Transcript
MICHAEL ARMACOST: I'm Mike Armacost. It's my distinct pleasure to welcome you this morning to this briefing by the Presidential Appointee Initiative.
This is a project that has been going on for many months. I see many familiar faces, so you are knowledgeable about the project. It was born out of the conviction that this process of selecting people for some of the most important executive branch jobs has become far too costly and time-consuming, inefficient, and most particularly, pretty grueling for many individuals and thereby serves potentially to discourage our most talented citizens from thinking about — contemplating — and accepting these very important duties.
As I say, this is a project that was designed to deal with the executive branch process of selecting and confirming senior appointees. And our objective has been to help the next batch of these appointees through a pretty harrowing process, and to offer recommendations for simplifying and improving it.
We saw just yesterday the process has claimed yet another victim. And whether you feel that this is another case of the politics of personal destruction or a case of an appointee not having provided adequate and timely warning of a potential difficulty is not the subject for debate here. It simply reminds us that this is a process that's deeply embedded in the contemporary political mores of Washington and therefore, to fix it, will require cooperative work across the aisle on the Hill and between parties, between the branches.
It was for that reason that we commenced our work many months ago by creating an advisory committee chaired by two very distinguished Americans: Frank Raines, a Democrat, chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae, former OMB director; and Nancy Kassebaum Baker, a Republican who served with distinction for many years as a senator from Kansas in the Senate. And we looked to them to help us figure out ways of fixing the process that can elicit the cooperation from people in both parties on the Hill and throughout the country.
It's our standard operating procedure, moreover, at Brookings to believe that good policy recommendations must be grounded in thoughtful research. And it's for that reason that we're gathered today to brief the results of survey work that we've undertaken with Princeton Survey Research Associates.
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But before doing that, I would like to say how grateful we are to The Pew Charitable Trusts for the financial support and intellectual help that we received on this project. Dr. Rimel's been a collaborator from the very outset. Indeed, in a way, this project was hatched at The Pew Charitable Trusts, where Paul previously worked as a program officer. And this has been a very fruitful collaboration, for which we're grateful.
Let me therefore invite Rebecca Rimel, president and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts to say a word before our briefing commences.
REBECCA RIMEL: Michael, thank you for those kind remarks, but it's really you that we should thank. Three times your country called you to serve, and three times you answered that call. And for that, I think everyone in this room is grateful.
There are many words that can be used to describe public service — arduous, exhausting, time-consuming on the one hand, and perhaps on the other hand, professionally rewarding, intellectually exciting, and personally very gratifying. Citizens understand these demands, yet we need them more than ever to heed the call to public service. The problems that we're dealing with on our home front are ever more complex. Our international situation is more compelling and complicated. Indeed, we're in an era where it seems that partisanship always trumps partnership. And in fact, cynicism is often looked at as the word that describes our public life instead of civic spirit.
And indeed, certainly everyone that lives in this town, and everyone in this country, knows that we've come through one of the most demanding and complicated, and some say contentious, elections in our history. So we're going to be looking for leaders who can be bold and thoughtful and can emphasize the ties that bind us rather than the divisions that divide us.
Since the very early days of the Republic, our founding fathers understood that key appointments and leadership were absolutely critical to their success and the success of the country. They knew they needed talented, principled citizen-patriots, as they called them. Jefferson said, "There is nothing I am so anxious about as good nominations. No duty is more difficult to fulfill."
In fact, I think some of us ask ourselves, if the founding fathers were here today under these circumstances, would they serve? But some of the satisfactions are very much the same. I had a recent opportunity to talk with Madeleine Albright and also with John Whitehead, and both of them said the same thing: the most gratifying part of their career had been the chance to serve their country.
There's bipartisan agreement on the fact that public services is indeed important and we need our most talented individuals willing to serve. And there is agreement as well that civic service brings satisfaction. But if we want our most gifted citizens, our best and brightest if you will, to serve, we must make the appointment process — yes, diligent and deliberative, but we also must make it inviting and invigorating. I think some would argue that it resembles much more a hazing process now or setting ever-higher hurdles over which we ask our recruits to jump. And yes, we are recruiting people. Let's remember that.
Well, you know, they've given up hazing on most college campuses around the country, and so maybe we ought to ban it as part of the appointment process as well.
The Pew Charitable Trusts and its founders were deeply committed to what makes America great. And they believed that engaging and informing citizens in the public policy process was going to keep the country strong. And that's exactly the work we're about at The Pew Trusts and why we're so pleased to partner on this initiative.
This room is filled with people who answered the call to public service and we're indeed grateful. You have a commitment to civic service and to the public stewardship. We are hopeful that, with the hard work that's been done on this project, that more people will be willing to follow in your footsteps. I offer my deep appreciation to the co-chairs and to the co -authors. A lot of hard work has gone into this and the lending of their time and talents will benefit us all.
And so it with great appreciation that I turn to my colleague, Paul Light, somebody who has been deeply committed personally to public service through his research, through his own professional career, and through his advocacy. Paul.
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PAUL LIGHT: The basic question of our event today is what if you held an administration and nobody wanted to come? What are the attitudes of the kinds of people who we want to serve, America's civic and corporate leaders? And we have done a survey of 580 of America's most talented citizens to ask them what they think about the process, would they serve, what do they see as the costs and benefits of service, would they take the call if the president asked them, and would they say yes? And the answers here are mixed. There's good news and bad news in this survey.
Before we get started, two quick points about Linda Chavez that I want to make. It's going to come up in the conversation today, and I'll make two quick points.
Number one, she really should have read "The Survivor's Guide for Presidential Nominees.
[Laughter.]
This is a wonderful book that is a true collaboration between the Council for Excellence in Government and the Presidential Appointee Initiative. It was published by the Presidential Appointee Initiative. It is free. There's no copyright on it. It can be downloaded at our web site: http://www.appointee.brookings.org.
And it's very clear in this Survivor's Guide that one of the most important things a nominee can do is reveal everything. It's kind of the golden rule of the modern appointments process: reveal unto others before others reveal unto the media. I don't believe that her withdrawal yesterday is likely to reduce the willingness to serve among potential nominees, and we can have a little bit of a conversation today about that. But that's, in part, because the willingness to serve, in this survey, is rooted in a belief in the honor of service. The readiness to serve is conditioned, I think, on the notion that people can make a difference through their work at all levels of government and, in specific, in the presidential appointments — through presidential appointments.
I would also say, unfortunately, that the attitudes towards the current process among potential nominees are already so troubled that it's not clear to me that a single instance of withdrawal yesterday will make much of an impact on these attitudes, and Ginni and I will certainly talk about that.
This event is built around what we believe to be a unique survey of America's best and brightest, the kind of people we hope will serve. There were 580 respondents in this survey — 100 executives from the Fortune 500, 100 presidents of America's top 300 colleges and universities, 85 executive directors from America's largest 300 non-profits, 95 think tank scholars, 100 registered lobbyists at the nation's largest lobbying firms, and 100 state and local government officials.
They were interviewed last summer and fall by Princeton Survey Research Associates, which is our survey partner in all of this, a wonderful firm. The survey was directed and led by Mary McIntosh, who's here with us today and also ably assisted on our team by Judith Labiner, who is the deputy director of the Center for Public Service.
Before we go into the event, I want to thank the staff at the Presidential Appointee Initiative who have worked on this — Sandy Stencel, our executive director; Carole Plowfield, our associate director; Erin Murphy, Suzanne Morse, Michael Hafken. The survey will be available immediately on our web site, downloadable. And that's thanks to Gary Harding, who is at Brookings as our web liaison.
The event will occur in two parts — first, a presentation by Ginni and myself about the survey and then discussion of the implications of the survey, what it means, by our co-chairs, Frank Raines and Nancy Kassebaum Baker.
So without ado, Ginni, will you talk about the first piece of the survey?
VIRGINIA THOMAS: Thank you very much, Paul. It is a pleasure to work with Paul Light and Brookings on this. This was a worthy cause and one that's near and dear to my heart. Some of you may or may not know that my husband is Clarence Thomas, and so we have a little bit of familiarity with the rough-and-tumble of this town and things that happen in a confirmation process.
But it was a pleasure to do this, and my job is to focus on a couple of parts of the survey research that was done under Heritage and Brookings name as we went out to the best and brightest in the country.
And first of all, on the history and what people knew about public service, we did find three things I wanted to bring to your attention. First, there's quite a bias that favors people in the Washington, D.C. area. Over a third of those surveyed tended to be in government previously and half of them were in non-Senate confirmed positions. And half of them lived in the D.C. area. And so those who are close to Washington know how contacts — know about the forms, know about the process, and they tend to keep coming back to service, which may or may not be consistent with what the founding fathers intended originally.
Secondly, for those that don't have the proximity to the D.C. area, we found that the media becomes a very important lens on the process to those who are seeking to serve their country in this way. We found that 60 percent of the corporate CEOs thought that the media had a great deal or a significant amount of influence on what they thought about the appointment process, and even a higher percentage of lawyers and lobbyists and think tankers in Washington thought the media played a tremendous role in deciding what the appointment was going to be like.
And thirdly — I think this is an important point — almost one in every two people pulled back from the process once they got a little taste of it. Whether they pulled back or whether they dropped out, one out of every two people pulled away from the process. And that's a troubling statistic that I hope we all think about, and that's why Paul and Rebecca and a number of people have us studying this process and have us hoping to solve some of the problems that keep people from turning away from it.
Some of it — you'll see in the report — was because of bad timing. Some of it was because of financial or family problems. Some of it was because of the concern over the process that we saw witnessed in the papers today, some things like that. And some of it was they just weren't fit for the particular job that came their way. When you look at the readiness to serve question, it is encouraging and inspiring. I think it's part of the good news Paul was mentioning that's in this survey. A great number of people are ready to serve for all the right reasons.
We measured readiness to serve by asking people their first impressions of serving in the federal government for a president. And 84 percent had a very or somewhat favorable impression of serving their country in this way. Younger people in particular had a more enthusiastic response, as did people who had a very positive reaction about what government can do in this country.
Their initial impression is positive, but then it comes down to this process of weighing the cost and the benefits of serving in one of these posts. And really, when it comes down to a lot of people think right away when they're moving between jobs, they think of pay, only 5 percent of our survey respondents indicated that pay was a positive factor. More importantly, a majority believed that the appointment would make a difference, that they could make a difference in that place, serving their country, which is a very encouraging and inspiring thing — a notion to focus on. Yet, also, a majority believes that the appointment would be disruptive to their lives.
We did find that women and minorities thought that there would be greater benefits in appointment to the federal government than others. And most importantly, the more knowledge they had about the process, the more that they thought that the costs were heavy and the benefits were not as positive. So familiarity with the process may not breed contempt, but it certainly creates a certain sensitivity to the cost of service.
And lately, we did find that the Washington, D.C. area — for reasons that we couldn't dig into more carefully — was a negative. The Washington, D.C. area carries a bit of a stigma and, perhaps, Linda Chavez can come talk with us about that.
Thank you.
P. LIGHT: Thank you.
There's very good news in Ginni's presentation regarding the fact that potential appointees see a value in service. I found that result uplifting — that there's a reservoir of interest in serving in this country at the highest levels of government, and I personally believe that there's a reservoir of interest in serving at all levels of government. Americans want to make a difference for their country.
Statistically speaking, an individual's belief in the honor of service and an individual's belief that they can make a difference through service are the most significant predictors of a willingness to serve. Think about it. That, you know, this kind of notion that we believe in the honor of service and the ability to make a difference — things that we've argued about for years — are important, although when we talk to potential nominees about how they'll respond to the president's phone call, honor and the ability to make an impact really do matter.
Now, there's some bad news, and it comes from me. I don't know why I'm always the one who gives the bad news. Ginni gets to give the good news. But simply stated, the appointments process itself has become the most significant barrier to accepting the call to service among potential appointees. To paraphrase Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan, "It's the process, stupid."
In fact, Congress and the next president have wonderful evidence in this survey that simple changes in the process will increase the likelihood of service dramatically. And it's rare when you're legislating that you know in advance that what you're about to do is going to make a dramatic impact. But here is the evidence in this survey.
The simple evidence is that potential appointees are much more likely than past appointees to describe the current process as confusing, embarrassing and unfair. One of the reasons yesterday's withdrawal is not likely to hurt is that there's not much further for attitudes towards the process to fall. Fifty-nine percent of these potential appointees said the word confusing describes the process today very or somewhat well, compared to just 40 percent of people who've actually gone through the process in the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations. Fifty-one percent of potential appointees said the process is embarrassing compared to 23 percent of actual appointees who went through the process that we surveyed last spring.
Only 43 percent of potential appointees saw the current process as fair. And there was plenty of blame among the potential appointees concerned about both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Two thirds of our respondents said the Senate makes the process an ordeal compared to just 46 percent of past appointees who've been through it. And 42 percent of these potential appointees — two out of five — said that the White House makes this more of an ordeal than necessary, compared to just under a third of actual appointees.
Simply stated, the process is the problem, and simple changes in the process can make a big difference. Luckily, these potential appointees had plenty of advice for our advisory board and for others who want to fix the process. The number one change that could improve the likelihood of accepting the call to service is simplification. From outside of town and from inside of town, potential appointees view this process as unnecessarily complex. But simplification involves something more than just streamlining the forms, which we think is going to happen under the direction or with recommendations coming from the new director of the Office of Government Ethics, the overall office, Amy Comstock, who's with us today.
The Senate and the House appear to be interested in action on streamlining, but there's something more than just streamlining the forms at stake here. There's a general notion that this process is too cumbersome, too difficult, there are too many players, there are too many obstacles in this concrete pipe that we call the presidential appointee process.
It's important to note, interestingly enough, that few of these respondents actually saw the forms as a problem. They didn't see it as a big issue for them — in part, we think, because they haven't seen the forms [Laughter] possibly because they know there's some help coming in the future. Almost three quarters of our respondents said, "Just simplify the process."
Almost as many recommended an increase in pay. Now, you know, we can debate that issue, but we currently pay our top executives in the federal government $161,000. Now, look, the founders believed that public service should be inconvenient. They believed it should be a burden. In fact, Benjamin Franklin argued at the Constitutional Convention that presidential appointees should get no pay at all. In fact, our title of our report is "Posts of Honor," which is the term that Franklin used to described the executive officers of government, saying that these posts of honor should be taken for public reasons only and should not benefit their occupants.
So whether $161,000 today to get a top CEO of a university, a non-profit, or a corporation is enough I think is debatable. Last year, the United States Congress increased the president's salary from $200,000 a year to $400,000. That was the first increase since 1969, a rough doubling — exact doubling actually. Whether we can increase presidential appointees' salaries, I think is an issue for our advisory board to struggle with and whether it will make a difference we think in this survey, the potential appointees are telling us that it would.
And 67 percent of our respondents asked for help returning to their previous jobs. In fact, there's a key point buried in this report that's very significant and it's the role of employers in this country in encouraging their most talented employees to take presidential appointments. Half of our respondents said that their employers would not encourage them strongly or somewhat to take a presidential appointment. And that's an issue that we're going to work on in this project as we do outreach to the corporate, the academic and the non-profit sectors to encourage employers to let their people go, let them come to Washington. They don't necessarily want to come here for the quality of life. They don't necessarily see this as a significant pay increase. They do want to serve. And a little bit of encouragement from our nation's employers might help.
Let me conclude my brief here by basically responding to the question: What should George W. Bush say when he picks up the phone to call presidential appointees? Because we have some good statistical evidence here from this survey on what he should say.
Number one, he should focus on the honor of service. He should tell appointees, and reinforce in his very first message, that serving in the federal government as a presidential appointee is the highest honor an individual can undertake.
Secondly, the statistical evidence suggests that he tell his appointees- to-be that they can make a greater difference through presidential service than anything else they can do. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence, Rebecca, about that issue, testimonials in the survivors guide and elsewhere about the importance of service. But statistically speaking, there's no doubt that potential appointees are more favorable to service when they are told and when they believe that they can make an impact through their work.
Third and perhaps most tangibly, George W. Bush should make his commitment clear to improving this process along with the Senate. Statistically speaking, perceptions of this process being fair, which are related to perceptions of the process not being confusing, not being embarrassing, not taking forever, are a good predictor of a person's willingness to serve. Honor, impact, and improvements in service go a long way, or improvements in the process will go a long way to making sure that the phone call from the president is answered with a resounding "yes."
As I said before, there are very rare times when we know at the beginning of a legislative process, the beginning of a reform process, that what we will do will make a difference. And improving this process, streamlining it, making it more sensible, making it less burdensome, making it faster, making it easier, will, indeed, make a difference in bringing people to Washington — the kinds of people that we really want to serve.
What I'd like to do now is turn to Franklin Raines to talk a little bit about our reform work. In March, the Presidential Appointee Initiative will release its reform agenda. We have already made progress on small scale reforms working with our partners around town, many of whom are in this room from Heritage, from the Council for Excellence in Government, Cal McKenzie, our senior advisor to our project who is one of the nation's most knowledgeable people on this process, the White House 2001 project and so forth.
We've made some small steps forward. Amy is here from OGE, Office of Government Ethics, in part as a testimony to the impacts that we've already had, but we need to go much further. Frank can talk a little bit about where we're headed and where we want to go.
Thank you.
FRANKLIN D. RAINES: Thank you, Paul.
Let me just begin by reminding everyone of something that Paul made reference to, which is that the presidential appointment process is, first of all, a recruiting process. Certainly, no president would have difficulty ultimately finding someone to occupy each of the positions that he needs to fill. But that isn't the issue. Any executive knows it's attracting the people you want and getting them to stay and continue to do the job is the hard part of recruiting.
And so this is not simply a process about dividing the spoils and how much more quickly can a president get in place someone from their party as compared to from another party. It's really about enabling a president to attract a level and quality of people that he or she believes are necessary for them to be successful.
And given that presidential appointees head up very large organizations, very complicated organizations that have very strong management challenges, the range of people who can perform at a very high level in those jobs is relatively small. And that's something that not only presidents of the United States face. But CEOs of the major companies and heads of labor unions and heads of universities and other non-profits face the same issues as well. This is a difficult, difficult process in the best of times. But within the presidential appointment process, it is made more difficult than it need be.
We have had some progress so far as a result of this initiative, and I'd like to remind you a little of that. There's obviously much more that needs to be done, and then I'd like to conclude by saying a word about recruitment from the corporate sphere.
Since the initiative began, we've had the passage of the Presidential Transition Act of 2000, which was co-sponsored by Senators Thompson and Lieberman in the Senate and a bipartisan coalition in the House led by Representative Steven Horn, pushed through this legislation. The president signed it in October, which gave the current transition a little bit of a head start, and fortunately so, given that it has been so truncated. In allowing much earlier interaction between the government and the transition and also, and I think very importantly, in requiring the Office of Government Ethics to conduct a review of the financial disclosure process and submit a report to Congress on how that process can be improved.
Also, the president issued an executive order on facilitation of presidential transitions in November as well. There was the Senior Coordinating Council established to work with the transition, and a requirement that the White House Personnel Office provide information to the transition on all of the presidential appointments, positions requiring appointment, and including a reference to individuals who can provide the substantive information required.
And one of the little secrets about the White House is that the process that involves this great complexity of recruiting all of these appointees has no continuing support from administration to administration. The head of presidential personnel walks into that office and there is literally no one there and there is no paper in the office. There's nothing there to facilitate them from day one; not exactly the structure you would put in place for such a critical endeavor if you had the opportunity to change it.
Also, President Clinton took an act to revoke a requirement that has been an impediment in the recruitment process and that was his own executive order that extended the ban on post-employment contacts with an agency. He extended it from one year to five years, and he revoked that requirement. Under law, appointees are prohibited for life from having any lobbying or attempts to influence measures in which they were personally involved. So this isn't a question of a conflict of interest that they have been on one side of an issue and they've now gone to the other side. This related to an effort really to push aside those who had been in an agency from any contact on any subject, substantive contact on any subject. And by law then, those subjects will say we're not personally involved for a period of four years beyond what the statutes require.
For those from the corporate arena, but as well as those outside the corporate arena, the prospect that your employee would not only be barred from contacting the government on a matter in which they had been involved — which is easily understandable — but that they would be barred from any contact with the organization at all could wipe out entire career possibilities. Now, for people, for example who may be a banking regulatory lawyer, if they couldn't for a five-year period contact the banking agencies, it would certainly limit their utility.
Much more obviously needs to be done. The whole financial disclosure process needs to be streamlined. Again, this is not simply a bureaucratic issue. It is a true impediment to having people come in the process and having them stay in the process and have them not decide halfway through the process — on second thought, I'm not interested in moving forward with this appointment. And this has to be done not just at the White House level, but also with the FBI and with the Senate. We have to give nominees ongoing information about where they stand in the process. We need to accelerate the review process. We have to reconsider the widespread application of the FBI full field survey investigation for so many of our offices. We also need to have reforms on the Senate side that Nancy will speak about.
Let me finish by just saying something about the role of employers.
Because of the difficulty recruiting in the private sector, there has grown up a whole series of measures that we generally refer to as "hand-cuffs" to ensure that it's very hard for employees to leave once they've been recruited. And the more senior and more important they are, the greater the number of handcuffs, so that compensation is not paid out all in one year. It is paid out over a period of time. Compensation is not simply in cash. It can be in the form of some kind of deferred compensation or, in the case of corporations, stocks. Some stocks can be an actual share of stock or it can be an option on the shares. Very often, the value of he compensation is time-related. The value of an option is much greater if that option exists for 10 years, for example, than if it exists only for one year.
And all of these are created by other employers to keep their employees. Well, if the federal government is trying to recruit employees from these circumstances — again, whether it's a non-profit area or in the for-profit area — it's up against a very difficult task because not only is the employee giving up future income, but they are giving up the income that they have already earned but has been deferred for one reason or another and is not accessible to them.
Already the Congress has a provision that allows the Office of Government Ethics to limit the burden of some of these transitions by giving favorable tax treatment on required sales of stock, for example, which means that some of the time-value is not lost. That favorable treatment, however, only applies to stock. It does not apply to options. And it's important that we focus on these handcuffs as a way — from the government's side — to try to deal with the panoply of them because they are only going to increase as the competition for talent increases.
At the same time, from the corporate side and the organizational side, they have the ability to release some of these handcuffs at their discretion. And in our company, for example, if someone is going to leave and they're not going to leave to go to a competitor or go into a separate business, but they want to go into public service, either in government or at a non-profit, we have a policy of releasing the handcuffs to allow them to go into public service because we think that that's an important endeavor. And I would strongly encourage other corporations — and I know a number of them have done this — a number of other corporations to adopt similar policies, to release these handcuffs to allow employees who move into public service and respond to the call of their president.
But we also have to go, I think, even further, which is to recognize this strong desire of people to serve because they believe it is of value to their nation. This is something that corporate leadership, I think, needs to value as well, and that, in making the tradeoff between the needs of their company and the needs of the nation, I hope that more of them will find that it's better to make a contribution of a talented employee than to make the next soft-dollar contribution if you are truly trying to improve the commonweal.
NANCY KASSEBAUM BAKER: I would like to speak just a moment about the role of the Senate in the confirmation process, and I would like to begin by a statement that Senator Lott gave me yesterday in talking about the report so far and initiatives that we sent in a letter in the first part of December to Senator Lott and Senator Daschle.
And so if I may, I will just read what he said regarding release of the report of the Presidential Appointee Initiative.
"I have long been concerned that our current appointments process discourages some good people from coming into the government. The commission's report is invaluable and the Senate should give serious consideration to the recommendations that will be forthcoming. Hopefully, this is the first step toward our working to make the appointments process more reasonable and effective."
And so I think, on both sides of the aisle, there is a genuine desire to try and work together to find some constructive and effective solutions. I think it's important — it's been noted here before — that, in 1961, President Kennedy had 196 positions to fill. Thirty years later — 800 positions were filled by President Clinton. And that doesn't include the independent agencies, the advisory commissions — all of the other positions that have to be filled. And the process pretty much is the same for every position, whether it's an advisory position, a short-term commission, as it is for a secretary. And I think one of the things that we have looked at and reviewed and should be forthcoming is ways to better tailor some of the initiatives as well as just a simplification of the forms.
So do we do or what can we do?
Maybe some of these are more personal suggestions at this point than concrete recommendations that we've made, but several were sent in the letter. And I guess one I have felt strongly about when we talk about this as a post of honor and it does make a difference in service. I must say I have to ask myself sometimes, "Does it?" It should. Many believe so. The survey shows that anyone asked would say and believe, and it's true, that it is an honor to be asked. But does it make a difference to serve? And I think what we can do is help, indeed make it a difference to serve.
One of the ways — and we're starting with it — is improving the appointment process. But I think there are some other things that we can do that ultimately will be beneficial and perhaps we'll want to continue to be engaged in to improve the process. I believe we need to limit the number of political appointees. I think this, again, has made the process even more burdensome, and has perhaps diminished the importance of those who are asked to serve at the very top levels. And as a result, you just continue to have more assistants, assistants and others that are included in the process. Ways that that can be improved — I'm not sure, but that is one thing we're looking at.
And it's been mentioned, simplifying and standardizing the information-gathering, the forms that are used. And I think, again, tailoring them to fit the position and then not have different forms used by say the Foreign Relations Committee as well as the administration. Maybe two committees would have jurisdiction and hearings. How many different forms does one have to fill out to get the relevant information?
The Senate should consider a rule — and this is one of the suggestions we made in the letter — that limits the imposition of holds by senators to the total of no more than 14 days on any single nominee. It can be done. It should be done. A hold doesn't mean that it will come up immediately. It just simply means it's still on the calendar and it could sit on the calendar for quite some time. There certainly could still be a filibuster regarding bringing it up off the calendar. But a hold should not be longer than that.
Holds were initiated, as certainly most of you in the room know, to honor anybody's uncertainty about either the legislation or a nominee and give time to make sure that all the relevant information one needs is out there. But 14 days is long enough.
The Senate should adopt a rule that mandates a confirmation vote on every nominee no later than the 45th day after receipt of the nomination. That may be a bit more difficult to get the Senate to agree to as a rule. That seems to me a reasonable one. If there is some uncertainty and clearly efforts have been made to raise concerns about a candidate, then the vote should be taken. And that gives time enough, it would seem to me, to be able to make that determination.
These are just a few of the things that I think we could undertake right now along with the current process that is ongoing. We will have further and more detailed recommendations to make — maybe even sooner than March since this is becoming, I think, very important.
I happen to believe it's an important initiative — not just for these things that we could do in improving the process, and one is to make sure that there is forthrightness on all sides. You can't legislate that. And we can put it in a book. But unless the nominee and those who are doing the vetting process can share with each other information that might or might not become controversial, then we're still going to run into problems.
And today with the media, today — not to criticize unduly the media, but there is an effort to find a story for the evening news that's going to catch people's attention, and trying to find the feet of clay and those, no wonder we have a hard time today finding heroes or heroines because we all seem to want to find a weak spot. But it becomes important if, indeed, it's going to be an honor to serve and a willingness to understand that a difference can be made, if we have a process that will respect differences of views, but also will respect the integrity and the ability of the person who's being nominated to serve. And without that, we can't accomplish much.
But I think, if we look at the process from the standpoint of how to improve the appointments and go beyond that to how we can — the Office of Ethics in Government and other initiatives to look at the whole structure of the presidential appointees and how that's changed and how we can make it more effective, perhaps it will, indeed, be worth the effort that many now question whether they want to go through what they're being put through.
Thank you very much.
P. LIGHT: Great, great. I think what we'll do now is open this up for questions from the floor and see what's cooking here. We'll take questions for about a half-hour maximum.
Terry?
Terry Sullivan: You're talking about the comparison between the survey results about conflicts of interests and financial disclosure from these people who haven't served in government. They haven't gone through the process and they may be naive, and the survey results — basically on the same sorts of questions from people who have gone through the process and have filled out the forms, et cetera.
P. LIGHT: Sure. Want to take a whack at it or ...?
The people who've been through the process — we have a long stream of data now dating back to 1964 actually. Cal McKenzie, who's in the room here, and I worked on a survey of the Johnson through Reagan first administration appointees, some of whom experienced the ethics process embedded in the 1978 Ethics Act. They saw the forms as somewhat more burdensome than the people who have come through it more recently. I think there's sort of an inurement that occurs over time that you become inured to the process and accepting of the forms, that this somehow seems as acceptable.
The people as potential nominees, when we asked them about the burdens of the forms, did not see them as burdensome as the people who've been through the process. I think that's, in part, because they haven't seen the forms.
You know, of the total sample here, only a small number had actually been contacted for an appointment in the past. As Ginni said earlier, half of the people who had been considered for an appointment in this sample had declined it or would have declined it had it moved to a final resolution. The impact of the forms in that small group actually is more significant. I think you don't realize what this process looks like until you're in the middle of it, until you kind of get inundated and you get this package of material from the transition counsel or the White House counsel and you suddenly realize, you know, that you've got an extraordinary burden on your hands to remember every last detail from your life over the last 15 years.
One of the things the White House could do in this process is that the National Security Clearance currently conducted by the FBI only requires a seven-year lookback. You're supposed to fill out these forms and give your employers your residences and so forth just looking back seven years. It's the White House that asks you to go back 15 and also asks you to go back to your 18th birthday on drug use, alcohol use, and encounters with the law. The White House could streamline this form in an instant by reducing or changing the lookback requirements.
But people who haven't been through this process just have not experienced the forms in their full flurry. The lobbyists in this sample, who do know the forms, were very negative about the impact and there's some evidence there by way of comparison.
Other questions?
Yes, sir.
QUESTION: Well, just to follow up on that in the real political world, let's say you did just have a seven-year lookback and you find out eight or nine years ago there was, for example, the undocumented nanny for whom you didn't pay taxes. Are you going to have a rule that that's off-limits? Obviously, the press is going to write about it, but it's a deal that the Senate can't take that up?
P. LIGHT: Well, let's let Frank answer. Then I'll turn to Nancy.
F. RAINES: — You can very easily say it will cover a seven-year period, but if there's anything prior to the seven-year period that we should know, tell us. But that doesn't mean that you impose the requirement on thousands of people in the hope that you can find the one person who had a problem 10 years ago and it's a disproportionate burden on the whole process that is the problem.
Just remember, we're trying to encourage the marginal 10 or 20 percent of the better qualified people, the people presidents really want to come in. There are some people who will come in no matter what you throw at them and so redoing the forms isn't going to really change anything. But the sanctity of a form does not by itself mean that you'll get better disclosure. If you're really worried about, "Is there something that's embarrassing that can come up?," designing the perfect form isn't going to get you there because, over a period of 10 years, the form will just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger as you discover more and more human foibles.
So you should not be relying on forms as a way of getting at the one off problems that will occur in one out of every thousand appointments. There's nothing that will keep you, that will ensure that people will either remember or adequately disclose or adequately describe events that they may believe weren't important or they may believe are important but, nevertheless, that can go undetected. Forms are a bureaucratic way of dealing with something that really has to be done on a much more individualized basis, and only on an as-needed basis.
P. LIGHT: Let me just pivot off that to give you a simple fact about the Chavez nomination. The FBI was still doing the background investigation, the full field investigation, at 4:00 PM yesterday on her. They had not completed the vetting process. All of the information that she had provided in her forms was utterly and completely and totally useless.
The key question that she needed to answer was in the conversation with the transition counsel where she was asked: Is there anything in your history about you or your family that could embarrass you or otherwise jeopardize your nomination? And there's no form known to humankind that will get that answer. That's a point-blank question. You can ask thousands of questions. In fact, we're approaching, you know, that number. Does that ensure that you get the truth?
We could actually streamline this process, get it down to a handful of questions that every nominee has to answer. But it's really going to be in that one-on-one bare-knuckle, bright-light interview with the White House where they say, "Look, we have to have the truth here because it's going to come out sooner or later." That's the point that Frank's making. But just think about it. The FBI was still doing the investigation yesterday and had not yet come up with the answers.
Ginni.
V. THOMAS: I just want to say that Paul and I agree on some things, but, boy, we disagree on some things, too.
I think it's a very sad day when you hold up the kind of person you want to serve in our country. Linda Chavez is the perfect example. She's come from hard times. She's a capable, bright woman who is a quick study on issues. I mean, when you think about what happened yesterday, it shows there's a poison in the system that prevents good people from coming to Washington and doing the right thing.
And now we have — we had the Nannygate problem that came with the Clinton administration which, depending on what you think, it's either a wise thing or a stupid thing. Now we have a good Samaritan rule that prevents you from serving if you forgot to ask, you know, for the person's green card that came to your door looking for help, as she said. And I think it will send a very destructive signal and she may have done some things wrong that we can't figure out here, but I do think that there was a bigger war brewing and that this had more to do about the bigger war than the small thing that she was found doing.
P. LIGHT: I think that's a good point. Nancy, did you want to comment.
N. BAKER: I guess, my only answer to that would be that we really don't know. But I would wish that, like Frank said, all the questions that are on that form, the full field FBI investigation, wouldn't have uncovered that anyway.
So it is important to have — whether it should have been or would have been the issue — it seems to me Linda Chavez and those who were talking to her prior to her name being put forward — make sure in the discussion that they can discuss this between themselves and say — I had this woman in my home. Walk through it. Because it shouldn't be confrontational at that point. Is this going to be a problem?
I don't think anyone wants to embarrass her anymore than it being a problem for the incoming administration. And that's where I think one would have to tailor it. You have to be willing to be forthcoming and those in the vetting process should be assisted rather than being confrontational in walking through something. Would you agree, Ginni, that — not knowing the details of this but realizing that, in some ways, there should be greater help in that area.
P. LIGHT: Back here.
QUESTION: Since Mrs. Thomas is here, I guess I can ask her. When we mention embarrassment, you're probably talking about Senate confirmation hearings, and things like that, various things that might come up. Is that what — first of all, how big of a deal is that to potential officeholders? And is there anything that can be done to address that, or is that just something that people are going to have to live with?
V. THOMAS: Well, it's becoming a bigger deal. It's becoming a bigger deal. You know, I guess we don't have anything to compare our survey against. But we're troubled by the degree to which the embarrassment factor is developing and preventing people from serving their country.
And you know, what you see in public is really the tip of the iceberg for those who have been through it. What happens below what you see in public — there's a horrible personal turmoil that goes on for the person that's accused of things that aren't true or the person that's accused of things that may have happened years ago. Every form that you fill out that asks more and more questions with this process, you're arming your enemies, who disagree with you on policy reasons, who — then it gets used in this process. So that's part of the poison of the system.
We're trying to struggle here with how do we take the poison out of the system? Are the forms too long so that we're exposing too much that doesn't need to be relevant to serving your country? Does the media bear some responsibility? I'd say yes. Does the Senate bear some responsibility? I'd say yes. Does the White House bear some responsibility? Again, yes.
P. LIGHT: Back here. Congressman Bill Klinger.
CONGRESSMAN BILL KLINGER: In terms of the complexity and the ambiguity and the difficulties that are faced by a nominee, how much is that? Can you quantify how much is that caused by legislative initiative and how much would be as a result of White House action? In other words, is it going to be more difficult for this administration to do much about those impediments that are legislatively created as opposed to those that they can do with the stroke of a pen?
F. RAINES: My experience — the fundamental requirements that were put in the Ethics Act in law are not the source of the greatest burden. It is this confusion — and this gets back to the embarrassing question — it's the confusion of political embarrassment with ethics that has caused the problem.
You can have an issue that does not raise an ethical question but could be embarrassing to the administration because of what it says about their policies or their intentions or some other factors that — these things have all gotten added on in the name of ethics, but it's not really about ethics. It's really about ensuring that your nominee isn't out there advocating something and there's something in their background that shows they were less than faithful to it themselves in their private life. But it's not an ethical question. It's an appearance question, maybe an authority question, a legitimacy question, but it's not about ethics.
And so I think the larding on at the White House level of what is essentially an array of political protection devices as ethical questions has been a problem. Similarly in the Senate where the — depending on the committee, where committees have utilized their process as a way of either influencing this particular nominee, influencing another nominee who is not related to this one but you can get some leverage on them because of this particular nominee, and to try to — and perhaps even defeat a nominee based on personal foibles.
Again, it's not — usually it's not ethical questions. It's very interesting how rarely we have found a case where someone has been accused of making a decision that directly benefited them in their pocket, which is what the old notion of governmental ethics was about. You can't make decisions that will benefit you personally.
We have lots of things about whether or not you have humiliated yourself, but very few about whether or not you've actually taken a bribe in one form or another. We have an enormous apparatus, and we co-join them, and also tying it to the national security apparatus, which is really what the FBI investigation is done. You're taking a level of detail that we intended to seek outside and now to try to find out whether people have failed to make payments to the Social Security Administration.
I mean, it's a form of overkill that is, I think, very detrimental. So the ethics part, which Congress has legislated, I don't think is a big part. I think it's all the things that have now glomed on to this process and call themselves ethics and use them to achieve other means.
P. LIGHT: Amy, you want to make a comment? Amy Comstock ...
AMY COMSTOCK - Office of Government Ethics: — I did want to follow up. I absolutely agree with what you said. We will be preparing a study pursuant to the Presidential Transition Act that we will get up to the Senate in April, and it will have some areas — I expect it will have some recommendations for legislative change because in the financial disclosure area primarily, there are some areas where it can be streamlined. But the reality is, while it's our mandate to also look at areas where the entire nominations process can be streamlined from the White House to the Senate — excuse me, Senate confirmation piece. That's not something that OGE can do based on its own.
We certainly want to be at the table. We want to help. We want to cooperate. But all the issues that you all are raising here about the poisoning of the well, and the attitude and the gotcha mentality that we live in now. All those issues are really on the table right now. And while OGE, as I said, will propose what we can legislatively and want to be part of that conversation, it's going to take cooperation from the White House and the Senate for us to really tackle some of these issues.
P. LIGHT: Well, we can make some progress, no doubt, by just demanding that every question on the form have a reason. I want somebody to tell me what the date and place of birth of my mother and father-in-law have to do with my ability to serve.
Now, I don't want you to ask my mother and father-in-law about that. But you know, these forms have just, you know, over the years, accreted questions. We have Al Felzenberg from the Heritage Foundation who can tell you the origin and history of each one of these questions. I think we can get the number down. I think we can ask better questions, different questions, and make it easier. That's not to say the Senate shouldn't discharge its responsibilities. I think Nancy would be a tireless defender of the Senate's prerogative on that. But are they asking the right questions?
We can get this started, you know. I think one of the joys of this project is that it's been a wedge for having this conversation. We can't solve it all with this one, but we're making progress.
N. BAKER: Well, I am a great defender of the advice and consent role the Senate is supposed to play. And do you ask the right questions? Well, I think that can be asked every time we have a hearing. I've always said that is really the key issue perhaps that — a responsibility we have is asking the right questions. And I've sat through many a confirmation hearing when I thought there were really pretty ridiculous questions asked or irrelevant.
But it becomes a showcase for everyone, essentially. And I don't think that can be changed with a change in forms or anything else. It really depends a lot on the politics of the moment. And I totally agree with what Frank has said. And that can't just be changed. The climate itself has to change to a certain extent and I believe people on both sides are really willing an anxious to take a look at that at this point.
I have believed that maybe being 50-50 in the Senate is an opportunity because, if we're going to accomplish anything constructive, it's going to take people willing to work together. And I guess I would hope that it might be an opportunity to change the environment here at this point.
But I don't know how — a chairman has a lot to do with how a committee operates and the process. And it might be useful for us to think about, again, making our appeal to the chairmen of the committees as they start the confirmation hearings.
P. LIGHT: Other questions? Back here.
QUESTION: — a couple of industrialized Western democracies that have — for example, Britain has a transition period that's about 24 hours long, as far as I know. Germany has a foreign minister at the moment who it was recently revealed was an anti-police demonstrator in the 1970s and threw rocks at troops and so on.
I agree with you about the intrusiveness and obnoxiousness and irrelevance of this process, but did you look at any other national systems of vetting high ranking officials and find that, say, Britain and Germany suffer from profound problems that we do not because they don't ask those questions?
F. RAINES: Let me take a crack at it.
Remember how unique the American system is. There are very few other governments in the world who have appointed officials that go very deeply into their administrative apparatus. Indeed, there are very few governments in the world who have non-elected officials. In most parliamentary systems, the ministers have been members of Parliament and have been subject to a public vetting so that, if you have a minister who has troubles in their background but they've nevertheless been re-elected by the public, just as in this country, you know, it's sort of a cleansing. If you go through an election and people know about it, it's sort of off — out of bounds for future objection. And so what's unique about this country is that we — our executive branch is separate from the legislative branch and the only elected officials in it are the president and the vice president.
So everyone else is operating under derivative power that comes from those two elected officials. And so we, almost uniquely, have this whole cadre of people who are literally coming from private life, most of whom were not in government anywhere at the time they come into occupying these offices, whereas in most other countries, you're talking about people who are elected officials somewhere simply being elevated to an executive position within those governments.
So it's a very unusual circumstance that we have. And because we have so few elected officials in the executive branch, and because it's so hard to take on a president, very often, the appointees are the proxies for taking on the president. You know, it requires a lot to say that you'd like to undermine the president, not quite as much to say you'd like to undermine this particular secretary or assistant secretary or administrator. And so they can serve as a political proxy, whereas you wouldn't need to do that in those other countries. You could go directly at the people because they are elected and they are required to come stand before the Parliament typically on a periodic basis and defend themselves. And so I think that is partly why our situation is very unique and it's hard to find a lot of other examples to learn from.
P. LIGHT: Other questions? We'll take two more questions.
Al Felzenberg?
AL FELZENBERG: Hi. Excuse me. Al Felzenberg from the Heritage Foundation. A couple of points.
I certainly agree with Paul that the Linda Chavez issue is probably not going to discourage other candidates for the reasons you said, but there is another chilling effect in all of what we've been discussing that might. And that's the leak of confidential information, the leak of what the FBI does and doesn't have.
When I worked on the President's Commission on the Federal Appointments Process, Senator Danforth, a very able public servant, took to the Senate floor, castigated a colleague for allowing a staff member or even the colleague himself to leak things from an FBI file. There are references today in the various newspapers about what the agents who haven't finished their report, as you point out, were and weren't worried about. I mean, why are we reading this? Why are we reading things about Gov. Keating?
Then we had, of course, those 900 files that made their way into the White House into an office with a refrigerator. We have no idea how they got there, what was looked at, what wasn't. I think that has a chilling effect — the idea that your VISA cards, your divorce records, medications you've been on, past surgeries you've been on, things that you do offer up, can be rummaged through.
The second thing, I would hope, with due respect, that Senator Kassebaum rethink her opposition to the number of political appointments we have. I was just making some notes here. When President Kennedy was president, there was not an EPA, there was not a Department of Energy, there was not HUD, there was not HCFA, Department of Education, Department of Veterans Affairs. And as Frank reminds us, in a republic, which I hope we still are, the only way a president can enact his policies through his own government to speak with one voice is through the minions that he appoints.
So I would hope you'd look at the growth of government and the size. I don't think 6,000 people over a workforce of 1.7 million would be too much to ask for a president to have.
P. LIGHT: Let me respond a bit to that one.
Just from the standpoint of it's not the size or the number, but the layers of management they occupy. Back in 1960, being an assistant secretary of a department was really something. You had a deputy secretary. You might have an undersecretary. But that was the number two or number three position in most departments. Today, being assistant secretary is a job that's underneath eight, 12 layers — secretary, chief of staff to the secretary, deputy chief of staff to the secretary, deputy secretary, associate deputy secretary, deputy deputy secretary, undersecretary — do you want me to continue? — principal deputy undersecretary ...
[Laughter.]
Forty percent of the layers in the Department of Energy in between the secretary of energy last year and the chief of the Los Alamos weapons lab were political appointees. They weren't very many in number, but they occupied a large number of layers between the top and bottom. But you and I are going to have that debate, Al. I'm going to convince you sooner or later.
An answer here?
N. BAKER: Well, I would just say that you made the point I wanted to make — not so much the numbers, although I think its grown to the point it's diminished the importance of having a major role, having a focus for those who should be speaking to policy because you have to go through so many different layers. And frequently, you find, if you're working with a department, the left hand and the right hand aren't necessarily working together.
Now, how we improve that, I'm not sure, and whether this is a way to get at improvement. But I think it goes back again to lending some stature and direction to what you're doing in the appointment process. It's — you know, as well as anybody in this room, how hard it is to be a good manager for the Department of Labor. We'll take that since we're discussing right now. I happen to think Linda Chavez, while I wouldn't have agreed with her on all opinions, would have been a pretty tough secretary of labor.
Now, you need somebody who will have stature and ability to work with various layers. But as the appointment process has grown, there are too many who want to be kings of their own fiefdom and nobody wants to be a follower. So you've got it spread all over the place no matter where you go. And I think that's what's very discouraging.
I've had people come to me — I don't need to get personal — but a young man who was a Kansan who was a superb reconstructive surgery for children, and he talked to me about running for office because he wanted to come to Washington and make a difference. And I said, "If I had your skill, I would never come to Washington."
[Laughter.]
But you know, how do you encourage someone when many times you know — you get bogged down in just a morass of different layers and I think what we're talking about is restoring some responsibility and dignity to the process or, otherwise, all of these other questions simply become irrelevant, and we do get the trivial instead of the important question asked.
F. RAINES: The corollary to what Paul's saying about reducing the number of political layers has to be improving the quality of the career service so that, when a new administration comes in, they know that there will be people there who will implement their policies and implement them well, and that you are not having to go out and seek out people — who can I get who knows how to run the student loan program? And where you're facing a massive management challenge.
If policy officials are policy officials, you don't need as many of them. But if you're relying on them as your recruitment tool for management because you've got problems in the civil service that don't allow you to get the appropriate managers, then that's a different problem. And I think we've seen both of those things happen here, a desire to get political people in every part of the department, but also a gap that's been created by a civil service that has not been either allowed or assisted in having the kind of senior people that you would say — they're there all the time and they will be able to manage his agency. We're now putting a policy official above them, not a manager but a policy official.
And you don't need as many policy officials as you do managers. So I think we're going to have to work both sides of that equation to ensure that the senior civil service is up to the task in the same way that it's up to the task in other countries.
P. LIGHT: Here's what we'll do, Al. We'll take the 3,000 political appointees and we'll put them on the table with the 7,000 career, which constitute our 10,000 members of out senior executive corps in government and you and I will figure out how many there should be and how to sort them. Because if you're taking out political, maybe you need to sort career.
I'd say, also, on the issue of FBI clearance that individual citizens in this country have a greater right to correct their credit records than presidential-appointee-designates have to correct the FBI record before it goes to Capitol Hill, and we ought to give nominees the basic right to see their files before those files go anywhere else and to correct provisions in their files, and that's certainly something that we're discussing with the advisory board that Cal Mackenzie is working on.
I think we should actually bring this to a close. We've kind of exhausted our time limit. We will have the release of our reform agenda no later than early March, perhaps earlier. I always like it when we're given more urgency around this issue.
The good news here, of course, is that there is this reservoir of willingness to serve. It's out challenge in this project and in this town and working with our partners to make sure that, when the president-elect calls, the answer can always be yes at the least burden possible.
Thank you for coming today. We appreciate your continued support. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE AND END OF EVENT.]