Sam Brownback: “the amendment that Senator Thomas and I have offered would simply require the Architect of the Capitol, the Secretary of…”

“the amendment that Senator Thomas and I have offered would simply require the Architect of the Capitol, the Secretary of the Senate, the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate, the Public Printer, and the Director of the United States Botanic Garden to submit to Congress an inventory of all noninherently governmental--or commercial--activities. Throughout this session of Congress, my colleague from Wyoming and I have been working on S. 314, also known as the Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act, which would require the Federal agencies to do the same. My subcommittee, the Oversight Subcommittee on Government Management, Restructuring, and the District of Columbia has held three hearings focusing on this legislation. More recently, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee reported this bill out of committee. This bill has bipartisan support, the support of the Administration, as well as Federal employees and the industry community. Through our work on this issue, we concluded that this requirement should apply to the legislative branch as well. Last month, OMB asked all Federal agencies to submit their commercial inventory to OMB. The legislative branch should do the same and submit their inventory to Congress. The Thomas-Brownback amendment tasks those who are engaged in the daily operations of the legislative branch to identify these commercial activities.”