Legislative Branch APpropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 22, 2007)

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Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate the opportunity to join with my colleague again in this effort to try and reduce this output. I respect my friend, the chairwoman of the subcommittee, but I do think it is time for us to take a more aggressive action to reduce what is a gratuitous waste of resources and is a signal, I think, for us all to find ways to be able to deal with the electronic era.

This is a holdover. We have attempted in the past to be able to scale it down. I have also checked with legislative counsel to find out what we need to repeal. But I have been told that simply by enacting our amendment today, we will, in fact, achieve that objective in terms of reducing the number of unnecessary printed copies.

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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is simple: by instructing the Government Printing Office (GPO) to print half the number of CONGRESSIONAL RECORDS daily, we will save $3.2 million in taxpayer dollars and 57 tons of paper annually.

An unofficial survey of House offices revealed that many swiftly discard their daily copy of the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD. And why shouldn't they? The full, easily searchable text of the RECORD is available online back to the year 1989. As electronic viewing of this resource becomes more widespread, we must continue to adjust the number of printed copies accordingly. In fact, since 1995 we have reduced the number of daily printed CONGRESSIONAL RECORDS from 18,000 to 5,600 per day.

We have an opportunity to save millions of dollars by taking advantage of paperless technology and pushing House operations into the 21st Century. I commend Speaker PELOSI in her recent effort to ``Green the Capitol'' and this is a common-sense amendment that is consistent with that initiative.

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