You would convert that to office space is what I understand. I don't see that happening, and maybe I misread that. But, boy, no windows. It is going to be pretty miserable converted space if that is what you have in mind. Tell me that I misread that.

Mr. HANTMAN. You have mentioned, Mr. Moran, there are several potential options.

Mr. MORAN. Yes.

Mr. HANTMAN. I fully agree with you that all of these options need to be explored. We need to hold hearings on them, and there needs to be a lot of discussion with folks on the House side.

Mr. MORAN. But the ones I mentioned now in the early time frame, within 1 to 5 years, we need to be making that kind of decision, right?

Mr. HANTMAN. If that is the decision to be made. But there are other options-whether or not the House chooses to convert parking areas into offices by punching windows in the outside walls, by creating atriums. The light comes down on the inside.

The concern about central space and being in dark areas is a concern with that philosophy, unless you can insert windows and atria so that light does, in fact, come down into it. Alternatives to doing that are certainly building new buildings on alternative sites. Those are some of the options that would be presented as part of the master plan.

MADISON BUILDING

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Obey mentioned something that you did allude to, although you made it clear you did not look into it and didn't investigate the possibility, but the Madison Building was originally intended to be House office space, wasn't it? That is a foregone conclusion. I guess that is water over the dam, at this point. Is that what you are going to suggest?

Mr. HANTMAN. I was reading the book by George White, my predecessor, on that. He indicated when he first became Architect of the Capitol and saw the plans for the Madison Building, he indicated that really wants to be a House office building, not a library building. He says in his description in that book that he was torn from pillar to post for having suggested something that was already going to happen.

The reality is, from a location perspective, that site certainly makes sense for a House office building.

Chairman LEWIS. Was he the guy who designed the two elevators I was talking about a while ago?

Mr. HANTMAN. He may have been involved in that.

PARKING

Mr. MORAN. It was Sam Rayburn's ghost. But let me ask you little more about parking. These are going to be some mundane questions, but I think members would like to know.

First of all, what will happen to the parking? When we have a late night vote, we all scurry into that lot on the East Front of the Capitol. Is that lot going to be maintained? What happens to that parking area? No? Don't get into that?

Chairman LEWIS. You can get into it. It is going to disappear.

Mr. MORAN. That is what I thought, so I am wondering what happens?

Mr. HANTMAN. Well, certainly in terms of the East Front of the plaza, the idea of having a respectful entrance to the Capitol itself is one of the goals of the project.

Mr. MORAN. And us driving in there and parking is disrespectful, is that what you are suggesting? You don't need to answer that, I know the answer. So we lose that parking.

Of course, during our discussion of another House office building, we have to consider the time it will take for Members in that building to get all the way over to the Capitol to vote within a reasonable time frame. We have some serious issues once we get past the Capitol Visitors Center.

CVC VISITOR CAPACITY

But let me ask you, of the people that come into the CVC, visitors, tourists, how many do you expect to actually go into the Capitol building itself?

Mr. HANTMAN. An excellent question, Mr. Moran. The Capitol Visitor Center was designed as an adjunct to the Capitol building itself.

Mr. MORAN. Not a substitute.

Mr. HANTMAN. Absolutely not. But from a fire and life safety perspective, the Capitol itself can only accommodate approximately 2,000 people per hour in addition to when the House is in session, the Senate is in session, people are in the Chambers, there are people meeting, because of the number of means of egress and the safety.

Mr. MORAN. I understand that. The reason I am asking the question is that you are going to have many more than that. It doesn't make sense to build a CVC unless you are planning on many more tourists than the number who can possibly fit into the Capitol during that time frame.

Mr. HANTMAN. I think we have all seen that the capacity of the building to comfortably accommodate visitors has been exceeded already. With Washington being one of the 10 top tourist destinations in the country, the numbers visiting the Capitol are certainly not going to go down.

Mr. MORAN. So, Alan, what do we do with these thousands of people that are in the Capitol Visitor Center, who want to see the Capitol itself, but realistically we can't move them into the Capitol?

Mr. HANTMAN. I think what is going to happen, we met with representatives of the tour industry and have more meetings planned with them. I think the concept of not having everybody come at the same peak time is what the industry is going to self-regulate. Because if they know that we can only accommodate 2,000 people going into the Capitol building safely per hour, they will try to schedule it earlier in the morning, later in the day. Alternative weeks when the kids are off from school, that means senior citizens groups may not come. All those things I think will be scheduled, self-regulating.

But the Visitor Center itself, Mr. Moran, has been designed to comfortably accommodate 4,000 to 5,000 people at a time, because

to have lunch, to see the exhibits. After their tour they may come down and do the same things. They will have a place to meet and get out of the weather.

Mr. MORAN. Well, I appreciate that. But let me underscore what I am getting at here. The Capitol Visitor Center is designed, and we are putting half a billion dollars into this, to accommodate twice as many people at any point in time, twice as many people, as can fit into the Capitol building itself.

Mr. HANTMAN. That is correct.

Mr. MORAN. That is correct. And it seems to me that we are creating a situation where we are going do have an awful lot of frustrated tourists who are either going to have to wait in very long lines or give up on actually seeing the Capitol and be restricted to a virtual tour of the Capitol in the CVC. That is just the reality. We have built this building to accommodate twice as many people as can possibly fit into the Capitol at any time.

CVC VISITOR TIME TICKETING

Mr. HANTMAN. I think part of the issue, as I started to allude to before, Mr. Moran, is the tour industry is going to have to regulate, just like the White House has time ticketing, just like the Holocaust Museum has time ticketing. My sense is we are going to have to go to time ticketing. If you don't have a ticket, you get it for another day when you do have a ticket so you don't have to come and expect to get into a building that is already crowded.

Mr. OBEY. Let me just interject, I hope to goodness we are not modeling ourselves after the White House tours. They have incredibly scaled back and shut down the ability of tourists to go in that place. If you don't believe it, just ask my constituents every day. Mr. HANTMAN. No, in fact we will have enough screening to be able to comfortably accommodate the 2,000 people per hour going in the Capitol building itself. We will have the capacity for it. And those people who don't get tickets, as I said before, Mr. Moran, this is not meant as a substitute. The reality is during peak seasons you will probably have more people than can comfortably be accommodated in the building itself. The issue then will be people will be able to come and see the exhibits, they will be able to see whatever statues we put in there, whatever artwork, get on the computers that we have in the exhibition area to look at what bills are being worked on, look at the virtual theaters in the exhibition area. If they haven't got a time ticket to go in, they will be able to have an experience there at the very least.

CAPITOL BUILDING VISITOR CAPACITY

Mr. MORAN. Okay, now this is what I am getting at. You articulate it fine, but the fact is that we are going to have to refuse half as many people as come to the Capitol for this experience. It is going to average about an hour's experience, and in that hour we will have about 5,000 people in the Visitor Center, 4,000 to 5,000. We can accommodate about 2,000 people in the Capitol, if we are lucky, and that is about maximum. But we built this building to attract these people, to kind of lure them in to see the Capitol, and half of them we are going to have to tell them they have to visit

Now, I don't think it is enough to just say well, that is your tour operator's problem. I think we created a situation that is bound to frustrate the visitors. Every one of these visitors is a constituent of some Member of Congress, and they are going there and they need to understand half of them are going to have to accept a virtual tour of the Capitol because we don't have the capacity to bring in more than half the number of people we have built the capacity to lure into the CVC.

Mr. HANTMAN. I think that is why it is important to get the staff on, the executive director and key staff, so they can create the web sites that are needed to be able to say okay, this is when tickets are available, this is when tickets are not available.

Mr. MORAN. But, Alan, I am sorry to interrupt you, but the problem is we have a building that the taxpayer has built, has paid for, designed to accommodate twice as many people as the Capitol can accommodate, so we need to bring them in. Otherwise, we are only making half of the use of the CVC that we have paid for. So we want to maximize the use of the CVC. But if we do that, we are deliberately attracting twice as many people as we can give a real experience of visiting the Capitol to.

Mr. HANTMAN. Without the Visitor Center, Mr. Moran, we have had lines of 3, 32, even 4 hours. People were waiting to get into the Capitol, without the Visitor Center. What we have tried to do is give them space, out of the weather, to wait for their tours. By going into the Visitors Center, they'll have rest rooms, they'll have dining facilities that they have never had before.

Mr. MORAN. I hear what you are saying. I am just afraid that half of the people that come to the Capitol are going to have to content themselves with a virtual tour, not the real tour.

I won't belabor it any more. You can see my point. It has been a source of frustration with regard to the CVČ for some time, but you are doing what you were told to do.

Chairman LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Moran.

Mr. TAYLOR. I appreciate your patience, Mr. Taylor.

CAPITOL VIRTUAL TOURS

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As the chairman of the Legislative Branch Subcommittee for 4 years and one who takes thousands of constituents, students especially, through the Capitol, I actually appreciate the effort that you made with the accommodations for twice as many students.

I will have some questions about how it got so expensive in a moment, but I would like to commend you, because in taking students through, I went to the point where I started doing it at night, because it was the only time you could really have an experience where a student could be told about the importance of the Capitol, different parts of the Capitol, where you could be heard and have a chance to see.

What we have had in the past, and this is not a downplay of the good job that our redcoats do there, because they do the best they can in the present circumstances, many tours go through, for example, the old Supreme Court downstairs which was originally the Senate Chamber. And walking through that, unless the knowledge

the students, they don't know whether they are in the Capitol or the Holiday Inn as far as any real experience.

That is a shame, because in my opinion that is one of the most important sites. Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated twice there, it was the first meeting of the Joint Session of Congress in the Capitol building itself, and on and on.

I think from what you are saying, the virtual tour is very important, because it is a chance to educate the student, prepare the student or the visitor before going to the Capitol. Then he or she can see and get more value from the historical sites that he or she visits, and that is a real plus. That will take more time than going through the Capitol.

Creating the ability to go through the virtual tour, either with the film or other exhibits, you will shorten your tour and make it more worthwhile in the Capitol. That is a very positive thing. So I commend all of the people that are working in that area. We often did a lot of ours outside the Capitol, if weather permitted, to talk about it before we went in, because it was always crowded inside the Capitol.

CVC INCREASED COSTS

I would ask one question though, Mr. Chairman, which is when I supported this project and served with you, Mr. Chairman, when some of the things were actually being talked about some years ago, because of the reasons I just mentioned at that time I remember we talked about $60 million, and later we talked about $100 million, and now we are talking about $500 million, and maybe

more.

I read the document here about some of the reasons why the thing grew. What inspired those reasons? Was it the Senate desiring more space, as they are often accused of doing? Was it the police desiring more space to protect us? They almost have now as many policemen, Mr. Chairman, as we have in the City of Tampa or Pittsburgh, twice as big as the Tennessee Highway Patrol. I could go on and on. They have put together horse stables, and literally over 100-some cars and things for a stationary site. When I was chairman, I fought it. After 9/11, things just sort of fell apart. But I digress.

Let me ask you, was it the police? What inspired these changes that we have? I have a paper that says "reasons for the construction costs," and that talks about the construction reasons. But what inspired those reasons? It had to be one of those areas. Maybe it was a combination.

Mr. HANTMAN. Thank you, Congressman.

The project, again, was originally conceived of as a Visitor Center with future expansion wings. We were directed basically to dig as large a future expansion opportunity for the House and the Senate as we could for as yet undetermined functions. So we created the shell space on the House and the Senate side, about 85,000 square feet on either side, for a future use to be determined. So it was essentially the leadership on both sides that indicated what those uses would be and when they would essentially be constructed.

Basically, the dollars for the construction of those expansion areas came after 9/11, and the programs that we worked on were