ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline Volume 9, Number 54 June 16, 2000 In this issue: [1]Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill Passes House with LSTA Funding; Interior Appropriations Passes House [2] Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill with GPO Funding Delayed; [3] Another Filtering Mandate Makes a Strong Start Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill Passes House with LSTA Funding The Labor Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill (H.R. 4577, H. Report 106-645) passed the House on June 14, after lengthy debate by a vote of 217-214. The minority, led by Rep. David Obey (D-WI), presented many amendments to increase education spending, but all were defeated. If any proposed increases were not offset by cuts in other areas, they were declared not in order. The President, in remarks to the Hispanic Conference held on June 15, after citing education progress said "it is threatened by the education bill . . . that the House passed yesterday." In terms of funding for the Library Services and Technology Act, the House bill would allocate $170 million, $3 million below the President's request, while the Senate bill would fund the program at $168 million. The House language on filtering remains in H.R. 4577. H.R. 4577 now goes to the Senate for action. The Senate bill, S. 2553, S. Report 106-293, while including greater increases for some education programs still falls short of the President's overall budget increases for education. INTERIOR APPROPRIATIONS PASSES HOUSE During a sometimes tense and acrimonious debate, the House passed H.R. 4578 (H. Report 106-646) late on June 15. Supporters of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Museum program part of the Institute for Museum and Library Services. (IMLS), had offered amendments which would increase funding in varying degrees for the three agencies. The final amendment would have increased NEA by $15 million, $5 million for NEH and $2 million for the Office of Museum Services, but the offset for the additional funding was diverted to Indian health services. Neither NEA nor NEH has received significantly increased funding since 1995. The Senate has not yet acted on the Interior Appropriations bill. Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill with GPO Funding Delayed House action has been delayed on H.R. 4516, the legislative branch appropriations bill. A House floor vote could be possible during the week of June 20. Grassroots pressure must be kept on all House members to save FDLP funding. (See ALA's Legislative Action Center at http://www.ala.org/washoff). It is expected that the House will supposedly restore $100 million dollars. This restored funding would be spread throughout the various legislative branch agencies, including the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), the Government Printing Office (GPO), the Library of Congress (LC), Congressional offices, and the Government Accounting Office (GAO). This congressional action may be done by amendment, rule or both. Unconfirmed reports suggest that a partial restoration of $26 million would be put back for GPO. Even level funding translates into cuts for GPO. In the behind-the-scenes negotiations, the restored money was to be used to make sure that there were no lay- offs in legislative branch agencies. Many others in the House itself were concerned about major cutbacks to the Capitol Hill Police account. Originally, H.R. 4516, was voted on by the House Appropriations Committee on May 9th. This bill made especially deep cuts to FDLP and GPO. A 25% cut to printing at GPO would have translated into a 62% cut to services for the FDLP, making it suddenly and almost exclusively an electronic program. The library community has rallied to save funding for the FDLP and GPO as well as seeking to restore LC funding. See previous ALAWON reports as well as the GODORT web pages for background and updates on detailed information about this situation. Another Filtering Mandate Makes a Strong Start On June 8, 2000, Rep. Chip Pickering (R-MS) and 16 co-sponsors introduced a bill to require schools and libraries to implement filtering or blocking technology for computers with Internet access as a condition for receiving the E-rate (H.R. 4600). Pickering's bill is called the Children's Internet Protection Act and is extremely similar to S. 97, Sen. McCain's bill of the same name. McCain's bill has passed the Senate Commerce Committee and can be attached to any suitable bill that comes to the floor. Pickering held a press conference on the same day to announce that he has a commitment from the House Commerce Committee's leadership to hold a hearing on the bill in July. From there Pickering expects to bring the bill to the House floor under suspension of the rules, which is reserved for non-controversial bills. One notable co-sponsor for the bill is House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications Chair Billy Tauzin (R-LA). Tauzin has led other efforts to curb the Federal Communications Commission's administration of the E-rate program. Also attending the press conference and endorsing the bill were Pat Truman of the American Family Association, and Jan LaRue of the Family Research Council. LaRue distributed copies of Dangerous Access, 2000 Edition: Uncovering Internet Pornography in America' s Libraries, a report produced by the Family Research Council. ****** 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; Mary Costabile, Peter Kaplan, Miriam Nisbet and Claudette Tennant. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Jennifer Hendrix, Carrie Russell and Saundra Shirley.