DELAY IN RECEIVING COMMITTEE REPORTS Mr. SMITH. And committee reports, too. It has been taking us a week-I am not talking about right now, but last summer, like in June and July, it took a week to get a committee report back. Mr. BOYLE. Yes, sir, in that period when all appropriation bills had to be on the floor by a certain date, we had as many as 80 to 100 reports to print overnight. We can't do that quantity of work overnight together with our other urgent Congressional work. And anytime you try to rush the typesetting operation, we are going to make mistakes, and the shorter the amount of time we have, the more mistakes we are going to make. The solution is to cut down the amount of keyboarding by using new methods and processes. Mr. SMITH. Why is it worse than it used to be? I think it is a lot worse than it was three or four years ago. Mr. BOYLE. Let me say this: that in the entire country, in every craft, I don't care whether it is the printer, pressman, carpenter, plumber, or whoever, people do not seem to have the motivation they had 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. The unions will probably disagree, but it is true. Our people are not doing the job as well as they were 15 years ago. I don't think many people in this country are doing the job as well as they were doing 15 or 20 years ago. Mr. SMITH. Accuracy and speed both are so important in the legislative process. I mean it bogs you clear down if you can't get accurate, speedy work. You do a lot of work, though, and this certainly has the highest priority. Mr. BOYLE. The Congressional Record has a high priority—we have never missed a Congressional Record. Mr. SMITH. You had a couple of days there you didn't get them for two days. DELIVERY OF CONGRESSIONAL RECORD Mr. BOYLE. The Congressional Record? Mr. SMITH. Yes. We were in session late at night and didn't get it all the next day, and it was the day after that before we got it. Mr. BOYLE. But we got the Congressional Record out. There has never been a day we didn't Mr. SMITH. After we had gone home. Mr. BOYLE. Mr. Smith, when we get copy at five or six o'clock in the morning, there is no way possible that we can set it in type, proofread it, print it, and bind it and deliver that portion by eight o'clock in the morning. Mr. SMITH. A couple of days we didn't even get it the next day. Mr. BOYLE. We delivered every single Congressional Record the following morning. I have a list of times when the Congressional Record was delivered to the House and Senate post office, and there has never been in the history of the GPO, to my knowledge, including storms, and floods, or what-have-you, that we did not deliver a Congressional Record to the House and Senate post office the morning after the House and the Senate were in. With one exception and that was when the city was in turmoil after the assassination of Dr. King. Mr. SMITH. Are you talking about when we are in until midnight? Mr. BOYLE. One, two, three o'clock in the morning, 24-hour filibuster or what have you. Mr. SMITH. Then there is something wrong with your delivery. It is not getting up here to us. I can tell you there were several days that happened. Mr. BOYLE. I believe I know what the problem is. We get the copies into the post offices, and if we don't make it by a certain time in the morning and miss the postal people going around with the first delivery, the delivery could come later in the day. Mr. SMITH. You don't send them by mail? Mr. BOYLE. No, sir. We deliver the copies to the House and the Senate. We deliver them to the floor; we deliver them to the House post office and Senate post office. We deliver by truck about 8,000 copies to the Hill. Mr. SMITH. Is there anything that can be done? I know other committee chairmen are saying the same thing: we have to do something about GPO; we can't operate this way; it is taking so long to get committee reports and they contain so many errors. When the committee report comes back, you have to put two or three people on it for three days to find the errors, and they drop whole paragraphs sometimes. Mr. BOYLE. I know. Mr. SMITH. Is there anything that can be done to make the service a little better, or at least get it back to where it was three or four years ago? Mr. BOYLE. This is the first time your problem has been brought to my attention. I have a file of letters that high from committee chairmen complimenting us on the service and saying it is better than it has ever been before. I was under the impression we were getting better. Mr. SMITH. Everyone I talked to has said they are having the same trouble. Mr. BOYLE. This is the first time it has been brought to my attention. I get mostly the opposite view. But, yes, we are attempting to improve the quality. We have quality control programs, and modern equipment. As far as meeting totally impossible schedules, you couldn't get the Congressional Record that occurred on the last day of the Congress printed anywhere else in the world in any one printing plant. Mr. SMITH. That actually isn't nearly as important as committee reports. Mr. BOYLE. No, sir. Reports are very important. Mr. SMITH. We send the report over and it takes a week to get it back, and it has taken a week. And then you get it back, and you just know before it comes back, you are going to have to send it back again. You can never use the report the first time it comes back. It has to be redone a second time. It just makes it impossible to operate. I don't know what the problems are. That is what I wanted to know. Is there anything that can be done to improve it? Mr. BOYLE. As I say, the equipment that we now have and the process we now have will help. Mr. SMITH. Regardless of the equipment, these errors- Mr. BOYLE. These are people errors. But when you set type, and you hit keys, there is nobody so perfect that he is not going to make occasional mistakes. That is why we have proofreaders. If everybody was perfect, we would save a lot of money by not reading proof. Proofreaders are not perfect. They miss errors. A book, a commercial book that you would buy as a college text is proofread seven or eight times in the process of editing and production. We cannot afford to nor do we have the time to proofread any more than one time. Mr. SMITH. So we have to have our staff proofread it two or three times and send it back. Mr. BOYLE. When we send work out to Federal agencies, they have to proofread it. They proofread it again. I can't sit here and say we are going to send out work 100 percent error-free at the same cost. Mr. SMITH. On the Small Business Committee, I have a staff person who takes care of the liaison with GPO. I thought maybe she didn't know what she was doing, but I found out it wasn't her, because I looked at what she had sent to GPO, and there wasn't anything wrong with it. It was what came back. SETTING PRIORITIES Mr. BOYLE. I don't doubt your word at all. I know we have errors. As far as the schedules, we work on a set of priorities that Mr. Sonntag, with his Congressional Information Section, determines based upon talking to the staff people or all the committees, and some committees not only demand, but require, faster turnaround time than some other committees. Some committees don't require that they have a report sooner than three, four, or five days. Others want it overnight. So we schedule on the basis of hopefully working out priorities with the committee staff people, and the chairmen and the leadership and hope that the priority we work out is acceptable. When we make a promise that we are going to deliver that report-then we meet our promise. Mr. SMITH. Well, that is all. Anyway, it is not a matter of needing different equipment? Mr. BOYLE. No, sir; we have all of the equipment that we need to do the job. Mr. SMITH. That is all. Mr. BENJAMIN. Thank you, Mr. Smith. PRINTING AND BINDING Mr. BENJAMIN. We will turn to Printing and Binding. This appropriation provides funds for the Federal Register and other government publications authorized by law to be distributed free of charge to the recipient. The budget request is $15,722,000, plus a deficiency appropriation of $3,819,000. We will insert the budget schedule and justifications material— III-1 to III-5-in the record at this point. [The information follows:] • Includes $357 for payment of obligations incurred under the appropriations for similar purposes for preceding fiscal years GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE PRINTING AND BINDING For authorized printing, binding, and distribution of the Federal Register (including the Code of Federal Regulations) as authorized by law (44 U.S.C. 1509, 1510); and printing and binding of Government publications authorized by law to be distributed without charge to the recipient, [$11,476,000] $19,541,000: Provided, That this appropriation shall not be available for printing and binding part 2 of the annual report of the Secretary of Agriculture (known as the Yearbook of Agriculture): Provided further, That this appropriation shall be available for the payment of obligations incurred under the appropriations for similar purposes for preceding fiscal years. (Legislative Branch Appropriation Act, 1979.) Printing and binding estimated requirements for fiscal year 1980 A. Congressional Record program. B. Miscellaneous publications.. C. Publications for International Exchange. D. House and Senate business calendars__ E. Bills, resolutions, and amendments... F. Committee reports--- G. Documents_. H. U.S. Government Manual, Public Papers of the Presidents, and Subtotal____ For the payment of obligations incurred under the appropriations for similar purposes for preceding fiscal years. Total... |