Mr. Dreier. We are hearing from the Internet, and we have heard from Jim Warren of Woodside, California, on e-mail who says any documents prepared by congressional staff or Members using a word processor should be placed on free public access congressional Internet file servers. He goes on to say, technology now make its possible to empower representative democracy by allowing citizens the option of being fully and timely informed. Please do so.

Why don't we go right now to our colleague, Scott McInnis, who has not been with us for a few minutes. Are you still out there in space, Scott?

Mr. McInnis. That is right, Mr. Chairman. I am.

Mr. Dreier. There you are.

Mr. McInnis. Mr. Chairman, that is correct. I am afraid if I get any closer to this microphone I am going to eat it.

Mr. Dreier. Well, we have just zoomed in on you.

Mr. McInnis. Mr. Chairman, the comments we have heard from the witnesses I felt were particularly useful. It is interesting. I think we are going to see a debate in the future to see whether we should have remote voting. But let me stress again the opportunity that this has allowed us out in rural America or out in America outside the Beltway, to participate.

You know, I didn't even_never was able to set foot in the United States Capitol until the year that I ran for election to the U.S. Congress. And this kind of allows us to step inside your chambers there, Mr. Chairman, and bring it home.

And as I mentioned earlier, for a district this size, what we did years ago was really in our districts to go to college, you had to go to the population centers. Now we have our community college system like the Pueblo Community College. And to go to participate in politics you had to go to the population centers. I think we have huge advantageous now that we are reaching out, much as we did with the community college system, we are now reaching out into America.

I think there is an issue, I can say that the advancement of e-mail in our offices. My particular office, Mr. Chairman, looked at e-mail. We certainly have the computer capability. The difficulty we found was that we would increase, we thought, by a factor of 30 to 40 percent, the amount of inflow to our offices.

Now in our offices we get a thousand pieces of mail a day in the four district offices here in Colorado and the office in Washington. Our concern was that we didn't have the staff capability to respond to the e-mail, and we, as you know, Mr. Chairman, and as my colleagues sitting there know, that all of us try to respond to the mail that we get in. So I think actually the increased participation will increase staff requirements.

So there are going to be costs involved but, Mr. Chairman, I am going to have to excuse myself from the committee because I am going to get back and head into the mountains. But I do want to tell you thank you very much for allowing us here from Colorado to participate. And I look forward to seeing you next week. And I can't help but put a plug in. We still have great snow out here, so we want all of you people from California to continue to spend your money out here in Colorado. But then after you are done spending money, we want you to go back home.

Mr. Dreier. We understand that, Scott. Let me ask, before you leave, you said that you projected that there would be a 30 to 40 percent increase with e-mail. Has that been the case?

Mr. McInnis. Mr. Chairman, another technical problem. They didn't switch on your mike back there, and I couldn't read your lips fast enough.

Mr. Dreier. I was just asking, Scott, if you had, in fact, seen a 30 to 40 percent increase in the inflow because of the use of e-mail in your office? You said you had projected that.

Mr. McInnis. Mr. Chairman, that is a projection based on the number of inquiries we have had from the district, and when we talk to people, would they utilize it, the response was pretty strongly overwhelmingly yes. But we felt that if we were not able to respond to these individual e-mails that we would have a lot of disappointed folks. It is kind of like in Colorado years ago, Mr. Chairman, when I sat on the Colorado Tourism Board, we put in a 1-800 number to assist tourists that would like to come to Colorado and we found that we were immediately, immediately got an overflow into the 1-800 number and we had a lot of people that were very upset by the fact not that we offered a 1-800 number but by the fact that every time they called they got a busy signal. So it ended up being really a disaster for us.

I think we are going to have to very carefully allocate staff, because we still have to maintain the ability to respond individually to our constituents.

Mr. Dreier. Well, thank you very much, Scott. And Dr. May, we appreciate_

Mr. McInnis. You will have to switch on a mike for me, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Dreier. My mike is switched on. Can you hear me now?

Mr. McInnis. Thank you. I hear you now.

Mr. Dreier. I was saying something nice about you.

Mr. McInnis. Turn on the mike when you do that.

Mr. Dreier. I usually leave it off. It was a very brief comment though, Scott.

Let me thank Dr. May and those at Pueblo Community College and to say that our colleague, Mr. Beilenson, would like to raise a question with you, Scott.

Mr. Beilenson. It is not so much a question as a couple of little statements. One is it is nice that you are out there in Pueblo. It evokes some memories. I spent a night in Pueblo back in 1954, when I was hitchhiking around the country, and it was a nice little town then and it is probably 10 times as large now.

The other_

Mr. McInnis. That is about the time I was born, by the way.

Mr. Beilenson. Probably before you were born.

The other thing I wanted to say is this_to my colleagues who may not know it. My friend and colleague, Mr. McInnis, represents the most beautiful district in the country. Our family on two occasions has had the opportunity to take week-long or actually 10-day long horseback trips in the La Garita Wheeler Wilderness and the Weminuche Wilderness. And why do I say this? It is only because these are beautiful places, Mr. Chairman, and for those 8 to 10 days we were literally up there above 11,000 feet. We never saw another single human being that was not in our group. That appeals to me a lot more; not being able to hear from millions of people in contrast to ways that we are talking about today, where 550,000, 600,000 people will be at us with e-mail.

I think my friend, Scott, did the right thing in not starting e-mail in his office. We would be inundated with messages, and I think it is nice to be able to appreciate and to be in a district such as his and not have to have our constituents get at us all the time. You know what I mean, Scott?

Mr. Dreier. You have made a very clear statement on the process of deliberative democracy, Tony.

Scott?

Mr. McInnis. Mr. Chairman, I want to again thank you for the participation, and again, as I said, now I am off going to the district to cover a number of events. But thank you very much. I want to thank the witnesses and thank my good friend, Mr. Beilenson. He is always welcome to the high mountains of Colorado.

Mr. Dreier. Thank you very much, and thanks again to all at Pueblo Community College.

Porter? Do you have any further comments?

Mr. Goss. Very briefly, thank you, Mr. Chairman. The observation I have about the e-mail is that we opted not to put it on our home page after checking with Members who had put it on their home page. We just simply don't have the resources to deal with it.

But the other question that comes up, something that was triggered in the comments, I think this is going to go well beyond just the structure and the way we do business in Congress. Everybody knows there is a silent partner involved in this town called politics, organized party politics; not so silent sometimes.

And it seems to me that if every word that we write or speak is always going to be available, as the last e-mail that you just heard and read, seems to me opponent research is going to take on new meanings, and matters like political correctness are going to be redefined and it is going to be a very interesting world. It is going to literally put you on stage all the time as if you are in front of cameras all the time. And everything you do and write is going to have to be explained.

And I wonder how we are going to handle that because people are sometimes so willing to take things out of context in order to score a political point, and in particular in this atmosphere I think that is an observation that is worth noting.

Mr. Dreier. From the Internet we have a question that_we are still hearing from Colorado. Grand Junction, Colorado, has raised a question, which I would like to pose to the witnesses. Ben Gagnion of Grand Junction has said: Do you believe that having Representatives participate via technology rather than in person would make it easier for them to avoid difficult questions or discussions either by claiming technical difficulties or remaining silent? Vern?

Mr. Ehlers. The latter is an impossibility. I have never known a politician to remain silent. Claiming technical difficulties, I don't think that would be a factor. So I don't see that impacting on this at all. Many of these issues it is just a matter of getting used to.

Some of the reservations I have heard expressed about the remote meetings, remote conferencing, the computer use, and so forth remind me of some of the articles that I read from approximately 100 years ago about the use of the telephone, and I recall specifically reading an article about some Representatives who refused to have telephones installed in their offices when they first became available. Maybe there are some today who would like to deinstall their telephones but it is a lifeline at this point.

And as Jeff said earlier, there is really no difference between e-mail and snail mail. The only increase in volume we have observed in our office, and I have been on the Internet ever since I got here, the only increase in volume has been the fact that there are some people in this world who when they write their Congressperson decide that since they have taken the trouble of writing on the Internet they might as well send it to every Congressman. And it is easy to do that. You enter all the names and you make it a habit of sending them. We got a lot more mail from outside the district, but from within the district there has not been an appreciable difference; it is just that people are getting it delivered faster than they used to get it delivered.

Mr. Dreier. Secretary Flahaven, do you have any comments at all? We want to make sure that you are still part of this discussion.

Mr. Flahaven. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

I think that the use of electronics, and e-mail in particular, have allowed constituents to get to their Members in a different way. One of the cautionary notes, I guess that I could say, based on our experience, is that lobbying organizations also have discovered the world technology and many times our fax machines and our e-mail receivers are clogged with messages from organized lobbying efforts and are not always simply generated by individual constituents expressing deeply held concerns. So, I think that that has to be evaluated in the whole process.

But in spite of that, maybe one downside, I think that legislative experience would be that we ought to embrace these things and use them for the value they can bring to us.

Mr. Dreier. I would like to raise a question that has really come from virtually everyone here, and that is bringing up the point that was made earlier, that the view in the mid-1970s was that by televising the proceedings of the Congress, the American people would understand and have a very high regard for what it is that has gone on in this institution.

We all know that the opposite has been the case. And so we are faced with this struggle of trying to ensure that we have greater input from the American people and at the same time that they have more exposure to what it is that we are doing here. And as we have seen greater exposure, we have seen a diminution of the support level for the institution. And I wonder what concerns you all think we should have, and how we would strike a balance on that?

Mr. Frantzich. I have looked at poll figures and Congress certainly went into the whole television process by saying, "To know us is to love us," and as we know it has been, "Familiarity breeds contempt," if you casually read the poll results.

If you look more carefully, the people who are heavy viewers of congressional television are relatively sophisticated. It is not so much pox on both your houses, but it is, "We don't like this that's going on and that that's going on." There is room for improvement.

I guess the schoolmarm in me says clean up your act and you will be liked. That is too simplistic. But the people who are watching are saying, I want to judge performance and I am going to leave open how positive I view the institution and its Members. There is some room for hope in that process.

Mr. Dreier. Tony?

Mr. Beilenson. In response to that particular observation of yours, Mr. Chairman, I think it is as a result, to a certain extent, if I may say so_I am trying not to be partisan, in all seriousness_when people began getting C-SPAN and started watching us, they started hearing what we were saying about ourselves, among other things. And there have been certain Members in this place, I shan't mention any names, who have made it their business over the past few years_Members from both parties_who attack the process and attack one another, and people watching us pick up on that.

If we didn't have that kind of discussion going on_if, for example, we didn't have these 1-minute speeches at the beginning of the day, which I find offensive from both sides, and had television coverage only of the debates among committee members on particular bills and amendments_I think that most of that debate is civilized and thoughtful and people would come away from watching that feeling quite good about what they see back here.

But if they tune in and they spend the first 30 minutes of each day hearing Members from each side attack the other side, attack the President_whether it is a Republican or Democratic President_everybody comes away with a bad feeling about the process, as we do when we tune in and watch some of our colleagues lambaste one another.

Mr. Dreier. Porter would like to be recognized for one minute in light of your remarks.

Mr. Goss. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with my colleague from California that there has been a loss of comity. And I think that sometimes the debate gets very passionate, and sometimes the debate is more engineered to score political points than it is to do anything else. And I think that probably is inappropriate for the use of the public's resources in the House.

I would say, I have tried to understand why_how our approval ratings move around, and it seems to me that there is much perception involved in things like congressional pay raises and issues are involved in that. But it is puzzling what a low approval rating the institution has when, in fact, that so many incumbents do get reelected. So many Members of Congress have a high approval rating with the people for whom they work; that is, the people who are in their district.

I would make two observations, Tony. One is it is a well-known fact that you don't want to watch legislation being made any more than you want to watch sausage being made. It is not necessarily an attractive process. There is a lot of give and take.

And the second thing I would say is this democracy, only 200 years old, has probably done a better job than any other place in the world of legislating. Many other places in the world are still settling differences using weapons and guns. I think we do pretty darn well just with words, although I agree that there are days which we should clean up some of the statements that we make.

Mr. Dreier. From the Internet we have another statement, and then I would like to call on you, Jeff, and this gets along the line of some of your testimony. This is from Ira Highly. I think this form of Internet participation will eventually end the big government and the waste known as Washington, D.C.. We will go back to the days when Congress worked only a portion of the year and not a lifetime job.

Jeff?

Mr. Eisenach. As I said, I think the role the Congress has to play, certainly for the coming decade or two, and, frankly, I believe into the future, is one of greater importance, not less importance. I think it is greater importance in the short run because of the need to not just tear down or reduce the size of the Federal Government that we now have, but to create a set of replacement institutions and laws and frameworks that allow markets to operate and enhance personal freedom. And that, I think, is a very challenging task.

What I do think the Internet and the information revolution more broadly permit is a much more complex, integrated, and widespread spreading out of the powers of government. I think what you have is the ability to actually get to communities the power to make decisions that primarily affect those communities, while at the same time having the communications and networking capability so that when those decisions do have impacts on neighboring communities, or on the Nation as a whole, that those impacts can be taken into account in a much more complex way than they are today. I think that will occur.

As for how Congress operates, and I do think that it is important that Congress, A, be in a position to interact with the much more complex and integrated system of governance which will be lots of different institutions and lots of different places, as opposed to talking mostly to itself. And, B, I do think that that means getting out of Washington more. I do think that that will be one of the consequences.

As I say, I think if you look at days in session by the U.S. Congress and compare it with State legislatures or days in session with the U.S. Congress and compare it with historical times, comity and personal interactions do not require being, I don't believe, being in session as much as Congress currently is in session.

I think Congress will always want to meet in person. But what information technology will allow is for Members, even if they are spread out into 435 districts around the country, or for that matter when traveling abroad, to meet virtually in a way that is fairly person-to-person.

One comment I would like to make with respect to where we are presently, and that is as we have seen today the technology that we are working with today is extraordinarily rudimentary relative to where we would be 2 years from now or 4 years from now or 6 years from now, and the ability to have personal interaction. The wall behind me, in all likelihood, will be a full-sized, wall-size video screen 5 years from now or 10 years from now. Certainly can be. And the people sitting in various places around the world will be as if they are sitting in this room and there will be no dropouts from glitches.

Mr. Dreier. So we could see the snow-covered mountains of Colorado?

Mr. Eisenach. If we choose to do so, it would be possible.

Mr. Dreier. Let me raise one specific area where we have some disagreement and that has to do with the specific use of the voting card. And you are arguing, Jeff, that we should see Members vote from their districts. One of the hearings that we held earlier of this subcommittee we talked about this issue, and I think it is our friend, Tom Mann from Brookings, who raised the following point: Could you imagine a Member of Congress sitting in his or her district office and not being faced simply with a lobbyist in the hallway of the Congress, but instead picketers outside of that door, 50, 60 people, who are raising Cain on a particular issue as a Member of Congress is getting ready to cast a vote on that question?

I think that that, in itself, raises a very interesting point. And I also believe that as we look at the issue of noncontroversial items, maybe there could be an agreement where we would have something like an electronic calendar whereby those items that are noncontroversial could be voted on_maybe you used the argument, Jeff, running across the street_from Members' offices at that point. That might be some sort of compromise.

But I am one who concurs with Tony, and I have consistently argued that the personal interaction which does take place_and I talked about this earlier on C-SPAN this morning_on the Floor of Congress and those who watch the wide angle shots of C-SPAN see that there is interaction that takes place even while the debate is going on on the Floor of the Congress, is a very important part of legislating.

Vern?

Mr. Ehlers. If I may, I would like to comment on a few things that you have said and that my fellow panelists have said. Before I do, I would also like to comment on the first Internet message you received which came in from Jim Warren, and that was no surprise to me. I met him last summer and Jeff knows him as well. He was at the Aspen Institute, not the institute, but the Aspen function sponsored by the Progress and Freedom Foundation.

Jim, you may be interested to know, is the one who organized the first Internet group in California to lobby on an issue and managed to get a bill passed just by using the net as a means of notifying members who immediately called legislators' offices. So he was the first one to successfully use the Internet in that process.

On the issue of remote voting, it is no surprise to me that anyone outside the Congress would say why don't you just vote from your offices? I think most of the Members of Congress would say, no, and there is a reason for that.

We have to transact a lot of business with each other in a personal way. It is very, very difficult to reach each other. Typically, we may trade phone calls five or six times before we actually make contact. What the voting does is to say to everyone, stop what you are doing, go to the Floor. And I think all of us go there with a 3-by-5 card filled with names of people we have to see and what we have to see them about.

If you watch closely from the galleries you will see people looking around, scurrying around finding people. And you have all of these ants chasing around looking for specific other ants to discuss issues with. It is a very, very productive 15 minutes.

Now, I agree that we can make this more efficient as we do sometimes by grouping votes so that we are not having our day interrupted too often. But I sometimes think it is a little like the British tea at 4 o'clock where no matter what organization you are in, at 4 o'clock you stop what you are doing and you go have tea. You meet with everyone in the building, everyone in the business, and you talk about issues. You don't have that opportunity otherwise. And that is basically what we do during the voting period.

I do want to comment also, Mr. Frantzich, I think you have probably the most perceptive observations I have heard from someone outside the Congress on the operation of Congress. It is obvious you have been watching us for a long time, and I just want to register my appreciation.

Also Mr. Eisenach, I think the key issue you raised is one of restructuring. How should Congress restructure itself and perhaps restructure the Federal Government in view of technological advances?

Now, what I have observed is that we are going in the wrong direction in the Congress and that we tend to be taking issues and making them more complex by writing these immense 2,000-page bills which get referred to 17 different committees, and you have this tremendous process going on to try to deal with that.

I think one of the restructurings that would be effective_and Congress, in fact, probably could meet less often if we did this_is to insist that bills had to address only specific certain parts of issues and deal with those directly.

This is the way State legislatures still work, and we spent much more time in general session than in committees in the State legislative level, but always on specific small bites that you could deal with in perhaps 10 or 15 minutes of debate. Vote. Get rid of it and pass it on. And most of the votes would be unanimous in that case. And I think that is just one example of the type of restructuring you are talking about.

We are tending to complexify issues today rather than simplify them. And I believe that has really hampered the efficient operation of Congress. And so we have these issues such as telecommunications reform, which hung on for some 15 years or so, whereas had it been addressed on an annual basis just dealing with the issues that were pertinent at that time, we could have kept it updated every year.

I don't know what other ideas of restructuring that you have or other Members have, but I think that is clearly going to be the key to making adjustments to the future.

Mr. Dreier. It looks to me as if Mr. Flahaven is attempting to jump in here. Am I correct?

Mr. Flahaven. That's right, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to address that issue that was talked about a few minutes ago about why do people still have a low impression of legislative institutions, in spite of all we have done and all the public_various things that we have done in our television coverage.

And I believe that for those people who watch the process, who watch the institution, they do have a better understanding and at least a more informed judgment about the institution. And I think that it is generally positive. I don't know that it changes, you know, everybody's opinion, but in 1994, a Minneapolis cable survey indicated that 40 percent of the cable households tuned into some of the proceedings that we had on a controversial bill on nuclear waste storage here in the State. That was a very controversial item, as I say, and generated a lot of legislative hearings, and culminated in a long conference committee.

And if 40 percent of the cable households in Minneapolis watched a part of that, and presumably mostly the conference committee, it really did a good job of educating citizens on the process. Also, during the 12 weeks in our recently completed 1996 session, 3,000 viewers of legislative coverage phoned into our comment line and 73 percent of those calls were comments about the actual issues being discussed. And 21 percent of the callers gave us favorable comments about the coverage itself and hoped that the service would be continued.

And to finish, a sample size of 2,300 public television viewers, almost 20 percent listed our 30-minute public affairs program as one of their favorite shows.

So, I think that may be more important for us to say we want to reach out to people, and whether or not they have a positive or a negative view of the institution may be incidental to the fact that at least we are providing coverage that people want and that they will form those opinions from that and from regular news sources.

And I think that we have also found that people at least have a better view of their individual member, their Senator or their House Member. And so at least if they know more about that person, or at least their Senator and their House Member, what they think of the institution may be incidental to what they think about their own members in the legislature or in the Congress.

Mr. Dreier. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.

Jeff?

Mr. Eisenach. If I could make just two or three comments. First, on the issue of transparency and the ability to see documents on line and so on and so forth; the implications of that for everyone having to be concerned about political correctness.

The truth of the matter is I suspect people are more concerned by what they don't know or think they don't know than what they do. And in a completely transparent Congress, which is technologically possible, they would not just see the line taken out of context; they would see the letter of which it was a part, the memoranda going back and forth describing the issue.

The truth of the matter is I think one of the fundamental tenets of democracy is that we can count on people to be informed and to make fair decisions ultimately. And I think more information ultimately has to be presumed to win out over less to be productive.

I frankly don't see much reason why the presumption shouldn't be in favor of complete openness given that that is technologically possible. And the question ought to be which things would be restricted, very much as the executive branch is subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

One question that comes out of that is whether the Freedom of Information Act-exempt materials at the executive branch ought not be tagged at the time they are created, and all other documents be instantaneously available. Why have to go through a 6-week or 6-month or 2-year process to get a document through the Freedom of Information Act when it could be available to you on-line instantaneously?

Secondly, on the question of restructuring I am very much struck by what Congressman Ehlers said. I think that, yes, in many cases it should be possible to do incremental pieces of legislation and perhaps those are the cases where it would be possible to vote remotely. But it is also true, I think, that one of the challenges the Congress faces is to remake the large structures of the executive branch, and that that does require an holistic approach.

I think trying to do telecommunications, for example, piece-by-piece could have been a mess as opposed to trying to take a comprehensive holistic approach to it. Maybe there is a way to distinguish between the holistic, macro reform that needs to occur and to do that on the House Floor maybe more so even than now is the case while taking incremental reform legislation and doing it even on a remote basis.

The third point I make is that I believe the most important structural reform is one that is characterized by the simple word, "dynamic." What is true is that, first of all, the structure of Congress is out of step with at least the future structure of the Federal Government and needs to be restructured.

But secondly, the structure of the Federal Government probably needs to be more dynamic in the future than it has been in the past and Congress, therefore, also needs to be more dynamic. You all have already taken steps_term limits on committee chairmen, for example_to end or reduce the ossification, the structural lack of change in the Congress. And I think further steps in that direction are the most important single structural reform.

You ought to be able to take an issue, address it, eliminate the institution that addressed the issue, and create a new institution (i.e., committee or task force) to address the next issue, rather than being locked into committee structures that often grow out of date. And of course, your efforts, Mr. Chairman, in terms of eliminating some of those committees that have been around here for 20 or 30 years after they were arguably and pretty clearly no longer needed, were the first major step in that direction. And the fact that you are continuing to move in that direction, I think, is very important.

Mr. Dreier. Professor Frantzich?

Mr. Frantzich. Two comments; one on the transparency issue. Almost 200 years ago, there was a debate in the Senate about opening its public galleries and Members said if we open the public galleries, it would be the death of the institution. A hundred or so years later the discussion on radio coming in, some Members concluded it would be the death of the institution. And much of the discussion concerning televising the chambers was around the death of the institution.

Well, you are a pretty durable institution with the onslaught of technologies. And so I think Jeff is right, that the presumption ought to be openness unless there is an awfully good argument for closing. And not only openness, but a timeliness of the information to make it realistic in the process.

Second, I would disagree with Jeff_

Mr. Dreier. So we will continue to follow Bismarck's line, we will not watch sausage being made?

Mr. Frantzich. Well, I am not sure that it is not instructive to see sausage being made. I may not want to eat it after it has been made.

On the remote voting, I am concerned about remote voting and I think it would be a very narrow range of issues in which I would be willing to accept it. We know, for example, that in the use of E-mail there is the phenomenon of flaming. You can get on E-mail and type anonymous's. You may send out messages to all sorts of people and you may say things that you would not say in a face-to-face setting.

Since Congress is based on compromise and on issues over which reasonable people can disagree with good faith, I would rather have them disagree with good faith face-to-face and dampen some of the intemperate things. I see this as an example of the broader phenomenon we see when people have a kind of open microphone on talk radio, for example, where it is very anonymous. You just blast it out there. I would not want those sorts of conversations common on E Mail to be the regular basis for Floor decisions. I would rather have Members face each other face to face, listen to each other's comments, and then vote as opposed to doing it remotely.

Mr. Dreier. Thank you very much. We are going to begin to wrap this up because we have gone beyond the time that we have planned. And I would like to call on Mr. Beilenson, the Ranking Minority Member.

Mr. Beilenson. Thank you. I just want to say that I agree very much with what the professor from the Naval Academy just said. Three or four things briefly.

Mr. Chairman, the first is I found this a very interesting, extremely interesting meeting and I commend you for holding this hearing. And along with you, Mr. Chairman, I thank our witnesses, not only the three gentleman here, but the two other gentlemen out there, and the rest of the country, for having joined us. It has been a learning process. One does not always learn at some of our committee hearings, as our Chairman knows.

Let me comment briefly on three things, if I may. They don't require responses; they are sort of my response to what some people have been talking about. One has to do with remote voting.

That was a very good example that you picked up from what Thomas Mann said. It is kind of worrisome thinking about voting in your district office when there are 150 people chanting outside_some may be heavily armed_as to how you are going to vote on this issue that they feel very strongly about. I feel a little safer doing it near Washington.

But in the average case, one would suspect if you were voting, say, from your district office, what is more likely is that your buzzer would ring or the phone would ring_some indication that it is time to vote_and you would say to your staff person, what are we voting on now? And you would have nobody to talk to about it. You are setting out there in Pueblo, Colorado, or Los Angeles, California, all by yourself and it is time to vote. There is nobody to check in with.

It comes very much back to what our friend and colleague, Mr. Ehlers, was talking about_how useful it is to be here physically with other people exactly for the reasons he suggested. And on top of that, even with respect to voting_I guess we should not admit this and you all don't need to, but I shall because I am not seeking reelection_sometimes one doesn't know exactly what it is one is voting on and all the pros and cons when one gets over to the Floor. And you have 5 or 10 minutes_and that is a lot of time, actually_to check with two or three of your Democratic friends and two or three of your Republican friends, whose position on whatever issue or whatever general area of jurisdiction you are discussing at that time, you have come to trust and find out from them exactly how they feel about it and it gives you additional input, if you need it, or if you want it before you vote. That is an important kind of thing and something we would not have if we were isolated out at some distance.

I would also like to say I particularly enjoyed the testimony of Vern Ehlers. Perhaps because we tend to start thinking the same way if we are members of this group or this organization.

One of the things that he spoke about, which I worry about and think about all the time, is something which we have spoken about here today, Mr. Chairman. I think Vern put it in terms of the revulsion of the public; I think is the last thing he spoke to. We are talking about how people react when they see us on television.

It occurs to me that if you put any area of human relationships under the microscope, it won't look too pretty. It won't look too good. If you had C-SPAN watching your family relationships, your family activities_you telling your kids to eat or get their work done or your spouse berating you for not doing what you are supposed to be doing_or if C-SPAN were in there, whatever business you are in other than Congress, watching all of the machinations going on in your office, that won't look too pretty either.

And by its very nature, as one of our witnesses properly said a few minutes ago, Congress, the legislative branch, acts by compromise. People may not like it, but it is true and it is good. We understand it is good. We move to the middle. We learn to make some compromises and some adjustments to one another. That is how a democracy works, but it is probably not a very pretty thing to see.

So that by its very nature I suppose too much exposure to this, perhaps, necessitates some kind of a process that to the uninitiated, or until they get used to it as Members have said, witnesses have said, as people get more sophisticated about it they understand what it is like to be a legislator and what is necessary to make this system work.

And, finally_this is a very basic thing to me, because I tend to be a bit computer illiterate and a few decades behind the times_with respect to the impact it would have on the Congress and the workings of the legislative branch, I am not sure that it is always necessary or appropriate to be keeping up with the times, or keeping ahead of the times.

I do not think that the problem is that we lack information. We have plenty of information. Actually, there is a surfeit of information. And to be frank about it_I sometimes joke about this back home_my job is to take out a little voting card and either push the yes button or the no button. You can have a lot of information in your head that is important in drafting legislation and so on, but the decisions we make are relatively simple decisions.

What we need more of, I think, than information, which as I said there is plenty of these days_even if you cut off the flow of information and didn't expand it beyond what it is now_is understanding and wisdom and judgment and experience. Not just more information thrown at us, especially with the immediacy that some of us are speaking of.

We don't need more information more quickly, I think. If you argue for that, I think you misunderstand what I, at least, believe is the nature or should be the nature of a legislative body, of course including the Congress. Our job is to filter things_to think about them, let them percolate_ and not react immediately to everything in the world.

That is part of our problem as a Nation these days. You see something on CNN going on in some country that no one has ever heard of and while we are watching this we require our President, whoever he or she may be, to react with a policy for the country five minutes later. We really should sit back and think. Should we be involved at all? Is this terribly important to us? And have some time to sit around and figure out what our reaction should be.

It is the same with respect to legislation_writing legislation and responding to issues that confront us; its important that we filter this, that we take some time and that we not react immediately. That is the job of representative government. If we are to have a representative democracy, rather than a direct one, you need people here who will take the time to hearings, who will listen to witnesses, and who will deal with others in the body whose points of view are somewhat different. They will eventually come out with something that fits well enough so that the country keeps moving ahead slowly in the very successful way, as our friend, Mr. Goss, properly pointed out, that we have been doing for a couple hundreds years.

Maybe that is just an older person speaking. But I really think that the legislative branch of the government was designed to be and should be a relatively slow-moving branch of the government. It needs to put a brake on the excesses of the executive branch; to look at things carefully, as I have said a couple of times now, and not to respond or to react too quickly. And I guess I have had my say.

Mr. Dreier. Thank you very much, Mr. Beilenson. And I think that was very well said.

One of the things when I went through the whole process of committee structure reform, and cochaired the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, I always hesitated when people talked about the fact that we need to make Congress more efficient. Inefficiency is something that the Founding Fathers were very careful to ensure would be part of the process of lawmaking, as you said.

Mr. Beilenson. That is true.

Mr. Dreier. It should be done slowly. When we talk about efficiency, we do want to get the information that we need efficiently, but we don't want to in any way jeopardize the deliberative nature of this institution which is so important.

Porter?

Mr. Goss. Well, of course, I am shocked to hear that Mr. Beilenson might want to ask somebody else on the Floor. Mr. Beilenson is one of the most thoughtful, fully informed Members_

Mr. Beilenson. That is because I ask so many questions on the Floor of other Members.

Mr. Goss. But I will say this sincerely. I know that it is very important. I don't think we are at the point where remote voting is the right idea yet. Maybe perhaps some day it will be.

I very much like to know what my colleagues in my State are thinking. I like to be able to watch the board about how committees are breaking down. I like to see whether we are crossing partisan lines. I like to see whether the issue is playing one way or another in one region or another. And that, I think, is all part of the mix and benefit and I would hate to give that deliberative process up in the name of efficiency.

And plus, I think the Chairman has pointed out this idea of an angry crowd outside the door. And I can easily suggest a scenario where somebody might miss a putt on the 8th hole because they suddenly had to interrupt their concentrating and cast a vote. And that would be terrible, too. I am just not quite ready to get to the remote voting.

On the other hand, the presumption of openness I think is very critical. I come from Florida, which is the Sunshine State, and we do government in the sunshine. Of course, there have got to be exceptions. But one of the challenges I would immediately throw out to Mr. Eisenach_I agree with him that we should go for the presumption of openness_is I guarantee you if you know your schedule, your daily schedule is going to be subject to scrutiny, it will be printed one way. If it is just going to be a schedule that is going to guide you on where you go next and how you are going to do it and what you are going to do and be personally private and never leave your pocket, it will probably say something differently. There is nothing sinister there.

It is just everybody is very concerned about political correctness. So instead of saying 5 o'clock go to the gym, have fun, play basketball for half an hour, it would probably say something like 5 o'clock, important meeting on health_Member's health or something like that.

There is a way to craft things so you never do get to this openness and that is the observation I was making.

Mr. Dreier. Thank you very much, Porter.

We are running out of time here. I want to express my appreciation to Secretary Flahaven, who stood with us; of course, my colleague, Scott McInnis, and to our three witnesses who are here and also our appreciation to House Information Resources and to C-SPAN and all of the people who have made this experiment in looking at the 21st Century_Secretary Flahaven, are you speaking up there? Somebody is_were you speaking?

Mr. Flahaven. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I was. I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity for me to be here and for including someone from State legislatures in your deliberations. I have been in this business a long time. I am a former congressional staffer and have been involved in this process, and I appreciate the fact that you have included us.

We try to keep up with what's going on in the Congress. I have an old colleague in the business who's a former Clerk of the House in Tennessee, Jim Freeh, and we try to keep some communication going between the Federal and State levels. And I also wanted to acknowledge the fact that my appearance here today is through the cooperation of our Senate media services and our House of Representatives T.V. Office. I think that demonstrates the fact that we have a lot of cooperation in these institutions. And also to thank the people from my staff who are involved in technology, Steve Sennick and Jim Greenwalt and Karen Clark, who helped bring the Minnesota Senate and the Minnesota Legislature along in this process.

Mr. Dreier. We thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.

And let me close with a very appropriate statement for this experiment we are going through. We are having technical problems with the Web site, but I would like to state again how people can access that and to say to keep trying; www.house.gov/rules/21home.html. And the E-mail is xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

So as we move towards the 21st Century, this hearing stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:00 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]