House to end page program, citing costs
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Reporting from Washington — House leaders announced Monday the end of an era: The House page program will be no more.
Citing the $5-million cost of the program and the dwindling need for young pages to run papers and messages between congressional offices and the House floor, the historic program will be discontinued.
“This decision was not easy,” House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the minority leader, said in a joint statement, “but it is necessary due to the prohibitive cost of the program and advances in technology that have rendered most page-provided services no longer essential to the smooth functioning of the House.”
The page program gave students the chance to have a front-row seat to the workings of the House.
But the program came under scrutiny after it became known in 2006 that former Republican Rep. Mark Foley of Florida had engaged in inappropriate contact with some of the young men involved in the program.
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