This is titled congress and the frank bringing congressional mail standard into the 21st century. I recognize myself to give an opening statement. Happy halloween, everybody. I am dressed as americas most maligned superhero congressman, able to fly across the country in six hours on alaska airlines. We were thinking about titling this hearing Franken Stein how the houses ghoulish mailing standard have haunted members for decades, but i suppose we should go with the official unspooky title for the record. Like most of the issues that fall into this committees mandate, in the work of the House Commission on congressional mailing standard, its very inside baseball. To most people frank is a name or a hot dog or, but the reality is for members of congress, the congressional frank is actually fundamental to how we communicate with our constituents and every time we respond to constituent requests or send news heat e letters or upcoming town halls, we use the frank. Its no surprise with Media Congress seen a decline in the use of the frank. Consumers spent 58,000 on frank mail, today members spend an average of 26,000. There is obviously variation by district and member. Still there is no getting around the fact social media has had a tremendous effect on how congress communicates with constituents. Ten years ago congress didnt have a digital staff. Today almost every committee has one including ours. Given these changes in the way that congress and the American People communicate, todays hearing is actually really important. If history is any indicator, Communications Platforms will continue to rapidly evolve. I know that representative susan davis and the frank commission have idea how to modernize the frank, members have to understand the difference across platforms to make expert choices of how best to communicate and it comes with geographic constraints social media doesnt. Some come with advertising the frank pail doesnt. The bottom line is communicating is a lot more complicated. Im looking forward to what people have to say and the history and modern trend and how members communicate with their constituents. This community is focused on making Congress Better serve the American People. I think this hearing is wholly in support of that mission. Now id like to have our vice share opening remarks and any halloween jokes he has as well. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I think you stole them all there. All i have is the last name. Thats all i can do on halloween. Thanks for holding this hearing today. As you said, mr. Chairman, there are more ways than ever to talk about constituents back home. With the click of a mouse we can detect e connect throughout our district to share problems and hear ideas and opinions from those we represent. Communication with those we represent is one of the postimportant part of our jobs as we are representatives for them. The current franking process as you describe is one most dont know about or understand feels light years behind the speed of communications and the opportunities we have today. We all want to communicate and get back to our constituents. As a result this year we have heard from many of our colleagues who have many idea for reforming congress, including this process of communication. So on this topic. Many of the freshman members have stepped up to voice their opinions and question the way we do things. I am very grateful for that. Because they have experienced the rooug rules and the regulations and procedures for the first time. Theyre quick to highlight ways to improve or suggestion they may have to allow us to communicate differently and better and quicker. So i look forward to the hearing today. It will be great. A wonderful halloween day, what better way than to start it off here on the committee hearing. All right. Today we welcome testimony of five witnesses. Our first panel, which were calling the davis panel. We have representative susan davis and representative rod fidavis who in addition to serving on this he served on the chair of mailing standard in the 115th congress. Both are here to share their knowledge in the franking process. Each will provide five minutes of testimony. So representative susan davis, are you now recognized for five minutes. Thank you very much, thairm chairman and vice chairman graves. You do understand we get confused every now and then. I appreciate you pointing that out. Of course members, its a pleasure to john you on what has to be houses first ever franken tine heari stein hearing. I want to thank the ranking member, rodney davis and the Franking Commissions new rank member ryan steele. All of who play a key role in massive communications. The houses rules, franken rules have certainly spooked members, staff and constituents over the years but the good news is we can make the process less scary and more effective. Kraer to what many staff believe, the house franken man warm was not created to frighten people but rather with the Good Intention of preventing members from misusing taxpayer funds for personal, political or commercial use. However, after nearly two decade of working with those rules, weve seen the rules have the unintended side effect of slowing things down and preventing members from writing the way they speak when they conduct official business. Our commission took fresh look at the rules and came up with a new approach. It has two main components, which go handinhand, Greater Transparency and a simpler set of rules. Greater public transparency ensures greater member accountability. We can achieve this available online. The houses website can link to ours as it currently does for Financial Disclosure reports. For and travel reports, gift and travel filings. Legal expense Fund Disclosures and statements of disbursements. I would just state again, you all notice, the whole idea is to have members Franken Communications be available to their constituents like other reports. I just noticed, which really does i believe discourage undo advantage of the franken privilege. Combined with transparency the rules will prevent the misuse of taxpayer funds. I look forward to sharing the new rules we are developing soon and staffs are pulling those togethers and have come up with quite a bit of consensus. As we work on our new package at franking, we have some requests of the Modernization Committee relating to Digital Communications. My written testimony goes into greater detail. Ill highlight a few main asks now. First, we suggest the Modernization Committee recommend consolidating and quote Digital Communication and putting it under our jurisdiction. Right now, we are only charged with reviewing postal mail but in practice, we review all communications. And second, the Modernization Committee should evaluate the appropriateness. Again, i think this is for you all to look at. Of allowing members the option to transfer their social media followers from Campaign Accounts to their official accounts from time to time or perhaps just one time and also consider allowing Campaign Websites to link to official sites. This would eliminate confusion from our constituents while maintaining appropriate separation. Third, we need to update Office Reports which are still self reported and done by hand. Perhaps we could fix this with a unique bar code . Ill wrap up now, i know votes and pumpkins are fast approaching. Thank you again, it has been a pleasure working with you and your staff as well. We look forward to your next set of recommendations. Thank you, chair davis, now, representative rodney davis, are you now recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you to the vice chair and also to the chair of the franken commission, my good friend miss davis. I will tell you its an honor to speak from this side and ill go back around to that side as soon as im done, but to be able to talk about something a lot of folks in and around washington dont want to take the time to delve into. Its very important for the job we do in communicating with our constituents. Last congress i was the claire of the franken commission and i had to commend my colleague miss davis because we were able to Work Together to implement some new processes that had made the frank easier. But were not done yet. And i do want to say the folks that work on House Administration that take these franken requests. My staffers, tim and elizabeth do a great job in making sure they work with our member offices to implement many of the ar cane standard we put in place. Susan and i and our teams were able to make the process easier. No more paper. Were in the 21st century. This is the thing we should do. We digitized everything, which makes the process for turning that approval or disapproval around faster. Its something i know was a goal of both of us when we were on the commission. Weve got to do more and theres finally, i believe an appetite on both sides to roll up our sleeves as chair davis said, get our teams together. Come up with some solutions and i believe were doing that im very happy our colleague, brian style, a freshman, a former staffer like many of us whose had to use the frank and hes dog great job of getting involved and finding out how we can even expand on what susan and i did with our teams last year. We had recent bipartisan negotiations and theres as she said opportunities for substantial changing to the franken rules and we have three main buckets that were no cushion on making improvements on the speed of approval. Transparency and then also developing regulations to work. Let me outline a few of the reasons theyre in such needs . Were literally measuring the size of pictures and counting the number of times the letter i is used. Staff press sent has not been updated if regulations. Now, let me get this straight. Many of the rules that we follow and approvals that our teams follow have been set by precedent between staff for decades. We as members are to codify those precedence into rules and regulations so we dont have any changes on the committee and lead leadership thats something im looking forward to working with brian and susan on. Its hard to follow rules when theyre fougnot written down an think we should revisit when franking is needed. Many times we need to have an automatic approved process. Also, what are the consequences if members and staff deep follow those rules. For example. Does it make sense a facebook ad of 20 is subject to the same review of 100 mailers to 50,000 people. Furthermore, the expectation of privacy not the same as it was ten years ago, as a result, we support increased transparency standards for franking. I also believe with Greater Transparency comes a better check and balance with the constituents and the american taxpayer should replace the rule of staff measuring pictures. Finally as members contemplate, members need to send them to constituents. Reasonable regulations are necessary and finally regulations and guidance need to be transparent, accessible and easy to understand. I encourage the members to think bold and also new ideas are always welcome and i will take this opportunity to yield 29 seconds being to you, mr. Chair. Thank you both. You both stuck the landing. Thank you both for your testimony. Chair woman davis, i know its a busy woman for you. Thank you for making time to come. We will now invite up our next panel of witnesses to taker that seats, props as they do i will start providing introductions just in the interests of time. Our first witness is dr. Mathew glassman, a senior fellow at George Town University prior to joining gai, he worked at the Congressional Research for fen years, it includes congressional operation, separation of powers, appropriation, judicial administration, Agency Design and congressional history, he was details tailed as his professional staff for the legislative Branch Subcommittee in fiscal year 2010 and 2011. The next witness is joshua tuckary professor of politics at new york university. He is a coprincipal social media and participation laboratory and coconductor tore Political Behavior he specializes with emphasis in public voting in facilitateing all forms of political association. And a coeditor of monkey cage, an Award Winning scientifics progress. Which appears in the washington post. The first spot a person who for the past 15 years worked to stream 39 crm operations and leverage new technologies, prior to focusing on Software Solutions full time, josh worked at several telecommunications and testing startups. In 2018, he became focused on a soft wire business he cofounded. Witnesses are reminded, your oral testimony will be limited to five minutes, without objection, your written statements will be a part of the record. You will now be recognized. Chairman kilmer, Vice President graves and members of the select community. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. Im Matt Glassman at georgetown university. Im also with the Congressional Research service. My portfolio includes member communication and the franken privilege. Im a legislative branch patriot and committed to the goal of a modern and powerful legislature. In my testimony, i provided historical overview of the franken privilege. I studied the origins and rational and congress used to regulate franking. Member constituent communications is a Building Block of representative democracy. Its information cannot easily flow from members to constituents. Citizens will be less capable about electoral action about members. Likewise, if kwimpts cannot easily communicate to members, congress am action is less likely to reflect public opinion, franken mail could not be september by members but could be sent to congress by constituents. The legislative franken privilege has existed continuously since the first congress. Except for a brief period when it was temporarily abolished. A reform passed in 1973. It includes many of the familiar restrictions, abandon using private money. Limits on overall franken expenditures. Public disclosures of individual member costs and bans on mass mailings. In the last 20 years ago Electronic Communications have been built on top of the existing franken regulations. Twoing long standing criticisms have been launched. First, its financially waistful. Second it gives unfair advantage to incumbents. In 2018, house members sent over 78 million pieces of unsolicited mass mail. An average cost of 35 cents per piece. These expenditures are actually quite small by historical standard. Between 1998 and 2018, costs dropped by over 80 . The contemporary costs of mass mailings are being driven by a small number of offices. In year, they sent at least one mass postal mailing n. 20 earnings only 61 did. Furthermore, over half the costs of postal mass mailings averaged the 216,000 in mass mailings. As has been the case for decade freshmen members spent a lot more than senior members. An overall franken mail continue to be higher in election years than nonelection years. Throughout history, they have altered communications and have often triggered regulatory changes. For example, the rise of computergenerated mailing list and postal patron Mail Services in the 60s expanded to reach constituents and an explosion in unsolicited mail sent. The rise of electronics is once again changing how members communicate. Email is the most popular way to reach members. Social media accounts allow for real time action that have no cost. These changes call into question the relevant of the traditional mail system. Which has become a smaller portion in recent years. While members spent over 78 million pieces of mass mail, they sent over 1. 2 billion pieces of mass communication, they cost on average less than one half of one cent per piece, making them 70 times less expresencive. As a public policy, the franken privilege has five dimensions, who is entitled to be franked . What can be franked . How much it can be september, where it can be sent and when it can be sent. In addition, policy choices exist and how franken costs will be accounted and paid for. Congress uses a variety of frame works to answer these in the past. The contempt traer system is sa product of the late 20th century and increasingly out of sync with the rapidly changing constituent Communications Environment of the 21st century, thank you for having me here today. I look forward to your questions. Thank you, dr. Tucker you are recognized for five minutes for your testimony. Chairman kilmer, vice chairman graves, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. My name is joshua tucker, im a codirector for social media and politics. In my testimony today, id like to highlight the following four points. First, despite recent controversy around various social media platforms, there appears to have been no aappreciable drop in social media usage among u. S. Adults. Therefore, social media remain viable platforms for reaching large portion of the u. S. Population. Second, there is a great deal of variation in how social media tools can be used to communicate with the public, both due to ploompl affordances or setting up of the platforms, themself, as well as to the preferences of different members of congress. Third, there are crucial distinctions between communicating with constituents through the u. S. Postal service and social media fourth, ongoing efforts to make social media Data Available for outside research and analysis should therefore be an important concern for members of congress as access to social media data will be necessary to ass