There are some supervisors who are questioning that and perhaps will even seek some legal redress on that. There is a question in the law whether or not they are hourly employees. These are people who are supervisors in the plant, and their salaries are derivative of the journeyman salaries, SO that provision is there, but we think we are on sound legal ground. But that is the way in which we have made substantial changes. Mr. PACKARD. I commend you because many of the agencies, as they are downsizing in FTEs, find they are asking for more money for overtime; it is good to see that you can actually, in a downsizing mode, still reduce overtime. Let me see if there are any other questions. You mentioned in your testimony that you support the transforming of the Federal deposit library program to electronic technologies; however, this objective cannot be achieved efficiently and effectively without full participation and cooperation from the depository libraries. Are you getting that cooperation? Mr. DIMARIO. I believe we are. And I personally addressed that issue with individuals in the library community, and they have expressed that to me. They are not trying to fight the transition. They just have a constituent base that they need to serve in the process of the transition. So I think the cooperation is there, as it always has been; and I don't think we are having serious objections to anything that we are doing. ON-LINE BID PROPOSALS Mr. PACKARD. I would like to bring up this one letter then, if I may. I received a letter from Mr. Shuster, Chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Mr. DIMARIO. Yes, sir. Mr. PACKARD. And he has expressed some concerns about the I believe that the development of an in-house, on-line system, electronic information system is contrary to the concept of contracting out. And he commends you for 80 percent contracting out; and therefore, he is requesting that we determine whether the GPO has proper authority to spend Federal funds to develop such a system. Do you have a comment? Mr. DIMARIO. Yes, sir. The Federal funds that we spent for the on-line system, were primarily those funds used by the Depository Library Program to establish the Access system. We really did not put any additional money into distributing bids electronically. On each bid proposal that we post, we incur-the very minimal expense of putting four extra electronic tags in the document. So we have some minor incidental costs that go into posting solicitations electronically. We did all of this after dealing with this issue with Mr. Shuster's office, and Mr. Shuster also dealt with Chairman Thomas' office on it. So, the two Chairmen dealt together. Chairman Thomas approved what we were doing before we actually put the system up. The Printing Industries of America have been given a demonstration of the system and have been supportive of what we are doing, as a general proposition. There is only one commercial bid service that objects to free posting of bid opportunities on the Internet, as far as we can see. Mr. PACKARD. We will make this letter available to you, and I will not send a copy to you, but I will make it available and ask you to respond to Mr. Shuster and you send us a copy of your response. Mr. DIMARIO. Yes, sir. Mr. PACKARD. Well, I want to thank you, Mr. DiMario and Mr. Guy and Mr. Joyner and Mr. Kelley, for being with us today. We appreciate it, and we sincerely do appreciate the seriousness with which you have taken directions in the past, legislatively, and in our bill previously. I want you to know that we are still in a downsizing mode. We don't reach a zero deficit or reach a balanced budget in seven years by doing a big job one year in reducing and cutting back, and then forget it for the other six years. We just cannot do that. So if we are going to meet-if I am going to meet my responsibilities and my portion of that balanced budget in seven years, it means that we are on a seven-year glide path. It means that every agency under our direction is going to have to help us achieve that goal. And I think you have come a long ways, but we are certainly not there yet. I will say what I said to the other committees and agencies that we met with last week, that level funding is not going to be easy to achieve. Increases are going to be much more difficult to achieve in this year's budget-just letting you know that I need your help, and hopefully you will recognize our challenge and that is to develop a budget overall that will keep us on that glide path to a seven-year zero deficit or balanced budget. With that in mind, I want to thank you very much for being here and I appreciate very much your testimony and the answers to the questions. If we do have additional questions, I hope that you will respond and they will be included in the record. REPROGRAMMINGS [A question from Chairman Packard and response follow:] Question. For the record, please insert all programming requests from last year and their disposition. Response. The information follows: AU6 4 1995 AUG 4 1995 Honorable Ron Packard Committee on Appropriations Dear Mr. Chairman: I respectfully request approval to reprogram $2,007,000 of Fiscal Sincerely, Michael F.lli Mano MICHAEL F. DIMARIO We have received your letter of August 4, 1996, requesting authority to obligate The Committee has no objection to actions outlined in your request. Sincerely, Ron Packard Chairman Subcommittee on Legislative Mr. DIMARIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to say that everything that we have achieved is with the cooperation of our employees. And they have been very cooperative. Mr. PACKARD. We know that we are asking them to do as much or more than they have ever done before, and it does require cooperation. We thank you all. This afternoon, incidentally, before we adjourn the hearing, we will be having the Library of Congress. [Recess.] |