H.R. 292 (112^th): Stop the OverPrinting (STOP) Act

GovTrack’s Bill Summary

We don’t have a summary available yet.

Library of Congress Summary

The summary below was written by the Congressional Research Service, which is a nonpartisan division of the Library of Congress.

House Republican Conference Summary

The summary below was written by the House Republican Conference, which is the caucus of Republicans in the House of Representatives.

This summary can be found at http://www.gop.gov/bill/112/1/hr292.

Background

Current law requires the Government Printing Office to print hard copies of all bills and resolutions introduced in Congress.  Whenever a Member of Congress introduces a bill or resolution, the Government Printing Office prints 200 paper copies.  In the 110th Congress, Members introduced 14,042 bills and resolutions.  That amounts to 2.8 million paper copies, many of which are simply thrown away for a lack of use.  This year Congress will spend approximately $7 million printing bills and resolutions.  By eliminating the mandatory printing of every introduced bill, and instead using technology to ensure that bills are available online for anyone to examine, we can achieve significant savings to taxpayers, while still ensuring accountable and open government.  In the 111^th Congress, House Republicans proposed this measure as part of the YouCut program.  According to the office of then Minority Whip Cantor, ending the mandatory printing requirement would save $35 million over ten years.

Summary

H.R. 292 would eliminate a current requirement that copies of all bills and resolutions introduced by Members of Congress automatically be printed upon introduction.  Instead, H.R. 292 would require that bills and resolutions be made available in electronic format accessible on the Internet.

If a committee in the House or Senate requested printed copies, H.R. 292 would make an exception to the printing ban and authorize the public printer to provide the committee with up to 75 copies.  In addition, if a Member of Congress requested copies of a specific bill or resolution, the public printer would be required to provide the Member with an unrestricted amount of copies.

House Democratic Caucus Summary

The House Democratic Caucus does not provide summaries of bills.

So, yes, we display the House Republican Conference’s summaries when available even if we do not have a Democratic summary available. That’s because we feel it is better to give you as much information as possible, even if we cannot provide every viewpoint.

We’ll be looking for a source of summaries from the other side in the meanwhile.