[Senate Hearing 106-331]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 106-331
NOMINATION OF JOSHUA GOTBAUM
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON THE
NOMINATION OF JOSHUA GOTBAUM, TO BE CONTROLLER, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT
AND BUDGET
__________
OCTOBER 28, 1999
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
61-294 cc WASHINGTON : 2000
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For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee, Chairman
WILLIAM V. ROTH, Jr., Delaware JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
TED STEVENS, Alaska CARL LEVIN, Michigan
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi MAX CLELAND, Georgia
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire
Hannah S. Sistare, Staff Director and Counsel
Robert J. Shea, Counsel
Henry R. Wray, GAO Detailee
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Peter A. Ludgin, Minority Professional Staff Member
Darla D. Cassell, Administrative Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Thompson............................................. 1
Senator Durbin............................................... 7
WITNESS
Thursday, October 28, 1999
Joshua Gotbaum, to be Controller, Office of Management and Budget
Testimony.................................................... 2
APPENDIX
Biographical and financial information....................... 13
Prehearing questions......................................... 19
NOMINATION OF JOSHUA GOTBAUM TO BE CONTROLLER, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND
BUDGET
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1999
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in
room SD-628, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Fred
Thompson, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Thompson and Durbin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN THOMPSON
Chairman Thompson. This morning, the Governmental Affairs
Committee is holding a hearing to consider the nomination of
Joshua Gotbaum to be Controller in the Office of Management and
Budget. The Controller is charged with oversight of
implementation of the Chief Financial Officers Act, a piece of
legislation Congress passed to remedy decades of serious
neglect in Federal financial management.
According to the General Accounting Office, major problems
in the government's financial systems include its inability to
properly account for and report billions of dollars of
property, equipment, materials, and supplies; determine the
proper amount of various reported liabilities, including post-
retirement health benefits for military employees, accounts
payable, and other liabilities; and actively report major
portions of the net cost of government operations.
The importance of the position of Controller cannot be
overstated. Proper financial management is critical to the
efficient operation of our Federal Government. This Controller
will have a heavy burden to bear in moving the government
toward greater fiscal responsibility, especially as we prepare
for the first performance reports under the Results Act.
Mr. Gotbaum filed responses to a biographical and financial
questionnaire,\1\ answered pre-hearing questions submitted by
the Committee,\2\ and had his financial statements reviewed by
the Office of Government Ethics.
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\1\ The biographical and financial questionnaire appears in the
Appendix on page 13.
\2\ The responses to pre-hearing questions appears in the Appendix
on page 19.
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Without objection, this information will be made a part of
the hearing record, with the exception of the financial data,
which is on file in the Committee offices.
In addition, the hearing record will remain open for 2
weeks.
Our Committee rules require that all witnesses at
nomination hearings give their testimony under oath. Mr.
Gotbaum, would you please stand and raise your right hand? Do
you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Gotbaum. I do.
Chairman Thompson. Please be seated.
Mr. Gotbaum, do you have anyone you would like to introduce
at this time?
TESTIMONY OF JOSHUA GOTBAUM, TO BE CONTROLLER, OFFICE OF
MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
Mr. Gotbaum. Thank you very much, Senator. If I might, I
would like to introduce my wife's grandmother, Mrs. Winnifred
Dunn.
Chairman Thompson. How do you do?
Mr. Gotbaum. She came up from Roanoke, Virginia.
Chairman Thompson. Pleased to have you with us.
Mr. Gotbaum. My wife, unfortunately, could not be here. She
is at her father's hospital bed.
Chairman Thompson. I understand. Well, we wish you the best
in that regard.
Do you have a statement to make at this time?
Mr. Gotbaum. I have a brief statement, sir.
Chairman Thompson. Proceed.
Mr. Gotbaum. I am honored to have been nominated by the
President for the position of Controller in the Office of
Federal Financial Management at OMB. As this Committee above
all knows, the Controller and OFFM are a quite important part
of the architecture you set in place almost a decade ago with
the CFO Act.
There has been very real progress since then. The creation
of CFOs in major agencies, the development of accounting
standards, and agency and government-wide financial reports,
and the beginnings of improved financial systems.
I also should mention beyond the CFO Act the Government
Performance and Results Act, which has encouraged the Executive
Branch to hold itself accountable to financial as well as other
performance standards.
It is important that we all recognize that there is much
yet to do. We have made real advances in financial
accountability, but many agencies are lagging in financial
management. Many of our financial systems are not even ``solid
state''--they are paper--much less ``state-of-the-art.''
Finally, all of us in the Federal Government, those who are
doing very well and those who are doing less well, are still
exploring the best ways to measure performance and results and
are still looking how to incorporate those measures into
everyday management of our programs and to our decisions about
resources and into our plans for the future.
I agreed to be nominated for this position because as one
who cares intensely about management in the Federal Government,
I hope to continue this progress. I am a realist. I know there
are only 15 months left in this administration. Nonetheless, I
believe that these are issues which are not partisan. I think
they enjoy the support of people of good will throughout the
parties and in the Congress and in the Executive Branch. And I
think they ought to be a legacy of this administration for the
next. And so that is the reason I hope to be there and to do
so.
In closing, let me say again that I am enormously grateful
to this Committee for considering my nomination, for giving me
this opportunity today. I look forward to answering your
questions. I hope to earn your support and, if confirmed, the
chance to work with you and others to advance the goals of
better government that I think we all share.
Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much.
As indicated earlier, the Committee submitted some
substantive pre-hearing questions to the nominee, and the
nominee has also met with staff to discuss a variety of issues
of congressional concern regarding the financial management of
the Federal Government. Your written responses to these
questions will be placed in the record.
I will start my questioning with these three questions that
we ask of all nominees. Is there anything that you are aware of
in your background which might present a conflict of interest
with the duties of the office to which you have been nominated?
Mr. Gotbaum. No, sir.
Chairman Thompson. Do you know of anything, personal or
otherwise, that would in any way prevent you from fully and
honorably discharging the responsibilities of Controller at the
Office of Management and Budget?
Mr. Gotbaum. No, sir.
Chairman Thompson. Do you agree without reservation to
respond to any reasonable summons to appear and testify before
any duly constituted committee of Congress if you are
confirmed?
Mr. Gotbaum. Yes.
Chairman Thompson. All right. You pointed out several of
the statutes that Congress has enacted over the last decade:
The Chief Financial Officers Act, the Government Management
Reform Act, and the Federal Financial Management Improvement
Act. If our progress could be measured in terms of pieces of
legislation that have been enacted, we would be in great shape.
Each of these management reforms seeks to improve the
financial management of the Federal Government, and this has
been something that GAO has identified for a long time as being
at the heart of the management problem. Up until fairly
recently, there was very little in terms of accountability,
very little in terms of determining what it costs to produce
what we produce in the government.
In one of its most recent reports on the government's
implementation of the Federal Financial Management Improvements
Act, GAO wrote this: ``The historic inability of many Federal
agencies to accurately record and report financial management
data on both a year-end and an ongoing basis for decisionmaking
and oversight purposes continues to be a serious weakness.
There has been little discernible progress since last year.''
Mr. Gotbaum, you are in a position to effect greater
progress in this area. In your view, first of all, are the
staff resources dedicated to financial management issues
sufficient for OMB to identify and correct systemic problems,
improve government-wide financial management practices, and
implement these statutory requirements?
Mr. Gotbaum. It is a fair question, Senator. Let me say
first that I have read, obviously in preparation for this
position, the GAO report and met and sat with not only the
folks in OMB but the various chief financial officers and met
with the IGs, etc. I think the picture presented by GAO is an
accurate mixed picture, meaning we clearly have made real
progress, and it would be unfair to the people who have worked
on it not to recognize the real progress. It is also entirely
accurate to say that there is a long way to go.
And I can't tell you that I know, not having gotten in
there yet, that we have the exact right level of resources. I
think it is important to say, however, that--because I have
been at OMB for a couple of years--that the way the
organization works (because it really is a matrix organization)
if it does its job well, is to leverage the resources of all of
OMB.
And so, from my perspective, Senator, the issue is: Can and
does and will OFFM and the folks in the management side of OMB
leverage the resources, leverage the expertise, leverage the
contacts, and leverage the clout of the divisions (the so-
called Resource Management Organizations, or ``RMO's'') that
have individual staff members assigned to individual agencies?
In some areas, I know that they have done that and have done
that well.
When the Health Care Financing Administration a couple of
years ago came forward and said ``We are in trouble, we know we
are in trouble, we are not sure that we can comply with Y2K,
and it is going to take both additional resources and effort,''
the folks from the management side of OMB and the resource side
working together. While no one would say that we are out of
that woods yet, it is clear that there has been a lot of
effort.
So I think the critical thing here, Senator, is that the
organization be active, that it leverage the rest of OMB, that
it leverage the CFOs' Council. One of the things that I have
got to say, Senator, that is enormously encouraging is to go to
a CFO Council meeting, because agency after agency after
agency, these are folks who are recognizing that they have
common problems. They have common challenges and common issues,
and they are working together to solve them.
And as you know, Senator, there are lots of places in the
Federal Government where agency after agency after agency faces
the same issue and doesn't know it; doesn't look to anybody
else for help and doesn't look to anybody else for advice. And
so what's really encouraging about the CFO Council is that it
is a real mechanism for solving common problems together.
And so what I hope would happen, if confirmed, is that
using these resources and setting up some kind of standards and
reporting for progress, those two things together ought to
provide the encouragement we need to make the progress we need.
I think the GAO is accurate in their report. But if it takes a
periodic GAO report to figure out when we are or are not up to
snuff, then we are not going to be up to snuff, because one of
the basic tenets of Management 101 is if you don't measure it,
you can't improve it. And so that is what----
Chairman Thompson. That is what the Results Act is supposed
to do for us.
Mr. Gotbaum. Yes, sir, it is.
Chairman Thompson. Ultimately. And it has taken a good
while to get there. These reports are coming in, the
performance plans and so forth, and they are not up to snuff.
But you are going to be in the center of this, and that means
that you are going to be in a key position to do something
about it, because it is really--we talk too much in terms of
crises around here, but it looks to me like that we are facing
one in terms of the way the government operates.
We are arguing now over a 1 percent across the board or 1.4
percent across the board, and trying to fill a $4 billion hole.
GAO has identified over $200 billion of waste and fraud, and
pointing out to these agencies, in pretty specific terms, where
we are losing money.
The Navy has identified--is it $300 billion?--$3 billion
that they identified as lost in transit. So, you know, we are
trying to get a handle on that, and one of the reasons it has
been so difficult to get a handle on it has been because of the
inadequacies in our financial system.
Now we have passed the Results Act, and I think as most
everyone knows, what we are trying to do there is identify what
our goals are in government. What are we really trying to do?
Not churn paper, but what results are we really trying to
achieve for the citizens, and then figuring out some way to
measure that. What are the results of what we are doing?
But that is all based on adequate financial data, and the
GAO tells us we have lousy financial data. And so that is at
the heart of it.
Much of the data required by the Results Act comes from
financial systems that are in place, and according to GAO, many
of the government's financial accounting systems are badly
flawed.
They wrote recently that: Agencies do not have a single
integrated financial system to rely on and they rely on ad hoc
programming and analysis of data that is not reconciled and
often requires adjustments. As a result, the risk of material
misstatements increases and reliable data cannot be produced in
a timely and efficient manner. This is in the case of most
Federal agencies.
According to the GAO, most agencies' fiscal year 2000
performance plans suffer from the same three key weaknesses as
their fiscal year 1999 plans, one of which was the lack of
credible performance data. In fact, GAO found that the plans of
20 out of 24 major agencies provide little confidence that
their performance data will be credible.
So I would ask you what steps will you take to ensure that
we have a good foundation of performance data with which to
proceed in implementing performance-based management.
Mr. Gotbaum. This is a very important question. It is one I
got a chance to discuss with your staff in the interview.
There is a part, Senator, where I agree with and a part
where, I have got to be honest, I disagree with the emphasis in
the GAO's report. We all think that the Results Act is an
incredibly important issue. We also recognize--and we are
pretty honest about it--that we are in the early stages of it.
There is a range: Some agencies do, in my view, an extremely
good job. Some agencies do a job that I wouldn't want to have
to defend. Most agencies are in the middle and are working at
this seriously but aren't there yet.
I want to draw an important distinction because I think it
matters to this Committee on an ongoing basis: For many
agencies, they don't yet know what are the right measures of
performance. GAO is raising a second issue--which is a real
issue, but it is a second issue--which is that they also don't
have established systems and the kind of audit trail that you
would need to ascertain the validity of those performance
measures.
Because we are still in the developmental stages of GPRA,
because we are still at the point where we are trying to nudge
agencies to think about what kind of information--(what kind of
performance information to use for our grants program versus an
operating program, what kind of performance information to use
for procurement rather than other kinds of systems, etc.)--the
danger is that we could freeze agency decisions too early.
If agencies get the sense that the GAO and us and you care
more about the verifiability of performance data, they are
going to take easy hits. They are going to start picking the
easily quantifiable stuff: ``How many grant applications I have
processed?'' rather than ``What is my average time,'' or ``How
satisfied are the recipients of my grants over the service they
got?'' This is not to say that GAO shouldn't push and you
shouldn't push on the issue of verifiability of financial
systems. There is plenty of room for improvement there. But
what I would hope is that you also push on the broader first
job of GPRA, which is to say to agencies: Are you using the
best performance measures you can? Are they performance
measures that are really suited to what your job is?
I got to say that in the 2 years that we have had the
Performance Act, there has been real improvement. We are a long
way from Valhalla, but there has been real improvement. And
what that says to me personally is that we can make more
progress.
Chairman Thompson. I was talking to some people yesterday
about--they were talking about, as one of their measurable
criteria, the number of reports they had produced. And I said,
``What if they are lousy reports?''
Mr. Gotbaum. Yes, sir.
Chairman Thompson. See, that is what we have got to get to.
That is what you are talking about, isn't it?
Mr. Gotbaum. Yes. And I will give you another for instance.
This is a case where OMB was later to the game than I wish we
had been.
Each year we send a huge set of instructions to the Federal
agencies saying these are the rules by which you should prepare
your budget reports. It is called Circular A11. And this year
for the first time, we said to agencies: In addition to your
GPRA reports, you got to start integrating your performance
information into your budget justifications, into your budget
submissions. Now, we have suggested this in the past, but now
it is in words of one sentence--in words of a few syllables,
directly in the A-11.
Now, I am a realist. Do I think that as a result of that
change 4 months ago that all of a sudden every agency's budget
submission is now going to be rife with the kind of performance
data that you would like and we would like? No, sir, I don't.
But I do think it can--and if we enforce it aggressively--step
up the quality.
Chairman Thompson. Oh, I think that is very important. I
think that one of the big things that we have been lacking is
some connection between performance and budget. And we have got
to do better in Congress. We have these hearings and identify
these problems, and these agencies waste/lose millions,
sometimes billions of dollars. Down the hall they are having
some kind of appropriations process that hardly takes it into
account. But it has got to be a combination of Congress plus
the OMB.
Most of the attention is on the ``B'' part over there
because people don't credit for the ``M'' much unless there is
some easily understood number like fewer employees, government
employees, or something like that. When you look at it, first
of all, most of them are military and, second of all, we are
outsourcing stuff. So it is not costing the government any
less. There are a few less bodies on the full-time payroll.
So you have got a real problem, but we understand, I think,
the nature of that and how difficult it is, but how important
the job that you are going to take on is, because you are the
guys who are supposed to be managing, seeing that the agencies
do what they are supposed to do. They clearly have not been,
and a key part of that problem is the financial management
problem, and that is where you are going to be. So it looks to
me like you understand that and you are going to come in with
some fresh energy and maybe some fresh ideas as to how to break
through, and we look forward to working with you on that.
Mr. Gotbaum. Thank you, Sir.
Chairman Thompson. Senator Durbin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN
Senator Durbin. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gotbaum, thank you for being here today. I would like
to just ask you basically two questions.
The first relates to a friend of mine who had an experience
back in Springfield, Illinois. He is an old buddy. He had a
heart problem. And so he went to one doctor, and this doctor
said, ``You are going to have to stop drinking beer,'' which
was a big change in his life-style. So I said to him, ``What
did you do?'' And he said, ``I got another doctor.'' And I
said, ``What did that doctor tell you?'' He said, ``Well, if I
gave up bread, I could keep drinking beer.'' And he said, ``I
haven't touched a slice of bread in weeks.''
We seem to have a similar thing going on here when it comes
to the Congressional Budget Office and OMB and the budget
process. It appears that those of us on both sides of the aisle
here pick and choose from projections and forecasts from OMB
and CBO when they help our case. I found that yesterday. We
were in a markup, a conference committee on the Labor-HHS bill,
and some moments the Chairman would be quoting CBO dogma and
other moments OMB dogma when the occasion presented itself.
Do you have any perspective on this role of the dueling
agencies and whether or not this is healthy or whether there is
any objective standard we can use to say here is credibility,
here is partisanship? Where can we have a credible line drawn?
Mr. Gotbaum. Well, Senator, since there are members of the
OMB staff here and I am from the administration, of course, I
should say that the OMB numbers are right. But let me be more
direct.
Chairman Thompson. They have been quoting CBO numbers
lately. [Laughter.]
Senator Durbin. We are all guilty of this.
Mr. Gotbaum. I told you the partisanship in here was much
more complicated than I could handle.
I have participated in this as Executive Associate Director
of OMB for a couple of years and watched it from other
positions. I got to say, Senator--and this is a personal view--
these are two independent, very professional organizations--
even when I disagree with CBO or when I disagree with OMB
staff, I got to say these are terrifically competent folks,
very professional, very dedicated. I think the fact that there
are two--that they are independent, that they are watching each
other, that they are calling each other's fouls--probably at
the end of the day is more helpful to the process than if you
didn't have that.
I think the OMB staff is fantastic; in a government that is
full of very good civil servants, I think it is the best group
of civil servants I have ever seen. However, it is also the
case that because we are from the administration, even though
we are professional, hard-working, dedicated, and try to call
them as we see them, the folks up here in Congress are always
going to have that nagging doubt.
And so I think the CBO has made a real contribution. That
doesn't mean, Senator, that we won't have differences on the
margin. It doesn't mean we won't have differences on some call.
We will and we do, etc. But I think given what you get for
having a second opinion that is of quality, I think we are all
a little better off. And that doesn't mean that I wouldn't be
grateful if my former colleague, Barry Anderson, and Dan
Crippen occasionally didn't lean our way, but the fact of the
matter is the process works better than if we didn't have them.
The other thing I should say, Senator is that one of the
things that happens from the legislative process here is that
you all focus necessarily on the disagreements. You focus on
the cases where we and they disagree, or you focus on the cases
where Democrats and Republicans disagree or the House and the
Senate disagree. The vast majority of estimates that we do and
they do, way over 90 percent, are close together. And that is
part of the reason why we get some confidence when we have the
disagreements.
Senator Durbin. Let me address one other issue, and Senator
Thompson has already alluded to it--the ``M'' part of OMB. You
made a speech to the National Academy of Public Administration
last summer and alluded to an issue of great concern to me.
That is the issue of food safety and the multiplicity of
Federal agencies, 12 different Federal agencies with
jurisdiction over the safety of food in the United States, 35
different laws, clearly duplication, overlap, and waste taking
place.
This is something that this Committee, the Governmental
Affairs Committee, addressed over 22 years ago and said we have
got to do something about that in a hurry--22 years ago. And
the obvious conclusion is we haven't done much.
I am just curious as to when it comes to the role of OMB
and talking about this kind of duplication at the Federal
level, where we have clearly mired ourselves down into a tangle
of jurisdictional fights downtown, jurisdictional fights on the
Hill, jurisdictional fights in the industry, what role can the
voice of OMB play in changing this?
Mr. Gotbaum. Senator, this is another example of the point
I made to Senator Thompson. OMB has a very difficult,
frequently misunderstood, and frequently painful role, which is
it is our job, on behalf of the President, to reconcile
disagreements, to force agencies to look beyond their
stovepipes as best we can, and in some cases just keep score,
make sure that we are doing this stuff.
There is a young woman at OMB who actually was my special
assistant for a while, a woman named Wendy Taylor. She is 30
years old. She is from Lawrence, Kansas. She is as smart as my
mother thinks I am. And she is in OIRA, the Information and
Regulatory Affairs shop of OMB.
She worked with the folks on the agriculture branch, the
health branch, etc., Every couple of years we do go back and
look at cross-cutting issues like food safety (we always look
at cross-cutting issues, but which cross-cutting issue we look
at changes over time). And so within the administration, we
forced an inter-agency discussion.
Now, we also work in the world of the real. There are still
multiple agencies that do this stuff but that doesn't mean that
we are not watching, working, and trying to make improvements.
And let me just mention one that I--because Wendy was working
for me at the time--participated in. We said, ``All right,
maybe we are not going to consolidate all these agencies for
internal reasons or legislative reasons. But we can certainly
force them to talk to each other about their own research
budgets. We can make sure that in the area that is most likely
for there to be overlap, `Guys, you ought to sit down and we
ought to have a single, coordinated research budget in this
area.' ''
And so we created a food safety research institute. It is
in early days, it has been in operation for a year. But it is
getting folks to the table, forcing them to have what I think
of as an integrated agenda for research, making sure that the
funds we do have, whatever they are, are used sensibly. It is
an example of where and how OMB works.
We do this a lot. Personally, I have spent a lot of time as
Executive Associate Director in those issues which cross
stovepipes, so counterterrorism and dealing with weapons of
mass destruction because it covers the Justice Department and
the Defense Department and Health and Human Services, etc., is
something which I watch over. That is another example.
Federal agencies, they are created, they have their
histories, they have their skills, they have their people. And
sometimes you can and should make wholesale changes, but you
ought to recognize that there are real costs to making them.
Even if we don't go that far, we nonetheless ask, ``Are we
allocating the Nation's resources in some way that makes sense
among them?'' When we were talking about who trains local
governments to prepare for the possible terrorist incidents we
had a discussion and we said, ``DOD could do it, FBI could do
it, HHS could do it, but obviously you can't have all three.''
This is the bread and butter business of OMB. It is
something we do a lot.
Senator Durbin. The real responsibility, of course, lies
here on Capitol Hill, and perhaps at the initiative of the
President, to change the laws to solve the problem. And at
least you have to say that the conversation, the dialogue that
you have discussed has to be positive. The only bad thing I
know that came out of it was when one member of the Cabinet
referred to it as ``a virtual unified food agency.'' I took
that as in virtual reality, which is not reality but appears to
be. And so that choice of words, I think, left something to be
desired, but I thank you for your testimony, and I certainly
support your nomination.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much.
I couldn't let this opportunity pass without once again
referring to basic problems that we are dealing with here. GAO
and agency IGs have identified about 300 major management
problems for the 24 agencies collectively. This includes the 26
problems on the GAO's current high-risk list. Agencies on the
high-risk list specifically because of poor financial
management include the Department of Defense, the Forest
Service, Federal Aviation Administration, and the Internal
Revenue Service.
There are over 700 open GAO recommendations addressing
high-risk problems alone, and another 450 open GAO
recommendations on other major management problems. There are
hundreds more open IG recommendations for the 300 management
problems.
Now, that is not to say that all the recommendations are
even good ones or valid, but that is an awful lot of stuff out
there that there seems to be not much happening on because so
many of these agencies continue to appear on the high-risk list
over and over and over again.
Collectively, there are over 1,000 open, unresolved GAO and
IG audit recommendations. Many of these major management
problems, of course, relate to financial management.
So this is just the scope, just reminding you of something
that I know you know by now, the scope of the problem and what
you are going to have to deal with. But I know you are
committed to do that. You have an excellent background
educationally and in terms of your work in the private sector
and your government work, and I commend you for taking this on.
And please work with us and give us your ideas and let us work
together to see if we can't begin to address some of these
things.
You are right. A lot is going on. A lot of good work is
being done by a lot of good people. But it is not our job to
get together and congratulate each other on what we have done.
It is our job to do better, because we are not doing as well as
if we were in the private sector and had to be accountable. So
we have got to move toward that.
If you have nothing further, then I have nothing further,
and we will try to move this nomination along as rapidly as
possible.
Mr. Gotbaum. Senator, let me just say thank you again. This
is not to minimize the issues that you raise, because they are
real and they are important. I think that in order for us to
make progress, we need a combination of carrot and stick and
reporting in the light and tough talk, privately, in the dark.
I certainly don't want to dissemble under oath and to the
chairman of my committee, so I am not going to tell you that we
are going to solve all of this, but I can tell you that we are
going to work at it seriously. We are going to work on the
large ones that we can make progress on, and I look forward, if
you all confirm me, to working with you in trying to get
something accomplished.
Thank you.
Chairman Thompson. I appreciate that, and thank you very
much.
We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 10:45 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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