Darrell Issa: “Thank you. Then I will close. Mr. Speaker, the Federal Register Modernization Act does exactly what the title…”

“Thank you. Then I will close. Mr. Speaker, the Federal Register Modernization Act does exactly what the title suggests--it modernizes the Federal Register Act. When you look at a well-intended bill that hasn't been addressed since the 1930s, it comes to mind how easy it is to ask something to go on and to have a Federal bureaucracy actually do a good job. The National Archives and many of the institutions here in Washington do work, but from time to time, you ask the question: At what cost? The Modernization Act seeks to do two things: one, simply lower the cost for printing, which is no longer necessary in a digital age, and, in fact, to open the door for what I believe is the modernization that goes beyond that. Since 1994, when the Office of the Federal Register first published its electronic edition of the Federal Register, we have, in fact, had an opening for our government to go digital beyond just any minor amount. Today, many people ask the question--and I am going to ask the question here today--if the IRS has 50 years' worth of your tax returns, why wouldn't we capture the workings of government digitally, hold them and, at the appropriate time, make them available for our children and our grandchildren for whatever purpose they may have in studying the history of what we do here today?…”