ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline
Volume 13, Number 48
July 15, 2004

In This Issue: HOUSE PASSES LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS BILL

On Monday, the House of Representatives passed the fiscal year 2005 Legislative Branch appropriations bill (H.R. 4755) by a vote of 327-43.  H.R. 4755 would set aside $2.75 billion for the House of Representatives and the various agencies that support Congress. 

If enacted, the bill would represent a decrease of $2 million, or less than 0.1 percent, from the amount appropriated for fiscal 2004 (PL 108-83).  It also would give the legislative branch 13 percent less, or $395 million, than President Bush requested.

The bill would trim Government Printing Office (GPO) spending by $13,443,000 or 10 percent, bringing it to $121 million.  This is also around $29 million below the President's budget request.  

Within GPO, the bill includes the Public Printer's request of $88,800,000 for the Congressional Printing and Binding (CP&B) appropriation.  However, for the Office of Superintendent of Documents, H.R. 4755 provides $32,524,000, a reduction of $1,729,000 below fiscal year 2004 level and $509,000 below the budget request.

The bill did not approve the $25,000,000 request for the Revolving Fund and separate funding of $4,225,000 for the Office of the Inspector General.

The bill also provides a total of $543 million for the Library of Congress, a 4 percent increase over last year. 

The measure now moves to the Senate, which, by custom, takes up its own version of the bill to cover its own operations and specific projects.  That is expected to add about $823 million, bringing the overall total of the bill to about $3.6 billion. 

In June, ALA, along with the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Special Libraries Association (SLA) sent a letter to the House and Senate Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittees in support of the Public Printer's FY 2005 budget request of $150,833,000 for the GPO.  

******
ALAWON (ISSN 1069-7799) is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits.

To subscribe to ALAWON, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc@ala.org or go to http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon.  To unsubscribe to ALAWON, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. 

ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff.  Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Carol Ashworth, Camille Bowman, Don Essex, Joshua Farrelman, Patrice McDermott and Miriam Nisbet. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Carrie Lowe, Kathy Mitchell, Carrie Russell. ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.