Six Minority Employees: Authorization contained in the Legislative Pay Act of 1929 and amended each Congess by House Resolution authorizing the six employees. The current authorization is contained the Speakers Pay Order of 1992. The FY 1995 budget request includes an FY 94 prorated locality pay increase, an FY 95 prorated locality pay increase and an FY 95 prorated Cost of living adjust ment. Democratic Steering and Policy Committee: The current authorization has five positions in accordance with the Speakers' Pay Order of 1992. The FY 1995 budget request includes an FY 94 prorated locality pay increase, an FY 95 prorated locality pay increase and an FY 95 prorated Cost of living adjust ment. Democratic Caucus: The current authorization has two positions in accordance with the Speakers' Pay Order of 1992. The FY 1995 budget request includes an FY 94 prorated locality pay increase, an FY 95 prorated locality pay increase and an FY 95 prorated Cost of living adjust ment. Republican Conference: The current authorization has seven positions in accordance with the Speakers' Pay Order of 1992. The FY 1995 budget request includes an FY 94 prorated locality pay increase, an FY 95 prorated locality pay increase and an FY 95 prorated Cost of living adjust ment. Other Authorized Employees: Authorization for the three Former Speakers' staffs contained in 2 U.S.C. 31b-5. L.B.J. Interns are authorized pursuant to H. Res. 420, made permanent law in Public Law 93-245, 87 Stat. 1079, and increased annually pursuant to authority granted the Disbursing Officer in Section 5 of the Federal Pay Comparability Act of 1970. The Technical Assistants in the Office of the Attending Physician and leadership drivers operate on an appropriation. Question: In addition, insert a table indicating annual staff levels (Committee, Administrative, and Members' offices) since 1970. Mr. MEDLOCK. I will insert a summary at this point showing the fiscal year 1993 expenses, the 1994 appropriations, and the fiscal year 1995 estimates. [The information follows:] Mr. MEDLOCK. Also I will provide a chart for the proposed budget illustrating how they are apportioned to each program or office at this time. That is the pie chart that I just mentioned. [The information follows:] FTE REDUCTION Mr. MEDLOCK. Before I discuss the budget in each of its sections, I would like to discuss Public Law 103-69, Sections 307 and 308, which reduce the employment levels and administrative expense for all legislative entities. We have already touched on this. We have already discussed it to some extent. First of all, Section 307 requires that the number of employee positions on a full-time equivalent or what we call an FTE basis shall be reduced by at least 4 percent from the FTE level as of September 30th, 1992. At least 10 percent of the positions eliminated shall be in the high-grade positions, which is equal to or greater than the annual rate of basic pay for a GS-14 under the General Schedule. That is somewhere between $56,000 and $57,000 a year in salary. Now Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Say that again? Mr. MEDLOCK. Ten percent of those 4 percent positions, 10 percent of those positions must be the higher grades or GS-14 or above, which under the General Schedule is about $56,000 to $57,000 annual salary. The Director was also instructed to prepare a plan for achieving these necessary reductions in accordance with the guidance provided by the Committee on Appropriations report on last year's Legislative Branch Appropriations bill. We have computed the FTE base, and maybe I ought to give a quick definition-the FTE definition that we are to follow is contained in OMB Circular A-11. It is kind of convoluted. But to give you an idea in sort of a layman's approach of what FTE is, it is the attempt to take all the different types of employees that are available, such as permanent, temporaries, part-time, you name it, and give us a fixed number of equivalent positions that would relate to those diverse types of employees. That is all it tries to do. And as Mike just told me, it is over a 12-month period, not just a daily basis. So it is an attempt to bring all those diverse pieces together into one equivalent term for an annual salary-annual position called a full-time equivalent. If that is not clear, I would have to dig into the specifics of how we compute it, and I don't think we need to do that. Mr. MORAN of Virginia. It wasn't clear to me. It used to be that when you wanted to cut positions, you would first cut the authorized positions. That is the way the appropriations committees used to do it. Mr. MEDLOCK. Absolutely. Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Then they got to the point where you could only get credit for cutting authorized and appropriated positions. But now you are telling us that we have gone beyond that point, that you don't get credit for cutting authorized positions, don't even get credit for cutting authorized and appropriated positions, but they have to be real, live, breathing bodies in each position? Mr. MEDLOCK. Absolutely. Mr. MORAN of Virginia. And that is the only credit you get? Mr. MEDLOCK. Yes, based on a basis point in time. So, in other words, if you didn't fill your authorizations, you don't get credit for cutting an authorization that is not filled. You only get credit for cutting an authorization that is filled. In the future, you could fill one of those authorizations, but you still can't go below the total number of authorized faces, as they say in the Defense Department, faces present for duty. Mr. MORAN of Virginia. So there would be an incentive then, knowing what is coming up in the next fiscal year's budget that we get nine months ahead of time, to fill all your authorized positions, and then hack them out once the new budget comes in so that you can accomplish an actual reduction, so that the baseline has already been set. Mr. MEDLOCK. Already set, that is right. But now if you exclude a category, then it would behoove those who own that category to do what you just said. Mr. MORAN of Virginia. But nobody was excluded, so that is a moot Mr. MEDLOCK. That is right. But there are proposals Chairman Rose proposed excluding the Members' clerk hire. If you do that, that would basically incentivize those to hire up to their full authorizations. Then we would have to cut everyone else what their authorizations went up to meet the cut, at a particular point in time. Mr. MORAN of Virginia. If you were not to take it from clerk hire, it just puts more burden on the rest of the staff, because the clerk hire is only being counted in terms of the actual faces on board. Mr. MEDLOCK. And the clerk hire represents way in excess of 80 percent of the FTE positions. So Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Eighty percent including all the committee Mr. MEDLOCK. That is right, the committee staffs and the service support that runs the operations such as the Clerk, the Sergeant at Arms, Doorkeeper, and the Director, all of our positions. Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Everything else represents only 20 per cent? Mr. MEDLOCK. That is approximately correct. Members' clerk hire right now on the base they are telling me the actual number is 66 percent. Mr. MORAN of Virginia. That is a little less. Mr. MEDLOCK. Two-thirds. I was just glancing at the numbers. So the base right now is 11,270. The Members' clerk hire is 7,414 of the base. So that is 66 percent of the total. Now, if you went back on authorizations, that would adjust itself up. But anyway, that is the danger of what we are saying. And therefore if you exclude it and someone then hires more within their authorization, then you would still be taking more out to get to the base. So it is a tough decision that is going to have to be made by the Members when we present the plan. And we will present options that will allow a discussion to take place and a decision made on where we take the cuts. So as I was saying, at some point in time we are going to present the proposal, which will be broad enough for everyone to form a discussion on what is the right way to go. I will provide options. And most of this, I hope to have all of this FTE approval process |