[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 78 (Thursday, May 22, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H4825-H4827]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             STOP THE FRANK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Woodall) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time this afternoon.
  I am sorry you are not going to get the benefit of the posters I 
brought down here with me because I am talking about a topic that is 
not one we bring up a lot in this Chamber. It is the use of the 
congressional frank.
  I will wager that when you were elected to Congress, the only thing 
you knew about the frank is that perhaps you cussed it from time to 
time when it showed up in your mailbox. I brought a copy down here 
because I am sure there are going to be staff and folks back in the 
office who hadn't seen one before, folks walking around the office 
building today.
  But the frank, the congressional frank--why they call it the frank I 
do not know--is that signature that you and I put up in the top right-
hand corner of our envelopes so that we can send mail.
  I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, if you have gone to town hall meetings 
where this hasn't come up, I would be interested to know. Because on 
that list of congressional perks--and you know the ones I am talking 
about, ones like you get free health care for life, which of course is 
not true, ones like if you serve one term in Congress you get a free 
pension for life, also not true--but among those perks is the free mail 
perk, the congressional frank. It drives me crazy, Mr. Speaker, it 
drives my constituents crazy, and we have the power to fix it here in 
this Chamber. I want to stop the frank.
  Now, folks might say if you want to stop the frank, why not just stop 
using the frank. Fair enough. It is because the law requires us to use 
it. I am going get to that later, Mr. Speaker, because I will bet you 
have not seen that code section before.
  Here is an article from Bloomberg, Mr. Speaker, lest you think this 
is something that you and I just hear at town hall meetings. This is 
something that is out, and you see it in newspaper after newspaper 
after newspaper. A headline--this is two summers ago, Bloomberg: 
``Lawmakers Intent on Dictating How the U.S. Postal Service Cuts 
Billions From Its Spending Are Among Those Helping Themselves to a 
Favorite Congressional Perk: Free Mail.''
  I want to be clear: there is no free mail, there is no free mail in 
the United States Congress today. This frank that I am talking about, 
Mr. Speaker, every time you sign your name to the top of a letter you 
are paying the full freight on that letter. You are absolutely going to 
pay for it when it hits the Postal Service. Sometimes it is on the 
honor system that you are reporting it, sometimes the mail house here 
at the Capitol is counting it. There is no free mail.
  But even a group as reputable as Bloomberg believes that there is. I 
know with certainty, because I hear it from my folks back home, our 
constituents believe that there is. In this time where trust is the 
commodity that is in the tightest supply in this town, we must do those 
things to restore trust with men and women back home. We must end this 
favorite of congressional perks.
  Now, this is Bloomberg 2012, Mr. Speaker. I don't want you to think 
this is something that we have just started talking about. You can't 
see it from where you sit. But I also brought The New York Times from 
March of 1875. That is right. March of 1875, The New York Times is 
chronicling a vote that was taken right here in the U.S. House of 
Representatives. Well, not right here in this building on this floor. 
It was taken through those doors and into the next Chamber. But it says 
this. It says:

       By a vote of 113 to 65, the House concurred in the Senate 
     amendment of the postal appropriations bill to restore the 
     franking privilege.

  Now, the franking privilege, this signing of your name on a letter, 
it came from England, and it came in the early days of the Postal 
Service, where maybe you had an important governmental responsibility, 
maybe you needed to communicate with folks on the other side of the 
country and there was no local post office close by. You could be 
living out on the frontier, you could be far away, you just might not 
have had a coin in your pocket. So it allowed in the name of government 
efficiency for Members of Congress to sign their name at the top of a 
letter and drop that into the postal stream.

                              {time}  1430

  I promise you there is not a man or a woman who serves in Congress 
today who does not know where his local post office is. There is not a 
man or woman who serves in Congress today who struggles to get over to 
the grocery store where there are stamps for sale.
  We do not need to be able to sign our names at the top of an envelope 
today to get it done, but in 1875, after Congress had abolished the 
frank, in the name of abolishing congressional perks, the Senate passed 
a bill to bring it back into being. The House concurred.
  The New York Times says this:

       So far as our observation goes, there has never been any 
     demand for the restoration of the franking nuisance, except 
     on the part of Congressmen.

  I want you to think about this. Where does this sense that Congress 
gets free mail privileges come from, Mr. Speaker? It comes from the 
fact that, once upon a time, Congress actually got free mail 
privileges.
  Again, the Postal Service was in its infancy, and in order to conduct 
the people's business, the franking privilege was adopted from what 
folks had seen at play in England, but in 1875, Congress was still 
trying to grapple with the distrust that the franking privilege created 
amongst its constituencies.

[[Page H4826]]

  The New York Times, March 1875:

       So far as our observation goes, there has never been any 
     demand for the restoration of the franking nuisance, except 
     on the part of Congressmen.

  Mr. Speaker, what I hope you will help me carry to our colleagues is 
that we no longer need that franking nuisance.
  There will be men and women in this Chamber who will say: Rob, what 
is the big deal? Don't we have bigger problems to struggle with?
  Of course we do, but this one is easy for us to fix. There are those 
men and women out there who believe that there is a congressional perk 
that exists in this Chamber--at a time of record budget deficits--that 
no other American has access to, and we can abolish it with the stroke 
of our pen right here in the House.
  This is something that has plagued me and my conscience in a way that 
I just wanted to stop using it. I just wanted to start buying stamps. I 
want you to think about the micromanagement in this institution, Mr. 
Speaker.
  My plan--my radical plan--was that I was going to buy a stamp and 
send a letter. Whoa. Lo and behold, Mr. Speaker, it turns out that that 
is against the rules. I have a copy here of the Members' Congressional 
Handbook from this Congress.
  It says:

       Postal expenses can be incurred only when the frank is 
     insufficient.

  That means, for the whole code section that tells you what the frank 
can be used for, only if you are outside of that code section can you 
put a stamp on.
  I have highlighted it here, Mr. Speaker:

       Postage may not be used in lieu of the frank.

  Here it is, Mr. Speaker, in large print, with my name at the top of a 
letter. It embarrasses me every time it goes out the door because I 
know, even when I am doing the people's business--which I am doing with 
each and every letter that goes out the door in responding to 
constituents' concerns and in answering constituents' questions--that 
folks do not feel served on the other end.
  They feel reminded that, perhaps, there is one set of rules for 
Congress and one set of rules for everybody else, but the rules that we 
have agreed to live by in this body prohibit me from buying a stamp and 
sending that letter out instead.
  The good news, Mr. Speaker, is that it turns out, when the law is not 
written the way the law ought to be written, my constituents have 
empowered me with a voting card with which to change it.
  I have partnered with my friend, Tammy Duckworth from Illinois, a 
Democrat on the other side of the aisle; and, together, we are going to 
stop the frank. We are going to abolish this so-called congressional 
perk--this free mailing privilege, this bane and stain in this 
Chamber--that folks have been fighting to get rid of for over 100 
years. We are going to do it.
  I am not optimistic enough to believe that this can be done alone. 
That is why I have a fantastic partner on the Democratic side of the 
aisle, and that is why she and I, together, are going to those groups 
around this town who care about congressional accountability in order 
to make them our partners in this effort. I have quotes from two of 
them.
  If you sit on the right-hand side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, the 
National Taxpayers Union is certainly a group that you know and 
respect. Their appeal is certainly bipartisan, but I know it has 
credibility on the right.
  The National Taxpayers Union says this:

       Repealing the so-called ``franking privilege'' is a fair 
     and simple reform that will introduce pay-as-you-go budgeting 
     to one of the most basic units of government--the 
     congressional office. Check there ``on board.''

  Now, if you are on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, I know 
Public Citizen is a bipartisan group. They speak to folks on both sides 
of the aisle, and public integrity is their mission.
  Public Citizen says this:

       Public Citizen heartily supports the Woodall-Duckworth 
     legislation to rein in the abuse of taxpayer-funded frank 
     mail for Members of Congress, and it applauds your work of 
     making this commonsense legislation come from across party 
     lines.

  We can do this.
  Here is my frustration as a 3-year Member of this House, Mr. Speaker, 
and I know it is your frustration, too. You can't do the big things 
without each other, and it is tough to find one another when you 
haven't been able to do the little things together that build the 
trust.
  Trust is the commodity that is missing. It is not just missing 
between our constituents and this Chamber. Mr. Speaker, you know it is 
often missing within this Chamber. We must seize upon opportunities, 
big and small, to come together to do those things that we know are the 
right things to do.

  I will say to my colleagues, Mr. Speaker--because I know there are 
going to be folks back in their offices who are watching and who are 
saying: Hey, wait a minute. Don't we have a whole list of rules about 
the dos and don'ts of sending mail from a congressional office?
  We do. Those rules and regulations are housed in what is called the 
Franking Commission today, which is actually the Committee on Mailing 
Standards.
  I don't propose to abolish a single one of those. Those rules, for 
folks who don't know, are designed to prevent people from campaigning 
on the taxpayer dime out of their official offices.
  Now, there are folks in this Chamber who might like to abolish those 
rules, too. That is not my fight. The standards that prevent Members 
from abusing the mail in their offices, that prevent them from 
campaigning out of their offices--all of those standards to try to make 
sure that taxpayer dollars are being targeted only at those taxpayer-
required needs--will remain in place.
  This, this signature at the top of a letter, suggests to every 
American that, somehow, when you get elected to Congress, the rules no 
longer apply to you, big rules and small rules, like licking a stamp. 
Now, you don't even have to lick the stamps anymore. You can just peel 
them off--they are self-stick now--and stick them right on.
  We can do this. There is a low opinion that folks often hold of 
Members of Congress, Mr. Speaker, but I believe we can buy stamps and 
stick them on letters. I believe that we can--but wait. There is 
nothing in what I propose that requires you to lick your own stamps or 
to even stick on your own stamps.
  If you want to get a postal permit device like every business in 
America has, by golly, run your office like a business. If we want to 
change the rules, so that we use the penalty mail system, which is what 
the executive branch uses--what the White House would use, what the IRS 
would use, what the Justice Department would use, which is the same as 
a postage-paid marker from a business, except that it is a postage-paid 
marker from a government--fair game.
  We are the only folks who run the show this way, and it is time for 
that to stop.
  I don't think folks understand how far it goes. The franking 
privilege exists in statute. If I were to pass on my franking 
privilege, Mr. Speaker, it goes to my wife. Did you know that, if 
Members of Congress were to pass on, suddenly, their spouses would be 
allowed to start signing their names to letters and dropping them into 
the postal stream? Why is that? Why is this something that I can deed 
on after my demise? In fact, why is it something that exists at all?
  The answer is, once upon a time, it was difficult to find a stamp. 
Can't we agree that those days are behind us?
  Public Citizen can agree, and the National Taxpayers Union can agree, 
and Tammy Duckworth from Illinois can agree, and Rob Woodall from 
Georgia can agree. I know this is something that we can do together.
  Mr. Speaker, I don't claim that this is going to be the proposal that 
saves the world. It is not; yet, for every taxpayer who opens up the 
newspaper every day and does not find news about how his taxpayer 
dollars are being invested transformatively in the lives of children, 
invested transformatively for men and women harmed in the defense of 
this Nation, but instead, opens up the newspaper and finds story after 
story of waste, of fraud and of abuse, our role here in this Chamber is 
to root that out and to stop it wherever we may find it.

[[Page H4827]]

  Don't you believe, before we can help someone else clean up his 
house, we must clean up our own house?
  Mr. Speaker, I encourage you to visit my Web page--which is 
woodall.house.gov/stopthefrank--because if you and I don't push this 
amongst our colleagues, it is not going to rise to the level of action. 
It is just something that we can do. We can do it. We can do it right 
away. There is no need to delay. We can begin restoring faith one bit 
at a time.
  Let's restore faith with this today, with another bill tomorrow and 
with another bill the day after that, and one of these days, we might 
find that the American people have trust and confidence in their 
Congress again. It wasn't true in 1875, and it may be optimistic to 
believe it could be true in 2015, but I am certain of this: if we know 
that we have opportunities and if we fail to seize those opportunities, 
we will never earn and, I dare say, deserve the trust of our 
constituencies back home.
  Mr. Speaker, send any of your constituents who are interested to 
woodall.house.gov/stopthefrank, and in fact, encourage the folks that 
you see and interact with from other parts of the country to visit Stop 
the Frank. Then encourage their Congressmen and their Congresswomen to 
be a part of this effort.
  This does not have to be a partisan issue because it is not a 
partisan issue. This does not have to be a wait-and-see issue because 
it is an issue we have been looking at for more than 100 years.
  What this can be is a get-it-done-together issue that, again, with 
one small step at a time, begins to earn the trust of the American 
people that I know each and every Member of this Chamber wants to earn.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________