================================================================= ALAWON Volume 6, Number 96 ISSN 1069-7799 November 7, 1997 American Library Association Washington Office Newsline In this issue: (88 lines) -FY98 LABOR, HHS, EDUCATION APPROPRIATIONS UPDATE -LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS BILL SIGNED: GPO AND LC _________________________________________________________________ FY98 LABOR, HHS, EDUCATION APPROPRIATIONS UPDATE In the remaining days of this Congressional session, the fate of the FY98 Labor, HHS, Education bill has been uncertain at best. The issue of national education testing has created great turmoil among the leadership, some House members who dislike the idea of national tests, and the President who has vowed to use the veto pen if the issue is not included in the appropriations bill. Early in the week a compromise seemed possible. The conference committee was prepared to take the report to the floor on Wednesday, but that schedule was canceled. The House began consideration of the conference report on H.R. 2264, the FY98 Labor, HHS, Education appropriations bill, on Friday evening, November 7. The Senate is expected to stay in session over this weekend, so it may be that work will finish on the bill before Monday, November 10. _________________________________________________________________ LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS BILL SIGNED: GPO AND LC President Clinton signed H.R. 2209, the FY98 Legislative Branch Appropriations (P.L. 105-55) on October 7. The statute includes appropriations for the Government Printing Office (GPO) and the Library of Congress. GPO's Superintendent of Documents appropriation will be $29.077 million. Conferees agreed to the lower sum passed by the Senate instead of the $29.264 million proposed by the House. The conference report (H.Rept. 105-254) also outlined the actions GPO has taken or plans to take to assure that government publications will not be destroyed without the usual prior notification of issuing agencies to determine if they want the excess copies. Conferees noted that GPO has developed a legislative proposal to authorize the transfer or donation of excess publications to schools or similar institutions, if they are not wanted by the issuing agency. The Library of Congress will have available FY98 appropriations of $376.719 million which includes the authority to spend receipts of $30.295 million. This amounts to an overall increase of 4.4 percent over FY 97 funding. Highlights include: -$5.584 million for an Integrated Library system. -$1.250 million for additional talking book machines. -Authorization of a Cooperative Acquisitions Revolving Fund under a no-year revolving fund that allows the Library to recover direct and indirect costs of the program from the 78 participating research and university libraries throughout the nation. -Approval of authority to invest gift funds. -Price level increases generally limited to 4 percent. ________________________________________________________________ ALAWON is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. To subscribe, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc @ala.org. To unsubscribe, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/ washoff/alawon. Visit our Web site at http://www.alawash.org. ALA Washington Office 202.628.8410 (V) 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, #403 202.628.8419 (F) Washington, DC 20004-1701 800.941.8478 (V) Lynne E. Bradley, Editor Deirdre Herman, Managing Editor Contributors: Mary Costabile Anne Heanue All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. =================================================================