Mr. GRAHAM. There will be 1 person to take charge and 2 clerks. Mr. REED. I do not assume we would use it but we should have enough.

Mr. HORAN. $20,000 is what you request?

Mr. GRAHAM. I think that will be enough.

Mr. GARY. I think that is one of the most important problems we have had and a thorough study should be made of it. I would be sympathetic to a reasonable appropriation.

Mr. HORAN. Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 1953.

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WITNESSES

RAYMOND BLATTENBERGER, PUBLIC PRINTER

PHILIP L. COLE, DEPUTY PUBLIC PRINTER

FELIX E. CRISTOFANE, COMPTROLLER

D. C. EBERHART, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, FEDERAL REGISTER DIVISION, NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS SERVICE, GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION

ROY B. EASTIN, SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS

CARPER W. BUCKLEY, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS

WORKING CAPITAL AND CONGRESSIONAL PRINTING AND BINDING

Mr. HORAN. The committee will come to order. We have the pleasure of having Mr. Raymond Blattenberger and his staff of the Government Printing Office as well as the Superintendent of Documents, Mr. Roy B. Eastin, and his assistants.

I believe you have a general statement, Mr. Blattenberger? Incidentally, this is your first appearance before this committee? Mr. BLATTENBERGER. Yes, sir, it is.

Mr. HORAN. Where do you come from?

Mr. BLATTENBERGER. Philadelphia.

Mr. HORAN. We are glad to have you here, and continue with your statement.

Mr. Bow. Mr. Chairman, since this is Mr. Blattenberger's first appearance before the committee since his appointment as Public Printer, I wonder if he might give us a biographical sketch?

Mr. BLATTENBERGER. I have been in the printing business since I was 14 years of age and I am now 61. I started out in the pressroom and for the last 36 years prior to coming down here I was with Edward Stern & Co. in sales and plant management, labor relations, and trade relations. The question was raised that I was not a printer. I told the Senator who asked me that I have been printing for 47 years and if I am not a printer, I have certainly been kidding myself and a lot of other people for a good many years.

GENERAL STATEMENT

We are here to justify the appropriation estimates for the 1954 cost of printing and binding which may be ordered by the Congress and for a revolving fund to finance the Government Printing Office's

production of printing and binding for the Federal Departments until such time as charges can be billed and collected.

Our first request is for a sum to cover printing and binding costs of congressional printing. The Government Printing Office acts as custodian of this money and makes deductions from the appropriation as work is performed. Naturally, we have no control over the amount of printing Congress requires. In the breakdown, we shall attempt to show the expected cost, for example, of printing the Congressional Record, bills, resolutions, amendments, calendars, reports, hearings, documents, and other authorized publications.

Secondly, we shall ask for a sum as a loan from the Treasury to use as an operating fund for departmental printing. This money is returned within 6 months after the close of the fiscal year. Our business volume during fiscal 1953, now nearly over, is expected to total between 73 and 75 million dollars. Budget estimates submitted for the fiscal year 1954 were based on expectation of a volume exceeding that amount. Since working-fund balances are returned to the Treasury at the close of the fiscal year, we would have no cash for operation after July 1 unless the revolving fund were provided.

However, this estimate of volume, and the proposal for a $15 million operating fund, was developed some months be ore I took office. At the time the estimates and justifications were prepared, the $15 million request appeared to be fully warranted. Since then, there has been a drop in the flow of work to the Office and I recommend to your committee that it cut from these estimates the $5 million increase requested for working capital. I am confident that barring a national emergency, the $10,000,000 amount as approved last year, will be adequate to meet payrolls, and to take advantage of approximately $114,000 in discounts that are normally available if bills are paid promptly.

With your permission, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I would like to have Mr. Cole, Deputy Public Printer, proceed with the justifications for the main appropriation and Mr. Roy Eastin, the Superintendent of Documents, with the justifications for that office.

Mr. HORAN. Is this a revised estimate that is before us?

Mr. COLE. The revision is in the request for the $15 million loan from the Treasury. The Public Printer feels that the $10 million we received last year would be adequate this year, so we could stand a $5 million cut from that requested $15 million. We had $10 million in that fund last year and we asked for $15 million on the basis of the amount of work that we expected in the Office. The $15 million would give us a bank balance which is big enough to operate from. We were dangerously close to running out of money with only the $10 million before.

Mr. HORAN. Then your estimated working capital would be $16,100,000 total?

Mr. COLE. It would be $10,100,000 and $10 million for a total $20,100,000, with the $5 million cut.

Mr. HORAN. We might just as well go ahead.

ADVISABILITY OF BUSINESS-TYPE BUDGET

Mr. GARY. Mr. Chairman, this committee last year had this provision in its report:

The material included in the budget pertaining to the Government Printing Office is somewhat misleading since it is set up on the same basis as for agencies supported primarily by appropriations. An examination of the budget will give many or perhaps most observers the impression that the total cost of printing done by the GPO runs to a little over $20 million.

Actually, taking into consideration the enormous amount of printing done for other agencies on a reimbursable basis, the total cost of operations is many times this amount. Other phases of financing such as the contracting of printing to private printers, also are not adequately revealed by the present methods of budget presentation. It is the opinion of the committee that a business-type budget would be an eminently better method of presenting this Office's financial operation and directs that officials of the Printing Office and the committee staff proceed with the review of the budget of the Printing Office to determine in more detail the best method of budget presentation for this appropriation. It will be expected that the 1954 budget will be prepared on a business-type basis similar to the budget submitted by the Government corporations.

Has that been done?

Mr. CRISTOFANE. We have had that up with the staff of the Appropriations Committee and we had suggestions from them. We have contacted the Bureau of the Budget and the General Accounting Office and we tentatively have worked up a plan on a business-type basis. We then also worked up with the General Accounting Office the briefing of the appropriation language because the appropriation language appeared to be somewhat cumbersome. We have the information, and I have called the staff of the Appropriation Committee, and we are awaiting their return call, because we do have information and we are ready to go ahead any time they are. Mr. GARY. With the business-type budget?

Mr. CRISTOFANE. The business-type budget we find from the Bureau of the Budget is on a revolving-fund basis. Our appropriation is cut off at the end of each year, and we start again the succeeding year with a new appropriation. From the information we now have from the Bureau of the Budget, it would be necessary for us to change to a revolving fund, which is a continuing appropriation. That would mean that we would have to change the language of our appropriation act so that we would have appropriated for working capital a revolving fund instead of a yearly appropriation.

Mr. GARY. You have no objection to a business-type budget? Mr. COLE. We feel that the present method more adequately handles it, and is the better way because of complications developed in these discussions. However, it can be done either way.

Mr. GARY. Have you consulted with the General Accounting Office with respect to that?

Mr. CRISTOFANE. We have consulted with the General Accounting Office with respect to appropriation language but not with respect to the business-type budget. We consulted with the Bureau of the Budget with regard to the business-type budget.

Mr. GARY. Is not the General Accounting Office doing that work for the Government rather than the Bureau of the Budget?

Mr. CRISTOFANE. As far as I know, they were not.

Mr. GARY. They examine practically every agency.

Mr. CRISTOFANE. They examine our accounts but as far as setting up a budget is concerned, we were under the impression that the Bureau of the Budget would be the one

Mr. GARY. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has recently gone on the business-type budget.

Mr. CRISTOFANE. Yes, sir.

Mr. GARY. And most of the other agencies operating the same way that you operate have gone on the business-type budget.

Mr. CRISTOFANE. We have looked into the operation of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing which is on a business-type budget and at the present time at least we believe that the plan under which we operate, from the standpoint of furnishing information as well as accounting, is probably better than the plan they have; but if it is desired that we go on a business-type budget, including the revolvingfund arrangement, we can change ours further.

Mr. GARY. We have set up now the new Accounting Procedures Act, we have a Joint Committee on Accounting composed of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Director of the Bureau of the Budget, and the Comptroller General. It was my understanding that that committee was going to try to work out uniform accounting procedures for all of the various Government departments. If that is done, it would certainly be much easier to handle the budget if your Office went under that uniform procedure. It seems to me that there ought to be a review of our whole situation with that in view.

Mr. CRISTOFANE. We can do that. We have prepared a statement on a business-type budget arrangement, a copy of which I have here. However, it does not provide for a revolving fund but the same kind of information is furnished under the plan we have except that the working capital fund is appropriated each year rather than a revolving fund forwarded from one year to another.

Mr. HORAN. Are there any other questions at this point? If not, we will continue with our hearing here.

Would you briefly go over the matters of increase there? I notice the Congressional Record is going to be less, the estimate is down $100,000 but the rest of them are more or less increased.

BASIS FOR ESTIMATE

Mr. COLE. As we have explained before-I am certain you will remember these are our guesses as to how much printing and binding the Congress will require for the coming year. We have estimated from our past records and past experiences the approximate number of pages of each of these various types of items that we expect will be printed by the Congress.

Mr. HORAN. Your request, then, for $5 million decrease in the actual appropriation does reflect a saving in these other items?

Mr. COLE. No, sir. The request for $5 million decrease indicates that the total volume of business in the Government Printing Office is expected to be at a lower level. Therefore, we will not need as much capital in the bank to handle the accounts.

Mr. HORAN. That is exactly what I thought I asked.

Mr. COLE. It does not cover your congressional printing, though. You see, the Government Printing Office actually operates-the congressional printing is about 10 percent of the whole. The rest of

it is made up from the printing which we do for the Government agencies.

Mr. HORAN. And are reimbursed.

Mr. COLE. And we are reimbursed for it. That is the reason for asking for $15 million, which the Public Printer thinks we can cut to $10 million, in order to have a bank balance to handle discounts and take care of operations until money comes in from collections.

Mr. GARY. How much is your total operation? How much does it amount to?

Mr. COLE. We expect this year that it will add up to $73 million. Mr. GARY. In the statement you have before us here it only shows $10,100,000.

Mr. COLE. This $10,100,000 is not money that belongs to us. Under normal conditions, you would appropriate to somebody in the Capitol this $10,100,000 to pay your printing bills. The Government Printing Office as such is not receiving an appropriation. We get our sustenance from charging the customer agencies for what we do for them, so what we are doing literally is justifying your appropriation for congressional printing.

Mr. GARY. That is Government money.

Mr. COLE. Yes, sir.

Mr. GARY. There is no report made to this committee on that business that you do under this type of budget.

Mr. COLE. All of those accounts are audited and handled through the General Accounting Office, just the same as anyone else's. What happens is the Appropriations Committee appropriates a fund to the Agriculture Department, Interior, and the rest; out of that fund a certain percentage of it or a certain portion of it goes for printing and binding. The Public Printer has no idea how much printing and binding he is going to do for the Government next year until we actually receive requisitions and make estimates, do the printing, and bill for it.

Mr. GARY. But the work in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and in the Government Printing Office is the same is it not? They operate the same way.

Mr. COLE. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has a definite setup in that they have several customers that patronize them, a half dozen at the most, the Post Office, the Internal Revenue, and the Treasury. The Treasury Department, their parent organization, is their best customer, of course, with the money. The Post Office with their postage stamps and the Internal Revenue with the tax stamps and so forth. We have 150 agencies and we have no idea whether we are going to receive a million dollars' worth of printing from one of these agencies or whether it is going to be cut to $200,000. It depends on what the final appropriation is for that particular agency and what arrangements have been made in their budgeting operation for printing and binding. So by law, the Public Printer is charged with hiring the number of people it takes to actually do his printing and no more; and so under this system we could not definitely establish the number of employees we are going to have in the Government Printing Office next year because we might set it up for $73 million and instead of $73 million we might have $90 million worth of business and you cannot do $90 million worth of business with the same number of employees.