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The costs for By-Law mailings include postage, personnel costs, computer services for mail label generation, receipt and storage charges, packaging and delivery activities and overhead expenses.

It is expected total program costs will be reduced as a result of FY 1980 activity in the mechanization and automation of portions of the By-Law program.

SUBSCRIBERS TO CONGRESSIONAL RECORD

Mr. BENJAMIN. Last year we discussed the pricing of documents in considerable detail, some of which you have no control over, such as the Congressional Record and the Federal Register. Subscribers to the Congressional Record were receiving a subsidy of $116 per year. How many subscribers are receiving this subsidy? Where do we stand on pricing this year?

[The information follows:]

There are currently 5,460 subscriptions to the Daily Congressional Record. The Joint Committee on Printing authorized an increase in the price of a subscription from $45 to $75 for subscription renewals beginning January 1979. It will take approximately one year for all renewal subscriptions to be at the $75 price.

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD SUBSCRIPTION PRICE

Mr. BENJAMIN. Last year we asked you to work with the Joint Committee on Printing to set a realistic price on a subscription to the Congressional Record. Has this been done? Explain.

[The information follows:]

The Joint Committee on Printing, in conjunction with the Public Printer, has established a subscription price of $75.00 for the "Congressional Record," effective with the first issue published in the 96th Congress.

PAGE COST OF CONGRESSIONAL RECORD

Mr. BENJAMIN. Each year we ask what the cost is per page of the Congressional Record. What is the current projected cost in fiscal year 1980?

[The information follows:]

The page cost projected for the Congressional Record Program is, fiscal year 1978, $347.69; fiscal year 1979, $386.33; fiscal year 1980, $393.36.

This page cost includes the typesetting, printing, and binding of 35,000 copies of the daily Congressional Record; indexing and printing of the biweekly Record and Indexes; storage, proofreading and correcting of the daily Record in order to print, bind and distribute the bound permanent Record.

COPIES OF THE BOUND RECORD

Mr. BENJAMIN. On page II-2 of the justifications you stated: After the close of each session, the daily proceedings are consolidated, indexed, and about 2,500 copies printed as the bound edition of the Record. About 1,500 of these sets are distributed to departments, depository libraries, public sales, and recipients other than Congress by law.

What happened to the remaining 1,000 copies at the end of the second session of the 95th Congress?

[The information follows:]

Of the remaining 1,000 sets, approximately 700 sets were distributed to Congress. The Congressional Printing and Binding Appropriation is charged for these sets. The 300 additional sets were distributed to Government agencies and they were billed at the price added rate.

DELAY IN DISTRIBUTING THE BOUND RECORD

Mr. BENJAMIN. In February of this year, 1979, I received a copy of the bound Congressional Record for the period May 17, 1976 to May 24, 1976. Please explain the 21⁄2 year delay in printing.

I don't know if it would be in the printing or the distribution. Mr. BOYLE. Yes, sir, it is a combination.

When the daily Record is printed, the way we operate now, the type is stored and within 30 days the Members have the opportunity to make any changes, corrections, or additions that are not substantial. We get the copy from the Members, and make the corrections, and also move material around ourselves. Some material that didn't get in in time to print in the body of the Record and was printed in the extensions, moves into the body of the bound Record.

We pick up the standing type. It is completely corrected; pages are completely re-made-up and proofread again, hopefully to get it as error free as possible. We also refolio it, put new page numbers on it, index it, and we go to press. It is about a 2-year elapsed period from the time when Congress adjourns at the end of a session before the Members receive the last volume containing the index for that session.

Mr. DEVAUGHN. It is 33 volumes.

Mr. BOYLE. It is a lot of printing, and it does not have top priority. It sometimes stops when the other congressional workload has higher priority. Really we have a special force that works on the Bound Record, reads it every day. But when we need those people to get out reports, bills and hearings for 8 a.m. meetings we stop work on it. I hate to use the word "fill in," but it is one of the jobs that we use to equalize the peak- and valley-workload, and it has traditionally taken that long. I don't think there is a statutory requirement that we have to have it done by any particular time.

UNITED STATES CODE

Mr. BENJAMIN. The United States Code is much the same vein, is it not?

Mr. BOYLE. The United States Code is not the same thing. The United States Code is much more complicated than the Bound Record. We work with the Law Revision Counsel of the House in getting out the United States Code. We also work with Archives who takes copies of the enrolled bill and adds side notes and the legislative history. We receive this back as copy and then print the slip law. Copies of those slip laws go to West Publishing Company, via the Law Revision Counsel.

West takes the slip law itself and puts it in the language that would go into the Code and finds place in the Code where it would go, and that comes back as our copy for the U.S. Code.

As we start on title 1, and get all of title 1, and I think title 1 and title 7 are printed in the same volume, when we get enough material totally completed, proofread and okayed by the Law Revision Counsel, we will go to press with that volume. When that volume is finished, I hope we have another volume.

How many volumes of the 1976 have been completed?
Mr. DEVAUGHN. 16 volumes.

Mr. BOYLE. 16 volumes and 21,000 pages. It is a huge job.

UNITED STATES CODE DATA BASE

Mr. DEVAUGHN. It has been loaded electronically now.

Mr. BOYLE. For the first time last year we converted the entire United States Code and put it in a computer data base. In the future all we have to do is take the changes that are published as Supplements and merge that data into the Code and address the material in the computer, pull it back out, and typeset it. We are going to sell tons of surplus metal used in this job. It is an entirely new process this year.

Mr. BENJAMIN. What is the delay now?

Mr. BOYLE. There is no delay now. The delay was due to the amount of time that it took to convert the entire Code to the new process. As I say, on the United States Code we have a pre-agreed upon schedule with the House Law Revision Counsel.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I can appreciate that, but it was just recently that we received the 1976 edition.

Mr. BOYLE. The 1976 edition.

Mr. BENJAMIN. So we are talking of what, 3 years?

Mr. BOYLE. The United States Code prints every 6 years, so the last edition was the 1970 edition. This is the 1976 edition. But now we are almost ready to print Supplement 1, which is all of the public laws that passed in the 95th Congress, 1st Session.

Mr. DEVAUGHN. I would like to inject that West Publishing couldn't start working on the laws passed in the 94th Congress, 2nd Session until 1977, and it took them some time to codify. By the time we got copy, it was probably sometime in 1978.

Mr. BOYLE. There is a 2-year production cycle built in after the adjournment of Congress.

CODIFICATION BY WEST PUBLISHING

Mr. BENJAMIN. It seems amazing that you have to go through a commercial enterprise like West Publishing. We do have a Law Revisions Counsel here.

Mr. DEVAUGHN. These were arrangements made back in 1925. Mr. BOYLE. The House has the responsibility for furnishing the copy for the Code to the GPO.

Mr. SONNTAG. The Law Revision Counsel is actually under the Speaker of the House. That is their contract with West Publishing Company. That is the way they handle it.

Mr. BENJAMIN. So we had better take a look at that.

Mr. SONNTAG. Yes, sir.

Mr. BOYLE. I can't answer the question, Mr. Chairman, but I know there is a reciprocal agreement that-

What is the title of the Code that West puts out?

Mr. DEVAUGHN. Annotated. They would be doing this anyway, so I imagine the fee should be rather small.

Mr. BOYLE. I would take a guess there are some benefits to the government the way it is handled now but I couldn't tell you what the costs are because there are two Codes. There is a commerciallyproduced Code by West and we have the United States Code produced by the Law Revision Counsel.

APPLICATION OF FIVE-PERCENT REDUCTION

Mr. BENJAMIN. Last year, a five percent reduction was applied to those activities not required by law. Tell us where you applied those reductions and what effect they had on your activities.

Mr. DEVAUGHN. We are trying to spread it around as much as possible. Our initial letter back to the committee said it would come out of the Congressional Printing and Binding Appropriation, but we are really trying to spread it throughout the entire three appropriations that we have received. It was just impossible to tell at the beginning.

This will probably come up later in some of your questions but we have a unique situation in our appropriation. Technically, I guess legally, it is our appropriation, but in the real sense it is not, in that the Government Printing Office does not have the authority over the obligations. The obligations are made by the Congress, either by law or through some action that the Congress takes, and the Public Printer has no authority to say, well, it looks like we are spending at an excessive rate and we better slow the program down or stop doing work that is ordered, or whatever. The obligations are made by another party, and we just simply fill the order.

So it was extremely difficult to tell in advance where the best opportunities would come to affect these savings, and right now I think we are running a little below normal, so hopefully we will effect the overall five percent.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Have you at least got goals on where that five percent is going to be withheld? I would presume you are looking at some experience on this as to where to finally apply it all.

Mr. DEVAUGHN. Not really. As I say, we have no control over it, and without control we can't set goals that we are going to shoot for because there is no way to control the achievement of the goal. Mr. BENJAMIN. What does the withholding amount to in actual dollars?

Mr. DEVAUGHN. Five million four hundred thirty-one thousand dollars.

Mr. BENJAMIN. What is going to happen if you come up to September 1 and you haven't accounted for this and you start going into the use of these moneys?

Mr. DEVAUGHN. We will be back over to this committee well before that, asking for a supplemental appropriation.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Let me ask you to submit for the record your projected savings as best you can at this point. I have got to urge upon you that you have got to withhold this money; otherwise, this subcommittee, with Mr. Conte, who introduced the 5 percent cut amendment, is not going to be very receptive.

[The information follows:]

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During our Appropriation Hearings on February 22, 1979, I promised to provide my views in writing about the five percent restriction on Fiscal Year 1979 appropriations. As was stated in a June 26, 1978 letter to the Staff Director of the Legislative Branch Subcommittee on Appropriations, it is our opinion that our appropriations are not subject to the five percent limitation contained in Section 311 of Public Law 95-391 dated September 30, 1978. Our basis for this conclusion is that the restriction is limited to "payments not required by law." Moreover, it could be stated as a general rule that the terminology 'payments required by law" pertains to expenditures where the authorizing legislation is so structured as to remove the obligating authority for payments from the control of the agency head or the official to whom the appropriation has been made. For example, Social Security laws are so structured as to obligate the appropriation and require a payment once the recipient has properly filed his or her application and meets the legal criteria of such payments. At that point, the payment to the recipient is required by law to be made within the maximum extent of the budgetary authority. Similarly, appropriations made to the Public Printer are obligated by the Congress whenever it takes actions which require printing. The Public Printer is not authorized to refuse to print for the Congress.

Concerning the Depository Library Program, the obligation is incurred by operation of law immediately upon the printing of a publication by any Government agency whenever an appropriately designated Depository Library is entitled by law to have a copy of the Government publication.

In other words, where the obligation authority is fixed by law rather than being under the control of the Public Printer, the "obligation and expenditure" could be considered as being required by law. Since the appropriations to the Government Printing Office fall into this category, they should not be subject to the five percent restriction.

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