I have already posted this on the Pennsylvania in the Civil War message board, but here is my response FWIW to the hype you've initiated:

If you read the entire proposed regulations, you will see that the current rates that took effect in 2001 were based on a 1999 cost study. What did a price of gasoline cost in 1999? A loaf of bread? A pound of steak? What was the GNP?

If you want to contact your Congressional representatives, suggest they restore the full funding of the Archives budget instead of slashing it has been done the last two years. As a result, the Archives has had to (1)reduce the hours and days that the research side of the Archives is open to the public, (2) reduce the number of "pulls" per day from six to four, and (3) reduce staff. All of which takes away from the Archives ability to fullfill its primary mission which is to preserve the records of the U. S. government.

In addition, if you read the reasons for the proposed increase in rates, you will find that the Archives has been losing money on filling requests for copies of both the Compiled Military Service Records and the Civil War pension files. What people seem to forget is that in order to fill a request for copies of these records it isn't just the cost for copying the files that is involved. It requires staff time to make copies--and these are records that are over 140 years old so you can't just jam them into copier feeders and wait for the copies to come out the other side; these are on very delicate paper that must be copied one at a time. And, of course, there is today's technical side of copying; namely, the costs of operating a copier, the toner/ink and the copy paper.

As you may know the Archives created a list of registered independent researchers which has been posted on its website for the last couple of years. It was posted before the Archives took the step of [publishing the full listing of the Record Groups in its control. I believe this was done in the hope that people who couldn't get to the Archives here in Washington would hire a researcher to retrieve the needed documents, rather than tie up Archives staff time. From my observation, all of the researchers on the list charge rates that are in the same range as the Archives, and many are lower than the Archives current rate for retrieving documents.