it might be desirable to require that joint committees that have Members of the House turn over their files to the Clerk of the House. Mr. STEED. What has been the practice? Mr. MEGILL. There has been no requirement at all. Mr. STEED. What happens to their files? Mr. MEGILL. I think a lot of them have been lost or not turned in, as has been the uniform practice on the House side for committees. Mr. STEED. I am glad you brought that out. Mr. Bow. That would require legislation? Mr. MEGILL. Yes. Mr. STEED. I think it is a matter that should be brought to the attention of the proper committee to see if it could be cleared up because I imagine some of these joint committees sooner or later come to the point where their files should be available for any use that might be required of them. Mr. MEGILL. It is the one loophole. On the House side the House has a very firm rule about the files and the files of the House are very well preserved and it is one of the largest and finest collections on the history and progress of the Government in existence. a The Secretary of the Senate has similar requirement to the Clerk of the House although he does not have the same firm rule the House has established and placed on the Clerk to collect and protect the files of the House, and I thought it might be worthwhile to urge the other side to do the same in regard to joint committees. Mr. STEED. I think that is important because I have had occasion to know that the protection of these files becomes very important, especially when they reach the point they are not under the proper jurisdiction of the committee which created them. Mr. ROBERTS. It has not been many years ago that special committees, when they disbanded, kept the files and never did turn them over to the House. That was the basis of many a lawsuit. Mr. STEED. You may proceed with your statement. JOINT COMMITTEE ON INTERNAL REVENUE TAXATION Mr. ROBERTS. For the payment of salaries and other expenses of the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation, fiscal year 1963, $322,500, the same as appropriated for 1962. This estimate was submitted as requested and, if your committee desires any further information regarding this particular item, I respectfully refer you to Mr. Colin F. Stam, chief of staff, Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation. Mr. STEED. At that point I would like to comment that while they have not asked for any increase, it is obvious that the Ways and Means Committee has probably reached almost an alltime high in the work they have been doing and I would assume the demands on this committee have likewise been rather extensive. They have been doing a pretty good job and trying to stay within their budget. I think for the sake of uniformity we ought to insert the current salary schedule and information in line with what we have done with the other committees. Mr. HARPER. Mr. Chairman, that is listed on page 38 of the committee print, as follows: 1 Positions and rates of pay are at discretion of the committee. Mr. STEED. You may proceed, Mr. Roberts. JOINT COMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY POLICY Mr. ROBERTS. For salaries and expenses of the Joint Committee on Immigration and Nationality Policy, $20,000, the same as that appropriated for 1962. Mr. STEED. Has any of this money been expended this year? Mr. HARPER. No, sir. Mr. STEED. That is the same story that has been true for a long time? Mr. HARPER. Yes. OFFICE OF THE COORDINATOR OF INFORMATION Mr. ROBERTS. For salaries and expenses of the Office of the Coordinator of Information our estimate for the fiscal year 1963 amounts to $113,875, compared with $108,245 appropriated for 1962 or an increase of $5,630. This estimate was submitted as requested by the Coordinator of Information. All salaries are set by the Coordinator with the approval of the Speaker except the Coordinator's salary which is set by law. Mr. STEED. Mr. Sullivan, the committee is delighted to have you here today and we would appreciate having a statement and we may have some questions. This is a function that I imagine you have some difficulty defining because the uses made of your office are determined by the Members? Mr. SULLIVAN. That is right, and it varies from day to day. We never know what is coming up next. We try to dig up whatever the Member calls for. The workload from months to month runs pretty evenly, particularly during the session. I have a prepared statement I would like to submit for the record. Mr. STEED. It will be made a part of the record at this point. (The statement follows:) The Office of the Coordinator of Information operates as an instant spot-news clearing center for the Members of the House, their staffs, and committees. On call, we assist in agency contacts, distribute departmental press releases of special interest to a given district, and provide Associated Press ticker service to interested Members on news developments of extraordinary impact in the district, as hurricanes, explosions, air disasters, tidal waves, and fires. Through the regular committee calendars, we provide for Members, on call, a quick check on the status of any bill through every phase of the legislative process. Most of our service is by telephone; only occasionally are we called upon for information to be submitted overnight by mail. Our general rule is that all inquiries are answered and cleared before the close of business the day received. Rarely does a request from the Member lie on the desk overnight, awaiting departmental statistics. During the calendar year 1961, we performed 13,921 such services to Members, an average of 1,160 per month. During the last 10 years our workload has averaged consistently about 1,200 to 1,500 requests per month during the session, and about half that number during recess. Through February 28, 1962, the Office has performed 153,904 such services, since May 1947. All but 9,000 of this total were directly to Members of the House, and more than half the other calls were from Senators. The remaining 3,344 calls were from newspapers and magazines seeking a quick check on some current legislative development. These calls average about one a day. During the 87th Congress to date (through March 1) we have served 420 individual Members of the House and 53 Senators. Our staff consists of seven research editors, a librarian, and two secretarystenographers. Each editor is a specialist in some area of public affairs, such as military, diplomatic, economics, science, or constitutional history. By this staff specialization, we route all inquires to the various desks for instantaneous attention. One man was added to our staff this year to give us a graduate lawyer certified to practice before the Supreme Court. He now handles all matters touching legal documentation and constitutional history. This addition to the staff greatly strengthens our service in this vital area. Prior to this addition, there had been no staff changes over the last 6 years. Our library systematically indexes all departmental reports from month to month, plus all legislative reports from both the House and Senate. The whole range of Government thus is at hand for the daily service of the Members. Our staff is able, loyal, devoted, and steady. Seldom a week passes without a letter of appreciation from some Member to a particular staff editor. Our relations with the Members is private, direct, and often confidential. The tradition of the Office always has been to respect and guard these confidences with utmost prudence and discretion. This was the first and most emphatic policy directive from the late Speaker Rayburn, and it has been twice reaffirmed by Speaker McCormack in the present session. Mr. STEED. Do you know why this item appears under the "Contingency fund" heading rather than some other place in the bill? Mr. SULLIVAN. I think the Coordinator's Office was established by a resolution. It was established as a function of the Speaker's office originally, and I think except for the stationery room privileges and accounting purposes it was not a part of the legislative establishment so much as a function of the Speaker's office. Mr. STEED. By necessity, I assume, in some degree, the work you are called upon to perform runs a very close parallel or relationship to the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress. Do you feel that there is any real duplication between the function of your Office and that Service? Mr. SULLIVAN. We think there are two distinct fields. The Legislative Reference Service is an academic research operation. They will give you a broad academic survey on almost any topic that you propose, whether it is juvenile delinquency or the decline of the railroads or any topic that may come within the legislative purview. Our job is a function of the legislative process from day to day. Where is this bill? When was it passed? Where is it now? Who is on the conference committee? Those are functions of the day-to-day operation which would be a burden on the doctors of philosophy in the Legislative Reference Service. They do not have the time to look up and see who is on the conference committee on the retraining bill, for example. Mr. STEED. Since your workload is obviously much heavier during the time Congress is in session than otherwise, can you give us some comment that would justify the requested increase and explain why you cannot take advantage of the slough-off after adjournment? Mr. SULLIVAN. In the first place, our sessions have been running 9 and 10 months a year recently, and when the session ends we barely have time to complete a vacation schedule for the entire staff before the session is back. We have about 3 weeks of wrapup when the session is over, completing the legislative lists and so on. Then we start our vacations and we have about 2 or 3 weeks of putting the House in order before the session starts again. We have a rule never to have more than two people out of the office even during the recess, and with the long sessions we have had in recent years we barely have time to complete a vacation schedule and do our preparatory work for the new session. Mr. STEED. What is the picture as to the number of people involved in the work 10 years ago and now? Mr. SULLIVAN. There has been only one addition to the staff. When we started in 1947 under the original resolution the membership of the staff was exactly the same. Some of these people have earned merit increases over the years so that the payroll is not the same in total but the staff is exactly the same since 1947, until we put on this new man in February of 1962. He is a specialist in legal and constitutional history. We are getting a whole new range of questions now which evolve from the decisions of the Supreme Court and change the whole tenor of American constitutional history in some directions. These are questions of constitutional and legislative history and research that we have never been confronted with before. Mr. STEED. Is that the sort of thing that would tend to place your function very close to the type of service the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress does? Mr. SULLIVAN. In that particular field, yes. They have an American Law Section over there, but these are matters for day-to-day decision, sometimes in the committee, sometimes even in debate on the floor. Mr. STEED. What has been the general trend in the volume of work you do as against the first and second years you were in existence compared to what it is now? Mr. SULLIVAN. I have those figures, sir. In 1950 our total load was 6,780 and that developed rather consistently up to a peak of about 14,000 in the 85th Congress, and now we have stabilized at somewhere between 14,000 and 15,000 a year, but it started, to answer your question, at about half of that in 1949 and 1950. Mr. STEED. I am sure most Members have been faced with some of the same problems I have, and it has been most helpful many times to call on your office for assistance to fill the requests that come to us from our constituents. I appreciate the service we have had and commend you for what I think is a very important job and, like some other things we have had to deal with in this bill, I think this type of activity, within the bounds of sound reasoning, justifies itself because it makes it possible for the American people to know a lot more about what is going on in addition to the other good that stems from it. I have always been very sympathetic to all reasonable efforts to enable the people of the country to have access to more and more information about the way their institutions function. Mr. SULLIVAN. That is very kind of you, Mr. Chairman. Our response from Members is pretty much in that vein. Hardly a week passes that someone does not call and thank us for services performed through a Member's office for a constituent. Mr. STEED. Again we want to thank you for your appearance. Mr. STEED. You may proceed, Mr. Roberts. TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE SERVICES Mr. ROBERTS. For the fiscal year 1963 we estimate $1,375,000, compared with $1,300,000 appropriated for 1962, or an increase of $75,000. Through February 28, 1962, we have expended $738,827, leaving a balance of $561,173. However, the bills we have paid are mostly only through January and therefore we will have to disburse for 5 more months through June 30, plus any pickup bills that may ay be rendered for service later. We believe if the telephone and telegraph bills continue to run at the level of the past months that the additional $75,000 will be needed for fiscal year 1963. |