Brad Sherman

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Illinois, the home of the greatest Republican President of the United States, for yielding me this time. I hearken back to the Grand Old Party that gave us Teddy Roosevelt and reflect on how far that party has fallen in the area of consumer protection, to the point where we now have the most anticonsumer administration in the history of this country, an administration so dedicated to stripping away all protections for consumers, so dedicated to unbridled corporate power, that they would trample on other values they claim to hold dear, all in an effort to expose consumers to some of the worst practices in the home mortgage market. The Grand Old Party claims to care about States' rights, and then they use the power of renegade regulators to strip away all State authority to protect consumers in home mortgage lending situations, when our land law and our mortgage law has traditionally been a matter of State jurisdiction. They claim to care about democracy, but instead of this major decision being made by the elected representatives of the people, it is made in the bowels of the bureaucracy. The gentleman from Oklahoma correctly points out that the committee of jurisdiction should be focused on this, but instead, a party dedicated to corporate power does not deal with this in the Committee on Financial Services where the gentleman from Illinois and I both sit. Mr. Chairman, there is one other value that is trampled on, and that is the value of fair market competition. Because what this OCC regulation does is it says that if you are a national bank, you do not have to abide by any of the State laws. But if you are one of one-half of the banks that is State chartered, well, then, you do. And frankly, some of those laws are rather Draconian. So it provides a very unfair advantage to one-half of the competitors, particularly the largest ones. Finally, it creates a race to the bottom among bank regulators. Now, the national banks are exempt from consumer regulation, so what do the State regulators do if they want market share, if they want to stay in business, if they want to have any banks to regulate? The pressure is on them: Race to the bottom. What we need instead is to get rid of this regulation, to return to a democratic process in which States can protect consumers and where, if we are going to have national standards, they are established by a Congress not looking to strip away all consumer protection but rather a Congress looking to provide a reasonable level of consumer protection and a reasonable level of access to credit. It is time to rein in the renegade regulators. One would have thought that the folks on the other side of the aisle would be saying just that.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, are we safer now than we were 4 years ago? We have spent billions and 1,000 of our best have died in Iraq. But spending blood and treasure without wisdom will not necessarily make us safer. And while we have as a unified Nation dealt with al Qaeda and Afghanistan, we have ignored the nuclear weapons programs of Iran and North Korea. Our policy toward those two greatest threats has been ``hear no evil, see no evil.'' The administration's idea on how to make us safe from those nuclear weapons as to North Korea is to beg and as to Iran is to beg the Europeans to beg on our behalf. The Bush administration refuses to use economic sanctions on Iran and those who subsidize North Korea because they do not want to inconvenience corporate America. Our invasion of Iraq is as if in the wake of Pearl Harbor we invaded Fascist Spain while ignoring Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight in memory of a sad event. July 20, 2004 marks the 30-year anniversary of Turkey's invasion and occupation of Cyprus. I would like to join my colleagues in observing this terrible anniversary, and offer some observations on recent events on Cyprus. On May 1, 2004, Cyprus became a member of the European Union as a divided and occupied nation, its northern part being under illegal Turkish military occupation. The potential reunification of Cyprus is at a critical juncture. Accordingly, the United States and the U.N. must re-examine the key provisions of the Annan Plan in an effort to remedy the deficiencies that now plague the plan and obstruct the potential reunification of Cyprus. The economic isolation of the Turkish Cypriots is not the fault of Greek Cypriots, as the Annan Plan wrongly assumes. Indeed, one of the most egregious aspects of the Annan Plan Report is the inclusion of terms such as ``pressure'' and ``isolation'' in reference to the Turkish Cypriots as if this were the fault of the Greek Cypriots. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Report fails to state the truth: The isolation of the Turkish Cypriots is caused by the presence of 35,000-40,000 Turkish troops and the establishment of the Green Line barbed wire fence across the face of Cyprus. Remove the Turkish troops now and the Green Line will disappear, and economic conditions in the north will improve dramatically. There is no embargo. There is the rule of law. The European Court held that trade goods from the occupied area could not be exported directly but had to go through the legitimate government of Cyprus and its Customs Service. Also, the relatively poor economic conditions in the occupied area have been caused in substantial part by the Turkish bureaucrats who were sent to the occupied area to run the economy. There is no justification for maintaining the Green Line's barbed wire fence and the artificial division of the island of Cyprus. When authorities opened parts of the Green Line in Nicosia, more than one million people crossed to visit the their former neighbors and countrymen. They have demonstrated beyond a doubt that the Greek and Turkish Cypriots can live and work together and that there is no security problem for Turkish Cypriots. There is a security problem for the Greek Cypriots: the 35,000-40,000 Turkish occupation troops. Those same troops, of course, are responsible for the economic isolation of the Turkish Cypriots, and thus all of these troops should be removed from the island. I hope that next year, when July 20 is upon us, there will be no reason to rise and decry a divided Cyprus. All parties should go back and rework the Annan Plan.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, this bill is packaged as a bill that requires the expensing of stock options that are issued to the top five executives of every company. This amendment allows the bill to achieve its stated purpose. The bill, in fact, when one reads the fine print, says that in calculating the value of options given to the top five executives of the company, one does not use either of the two formulas that are established. One does not use the best estimate. But one instead assumes that the stock does not go up or down in price over time, an absurd assumption, an assumption that yields a zero valuation for the stock options given to many top executives in this country. If we adopt this amendment, then the bill will at least achieve the purpose it sets, namely, that we will have a fair expense reported on the income statement for options given to the top five executives. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I come here as a CPA to fight for the independence of the FASB, an independent board that has given us generally accepted accounting principles which this bill would change to generally political accounting principles. America has to fight in the world for capital. In China, domestic companies just report pretty much whatever they want on their financial statements. America competes with tough, transparent, enforced, nonpolitical accounting standards. That image has been recently tarnished by recent scandals, and now we are being told to adopt generally political accounting principles that will further tarnish our image. We are told that it is difficult to estimate the expense amount of stock options, that accountants cannot do it. Well, it is actually a lot easier than things accountants have been doing for centuries involving amortization, obsolescence, depreciation, and dozens of other estimates. We are talking here about executive compensation, some $40 billion a year. Now, imagine if you gave a crumb to 999 people and a giant cake to one person. You could then come to the floor and talk about a broad- based distribution of carbohydrates. That is in effect what we have here. When the academics came before our committee, they explained roughly 30 percent of all stock options are in the hands of the top five executives, and the remaining 70 percent is spread very narrowly among other top executives. We have crumbs for the rank-and-file, almost all the options in the hands of the top executives. That is why 80 percent of CEO compensation in this country is in the form of stock options. Let us say, even though that phoney accounting was good, should we not do it for health care instead of executive compensation? Why not have an accounting principle that says companies can provide employee health care, and we are going to encourage them to do so, and they do not have to list it as an expense on their income statement? The users of accounting information do not want this bill. The Investment Company Institute representing the mutual funds, and Alan Greenspan, for example, have come out against it. Finally, this bill is absurd politics. It will hurt America in the fight for capital around the world. This bill, for the first time in history, would overrule the FASB. Let us vote it down.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle).

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. We are told by the gentleman from Pennsylvania that you should not list an item as expense on the income statement unless cash leaves the company. What if stock options were given to a health insurance company in return for providing health insurance to the employees? Everyone in this hall agrees that would be listed as an expense. What if a company issues stock in return for employee services or stock in return for supplies? Everyone agrees that would be listed as an expense. Again and again, when a company is getting supplies, when it is rewarding its rank-and-file employees, when it is providing health care, everybody agrees you list that as an expense, even if no cash leaves the treasury of the company. And, yet, we are asked to make one exception, and that is for executive compensation. Keep in mind the vast majority of these options are going to top executives. Thirty percent of the options are going to just the top five individuals. Now, there is a compromise that is set forward by the authors of this bill, and that is that at least the options going to the top five are going to be expensed. That is the compromise stated in the title of the bill. And yet, when you look at the details, you see that roughly a quarter of the companies in this country expense stock options. Some use the binomial method. Some use Black-Scholes. No one uses the phony method, also known as the minimum-value method, under which you say you are expensing stock options, but assume zero volatility, a unique approach used only to conceal what the bill would accomplish. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. America has to fight to get capital. China lets its domestic companies put anything they want on their financial statements. We respond with independent, nonpolitical, generally accepted accounting principles written by the FASB, an independent board. Under this bill, we would have generally political accounting principles. Capital will go abroad. No wonder perhaps the best group defending investors, Greenspan, Buffett, the mutual funds represented by the Investment Company Institute and the major pension plans representing public employees all oppose this bill. We are told that options are broadly based. Thirty percent of the options goes to the top five executives; the other 70 percent are narrowly spread among top executives. That is why 80 percent of CEO compensation in this country comes in the form of stock options. We are told that it is difficult to do the calculations to expense stock options, but accountants do much more difficult calculations already and have for generations. We are told that we should adopt an absurd accounting standard, one where if you give an option to the number five person at a company, that is an expense, but the number six person at the company gets an option that is not an expense. Only a political body like Congress would decide that the weights and measures varied dependent upon whether you are dealing with the number five executive or the number six executive. In sum, Mr. Chairman, imposing political standards in an effort to conceal executive compensation will tarnish America's image for objective financial reporting and hurt our efforts to attract capital from around the world.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First, let me deal with this view that somehow the World Bank is not the World Bank, it is separate agencies. It is true the World Bank has five different departments, but as the World Bank's own Web site says in referring to the two departments in question now, the IBRD and the IDA are run on the same lines. They share the same staff and headquarters, report to the same president and evaluate projects with the same standards. They go on to say the IDA simply takes the money out of a different drawer. So, if we are funding the World Bank, we funding the World Bank. This vote on this amendment is our only chance this year to vote to put economic pressure on the government of Iran that is developing nuclear weapons. It is the only chance we have this year to respond to the World Bank and to show how we feel when they send our money to a government that our State Department has identified as the number one state sponsor of terrorism. It is our only chance to respond to the investigation of Senator Lugar, who has shown that many experts estimate that between 5 percent and 25 percent of the money we send to the World Bank is misused; and it is our best opportunity to vote to increase child survival and to save children's lives, whether they are dying from diarrhea or dying from diseases for which immunization is possible. This is our chance to speak as a caucus and to say that time for business as usual is over. We can walk out of here saying, well, we disagree with the World Bank, but there is nothing we can do about it. But then we have to go back to our districts, when a nuclear mushroom cloud explodes first in a test in Iran and then, God forbid, in a hostile use by the Iranian government, and defend our votes to support a bill, part of the money of which ended up in Tehran. I see the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy) here, and I do not know whether he wishes time. I commend the gentleman for his efforts to make sure that we deal with the World Bank, and I appreciate his support for this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. I introduced this amendment on behalf of myself and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen). The gentlewoman is the chairwoman of the subcommittee that deals with the Middle East on the Committee on International Relations. I am the ranking member of that subcommittee of that committee that deals with terrorism and nuclear proliferation. We are both concerned that the World Bank has decided to make loans of $359 million to the government of Iran. We are also both concerned that we have an opportunity here to help the Child Survival Account, to save perhaps millions of children's lives simply by providing it more funding than this bill provides, to those programs that provide immunization, those that treat diarrhea and other easily curable diseases. So we see an opportunity both to deal with the World Bank's decision and to increase child survival. Mr. Chairman, just a couple of months ago, the World Bank, over American objections, approved $359 million for Iran. They did so at the same time that the IAEA was deliberating not whether Iran was developing nuclear weapons, we all know that they are, but the degree to which they should be sanctioned for their clear violation of nuclear proliferation control agreements. Now, the government of Iran spends the minimum necessary on domestic projects in order to stay in power. This $359 million allows them to fund those minimal domestic projects. Then the government of Iran uses what is left over to develop nuclear weapons and to support terror. It is the number one state sponsor of terror as identified by the United States State Department. So this bill as presently written puts money in the World Bank. One quarter of the World Bank's assets and funds, roughly, are those of the American taxpayer, and then $359 million is going from the World Bank to Iran. We need to make it clear that Members do not have to go back to their districts and defend sending American tax dollars to Tehran at a time when they are developing nuclear weapons. We also need to help the child survival accounts. I would have wanted to cut $359 million from the World Bank and add a full $359 million to child survival. As a result of the outlay rules and timing of outlays, this amendment was in order only if we increased child survival by $290 million. So if my colleagues are fiscal conservatives, this amendment saves the government $69 million, but, more importantly, it funds some of the very best U.S. AID programs. It provides additional money for child survival and maternal health. It provides for those very effective treatments for easily curable and preventable diseases. This amendment enhances the bill. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen).

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I voted against H.R. 4418--The Customs Border Security Act of 2004--because I did not feel a bill of such importance should be considered under suspension of the rules.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. SHERMAN. I am, Mr. Speaker, in its present form.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, under this motion, the bill would be amended so that we would have a $25,000 limit on the amount that any single committee would spend on postage during fiscal 2005. Before I discuss why such a limit is necessary, I will enter two letters into the Record. National Taxpayers Union, July 12, 2004. Hon. Brad Sherman, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Congressman Sherman: On behalf of the 350,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU), I am responding to your request for NTU's views on a proposal to limit each Committee's expenditure on postage to the sum of no more than $25,000 per year. Even as overall postage and printing expenditures have declined from the $100 million-plus levels once seen in Congresses 15 years ago, franking remains a source of fiscal and political interest to NTU. The already-generous limits governing the use of postage by House Members' personal offices were lifted in 1999, while new computer technologies have allowed lawmakers to maximize the impact of their mailings in ways that were not feasible as recently as ten years ago. Today, it is still possible for an incumbent House Member to spend as much on franking in a year as a challenger spends on his or her entire campaign. Rules regarding the content and proximity of mailings to elections only modestly offset this tremendous political advantage. During our 15-year campaign on behalf of franking reform, NTU has focused on Member offices because they are the primary source of unsolicited mass mailings and associated expenditures. We were thus surprised to learn of a single Committee's FY 2005 postage request for $250,000 in the Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill. NTU is greatly concerned over the prospect of any Committee in Congress receiving postage funding in these amounts, as it would mark a significant expansion of the franking privilege that had traditionally been utilized in large part by Member offices. Such concern is irrespective of the immediate policy issue at hand or the parties involved. If the House sets a budget precedent now, taxpayers will very shortly face the unwelcome prospect of tens of millions in addition franking expenditures in future Congresses. Equally important, Americans would be forced to contend with a new set of issues affecting the balance of the political process. Years of efforts from groups like NTU and reformers within Congress have yielded an improved, yet imperfect, franking disclosure process. Despite instances of poor recordkeeping, inadequate disclosure, and overly-permissive rules, today constituents at least have limited access to basic franking information--giving them a chance to hold House Members politically accountable for the unsolicited mass mailings they send into their districts at taxpayer expense. Allowing such a practice at the Committee level, where ties between Members and constituents are less direct, would undermine even this limited progress. It is especially galling that Congress would even consider an additional taxpayer-financed expansion of the franking privilege under the current fiscal and political circumstances. Amidst FY 2005 budget deficit estimates approaching $400 billion, and a campaign finance law that further hamstrings political challengers, allowing such a huge postage funding request for any Committee will further reinforce Congress's reputation as an institution incapable of self-restraint. Given the historic patterns of Committee expenditures, a $25,000 annual limit on postage for each Committee is more than adequate for any legitimate communication needs. Seemingly minor budget requests such as the one before Congress now can have major consequences for taxpayers in the not-too-distant future. For this reason alone, the House of Representatives can and should restrict Committee postage expenditures--and a $25,000 annual limit is a reasonable first step. Please feel free to contact me should you have any additional questions regarding our position. Sincerely, Pete Sepp, Vice President for Communications.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, just to quickly respond to the gentleman from Georgia who argues that these mass mailings by committees are justified. If we do not have a limit, they will grow. What was a $500,000 request this time may be a $1 million request or a $2 million request for the 109th Congress. Never before the 108th Congress has any committee ever needed more than $10,000. The idea of having a field hearing as a reason to mail out a districtwide mailing, or several districtwide mailings, is relatively absurd. If the field hearing is really of interest, the press will publicize that field hearing; and people will come if they are interested. A field hearing has never in the history of this House up until this Congress been used as an excuse for mass propaganda into a Member's district; and if the gentleman thinks it should be, that is a revolutionary change. It is not one I would like to see in the 109th Congress.

Mr. SHERMAN. I thank the gentleman from Virginia for yielding me this time, Mr. Chairman. I rise to deal with one aspect of this bill, and that is that it does not impose, as I would like it to, a $25,000 limit on the amount of postage spent by any one committee in any one year. That would be $50,000 a Congress or $25,000 as an annual limit. After all, in the 107th Congress, encompassing 2002 and 2001, the average amount spent by the highest-spending committee was $6,807. In fact, in looking at the entire history of this House, I cannot find an example where any committee prior to the 108th Congress ever needed to spend more than $10,000 on postage. A $25,000 limit seems like it provides plenty of room, particularly for a country that faces the kinds of fiscal problems that we face. And yet, why would I even think it necessary in a House where no committee had until the 108th Congress spent even $10,000 on postage, why would I think it necessary to come to this floor to seek a $25,000 annual limit? The reason is that one committee, and this could be the opening of Pandora's box, decided in the 108th Congress to engage in a program of mass mailings in selected Members' districts. That committee, in the 107th Congress, spent an average of $2,483, that is less than $2,500 on postage. But in the 108th Congress, they came before the Committee on House Administration and asked for $250,000 for postage for 1 year, and in fact asked for $.5 million on postage for the 2 years making up the 108th Congress. So think of this. This is a 4,445 percent increase over what that same committee had requested for the prior Congress. But if that does not bother the fiscal conservatives in this room, reflect that it was a 9,968 percent increase over what that committee actually spent in the prior Congress. Now, in fact, the Committee on House Administration did not provide for this one authorizing committee to have $.5 million for postage, but they did provide $50,000 for 2003 and another $50,000 for 2004. And this committee in fact spent $49,587 on postage just in one invoice in December 2003. And, in fact, in order to have something to mail for $49,000 in postage, they spent $40,000 printing the material that was mailed, just to send out material into a very few Members' districts. Now, the affected Members did not, to my knowledge, have any objection to the contents. But mark my words, this is the beginning. If we pass this legislative approps bill with no limits, then this one authorizing committee may come and ask for $.5 million on postage for the 109th Congress. They may ask for $2 million or $3 million in postage. Other committees may get in on the deal, and then we may have a circumstance where the Chair of each committee has a multi-million dollar postage slush fund to do mailings in the different Members' districts. Now, how is this different for the Member communications that we are all aware of? Because we all mail into our own districts newsletters, et cetera. Well, first, each Member gets a limited MRA. In contrast, the amount that could be provided under this leg approps bill for a single committee to do mass mailings is unlimited. Secondly, and I think this is the most important difference, every mailing says published and mailed and printed at government expense, so that the recipients of the mailing can hold the author accountable. If I am sending out useless mailings to my constituents, they can circle that line and remember it when the ballot box is in play. In contrast, if a Chair mails into my district or mails into another Member's district, and the recipients of that mailing think that it is useless, that it is highly political, that it is propaganda, that it is on a subject they are not interested in, what recourse do they have? I guess they could pick up and move to the district of the Chair who sent out the mailing. But assuming they are unwilling to move from one part of the country to the other, they have no recourse. So once we have Chairs sending out mailings, these mailings have no check on them. There is no accountability, and there is no way for the recipients to register their belief that the mailing is useless. In addition, MRA funds are distributed equally to Members regardless of their political party. But if we see $.5 million appropriated by this bill allocated to a particular chairman to do mass mailings into Members' districts, that will be entirely money for one party and zero for Members of the other party. Now, I want to stress my proposal here is bipartisan. In fact, it is designed to affect Democratic chairmen. That is to say, it affects the 2005 fiscal year, when I hope and expect Democratic Chairs will be the ones that will be able to do these mass mailings. But I do not care whether it is Democrats or Republicans. We should not have mass mailings going out by Chairs. That is why I would like to enter into the Record a letter from the National Taxpayers Union and another from Citizens Against Government Waste. Each of them says that we ought to limit to $25,000 a year as a first step the amount spent on postage by any committee. This marks the first time that any legislative proposal of mine has been formally endorsed by the National Taxpayers Union and by Citizens Against Government Waste. I know that people will want to come to this floor and reflexively vote against any motion to recommit, at least members of the majority, but your vote determines whether you endorse opening Pandora's box to unlimited mailings. National Taxpayers Union, Alexandria, VA, July 12, 2004. Hon. Brad Sherman, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Congressman Sherman: On behalf of the 350,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU), I am responding to your request for NTU's views on a proposal to limit each Committee's expenditure on postage to the sum of no more than $25,000 per year. Even as overall postage and printing expenditures have declined from the $100 million-plus levels once seen in Congress 15 years ago, franking remains a source of fiscal and political interest to NTU. The already-generous limits governing the use of postage by House Members' personal offices were lifted in 1999, while new computer technologies have allowed lawmakers to maximize the impact of their mailings in ways that were not feasible as recently as ten years ago. Today, it is still possible for an incumbent House Member to spend as much on franking in a year as a challenger spends on his or her entire campaign. Rules regarding the content and proximity of mailings to elections only modestly offset this tremendous political advantage. During our 15-year campaign on behalf of franking reform, NTU has focused on Member offices because they are the primary source of unsolicited mass mailings and associated expenditures. We were thus surprised to learn of a single Committee's FY 2005 postage request for $250,000 in the Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill. NTU is greatly concerned over the prospect of any Committee in Congress receiving postage fundings in these amounts, as it would mark a significant expansion of the franking privilege that had traditionally been utilized in large part by Member offices. Such concern is irrespective of the immediate policy issue at hand or the parties involved. If the House sets a budget precedent now, taxpayers will very shortly face the unwelcome prospect of tens of millions in additional franking expenditures in future Congresses. Equally, important Americans would be forced to contend with a new set of issues affecting the balance of the political process. Years of efforts from groups like NTU and reformers within Congress have yielded an improved, yet imperfect, franking disclosure process. Despite instances of poor recordkeeping, inadequate disclosure, and overly-permissive rules, today constituents at least have limited access to basic franking information--giving them a chance to hold House Members politically accountable for the unsolicited mass mailings they send into their districts at taxpayer expense. Allowing such a practice at the Committee level, where ties between Members and constituents are less direct, would undermine even this limited progress. It is especially galling that Congress would even consider an additional taxpayer-financed expansion of the franking privilege under the current fiscal and political circumstances. Amidst FY 2005 budget deficit estimates approaching $400 billion, and a campaign finance law that further hamstrings political challengers, allowing such a huge postage funding request for any Committee will further reinforce Congress's reputation as an institution incapable of self-restraint. Given the historical patterns of Committee expenditures, a $25,000 annual limit on postage for each Committee is more than adequate for any legitimate communication needs. Seemingly minor budget requests such as the one before Congress now can have major consequences for taxpayers in the not-too-distant future. For this reason alone, the House of Representatives can and should restrict Committee postage expenditures--and a $25,000 annual limit is a reasonable first step. Please feel free to contact me should you have an additional questions regarding our position. Sincerely, Pete Sepp, Vice President for Communications.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The OCC gets its $500 million budget from the banks it regulates. It is financially accountable to the banks rather than Congress. That is why we had to offer an amendment dealing with the Department of Judiciary's budget. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez), who spoke with such passion and wisdom just a second ago, introduced in our committee, when we expressed our budget views and estimates, language criticizing these OCC regulations. And that language passed 34 to 28 with the support of the relevant subcommittee chairman, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Kelly). I would point out that now it is time for the Committee on Financial Services and this Congress not to just express our views but to legislate. That is why I will withdraw this amendment and hope that our committee will act instead of simply expressing views. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw the amendment.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, we need to defeat this rule so that I can offer an amendment to simply say that no committee in any year can spend more than $25,000 on just postage. That would be $50,000 a Congress. Why would such a limit be needed? Why is the $25,000 limit needed? After all, in the year 2002, the average committee spent only $2,104 on postage. The largest amount spent by any committee during the 107th Congress on an annualized basis was $6,807. I know the gentlewoman from New York cited the amounts requested by committees. They requested a bit more than these figures. But when we look at what they actually spent, no committee needed to spend in the average year more than $6,807 in the 107th Congress. But a new phenomenon has arisen. The Committee on Resources has decided it needs more resources. In the 107th Congress it spent $2,483 per year on postage. For the 108th Congress they requested a quarter million dollars per year for postage; $500,000, half a million dollars, for the whole 108th Congress. Think of this from a fiscal responsibility standpoint. That is a 4,445 percent increase over what they requested before. Maybe that is not too bad. After all, 4,445 percent increase in the cost of a government agency, no fiscally responsible person would object to that. But do not compare it to what they requested last Congress. Compare it to what they actually spent. Then it is a 9,968 percent increase. Maybe somebody with some fiscal conservatism would be concerned about that, a committee which in the last Congress spent $2,483 on postage now wants to spend $250,000 on postage. We do not know what they are spending all this money for. It is hard to get the information. But we do know that last quarter, just in 3 months, the committee spent $49,587 on postage, and when they spend money on postage, they inevitably have to spend money on printing, and, yes, they spent $40,732 on printing. What did they use the money for? Not to carry on committee business in the sense of telling the press what the committee is doing, writing to experts to see if they can gather information. This is not individually sent-out letters, no. These were mass mailings into individual Members' districts, $250,000 per year. What kind of mailings went out? Here is an example that was referred to by the gentlewoman from New York. We will see that this mailing went out to Arizona. Our information is that it went it to the gentleman from Arizona's (Mr. Renzi) district, who happens to be one of the most targeted Members in the entire Congress by one political party. It praises three Members of the Arizona delegation for cosponsoring a bill, and if we read it very carefully, it attacks or implicitly criticizes a fourth Member of the Arizona delegation for not cosponsoring this bill. I might add it is a terrible bill, but the mailing praises those who cosponsor it. Our information is that it went just to the gentleman from Arizona's (Mr. Renzi) district; so the fact that it implicitly criticizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva) is not of great significance unless he has statewide ambitions I am unaware of. In any case, what does this mailing do? It lauds a Member. Some of these mailings are going out in violation or possible violation of the blackout period. So we are used to not sending out mailings 90 days before an election. Apparently the committee chairmen can. This mailing seems rather benign in that it lauds a Member, and it does so only on one issue. Mark my words: If we do not draw the line now, the next piece will be a hit piece, and it will not be limited to one issue. It will not even be limited to a committee's jurisdiction. It will be an attack piece sent out a day or a week before an election. How is this all different from the Member communications that we are aware of? Because many of us send mail to our constituents. First, a Member gets a limited Members' representational allowance. We are responsible to our districts, to the recipients of that mail. If the mail is informative, then I can tell my constituents we sent them informative mail that came out of our budget, which we could otherwise have used to hire personnel. But a committee chairman is not responsible to the people who receive the mailing, so they could look at it and say this is wildly uninformative. It is a terrible waste of money. It says it was paid for at taxpayer expense. I do not like it, but it does not matter because my Member did not send it. It comes out of the budget of some Washington committee. Second, the MRA funds are at least distributed relatively equally by party. Each Member gets their own account. This $500,000 went solely to one political party. And it is not just $500,000. If we do not draw the line now, it will be 5 million, it will be 25 million. It will not be one committee; it will be every committee. Members also know what information their constituents need to receive. Committee chairmen, with all due respect to the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), I do not think he is an expert at what information people in the gentleman from Arizona's (Mr. Renzi) district need to hear. Then we are going to be told that these are to announce field hearings. I might add this piece of mail has nothing to do with any field hearing. But we could have a rule that we have these slush funds, but only if we are announcing a field hearing. A field hearing should be a field hearing, not an excuse for propaganda, not a district-wide town hall on behalf of an endangered Member or a targeted Member. Finally, I know here in Washington that our targeted watchdog groups publish lists. They criticize those who spend money on postage and printing. They wonder whether that is a good use of government resources. Well, wait a minute. None of these groups caught this. They will attack a Member for spending $100,000 on postage. How about $250,000 on postage? We need to do something about it, and we need to do something about it today. If you vote for this rule, you are voting for giant political slush funds, not just of half a million dollars, but for as large as they are done by whichever party controls this House. You cannot say you are going to deal with it tomorrow if you vote against dealing with it today. Vote against the rule.