Former Pages Offer Bill to Reinstate House Program

[Recursion]

Rep. Dan Boren on Tuesday became the first Member to introduce legislation that would restore the House page program.

The Oklahoma Democrat introduced the bill along with fellow former page and Dean of the House Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas).

The legislation would direct the House Administration Committee to create a nine-member advisory panel tasked with recommending ways to efficiently reinstate the program.

“I am committed to restoring the tradition of young people serving in the House of Representatives,” Boren, who was a Senate page under the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), said in a statement. “Since the short-sighted decision to end the program was handed down by leadership, my office has received an outpouring of support for the reinstatement of the program. I understand the need to cut our expenses in Washington, but we may be able to run the program with no cost to taxpayers based on the recommendations of the advisory panel.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/former_pages_offer_bill_to_reinstate_house_program-208669-1.html

The Clerk of the House once said the page program has launched more careers in public service than anything else Congress has done and I'm inclined to agree. It's a great program, and I really hope this bill passes. I wrote Congresswoman Norton (who can actually vote on this since it's an internal bill) and if you have a second I would ask you to write your Representative as well.

[Renew Deal]

1. I hope they bring it back

But I'm not hopeful without and republican sponsors for this.

[Recursion]

2. Anybody in Crenshaw's district in FL?

He's currently the only Republican in the House who served as a page.

[Cool Logic]

3. " but we may be able to run the program with no cost to taxpayers..."

:rofl:

[Recursion]

4. There's been talk of that for a while, actually; having a foundation fund it

The school for the pages is, oddly enough, part of DCPS, and is a line-item in the District's annual subsidy from Congress. The dorm was at one point a House office building but that's been torn down so I'm not sure where they were living more recently. But people have been talking for a while about developing a foundation to manage and fund the program so that it's not on the Clerk of the House's books. Also, the Members who appoint pages could have the cost come out of their office budgets for that year, which hasn't been the case to date.