[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8143-8145]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             STOP THE FRANK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Costello of Pennsylvania). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2015, the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Woodall) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of 
the majority leader.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I am slow to come to the floor because you 
can't compete with a Muhammad Ali commemorative Special Order. That is 
too much passion to follow. I just have little old legislative business 
on my mind. I am not talking about changing the world. I am just 
talking about changing our little part of the world.
  I don't know if you remember, Mr. Speaker, when you first got here, 
you had to go downstairs and sign your name so that we could use that 
instead of a postage stamp on every piece of mail that you sent out the 
door. It is called the franking privilege.
  I have a bill--it is H.R. 1873--that Tammy Duckworth and I introduced 
together to abolish that franking privilege. It is not going to take a 
lot to get that done. It is something that is within the complete 
control of us here in this institution, but it has been a challenge 
that is hundreds of years in the making.
  I put mine on here, Mr. Speaker. This is my signature there on the 
front of every envelope I send out. If you want to know how to forge a 
check in my name, all you need to do is look at any envelope I send out 
the door.
  Back in the day, had we been here in 1817, it might have been hard to 
find a postage stamp. In the name of getting congressional business 
done, the law of the land, carried over from England, was that you 
could sign your name on all of your government documents in order to 
get that important government business done. You couldn't just walk 
down to the local grocery store and buy stamps. You had to have a 
mechanism for getting your constitutional responsibilities 
accomplished.

                              {time}  1900

  We do that still here today. In these cynical times, Mr. Speaker, I 
would tell you that I hear most often from folks that they think one of 
two things is going on with the franking privilege: one, that we are 
involved in some sort of incumbent protection plan--self-promotion here 
in this institution, self-glorification--by sending our names out on 
the front of all of the mail that goes out the door. If not that, I 
hear the second criticism, which is, Rob, why do Members of Congress 
get free mail? The Postal Service is in dire straits--free mail for all 
Members of Congress.
  It is not free mail. For every letter that goes out the door that 
reads ``Rob Woodall'' up at the top, I get a bill. I get a bill from 
the United States Postal Service for what a stamp would have cost had I 
put it on that letter. For every piece of mail that goes out the door 
with ``Rob Woodall'' written up at the top, I get a bill from the 
Postal Service for whatever the bulk rate would have been for the large 
amounts of mail that I send out the door. It is not free mail for 
Members of Congress. I want to dispel that myth.
  I get all of the emails that I know so many of my colleagues do, 
which read: ``Go and serve one term in Congress, and get your pension 
for life.'' Nonsense. Not true. I do get the emails that come in and 
that talk about the special health care privileges that Congress has 
and that nobody else can have access to. Come on down, and join the 
ObamaCare exchange. You can have the same health care privileges that I 
have. Of all of the myths that go on out there, the myth of free mail 
continues still today. It is not free mail. We just don't put a stamp 
on it. Why don't we end this confusion once and for all?
  I would like to tell you that this was my brilliant idea--a small 
idea but my brilliant idea. Not true. We, actually, went down this road 
in the 1800s. I hold here--Mr. Speaker, you can't read it--an article 
from The New York Times on March 3, 1875.
  It reads:

       By a vote of 113-65, the House has concurred in the Senate 
     amendment to the postal appropriations bill partially 
     restoring the franking privilege. The precise extent of this 
     restoration is an allowance of free transmission through the 
     mail on a Congressional frank of the Congressional Record, 
     agricultural reports and seeds, and all public documents now 
     printed or authorized to be printed.

  The New York Times, as it is still known for today, goes on to 
editorialize just a bit:

       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. The new men, especially, long for a 
     taste of the sweets of privilege.

  This the New York Times in 1875. The ``sweets of privilege'' is how 
they described the signing of one's name to a constituent's response so 
you can tell your constituents how it is that you feel about the war in 
Iraq, so you can tell folks how you feel about the FCC's new 
regulations, so that you can respond to that young Eagle Scout 
applicant who wants to get the Citizenship in the Nation merit badge.
  We knew in the 1800s that something just didn't seem right about not 
using

[[Page 8144]]

stamps like everybody else did. We knew that something didn't feel 
quite right. For several years, we abolished the franking privilege, 
and then we brought it back.
  I don't have any problem finding stamps, Mr. Speaker. If anybody in 
this institution has problems finding stamps, I have several local 
locations that are here by the Capitol. You can send a staffer down to 
pick up stamps in bulk. For me, I am in the Longworth House Office 
Building, up on the seventh floor, so I have got to go all the way down 
to the basement in order to buy my stamps. It is about seven floors 
away.
  They don't do that anywhere else in Washington, D.C. They don't do 
that. If you are at the IRS and if you need to send out a tax form, you 
don't sign your name at the top of the letter. If you work over at the 
Department of Agriculture and if you need to send out a newsletter, you 
don't sign your name at the top, because everybody else in government 
uses what is called ``penalty mail.'' It is the same stamp up at the 
top of a corner that any businessperson would use, that any bulk mail 
house would use. It is section 3202. It is called ``penalty mail.''
  It reads:

       Subject to limitations imposed by sections 3204 and 3207 of 
     this title, there may be transmitted as penalty mail official 
     mail of officers of the Government of the United States, the 
     Smithsonian Institution, the Pan-American Union, the Pan-
     American Sanitary Bureau, the United States Employment 
     Service, and the system of employment offices operated by it 
     in conformity with the provisions of section 4949(c).

  Understand that we have a special section in the United States Code 
that deals with how mail gets out the door, because it is very 
difficult. We have only been doing it for a couple of hundred years. It 
requires some special attention from the United States Code, so we have 
a special section of the Code that allows officers of the Government of 
the United States, of the Smithsonian Institution, of the Pan-American 
Union, of the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau, and of the United States 
Employment Service some special dispensation so they can get mail out 
the door.
  But was that good enough for Congress? The answer is ``no.'' Congress 
has yet another special exception beyond the special exception, as is 
highlighted in section A, ``officers of the Government of the United 
States other than Members of Congress,'' because what we have is our 
special signature program.
  Mr. Speaker, we have got big things we have got to solve in this 
country--big things we have got to solve. You can't solve those big 
things when folks believe that you are not telling them the truth about 
the little things. You have got to build trust with one another. You 
have got to build trust with one another not just here in this 
institution but with our constituencies back home; but when people see 
what they think is free mail that is going out the door, it undermines 
that trust.
  I refer now to the House Manual, Mr. Speaker:

       Postal expenses incurred only when the frank is 
     insufficient, such as certified, registered, insured, 
     express, foreign mail, and stamped, self-addressed envelopes 
     related to the recovery of official items, are reimbursable. 
     Postage may not be used in lieu of the frank.

  I got to Capitol Hill, Mr. Speaker, and I thought: Do you know what? 
I know what it is like not to be on Capitol Hill. I am going to go get 
a bulk mail permit.
  They said, No, Rob. You can't get a bulk mail permit to send out mail 
on Capitol Hill.
  I said, Most of what I do isn't bulk mail. I will go buy stamps to 
send that out.
  They said, No, Rob. You can't buy stamps to send out mail. You have 
to sign your card. You have to put your signature on it. We have to 
have a special congressional mail privilege for you.
  Tammy Duckworth and I--one Republican, one Democrat--say we can do 
better than that. It is an election year. Do you know what happens in 
an election year? The law of the land is: you can't send out mail 
anymore. If I have a town hall meeting that is going on next week, I 
couldn't have sent out an invitation last month to have invited you to 
come meet your Congressman. I couldn't have sent out a newsletter last 
month to have told you what we were doing with the National Defense 
Authorization Act. I couldn't have sent out a newsletter last month to 
have told you about an employment and jobs fair program that was going 
on, because the law of the land so recognizes this privilege as 
something that incumbents use to boost their election prospects that it 
is banned in the 90 days before any election.
  So I ask you: If this practice is so offensive that we ban it within 
90 days before any election, why don't we just do away with it 
altogether? If it is so offensive that it must be banned for 180 days 
out of the year, why don't we do away with it for the other 180 days, 
too?
  I don't need my name on the front of every letter that goes out the 
door, and I don't need someone to protect me from the challenges of 
buying stamps; but I have rules in place that prevent postage from 
being used in lieu of the frank.
  I serve on the Budget Committee, Mr. Speaker. I want to balance the 
Federal budget. We are not going to do it with this bill. I am the lead 
sponsor of the FairTax. It is the most fundamental reconstruction of 
our Tax Code that has happened since the income tax came into being in 
the early 1900s. It is the most prominently cosponsored piece of 
fundamental tax reform legislation in this body. Those are serious 
pieces of legislation. This is something minor--this is around the 
edges--but the National Taxpayers Union has seen fit to say that 
repealing the so-called ``franking privilege'' is a simple reform to 
introduce pay-as-you-go budgeting. It is absolutely right. Public 
Citizen hardly supports the Woodall-Duckworth legislation to rein in 
the abuse of taxpayer-funded franked mail.
  I want to do the big things together, and I want to do the things 
that matter together. When silly things like this undermine the sacred 
trust that we have with our constituents, they need to go. Our 
colleagues who served in this body in the 1870s knew it. They abolished 
it, but they just couldn't let it go, and they brought it back. Even 
The New York Times asked: Where was the outcry for free congressional 
mail? Why was it brought back yet again?
  I tried to get this done on my own. I say to my colleagues that I 
didn't want to waste your time in this way. I tried to go to the Chief 
Administrative Office to see if I could just get an exception so I 
didn't have to send out this mail. I tried to go through the House 
Administration Committee to see if there was some sort of dispensation 
so that I could opt out of this system. I tried to go through the 
Office of the Speaker to see if my MRA could be spent in a different 
way so I didn't have to perpetuate this. Again, it is a practice that 
is, apparently, so hideous it is outlawed for 180 days out of the year; 
but I couldn't get any of those things done.
  Now it has come down to us to pass that simple line of code. It is a 
bipartisan bill--Rob Woodall, Tammy Duckworth, a host of other 
cosponsors. I invite you to join me to abolish the franking privilege. 
You are welcome to use our hashtag of ``Stop the Frank'' any time you 
feel like you can move that forward. We are not going to reestablish 
trust overnight, but with one little accountability action at a time, 
we can do it. Let's do this little one today. Let's show up again and 
do another one and tomorrow and do another one and the next day and do 
another one and the next day and do another one. Then we are going to 
wake up a year from now or a month from now or a week from now, and we 
are going to find out that we have really made a difference together.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. 
Foxx), my friend from the Rules Committee.


                               Skills Gap

  Ms. FOXX. I thank my colleague from Georgia.
  Mr. Speaker, I frequently hear from employers who are struggling to 
find employees with the right experience

[[Page 8145]]

and technical skills to meet workforce needs.
  The passage of the bipartisan Workforce Innovation and Opportunity 
Act was an important step for the millions of Americans who are looking 
for work and for the employers who have 5 million-plus job 
opportunities that remain unfilled due to the skills gap. However, 
great jobs are still going unfilled. Americans are still missing out on 
rewarding careers, and many businesses are still suffering.
  For example, in the AED Foundation's 2016 Workforce Survey Report, 
more than 50 percent of equipment distributors indicated that the 
skills gap hindered company growth and increased costs and 
inefficiencies while nearly 75 percent said the lack of skilled 
technicians made it difficult to meet customer demand.
  It is imperative that the Department of Labor finalizes regulations 
for WIOA and that Congress strengthens the Carl D. Perkins Career and 
Technical Education Act.
  I appreciate very much my friend from Georgia and my colleague on the 
Rules Committee for yielding to me in order to discuss this important 
issue to so many of us.
  Mr. WOODALL. If my colleagues don't know, one is used to seeing the 
gentlewoman from North Carolina leading on the Education and the 
Workforce Committee. All day today, she has been leading on the Rules 
Committee--chairing those actions that are going on up there. I hoped 
she was here to file a rule to tell us that that process had been moved 
right along, but we will have to wait for that.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________