[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 21421-21428]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 2647, LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 
                                  2002

  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House 
Resolution 273, I call up the conference report on the bill (H.R. 2647) 
making appropriations for the Legislative Branch for the fiscal year 
ending September 30, 2002, and for other purposes.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 273, the 
conference report is considered as having been read.
  (For conference report and statement, see proceedings of the House of 
October 30, 2001 at page H7512.)
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Taylor) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) each will control 
30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina from North 
Carolina (Mr. Taylor).
  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time 
as I may consume.
  I rise today to present the Legislative Branch Appropriations 
Conference Report for Fiscal Year 2002 to the House for consideration. 
I would like to thank the ranking member, the gentleman from Virginia 
(Mr. Moran) and all of the members of the subcommittee, for their 
support in crafting this legislation. I would like to also say thank 
you to the staff for all of their hard work during these times, 
especially to Chuck Turner, Manny Crupi, Ed Lombard, Liz Dawson, Mark 
Murray and Tim Aiken. All Members owe them a special thanks for their 
work.
  I would like to say a special thank you to the Capitol police who are 
listed under this bill. We have gone through unusual times in the last 
almost 60 days, and we owe them a special thanks for their undying 
efforts to maintain protection for the Members of the House, our staff, 
and our guests who come to the Capitol.
  Mr. Speaker, we have a noncontroversial, bipartisan bill. With 
respect to the items that were sent to the Senate in the House passed 
bill, we have held the increase over the 2001 bill to 4.6 percent. Now, 
that is an increase which is well below the President's request for 
2002 appropriations.
  And the committee bill meets our 302(b) allocations for budget 
authority and is $15 million below our outlay target.
  Mr. Speaker, the House has approved the rule for this report. The 
committee has done its job and it has done its job well, I believe, and 
this bill deserves the overwhelming support of the House. I do not 
intend to extend the debate, and I will include a summary of comparison 
of accounts in the Record.
  Mr. Speaker, this bill does contain the funds and language to 
implement the tuition loan reimbursement plan for our agencies, for the 
Congressional Budget Office and the Senate, and the bill contains funds 
from committee and members' representational allowances accounts to 
fund the program for House employees. We are awaiting the Committee on 
House Administration to respond to our call for rules and regulations 
in this area, and we feel that will be forthcoming.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present the Legislative Branch 
Appropriations Conference Report for Fiscal Year 2002 to the House for 
consideration.
  I'd like to thank the ranking member, Mr. Moran, and all the members 
of the subcommittee for their support in crafting this legislation.
  I would like also to say a thank you to the staff for all their hard 
work during these times. Especially to Chuck Turner, Manny Crupi, Ed 
Lombard, Liz Dawson, Mark Murray, and Tim Siken--all members owe them 
special thanks.
  And, Mr. Speaker a special thanks to the Capitol police who risk 
their lives daily, and have been doing so diligently, since the 
September 11 attacks, to protect House members and staff, and our 
visitors. They are heroes to all of us.
  Mr. Speaker, we have a non-controversial, bipartisan bill. With 
respect to the items that were sent to the Senate in the House passed 
bill, we have held the increase over FY2001 to 4.6 percent. That's an 
increase which is well below the President's request for 2002 
appropriations.
  And the Committee bill meets our 302(b) allocation in budget 
authority and is $15 million below our outlay target.
  We have had some questions about a student loan repayment program for 
House staff. The Committee has no objection to including the 
appropriate legislation in the Legislative bill. But it is a 
complicated technical matter that involves internal House policy and 
must be integrated into the legislative authority for allowable uses of 
members' allowances and committee funding. Under the rules, those 
mattes are within the jurisdiction of the Administration Committee.
  We have received no requests from the Administration Committee to 
include such authority. Therefore, the joint statement of the managers 
that accompanies this conference report encourages the House 
Administration Committee to develop and recommend guidelines

[[Page 21422]]

and appropriate legislative language to establish a student loan 
repayment program. The funds to carry this out are included in the 
bill. The Appropriations Committee will be happy to carry such 
authorizing language in the appropriations bill. That is in accord with 
long standing practice of the Appropriations Committee to assist House 
Administration and the Leadership in achieving administrative 
improvements in the operations of the House.
  Mr. Speaker, the House has approved the rule for this conference 
report by unanimous vote.
  The Committee has done its job; it has done a good job. This bill 
deserves the overwhelming support of the House. I do not intend to 
extend the debate and will include a summary of the comparisons of 
accounts in the record.
  I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

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[[Page 21427]]

  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may 
consume to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the ranking member 
of the Committee on House Administration.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time, who is doing such an outstanding job as the ranking member, and I 
thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor), and I thank Ed 
and Liz for the outstanding job they are doing. We are glad to have Liz 
Dawson with us. She is doing an outstanding job, and now doing an 
outstanding job with the security of our Capitol. I appreciate our 
former Staff Director's assistance as well.
  Mr. Speaker, I am not going to take a long time, but I want to talk 
about just a couple of things, actually three things that are in this 
bill with which I am very pleased.
  First of all, we are moving ahead on enhancing security in this 
complex. That is absolutely essential. I have been talking about that 
for some years. I appreciate the fact that the committee has now 
provided the Capitol police with all of the officers that they can 
train within the next year to fully fund the security requirements and 
the Capitol police in terms of their safety as well as the safety of 
this complex, both from a physical standpoint and from an individual 
personal standpoint. I do not mean us personally, but the individuals 
in the Capitol.

                              {time}  1215

  It also restores pay parity of the Capitol Police with the Park 
Police and Secret Service. I think that is important, because we do not 
want to spend a lot of money training people simply to have them go off 
to other agencies. So I thank the committee for their efforts in that 
regard.
  Let me mention two additional provisions, and then I will cease. Both 
of these provisions are related to legislative branch workers.
  First, section 133 of the bill will finally end the practice of 
employing temporary workers for long periods without providing them 
access to the same valuable Federal benefits that permanent employees 
enjoy from the first days on the job. I think that is important as a 
personnel policy, and I think it is important, from a fairness point of 
view, to our personnel.
  The Architect now employs more than 300 such workers, mostly on 
construction projects. Many have been employed almost continually for 
years, and in some cases over 15 years, and still have not had 
benefits: no retirement, no health care. That is obviously, when one is 
25 years of age, thought to be not of much consequence; when one gets 
to be 50 years of age and one looks back, it is of great consequence. 
These workers will now have access to benefits, and no new hires can 
work more than 1 year without getting them.
  Secondly, section 310 will ensure that the House telephone operators, 
who have played a key role in assuring continuity of operations during 
the instant crisis, will always receive the same annual wage adjustment 
ordered by House administration for all classified House employees.
  We found a discrepancy existed. I will not go into the reasons that 
discrepancy existed, but it is now resolved.
  There are a lot of other excellent provisions in this bill. I agree 
with the chairman and with the ranking member, this is not a 
controversial bill. It is a good bill.
  Again, I thank both the chairman and the ranking member and our 
staffs for working so hard to make it so.
  Mr. Speaker, this is an excellent bill that every member should 
support.
  It fully funds a number of accounts, including the Government 
Printing Office, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Congressional 
Research Service, key agencies that directly support the Congress.
  It fully funds the American Folklife Center in the Library, including 
the veterans' oral history project. It funds the new sound-recording 
preservation program. It provides needed funds to improve services in 
the law library.
  To enhance security in the complex, it funds all the extra Capitol 
Police officers that the department can hire and train during fiscal 
2002. I've fought for over two years for enough police manpower to 
assure adequate security. A key measure of adequate security is 
deployment of a minimum of two officers on every door.
  We're not there yet, but this bill moves us in that direction and I 
hope we will move still further next year.
  The bill does restore pay parity for the Capitol Police with the Park 
Police and Secret Service Uniformed officers.
  The bill extends GPO's early-out/buy-out authority for 3 years, and 
funds a 4.6 percent COLA.
  The bill otherwise provides sufficient funds for the operation of 
member offices, committees, and the officers of the House.
  Mr. Speaker, there are two provisions that I want to mention in 
particular, both related to legislative-branch workers.
  It funds the same $65 transit benefit available in the executive 
branch for every legislative-branch agency. I especially want to 
compliment my friend from Virginia for making this a priority. I will 
work with Chairman Ney in House Administration to authorize the 
increased benefit promptly for House employees.
  First, section 133 will finally end the Architect of the Capitol's 
practice of employing temporary workers for long periods without 
providing them access to the same valuable Federal benefits that 
permanent employees enjoy from their first days on the job.
  The Architect now employs more than 300 such workers, mostly on 
construction projects. Many have been employed almost continuously for 
years, as ``temporary'' workers. Under my provision, these workers will 
have access to benefits, and no new hires can work more than 1 year 
without benefits.
  Second, section 310 will ensure that the house telephone operators, 
who have played a key role in assuring continuity of operations during 
the instant crisis, will always receive the same annual wage adjustment 
ordered by House Administration for all classified House employees. 
That initially didn't happen this year.
  Mr. Speaker, there are many other excellent provisions in this bill, 
far too many to list in the time allotted. Suffice it to say that it 
has been a joy to work this year with the gentlemen from North Carolina 
and Virginia, and with the able new subcommittee clerk, Elizabeth 
Dawson, all of whom I sincerely thank.
  I also want to thank Mark Murray, the minority subcommittee clerk, 
Tim Aiken of Mr. Moran's staff, and Roger Szemraj [``Shem-rye''] and 
Julie Little of Ms. Kaptur's staff, for their fine work. I urge an 
``aye'' vote.
  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his cogent, concise, and very 
substantive statement.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill. I thank the gentleman for his 
statement. It is largely the same bill that got 380 votes in the House 
last time. I am going to thank the appropriate people, after I just say 
a few words or make a few points about the bill.
  Mr. Speaker, it is important to make it clear that the Library of 
Congress, the General Accounting Office, the Government Printing 
Office, the Congressional Budget Office, all largely received whatever 
they requested; the joint committees and leadership accounts, as well.
  There are a number of provisions that will enable us to be better 
prepared to counter this new terrorist threat. Security and the need to 
preserve the ability of this institution to continue to function have 
been our paramount concern in putting this bill together.
  Mr. Speaker, this does provide funds to hire an additional 79 Capitol 
Police officers. It will bring the total force up to 1,481 full-time 
equivalents, and it will fund all their benefit increases.
  Several long-standing problems were resolved. The gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) had raised the issue of temporary workers being 
involved in long-term projects. These temporary workers have been 
working an average of 4\1/2\ years, but they were not getting health 
and pension benefits because they were still given that classification. 
That has been resolved.
  The gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) was concerned about the 
contract cafeteria employees. They have been without pay since the 
closure of the Ford and Longworth cafeterias, so this bill would enable 
them to be compensated for their lost wages. We did

[[Page 21428]]

not want them to find other jobs; we wanted them to be available when 
these office buildings reopen. But these people are not getting paid a 
whole lot, and so they were really suffering.
  There is a provision here that provides $65 per month for an employee 
transit benefit for the employees of the legislative branch if they use 
public transportation. They can get $65 a month tax-free. By next year, 
it goes up to $100 a month.
  The executive branch has provided this to their employees; we felt it 
was the appropriate thing to do it here. We have done that.
  There are provisions that will help us implement a teleworking 
policy, telecommuting. That is something the gentleman from Virginia 
(Mr. Wolf) has been pushing. And particularly during this period of 
time when the House offices were closed, we realized that we have to 
figure out ways to be able to continue functioning, albeit sometimes 
from remote locations. We will try to do that with home laptop 
computers, in some cases.
  Mr. Speaker, I think those are most of the issues. There was an issue 
with regard to student loans. We hope that the Committee on House 
Administration can provide the same kind of student loan payback 
incentive that the Senate has, where we may be losing some well-
qualified people to the Senate, of all places, because we do not 
provide the same kind of incentive they do. So we would hope that the 
authorizing committee would take care of that.
  Having said all of this, let me first of all thank the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Taylor), the chairman. He has been very good to 
work with. As I say, this is a good bill. Every request that was even 
remotely reasonable has been met.
  I want to recognize Mark Murray, Liz Dawson, and certainly Ed 
Lombard, who has been brought into service. He is the repository of all 
institutional knowledge on the legislative branch appropriations bill. 
I remember when Vic Fazio was the Chair and I was on the committee, and 
Ed had been a senior pro even then, so we appreciate him.
  I know Liz, as the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), said, has 
been very much involved in all of the security functions that are going 
on. We thank Liz for doing that.
  As well, Mike Harrison of the office of the gentleman from Maryland 
(Mr. Hoyer), Roger France of the office of the gentleman from North 
Carolina (Mr. Taylor), we thank them for his help. Manny Crupi and 
Chuck Turner, and of course Tim Aiken of my staff, they all deserve 
credit for their assistance.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill. There is no good reason not to 
support it. It ought to be supported unanimously.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this Legislative 
Branch Appropriations Conference Report and as a new member of the 
subcommittee this year, I wish to thank Chairman Taylor, Ranking Member 
Jim Moran, my esteemed colleague Steny Hoyer, and the entire 
subcommittee for welcoming me so warmly and for their hard work in 
crafting this outstanding bill.
  I also rise to highlight a provision in the bill that I worked to 
have placed in the conference report and wish to thank the Majority for 
their assistance in this effort, along with Chief Administrative 
Officer Jay Eagen.
  This provision permits the women and men who provide food service in 
our House office buildings to be paid for the time they were unable to 
come to work. It allows them to collect at least some of the wages they 
lost--through no fault of their own--during recent shutdowns of House 
office buildings.
  The genesis of this provision is particularly interesting--the result 
of one of my staff asking cafeteria workers how the shutdowns had 
affected them. The reply was: it hit home and it hit hard.
  Food service workers in the Ford building have not been paid since 
October 17. Food service workers in the other House buildings were paid 
for the first three days of the shutdown, but after that were forced to 
take leave or assume leave without pay status. We are all acutely aware 
that not only the Ford building but also the Longworth building and 
therefore the Longworth Food Court remain closed today.
  These women and men are neither salaried employees, nor federal 
employees like their counterparts in the Senate. Thanks to the great 
wave of privatization in 1995, these women and men instead earn hourly 
wages and many rely on and are challenged to stretch every penny of 
their paychecks to support themselves and their families. Quite 
literally, every dime counts.
  Many of us through the years have come to know these women and men 
quite well. We know them by name and have come to rely not only on 
their service, but also their smiles.
  Whether it be a cup of coffee, lunch, or just a mid afternoon snack 
people like Betty, Pat, Maria, and Doris play a meaningful and 
consistent role in our lives.
  They work hard. They help keep us going.
  They deserve compensation for the days they were unable to work, just 
like any member of our salaried staffs and I am very pleased that as a 
result of this provision and bill they will indeed receive at least 
some of it.
  Once again, I wish to thank my colleagues on the subcommittee for 
their work in bringing the conference report before us today and would 
once again encourage all my colleagues to join me in supporting its 
passage.
  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my 
time.
  Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests 
for time, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous 
question on the conference report.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The question is on the 
conference report.
  Pursuant to clause 10 of rule XX, the yeas and nays are ordered.
  Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further proceedings on this question 
will be postponed.

                          ____________________