Thomas Foley: “today, I rise to call attention to yet another example of how Congress wastes taxpayers' hard-earned money. A week or…”

“today, I rise to call attention to yet another example of how Congress wastes taxpayers' hard-earned money. A week or two ago, every new Member received this letter from the Clerk of the House encouraging us to order our own personalized gold embossed set of the United States Code book, a set of 223 volumes that I have since discovered we can take with us when we leave office. After doing a little research, I have learned that these books with each Congressman's name nicely engraved in gold on the binder costs taxpayer $2,500 a set. Thus, to provide every new Member of the last two Congresses, they have spent over $500,000; a half a million dollars spent on books that are available in every House office building, in the House counsel's office and, of course, in the Library of Congress across the street. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues to join me as an original cosponsor of a measure that will end the practice of ordering these books and demonstrate to the American people that we are serious about cutting the deficit and that we are taking a small step in our individual offices to make a difference in the United States of America.”