PHOTOSTATS AND IDENTIFICATION CARDS

Mr. ANDREWS. Going back to item No. 2, "Photostats and identification cards," what is the status of the new program to provide all employees identification cards with their photographs?

Mr. JENNINGS. We are, I would say, 70 percent complete.
Mr. ANDREWS. How often are those cards renewed?
Mr. JENNINGS. At the beginning of each Congress.

DISTRICT TELEPHONE EXPENSES

Mr. ANDREWS. In connection with the district telephone expense item, which I believe was authorized by a House resolution last year, I do not recall that you suggested that that be made permanent law. Is that because you expected us to do it in the supplemental?

Mr. JENNINGS. If we did not, I would hope that you would because, as pointed out, it should be over in the telephone and telegraph rather than in miscellaneous.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr Langen? Miscellaneous items.

UNEXPENDED BALANCES

Mr. LANGEN. Let me raise a question similar to the one I raised yesterday.

I note here when you get to the total of the figures, and again you show a balance available for fiscal year 1967 as was true in 1966-does this indicate that that money first of all has not been expended? Mr. JENNINGS. Right.

Mr. LANGEN. But that there may be spending requests that Members can submit or other ways that could account for those amounts? Mr. JENNINGS. Yes, sir.

Mr. LANGEN. What happens to those amounts? Are they turned back to the Treasury?

Mr. LIVINGSTON. They go back to the Treasury, at the end of a 3-year period, but if any bills come in after that time they can still be paid from the funds still available in that category.

Mr. LANGEN. Are there not some of those requests where a new regulation might be helpful which just said, speaking of Members' trips home for instance, that any reimbursement ought to be applied for by a given date so that come that date you could clear up those requests for that year?

Mr. JENNINGS. Having been a Member I can see that that would be desirable to have a statute of limitation, but by the same token, if a Member happens to turn up with a number of travel vouchers or telephone bills or various other requests that he had not made and he was entitled to it, but the statute of limitation ran out and someone got it and someone did not, I can see that in a spirit of fairness that a number of individual resolutions would be justifiably introduced permitting them to get this money.

Mr. LANGEN. I do not see any harm it that.

Mr. JENNINGS. I do not see any harm in it, but I do not think you are going to save anything as a result of this. I think it might be more costly to run the gamut of special resolution and a hearing on it and all of the people involved than it would be just to have it remain available for the allocated time.

Mr. LANGEN. I mean a reasonable length of time.
As I understand it, it can go on for 10 years now.

Mr. JENNINGS. Yes, sir. As I pointed out on the stationery allowance, I had one Member ask me to reconfirm to him that this would be available, any unused balance would be available to him at such time as he needed it. And specifically after he retired.

Mr. LANGEN. I can see the advantage of that. At the same time, how many similar circumstances will you find anywhere else where you could leave an amount like that drag on for years and then come along and pick up afterward?

Mr. JENNINGS. I suppose you can do it in your bank account or in private stock. If I have some dividends from one of my companies and I do not pick it up that year, it can stay right there.

Mr. LANGEN. This may be true, but at the same time, with regard to an obligation of this kind, in all other transactions there is a statute of limitation that applies and, as I understand, it does not apply here. Mr. JENNINGS. No, sir; it does not.

Mr. LANGEN. Could you carry it out after the 6-year period?

Mr. JENNINGS. I think there is a great deal of merit to what you say because, obviously, we would know better as to what we really had. I was just pointing out some of the other side. I am not doing it in disagreement, I am just thinking out loud on some of the pitfalls we might run into. Obviously, from an administrator's standpoint, and certainly from a financial standpoint, we would love to be in a position to balance our books. It is part of the law, and the law would have to be changed.

Mr. LANGEN. I think I would want to make one other recommendation with regard to these unpaid funds. Even if it did require some more work. But let's suppose a number of demands had accumulated and there were not moneys available for them. This would seem to me to be an amount that would rightfully belong in a supplemental appropriation. You would then come to this committee and say, during the last 6 months or year I have had all of these new bills, and you would then identify what they were and the total amount, and I need an appropriation to pay for it. This way they would get attention at that time, they would be properly accounted for at that time rather than to have them covered up in some kind of mysterious bookkeeping system.

Mr. JENNINGS. Really, that is what we do. That is the reason we have to come to the committee for supplemental appropriations because, after paying all of these things that I just listed here, we would have had a deficit of a minimum of $285,000. That was a projected deficit. So we had to come and ask for supplemental appropriation because at the time we made our request, we could not anticipate that all of these things would be in, and yet the law said this shall be paid from the contingency fund.

If you were not to grant this, we would be out of luck in some cases. We will be able to absorb in some cases some of these things.

Mr. LANGEN. I would appreciate that.

(Off the record.)

Mr. LANGEN. At this time, what I am trying to get away from is the appearance that this kind of a record presents, that in appropriat ing money for 1966 and 1967, we were just overgenerous and provided more than three-quarters of a million dollars that was not really

necessary. This looks like a generous appropriation, when really it was not, but it takes on that appearance.

guess

Mr. JENNINGS. We are attempting to make a better educated than we have in the past. That will not happen this time in my opinion because, as I pointed out, we are cutting the cloth a little tighter. We will be able to absorb some of these pay increases without the entire supplemental request which we made, and we should show a much smaller balance carryover as of the end of this year than we have in years past.

I certainly am in total agreement with you, but had this not been as large as it was last year with these resolutions, we would have been back asking transfer authority in replenishment in a supplemental a long time ago.

JUSTIFICATION OF NEW RESOLUTIONS BEFORE THE

APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE

Mr. LANGEN. This might well be, but I still think it is a better part of good business that any time a new resolution comes along, I would like to see the promoters of that resolution come before this committee and say we have to have this much more money.

Mr. JENNINGS. I could not agree with you more, Mr. Langen. I do not think that we are going to hang on to the expenditures until we get to the day that it is required. As long as they are in position to just take those amounts out of a contingency fund, we are forever going to have these additions that nobody understands at the time they come before the House and nobody really knows how, when, or where it happens. I just think it would be good business to have them come before this committee and say, it is going to take a number of dollars to pay for this resolution. I think I can point out some specific instances where this would be extremely helpful, and by the coordination of the two committees, those who have to provide the money and those who are authorizing it, some real advantages in savings might occur. Mr. LANGEN. One more question.

Is there anywhere in this entire category of 32 items where some savings can be accomplished without injury to any of the activities around here?

SAVINGS FROM THE PURCHASE OF ICE MACHINES

Mr. JENNINGS. I think I have been able to save some. Let me give you one example.

When I would walk through the buildings, I would see the delivery of the ice being chipped from a big hunk of ice carried in buckets by the force from the Architect's Office. I had no idea where all of this was coming from but I took a look at it and found we were buying the ice. I found an icehouse under the front steps of the Capitol that they delivered ice to on certain regular intervals. As soon as it melted down they would deliver more ice. It looked unsanitary, and wasteful. I looked into the possibility of buying ice machines which would give cubes. So I asked about buying some ice machines; the Architect said. they could not buy the ice machines.

Primarily we go on the basis, the line of demarcation is anything that is attached to the building comes under the Architect, anything

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that is movable comes under the Clerk of the House. There are exceptions, the venetian blinds and rugs and so forth, and electrical things. But I found in 1966 we paid $6,483.60 for ice, in 1967 we paid $6,159 for ice, and I found I could buy an ice machine for each of the three buildings for $12,777.44. And I did.

So far in the year of 1968, we have only spent $1,000. But in 1969 we should not spend anything, or very, very little, and the reason this was spent was because the ice machines were not installed and this represents the expenditures back in those months at the beginning of the year before we started using the machine.

Mr. ANDREWS. You have stopped buying ice now?

Mr. JENNINGS. Yes, except on special requests and special occasions. As a result, we are getting a cube of ice now that is much more usable and we do not have the waste.

Mr. ANDREWS. What do you use that ice for?

Mr. JENNINGS. It is used in the committees around the committee tables and for the witnesses. It is used in the dining rooms and it is used in the individual Members' offices, such as the one you have right on the table at this time.

Mr. LANGEN. Any savings of that kind are certainly timely and appropriate and ought to be made, and I commend the Clerk for any savings he accomplishes in any and all of the services that are supplied.

Mr. ANDREWS. And you stopped buying ice from outside. You make the ice that is used here for ice water in committee rooms and in the dining rooms?

Mr. JENNINGS. Yes, sir. Our last purchase of ice was November 8, 1967, and that was $229.80.

Mr. ANDREWS. It had been running $6,000 a year?

Mr. JENNINGS. In excess of $6,000 a year.

Mr. ANDREWs. The Clerk is to be commended.

Mr. LANGEN. He certainly is.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Langen has another question he wants to ask about savings you have been responsible for.

WALL CALENDARS

Mr. LANGEN. What about the wall calendars that have been supplied to the Members? Can you tell us about this?

Mr. JENNINGS. Yes, sir. This was something that was really getting out of hand through perhaps no fault of anyone. Last year in 1967 we spent a total of $48,960 for wall calendars. It represented 90,000 of them and cost us 54.4 cents each. In our cleaning out operation it was not uncommon to find stacks of calendars that were not used. As a matter of fact, it was not uncommon to have Members of Congress place them outside and in our baling operation we would find the whole section of calendars that were a year old.

This year I went before the House Administration Committee on this. It was becoming quite a problem to me to determine who got what. You would have requests for 1,500, 5,000, 200, there was no rule to follow. So I asked the House Administration Committee to give me some direction and to pass some rules whereby everyone would not only be treated alike, but it would bring some direction to this. We have a total expenditure this year for calendars of $36,270. That rep resents a total of 71,431 calendars. We were able to get the cost down

to 40 cents each rather than 54 cents each; 25,603 of those calendars went to the stationery room and were paid out of stationery accounts, individual Members bought them, which means this year, rather than passing out 90,000 calendars, we passed out 45,828 for use around the Capitol. The cost was $25,844 instead of $48,960, for a total savings of $23,116.

Mr. LANGEN. You are to be complimented. I am sure you found the distribution and satisfaction of everybody concerned was better served,

too.

Mr. JENNINGS. I do not know. I might have to take issue with that particular statement as far as the distribution and satisfaction is concerned.

Mr. ANDREWS. Did you get many complaints?

Mr. JENNINGS. Yes, sir; I got any number of complaints. As a matter of fact, I thought it was going to be reversed on several occasions. (Discussion off the record.)

Mr. ANDREWS. Proceed, Mr. Clerk.

REPORTING HEARINGS

Mr. JENNINGS. For stenographic reports of committee hearings, other than special and select committees, $223,000. This is the same as appropriated in 1968.

We have no way of knowing exactly what will be used. However, you will notice in 1966 we requested the same amount, we had $46,000 left over. In 1967 the same amount, we had $51,000. As of February 29, we had spent $97,723.10, which leaves a balance of $125,276.90.

I think based on past history, although we have been showing roughly $50,000 a year less, the business has increased as more and more committee hearings are ordered and reported.

Mr. ANDREWS. This is a matter over which you have no control? Mr. JENNINGS. Absolutely none.

Mr. ANDREWS. There have been no changes in this appropriation amount for several years, but I know you have had a rather substantial unexpended balance in each of the last 2 years, and you forecast about the same unexpended balance at the end of this year. Mr. JENNINGS. Based only on the expenditures to date and past years.

Mr. ANDREWS. Proceed, please.

SPECIAL AND SELECT COMMITTEES

Mr. JENNINGS. For the information of the committee, we submit for the record a tabulated statement showing the various committee investigations authorized during the 90th Congress, as if February 29, 1968. This statement shows the total amounts authorized, the amounts expended, and the unexpended balances. The committee