And if you would like, Mr. Chairman, I am sure that Karen Carlin, who is the President of the fund, would be glad to report further if there is anything you would like to ask her.

Mr. FAZIO. Karen, do want to put on the record any more documentation of your success?

Ms. CARLIN. We are planning to have most of the moneys raised by the end of 1995 so that we can break some kind of ground and get started in 1996. That is our goal, to have all of it raised.

Mr. FAZIO. And we are within budget at this point?

Do either of you ladies want to comment at this point? We would appreciate it if you would.

Ms. JOHNSTON. We are happy, really, with the progress that has been going on; and of course, we work with the Architect and his staff completely, totally; and everything is on schedule, and we are very pleased with that.

So we really urge that the Botanic Garden be built, and the two together would be a prime exhibit on the mall for us all.

Mr. FAZIO. We don't want to slip while you are progressing.
Ms. CARLIN. It helps with the fund-raising. It is all one big pic-

ture.

Mr. FAZIO. If we had your help on all the other things we are doing, we would have more confidence over here.

Ms. BENTSEN. Our plate is very full.

Mr. FAZIO. It is a lot of money. It is equivalent to 700 full-time AOC staff people, for example; and yet we can't do without those 700 people even for a few years.

So I wanted to put it in the context of the difficulty that this committee has with our requirement to cut each year rather than grow, even at the rate of inflation.

I think it was an unfortunate reality that the conservatory was simply not able to withstand the ravages of time. We might have found it on one level, like it or not, one morning. Hopefully, it would have occurred without anyone in it, but I think we are pretty much in a position where we have to proceed.

The question is simply: How can we adjust this and time it so that we don't appropriate any more money than is absolutely required at any given fiscal year? And we have already begun that.

Mr. WHITE. Mr. Chairman, let me comment, if I may, about the splendid support and help of Mary Johnston and B. A. Bentsen and, of course, Karen Carlin, who is in the trenches-and Mrs. Johnston and Mrs. Bentsen, of course, are in the trenches, too. Part of the reason for this success is the effort that they have exerted in the fund-raising process and in the meetings and activities associated with the design of the Botanic Garden and the competition that was held, et cetera, et cetera.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank them for all of their past efforts and their continuing efforts.

Mr. FAZIO. Well, I would like to chime in and do the same. I know that you have done a wonderful job, and I am sure you will stay on target with your goal.

I do a little fund-raising myself, and I am jealous of the product that you have to sell. So I am really admiring your work and look forward to the completion.

Any comments from the Members of the committee on this issue?

Mr. MORAN. When they complete the work, they may share their list with you, though.

Mr. FAZIO. Actually, I have looked at it; and it is very similar. Mr. MORAN. They are obviously squeezing harder than you.

Mr. FAZIO. As I said, they have got a great product. People do love beauty.

Anyway, thank you very much ladies. We appreciate your attendance and what you are doing.

ACHIEVING FTE REDUCTIONS

This FTE issue, I think you understand quite well, is the bane of our existence; but we are going to have to wrestle through it. Mr. WHITE. It is a struggle, Mr. Chairman, even if it is applied the way the law intends, namely a 4 percent reduction overall.

Mr. FAZIO. Aside from any adjustment that we have to make. I think the administration, to be accurate, was emphasizing management more than the ranks, but not to the degree that this absolute application of formula would affect you. I think it was their bias toward middle management ranks. But this is not to say that I am at all at odds with your concern that it apply unfairly in the case of the Architect. We will find some way to work that out.

But putting that issue aside, it is a tough thing to deal with, particularly when we are talking not about positions that have been authorized and not filled-and you had some unfilled positions. We are talking about filled, funded positions.

Tell us exactly how are you going to do it?

Mr. WHITE. Well, we are probably in a little more fortuitous position than some because we have FTE employees beyond the authorized number of positions so that we have some management flexibility to reduce.

We just simply won't hire as many temporary people, and we will postpone the work that they would be doing. So we are in a little bit easier position.

It is one of the reasons why this anomaly takes place in being adversely affected in the GS-14 and over because we have a lot of construction people and a lot of temporary people for projects and

so on.

So we are in a little bit better position to do that, Mr. Chairman. Mr. FAZIO. But you are filling positions that are unfilled as well? Mr. WHITE. Exactly. And let me say in that regard, Mr. Chairman-this may be a strange way to compare it—but if the average citizen is 20 pounds overweight and it were to be declared that everyone should lose 10 pounds, those who are fat can lose the 10 pounds and not even know it; but if you are 10 pounds underweight, you are in real trouble when you are asked to conform to the same standard.

And we are a lean, mean, organization, if I may say so. We have cut back because we have tried to be lean in the beginning. We are understaffed, which I would be glad to prove to the committee, or justify on the basis of outside entities who have come in and examined where we have the bulk of our people, namely in custodial matters for both the Senate and House Office Buildings. We are understaffed in terms of the standard of the industry.

I am not asking for more. I am just saying that we are lean to begin with, and we are really beginning to be adversely affected. Mr. FAZIO. I am not opposed to you filling positions that are important to the conduct of your activity. We are looking for total reduction. And I am aware that everybody feels that they are running a lean machine. I think that would be something that Bob Reischauer would tell us.

You could go down the list of people that come before us, and they are all making a good argument, OTA and others. We still have to do it. And, regrettably, we have to do it with some sort of uniformity.

You might have seen Roll Call where I said we all have to do it, not just people that we don't know have to do it. If we don't do it to people we know, we are probably not going to feel it. And there may be an unlimited capacity, therefore, to continue to cut even when you are cutting into the bone.

AOC TO MAKE FTE REDUCTIONS

Mr. WHITE. We are going to cut. We will do what we are asked to do. I am indicating that it is one thing to cut out people that are writing reports about the price of frogs in south Transylvania. It is another thing to cut out carpenters and electricians and plumbers that are needed to maintain the buildings.

Mr. FAZIO. But everybody thinks what they are doing is important. After all, they have been doing it for years, and it is obvious that people have benefited from it-at least they believe so.

Mr. MORAN. Nobody is getting any money from this committee to study frogs in Transylvania. I say that seriously because that was meant as a pejorative comment about some of the research people, and that is not the case. There is no frivolous exercise going on in any of the Legislative Branch operations.

Mr. WHITE. No, I know that. I was thinking of the executive branch where this begins. We don't have that kind of thing happening here. I am aware of that.

But because the 10 percent of GS-14 and above grows out of that category in the executive branch, there may be places where it is more easily cut.

And from our standpoint, as you know, Mr. Chairman, we are here to serve the Congress.

Mr. FAZIO. Sure.

Mr. WHITE. We don't make things or sell things. At whatever service level is desired, we need support for what we do.

Mr. FAZIO. I would argue that you do far more than that, because you think the Capitol Building and grounds are those of the American people, not the Congress. We happen to be here on a temporary basis. Many of you are here far longer than we are, and I am sure that provides you with some economic stability, and that is good.

We have the glory of office to make up for the risk that we incur, but we are here for the American people. And this is their building, and if we fail to keep it up, I think we have let them down. The problem is conveying that to them somehow, because too often people think whatever we do here is for us. Even though we are really just transitory figures.

I am, as you know, an advocate of doing it right if we can. But we have to pass a bill. That is the test. And if we don't meet the test, we have accomplished nothing for all of us.

So I appreciate your willingness to work with us on this, and I am sure we are going to get to the numbers that we have to. We want to do it the way that is most successful.

I guess what I don't want to get into is a syndrome where we will not do something for a while and then have to do it in a crisis, therefore, eating up all the savings, and more, that we have accrued on an annual basis.

I don't know why the conservatory ran out of structural integrity at a given point in time. Maybe we could have done something on an incremental basis to prevent it. I don't know. Maybe that is just the way things are. But we clearly have to deal with that, despite its heavy impact on our budget.

And so, while I wouldn't want to deny the approach that you have suggested with workmen and temporaries, et cetera, if we are creating a balloon payment out there by not doing something that needs to be done on a regular basis, we really haven't solved the problem. All we are doing is deferring it, and it will come back to bite us when we have no alternative but to spend money on something that we might have done incrementally.

There are some questions related to the section 307 FTE reductions, and other items that I want to insert in the record at this point.

[Questions and responses follow:]

FULL TIME EQUIVALENT EMPLOYMENT

Question. Your Summary B table indicates a level of 2,068 positions for fiscal year 1995. But your FTE ceiling is 2,311 (Summary C). Explain the difference.

Answer. The summaries referred to appear in the Detailed Justifications for Fiscal Year 1995. Summary "B" is a tabulation of permanent positions authorized by the appropriations process. They represent a limitation of the number of permanent authorized positions that can be incumbered concurrently.

Summary "C" represents total Full Time Equivalency, which is computed by dividing total man-hours worked by 2,080 hours. Total man-hours worked includes all hours worked by permanent positions, as well as temporary positions and DavisBacon employees. Total man-hours worked for FTE calculation purposes excluded overtime and holiday hours.

The total authorized strength for fiscal year 1994 is 2,068 positions, and the total FTE ceiling for fiscal year 1994 is 2,347.

Copies of the Summary B and C follow.