Norman Mineta: “the new majority in the House of Representatives have put forward a number of suggestions for reform here in the…”

“the new majority in the House of Representatives have put forward a number of suggestions for reform here in the Congress. Some of these proposals have merit, some do not. But I believe that one of the most damaging, and fiscally questionable, is the proposal to eliminate Legislative Service Organizations here in the House. Some Members on the other side of the aisle have suggested that elimination of LSO's will save money. Nothing could be further from the truth. LSO's have given Members of this body, both Republicans and Democrats, the ability to combine their resources to more efficiently pursue policies they would have pursued anyway. Eliminating LSO's will not mean that Members of these caucuses will stop working on these issues. Far from it. As an associate member of both the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses, I can assure my colleagues that the work of these caucuses will not stop. As chairman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, which had hoped to organize as an LSO and will now be prevented from doing so, I can assure my colleagues that our work will continue as well. If that work requires that each caucus member duplicate within his or her individual office the work that could be done more efficiently and at a lower cost by one person working for an LSO, then so be it. The moral imperative that each of us feels to ensure that all Americans are represented in this House will not be changed.”