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UNEXPENDED BALANCES AVAILABLE, EXPLANATION

Mr. LANGEN. Mr. Chairman, let me just pursue what the chairman was inquiring about a moment ago.

In the figures as shown on pages 17, 18, let me refer to 17 first. The Office of the Speaker appropriation expenditure is $132,850, and then there is a balance available. What is meant by that balance available?

Mr. JENNINGS. That is a balance not paid. That represents only that which has been spent through to the present. The balance there, if you will take the items there and add them, it will give you the $132,550, All I am showing is the balance that is unspent as of this time.

Mr. LANGEN. I realize that for 1968. What about 1967 and 1966! Mr. JENNINGS. That is a carryover. We did not use all of that. That reverted to the Treasury.

Mr. LANGEN. This has reverted to the Treasury?

Mr. JENNINGS. Yes, sir.

Mr. LANGEN. It says "balance available." It is not available if it has gone back to the Treasury.

Mr. JENNINGS. Yes.

Mr. LIVINGSTON. Any balance of an appropriation reverts to the Treasury at the end of 3 years.

However, if any unpaid obligations are presented for payment after the money has been returned to the Treasury, we can, by law, pay these obligations from any current appropriation then available for the same

purpose.

Mr. LANGEN. Let me ask you this: How does that balance come about? In the Office of the Chaplain, for instance, in 1966, I note $911.44. Didn't we appropriate that salary as it was? How come there is money left over?

Mr. GIBSON. This position was vacant for a short time.

Mr. JENNINGS. When Dr. Braskamp died there was no salary paid during the time a vacancy existed.

Mr. LANGEN. That may be the case in that instance but

Mr. LIVINGSTON. In 1967 there is only a $4.40 balance. That is because we round off the figure.

Mr. LANGEN. I know that. I was not inquiring about any other. I see that they are all the same in this respect, in that there is some balance left over from that year. I wondered what was meant by the balance available.

Mr. JENNINGS. Really the balance available is a term that we are using in some of the contingency funds and some of the others. It is term which we are using here. It is a balance that is available for the rest of this year but it is a balance that was not expended at the en of that particular year. In these particular cases it is not recoverable. In some cases it would be recoverable if a bill should come in on telephone expense or some vendor had not given his bill and it woul come in. We would still have to honor it.

In these particular cases they are personnel. I can see that the ter is not exactly right, a balance available. It should be the balan unexpended and carried over.

Mr. LANGEN. If we were to total all of these balances that h accumulated in all of these respective positions, what would be total amount of money that you have for a 3-year period, anticipat that some bills would come in?

Mr. JENNINGS. Actually, it falls into different categories. As I said, in these particular categories, personnel at the end of the 3-year period, that goes back to the Treasury. In others-there are some cases, for instance, in the case of the furniture appropriation last year, the balance is until expended. In others, we just hold them until such time as the Members make a request. For instance, take the stationery allowance, or office allowance, or telephone allowance for the District. office. Any time that the Member would present those bills, transportation

Mr. LANGEN. This might well be. My question was: What is the total amount of money, all categories, regardless of what obligations may be against that? It seems to me to be a kind of pertinent thing. Mr. JENNINGS. It is. It just happens that we have these for some of the pay categories.

Mr. LIVINGSTON. We could give that to you for the record.

Mr. JENNINGS. We could insert that in the record.

Mr. LANGEN. Fine. Insert it in the record.

Mr. JENNINGS. All right.

(The information follows:)

The balance of all accounts except the revolving fund at the end of March 31, 1968, were:

For the fiscal year 1966, $3,084,057.25.

For the fiscal year 1967, $3,435,054.29.

Mr. ANDREWS, I would like to go along with that, too. As you say, they come in different categories.

OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENTARIAN, LUMP SUM ITEM

Mr. LANGEN. Another one of the things that was discussed here a while back that I don't quite understand, and perhaps you can clarify it for me, this lump sum. What is the exact use of that?

Mr. LIVINGSTON. This is for the hire of employees in his office as set up by law.

Mr. LANGEN. How many? Is that the total amount which the rest of the items below there make up a part of?

Mr. JENNINGS. Yes, sir. That is correct.

Mr. LANGEN. Each of the items listed below the lump sum is what you are expending out of that money?

Mr. JENNINGS. That is right.

Mr. LIVINGSTON. That is statutory.

Mr. JENNINGS. He does not come under the Classification Act of the House. This is a lump sum. He may divide it among his people any way that he desires, only with the confirmation of the Speaker.

Mr. LANGEN. Mr. Chairman, let me inquire: Does the House Recording Studio come under what we have discussed?

Mr. ANDREWs. No.

Mr. LIVINGSTON. That is in the committee print on page 6.

Mr. LANGEN. I had it before me. I wanted a clarification of what that $89,702 was made up of and these other items that come below it.

Mr. JENNINGS. That is correct. That is the way that those were spent last year. We assumed that is the way they will be spent this year as of now. However, if you will look at the footnote, it shows that he may change those in any way that he wants to.

92-655-68-27

HOUSE LIBRARY

Mr. LANGEN. We had some discussion regarding the House Library, I should merely inquire, do they keep any kind of a record of the number of inquiries they get?

Mr. JENNINGS. Yes, sir. I have this report here. I would like to read from the library report. It says:

We carried on the usual work of the library which includes a varied program. We delivered and picked up around 1,000 books.

We processed an estimated 3,000 telephone requests. Some of the latter could be handled in a few minutes, the others took hours of work.

We carried out various research projects for different offices. An average of five to 10 people use the library daily to do their own research. Most of them needed some help.

We kept the shelves in order, indexed hearings, worked on the master inder. answered correspondence, processed new material.

We set up and enlarged a vertical file which has proved useful, planned the moving of the library, which entailed working out a system of moving the books in order, cleaning the books, and planning the physical aspects of the library the space allotted to us.

We weeded out and disposed of all obsolete and useless material. The library was staffed, kept in order and many ways studied and carried out to anticipate and meet the needs of the Congressmen using it.

That was a report for 1967. We have a report for 1968.

Mr. LANGEN. Í note that you make reference to research. Is there some particular category of research that they confine themselves to! Mr. JENNINGS. This covers just about anything, anything that any Member would call about.

Mr. LANGEN. Or the staffs?

Mr. JENNINGS. Or the staffs of the Members usually call. Sometimes the Members themselves call, sometimes they drop by. The moving that is talked about here is the moving from one area in the Canno Building to another area in the Cannon Building necessitated by the renovation, which was quite a job. They did it in very fine fashion.

DISPOSITION OF ACCUMULATION OF OLD RECORDS

Mr. LANGEN. With regard to the renovation, I gather that there is a rather extended process of renovation which also includes the Disposition and Classification Office. I don't know much about th but I saw something of it and, as you stated earlier, thousands of volumes were uncovered or discovered, whatever the case may be What happened to all that material? What use was made of it?

Mr. JENNINGS. We set up a system of priorities. First of all, Mr Hollowell, the attorney on the staff, researched the rules and statue to see what we were supposed to keep. Of course, that took fir priority.

Second priority we gave to the National Archives.

The third priority we gave to all of the depository libraries locate throughout the country. Third priority we gave to schools of hig learning, especially those that had graduate schools, either giv masters or doctors degrees in foreign affairs, political science, a government.

Then after that we have just given them to anybody that wo take them. If no one would take them, we literally hauled off tr loads to the dump.

Mr. LANGEN. These were the regular documents that are or have. been in use and connected with House operations at some time or another?

Mr. JENNINGS. Yes, sir. They were just an accumulation of absolutely everything. They were in mailbags. They were thrown in basements. They were in shelves; they were just spread in the office buildings and in the Capitol, everyplace. It included everything: globes, statutes, committee information, just everything that was superfluous. I won't say that, but surplus.

Mr. LANGEN. Any idea how many volumes were handled?

Mr. JENNINGS. It would run into the thousands. We have classified and indexed all that we could and it has been quite a job. It has taken a lot of space because we would find some here and there and we have tried to line them up and down the hallways and the basement level. We have pretty well covered the Capitol Building and the office buildings and now we are moving to the Library of Congress.

Mr. LANGEN. Did you acquire any extra space this way, or merely get everything in order?

Mr. JENNINGS. Actually we didn't acquire a great deal of additional space, because you can put more volumes packed into a room and in mailbags than you can put on shelves, so that you can walk down the lines. We have just broken about even in this particular instance. Perhaps accumulated a little space.

Mr. LANGEN. What steps are taken to prevent the same kind of accumulation from happening over again?

Mr. JENNINGS. We took one man from the law library and we gave him the responsibility of, first, working with the members in requisitioning the United States Code Annotated, or the Federal Code Annotated Authorized. Then I gave him an additional responsibility to ry and prevent this from happening again.

In addition to that, Mr. Hollowell, the attorney, has been looking back through the statutes and trying to stop the accumulation of many of these volumes from the inception, from the actual printing. Some of this will have to be done by statute. We have tried to work up some ecommendations to have the statute changed, in order to provide that he clerk will receive only the documents needed.

It is a hard matter to keep them from accumulating. We find our racks covered by additional things coming in all the time. We have ried to cut those out. Where it is left within our discretion, Mr. uthrie, who is very helpful in this case because he came to us from he Government Printing Office, has been able to stop and keep out f the pipeline some of these things. Mr. Hollowell has tried to point ut from the statute where it is necessary to receive them.

Mr. LANGEN. Do any of these documents that you so discovered turn ut to be collector's items?

Mr. JENNINGS. Yes, sir.

Mr. LANGEN. I happened to have read in the Wall Street Journal his morning about some documents.

Mr. JENNINGS. Some of the depository libraries I have received tters from saying it would have cost them thousands of dollars to ive accumulated these records. With our system of priorities we have tempted to keep those that we thought were the most valuable in our vn library, in some cases our document room; in others we have sent the Archives and many of these things are in the Archives. We have

found some valuable publications, letters from George Washington, and things of that nature that have been extremely valuable. Goodness knows, just what value they have I don't know. But as I said, with the aid of priorities we still have them under control.

Mr. LANGEN. How did you decide which depository got which?

Mr. JENNINGS. In this case it was almost on a first-come, first-served basis because those that happened to be there at the particular time we found it, they are the ones that got it. I am sure that some have received some rather valuable volumes that others would like to have. They are still under our control and jurisdiction, so to speak. They are in the depository libraries. First we keep them, the Archives, the depository libraries, and then these schools of higher learning. Some of the other things, such as, "How Our Laws Are Made," Government pamphlets on Un-American Activities Committee, and so forth, agricultural prints and some old year books we have just distributed to anybody that would take them.

Mr. LANGEN. It could be possible that some alert depository library that got wise to this may have gotten a substantial share of this?

Mr. JENNINGS. That is true, Mr. Langen. When the chairman instructed us to take over the old Coordinator's Library and all that vast number of volumes and materials that we had, we, after going through our regular first two steps, then contacted the various committees. For instance, there was a great deal of research in there for Agriculture, for the Education and Labor Committee, and for Foreign Affairs. We asked them if they wanted any of those things we found in the Coordinator's Office before going to depository libraries.

Mr. LANGEN. Did you have anybody on your staff versed in the value of these documents that could determine their value? Was that all hit and miss?

Mr. JENNINGS. It was somewhat of a hodge-podge. We have some reasonably good people working on the staff, under the direction of Mr. Hollowell, the attorney on the staff. We attempted to contact the Archives and the General Services Administration, General Accounting Office, the various libraries of Congress. As a matter of fact, in this scheme of events also we gave to the Library of Congress anything they wanted for their volumes. We relied some on the judgment of those who were far more knowledgeable than we are.

Mr. LANGEN. By merely geographic location, didn't this offer quite an opportunity for the depositories located within the immediate area as compared to one back in my district?

Mr. JENNINGS. No, sir. We have contacted libraries. When we had requests we would go to the Members and get their franks and use their franks to send these out.

Mr. LANGEN. Recalling from experience, we did have some contact with somebody working down there on this. I recall, I think, a couple of times when some documents supposedly were to be available to us and preparation was made to send them. Only when it came to send them something happened and they were no longer available. I wonder what happened?

Mr. JENNINGS. I really don't know, unless I had a specific. It could be that in the system of priorities when we found that we replenished our own library, the Archives, the Library of Congress, the depository library, or we just didn't have the volumes to go to that depository library. There is no attempt for any discrimination or favoritism. It

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