[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 107 (Wednesday, June 28, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1348]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                          CONGRESSIONAL REFORM

                                 ______


                          HON. LEE H. HAMILTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 28, 1995
  Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert my Washington 
Report for Wednesday, June 28, 1995 into the Congressional Record:
                           Reforming Congress

       Last week the House passed its version of the 1996 funding 
     bill for Congress. Overall funding for the House would be cut 
     8% from the 1995 level. Congress must take the lead in fiscal 
     discipline. This bill is a step in the right direction.
       The bill also includes several worthwhile reforms of the 
     operations of Congress. It cuts funding for committee staff, 
     cuts Members' mail allowances, and eliminates a congressional 
     committee. It also cuts back congressional support agencies. 
     The Office of Technology Assessment, the Government Printing 
     Office, and the General Accounting Office all would be 
     downsized.
       These are all worthwhile reforms, and they reflect Members' 
     continuing efforts to streamline Congress and improve its 
     operations. In my view, three broader changes could make the 
     reform process better.


                        allowing more amendments

       The floor amendment process needs to be more open. The 
     House leadership prohibited several reform amendments to the 
     congressional funding bill from being considered on the 
     floor. Members wanted to offer amendments, for example, to 
     eliminate additional committees and ban gifts from lobbyists. 
     Of the 33 amendments that Members wanted to offer on the 
     floor, only 11 were allowed. Most of the denied amendments 
     called for additional reforms or deeper spending cuts.
       Last session Members in the minority objected, with some 
     justification, that many of their amendments were not allowed 
     to be offered, and they promised that if they were ever in 
     the majority the amendment process would be much more open. 
     Yet the new leadership has made only modest progress toward 
     more openness. The amendment process tends to be open on 
     minor bills and restrained on controversial matters. 
     Certainly on some difficult bills and amendment process 
     cannot be totally open. But on such bills the leadership has 
     to identify the major policy issues and allow a thorough and 
     thoughtful consideration of them. We still have a long way to 
     go to reach the goal of allowing Members to vote on the major 
     reform issues of the day.


                         greater bipartisanship

       Another concern is the increasingly partisan nature of 
     congressional reform. A partisan task force has been set up 
     by the House leadership to make recommendations on additional 
     reforms, particularly further changes in committee 
     jurisdictions.
       Committee reform is an appropriate topic for review, but I 
     am disappointed that the leadership has chosen not to make it 
     a bipartisan task force. Last Congress we set up the Joint 
     Committee on the Organization of Congress in a bipartisan 
     way, with an equal number of Members from both parties. 
     Historically that has been the best way to achieve long-
     lasting institutional reform.
                          Regularizing Reform

       I also believe that we need to regularize the congressional 
     reform process, taking up a major reform package each 
     Congress.
       One of my main conclusions from my work last Congress on 
     the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress is that 
     the institution is better served if congressional reform is 
     treated more as an ongoing, continual process rather than 
     something taken up in an omnibus way every few decades.
       Congress has set up three major bipartisan, House-Senate 
     reform efforts in recent times--the 1945, 1965, and 1993 
     Joint Committees on the Organization of Congress. All three 
     committees were given extremely broad mandates--to look at 
     virtually all aspects of Congress in order to improve 
     efficiency and effectiveness. The Joint Committee in the last 
     Congress took up everything from committee jurisdiction 
     changes and the congressional budget process to ethics 
     reform, House-Senate relations, and congressional compliance 
     with the laws we pass for everyone else. We conducted scores 
     of hearings, heard from hundreds of witnesses, looked over 
     thousands of pages of testimony, considered hundreds of 
     reform ideas, and issued reports totalling several thousand 
     pages.
       In my view, it would be far preferable to have the House 
     take up a major congressional reform resolution each 
     Congress. That would make the task much more manageable, 
     since Members would be able to focus attention on the key 
     issues of the day rather than the entire range of procedural 
     and organizational matters carried over from previous 
     Congresses. It would allow us to continually update the 
     institutions of Congress in a rapidly changing world. Letting 
     systematic institutional reform slide for several years only 
     allows problems to fester and heightens partisan tensions.
       I recently introduced a resolution requiring the Rules 
     Committee to take up the issue of a congressional reform 
     resolution each Congress. If the Committee decides against 
     sending such a reform resolution to the House floor for 
     consideration, they would have to explain--as part of a 
     required end-of-Congress report--why they thought 
     congressional reform was not needed.
       Interest in congressional reform tends to ebb and flow 
     according to the changing interests of the voters and the 
     main House players in reform, the shifting national agenda, 
     and the varying amounts of media coverage given to the 
     operation of Congress. I believe we need to regularize the 
     process so that whoever is in charge of reform in the future 
     will be looking seriously at scheduling and debating a 
     congressional reform resolution each Congress.
       This is not a new idea. The Legislative Reorganization Act 
     of 1970 stated the need for a congressional panel to ``make a 
     continuing study of the organization and operation of the 
     Congress''. Moreover, the 1974 bipartisan House Select 
     Committee on Committees stated that ``a key aspect of any 
     viable reorganization is provision for continuing evaluation 
     of its effectiveness, and for periodic adjustments in the 
     institution as new situations arise''. It is time to finally 
     follow through on these recommendations and regularize the 
     congressional reform process.
       We have been making progress on reforming Congress. But 
     pursuing reform in a more bipartisan, open, and regular way 
     will make our efforts more productive.
     

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