Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUSSELL. Madam Chair, the fiscal year 2017 Legislative Branch Appropriations Act contains several excellent provisions to cut down on unnecessary printing of paper documents in the House of Representatives. Section 102 of the act, for example, prohibits printed copies of bills from being sent to Members of Congress unless they specifically request them. This amendment is very similar. It prohibits the Federal Register from being sent to Members unless they specifically request it. It uses the exact same terminology as section 102.

The Federal Register, while important because it contains rules, proposals, and various other publications released by Federal agencies, unfortunately every business day Members of Congress receive paper copies of this Register, while it is available online and queryable. Sadly, most of these hundreds of pages in length end up in the waste bin.

The Federal Register, being available online, is a better way to go with this measure. The Government Printing Office sends 617 copies of the Register every single day to House Members alone. This includes subscriptions for personal offices, committees, archival offices, and others. Each annual subscription costs the Government Printing Office $750 a year to produce in paper and ink alone. These costs are charged to Federal agencies that publish in the Federal Register.

Among all the Members of Congress and six nonvoting Members in the House, paying for an annual subscription for all of these costs and other estimated delivery costs exceeds $400,000 annually. To put that into perspective, that could pay for the annual salaries of a dozen Special Forces sergeants who are defending our country abroad.

None of the funds made available by this act may be used to deliver a printed copy of the Federal Register to a Member of the House of Representatives, including a Delegate or Resident Commissioner to Congress, unless the Members request specifically a copy.

This simple amendment will build on the reforms of the congressional printing of sections 102, 103, and 105, allowing Federal agencies to better use precious taxpayer dollars. I encourage support for this amendment, Madam Chair, because, once again, we will never win the war on our national debt in some giant spending measure that will only divide us within our respective parties and within the Chamber. Instead, we will win it by combating waste one agency at a time.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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