[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 19 (Wednesday, February 15, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Page S1363]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. SPECTER (for himself, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Cornyn, Mr. 
        Chambliss, and Mrs. Feinstein):
  S. 2292. A bill to provide relief for the Federal judiciary from 
excessive rent charges; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I seek recognition to speak in support of 
legislation, cosponsored by Senators Leahy, Cornyn, Chambliss, and 
Feinstein, which I am introducing today to address a major problem 
affecting the Federal judiciary, specifically excessive rental charges 
by the General Services Administration for courthouses and other space 
occupied by the courts across the country. This legislation would 
prohibit the GSA from charging the Federal judiciary rent in excess of 
the actual costs incurred by GSA to maintain and operate Federal court 
buildings and related costs.
  Unlike many other elements of the Federal Government, the judiciary 
is required to pay a large and ever-increasing portion of its budget as 
rent to another branch of government, the GSA. In fiscal terms, since 
1986, the Federal courts' rental payments to GSA have increased from 
$133 million to $926 million in fiscal year 2005. This rental payment 
represents an increasing slice of the judiciary's relatively small 
overall budget. The percentage of the judiciary's operating budget 
devoted to rent payments has escalated from 15.7 percent in fiscal year 
1986 to 22 percent in fiscal year 2005. By contrast, only three percent 
of the Department of Justice budget goes toward GSA rent, and the 
Executive Branch as a whole spends less than two-tenths of one percent 
of its budget on GSA rent.
  In his 2005 Year-End report on the Federal Judiciary, Chief Justice 
John Roberts cited escalating GSA rents as one of the two serious 
threats to the independence of the Federal judiciary, the other being 
judges' pay. The increased rents, coupled with across-the-board cuts 
imposed during fiscal years 2004 and 2005, resulted in a reduction of 
approximately 1,500 judicial branch employees as of mid-December when 
compared to October 2003, and a 24-month moratorium on courthouse 
construction has been imposed.
  On May 13, 2005, a bipartisan group of 11 Senators on the Judiciary 
Committee wrote to Stephen A. Perry, Administrator of GSA, to exercise 
his statutory authority to exempt the judiciary from rental payments in 
excess of those required to operating and maintaining Federal court 
buildings and related costs. On May 31, 2005, Mr. Perry wrote back and 
denied this sensible request. Mr. Perry referred to the judiciary as 
``one of our largest and most valued tenants,'' but a more apt 
description would have been one of its most valued profit centers.
  The judiciary paid $926 million to GSA in fiscal year 2005, but GSA's 
actual cost of providing space to the judiciary was only $426 million, 
a difference of $500 million. The judiciary in essence is being used as 
a profit center by GSA, which accomplishes this by charging for such 
fictitious costs as real estate tax which GSA does not in fact pay and 
forcing the judiciary to pay for buildings that have been fully 
amortized, not only once but several times.
  This legislation provides a relatively modest and simple fix to this 
near crisis in the Federal judiciary, and I urge my colleagues to 
support it.
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