College and Research Libraries


By E V E R E T T S. B R O W N 

T h e Appendix to the Congressional Record 

SINCE 1873, beginning with the first session of the Forty-third Congress, 
the proceedings of Congress have been 
officially reported, printed, and pub-
lished directly by the government. T h e 
Congressional Record appears in daily 
form, containing an account of the pro-
ceedings of the previous day, and a semi-
monthly index is issued. At the end of 
each session of Congress a bound set of 
the Record is published, together with 
a detailed index. With the appearance 
of this bound set it has been customary 
for libraries to discard the daily issues. 
However, a recent rule of the Joint Com-
mittee on Printing has raised a serious 
problem in this respect. 

For many years it has been the prac-
tice of members of both Houses of Con-
gress, by obtaining the privilege of 
"leave to print," to insert in the Con-
gressional Record speeches not made on 
the floor. So long as members confined 
their remarks strictly to the business at 
hand the practice was not too open to 
criticism, but in recent sessions the 
privilege has been greatly abused and all 
sorts of extraneous matter has been in-
serted in the Appendix to the Record. 
From the first session of the Seventy-
fifth Congress on January 5, 1937, until 
the second session of the Eighty-third 
Congress in 1954, material appearing in 
the Appendix was published in separate 
volumes at the end of each session. T h e 
results of this practice are very revealing. 
For each session during that period the 
Appendix has approximated one-third 
the length of the Record proper. For the 

Dr. Brown is professor of political 
science, University of Michigan. 

Eighty-third Congress, first session, from 
January 3, 1953, to August 3, 1953, the 
Congressional Record account of pro-
ceedings totaled 11,202 pages and the 
Appendix 5,402 pages. In the Eighty-
third Congress, second session, from 
January 6, 1954, to December 2, 1954, 
there were 15,290 pages of proceedings 
and 6,926 of Appendix, totaling 22,216 
pages. T h e cost of the Record (includ-
ing the biweekly issues) for the fiscal 
year 1954 was $1,558,405.39. A figure of 
$80 per page is used for estimating the 
cost of the Record material, but the 
Public Printer states that since the Ap-
pendix is set in smaller type, the cost of 
extraneous material would be nearer 
$82 per page. Based on these estimates 
the cost of the Appendix in recent years 
has been about $600,000 annually. 

It was suggested to members of the 
Joint Committee on Printing that all 
extraneous matter now inserted in the 
Record be omitted, thus saving a large 
sum of money and producing a more 
orderly account of the proceedings of 
Congress. T h e power to effectuate this 
reform rests with Congress. By Act of 
January 12, 1895, the Joint Committee 
on Printing, consisting of three mem-
bers of the Senate and three of the 
House of Representatives, was given 
control of the arrangement and style of 
the Congressional Record. The law pro-
vided that the Record should be sub-
stantially a verbatim report of the pro-
ceedings and ordered the Joint Commit-
tee to take all needed action for the re-
duction of unnecessary bulk. No ex-
traneous matter is supposed to go into 
the Appendix without unanimous ap-
proval and consent of the Congress. In 

394 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



the hope of controlling, to some extent, 
the extension of remarks, the rules pro-
vide that extensions of two Record pages 
or more shall be accompanied by an 
estimate of cost from the Public Printer 
before permission to extend will be 
granted. Furthermore, the Rules and 
Manual of the House of Representatives 
stipulate that the Congressional Record 
"is for the proceedings of the House and 
Senate only, and matters not connected 
therewith are rigidly excluded." 

On June 22, 1953, the Joint Commit-
tee on Printing undertook a partial re-
form. After stating that it was the sense 
of the Committee "that the printing of 
extraneous matter in the permanent 
form of the Congressional Record con-
stitutes unnecessary bulk and a waste of 
public money," the Joint Committee re-
solved that beginning with the Eighty-
third Congress, second session, "all 
statements prepared by members on sub-
jects in which they are particularly inter-
ested, inserted in the Appendix of the 
daily Congressional Record, shall be 
moved to the end of the proceedings of 
the day permission was granted"; and 
"all extraneous matter including but not 
limited to newspaper and magazine ar-
ticles, editorials, addresses, radio pro-
grams, commentators' stories, resolutions 
from organizations and individuals, let-
ters from constituents, etc., together 
with Members' remarks preceding same, 
appearing in the Appendix of the daily 
Congressional Record, shall be omitted 
from the permanent form of the Con-
gressional Record." 

In accordance with these new rules, 
the bound set of the Congressional 
Record of the Eighty-third Congress, 
second session, was made up. Prelimi-
nary to its publication the Public Print-
er stated that only about 1,100 pages of 
the daily Appendix, out of 6,926, would 
be carried into the bound set, at an esti-
mated annual saving of $100,000 accru-
ing from exclusion of the remainder. If 

the reform were carried to its ultimate 
conclusion and all extraneous matter 
were excluded from issues of the Record, 
a much larger sum would be saved. 
Furthermore, under the current plan of 
publication, in order to have a complete 
account of everything that is being 
printed in the Congressional Record, it 
is necessary for libraries to retain both 
the daily issues and the bound sets or 
to have microfilm copies of them. 

These facts were presented to Senator 
Carl Hayden, chairman of the Joint 
Committee on Printing. While admit-
ting that the Joint Committee concurred 
in the intent of the recommendation to 
exclude all extraneous matter from the 
daily Record, Senator Hayden stated 
that "it is believed that the adoption of 
such a measure would result in Mem-
bers reading material on the floor of 
the House and Senate thereby delaying 
important legislation and cluttering the 
body of the Record with extraneous 
matter with no saving effected in the 
overall cost of the Record." In rebuttal 
of this argument, it might be pointed 
out that if the respective Houses en-
forced their rules, and members of Con-
gress exercised due restraint, no extrane-
ous material would be read at any time, 
thereby avoiding the possible abuses 
mentioned by Senator Hayden. 

T h e question was also raised with the 
Joint Committee as to which edition of 
the Record—the daily or the final bound 
one—ought to be microfilmed for per-
manent use. It was the committee's 
opinion that microfilm companies 
should film the daily edition "so that 
librarians and others who do not have 
the space to store that edition may ob-
tain the same from the Microfilm 
people." 

This recommendation took no ac-
count of the desire of many librarians 
to possess a copy of all material inserted 
in the daily Appendix but not printed 
in the bound permanent set of the 

SEPTEMBER, 1956 395 



Record. On March 2, 1955, as a partial 
check on this excluded material, the 
Joint Committee on Printing adopted a 
resolution which directed the Congres-
sional Record Index Office to include in 
the index for the bound volumes a list-
ing of all material appearing in the daily 
Record and to show the omitted mate-
rial by a symbol. This order was put into 
effect with the index volume for the 
Eighty-third Congress, second session, 
references to material in the Appendix 
being prefaced by the letter A. 

However, there still remained the 
problem of preserving the material 
covered by this index and future similar 
indexes. T o meet this problem, as well 
as those of space and cataloging, Uni-
versity Microfilms of Ann Arbor, Michi-
gan, has adopted a policy of microfilm-
ing the bound set of the Congressional 
Record in its entirety, including index 
and Daily Digest, and the daily set, with 
its bimonthly index. It might be added 
that this bimonthly index of the daily 
issue is not cumulative, but any diffi-
culty resulting from this fact can be met 
by consulting the index to the bound 
set where, as already noted, the material 
appearing in the daily issue, but omit-
ted from the bound set, is indicated by 
the symbol A. 

A wide choice is now afforded librar-
ians. Some will wish to keep copies of 
bound and daily sets of the Record; 
some may retain copies of the bound set 
only; others because of lack of space 
may want none. All are now able to 
satisfy their needs through microfilms. 

Large savings in cost of government 
printing and in microfilming could be 
effected if members of Congress were 
obliged to conform to the rules govern-
ing insertion of extraneous material in 
the Congressional Record. Some indica-

tion of the abuse of the rules, as respects 
the sessions of the Eighty-third Congress, 
have already been cited. Further evi-
dence of the abuse is seen in the reports 
of the closing days of the first session of 
the Eighty-fourth Congress. On August 
3, 1954, the day the Senate adjourned, 
the Appendix totaled 229 pages of ex-
tended remarks and extraneous matter. 
After adjournment, but under permis-
sion to extend remarks, members read 
184 pages of material into the Appendix 
of August 16 and 219 pages into the 
issue of August 25. 

T h e second session of the Eighty-
fourth Congress promises no relief. On 
January 5, 1956, the report of proceed-
ings totaled 115 pages and the Appen-
dix 104; for January 9 the ratio was 122 
pages to 63; for January 12 it was 115 
to 129. Even permitting the publication 
of extensions of remarks which may 
have some justification because of the 
large number of members and their re-
sultant inability to be heard at length 
on the floor of the respective Houses, 
and the inclusion of significant material 
which might have a relation to legisla-
tion, there still remain many pages of 
the Appendix for which there is no justi-
fication. At $82 a page the government's 
bill—and hence that of the taxpayer— 
is excessive. And this takes no account 
of the cost to libraries of the additional 
space needed for storage, or for micro-
films if that is the form in which they 
preserve the Congressional Record. 

In these days of steadily mounting 
governmental expenditures and taxa-
tion and demands that the budget be 
balanced it might be recommended that 
economy, like charity, ought to begin at 
home, and that Congress in its control 
of the Congressional Record should put 
the rule into effect. 

396 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES