at Long Beach, who would 
be crawling around here finding the usual mouse holes, rat holes, lousy 
wiring, and all the rest, and we would have to suffer.

                              {time}  1420

  Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I did not mean it 
facetiously. The reason I say that is that we need to recognize that 
the onerous regulatory burden which we impose on American businesses, 
on universities and others is so great that is has created many 
problems. And while I acknowledge it would be impossible for us today 
to comply with any of those regulations which are out there, outside of 
the beltway for entities that are not part of the Federal Government, 
the fact of the matter is, we should realize that. And when we have to 
face the kinds of constraints that they have to, we just might realize 
that some of the cost of regulation, the duplication of regulation and 
the tremendous imposition out there should be reduced. That really is 
my goal on this.
  Mr. ALLARD. This is not a new idea about having Congress live under 
the same laws as everybody else. James Madison, one of the founders of 
our Constitution, wrote frequently and talked frequently about the 
hazards of having a legislative body exempt itself from the same laws 
everybody else has to live under and, in the process of doing that, 
that you set up an elite body. I frequently, as I think most of you 
hear from your local elected officials, talking about the burden of 
rules and regulations, whether they are elected to the school board or 
the city council or county commissions or even State legislators. One 
of the things that amuses me is some of the arguments that we hear from 
our own colleagues.
  They say, No. 1, that say we do not want those regulators in our 
offices. Well, they are beginning to get the idea.
  Then the second argument they make, we cannot afford all those rules 
and regulations. I said, now you are really beginning to get the idea. 
That is why your city council people and your county commissioners, 
State legislators are having so many concerns, because you really do 
not understand about the impacts you are having on their local budgets.
  Mr. WALKER. Just think about all the problems that we had when 
Congress all of a sudden awoke and figured out that we had to comply 
with parking laws that we passed in the last Congress, that we passed 
this, what I regard as a rather stupid law, that suggests that we are 
going to tax parking places at work. And the rest of the country is 
about to awake to this and find out that it is going to get real 
expensive for them.
  But when we figured out that we had to comply with this, we have now 
scrambled around and the administration committees in the House and the 
committees over in the Senate have now figured out ways to comply 
exactly but to figure out how we escape the law, how we can bring the 
threshold of our parking places underneath what it would really be to 
comply.
  It is exactly the kind of thing that the American people are 
concerned about. Once again, we found out a law applied to us and we 
scrambled around trying to figure out how we could make it so it did 
not apply to us. It boggles the mind.
  Mr. HORN. You are precisely correct. I would suggest perhaps a law we 
all ought to cosponsor and pass would be that we require all Members of 
Congress to come with their tax records, find space in this Chamber 
over 2 specific days and have to make out their own tax forms with no 
benefit of accountants. I think that would do more to get the 
consciousness raised around here for the need for tax simplication.
  Every tax bill I can think of since probably the 1940's especially 
1986, started out with the idea of tax simplication. I remember when I 
was on the Senate staff 30 years ago, we called anything we passed in 
relation to taxes the lawyers and accountants relief act of still in 
the air, 1962, 1986, whatever. We ought to have to do it ourselves in 
this Chamber, no advice. And then you would know what people go 
through.
  Mr. EMERSON. I just want to add to what the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania has said. He highlights the fact that the liberal majority 
there knows no bounds to what they would like to tax. Now they are 
going to tax the parking spaces of all Americans, and it has come home 
to us, because we are going to be taxed on our parking spaces here.
  I suggest the simple solution would be that we would pass a law 
declaring that parking places are a perk that all Americans should 
enjoy, and it is a benefit of one's job. But the gentleman is 
absolutely right. Certainly, that would be true in this mobile society 
in which we live today. The gentleman is absolutely right.
  We think that we know so well what is right of everyone else but do 
not make them applicable to ourselves. And when we do make applicable 
to ourselves the laws that everyone else is under, we have a much finer 
appreciation of the problems that Main Street America faces.

  Mr. WALKER. What we end up with is, we begin to end up with 
recognizing the stupidity of what we have passed. All of a sudden it 
now occurred to people that if you put in action the kind of thing that 
we are talking about, it would not do what it was purported to do. And 
that is to help the environment. This is supposedly a way of getting 
people out of their cars and helping with the environment. Now we have 
figured out that what it is going to do is cause people in our garages 
to drive around for half an hour or better trying to figure out where 
they can find a place, thereby polluting the air more and causing all 
kinds of environmental problems. So the law in the face of it has 
turned out to be the ultimate stupidity, and we only recognize that 
because we are confronted with it ourselves.
  Having recognized it, I wish we could repeal the law but there are 
all kinds of people out there who say, you cannot do that. We passed 
this law. It is a major reform law. I do not know who it is reforming. 
Too much reform becomes deformed. I think that is the case in this 
case.
  Once having to look at the law as it applies to us, we found out it 
is pretty dumb.
  Mr. DREIER. I wanted to take a couple of minutes to talk, if I might, 
about the specific area that I tried to get into the other evening but 
when the bewitching hour of midnight hit, I was unable to proceed.
  I want to talk about the issue which was focused on more than any 
other during those 37 hearings of the joint committee, and that happens 
to be this question of committee reform. I would like to take some time 
to offer some quotes that were offered in testimony as we went through 
this hearing process.
  Norman Ornstein, who is at the American Enterprise Institute and led, 
along with Thomas Mann, the renewing Congress project, Thomas Mann from 
the Brookings Institute, spent a great deal of time looking at this 
institution. He said that the committee system is the linchpin in the 
deliberative process.
  As we look at other quotes that came from the testimony, former 
Senator Bill Brock, who is a very good friend to many of us, in fact a 
candidate for the U.S. Senate, I hope he wins, in Maryland, he said, 
``The way committees are organized now does not relate to the world in 
which we live.''
  Mr. Mann said, ``The problem is fractured attention, superficial 
engagement in issues, scramble over turf, unrepresentative memberships 
on committees, concentration of jurisdiction on major committees. The 
only way to deal with that is through a process of consolidation.''
  The Carnegie Commission in February 1994 said, ``Encroachments of 
committee jurisdiction originally justified as response to 
extraordinary circumstances have become routine. Consequently, 
authorizing committees which focus on programmatic legislation and 
oversight have lost the power to appropriations committees, which 
center on fiscal issues. Incomplete information and inadequate 
awareness of broader concerns sometimes results in multiple committees 
and subcommittees in Congress working at cross purposes.''
  The former Vice President, Walter Mondale, now Ambassador to Japan, 
when he testified before the joint committee said, ``Looking back on my 
years as a Senator, I now realize the tremendous amounts of time, I 
spent on matters that did not really advance the broad national 
purposes with which this institution should be concerned above all 
else. I believe that since then the problem has gotten to be much 
worse.''
  He went on to say, ``Both the numbers of congressional staff and the 
proliferation of committees have reached proportions that are unwieldy 
and counterproductive and each tends to reinforce the other.''

                              {time}  1430

  He said, ``If you look at the committee structure, a lot of the 
priorities were set 50, 60, sometimes 100 years ago,'' and this is not 
necessarily the same Nation with the same problems as it was then. He 
said also, ``There was a time when Congress could tap into a deep 
reservoir of public trust. Now the well is nearly dry.''
  As we look at the proliferation of committees, it has been 
unbelievable to see the overlap. There are 52 committees and 
subcommittees which have responsibility over programs that deal with 
children and families. The Environmental Protection Agency answers to 
90 committees and subcommittees.
  There are 107 committees and subcommittees which have jurisdiction 
over the Pentagon. More than 40 committees and subcommittees have 
jurisdiction over surface transportation.
  The Federal Emergency Management Agency oversight is so splintered 
that no single authorizing committee is capable of examining that 
agency in totality. It is not uncommon to see conference committees 
that exceed 200 participants.
  Clearly, Madam Speaker, the existence of this gridlock and a lack of 
fairness and accountability are reflections of the inability of 
Congress to deliberate, which is our goal. Accountability and enhancing 
the level of deliberation is critically important. This antiquated 
committee system which, as my friend, the gentleman from Long Beach, 
CA, said earlier, was put into place nearly 50 years ago with the work 
of the Monroney-LaFollette committee needs to be changed.
  In the early years of this country there was a regular shift of 
committee. In fact, when the census was taken, this institution would 
look into bringing about changes in the committee system.
  I appeared on a television program with my counterpart, the gentleman 
from Indiana [Mr. Hamilton]. This was last fall, and he said, ``When I 
first came to the Congress some 30 years ago, there were not committees 
charged with dealing with issues like the environment. We have seen 
this increase in the numbers of committees to deal with those issues, 
and yet, there has been no commensurate reduction in committees that 
are dealing with other areas.''
  It seems to me, Madam Speaker, that we have a responsibility to look 
at a change of committees and priorities in this Congress on a regular 
basis. As we have witnessed throughout the world the incredible changes 
which have taken place over the last half century in communications, in 
transportation, in a wide range of other areas, it seems to me that we 
have a responsibility to bring the U.S. Congress into the 21st century.
  If we do not modernize the committee system now, this House may drift 
for years without resolving the major cause of gridlock, which is in 
this institution. That is one point that I know my friend, the 
gentleman from Cape Girardeau, feels strongly about.
  While many of the recommendations that come from the Joint Committee 
call for us to punt to others to deal with these issues, we are really 
abrogating our responsibility; because we as a committee, the Joint 
Committee on the Organization of Congress, were established with a 
specific charge to address and make recommendations to the House and 
Senate of ways in which we could deal with these problems.
  Clearly, Madam Speaker, the package which came from the Joint 
Committee, having spent all the time that we did with 14 proposals for 
committee structure reform that came to us from the Congressional 
Research Service, we basically did nothing on the issue of committee 
reform. In fact, here is the analysis that was given of that.
  The New York Times said, ``Regrettably, neither the Senate nor House 
Members addressed the sensitive matter of committee turf.'' Roll Call 
said that ``the plan is nothing more than a mouse.''
  Thomas Mann, in looking at the package we reported out, said, ``The 
idea that there have to be these sort of minor committees as fiefdoms 
to protect constituencies and careers is an old-fashioned idea that I 
think doesn't fit with a contemporary Congress.''
  James Thurber, from the American University, said, ``I think this 
bill is the mouse that roared when it comes to committee reform.''
  Roger Davidson, who testified a couple of times before us from the 
University of Maryland, used to work here, said, ``The most distressing 
gap in H.R. 3801 is its failure to address the structure and alignment 
of committee and subcommittees.''
  We had a recommendation that came to us from the renewing Congress 
project, that as I said was led by Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein. 
Unfortunately, we ignored that. I mentioned the 14 different plans that 
were outlined, and in fact, through our hearing process, sat in front 
of us as we asked witness after witness about the need for committee 
structure reform.

  Time and time again they said, ``Yes, we should do it.'' However, as 
my friend, the gentleman from Long Beach, CA [Mr. Horn] said earlier, 
``There are too many people in this institution who thrive on the 
status quo, creating a situation which makes it very tough for us to 
bring about reform.''
  As he said, we have today 117 new Members of the House of 
Representatives, 13 new Members of the U.S. Senate, most of whom in 
1992 ran on this platform of change, reform, and, unfortunately, many 
of them have come here and done very little to address it.
  However, I still hold out hope, as we look at the fact while there is 
this great hue and cry for term limits, come January 1995 we will see 
probably half of this institution having served for two terms or less, 
it seems to me that we will have more reform-minded people here. So if 
we do not get this package reported out this year, I hope very much we 
will be able to do it next year.
  Madam Speaker, I happen to have offered, with the support of my 
friend, the gentleman from Cape Girardeau, and others on the committee, 
when we had our committee markup, the one overall plan which would 
bring about major restructuring of the committee system. It was not 
perfect.
  In fact, I looked at some of the things and said, ``Gosh, I would 
like to change those myself,'' and I have been in the process of 
changing those, so when we bring the committee package or the overall 
reform committee's package to the floor, I hope we will be able to 
consider committee restructuring.
  Madam Speaker, I want to be able to offer that plan. However, as we 
look at the proposal that I offered to bring about committee structure 
reform, and as we look at other ideas to bring about changes, I would 
disagree slightly with my friend, the gentleman from Cape Girardeau, 
and say that if we do make the mistake of cutting too many committees, 
we always have the ability to go back and make a determination that it 
is absolutely crucial that we have that committee. We can put it back 
into place.
  My fear is that if we keep the structure the way we have it today, 
based on the way it was established a half century ago, we will not 
really get at the root of the problem.
  Mr. EMERSON. If the gentleman will yield, I don't think we are far 
apart on this subject at all. What I said is, I think the Monroney-
LaFollette committee did a fairly good job at the end of World War II 
in its recommendations on committee structure, which is what we have 
been operating under since about 1947, I think, the Legislative 
Reorganization Act of 1947.
  Madam Speaker, I would not quarrel that there should be some 
restructuring, some modification to bring us into the modern era. 
However, I was addressing the issue more from the standpoint that there 
is an understanding in the country that we are terribly overstaffed 
here in the Congress.
  Staff breaks down several different ways. I think as to full 
committees, we need expert staff with the expertise that the major 
committees deal with, and certainly we as individual Representatives in 
our representative capacity do need staff to help us deal with--we all 
have at least a half-million constituents. We need a staff to deal with 
all of that. We cannot individually answer 300 to 500 letters a week, 
hard as we may try, and do all of the other things we have to do.
  Madam Speaker, I think the level of staffing for individual Members 
is about right, and I do not take great issue with the full committee 
staffing, but subcommittees are a different thing. Let us not kid 
ourselves. It is a fact, you can read this in books containing 
political anecdotes, indeed, history, we have so many subcommittees in 
the Congress right now, in 1994, for one principal reason.
  There was a tremendous class of freshmen Democrats who entered the 
Congress in 1975 following the Watergate fiasco, and there was a great 
need for a lot of people to be called Mr. Chairman. That is the reason 
we have so many subcommittees, not because there was any demand for the 
subcommittees, but because there were so many Members of the majority 
who did not really have a role to play and there was that great desire 
to be Mr. Chairman. You can go back and look at history as to when most 
of the subcommittees, probably a majority of the subcommittees that we 
have as subcommittees to the committees of the Congress right now were 
created in the period of 1975.
  Mr. HORN. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DREIER. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. HORN. The gentleman is absolutely correct. The proliferation of 
subcommittees came as a result of that desire, but there is another 
factor we have not mentioned here.
  We are too fragmented. It makes us inefficient, too much staff, which 
I think frankly we have on the majority side of the committees. If they 
want to share some of that with the minority, maybe I will not feel 
that way, but they have not. It has been a very selfish thing. There is 
no 2-to-1 rule as we have sought for years, with one-third at least 
minority staff. It will be interesting how they feel when they are 
finally in the minority and see their staff disappear, of 70 people 
versus our 7 or something.

                              {time}  1440

  The other point is we are also making the executive branch 
inefficient. When you have a dozen, two dozen, the gentleman cited even 
many more committees that the head of a particular agency has to 
testify before, interact with, what we are doing, and I have spent most 
of my life as an executive, we are just tearing these people apart, 
fragmenting them, keeping them from running their agency. Sure, they 
need to relate to Congress, but they do not need to relate to 12 
committees of Congress.
  Mr. DREIER. The gentleman is correct and the examples are horrendous. 
I was told once by a Cabinet secretary that he came up here and would 
testify before three different committees, and he would often see the 
same exact members on each of those committees because they served on 
so many committees, and they would then go and ask different questions, 
or ask again the same questions for maybe a different television 
network that happened to be in the room at that time to cover it of 
that Cabinet secretary. It is absolutely ridiculous to impose those 
kinds of constraints on the executive branch.
  Mr. EMERSON. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DREIER. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Missouri.
  Mr. EMERSON. Madam Speaker, I think an excellent point is being made 
here by both of the gentlemen from California. They do need to 
structure things so that committees in the Congress somewhat mirror 
executive departments and agencies. A reason for this, in addition to 
those cited, the duplication of efforts and all of that, the Congress 
needs to do a better job in exercising its oversight functions. There 
we get into the whole budget process and the need for a 2-year budget 
cycle so we can spend 1 year doing what we do in authorizing, and 
another year exercising our oversight function to see if the programs, 
agencies, departments, policies of the Federal Government are indeed 
functioning in the manner intended by Congress.
  Mr. DREIER. My friend is absolutely right on the need for oversight. 
That underscores another very important flaw in the package coming out 
from the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. H.R. 3801 
calls for these incentive-based changes, and if on the whim of a Member 
of Congress they do not want to serve on the Judiciary Committee or on 
the Government Operations Committee, and those committees go out of 
existence, where would we be? Clearly this is an institution that has 
to have a Judiciary Committee, and clearly as we look at our 
responsibility to have oversight over the Pentagon and other agencies 
of the Government we cannot do it without some kind of committee 
charged with that. Yet based on this very flawed proposal that has come 
out, which does not really bring about a major structural reform of the 
committee system, instead, just saying gosh, if it is a popular 
committee and Members politically believe that it is going to be 
beneficial to them as they look at reelection in their district, then 
they will join that committee. If committee is unpopular, it would go 
out of existence.
  I think there are some constitutional questions that need to be 
addressed here, and that is why I think that rather than simply having 
the existence of a committee based on the whim of the membership, we 
need to look at our constitutional responsibility. That is why I am 
very insistent on moving ahead with the package that I have for 
complete structural reform, and I hope very much that we will be able 
to do that.
  Mr. HORN. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DREIER. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. HORN. Madam Speaker, the most popular committee in this Chamber, 
on which I happen to serve, is the Committee on Public Works and 
Transportation. We have an outstanding chairman. It is probably the 
only bipartisan committee on this House. We function on a bipartisan 
basis. It is a very progressive committee. It has come forth with 
trying to integrate transportation. My colleagues remember the so-
called ISTEA bill, an intermodal.
  Mr. DREIER. Does the gentleman think it is more bipartisan than the 
Rules Committee?
  Mr. HORN. About 3,000 percent.
  But the problem is we do not have all of the pieces. If we go to the 
other body there is integration on these pieces. We have a separate 
Merchant Marine Committee, so unless the bill is referred to us, 
jointly, which often it is, then that means fragmentation. We cannot 
deal with the railroads because they happen to be under Energy and 
Commerce, so we do not deal with railroads. So we are dealing with 
surface transportation, we have a part of the EPA jurisdiction, water 
resources, the environment and so forth, and aviation, but we do not 
have an integration in our own body of where we can look and relate to 
the different modes of transportation, and that is very sad.
  Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend for that very helpful 
contribution.
  Madam Speaker, we come to the end of this hour, and again we have 
just scratched the surface on the issue of congressional reform. I 
believe very strongly that we need to move forward as expeditiously as 
possible to meet the demand of the American people to bring about major 
reform of the U.S. Congress. I am counting on the majority leadership 
to do that for us.
  I thank all of my friends on the committee as well as my colleague, 
the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn], for joining us.

                          ____________________