Transcript
PAUL LIGHT: Good morning. I'm Paul Light. I'm vice president and director of Governmental Studies here at Brookings. I am also the senior advisor to the Presidential Appointee Initiative.
And I'll start by protecting our panel here; that all questions that would ordinarily go to former EPA Administrator Browner on Kyoto will go to somebody else. [Laughter.] Mort Downey will not be responsible for any questions on delays in the Federal Air Traffic Control System. Jack will not talk about SDI, and Secretary Eagleburger will —
LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER: I'll talk about anything.
P. LIGHT: — anything. [Laughter.]
Now we're here today to release the "Nominee's Bill of Rights," which asks for nothing less and nothing more than a restoration of fairness, dignity and speed in the presidential appointee process. This is part of the Presidential Appointee Initiative, which is a project of the Brookings Institution, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Thanks in advance to our staff from the Presidential Appointee Initiative. They're salted through here: Sandra Stencel, Carole Plowfield, Michael Hafken, Erin Murphy, Anna Gallagher; the whole crew who has helped put together this event.
The goal of this project is simple, this particular project is simple, is to make it easier to say yes when the president calls to ask an individual to serve the government.
There is no desire in the "Nominees Bill of Rights," among these individuals or the other signatories of the bill of rights, to lessen the rigor in the process. What we are asking for is simple speed, fairness, a little bit of dignity, and basically a lessening of the suffering that presidential appointees have to go through. We want to make it easier for talented Americans to serve.
We have particular concern for lower-level appointees who often are like Will Robinson from "Lost in Space." They don't know where they are, they're not quite sure who to call, they don't know what planet they're headed to, they don't know where they're going, they get lost in the process. These four individuals, I think, were treated with quite a bit of scrutiny and care by the White House and the Senate; probably more than that. But it's the lower-level appointees who get lost in this process. And it's interesting to note that the vast majority of people who have signed the "Nominee's Bill of Rights" are, in fact, Executive Level 4 appointees — assistant secretaries, who really do get lost in this process.
Before turning to the distinguished panel of signatories today I'm going to give you a status report of the state of the presidential appointments process. I'm making my talking points available to you on the way out. I have included the talking points with jokes, so whatever you liked you can revisit; whatever you didn't like you can say, "What was he thinking?" Much of this data comes from the databases maintained by Michael Hafken, our senior research analyst at the project, and therefore all mistakes belong to Michael and all truths are mine.
CAROL BROWNER: What belongs to —
P. LIGHT: I spelled his name. Well, there you go.
Now, the question here on the status report is simply asked, "How is the Bush administration doing?," and it's simply answered. There is good news on nominations. As of the 145th day of the administration, which is today, Bush has erased the impact of the truncated transition. He's caught up to Bill Clinton in nominations, caught up to his father's administration and nomination, and he's closing in on Ronald Reagan. Clay Johnson, over at the White House, and his staff in the Office of Presidential Personnel deserve great credit for mastering the nomination process.
The bad news is on confirmation. Bush is still dragging on confirmations. He's trailing Clinton and Reagan both, and is only where he is today on confirmations because of Senator Jeffords' decision to leave the Republican Party. The administration is facing great difficulty in the process. It's a bad sign when you get half of the people that you have confirmed thus far in the administration because a single senator destroyed your majority in the Senate. That's not a good thing. And every one of the Bush appointees who were confirmed — all 62 who were confirmed in the three days following Jeffords' decision ought to write Senator Jeffords a thank-you note because that's how they were confirmed.
As I just said, Bush has caught up on nominations. Ronald Reagan, by this point in time, on June 14th, 1981, had 220 nominated; Clinton, 184; Bush, 206. So he's getting there. There are lots of stats in my talking points that you can look at in terms of where he is.
There's uneven success across the departments. Veterans has half of its political appointees confirmed and in place; Labor has 42 percent; Commerce, 40 percent; Agriculture, 40 percent; State, 38 percent; HUD and HHS, 31 percent. But Interior has just one of its confirmable Senate positions in place. That's it. I say here that Gale Norton should be writing McCauley Culkin of "Home Alone" fame for advice. There is nobody there with her. Education has just two of 16, or 13 percent; Justice 6 of 34, 18 percent; Transportation — Mort, your Department — four out of 18, 22 percent; Treasury, five out of 21, or 24 percent, including the deputy secretary-designate, Kenneth Dam, who is being held by Senator Jesse Helms because of a dispute over textile imports in North Carolina. That's our deputy secretary of the Treasury.
There's been uneven pacing over time. I'd like to say there if Ronald Reagan was the tortoise of the nominations process, George W. Bush is the hare. There's a lot of spiking up and down, unevenness in the nomination patterns of this administration. Of the 21 weeks since inauguration there have been 12, with five or fewer nominations presented by the White House to the Senate. There have been eight with 10 or more, including a whopping 62 nominations made on April 30th.
There is evidence of better pacing in recent weeks. In the last five weeks, the Bush administration has sent 13, 15, 0, 10 and 13 names to the Senate. And it's the pacing that matters here because the United States Senate is like a python; it cannot digest a big pig at once. Not to compare those 62 nominees to a pig and a python, but you see how the Senate works. This is a concrete pipe that does not absorb large numbers of nominees in any given time. I think Clay Johnson has learned that lesson and is doing much better recently.
On demographics, the Bush Cabinet and sub-Cabinet actually looks more like Clinton's than Reagans. Ninety-eight out of the 242 people who have been announced, nominated or confirmed in the Bush administration thus far are not white males. Bush, of the 242, has 27 percent women. When Clinton was done with his Cabinet and sub-Cabinet, he was at 37 percent. Ronald Reagan ended at just 10 percent. There is some additional data on race. Fifty-five percent of the Bush nominees come from the Washington metropolitan area. This an inside-the-beltway Cabinet and sub-Cabinet thus far. And for those who are keeping track of where appointees come from from outside, California leads Texas. Eight and a half percent of the Bush nominees come from California, 7.7 [percent] from Texas. How can that stand? [Laughter.] I just don't know.
Impact of delays are clear. I want to thank Andrew Mohraz for some data that he collected on the management infrastructure. I'll just give you one set of factoids. I'm a management junkie. I pay attention to how you manage departments. And I'm going to talk about the chief operating officers, of which Mort was one. Four are still not confirmed as of today, two have not been nominated, and two are nominated and awaiting confirmation. That's at Ag, Commerce, Interior and Treasury. That's four out of 14 as of today.
General counsels who handle the Regulatory Commission — six have not been confirmed, of whom one has not been announced, two have yet to be nominated, and three are awaiting Senate action. This is the interesting one for all of our panelists. Of the chief financial officers who develop the budget and manage the financial system, only three of 14 have been confirmed. Of the 11 who have not been confirmed, six have not been announced, meaning either they have been decided in the White House or we're still looking; one has been announced but is awaiting nomination and four are awaiting confirmation.
Let me give you the data on this that Andrew collected. The 11 CFO's who are not in place as of today account for a discretionary budget of $256 billion out of a total discretionary federal budget of about $661 billion. That means that we have no CFO's in place managing about 40 percent of the federal discretionary budget. Now I don't know how the Bush administration is going to get a budget up to Congress next January and February if it doesn't have CFO's in place today, because it's right now when the budget starts. Isn't that right, Mort, pretty much?
MORTIMER DOWNEY: I think it started already.
C. BROWNER: It started.
P. LIGHT: It started already; no CFO's home. And you can see this unevenness in where the jobs are coming from. If you want a story about why this matters, this is a good story to follow: nobody home running the budget process in a government of our size.
Sources of delays we can talk about. The impact of the Senate turnover is obvious. We'll take some questions on that, I'm sure. Who gets hurt in this process? The American public, the Civil Service, nominees. I like to say nominees are people too. We have to think about what it takes to get a talented American to be willing to step forward and serve. And these are four talented Americans here, the signatories of the bill of rights. I mean, do we have to make it this hard? We don't want to lessen the rigor but at the same time, we don't want to discourage talented Americans from serving.
A brief overview of the bill of rights, which you have in your packets. It's important to note that the list of signatories is bipartisan. Erin Murphy collected a lot of this data. There are 210 Republicans on the list, 144 Democrats; 108 from Reagans' second term, 97 from George H.W. Bush's one term, 144 from Clinton's two terms. There are 22 Cabinet-rank, 27 deputy secretary rank, 53 undersecretary rank, and 241 assistant secretary rank. That's where we got most of the signatures.
Let me note before we continue that the "Nominee's Bill of Rights" does not ask for a lowering of standards. What it asks for is a quickening of the pace and an increase in respect for the people who are laying their careers aside, coming to Washington — one of the most difficult places in the country now to move to — and serving their country for the right reasons.
I will ask each of our respondents here to talk about why they signed the bill of rights, and when we get to the question and answer period we can talk a little bit about, you know, why so many former appointees would see so much incentive to sign this bill of rights, including a fairly distinguished group of individuals.
From my right to left we have a former secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger, deep and long inventory of service to this country. We have bios in our packets here of each one of them. Mort Downey, who served most recently as deputy secretary of Transportation, also served as an assistant secretary in the Carter administration. We have Carol Browner, who is currently at the Aspen Institute, served for eight years as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Jack Gansler, who is now at the University of Maryland, served for undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition Technology and Logistics. He served from 1972 to 1977, crossing the Nixon and Carter, Ford and Carter administrations as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Materiel Acquisition and assistant director of Defense Research and Engineering.
I was talking to him earlier about whether we couldn't get some of his former colleagues to streamline and improve this process, but I think they have to get that space shield done before they'll tackle a task this difficult. [Laughter.] Actually, that's a very pessimistic view. This is an easy process to fix with just a little bit of will.
So we'll start immediately to my right with Jack Gansler; each one talking a little bit about whey they signed the bill of rights, what they see in the process, and then we'll go to question and answers.
Thank you.
JACQUES GANSLER: First let me say I strongly support it, both for national reasons and, frankly, even for personal reasons. And you'll see that when I go through my little story as well.
I should explain the job that I had. It's a Level 2 position. My budget was about $40 billion per year for research and development, $60 billion per year for procurement, and $80 billion for logistics, or about $180 billion a year was my budget.
Secretary Cohen, I think properly — and here's where I strongly agree with the importance of maintaining the quality — went through a very valid search process for a couple of months at the beginning of the administration. That wasn't the problem. That's the part that really should be focused on. I came into that position, or his selection I mean, with first about 15 years in the defense industry, then five years in the government, then 20 years in the industry, and then up for candidacy. If you're counting on that I was six years old when I started, so don't worry about age.
My point is that I had the relevant experience, which is what you should try to search for, and not discourage people with that kind of experience from coming into these jobs. Now, the problem came in that it took another seven months from the time that Secretary Cohen said, "Yes, that's the person I want," until the time that finally the president was able to sign off after the Senate had approved me.
Twice during that process I almost dropped out. In fact, my wife almost dropped me out of it. Once, at the end of a long period of time when the White House hadn't done anything, she went to Secretary Cohen and said, "We're going on vacation next Thursday and if he's not out by then we're just going to drop out." And somehow the process got a little bit faster then. And then the second time was when the Senate was holding me up and she went to Senator Warner, because we happened to see him, and she said the same thing to him, you know, if this isn't going to — I'd been on hold for over two months because of a battle between the Senate and the president over the Authorization Bill. It had nothing whatsoever to do with me, but I was a very good hostage for it.
P. LIGHT: Should we hire her for our project? Is that the —
J. GANSLER: I think part of her reason for such enthusiasm about it wa