Senator MONRONEY. Particularly when you set in agate type in the Congressional Record some of these long forms that have to be published. It makes it very difficult reading. Mr. HARRISON. You might be interested to know that we are in the process of trying several new ideas to improve the readability of the record. Senator MONRONEY. The cost of the Congressional Record for the coming year, is that the estimate, $21.5 million? Mr. HARRISON. Not for the Congressional Record, no. That is the first item in this chart. The estimate is $3.3 million for fiscal year 1967. Senator MONRONEY. You have a deficiency of $3 million, is that right? Mr. HARRISON. In 1965. Senator MONRONEY. The total expenditures for 1967 will be $3.3 million for the Congressional Record, and $2,470,000 for miscellaneous publications? Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir. Senator MONRONEY. That would be those used on the Hill? Senator MONRONEY. What is the total of that? Mr. HARRISON. This item includes matters such as the Congressional Directory, Senate and House Journals. memorial addresses, nominations, United States Code and supplements, and publications not carrying document or report number, such as laws, treaties, committee prints, and similar publications. Senator MONRONEY. How does that differ from line 3 "Printing and binding," which is down $2,015,000? Mr. HARRISON. That includes letterheads, envelopes, blank paper, copy paper, notices, tags, labels, payrolls, blank books, stenographic note books, tablets, wall calendars, miscellaneous forms, and binding for both Houses. Senator MONRONEY. Printed hearings run $4.4 million? Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir; that is the biggest item. Senator MONRONEY. The bills, resolutions, and amendments run $1,560,000; is that correct? Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir. Senator MONRONEY. That is where you get the bulk of your cost, I take it. The House and Senate committee and business calendars run $850,000. Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir. That is not the wall calendars, Mr. Chair man. Senator MONRONEY. I know. That is the calendar of business showing the table of bills and summary of action thereon. Is that not correct? Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir. Senator MONRONEY. In the Federal Register, U.S. Government Organizational Manual, and Public Papers of the Presidents run $1,425,000. Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir. IMPROVED BREAKDOWN OF CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE PRINTING COSTS Senator MONRONEY. Can you furnish a better breakdown on the expenditures than we have in this big book, for the committee? Mr. HARRISON. I don't quite understand what you mean, Mr. Chair man. Senator MONRONEY. In carrying out our request for itemization, those last two pages Mr. HARRISON. The last three pages are the summary from the beginning of the year. That is the calendars, hearings, committee prints, and printing authorized by the Joint Committee on Printing, and printing authorized by simple and concurrent resolutions. The small items, such as letterheads and envelope orders have been eliminated. Senator MONRONEY. Would you be able from this-I think you have the material all here to compile from your records and meet the breakdown which we asked for in the Congressional Record, Senate side, on July 12, 1965? Mr. HARRISON. A few of the minor items have been omitted, such as envelopes, letterheads, orders of that sort. There are about 10,000 orders a year for letterheads and envelopes, which runs into a massive job to run through our computers. It can be done. We estimated it would cost an additional $15,000 to do it on our computers. The bulk of the cost of printing is in this report with these few minor everyday housekeeping items omitted, such as letterheads and envelopes. Senator MONRONEY. Is this provided to the House and has the House had an opportunity to go over it? Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir. EXAMINATION BY AND CONFERENCE WITH STAFF Senator MONRONEY. We will have the staff go over this material you have and see how nearly it comes to meeting the criterion we have laid down. (Clerk's note: The total in the report submitted by the Public Printer for the 10-month period July 1, 1965, to April 30, 1966, is in the amount of $3,120,389. The total billings to Congress for this same period are in excess of $10 million. The appropriation for congressional printing for the full fiscal year 1966 is in the amount of $16,500,000.) Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir. We will be very glad to sit down with your staff, the Joint Committee staff and the House staff and work out something that will be acceptable. It was our understanding that this was acceptable. Senator MONRONEY. I don't recall getting any breakdowns as to the use of printing by the committees on which I serve. But the staff will work that out. Senator Proxmire, do you have any questions? COMMERCIALLY PURCHASED PRINTING COST INCREASE Senator PROXMIRE. Yes. You say on page 2: We carefully analyze every job we receive to determine if it must be produced in our plant or whether it can be procured commercially. About a fourth of these jobs are bought from commercial printers. But, what is more revealing, the dollar volume represented by this commercially procured work amounts to about half our annual volume. Can you give me what the trend has been in this respect? Whether this represents an increase or decrease? Mr. HARRISON. It represents an increase. Mr. HARRISON. The year before I took office, the percentage of commercially procured printing was 40.7 percent. Senator PROXMIRE. This is dollar volume? Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir. In 1961, it was 42.5; 1962, 46.7; 1963, was 47.2 percent of the total we supplied our customers that we bought commercially; 1964 and 1965 ran nearly 46 percent. So far this year, it is 49.2 percent. GREATER EFFORT TO PURCHASE COMMERCIAL PRINTING Senator PROXMIRE. How do you explain the improvement? I would consider it an improvement, at least the change in which you are procuring this commercially. Because you are getting better cooperation from the agencies, and more leadtime, and jobs are bigger, and they are more suitable to commercial printing? Mr. HARRISON. No, we are working harder at buying from commercial companies. It has been my policy since I have been Public Printer to buy all printing that we could from commercial printers. I know this is the policy of the administration, and it has been my policy since I first went into Government printing. We need the commercial printer to help us round out the requirements of Government. We know that. We are, however, as I have stated many times over the country, finding it more and more difficult to find printers responsive to our invitations. COMPLAINTS OF COMMERCIAL PRINTERS Senator PROXMIRE. I have talked with some of these printers. As you know, I used to be a printer, myself. They raise two points. They say in the first place, they have a term with which I am not familiar, because I did not operate on this kind of basis for bidding on Federal work-"call contracts," which they say would make it more feasible for them to do Government work if they could have it done on this basis. Then they say, in the second place, that the specifications are not often as adequate as they feel would be desirable. Mr. HARRISON. I am surprised to hear that. Senator PROXMIRE. The third reason they give is, the failure of GPO to solicit from a sufficiently broad number of the right people, talking to the right man, somehow. I am not this morning prepared to support these particular complaints, but I think it would be very helpful if you could give me your own view on these points. Mr. HARRISON. We will be very glad to do that. (The information follows:) CALL CONTRACTS In reference to the first point concerning "call contracts" we have established many such general contracts and at present have 21 that are Governmentwide. These contracts cover standard products which are used by most of the Government departments. In addition we have approximately 250 contracts made in various areas of the country to meet the needs and for the use of specific agencies. We have encouraged the agencies to consider programing their requirements in order to be adaptable to these contracts. We are always on the alert for printing and binding which lends itself to developing term contracts. Many of these are on a multiple award basis and are usually set up in areas best suited to meet the needs of the ordering agencies. These contracts simplify the contractors bidding for this work as they are only required to quote prices once a year for each contract regardless of the number of orders they accept during the contract period. SPECIFICATION ADEQUACY In reference to the second point raised we believe that our specifications are very thorough and give the prospective bidders a good description of the job on which we are inviting bids. We have received few complaints and have on many occasions been complimented on the adequacy of our specifications. Our inspectors when making plant visitations receive many compliments in this regard. EXPANSE OF BID INVITATIONS In reference to the third point, we believe we obtain as broad coverage as possible from the suppliers available to us. The firms to which invitations are mailed are selected from the bidders list file which has been established and developed from returned questionnaire forms. The questionnaire includes the name and address of the firm; and information relative to the type, number, and size of equipment available for production purposes; the net worth of the firm; floor space; number of employees; classes of work on which invitations are desired; etc. We now have approximately 2,000 printing firms on our bid list located in 46 states. In order to afford equal opportunity to all qualified suppliers recorded in our bidders list file, a system of rotation is employed and used whenever practicable. The average number of firms invited to bid on a job is 25. Sometimes it may include as many as 200 firms. Zones or areas may be established for the placement of contracts when such action will facilitate deliveries or otherwise benefit the Government. Our inspectors when making plant visitations are on the alert for facilities which might be available to us, and call on these firms to enlist their participation. VOLUME AND COST COMPARISON OF GPO AND COMMERCIAL PRINTING Senator PROXMIRE. Could you give it to me on this call-contract thing? Mr. HARRISON. I don't understand this word "call-contract," Senator. We are now bidding printing from 2,006 printers in 46 States. Senator PROXMIRE. 2,006 different printers? Mr. HARRISON. Different printers in 1965; 46 States are represented. Senator MONRONEY. Do you have the total? Mr. HARRISON. This is fiscal year 1965. The total volume is $54 million. That was about 60,000 jobs done by commercial printers. Senator PROXMIRE. If the percentage is bigger, the total dollar volume must be very much bigger. Mr. HARRISON. That is right. This points up the fact that the large jobs that a man can make money on are being done commercially. We did, in our plant the same year, 185,000 jobs that reach a volume of only $64 million, which was only $10 million more than the 60,000 jobs. This brings the average value of the job we bought from the commercial printers just around $900 to $1,000. The ones we did in our plant were around a $300 average. You take the big jobs we do, such as the Record and the Federal Register, and the Airman's Guide, which we have to do on a crash basis, and the average runs down to around $200. These are the types of jobs that some folks would have us attempt to buy. The delivery dates are so impossible that at times we don't have time even to telephone the commercial plants before it is time to deliver the work. AGENCY PRINTING LEADTIME Senator PROXMIRE. What can we do or you do to try to improve those? Do you feel the agencies are sufficiently informed of the necessity to provide as long a leadtime as possible! As you say, these delivery dates do make it impossible for the commercial printer to do it. I would like to know what we can do about that. Mr. HARRISON. I don't know, unless you can give us bigger jobs. Senator PROXMIRE. Do you think it is always justified, in most cases justified, or predominantly justified? Mr. HARRISON. Of course, that is the determination that the head of the agency has to reach. Is this necessary to carry out the public business? Senator PROXMIRE. Are they aware of the desirability? Mr. HARRISON. Yes. Most agencies have Government Printing Office trained officials that we have transferred over to them to help them with their printing. They plead with officials to give more time. There has been a slight improvement over the last 20 years, but the type of government we are living with today sometimes just makes the longer leadtimes impossible. STATEMENT OF WILLIAM A. SCHMIDT, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER, PUBLIC BUILDINGS SERVICE, GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION APPROPRIATION FOR PLANNING AND SITE SELECTION OF GPO BUILDING Senator PROXMIRE. Let me just ask one other thing, that is, with relationship to the proposed new Government Printing Office. The Congress appropriated some $2,340,000; is that right? Mr. HARRISON. Two and a half million dollars for planning and site selection. Senator PROXMIRE. How much of that has been expended? Mr. HARRISON. We have Mr. Schmidt, who is the Deputy Commissioner of GSA Public Buildings Service. He has been handling this money. Senator PROXMIRE. I would like to know. Mr. HARRISON. This is Mr. William A. Schmidt. Mr. SCHMIDT. Through the 15th of June, the actual expenditures against the $2.5 million totaled $161,834. PREDESIGN STUDIES AND SITE SELECTION Senator PROXMIRE. What was that expended for? Mr. SCHMIDT. Most of that was to the Charles T. Main Co., of Boston, with whom we have a contract. Senator PROXMIRE. Both of these sites have been apparently rejected. Will this expenditure be of any value? Will the work be of any value? Mr. SCHMIDT. Yes. Senator PROXMIRE. In what respect? |