Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act

The Librarian of Congress picks the Register of Copyrights today. The bill would make it a presidential pick, confirmed by the Senate. The term would run 10 years and could be renewed for five years at a time. The person would need to be a U.S. citizen with a background in copyright law.

The bill would create a watchdog office inside the Copyright Office. The Register could not stop an audit, a subpoena, or a report. Firing that watchdog would take 30 days' written notice to Congress. Its budget request would go to Congress unchanged. But its audits would leave out cases of violence and damage to property. They also could not reach Capitol Police work.

The Publishing Office would have to publish draft staffing rules and take public comment first. The Joint Committee on Printing would also have to approve them. Workers who comment on a draft rule could not be punished for it.

Today the President picks these two officials. The Senate then votes to confirm them. Under the bill, committee leaders would offer three names. The Speaker, the Senate majority leader, and the two minority leaders would pick one.

The Librarian of Congress holds a 10-year term today. The bill would let those same four leaders fire the Librarian or the Publishing Office Director at any time. That would include people already in the job.

The Copyright Office sits inside the Library of Congress today. The Librarian signs off on many of its decisions. The bill would end that role. The Register alone would set cable, satellite, and music royalty rates. The Register would pick copyright judges. The Register would also decide who may break digital locks, such as to unlock a phone.

The bill would declare valid every copyright action taken from May 8, 2025 until it becomes law. That covers the Copyright Office and the Register. It also covers the copyright judges and the Copyright Claims Board. It would settle doubts about whether those acts had legal backing. Anyone put in office by an acting Register then would be an acting officer. A confirmed Register could remove them.

Publishing Office workers can now take retaliation complaints to two outside bodies. They are the Office of Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board. The bill would take the agency out of the law those bodies enforce. Its own new staffing rules would still bar the same conduct. But the outside route would be gone.

The Publishing Office Director would have to build a hiring, pay, and promotion system. It would have to follow federal merit rules. It would have to bar unfair staffing moves. It would also bar the political work federal law already blocks. It would sit outside the government's normal hiring rules.

The new system would have to give the same hiring edge that executive branch jobs give. People who qualify, such as many veterans, would keep it at the Publishing Office.

Publishing Office staff are treated as executive branch workers under parts of federal personnel law today. The bill would move them under the Congressional Accountability Act. That is the workplace-rights law for congressional staff. The switch would start when the bill becomes law. The bill shields pending claims and appeals only in its later staffing section. It does not shield them here.

Federal law now sets a floor of 90 cents an hour for journeymen printers, pressmen, and bookbinders at the Publishing Office. The bill would delete that line. The figure sits far below today's federal minimum wage. Pay talks between the Director and a committee the trades pick would stay in place.

Federal printing, binding, and blank-book work must be done at the Government Publishing Office today. The Joint Committee on Printing can approve narrow exceptions. The bill would change that rule to say the office "may" do the work. It would also repeal a 1993 spending law that barred agencies from paying outside printers.

Senior agents for the new Copyright Office watchdog could arrest people without a warrant. That would cover crimes done in front of them. They could also seek search and arrest warrants and carry firearms. They would need law enforcement training. The office would tell Congress twice a year that safeguards are in place.

A 2024 spending law freezes pay for senior political appointees. It holds their pay at the rate in place on December 31, 2023. The bill says the Librarian of Congress and the Publishing Office Director do not count as political appointees for that freeze. The same would go for any similar freeze passed later.