[Senate Hearing 112-197]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-197
ELIMINATING THE BOTTLENECKS: STREAMLINING THE NOMINATIONS PROCESS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
of the
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 2, 2011
__________
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
66-673 PDF WASHINGTON : 2011
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800;
DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC,
Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada
JON TESTER, Montana ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
MARK BEGICH, Alaska RAND PAUL, Kentucky
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Beth M. Grossman, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Kristine V. Lam, Professional Staff Member
Nicholas A. Rossi, Minority Staff Director
Molly A. Wilkinson, Minority General Counsel
Jennifer L. Tarr, Minority Counsel
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
Patricia R. Hogan, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee
Laura W. Kilbride, Hearing Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statements:
Page
Senator Lieberman............................................ 1
Senator Collins.............................................. 3
Prepared statements:
Senator Lieberman............................................ 21
Senator Collins.............................................. 23
WITNESSES
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Hon. Clay Johnson III, Former Deputy Director for Management,
Office of Management and Budget................................ 4
Max Stier, President and Chief Executive Officer, Partnership for
Public Service................................................. 7
Robert B. Dove, Ph.D., Former Parliamentarian of the U.S. Senate. 10
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Dove, Robert B., Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 43
Johnson, Hon. Clay III:
Testimony.................................................... 4
Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 25
Stier, Max:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 35
APPENDIX
``A Half-Empty Government Can't Govern: Why Everyone Wants to Fix
the Appointments Process, Why It Never Happens, and How We Can
Get It Done,'' by William A. Galston and E.J. Dionne, Jr.,
December 14, 2010, submitted by Senator Lieberman.............. 45
``Ready to Govern, Improving the Presidential Transition,''
Partnership for Public Service, January 2010, submitted by Mr.
Stier.......................................................... 64
Norman J. Ornstein, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise
Institute, prepared statement.................................. 98
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record from Mr.
Johnson........................................................ 103
ELIMINATING THE BOTTLENECKS: STREAMLINING THE NOMINATIONS PROCESS
----------
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2011
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I.
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Collins, and Brown.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. The hearing will come to order. Good
morning and thank you for coming here. This is one of those
topics and hearings that attracts not much public attention,
but is actually greatly in the public interest. So if we six,
and everyone else in the room can agree, I think it will be
good for America.
I thought I would start with a bit of history. In 1789, on
a single day, the Senate of the United States took up and
confirmed 101 executive nominations President Washington had
sent up just 2 days earlier. I guess there was one rejected,
and the President, our first President, complained--politely,
I'm sure--to the Senate about the one that he did not get
confirmed. But 101 nominations confirmed 2 days after they were
sent to the Senate.
My history does not go back this far, but I bet they
performed as well as the thousands and thousands of nominations
since that have taken months and months and months to get to
confirmation. And, of course, that is why we are here.
Modern presidents of both parties, I am sure, would sigh at
that story of Washington's experience with envy. Nowadays the
process by which a person is selected, vetted, nominated,
considered, and confirmed by the Senate has become--in the
words of one scholar--``nasty and brutish, without being
short.''
One hundred days into President Obama's Administration,
only 14 percent of the Senate-confirmed positions in his
Administration had been filled. After 18 months, 25 percent of
these positions were still vacant. And this is not an
aberration, of course, or an anomaly: The timetables for
putting in place a leadership team across the government have
been pretty much the same each of the last three times there
has been a change of occupant in the White House.
We have known about this problem a long time, but failed to
act.
In recent history, in 2001, under the former Chairman of
this Committee, Senator Fred Thompson, we held hearings on
``The State of the Presidential Appointment Process'' and
recommended legislation, which did not pass.
In 2003, a bipartisan commission headed by Paul Volcker
recommended ways to speed up the nominations process. That got
nowhere.
And in 2004, to put it in a different context, the 9/11
Commission said the delays in getting a new government up and
running actually pose a threat to our national security, and in
its report it also recommended ways to speed up the process.
Well, after years of talk, it may well be that the time for
change has finally arrived and we will have bipartisan support.
This is one of those things where ``it ain't over until it is
over.'' So while I am encouraged, I am not confident yet.
And the reason for the change is that in January, Majority
Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
established a working group together on executive nominations
and appointed Senators Charles Schumer and Lamar Alexander--
Chairman and Ranking Member, respectively, of the Rules
Committee--to lead it. These two colleagues of ours have been
working on draft legislation, and Senator Collins and I have
been working with them on it, and we hope to introduce the
legislation shortly.
The nature of the problem really is known certainly to
people in this room, and, therefore, I am going to put my full
statement in the record, which documents the problem in
specific numbers.
The legislation that we are working on will eliminate
Senate confirmation for several categories of presidential
appointments, freeing up the Senate to concentrate on the more
important policymaking nominees.
It will also raise and, I think, answer some other
questions. Can we simplify, standardize, and centralize the
forms and documentation required by both the White House and
the Senate so a nominee is not stretched out with duplicative
paperwork and information requests?
And second, since we know that there will be a flood of
nominations with each new Administration, can we create what
might be called a ``surge'' capacity by temporarily adding
personnel to the White House Office of Presidential Personnel
and perhaps the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to handle
vetting and background checks more efficiently?
In the past, the reason nominations reform legislation has
stalled is, I think, evident and not really acceptable. And it
is because of the perceived fears of some of our colleagues in
the Senate, particularly chairs and ranking members, that they
would be giving up some of their jurisdiction and authority if
there were fewer nominations that came before them. The truth
is that some of these nominations that are confirmed by the
Senate not only should not be but, frankly, it is a waste of
the Committee's time to spend on them when we could and should
be doing work on legislation.
Nothing in the legislation that Senators Schumer,
Alexander, Collins, and I are working on together will weaken
in any way the important constitutional role the Senate has to
advise and consent.
And if I may end with a little history as well, Gouverneur
Morris, who was one of the architects of the Constitution, said
when speaking in favor of the Advice and Consent Clause: ``As
the President was to nominate, there would be responsibility.
And as the Senate was to concur, there would be security.''
Those essential national goals and principles for our
government will be unaffected by the kinds of changes, which
are actually relatively modest, that we are talking about. But
I hope and believe that we can get these changes accomplished
this year.
Senator Collins.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman is certainly correct that rarely do we take on
an issue where it is of such intrinsic importance to the way
government functions and yet appears to be of little interest
to the press and the public despite that importance.
One of the most significant responsibilities of U.S.
Senators is set forth in Article II, Section 2 of our
Constitution. It requires that the Senate provide its advice
and consent on nominations made by the President.
The 82-word Appointments Clause, as it is commonly known,
provides the President with the authority to determine who, in
his judgment, is best qualified to serve in the most senior and
critical positions across the Executive Branch. It also
requires that we, the Senators, exercise our independent
judgment and experience to determine if nominees have the
necessary qualifications and character to serve our Nation in
these important positions of public trust.
The confirmation process must be thorough enough for the
Senate to fulfill its constitutional duty, but it should not be
so onerous as to deter qualified people from public service.
And I fear that is what is happening today.
Countless studies have been written and many experts have
opined on how to improve the process--from the Brownlow
Commission in 1937 to, as the Chairman has mentioned, the 9/11
Commission in 2004.
Let me say that there are two areas in particular where I
think improvements should be made. The first is to reduce the
sheer number of positions subject to Senate confirmation.
For example, why is it that the public affairs officials in
some major departments and agencies are subject to Senate
confirmation when they are not carrying out any policy role?
In this regard, the National Commission on the Public
Service, commonly known as the Volcker Commission, gathered
some very illuminating statistics. When President Kennedy came
to office, he had 286 positions to fill with the titles of
Secretary, Deputy Secretary, Under Secretary, Assistant
Secretary, and Administrator. By the end of the Clinton
Administration, there were 914 positions with those titles.
Today, according to the Congressional Research Service
(CRS), there are more than 1,200 positions appointed by the
President that require the advice and consent of the Senate. So
there has been an enormous explosion in the number of positions
that are now subject to Senate confirmation.
This large number of positions requiring confirmation leads
to long delays in selecting, vetting, and nominating these
appointees. Consequently, administrations can go for months
without key officials in many agencies. And when political
appointees are finally in place, their median tenure is only
about 2\1/2\ years.
A second area ripe for reform, in my view, is to develop a
consistent, common form for nominees to complete in order to
streamline the process, save time, and increase accuracy. This
also would reduce the cost and burden on nominees.
If these two areas could be reformed, substantial time will
be saved, and key leadership posts at our Federal agencies will
not be vacant for nearly as long.
National security reasons also compel attention to this
problem. As the Chairman has pointed out, the 9/11 Commission
identified this gap, and the National Journal has noted that
``[p]eriods of political transition are, by their very nature,
chaotic'' and that ``terrorists strike when they believe
governments will be caught off guard.'' Both the 1993 bombing
of the World Trade Center and the attacks on September 11,
2001, occurred within 8 months of a change in presidential
administrations, and the March 2004 attacks at Madrid occurred
3 days before Spain's national elections.
Now, during this mid-term period--2 years away from a
presidential election--we have the opportunity once and for all
to streamline the process. This can help ensure that the next
presidential transition, whether it occurs 2 years from now or
6 years from now, will be as smooth as possible, thwarting the
terrorists' belief that they will be able to ``catch us off
guard.''
While we must deliver on our duty to provide advice and
consent, reforms are clearly needed to improve the effective
operation of government. We all want the most qualified
individuals possible to serve our Nation. We should, therefore,
ensure that the process is not so unnecessarily burdensome that
key leadership posts do not go unfilled for long stretches of
time. And most of all, we need to reform the process so that
good people whose talents and energy we need do not become so
discouraged that they give up on their goal of serving the
public.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Collins, for that
statement.
Thanks to the witnesses. We have a great group of witnesses
this morning who bring real experience and insight to the
topic. So let us go right to Clay Johnson, who is a former
Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB). Thanks for being here.
TESTIMONY OF HON. CLAY JOHNSON III,\1\ FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR
FOR MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Collins.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson appears in the Appendix
on page 25.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chairman Lieberman. Coming back from Texas, right?
Mr. Johnson. That is right. I congratulate and commend you
all for taking this up so seriously. This is something that Mr.
Stier and I and others have been working on and have wanted to
be involved in helping to fix for a long period of time. And I
sense, as I suspect you all do, that this might be just such an
opportunity. There seems to be interest on both sides of the
aisle, at all levels of leadership--the Senate, several
different committees, and Senators Reid and McConnell--and so
let us know today and later how we can help you all get as much
done as possible.
My encouragement to you is that, as you think about
different reforms, you pay particular attention to the reforms
that can impact, as you have suggested in your opening remarks,
the capability, the capacity, and the ability of a new
Administration to put the Cabinet and sub-Cabinet in place by
the August recess, and perhaps the 93, 100, 125, or so of the
most time sensitive of those positions in place by April.
It does not mean that the Senate must confirm everybody
that the new President sends up, but that the Senate should
accept or reject, vote up or down that person so that the new
Administration can move on. It does not mean that the new
Administration should nominate the appropriate number of people
regardless of quality. The emphasis is on quality. The emphasis
is on the Senate being the Senate and fulfilling its
constitutional responsibilities, but to do it with a great deal
of attention to whether we have the capacity to get this done,
if everybody is so inclined, by April 1, or by August 1? And I
think the two key words are ``ability'' and ``capacity.''
One of the things I have found out in the last year or so
as I have worked on the Rockefeller Foundation and Aspen
Institute Commission on this subject, is that previous White
Houses have never had the capacity to actually nominate enough
people to the Senate in the period of time suggested to where
it was even possible for the 100 most time sensitive, most
important positions of a new Administration, regardless of
which positions they were, to be in place by April 1, or the
top 400 or so by August.
I point out in my written statement that the staffing of
the Office of Presidential Personnel in the White House is
really largely a function of tradition. Presidential Personnel
is given a certain amount of money to hire a certain number of
people, a total of about 30, and that means they can hire about
seven or eight commissioned officers, and they, really smart,
working really hard, can nominate enough people to get through
the Senate, with lots of debate, 230 or 240 people by the first
part of August--not because that is the goal. That is because
that is the budget they were given. So the idea of having a
surge capacity in that period of time is a really strong
concept.
I just talked about how it might be manifested in the White
House where some monies within the White House budget be
reallocated--or it has even been suggested that some private
monies be raised if there is not enough money in the White
House budget, to make it possible for the White House to hire
additional people for a 6-month period of time, to get it done.
The FBI, the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), and
Diplomatic Security agree that they can surge. They do not need
additional resources to create extra capacity in that first 6
months, but they need to know that this is really important.
They need to know that the White House wants them to reallocate
and move their people around. The FBI would not pull people
away from doing traditional FBI work, nor would the Diplomatic
Security pull their people away from securing our diplomats
around the world. But they would do less re-investigation work
and do almost exclusively investigation work--the same thing
with the Office of Government Ethics--and they can do that for
about 6 months. They cannot maintain that capacity without
additional resources for 9 months, 12 months, 2 years, but they
can for 6 months. It is really only the White House that I
believe does not have the resources to create that surge
capacity for a 6-month period of time.
Another important factor that is critical, I think, to
creating the ability and capacity to get those 100 most
important positions filled by April 1, and 400 by the August
recess, is to get the background information on all the
nominees to the potential vetters quickly. Right now a
nomination comes to the Senate, and Clay Johnson from Texas is
nominated to do something. That is what the Senate starts with.
Meanwhile, there is a file this thick in the White House with
every possible piece of relevant information on that person,
Mr. Johnson, and yet none of that is made available to the
Senate. That is dumb. I mean, it is just tradition. It is
separation of powers, whatever, but it serves no purpose at
all. And yet something like a standard form or a smart form or
some combination of those things I believe and am highly
confident can be developed to get most of the background
information the Senate needs to begin their vetting, with the
nomination.
Same thing with the FBI and the Office of Government
Ethics. All three of those, including Diplomatic Security, all
four of those vetting organizations say one of the things that
when everybody is trying to do something 2, 3, or 4 weeks
faster during that first 6 months of an Administration, it
takes 10 days to 2\1/2\ weeks to get the basic background
information before vetting can even begin. That is critical
time that the Senate, the White House, and the country needs to
get our people in place faster and minimize the risks
associated with those key positions being vacant. And I think
both of those issues, surge capacity and getting information to
the vetters very quickly, those are mechanical kinds of things.
They do not call for the Senate to stop being the Senate. They
do not call for anybody to lower quality standards. They call
for managing the process, structuring the process differently
than happens today, and I think those are process kinds of
things. Those are things we can address, I am highly confident,
and I am confident that the two of you and Senators Schumer,
Alexander, Reid, and McConnell are just the people we need to
lead this effort, and I commend you for taking it up.
Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. That was great, very
practical and helpful.
Max Stier, welcome. He is the President and Chief Executive
Officer of Partnership for Public Service.
TESTIMONY OF MAX STIER,\1\ PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, PARTNERSHIP FOR PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. Stier. Thank you very much for having me here. It is a
pleasure, and especially to be with Mr. Johnson. He has been
someone who has been a great partner. I have enjoyed working
with him, and it is terrific that he is keeping his aura on
this issue since he is really in many ways uniquely positioned
to understand many of the challenges that are involved here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Stier appears in the Appendix on
page 35.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am told--and I do not actually watch TV--that there is
supposedly a show called ``Wipeout,'' which is essentially an
obstacle course where people try to run through it and all
these crazy things happen to them. Sitting here, I am thinking
that maybe we should create a new reality TV show that looks at
the political appointments process and presents that as the new
entertainment. But judging from the audience, we may be in
trouble, if that is what we try to do here. [Laughter.]
So I think you are clearly right. This is a critical issue
that receives really very little attention, and without going
through any number of stories that demonstrates the critical
nature of this, I really wanted to focus on 10 recommendations,
my top 10 list of things that you might consider, some are
things that you are already looking at, as well as some of the
things that Mr. Johnson has already mentioned, but at least
hopefully a framework more that you can look at as well.
From where we sit at the Partnership for Public Service, we
believe there are two primary or root causes of management
dysfunction in the Executive Branch. The first is you have
short-term political leaders that do not align against the
long-term needs of the organizations that they are running. If
you are a political appointee, Senator Collins, as you
mentioned, you have 2\1/2\ years in office, if you are lucky.
You are going to be focusing on crisis management and policy
development, not on the long-term health of the organization
that you are running. And, clearly, the shorter that time
period, the shorter the runway, the harder it is for you to
focus on long-term issues that, in fact, have great
consequence.
Second, we do not have real-time information on performance
typically in government, and those two factors combined make it
worse because those political leaders can actually hide from
their impact on the organizations that they run during their
tenure, because the likelihood is that the damage that they
have caused is going to be a lagging indicator of public
failure that takes place once they are long gone.
The issue that is, I think, quite at center here really is
that leadership one. Do you have the leadership in place with a
long enough tenure and the right folks to make sure that
government is operating correctly? And this is the most vital
moment of all, as you have already stated.
So I think there are 10 critical things that Congress can
do right now, and clearly this is not a problem that the Senate
has created. This is a problem, though, that the Senate can
help fix.
So first--and you have already obviously hit this one--is
reduce the absolute number of Senate-confirmed positions. That
would be an incredible achievement. And, clearly, if you are
talking about 400 or a third of them, that would be massive.
Not all the Senate-confirmed positions are the same, so if you
are dealing with the boards, that is great. But in truth, the
ones that are going to have greatest impact on management in
government are the ones that are actually in the chain of
command in the Executive Branch, the ones that actually have a
field of control over some significant aspect of government
activity. So to the extent that you can focus attention on
those, that would matter a great deal.
And, clearly, to the extent that you can help prevent
future harm from occurring, that would matter too. With the
creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), we now
have 20 Senate-confirmed positions in that agency alone. And,
again, the tendency is always to add, very rarely to subtract.
So one would be to reduce those numbers, and that is hugely
powerful.
Second, I would argue that you should go even further and
think not just about converting them from Senate-confirmed
positions, but think about whether you might even make some of
them not just political positions but convert them into term
appointments or career positions. And, specifically, I am
thinking about the management positions themselves.
I just came this morning from a breakfast at which a former
comptroller was there for government, and she was saying that a
bunch of folks were meeting about the Chief Financial Officer
(CFO) Act, and they were talking about why is this a political
position, that it really ought to be a career position. And I
would argue to you that instead of just making these political,
not Senate confirmed, make the CFOs, the Chief Information
Officers (CIOs), the Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs), a
lot of these management positions, make them career or term
appointments that have a performance contract, and that will
give you that longer-run wait and will allow you to have a set
of folks that are around long enough to make sure that
government is managed appropriately.
Now, there is a downside. I think there is a legitimate
argument on the other side, which says if you make them career
or term appointments, then they will not be part of the core
team. The political team will not actually respect them. But
you know what? I think that is a trade-off we ought to take,
because the flip side of that is we do not have any long-term
focus on the management issues that we need. And we see a
repeat cycle where a new group of political appointees
eventually get an office, they figure out what is going on,
they develop a plan, and guess what? They are out the door
already. So that would be two.
Three is a timetable for confirmation, and this is
something that, I think, Mr. Johnson is spot on. The truth of
the matter is we do need that surge capacity, but when that
incoming Administration is focusing on the myriad of things
that it needs to do, it is not prioritizing getting the
appointments out to you because it does not know what the
demands are. It has not been told, that if you are going to be
able to have your government in place on day one, we will have
a bargain with you. You provide us the names by a date
certain--January 1, December 15, whatever it is that the Senate
determines--and then if you do that, we will do exactly what
Mr. Johnson described. We will make sure that you have an
opportunity to have these folks heard from. And that would be a
game changer. It would have enormous impact on actually what
the incoming Administration focuses on and where they put their
actual resources.
So my view is it should be the top 50 by day one. Right now
tradition holds that there is an effort to get the Cabinet in
on day one. To me that is not good enough. You know, again,
President Reagan had 78 by the first 100 days, President Obama
only 65. We are not moving despite the fact that the world is
moving much faster, challenges are much more pronounced. We
need to change the goalposts here. We need to move them
forward. And to do that, you need to offer a timetable. I would
respectfully argue that would make a very big difference.
Four, cap the number of political appointees at individual
agencies, not simply government-wide. So here is a problem that
I think is quite--again, not noticed by quite pronounced. There
is a cap of 10 percent for non-career Senior Executive Service
(SES) overall for political appointments in government, but you
see some agencies like the Department of Education where the
number is 20 percent. Frankly, oftentimes it is viewed as a
dumping ground, and it has enormous implications on the
management of those organizations. If you talk to folks that
are there, you will hear that. And what you ought to have, I
believe, is a cap on individual agencies in addition to the
overall government cap, and that would make a very big
difference. Look at DHS, it has 61 non-career SES, 102 Schedule
C's, and the Schedule C's are also highly problematic.
Five, something that I think you are looking at. If it has
to be a Senate-confirmed position, can you actually have
something that is an expedite process? So where it is non-
controversial, it does not have to go through committee. So it
permits the Senate confirmation process to go forward, but does
not require the same level of investment that you make in some
of the other reviews that you do.
Six would be the streamlined forms that Mr. Johnson
described, and I think that is a terrific idea, and time
matters.
One additional thought I would put on top of that would be
to say is there a possibility of looking not just at making the
process electronic, but actually trying to improve the process.
So the danger sometimes is to say, well, we can put it all on
the Web, but I think it is also an opportune time to look at
the method itself, and you may be able to make improvements
there.
Seven, we need a single source of information about the
status of political appointments, in particular Senate-
confirmed appointments. So most folks are now going to the
Washington Post which stopped publishing this in September.
Well, why isn't there a government Web site that tells you in
real time, where folks are in the process, ultimately who is
responsible. Has the Administration not put forward the names
to the Senate? It should be a one-stop shop rather than
individual committees where the information is right now.
Eight, more resources that Mr. Johnson already identified.
I think that would make a huge difference, particularly on the
White House side.
Nine, we need changes to the security clearance process.
One of my favorite examples of this is Mike McConnell. Thirty-
five years of security clearances, polygraph tests, you name
it. He gets nominated to be the Director of National
Intelligence (DNI). Guess what? They decide to do a new
security clearance for Mike McConnell all over again from
scratch. So there are all kinds of ways in which that process
could be improved as well.
And tenth, this is going to take us a little bit more off
course, but the truth of the matter is that there are two
things that are critical here: Who you pick and how you prepare
them. I do not know if Vince Lombardi said it, but he should
have. But we are focusing on who you pick. The preparation
piece of the political appointments is broken. You have a whole
ton of folks that are coming in. They do not understand
government. They do not understand how to manage government or
the people that they are responsible for. They do not operate
as a team. And we need to see an up-front investment much
larger than has occurred previously in that orientation, in
that preparation process. Again, it may not be the topic for
today, but I hope you will come back to this because I think it
is absolutely vital.
So thank you for the great work that you are doing here.
Obviously, this Committee already passed some legislation
earlier last year. That was, I think, really important in
helping provide resources at the front end of the transition
process. And, again, you are doing just an incredibly important
thing here. So thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Mr. Stier. That was
excellent. Obviously, a number of those can be accomplished by
administrative action and do not require legislation, a number
of your top 10.
Mr. Stier. I will pester them, too.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes. I do not know that you are going
to replace David Letterman with the Top Ten List, but that was
good. [Laughter.]
It is great to see Dr. Bob Dove again, who was our
Parliamentarian for years and who has a lot to offer on this
subject. So thank you for being here.
TESTIMONY OF ROBERT B. DOVE, PH.D.,\1\ FORMER PARLIAMENTARIAN
OF THE U.S. SENATE
Mr. Dove. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. My perspective
actually is a little different. I came to the Senate floor as
part of the Parliamentarian's Office in 1966, and so I have
watched leaders over the years. The first two leaders that I
watched were Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana and Senator
Everett Dirksen of Illinois. And my perspective is that the
Senate is basically a personality-driven institution, and the
two most important personalities on the Senate floor are the
Majority Leader and the Minority Leader. And that is one of the
reasons that I am so encouraged by the fact that the present
Majority Leader, Senator Reid, and the present Minority Leader,
Senator McConnell, have come together and appointed two
Senators who have already shown their ability to work together,
Senators Schumer and Alexander, to deal with this issue.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Dove appears in the Appendix on
page 43.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is an important issue, but it is an issue that has some
political ramifications that I have watched over the years.
Nominations have on occasion become a very convenient tool of
Senators to push a political agenda that often has absolutely
nothing to do with the nomination. And I know that Senators are
loath to give up a power position. That is the reason they come
to the Senate. And I appreciate that.
So I do not think that this will all be easy. I have seen
over the time that I have been on the Senate floor a situation
where a Senator from Alaska basically tried to blackmail a
Senator from Washington over a nomination with the idea that
the Senator from Washington, Henry ``Scoop'' Jackson at the
time, should support his attempt to get onto a committee that
existed then, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. That
failed. But also the nomination failed because the Senator from
Alaska continued his filibuster in that situation.
So, I have seen in a sense the political side of the
nomination process, and the fact that only the Senate deals
with nominations gives Members of the Senate a unique ability
to exercise that kind of political power.
I watched, as I say, for 35 years on the Senate floor as
various leaders dealt with the whole issue of nominations.
Probably the most powerful leader that I watched in that period
was Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. And, indeed, Senator
Byrd in the late 1970s was being frustrated over the whole
issue of getting to nominations, because it used to be in the
Senate that you got to nominations first by going to executive
session, and then making a debatable motion to go to the
nomination, as you now have to make a debatable motion to go to
legislation, and then you had another debate on the nomination
itself. And Senator Byrd was successful in setting in the late
1970s a precedent that eliminated one of those filibusters. It
is now possible for a leader to make a non-debatable, non-
divisible motion to proceed to any nomination on the executive
calendar, thus cutting in half the number of filibusters.
So I have seen, as I say, over the years how leaders have
dealt with the whole issue of the nomination process. I do not
think they have solved it yet, but they have dealt with it, in
the case of Senator Byrd, successfully eliminating one
filibuster involving nominations. But I do not think you are
going to take out the whole issue of politics from nominations.
A nomination which I well remember occurred when President
Lyndon Johnson was in office, and he sent to the Senate the
nomination of a totally unqualified person to be a Federal
district judge with the letter supporting it from Senator
Robert Kennedy as a kind of payback, as it were. And it worked.
That nomination failed in a very embarrassing vote on the
Senate floor.
This kind of thing is part of the Senate. Politics is part
of the Senate. And you will, I think, have to deal with that
issue as well in terms of solving this problem.
I applaud the proposals. I think there probably are way too
many positions right now that require Senate confirmation, and
reducing that number would be appropriate. But also, having
watched from a particular vantage point how the politics plays
out, that is not going to be removed from the system, and there
will be, I think, interesting fights over nominations based on
the politics in the future as there have been in the past.
Chairman Lieberman. That was great. We ought to get
together and just swap stories, Mr. Dove. [Laughter.]
That was quite realistic. Forgive me, I am going to try to
do this quickly, but way back, I cosponsored--it was in the
1990s--with a Republican colleague a measure--and others did,
too--to have a Congressional Medal in honor of a particular
American who had passed away. It had a hard time in the House
for various reasons. It finally made it to the Senate toward
the end of the session. We found out that there was a
Democratic Senator holding up the movement on this medal. So my
Republican colleague said, ``Please go see him.'' So I did, and
I said, ``Do you have anything against this man?'' ``Oh, no,
no.'' ``What is the problem?'' ``Well, your Republican
cosponsor, is holding up a nomination that I am concerned
about''--I think it was for the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC); it was no small matter--``and I am not going
to approve his medal for this person unless''--and I went back
to the Republican Chairman, and he let that nomination go.
[Laughter.]
And the medal was passed.
Mr. Dove. That is the way the Senate works.
Chairman Lieberman. That is the way the Senate works. So it
is actually an important cautionary note. We should start the
question round, and we will have 7-minute rounds.
There is a lot we can fix here, but there is a lot that is
just plain human and part of the Senate that will always
intervene in the advice and consent process.
Let me ask you if you have thought about this, and I will
begin with you, Mr. Dove. Are there other things such as the
change that Senator Byrd made that the Senate can do, do you
think, to improve its own processes and the nominations process
overall? In other words, understanding that there will always
be the kind of politics we are talking about, once a nomination
gets to us, after all it has gone through and hopefully we
expedite it, is there anything more you would suggest we think
about to expedite it?
Mr. Dove. Well, I will tell you that when I went into the
Parliamentarian's Office, the Parliamentarian at the time,
Floyd Riddick, gave me some advice, and he said, ``The rules of
the Senate are perfect. And if they are all changed tomorrow,
they are still perfect.'' [Laughter.]
I have tried to follow that advice. I try not to make
suggestions about how to change the rules of the Senate. I
think that is above my pay grade. I am sure there are things
that could improve the process, but I just am not comfortable
getting into those kind of suggestions.
Chairman Lieberman. I understand. I referred during my
opening statement to the 9/11 Commission, and, in fact, in the
Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, we
did enact provisions that expedited completion of background
investigations for the president-elect's nominees for high-
level national security positions before Inauguration Day. It
also in another way made an important that threat information
go to the president-elect as soon as possible after the
election.
I wanted to ask Mr. Stier or Mr. Johnson to comment. The
Obama transition was the first, obviously, in which these
provisions were in effect. In your report last year, Mr. Stier,
on presidential transitions, did you find that the new
provisions helped the President get his national security team
in place more quickly and perhaps to ensure that they were
better prepared to govern from opening day?
Mr. Stier. I think absolutely yes, they did use those
provisions, although there is an interesting discrepancy
between the McCain campaign and the Obama campaign in that,
then-Senator Obama had literally over a hundred folks go
through the security clearance process; whereas, my
understanding from the McCain campaign is they had five. So it
was a very useful tool but, again, one dependent upon a
campaign understanding the importance of it.
Chairman Lieberman. So that it worked in that way, but, of
course, the numbers--it worked in terms of the key national
security positions, nominees in the Obama transition. But, of
course, as you have said, the total number of nominees moved at
the beginning of the Obama Administration was actually lower.
Mr. Stier. Correct, in the first 100 days.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Stier. Again, I do not mean to flog this too hard, but
I do think it is one of the most important things that you
could really do, would be to create a timetable, a set of
expectations on the campaigns or at that point the president-
elect's perspective of what they need to do in order to have
their team in place. And I think, frankly, they did a lot of
great things, and they prepared a lot. There were a lot of
reasons why they wound up----
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Stier. They had personnel heads that shifted twice in
the process. But I think that they were not shooting for a high
target. They were not shooting for the target of having the 50
top positions in by day one and 100 by that first 100 days.
They were not organizing their resourcing in order to achieve
that, and, therefore, while they used this authority, it was
not to that end objective.
Chairman Lieberman. So I take it that your thought about
the top 100 by April 1, and the top 400 by August 1, is kind of
a device of the basic idea that the 9/11 legislation imposed on
the top people in national security.
Mr. Johnson. Yes, it is--and the 100 is a number out of the
air. It is more than 50, more than 25, and not 200. And every
President would have a different 100 positions depending on
what is going on in the world. But it is a nice number to shoot
for by 100 days or April 1.
A comment about the background checks before the
inauguration or before the election. If I am not mistaken, what
was authorized was a background check that would give the
person a top secret security clearance, which meant that the
person--as soon as the candidate was the president-elect, those
100 people or 125 people could get the same top secret
information and be available to advise the president-elect on
national security matters. It did not authorize a background
check worthy of being nominated to the Senate for a Senate-
confirmed position. Those are two different things.
So it provided the president-elect with--it surrounded him
with lots of advisers who had access to the same information.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Johnson. And you would rather have that FBI background
check to begin with, but the background check required that a
White House would want to do and the Senate would want to look
at before the person was nominated--or taken up for
consideration for confirmation is not begun with that
legislation.
Chairman Lieberman. Good point. What kind of process would
you establish and do you think it makes sense to try to do it
in law for selecting the top 100 or top 400, or whatever the
number turned out to be?
Mr. Johnson. I think a president-elect would identify the
positions that he or she were going to try to concentrate on
first and indicate that to the Senate leadership. The Senate
leadership might have some suggestions--only suggestions. They
cannot direct the President what to do.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Johnson. But they might add and subtract some. But have
a dialogue at the beginning about what those positions are, and
in effect, commit informally the Administration to work on
those with the highest priority and commit the Senate
informally to be prepared to receive those and to take them up
with some expedition. But it would not obligate either party to
do it.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Johnson. Again, for whatever reason--politics, people
being people, the Senate being the Senate--they may not want it
to pass them. They may not want to go that fast.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Johnson. Or they might want to go faster. But it calls
for a dialogue and some discussion and some prioritization
which drives everything else. It drives how fast the FBI works.
It drives the staffing of the Office of Presidential Personnel.
It will drive the resources that the committees allocate to
this kind of work in that first 90 days, 120 days.
Chairman Lieberman. It is a really good idea. In other
words, it goes beyond the obvious, which is any President would
want at the top, Defense, Treasury, State, etc., to forcing a
prioritization a little further down, and then putting Congress
or the Senate on notice that that was the goal, with nothing
mandatory about it.
Mr. Johnson. Right.
Chairman Lieberman. Most important of all, I think it
creates priorities.
My time is up in this round. Senator Collins.
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me start by thanking our witnesses for their excellent
testimony and thanking Mr. Dove for throwing the cold water of
reality on why logical reforms are so difficult to implement
and to get through the Senate.
The Chairman made a very important point that I want to go
back to, and that is that the Administration, this or a
previous one or any administration, has the ability to expedite
the process, and that is often overlooked when we heap blame on
the Senate for being slow to get nominees through the
confirmation process.
The fact is in many, perhaps most cases, the majority of
the time spent in the nomination and confirmation process
occurs before the nomination is even submitted to the Senate.
And one reason for the lengthy process is that recent
Administrations--actually, it goes all the way back to the
Eisenhower Administration--have required full field FBI
investigations for all nominees. And, Mr. Stier, when you
referred to Mike McConnell, that was an excellent point. Here
is an individual who has had the very highest level of security
clearance for many years in many different jobs, and yet we
start all over again as if he has held none of these positions.
The other issue is that the FBI investigation is not scaled
to the level of security responsibilities of the position for
which the person is nominated. Thus, the individual who is
nominated to be the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at
the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has to go
through exactly the same FBI check as the individual nominated
to be the Secretary of Homeland Security. And that does not
make sense to me.
I want to start with Mr. Johnson on this. Is there a way to
scale the extent of the FBI investigation so it more nearly
matches the responsibilities of the position?
Mr. Johnson. There is and I think it happens today. It did
with the George W. Bush Administration. I remember Fred
Fielding, who was the clearance counsel during the transition,
set it up, and then Al Gonzales as White House counsel set it
up where there was a scaling. The way they scaled it was, every
question was answered, but for the most important positions
there were, I would say, 20 in-person interviews. For a lower
level position, there were maybe 15 in-person interviews or 5
in-person interviews and 10 phone interviews. And in others
further down, there were only ten interviews. There was a
scaling in terms of how much data verification there was, which
is the time-consumer. It is not that they only filled out
sections 1 through 3 here and they had to fill out the whole
form over here. It is how much verification there was.
It is up to the White House--the White House determines how
detailed the investigation is. So if it is not being scaled, it
is because the White House is choosing not to scale it.
Senator Collins. I am going to take a look at that issue
with this White House. I personally read all the FBI reports on
all the nominees that come before our Committee, and they seem
to be the same kinds of intensive investigation.
Now, that may reflect the fact that in some cases this
Administration has gotten burned on some of the investigations
done by the FBI. That happened in the case of a Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) nominee that came before this
Committee, where there were significant issues that were not
uncovered by the FBI investigation.
Mr. Johnson. One thing I would suggest you do--and your
staff could do it--is visit with some of the White House
counsels for the last several Administrations in the first year
of the Administration. Tim Flanigan, who was the Deputy White
House Counsel for George W. Bush, could talk about it, and Fred
Fielding, and President Clinton's staff, maybe get them
together or talk to them separately. But they would tell you
what they did or did not do and what they think they can do and
cannot do.
Mr. Stier. If I might add?
Senator Collins. Yes.
Mr. Stier. I think it would be useful to get data. I hear
all kinds of anecdotal stories that are quite frightening with
respect to this and share your sense that it is not working as
it ought to in many instances. But we do not have data, and it
is not that hard to collect it, what is being done for the
nominees, how much time it is actually taking. And I think that
would help, more transparency would help a great deal.
I think one of the improvements that happened in the Bush
Administration was the requirement by Executive Order that
there be reciprocity across agencies for security clearances.
But now there is a suitability review that individual agencies
are doing on top of security clearances, saying, we take the
security clearance but we are going to see if it works for us.
That is actually just shoehorning back in another layer of
time-consuming and oftentimes detrimental review.
But I think this is ripe for more information that would
help you understand better what is going on.
Senator Collins. I think that is an excellent suggestion.
Mr. Johnson, you are in an unusual situation because you
have served as head of the Office of Presidential Personnel,
but you have also been a Senate-confirmed nominee as Deputy
Director of OMB. In fact, you came before our Committee, and
you are welcome to criticize our process, because it is more
extensive than others.
Mr. Johnson. Do I look that stupid? [Laughter.]
Senator Collins. But having seen both sides of the process,
which is very unusual for someone to have seen it from both
sides, are there particular paperwork or form burdens that you
recall as being particularly duplicative or onerous? You have
the OGE form; our Committee's form; the White House's form; and
the FBI's form. They are all different, from what I have seen.
Do you have any thoughts on that, having gone through the
process?
Mr. Johnson. Well, on the form, I had already filled out a
278 and SF-86 to get my security clearance and be properly
qualified to work in the White House. So I did not have to fill
those out anew. I had to update them, which you would have to
do anyway. So that was not a new thing.
As part of the confirmation process, there was a long list
of subject-related questions that I was asked to respond to,
and there was a meeting with your staff--maybe it was in this
room--to go over a bunch of issues. And nobody is going to
answer those questions in writing in a way that is going to
cause them not to be confirmed.
Senator Collins. Correct.
Mr. Johnson. And no one is going to say anything in the
interview that is going to cause them not to be confirmed. But
yet the relationship between me, the nominee, and the staff is
very important to begin to establish as early as possible. I am
not sure, though, it helps the Committee decide that I am
qualified or not to be the person confirmed for the position.
So the only question I would raise--it is not a criticism--
is whether that exchange of information and that interview with
the staff and the sharing of ideas needs to take place before
the confirmation. It needs to take place early on, I think
after the confirmation, to facilitate the exchange of
information and communication between Senate and the position
at OMB. But I am not sure that you get information from the
answers to those questions or from the staff interviews that
helps you decide this person is marginally qualified, not
qualified, or whatever.
So if time was of the essence and you are trying to move
things along, scheduling an extra week or 10 days or so to have
me fill out those questions and have the interview with the
staff I am not sure improves the quality of your decision that
I was qualified or not. It accomplished something else, but
that could have waited until after the confirmation.
Senator Collins. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Interesting. We are due for a vote
soon, but maybe we can do a couple more questions each on the
small matter of keeping the government funded and operating
after this Friday.
I wanted to ask you about the kind of one-way, one-time
standard, and you made a good point. After all that the White
House does to vet nominees, in some sense it starts again when
it gets here. Is there any reason why the Senate should not
begin with the full White House file on a nominee?
Mr. Johnson. There might be some legal reason it is not
shared. But if not, there could be some sharing of that
information. And if there is some reason why the form itself
cannot be shared, a so-called smart form could be used where
they put it in there and then it populates the data in an SF-86
and then separately gives the Senate the information it seeks.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. Mr. Dove, do you have any
thoughts about that from the Senate's legal point of view?
Mr. Dove. Well, what I am reminded of was the very
unpleasant confirmation process involving Senator John Tower to
be Secretary of Defense, and as I recall, there were materials
placed in a secret room----
Chairman Lieberman. That is correct.
Mr. Dove [continuing]. Where Senators could go, and then
there was some question that possibly some Senators used that
information in open debate on the floor of the Senate. To me
that is a problem, and was a problem during that confirmation.
Chairman Lieberman. One quick question--and I remember that
happened when I first came into the Senate. That was the first
month. Do you have any thoughts about how to fulfill this
notion of a surge capacity of staff within the Office of
Presidential Personnel at the transition time?
Mr. Johnson. Well, it starts with a new Administration,
directly or indirectly committing to get the 87 or 100 most
important positions filled, potentially; send the names up to
the Senate in time so the Senate is given a reasonable amount
of time to get them confirmed or not within that first 100 days
or by April 1, and the bigger number by August.
Once they have committed to do that, then they decide how
much money to allocate in the budget to Presidential Personnel
staffing, how many people they put in the counsel's office to
do clearance work, what kind of directions they give the FBI,
and what kind of directions they give the Office of Government
Ethics, etc.
Chairman Lieberman. Which is----
Mr. Johnson. But it begins with them committing to the
notion of doing that much work.
Chairman Lieberman. How about additional personnel? Because
you gave a good example about they only could get so many
through in----
Mr. Johnson. They get a budget. Right now the budget
generally allows for hiring seven or eight officers, and it is
about six Special Assistants to the President, and that is
where most of the work is done.
Chairman Lieberman. And that goes the whole time--I mean,
in other words, that is not just for the first 8 months or
whatever.
Mr. Johnson. Right. In that last 6 months of an
administration, it might be five instead of six.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Johnson. But the staffing is the same at the beginning
as it is in the end, which is----
Chairman Lieberman. Yes, so what should we do? Is one thing
to do here to create a budget for bringing in outside people to
do investigations for the office, for that early period of
time?
Mr. Johnson. Well, the so-called Kaufman bill, that you
passed calls for pre-election transition work.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Johnson. And it gives them the right to go out and
raise money to fund transition activities before the election.
And it is easy money to raise. They could raise a little bit of
money, or they could raise a lot of money, and they would want
to raise a lot of money if they were committed to try to make
100 and 400 nomination most expelitously. So it starts with
their desire to put their team on the field faster.
Chairman Lieberman. Got it.
Mr. Johnson. So that is a lot of jawboning. There are
things that the Senate could probably do in bill language that
refers to this or a dialogue at the beginning of an
administration. I do not know how this takes place. This is
your world. But it starts with that commitment, and then
everything else flows from that. If there is a need for more
money, $2 million, which is the most it would ever be, for the
first 6 months in a White House budget--that is not a deal
killer.
Chairman Lieberman. It comes from having that as a
priority.
Senator Collins, do you want to ask a question?
Senator Collins. Just one final point. I know we have a
vote that has started.
One complaint that I have heard from some nominees is that
it has been very expensive for them to go through the process
and to serve. I remember Gordon England in particular pointing
out that he had lost, I think it was, hundreds of thousands of
dollars because he had to divest himself of assets very quickly
in order to be confirmed as Secretary of the Navy, I think it
was, at the time. And as I said from the beginning, my goal is
to have the best people possible in government and to not have
unnecessary barriers to their serving.
On the other hand, clearly we want to make sure we are
guarding against real or perceived conflicts of interest, but I
would ask you, Mr. Johnson, because of the role that you play,
how big a problem are the requirements for divestiture and the
sheer cost of hiring accountants to help you go through your
records for the vetting process? Is that something that we
should be worried about?
Mr. Johnson. The reason people choose not to serve is
because it is too expensive, directly and indirectly. An
expense can be they have stock options that are worth too much
or too little, or they have an ailing mother-in-law living with
them, and they cannot afford to move, or they have just built
the house of their dreams, or their children are juniors and
seniors in high school, so there is an expense. There is a cost
to the family, to the individual.
If there is a direct cost associated with divestiture or
associated with getting accountants to pull together all the
information, it is because the person is really rich.
[Laughter.]
Senator Collins. Good point.
Mr. Johnson. So it is usually a cost that they can incur,
and they will tell you whether they can afford it or not.
Now, it would take the Office of Government Ethics to
determine whether there are other ways of dealing with a
potential conflict. Can you put it in a blind trust? I do not
know that. But I think the Office of Government Ethics--by the
way, pay a lot of attention to what they recommend because
their standards for looking for conflicts of interest are as
high as anybody else's in the government, they are trying to do
really good work, and they have thought very creatively about
how to do it with less burden and get to decisions faster and
look for ways to keep some of these expensive divestitures from
taking place. But they are the experts, and I encourage you to
pay a lot of attention to their ideas.
Senator Collins. Thank you. I would love to hear more, but
we do have a vote on, so I just want to thank all of our
witnesses today, and you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Collins. We will
really work on this.
Mr. Stier, do you have something else you want to say
before I gavel?
Mr. Stier. I just really wanted to say, back to Mr. Dove's
point about human nature, just to reinforce, I think part of
human nature around an election is that you are going to see a
lot more opportunity at the front end. So if you actually set
an aggressive timetable--and I would say not just 100 days but
really day one, which means you actually have to have money
pre-election. It has to be during the transition process that
they are actually doing this. Human nature will mean that this
stuff will happen a lot faster.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Stier. So that front-end piece I think is huge.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. Thanks to the three of you
very much. It has been very helpful.
We hope to have this legislation ready for introduction
next week, and then we will move it as rapidly as we possibly
can through the Committee. But you have been really helpful
today. We are going to leave the record open for 15 days for
additional questions and statements.
With that, again I thank you. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:13 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]