[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING THE ADMINISTRATION'S GOVERNMENT-WIDE REORGANIZATION PLAN
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 27, 2018
__________
Serial No. 115-88
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
http://oversight.house.gov
_________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
31-276 PDF WASHINGTON : 2018
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Trey Gowdy, South Carolina, Chairman
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Elijah E. Cummings, Maryland,
Darrell E. Issa, California Ranking Minority Member
Jim Jordan, Ohio Carolyn B. Maloney, New York
Mark Sanford, South Carolina Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Justin Amash, Michigan Columbia
Paul A. Gosar, Arizona Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri
Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Jim Cooper, Tennessee
Thomas Massie, Kentucky Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
Mark Meadows, North Carolina Robin L. Kelly, Illinois
Ron DeSantis, Florida Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Dennis A. Ross, Florida Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey
Mark Walker, North Carolina Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Rod Blum, Iowa Jamie Raskin, Maryland
Jody B. Hice, Georgia Jimmy Gomez, Maryland
Steve Russell, Oklahoma Peter Welch, Vermont
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Matt Cartwright, Pennsylvania
Will Hurd, Texas Mark DeSaulnier, California
Gary J. Palmer, Alabama Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands
James Comer, Kentucky John P. Sarbanes, Maryland
Paul Mitchell, Michigan
Greg Gianforte, Montana
Vacancy
Sheria Clarke, Staff Director
William McKenna, General Counsel
Kevin Ortiz, Professional Staff Member
Julie Dunne, Government Operations Subcommittee Staff Director
Sharon Casey, Deputy Chief Clerk
David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on June 27, 2018.................................... 1
WITNESSES
The Honorable Margaret Weichert, Deputy Director for Management,
U.S. Office of Management and Budget
Oral Statement............................................... 5
Written Statement............................................ 7
APPENDIX
American Federation of Government Employees Statement for the
Record submitted by Mr. Cummings............................... 48
The National Treasury Employees Union Statement for the Record
submitted by Mr. Cummings...................................... 52
National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association
submitted by Mr. Cummings...................................... 62
``Two Years Not Ten Years Redesigning Infrastructure Approvals,''
Common Good, submitted by Mr. Palmer can be accessed at:
https://www.commongood.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/
2YearsNotl0Years.pdf
``Assessing the Costs Attributed to Project Delays'' submitted by
Mr. Palmer can be accessed at: https://ftp.dot.state.tx.us/pub/
txdot-info/fed/project-delay-summary.pdf....................... 65
2018-06-20 New York Times ``How One Conservative Think Tank Is
Stocking Trump's Government'' submitted by Ms. Plaskett........ 66
Response from Ms. Weichert, Office of Management and Budget, to
Questions for the Record....................................... 83
EXAMINING THE ADMINISTRATION'S GOVERNMENT-WIDE REORGANIZATION PLAN
----------
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
House of Representatives,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mark Meadows
presiding.
Present: Representatives Duncan, Issa, Amash, Foxx,
Meadows, Walker, Blum, Hice, Russell, Grothman, Hurd, Palmer,
Comer, Mitchell, Cummings, Norton, Clay, Lynch, Connolly,
Kelly, Lawrence, Watson Coleman, Raskin, Welch, DeSaulnier,
Plaskett, and Sarbanes.
Also Present: Representative Scott.
Mr. Meadows. The Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform will come to order. Without objection, the presiding
member is authorized to declare a recess at any time.
The modern Federal Government is a result of layers upon
layers of legislative executive and judicial actions throughout
our Nation's history. The inertia of bureaucracy created by the
process allows it to persist year after year after year. And as
our former President said, there is every reason why our
executive governmental machinery should be at least well
planned, economical, and efficient as the best machinery of the
great business organizations which, at present, is not the
case. That was President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905, but those
words are still true today as they were just as true a century
ago.
Decisions that may have made sense in the past may not work
in the context of a modern 21st century society. And as we
progress as a Nation, it is incumbent upon elected officials to
reevaluate how to best deliver on the services to the American
people and the services indeed that they deserve.
Take pizza for example. If a company wishes to sell cheese
pizza, it has to meet with the Food and Drug Administration
requirements. However, if they add pepperoni to that pizza, the
company must now adhere to rules issued by the Food Safety
Inspection Services of the Department of Agriculture. So you
have one pizza going through one agency, another pizza with
pepperoni going through a different agency.
Or let's look at imported seafood, which accounts for
nearly 90 percent of consumed seafood in the United States. In
September of 2017, a Government Accountability Office audit
found that the FDA and the FSIS were not fully coordinating on
the drug residue testing methods. GAO also found that two
agencies were using different standards for testing drug
residue to determine if seafood was safe. Now, the lack of
coordination and aligned standards only harms businesses
seeking to comply with the law. But also, it harms consumers
and puts their health at risk.
The complex and ever growing demands of our citizens
require an efficient and effective Federal Government. And as
these examples suggest, the current construct fails to meet
this requirement.
The plan to reorganize the executive branch put forward by
President Trump seeks to help us meet this--the new needs or I
might say the existing needs of our constituents.
In March 2017, President Trump issued an executive order
calling on the Office of Management and Budget to create a
comprehensive reorganization plan that consolidates or
eliminates redundant and ineffective programs and agencies. And
the plan which was released last Thursday seeks to deliver an--
to the executive branch what they dictated to be wholly meeting
the Federal Government's important mission of service and
stewardship objectives.
The plan suggests bold reforms, such as the elevation of
the Office of Personnel Management into the executive branch--I
mean, the Executive Office of the President, the merger of
Departments of Labor and Education, and the consolidation of
welfare programs and a revamped Department of Health and Human
Services.
This plan is a roadmap designed to jump start a
conversation about how to best deliver these services to the
American people, the services they expect. And we're pleased to
have the OMB deputy director of management, Margaret Weichert,
here today to present that roadmap to the committee and to the
American public.
Accomplishing the goals in this plan will not be easy, and
it will require a hand-in-hand work with Congress, the
administration, and stakeholders to fully recognize and realize
the potential transformation that is envisioned here.
I want to thank you, Deputy Director Weichert, for being
here, and I look forward to our conversation.
With that, I recognize my good friend, the ranking member,
the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I'm
glad that we are having this hearing today.
I definitely have numerous questions for the witness about
the Trump administration's reorganization plan. For example, I
want to know why is it that there is no analysis of the cost
and benefits of this proposal? Why is there no assessment of
its impact on the Federal budget? Why is there no information
at all about how it will affect Federal workers? And why is it
there's no list of actions that require congressional approval?
These are all basic prerequisites for a serious plan, and they
are completely missing from this one.
Last week, my staff asked the Office of Management and
Budget for these assessments, and they were told that they did
not exist. The Trump administration now claims that it wants to
use this proposal, and I quote, ``to build productive
bipartisan dialog,'' end of quote. If that were a serious
claim, the Trump administration would have worked with us over
the past year, instead of keeping their work secret, despite
multiple requests from members of this committee.
Take just one example in our committee's jurisdiction, the
Postal Service. We have a bipartisan bill--Mr. Chairman, you
have worked very hard on that bill with us--that we passed out
of our committee unanimously, that would help the Postal
Service maintain a more solid financial footing forward.
Instead of working with us, President Trump unilaterally
appointed a task force to come up with its own ideas about the
Postal Service. Then without even waiting for its own task
force's results, President Trump rushed in this proposal to
eliminate the Postal Service entirely. Ladies and gentlemen, it
makes no sense.
Like so many other ideas that have come out of this White
House, President Trump's proposal to privatize the Postal
Service is disorganized, unilateral, nonsensical and, frankly,
incompetent. I do not think this plan is a serious one. What I
do think is extremely serious is the urgent plight of thousands
of children who the Trump administration separated from their
parents with no discernible plan to reunite them. None, zero.
Tomorrow, the Judiciary Committee is holding a so-called,
quote, ``emergency hearing,'' end of quote, on Hillary
Clinton's emails. They're hauling up Rod Rosenstein and
Christopher Wray to demand more answers. But the real emergency
is these children, these babies and toddlers, whom the
government has unilaterally and literally torn from the arms of
their parents, some of them a few months old.
To my Republican colleagues, last week, I asked a very
simple question, but a very profound one. I simply asked for
your help. Call a hearing, ask DHS and HHS and DOJ to come up
here and testify about what the plan is to reunite these
children and these kids with their families. Light a fire up
under them to get them moving. If we can have an emergency
hearing on Hillary Clinton, we certainly can have an emergency
hearing on these children.
And so I ask the question, I asked for help. But guess
what? I got no response. Zilch. Didn't even get a letter, not a
phone call, nothing. And so the children continue to suffer.
You've seen them locked up in cages. I said it before and I'll
say it again: This is our country. It is a great country, but
we will be judged by the way we treat our citizens and
particularly our children.
So on Friday, we had to send our own letter just from the
Democrats, dated June 22, to the Attorney General Sessions, DHS
Secretary Nielsen, and HHS Secretary Azar. We asked for basic
information on each child that was separated from his or her
parents so we could monitor and promote efforts to unify these
families. These are documents they should have at their
fingertips, and we asked for them by tomorrow. Apparently
however, we cannot have these documents, for some reason.
And as we all know, the Democrats are in the minority. And
since no Republican joined our request, the agencies will not
produce the documents. We hear a lot of talk from the agency
heads, but no documents. And so now I'm pleading, I'm pleading
with you once again. Anyone on this panel, anyone, is there one
Republican who will join us, just one, to save and help these
families reunite? Anyone? Radio silence. Is there one
Republican who will sign his or her name to this letter
requesting the basic facts and the documents about these
children?
I will yield to any Republican member who will join us in
this effort. I ask one last time, is there one----
Mr. Issa. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. Cummings. Yes.
Mr. Issa. Would you give the 30 days that the San Diego
court has ordered for full reunification as part of the letter
since the President's executive order now has been codified by
a Federal judge?
Mr. Cummings. No, no.
Mr. Issa. So you wouldn't give the President and the
Federal court system the 30 days to unify them?
Mr. Cummings. I'm just--taking back my time. I'll let you
see the letter, and if you want to sign on to the letter----
Mr. Issa. I look forward to seeing it.
Mr. Cummings. Yeah. We need help. These children need help.
We wouldn't do this to our own children. We would not allow
people to split up our families. As a matter of fact, if they
tried to split up our families, we would go off.
And so as I close, Mr. Chairman----
Mr. Meadows. If the gentleman will yield.
If you'll give me a copy of the letter, I'll get back to
you within 24 hours. You know that I have a bipartisan history
of demanding documents, regardless of their political, I
guess----
Mr. Cummings. Yes.
Mr. Meadows. --relevance. And if you'll give me a copy of
the letter, we'll get back to you within 24 hours.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr.
Chairman.
Is there--so--and I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
that. It means a lot to me.
And so we move forward. But I say to my colleagues, you can
have your emergency hearing on Hillary Clinton's emails, but
can we also have one on these kids who desperately need our
help? Children are separated from their parents by our own
government. Isn't that an emergency? Another week has gone by
and there's still no functioning plan to reunite these
families. Isn't that an emergency?
The harm and the trauma our own government is inflicting on
these children is continuing and compounding every single day.
There's no question that this is an emergency. I've often said
that what you do to a child, and if it's negative, it probably
lasts them for the rest of their lives. And it is not the deed,
it's the memory that haunts them and harm them. And so we all
know in our hearts that we need to address this, and we need to
start treating it like the emergency that it is.
And, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for what you just
said. This is a bipartisan issue, it should be. And we look
forward to your response.
With that, I yield back.
Mr. Meadows. I thank the gentleman for his opening remarks.
I'm pleased to introduce our witness, the Honorable
Margaret Weichert, deputy director for management at the Office
of Management and Budget. Welcome.
And pursuant to committee rules, we'd ask that you would
stand before you testify and please raise your right hand.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're
about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you God.
Ms. Weichert. I do.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you. You may be seated.
And please let the record reflect that the witness answered
in the affirmative.
Obviously, in order to allow time for questions and
answers, your oral testimony will be limited to 5 minutes. This
is not your first rodeo, you get that. And the clock's there in
front of you. And yet at the same time, your entire written
statement will be made part of the record.
So you're now recognized for 5 minutes.
WITNESS STATEMENT
STATEMENT OF MARGARET WEICHERT
Ms. Weichert. Thank you.
Chairman Meadows, Ranking Member Cummings, and members of
the committee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the
plan to reshape government in the 21st century.
Healthy organizations change and adapt to customer needs
and the demands of the free market. The U.S. Government should
be no different. Our Founders conceived a durable governing
framework and Constitution to serve the American people, but
our current organizational model has not kept pace with 21st
century needs.
Despite dramatic changes in technology, our Federal
Government still operates much like it did 50 years ago. And it
isn't well organized to provide the service and flexibility
that Americans expect in the digital age. I cringe when I hear
how inefficient it is to interact with Federal agencies.
Let me give you some examples. Jobseekers have to navigate
more than 40 workforce development programs across 15 agencies.
Poultry companies deal with multiple offices and time-consuming
paperwork because chickens and eggs are regulated by different
agencies. Environmental conservation for fish in our rivers are
affected by regulations from four different organizations. And
basic infrastructure development and maintenance projects for
roads and ports face organizational complexity that can delay
investments by years. This is not how Americans want government
to operate.
As a result, in March 2017, the President issued Executive
Order 13781 directing the Office of Management and Budget to
work with key stakeholders and produce a comprehensive
government reform plan to better meet the needs of the American
people. This plan is part of a broader set of management
improvement initiatives designed to balance executive branch
mission, service, and stewardship responsibilities, while
reducing duplication, risk, and inefficiency.
Concrete efforts to drive change were released in the
President's Management Agenda in March 2018. The PMA is the
administration's blueprint for aligning government IT, data,
and the Federal workforce in the 21st century. Reorganization
proposals build on this blueprint and are among the various
tools we are using to modernize government.
Over the past year, OMB reviewed top-down and bottom-up
reform and reorganization proposals from Federal agencies, the
public, academics, interest groups, and Federal employees. The
reform plan was also informed by years of research and
recommendations from the Government Accountability Office, GAO,
including the GAO high-risk lists and reports on government
duplication and fragmentation. After synthesizing this
information, OMB developed the recommendations included in the
reform and reorganization plan released by the President in
last week's Cabinet meeting.
Given the seriousness of this task and its potential for
major impact to government missions and to our workforce, the
OMB team worked with executive branch agencies on reform plan
deliberation and predecisional analysis in phases. The initial
phase covered data collection where agency input and 100,000
public comments were collected between June and December of
last year.
The second phase focused on opportunities to reduce
duplication and fragmentation and improve cross-agency
efficiency. This worked through on GAO reports on risk,
duplication, and inefficiency, as well as literature review
from think tanks and good government groups, which is included
on page 128 of the proposal. And that phase started in January
2018.
The final phase incorporated President's Management Agenda
priorities that were used to prioritize proposals where
mission, service, or stewardship might be improved via
reorganization or restructuring. This final phase began after
the PMA release in March.
A transformation of this scope will take time to implement.
Some changes can be applied directly within agencies, while
other more complex proposals may require action by the
President or Congress.
Now that the plan has been issued, we are eager to engage
in a constructive conversation with Congress on how to move
forward together. We know that Congress shares our interest in
driving positive reform. This committee in particular has
dedicated considerable effort over the years to exposing
duplication and inefficiency in government and exploring ways
to improve government operations.
At times of great change, commitment to government of the
people, by the people, and for the people is critical. As the
U.S. faces the challenge of serving the diverse needs of our
growing country, I look forward to working with all of you to
ensure that the executive branch is well-organized to deal with
21st century realities.
Thank you again for inviting me here today. I look forward
to your questions.
[Prepared statement of Ms. Weichert follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Foxx. [Presiding.] Thank you very much, Ms. Weichert,
for your statements, and we appreciate your being here.
I will in 1 second introduce members to ask their
questions. But I want to a brief followup on what you have
said. As I said when the reorganization was announced, the
Federal Government is long overdue for a serious overhaul. The
proposal to merge the Departments of Education and Labor is
recognition of the clear relationship between education policy
at every level and the needs of the growing American workforce.
At the Committee on Education and Workforce, we make these
connections in everything we do. I appreciate the
administration's support for this idea, and I look forward to
working with the administration on the proposal and how the new
department could function to best serve American students,
workers, job creators, and families.
I now would like to recognize Mr. Issa for 5 minutes of
questions.
Mr. Issa. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm delighted to see a real proposal. The last
administration had asked us for authority, but never gave us
any proposal. But having said that, I'd like to delve into a
piece of history for a moment.
As you know, this committee in the past has held hearings
to review the history of how you do a reorganization. And the
gold standard appears to--try to make sure I can see you--the
gold standard seems to be the history of the Hoover Commission.
In that situation, in addition to many, many ideas that had
bubbled up and were obviously on the forefront of the executive
branch's mind, what they did was they did a lot of what you've
just done, but they did it in a way in which Congress had to
buy in along the way, along with the interest groups, and that
allowed a commission that, through multiple Presidencies,
continued to allow an evolution.
As you look at the short term and authority, why is it that
we're not seeing, if you will, a sustaining body that would put
this out in the public and at the same time bring Congress on
a, if you will, a permanent basis into the process, rather than
an approval and then see you later?
Ms. Weichert. So----
Mr. Issa. And I mean no disrespect with the approval but
see you later, but we do know how that works.
Ms. Weichert. So I appreciate the question. And we too
looked at the history of reform in government and in the
private sector and looked at various experiences, including
experiences in the recent past where proposals basically got
winnowed away in the public deliberation process before there
was a rich and full dialogue. So much about the process that we
engaged in was designed to ensure that we had some really meaty
proposals to put out for public debate before engaging into
more implementation oriented part of the change, which we know
needs to happen in public.
Mr. Issa. I appreciate that. I guess I'll go back and sort
of restate the question, if you will. In the corporate world--
and you mentioned that in the corporate world generally there
are two kinds of reorganizations. There are ones that are
evolutionary, for example, pulling up to the corporate
headquarters, the IT functions as a service, something that's
long overdue in the Federal Government. And this committee has
seen, although we did empower CIOs, we still have too many of
them based on the legislation. But, you know, that's an example
of one that is very limited. And the execution is everything,
while the lines of code that it would take to authorize it are
relatively few. And then you have things more like, let's say,
General Electric, where they find that the organization itself
is in doubt and they start with serious combinations,
reductions, sales, et cetera.
You seem to be blending the two. In other words, the IT
function broadly being under a consolidated authority,
professionalizing it, and taking it out of, if you will, little
fiefdoms that sometimes go all the way down to an agency of
only a few million dollars of spending, is a shortcut that we
could certainly understand you're bringing us a single proposal
for. And I have to be honest, I didn't see that part of the
proposal. But then the other side of it, which is recognizing
that too many people report directly to the President, or to be
more cynical, too many people try to get through the chief of
staff to the President.
What are you going to do about that in this proposal?
Because nothing I see here really says we have too many Cabinet
positions and those Cabinet positions cannot possibly get the
ear of the President or direct access to decisionmakers in some
sort of a corollary to the private sector.
Ms. Weichert. So thanks for the question. You're exactly
right that we did blend both what we learned from public sector
reform initiatives in the past as well as in the private
sector. And what really drove everything that we did here is
the same thing that drove the work we did in the President's
Management Agenda, which is looking at the intersection between
mission, delivery, service to the American people, and
stewardship of taxpayer resources. And it was where that sort
of trio of things came into either conflict or in confluence
that we really focused our activity. And I think the key thing
to reiterate is there are many tools and many approaches. We
tried----
Mr. Issa. And lastly, in the few remaining seconds, if we
were to have the authority to approve it here today, what would
be your timeline which--in other words, how many years would
you really envision to execute even the portions that you've
already laid out?
Ms. Weichert. I'd say 3 to 5 years.
Mr. Issa. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Issa.
Mrs. Watson Coleman, you're recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you
very much. And thank you very much for being here today and
sharing this information with us.
Ms. Weichert, I've got a lot of questions about this
reorganization plan. I'm really concerned about the impact of
the proposals as it relates to active and retired employees and
moving the function out of OPM and eliminating OPM. At some
point, I'm going to need to have a discussion about how that
happens and our role in that. I'm very concerned about
protecting careerist employees. And I'm fearful that if that
function in any way, shape, or form gets into the White House,
we've got a real problem, given the White House's disdain for
the workforce in the first place.
But I am the ranking member of the Homeland Security
Subcommittee on Transportation and Protective Security. I have
a major concern and it has to do with the vulnerabilities that
are facing our surface transportation systems. The threat to
public transportation systems has fully grown in recent years,
culminating in an attempt of terrorist attack against New York
City subway system just this last December. Unfortunately, the
administration has responded to this growing threat by
proposing drastic cuts to surface transportation security
programs. And now you propose that Federal security
responsibilities for these vulnerable systems be transferred
back to the Department of Transportation, which failed to
protect transportation systems on 9/11 and no longer maintains
security expertise. You seem to envision an ever shrinking
Federal role in protecting public transit, despite how critical
these systems are to our national security.
What responsibility do you believe the Federal Government
should have in protecting surface transportation systems?
Ms. Weichert. So thank you for the question, and there are
a number of things in there. I'll start by saying that
definitively and from a business standpoint on the first set of
issues you raised around people in the workforce, the pragmatic
and practical reality is any change that delivers on mission,
service, and stewardship for the American people has to be
delivered by the workforce we have. And we do not disdain that
workforce; we applaud the work that that workforce does. And so
I do look forward to engaging on that conversation.
As it relates to transportation, I'm not familiar with all
of the back and forth components that happened prior to the
latest proposal. What I can say was the goal of many of the
proposals in here, including the transportation proposals, was
to reduce fragmentation, duplication, and areas where the
government was not having an integrated approach to serious
issues as the ones you're mentioning.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. So am I to assume that TSA weighed in
on this discussion and agreed with the transfer of these
functions into the Department of Transportation, and that the
Department of Transportation weighed into this discussion and
agreed that it would be capable of handling this additional
responsibility when it hasn't had a like responsibility since
after the transfers after 9/11?
Ms. Weichert. So the Department of Transportation
absolutely weighed in on the proposals. And basically, the
conversation looked at what would need to be done to align from
an organizational standpoint to reduce communication and
efficiencies, to reduce overlapping resource or fragmentation,
diffuse resources so that we could put the bulk of the money
towards the mission.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Well, part of the problem then is that
with regard to surface transportation issues, the
administration has consistently proposed to cut those things.
And now it's to move them into a department that doesn't seem
to have as its primary function that issue. And you didn't say
whether or not TSA had any input in this, you simply said that
the DOT did.
I'm wondering, is there a thought that the creation of the
Department of Homeland Security was not a good idea?
Ms. Weichert. There's no thought that that was not a good
idea.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Do you believe that State and local
authorities have the necessary resources to protect public
transportation systems without significant government--Federal
Government support?
Ms. Weichert. So the issue in the proposal was really about
coordination of effort, and so it's not the only tool, as
you're clearly indicating. Money is another important tool that
helps align us to the needs of the mission. What this proposal
was trying to do was look at structural impediments that were
organizational in nature that made it difficult to steward
resources in a way that provided the best service.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Thank you. If the transportation
security responsibilities were split across the multiple
departments, how would the Federal Government effectively
protect against and respond to attacks affecting multiple
modes? And who would direct those Federal efforts in such an
attack?
Ms. Weichert. So the specifics around how we actually
implement these proposals, again, back to the earlier comment.
What we wanted to put out was a framework, a set of principles,
and an orientation that was informed by leading practices
around how do we structure government in the 21st century. We
believe now it's the time for experts like yourself and others
who care deeply about the issues to help articulate a path
forward.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Thank you. I'm out of time.
I yield back.
Mr. Foxx. Thank you, Mrs. Watson Coleman.
Mr. Comer, you're recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Comer. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
And welcome to the committee today. I think I for one am
strongly in favor of reorganizing the government. The two
things that I support strongly from an ideological standpoint
with respect to government is to reduce the size of government
and the bureaucracy, as well as cut wasteful spending.
So my questions are, first of all, is this reorganization
plan, is it an actual downsizing of government?
Ms. Weichert. So I think it's a great question. The initial
look at the data around how do we deliver the mission in the
21st century looked at what are we doing? What does the
American people expect the government to do? And where are we
doing it well and where do we have challenges? Much like in
business, looking at the gap analysis.
What we do not actually have is a problem of too many
Federal employees. So when we did the analysis, something like
60 percent of our existing Federal workforce is eligible to
retire within 10 years, 40 percent within 3 years. So what we
don't have is a challenge of too many Federal workers to
deliver the mission. What we do have is a skills alignment
challenge and opportunity.
Mr. Comer. So is reducing the Federal workforce, is that a
purpose of the reorganization?
Ms. Weichert. It is--it is not the purpose of the
reorganization. It may be a byproduct in certain areas, but
it's actually a major priority to look at the workers we
already have who have passed background checks, who are
committed to the missions, and look at how we might redeploy
them to the areas we can't hire enough people.
Mr. Comer. Would you say that one of the goals of this
reorganization is to actually save money?
Ms. Weichert. Absolutely.
Mr. Comer. Shifting gears, I want to ask some questions
about the nutrition assistance programs, the welfare programs.
I'm a member of the Agriculture Committee. This has obviously
been a big topic of discussion as we squeaked a farm bill
through the House last week.
With respect to the consolidation of nutrition assistance
programs from the Department of Ag's Food and Nutrition Service
into the renamed Department of Health and Public Welfare, this
action would require congressional approval, correct?
Ms. Weichert. Absolutely.
Mr. Comer. What is the proposed timeline for stating the
purpose of obtaining statutory authority here?
Ms. Weichert. So this would be something we'd want to work
with Congress on determining. The rationale for this proposal
is really to make it easier for the States who actually
administer the cash or near cash aid, who typically administer
it out of one function, to make it more streamline so that more
of our money actually goes to the needy families and isn't
wasted on bureaucracy. I think the timeline and all the issues
need to be hashed out with the key players.
Mr. Comer. Okay. Could you explain the benefits to
taxpayers and those needing assistance from the government of
the consolidation of nutrition assistance programs with other
welfare programs?
Ms. Weichert. Sure thing. So conflicting and confusing
eligibility requirements actually make it difficult for people
who are in need of assistance to navigate what the requirements
are, and make it also difficult for the States who are
supporting that to help their constituents, their clients get
the need--need-based aid that they need. It also may--the
conflicting eligibility requirements may make it more
vulnerable to fraud and abuse of that system.
So the belief is that if we take a customer-centric
approach, both in terms of how we deliver the money to the
States as well as how the States interact with their clients,
the needy families, this should streamline it and make it
easier.
Mr. Comer. Great. Sounds good. Look forward to working with
the administration as we move forward with this reorganization.
Last question, this is a big question. When you're looking
at reorganizing the Postal Service, has privatization come up?
Is that the direction that you think you're going to propose to
head in? Or what's the status of privatization of the Postal
Service?
Ms. Weichert. So privatization is definitely a vision for
the longer term and a framework that could be looked at. I
think in all scenarios, both in the proposals that this body
has agreed to as well as the task force that the President has
pulled together, the near-term has to be about economic sort of
improvement in the Postal Service, because you couldn't
privatize an entity that has the level of liabilities and
economic challenge that the existing Postal Service does.
Mr. Comer. Great. Thank you very much.
And I yield back, Madam Chairman.
Ms. Weichert. Thank you.
Mr. Foxx. Ms. Norton, you're recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Norton. Yes. Ms. Weichert, looking at the proposals,
one appears to dismantle the OPM's government personnel office.
Now, that office was established by the Civil Service Reform
Act of 1978. Note the word ``civil service'' in that Act. But
the proposal appears to remove OPM's retirement, healthcare,
and H.R. Servicing functions to the Government Services
Administration, the GSA. It then renames the GSA the Government
Services Agency. That is correct?
Ms. Weichert. That is correct.
Ms. Norton. The policy function of OPM that ensures that we
have a merit-based, nonpartisan civil service system, as I
understand it from the plan, is going to be subsumed in the
Executive Office of the President?
Ms. Weichert. So it would move and be elevated to the
Executive Office of the President.
Ms. Norton. Why is that an elevation?
Ms. Weichert. So in most companies that have a human
centric and employee centric strategic human capital function,
having that function, having a chief human capital officer who
is close to the executive and close to where prioritization and
decisions are made is critical. And that the key element in
this proposal is, since that initial 1978 change and the
establishment of OPM with great merit system principles and
great civil service reform ideas, we have not delivered against
those merit system principles. By the data from the employees
themselves in the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, our civil
servants do not believe we are keeping up with merit. They
don't believe that promotions are based on merit. They don't
believe awards depend on merit. They don't believe that----
Ms. Norton. I certainly don't know what putting part of the
HR office in the executive office of the President would speak
to those concerns of employees. That's not the--that is not the
opinion of your own executive, Linda Springer, a former senior
adviser in your office who has helped launched the
administration's reorganization effort. And she's a former OPM
director in the Bush administration, has warned that this
change is, and here I'm quoting her, very troubling. She
believes that a central personnel office is necessary.
According to her, an independent central personnel office
is needed because--again, I think I should quote her--because
of the firewall between the agency and political personnel at
the White House as it relates to personnel practices,
particularly hiring and other actions, to be sure the oversight
for compliance for merit systems principles is handled
independently. And that comes from a--that comes from a
functionary senior adviser in your own office from the Bush
administration.
Ms. Weichert. So one of things that's a real challenge
about any reorganization is the people who have grown up within
an organization are rarely able to fundamentally change it. And
so it's important to look at data and facts. And one of the
things we did look at is across the OECD countries that are
relevant and similar to the United States, only one had an
organizational construct for people that was comparable to OPM,
and that was France, which is not known to be a bastion of
bureaucratic efficiency. Every other major comparable country
in the OECD had a function while they still had civil service
principals. And in some cases, they might have had something
like the Merit System Board that we have as separate. But in
each case, the--having it close to where decisions are made
about budget and policy priority helped ensure that mission,
service, and stewardship were aligned with the workforce
issues.
Ms. Norton. I yield back. But I have to note that you're
having it very close to where political decisions are made and
that firewall seems to disappear. Thank you.
Mr. Foxx. Thank you, Ms. Norton.
The chair notes the presence of our colleague Congressman
Bobby Scott of Virginia. We appreciate your interest in this
topic and welcome your participation today.
I ask unanimous consent Congressman Scott be allowed to
fully participate in today's hearing.
Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Russell, you're recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Russell. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Ms.
Weichert, for coming here today.
While I support the administration's dedication to
improving efficiency and streamlining government bureaucracy,
the proposal to spinoff Federal responsibility and
congressional oversight for operating our air traffic control
functions as written in the reform plan is inconsistent with
that goal by putting national security, safety, accessibility,
and efficiency of our national airspace in jeopardy.
The reform plan states that privatizing air traffic control
operations would reduce transportation fragmentation across
government. This fragmentation refers to the vital relationship
between the FAA and Department of Defense to protect the
national airspace in tandem by sharing airspace, training
systems, assets, equipment, and information. This is made
possible by their mutual status as Federal agencies within the
Federal Government.
By divorcing ATC functions from the government and thus
Department of Defense, each shared interest would be subjected
to a yet unknown established process of coordination, which
could leave our Nation vulnerable to cybersecurity and physical
attack. It would also create a potential multibillion dollar
unfunded liability for Department of Defense to update its own
systems in coordination with these new processes.
Instead of reducing fragmentation, air traffic control
privatization compromises the interoperability the Department
of Defense and other agencies such as the FBI, Homeland
Security, the DEA, and our intelligence services currently
enjoy. Instead of jointly developing the technologies of
spectrum vital to our national security, privatization of ATC
separates and complicates them. Furthermore, past proposals
have also diminished the powers of the President and reduced
his vital oversight, as well as Congress', to protect the
national security of our airspace against nefarious cyber
actors in times of national duress such as the 9/11 terrorist
attack. Instead of the President, the FAA, and the military
being able to rapidly make decisions, such as September 2001,
the emergency would first have to navigate its way through a
private board, something that is not only unrealistic, but
dangerous.
The proposal to streamline Department of Transportation by
privatizing ATC functions is intended to better enable our
aviation system to respond to consumer needs and modernized
services. And while we embrace modernization efforts to improve
cost efficiency, the lengthy process of privatizing would be
counterproductive to those ends, especially given that
modernization under NextGen is well on track. Instead, it would
result in industry uncertainty, significant cost to the Federal
Government, and a slower pace for NextGen implementation.
FAA administrator and NextGen chairman Ed Bolton warned
that such a transition could take 7 years and handle the
billions of dollars of taxpayer paid for infrastructure to a
private entity, while industry would be unable to update
technology and procedures. The aviation industry cannot afford
to lose time and resources in these indirect efforts. They
would much better be served in investing these years and
dollars directly into an already unfolding and modernizing
NextGen implementation.
While language in the reform plan advocates privatized ATC
systems such as those in Canada and other places, it is
important to note that there can be no comparison with the
88,000 flights a day in the United States to those of 9,000 in
Canada, most of which originate or terminate in the United
States, handled by our system, or even the 35,000 in Europe,
when combined with Canada, don't even equal half of U.S. air
traffic.
The U.S. airspace is not only the largest, busiest, and
most complex in the world; it is also the safest and most
accessible. This is in large part due to the public structure
of the system, including its accountability to this Congress
and the FAA and its mission to provide reliable air traffic
services to a wide range of users and communities across our
Nation. For these reasons, Congress has recently, historically,
and repeatedly rejected legislative efforts to privatize our
Nation's air traffic control systems.
Language for privatization in the 21st Century AIRR Act
held up FAA reauthorization for over a year in the House, and
it faced stiff bipartisan opposition in both the House and the
Senate. Any further attempt at ATC privatization would be
redundant and a waste of legislative efforts, and also reduces
the very powers of the President that the President is trying
to reform.
While we appreciate and support reorganization as an
opportunity for much needed government reform, we will continue
to oppose any attempt to those advocates and allies of this
system to privatize it in the United States. For this
fundamental reason, our national airspace belongs to we the
people and not a private company.
And, Madam Chairman, I yield back my time.
Mr. Foxx. Thank you Mr. Russell.
Mr. Lynch, you're recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And, Ms.
Weichert, thank you for appearing before this committee to help
us with our work.
I had a chance to read through the Trump administration
reorganization plan, and it says here at page 124, it says that
the overall goal of the reform is to enhance our global
presence and policy processes and to serve the goal of ensuring
the most efficient allocation of personnel consistent with the
best U.S. interest around the world.
Am I reading that correctly?
Ms. Weichert. I can't see what you're reading, but I'm
guessing it's right.
Mr. Lynch. Yeah, all right. Okay. I'll actually ask to
submit it for the record.
Mr. Foxx. Without objection.
Mr. Lynch. Okay.
You realize we don't have an ambassador in Albania. Would
that be consistent with an enhanced global presence?
Ms. Weichert. I was not aware of that.
Mr. Lynch. Okay. We don't have one in Australia either. We
don't have one in Azerbaijan. We--and I'm talking about we
don't have an ambassador and we don't have anybody nominated.
So here's the President out here trying to reorganize the
government, and we don't have anybody in, as I said, Albania,
Australia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belize, Bolivia, Central
African Republic, Ivory Coast, and Cuba. No ambassador, no one
nominated. So it's not like we're slowing the nominations down;
no nominations have been made. So, obviously, we can't confirm
someone because the President has not offered a nominee.
We don't--I was in--Mr. Issa and I were in Egypt about 10
days ago, a couple of weeks ago, I guess. We don't have an
ambassador in Egypt, an incredibly critical post in the Middle
East, an important ally at times with Israel. They've got an
insurgency on the ground in the Sinai. We've got troops there.
We've had them there since 1973, believe it or not.
And, you know, there are also some outlying human rights
issues that we raised with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi a
couple of weeks ago as well, but we have no ambassador, and
that's problematic.
We don't have an ambassador in Eritrea, Georgia, Honduras.
We've got major problems on our border involving many Honduran
refugees, and yet we don't have anybody on the ground in
Tegucigalpa that could articulate our policies. And again, no
nominees in any of these countries.
We don't have anybody in Iceland, Ireland, Jordan. Mr. Issa
and I visited with King Abdullah last week. Forty percent of
his population are refugees. He's trying to do the right thing
by Iraqi refugees, Syrian refugees. He's a great--we do not
have a better ally in the region, ourselves and Israel, than
Jordan. They are with us in the fight against ISIS. They are
doing their work. We have no one on the ground. We don't have
anybody representing this government as an ambassador to
Jordan. Hugely problematic.
Libya. Growing concerns about ISIS regenerating in that
country. We have no ambassador.
Mexico. You think we would have an ambassador to Mexico. We
do not. The President has not nominated anyone, and we've got
major problems on the Mexican border. I don't have to go over
that with you.
Mongolia. OECD, you mentioned OECD, we don't have a
designee to OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development. Hugely important.
Panama. No ambassador. No one nominated. Qatar. Another
huge problem in our Middle East policy. We don't have anybody
on the ground there. Saudi Arabia. You think we might have an
ambassador to Saudi Arabia? No one nominated, no one appointed.
Seat is empty. Singapore. Somalia, Al Shabaab is on the way
back. We have nobody on the ground in Somalia. South Africa,
Sudan, no one in Khartoum. Sweden, Syria, obvious problems.
Tajikistan, major problem for the folks--for our troops on the
ground in Afghanistan. There's a foreign fighter path.
Tanzania, Turkey. Again, I was there a couple of weeks ago.
Critical post in the region, straddles Europe and Asia. Huge
problems going on right now. No one on the ground there. In
Venezuela.
So this plan, rather than going out and trying to privatize
the post office, how about the President do his job? Nominate
people for these countries. Get us on the ground. The
President's proposal last year was to cut State Department by
30 percent, and this year, to cut them by 22 percent. We need
to do our job on the ground.
We--you know, we had a group of 50 generals that signed on
to a letter to express how important it is for the military to
have good diplomatic people on the ground so that we don't put
our men and women in uniform on the battlefield. We can avert
that by having good strong diplomacy on the part of the State
Department.
Mr. Foxx. Mr. Lynch, you time has expired.
Mr. Lynch. Madam Chair, you have been indulgent, and I
really appreciate that. And I do yield back my time and I thank
you.
Mr. Foxx. Thank you.
Mr. Mitchell, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Mitchell. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms.
Weichert for being here.
In contrast to what's happened a little bit here, I will
endeavor not to do a 5 minute and 30 second floor speech.
A couple of comments on my colleague about FAA and air
traffic control. I support what the administration is trying to
do, support it as we looked at the FAA bill. There's some
differences of opinion, clearly.
The Defense Department weighed in and said there weren't
concerns with the national airspace. In fact, Secretary Mattis
personally made phone calls to Members about that issue. So I'm
confused as to where some of my colleagues think somehow we're
going to give up our airspace to foreign entities.
There's discussion about NextGen being well under track.
Well, in fact, we spent billions of dollars, yet they can't
give us a date when NextGen will be put in place. We put
additional accountability measures in the bill of the FAA
reauthorization from the House to in fact insist we get a
better idea when that's going to happen, the cost of not doing
that. So I will support, if we don't get NextGen in place, we
don't update our air traffic control system which, in fact, is
archaic, we'll make another pass by and privatize the air
traffic control, whether all of my colleagues are happy with
that or not.
Let me shift, if I can. I spent 35 years in workforce
development and post-secondary ed. So your proposal on
combining education and workforce is intriguing to me. Give me
an example, I'm curious have you looked at it. As we looked at
workforce programs in the country, there's administrative costs
at the Federal level, both the national office and regional
office. There's administrative costs to the State, both the
agency administering it as well as their management and budget
unit, which also charged what was called indirect costs. Then
you had the local agency has an admin rate, and then the
service provider has administrative costs.
As you looked at this, did you estimate what the total
administrative cost currently being incurred by those programs
was?
Ms. Weichert. So thank you for the question. We definitely
looked at duplication and overlap, and where estimates had
already been done by others such as the Government
Accountability Office, we took those into consideration.
As I have said before, the goal of this proposal was not to
actually size the costs and benefits but put out a framework.
What I can say is the fragmentation in workforce development
was stunning. So 40 programs--and actually there is a lot of
debate about that. So I heard the number 40. I have heard the
number 46. I have heard the number 47. We can confirm 40 in
OMB, but we know the number might be higher.
Mr. Mitchell. Let me give you an estimate of that. I have
done it for a variety of programs. We operated a lot of those
programs. About 30 percent of the total money that we
authorized in Federal funds goes to administrative costs before
it delivers services to any individual that needs those
services, be it a laid off auto worker, whatever you want to
call it.
Ms. Weichert. Right.
Mr. Mitchell. Thirty percent of the money. I guess I agree
with what you are trying to do here in terms consolidating and
reduce the fragmentation, but the important thing to the
taxpayer and people that need services is actually put more
money of what we authorize the taxpayers pay directly
delivering services.
So what is your thoughts on the next step in terms of how
it is we do that and limit the administrative costs that chew
up so much of these budgets?
Ms. Weichert. So, I think it is a great point, and this is
obviously one that has generated a lot of interest. I think
what the chairwoman indicated in her remarks is really
important. Congress and the House, in particular, already
thinks about education and labor in an integrated way, and I
think this is a great place to start that dialogue and actually
frame out, you know, what would a timeline that would be
appropriate, what would the way to start forward, and to your
point, what are the metrics that we are really focused on.
I mentioned earlier, you know, what drove this was mission,
service, stewardship. In this context I'd want to have metrics
around the mission of training people, are we actually
effectively training people for the jobs that we have versus
jobs of the past.
Mr. Mitchell. Well, for example, I mean, some of these
programs, which, in fact, do duplicate. I have been involved
with them again. You can grant them as block grants to the
State and reduce a great deal of the Federal bureaucracy in
terms of allegedly delivering the programs.
They don't deliver a service. They theoretically make sure
that you are delivering it in a way they want to.
Ms. Weichert. Right.
Mr. Mitchell. We could block grant it to the State. We
could further limit administrative costs to the State and local
service providers. So I think the right direction you are going
is correct, but we need to be aggressive about that
administrative cost because it is a huge burden.
Ms. Weichert. Yeah, and I think it is a great point. And
from this point forward, we put out kind of the principles, but
the experts, the people who really live and breathe this can
help us frame, you know, the--both the desired metrics as well
as metrics that we would be worried about unintended
consequences, that we have to ensure as we are making change
happen, we don't inadvertently do some harm, and that would be
something, again, we would like to engage in dialogue on.
Mr. Mitchell. I appreciate your time, and I yield back.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Mitchell.
Mr. Cummings, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much. Ms. Weichert, first of
all, I want to thank you for meeting with me on yesterday. And
as I said to you then, one of my main--major concerns is that
this is not just an effort to do more harm to Federal
employees. I think they have given over and over again.
Whenever folk want to get extra money for something or they
need some, they go after Federal employees, and it concerns me
greatly.
I want to go and talk about this retraining, but before I
do that, I want to go to something that Mr. Lynch talked about.
You got all these vacancies in the ambassadorships and
people not even nominated. It seems like this is--there is some
homework we need to do before we even get to where you are. We
are not--we are not even functioning competently right now. You
follow what I am saying? Are you there?
Ms. Weichert. So the----
Mr. Cummings. You have this blank look on your face.
Ms. Weichert. Yeah. So I appreciate the comments, both of
Mr. Lynch and what you are saying about nominations.
Mr. Cummings. Yeah.
Ms. Weichert. None of the proposals that we looked at were
specifically dealing with that element, so all of the places we
looked at programs, we were looking at fundamentally structural
challenges to achieving mission, service, and stewardship.
Mr. Cummings. One thing we talked about yesterday was the
whole idea that in the next 10 years, I think you told me, a
large percentage of our Federal employees will be retirement
eligible. Is that right?
Ms. Weichert. Correct.
Mr. Cummings. What was that percentage?
Ms. Weichert. Sixty percent.
Mr. Cummings. That is a lot.
Ms. Weichert. That is a lot.
Mr. Cummings. You also said that we don't--you have got a
good group of people, the Federal employees, but sometimes you
need to kind of find a way to make sure their skills match up
with the jobs that are available.
Ms. Weichert. Correct.
Mr. Cummings. How do you plan to do that?
Ms. Weichert. So there are a number of proposals in here.
One of the key areas is really elevating the OPM function to
focus on the strategic elements of the mission.
So, today--and this is really the kernel of the proposal.
Today, most of the people in OPM are effectively doing
transaction processing related to HR paperwork. They are not
thinking about the strategic issues that you and I discussed.
They are not thinking about skill set mismatches between, you
know, the skills that were put in the GS schedule back in 1949
and what we need today.
We don't have the resources, given the way that
organization has to function, because it is dealing with all
this administrative overhead. So the first thing we want to do
is elevate the strategic functions of OPM to stay focused on
merit systems principles in the 21st century and how we
actually execute that.
There are a couple of other proposals in there that I think
are critical. There is one that probably has gotten almost no
attention, but it is something called, ``The Government
Effectiveness Advanced Research Center,'' something that we
would like to propose that would invite academics, public
sector, and private sector individuals to share ideas about
things like retraining and retooling.
And fundamental issues that affect Americans broadly around
as we automate more functions around paperwork processing, how
do we redeploy those same people, those valuable workers to the
highest and best use in government serving people, reducing
backlogs, and doing jobs like cybersecurity, data science, and
other things that add value.
Mr. Cummings. Now, you--the entire world has witnessed this
administration's inhumane treatment of children. So when you
testify about the Trump administration's plan that would remove
children's aid programs from their traditional department,
people are right to question the true motives. I think Ms.
Norton was referring to that.
President Trump's plan would move the supplemental
nutrition assistance program and the women's, infants, and
children program out of the Department of Agriculture where
they have been administered, helping millions of children and
low-income parents for decades.
The administration says that this disruption would benefit
the country, but I think we need to see more than empty
promises. Has the administration conducted a cost-benefit
analysis for this particular proposal?
Ms. Weichert. So as I indicated earlier, the proposals were
meant to look for ways that we could better serve the
communities that we are trying to help and that the
implementation phase would look at cost benefits.
Mr. Cummings. One last question. The postal service. This
is something that we, as I said earlier on this committee,
worked very hard on for years. We finally came up with a
proposal where all the stakeholders were in pretty much
agreement.
Have you taken a look at that? I mean, because it seems
that it solves a lot of the problems, and now we hear that you
want to privatize the postal system. So, I mean----
Ms. Weichert. So we are definitely aware and appreciative
of the work that this committee has done. And as you and I
discussed yesterday, having a bipartisan perspective is
welcome, and it is something that the team that is working on
this issue is definitely taking into account.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Walker, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Ms. Weichert, under
the proposed reorganization plan, the administration has
decided to combine the Department of Education and Labor. I
think many of us commend that effort.
Are there any other agencies that the administration looked
at combining or even completely eliminating?
Ms. Weichert. So the analysis--and I would encourage--this
is a shameless plug, but I would encourage folks to look at not
just the proposals themselves but also the framing of them. It
shows how we actually looked at the mission, service, and
stewardship.
So we focused on areas where there were challenges in,
first and foremost, delivering the mission that the people
expect of us. I think another proposal that I would mention--so
the Army Corps civil works component was another area where the
civilian work of the Army Corps, which is about 22 percent of
the total work that that group does, is very complex, very
bureaucratic, and has a lot of problems with mission delivery,
which is why we proposed reducing the number of agencies
involved in some of those projects from three to two. It
wouldn't eliminate Army Corps for Defense proposes, but it
would get it out of the business of civil works.
Mr. Walker. Sure. Okay. Under the reorganization plan, I
believe also the administration has suggested the postal
service, which was just discussed, could be at least partially
or maybe even fully privatized. Can we unpack that a little bit
more. When it comes to the administration, how they reached the
conclusion that the postal service needs to be at least
drastically restructured?
Ms. Weichert. So I think the simple facts--you know, if we
look at what we want the postal service to do, it has got three
main roles: universal service for Americans that was outlined a
very long time ago in the Constitution; we want to take care of
the postal service employees; and we want to ensure that it is
economically solvent.
In the last two categories, economic issues and really, you
know, change in the economic model for the postal service, and
particularly the drop in first class mail has fundamentally
affected our ability to meet our liabilities for employee
benefits as well as to be economically viable as an independent
agency.
Mr. Walker. Sure. Do you see a moment or a time where the
historical average would be followed when it comes to the price
of First Class mail? Is that part of your discussion?
Ms. Weichert. So I have not been in the details of this
particular proposal, and as I said earlier, we invite the
experts who are deeply steeped in these issues to be involved.
But what I can say is, you know, the driving force behind, I
think, all of these activities, the work done in this body, the
work of the task force, and then the proposal for the long-term
potential privatization all have in mind the fact that the
current economic situation--and you know, $100 billion in
unfunded liability, 6 years of default, that is unsustainable,
and we still have an obligation to serve, you know, the core--
the core ethos of that.
Mr. Walker. Well, thank you. I don't--Ms. Weichert, I don't
consider that a shameless plug on your behalf. I think it was
Yogi Bear that said: It ain't bragging if you have really done
it.
So keep up the good work. With that, I yield back, Madam
Chairman.
Ms. Weichert. Thank you.
Mr. Connolly. Would my friend yield before he yields back?
Mr. Walker. In theory, yes.
Mr. Connolly. I was just going to suggest to my friend that
one of the things Ms. Weichert did not talk about in response
to your question about the postal service was, of course, the
onerous prepayment requirement that Congress put on the postal
service in 2006 in lame duck, which has cost the postal service
billions of dollars, and that needs to be addressed. This
committee, as you know, Mr. Walker, has addressed that
unanimously.
Mr. Walker. Yes.
Mr. Connolly. I would love to see the administration at
least acknowledge that that is a major problem.
Thank you for yielding.
Mr. Walker. Of course. And since I have a couple of seconds
of my time left, Ms. Weichert, would you like to touch on that
at all before I officially yield back?
Ms. Weichert. Unfortunately, I don't have the context to
have an informed response.
Mr. Walker. Fair enough. Yes. I don't want to put you on
the spot without more information. Thank you, and with that,
Chairwoman.
Ms. Foxx. The gentleman yields back.
Ms. Lawrence, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you. Ms. Weichert, can you tell me--
other agencies had the opportunity to submit reorganization
plans with their own prospectives. Did you offer this
opportunity to the Postal Service?
Ms. Weichert. I don't know the answer to that question.
Mrs. Lawrence. Do you have, in your possession, a
reorganization plan from the Postal Service?
Ms. Weichert. I do not.
Mrs. Lawrence. Do you know why not?
Ms. Weichert. I do not.
Mrs. Lawrence. Did OMB consult the Postal Service at any
point in the process of creating such a plan, or did your task
force at any time even ask for it?
Again, you don't know.
Ms. Weichert. I don't know.
Mrs. Lawrence. So how did you come up with this
recommendation or plan on privatizing the Postal Service,
keeping in mind that the Postal Service does not fund itself
with taxpayer's dollars. It funds itself based on the sale of
their products. In addition to that, it operates under a
directive of the Constitution.
So how did you come up with a plan to privatize it when you
have not engaged the organization? And could I add to that,
when you are talking about reorganization, I am looking at the
members of the task force who are political appointees. Have
you had a forensic audit of tasks and desk audits of these
departments so that when you--this is a very severe
recommendation. It is very high level. To say I am going to
privatize it and then actually put it on the selling block for
the highest bidder is what I am reading into this proposal, and
you have not even engaged the organization, but you have
political appointees who have sat at a table, and, to me, I
will be honest, looks like a political just throw it up against
the wall, we should privatize it when you haven't, to me,
addressed the constitutional responsibility as saying that
there is economic challenges when the Postal Service pays its
own bills because they do not use taxpayer dollars.
So you are putting apples and oranges together, and I am
very, very concerned that a recommendation of privatization,
not reorganization, but privatization is something that this
task force to--and I am not seeing the expertise or the due
diligence to even get to that point. I am extremely concerned.
You are saying all the right words. I am very impressed
with your presentation. You obviously understand a lot, but
right here in this lane, you are lacking a lot that for me to
have you to sit here and say privatize, to sell it off when
this body has been working for years to come up with a
bipartisan plan--bipartisan--because we are trying to service
the country based on our constitutional requirement. I need you
to say something other than ``I don't know.''
Ms. Weichert. So I appreciate the passion and the
commitment to the topic. On this particular proposal, it very
much was looking at the long term with the understanding that
there were a number of players looking at the near term issues.
And, again, every proposal that made it in here was looking at
a combination of are we achieving the mission, the service, and
the stewardship responsibilities. And the notion of an
independent organization that is meant to be self-funded but
that has $100 billion in unfunded liabilities----
Mrs. Lawrence. And part of that is because of what we did.
We put legislation together to address that, because we are on
all this body, who has the constitutional responsibility as
well, based on our oath, we have pushed that forward.
How in the world did you get from saying we want to be
economically feasible to selling it to the highest bidder and
to privatize it? I just don't understand that leap, unless it
is purely political.
Ms. Weichert. I wouldn't say it is purely political. What I
would say--and again, in the front of the volume, we looked at
what are those things that are fundamental to the mission,
service, stewardship component.
Mrs. Lawrence. So why wasn't reorganization even put on the
table?
Ms. Weichert. So the external analysis and looking at other
proposals, including how other countries have looked at this,
definitely fed into that, but what I would say is----
Mrs. Lawrence. But I just want to interrupt you. You looked
at other countries, but you did not talk to the organization
that you are talking about privatizing. Something seems wrong
with that, that you would sit in a room and look at other
international post companies, organizations, and make a
recommendation of privatizing and sell it without even doing
your due diligence for what we do in America and looking at the
forensic operations, to look at where are the cost
deficiencies.
I am very concerned that this is not appropriate. My time
is up, so I am going to close with this. This body, who has the
legislative responsibility based on the people who voted us
here, I would hope every single one of us will stand up and
have the political courage to say we must meet those economic
responsibilities.
Ms. Foxx. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Mrs. Lawrence. And we will continue to do that----
Ms. Foxx. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Mrs. Lawrence. --but this is not professional and it looks
political and unacceptable.
I yield back.
Ms. Foxx. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Mrs. Lawrence. I yield back.
Ms. Foxx. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Mr. Grothman, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Grothman. Thank you for being here, and I will point
out, the post office is in the Constitution. I think it is
important for everybody to realize what is in the Constitution
and also important for everybody to realize what is not in the
Constitution and the Federal Government is forbidden to do. And
it is important to bring that up as well.
Thank you for the proposals. I mean, I think it is a good
thing to try to look at what we can do to make the government
more efficient, and I think when too many different agencies
have things, you know, one hand not know what the other is
doing, you result in spending too much money and having
perverse effects.
One of the things you want to do is you want to combine the
nutrition assistance programs with other welfare programs.
Could you explain the benefits of that?
Ms. Weichert. So I think that the primary issue actually
looks at the delivery and the service component.
Mr. Grothman. Right.
Ms. Weichert. So States administer both the temporary
assistance for needy families, as well as the SNAP and the WIC
programs essentially to largely the same group of people, and
they tend to have one organization that does that
administration, but when they deal with the Federal Government,
they have to deal with confusing, overlapping, sometimes
conflicting requirements that add to their overhead and
basically reduce the amount of money of the whole pool that
actually goes to the needy families.
Mr. Grothman. It is good. You know, one of the things that
I am interested in and one of the reasons I ran for this job is
you add up the public benefits, all the different things:
income tax credit, the SNAP, the low-income housing, the TANF,
you wind up with really big numbers that discourage people from
working and discourage people from getting married as well.
Do you think that by trying to put everything under one
roof we do a better job of seeing, quite frankly, how much is
available out there if you don't try to work as hard as you
can?
Ms. Weichert. So I think that the key thing from this
proposal was really in taking a great view of some of the best
in serving communities that are at risk. When you look at how
charities are judged and measured, they are measured by how
much of the actual benefit goes directly to the cause, and
then, you know, the charities that have the best performance
have the least amount of overhead. That is really where I think
we should be judged.
Mr. Grothman. You feel we are spending a lot of money on
poverty and a lot of that money is going to government
employees who are administering the programs?
Ms. Weichert. I absolutely think that we have excessive
administrative overhead that would be better served actually
bringing that money to the people that are targeted for it.
Mr. Grothman. I will give you a question, and you can think
about this. It is a conversation I once had with a person high
up in the administration. It was not the President.
Do you feel we would be better off just taking a block
amount of money and giving it to the States and saying: Here,
you deal with the low-income housing, you deal with the
nutrition, you deal with the educational requirements, and we
are out of here all together, because when you look at the
overall amount of money spent per person in poverty, it is just
shockingly high.
The average person would be happy to live off that, and of
course, a lot of that is not trickling down to the people if
poverty. It is going to the bureaucracy. But could you see the
day come when the administration would just say: Here is X
amount of dollars per person in poverty in your State today.
You deal with it?
Ms. Weichert. So I haven't done the full analysis to be
able to get to that conclusion. What I would say is that would
be part of the dialogue that I think we should have. Certainly
there are governors and State and local authorities who would
welcome that. And I think, you know, as many Members of this
body have indicated, when we get to the implementation phase,
we have to look at the costs and benefits, but I think it is
certainly something we would want to look at.
Mr. Grothman. I would encourage you to do that. I came here
with all sorts of ideas how to run these programs, but over
time, I realize that Congress is incapable of doing what they
should do in these programs, and maybe if you just said: We
will give the State of Wisconsin $20,000 a year for every
person in poverty, we would be ahead of the game and just clear
the decks here in Washington.
With regard to the merger of Education and Labor, is there
a reason why we didn't include something in there a little bit
more like commerce to kind of change the mentality and realize
that our goal here is to help commerce and not get in its way?
Is that something you would ever think about adding to the mix?
Ms. Weichert. I am sorry. I didn't understand the question.
Mr. Grothman. Would you ever consider adding commerce or
economic development, that type of thing, in the mix maybe to
try to change the mentality in the departments of education and
labor?
Ms. Weichert. So I think it is a great question. What we
wanted to do was get as clear as we could about core mission
elements, and so I think the place we saw the greatest overlap
had to do with workforce development and the alignment of how
we actually prepare people for the work force, so it didn't go
as far as the actual commerce mission, but I think it is an
interesting thought.
Mr. Grothman. Thank you for coming over. It is a tough--we
are a tough crowd.
Ms. Foxx. The gentleman's time has expired.
Ms. Kelly, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome. The President's
reorganization proposal includes a radical plan to merge the
Department of Education with the Department of Labor, but it
only devotes four pages to this proposal. Such a merger
obviously would require Congress to agree. But Senate
appropriations chairman, Roy Blunt told reporters there are not
sufficient votes for this merger, so it is not going to happen.
But I wanted to ask about reorganization that is happening
inside the Department of Education. The office of civil rights
within the Department is charged with protecting the rights of
disabled students, people of color, LGBTQ students, and others
who face discrimination.
Has the Department considered downsizing or consolidating
the regional offices of the office of civil rights?
Ms. Weichert. I am not aware of anything that would affect
the office of civil rights at all.
Ms. Kelly. Your proposal says you would move the office of
civil rights. I am asking if you or the Department have
considered consolidating its regional offices or shrinking its
footprint?
Ms. Weichert. So what I can say--so I am not familiar with
all of the details of the internal deliberations that the
Department of Education has done, but as part of this proposal,
very explicitly, a number of the programs, including anything
impacting the office of civil rights, was not discussed.
Ms. Kelly. So you don't know if there was an analysis on
the caseload of investigations this office would be able to
maintain after you cut the number of regional offices?
Ms. Weichert. I don't know, no.
Ms. Kelly. I would also like to ask you about another
important office in the Department of Education, which is the
budget service office. That is the office that communicates
with Congress and performs fiscal evaluations on current and
future programs. It is an important office, and Congress relies
on it.
Are there any plans that would change the place and
prominence of that office at the Department of Education? And
if so, what are the details?
Ms. Weichert. I am not aware of that. It was not included
in this proposal.
Ms. Kelly. So you don't think anything will change?
Ms. Weichert. I don't know in terms of internal
organizational structure.
Ms. Kelly. I would like to ask you about the Federal
student aid office now. The Federal student aid office, which
is responsible, as I am sure you know, for administering
millions of taxpayer dollars in loans to student borrowers. The
President's plan says that the Federal student aid office will
be merged with American workforce and higher education
administration office, along with eight other offices from the
Department of Ed and Labor, leaving it further removed from any
accountability to borrowers or taxpayers, but that big merger
is not likely to happen soon.
Why did you propose moving the Federal student aid office
in this way?
Ms. Weichert. So the proposal that is in the volume was
hoping to get Federal student aid aligned to a full workforce
development view of student aid that would encompass not only
higher traditional 4-year educational opportunities but also
vocational opportunities, make that easier. The proposal
envisions it is still operating as a whole entity and not being
further merged but that the management shift would help align
that broader mission of ensuring that we have student aid
available for a range of educational opportunities, not just 4-
year universities and things of that nature.
Ms. Kelly. So you are looking at not only 4-year but 2-year
or----
Ms. Weichert. Two-year vocational technical type programs,
as well as potentially a greater understanding of the role of
apprenticeships and other type on-the-job training.
Ms. Kelly. Any graduate? Are graduate programs included in
that?
Ms. Weichert. So, again, the goal would be to align all of
the Federal student aid ideas to really the end-to-end
perspective route, workforce development.
Ms. Kelly. And as you--as this plan may come about, does it
increase the accountability to taxpayers and borrowers as the
GAO and Inspector General have repeatedly recommended?
Ms. Weichert. So this tool is not, I think, the optimal
tool for that. I think there are a number of things in the
President's management agenda looking at our IT modernization
and data accountability and transparency where we absolutely
welcome the opportunity to get more transparent around elements
of the data so that we can be more accountable but do that in a
way that is efficient, effective, and not burdensome.
Ms. Kelly. Okay. Well, I think I yield back the balance of
my time. Thank you.
Mr. Cummings. Does the gentlelady yield?
Ms. Kelly. Yes, I will.
Mr. Cummings. Madam Chairwoman, I ask unanimous content so
have the statements from the American Federation of Government
Employees, the National Treasury Employees Union, and the
National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association
entered into the record.
Ms. Foxx. Without objection.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you.
Ms. Foxx. Mr. Hice, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Hice. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for being here. Can you explain the proposal to
move alcohol and tobacco responsibilities out of the ATF?
Ms. Weichert. I am not familiar with the details of that
proposal, but I would be happy to get back to you for the
record.
Mr. Hice. Okay. Do you know anything about that, the whole
issue of where the firearms and explosive bureau would go and
why?
Ms. Weichert. I do not.
Mr. Hice. Okay. I think it is--before I move on to some
other questions, I think it is something that we have got to
consider. It appears to me that we have got to look at who
would regulate firearms if it goes back under the Department of
Justice or remains under the Department of Justice and
potentially FBI.
Certainly the FBI is, in my opinion, not the proper place
to regulate firearms, are not equipped to regulate industry and
that type of thing, and it is concerning to me where ultimately
that would go.
Let me ask a little bit about the Department of Labor.
Specifically, as it relates to OSHA, has that issue come up at
all?
Ms. Weichert. So there are no plans to change any of the
specific activities of OSHA under this plan.
Mr. Hice. Okay. Well, there are about half of our States
that have a State run type OSHA program that, frankly, works
better because it is closer to home. They know the industries.
They know the issues that are facing their States better than
the Federal Government.
Is there a possibility or would the administration in any
way consider encouraging States to develop their own OSHA type
program rather than it coming straight from the Federal
Government?
Ms. Weichert. So I think it is a great idea, and I think it
brings up a great point. We wanted this proposal to be the
beginning of a dialogue that would be iterative and ongoing.
That is how modern, flexible organizations adapt and ensure
that they are aligned in the mission.
I think there are many principles in here that really are
asking questions about what should the Federal Government be
doing and what are States and local governments better
positioned to do. So we would welcome dialogue that is fact
based and, you know, asking the right questions.
Mr. Hice. So how would that dialogue best take place?
Ms. Weichert. So we have already started some preliminary
conversations with governors, and we have our intergovernmental
affairs organization in the EOP, but we would welcome
congressional involvement in essentially curating a
conversation on those topics.
Mr. Hice. Okay. Well, I would look forward to being part of
that, that communication and that discussion.
And Madam Chair, with that, I will yield back.
Ms. Foxx. Thanks for yielding back.
Mr. Clay, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Ms.
Weichert, for being here.
You know, President Trump's reformed plan appears to be
premised on the belief that reform requires structural
reorganization, the merging or moving around of agencies and
their employees, and I question whether that is truly necessary
or whether reform can be accomplished without eliminating,
merging, or moving agencies around.
Let's take, for example, President Trump's proposal to
merge the Departments of Education and Labor into a single
agency to be called, and I quote, ``The Department of Education
and Workforce.''
The new name is very similar to the jurisdiction of the
House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Ms. Weichert,
was this similarly a factor that was considered in the
President's plan?
Ms. Weichert. Absolutely, and the fact that most OECD
countries and countries like China actually organize in this
way.
Mr. Clay. Now you mentioned workforce development in your
other colloquy. You know, that is one of the important missions
of the U.S. Department of Labor. They retrain workers, they
help stand up workers, they even job corps. It is all geared
towards workforce development. How do you envision that once
these two agencies are merged? Is it still going to be as
robust?
Ms. Weichert. I think it will be more robust. So one of the
things--and getting to your first point of, is reorganization
necessary to make change happen.
Mr. Clay. Yeah.
Ms. Weichert. I think it is a pivotal question and one that
we thought deeply about. Organizational change is one tool
among many, and so many of the proposals actually focused on
places where change has been needed for some time, as
highlighted by Government Accountability GAO studies and other
concerns, and change hasn't happened, organization can be a
tool that actually gets resources together, aligns priorities.
As it relates specifically to the workforce, what we saw
when we looked at, you know, whether it is 40 programs or 46 or
47 workforce development programs, we saw a real mix in terms
of quality and outcomes orientation. We saw a real mix in terms
of evidence, evidence-based decisionmaking. What we are hopeful
to do is that we can steward the resources associated with
these various programs and focus them on the things that are
driving the reskilling, driving the workforce development in
ways that actually help the American worker that are easier for
businesses to actually deal with as well, and ultimately get
more Americans in the right jobs for the 21st century.
Mr. Clay. You know--and thanks for that response, but some
of my colleagues are quite skeptical of the President's plan
and question the underlying motive or purpose. For example,
Ranking Member Scott of Virginia called the plan, and I quote,
``hastily concocted proposal that uses the false promise of
streamlining to cut investments in our future.''
Ms. Weichert, how do you respond to critics of the plan
like Mr. Scott?
Ms. Weichert. So, first thing, to anyone who wants to
accuse us of being hastily--these plans are being hastily
concocted, I would encourage them to read the whole volume and
not just the thumbnail proposals in the back, including the
bibliography and including the President's management agenda
that really provides the context for the whole thing.
I understand in Washington, you know, in a hyper political
environment, questioning people's motives, but what I would
like to ask people to do is judge us by our actions and judge
us by results.
Mr. Clay. But, look, there is one member of even the
President's party who was quoted in the New York Times as
saying that, one, that the proposal to move the $3 billion CDBG
program from the Department of HUD to Commerce is just a first
step to eliminating the program. He says the move to the
Commerce Department was an attempt to strangle the program by
removing it from HUD--career HUD official. How do you respond
to that?
Ms. Weichert. So, again, I can't--I can't have a
conversation about motives. What I can say is that the
proposals that we have, we believe have a fact base and merit,
and we have attempted to showcase that in the report and in the
bibliography. What I would say is reasonable people with
expertise and passion may disagree, and it may be because they
are informed by facts that we don't have.
I would invite folks to actually, you know, meet us in the
realm of public debate, bring the facts, bring the alternative
proposals, and that is probably the most important thing I
would say is we have attempted to create a holistic path
forward. Is it perfect? Of course it isn't. Does it have
elements of challenge and difficulty? Absolutely.
But what we attempted to do was actually put together a
plan that was a holistic vision, and to the extent people
disagree with that, I absolutely welcome that debate, and I
think folks who have spent time with me and spent time with our
team realize we are genuine in having that debate.
Mr. Clay. And my time is expired. Madam Chairwoman thank
you.
Ms. Foxx. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Palmer, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Good to see you, Ms.
Weichert. I think the majority of members on both sides out of
this committee understand the need to make some reforms in the
Federal Government. We have had hearings on everything from
mismanagement at the Veterans' Affairs, Social Security,
cybersecurity, improper payments, and I can go on down the
list. I mean, we are acutely aware that there are needs for
reform.
You said something in your testimony that the Federal
Government operates much like it did 50 years ago. I have been
acutely focused on how do we reduce improper payments, and it
is a huge problem. It was $140 billion last year. Do you see
the reforms as having a very positive impact on reducing
improper payments?
Ms. Weichert. I think, to the extent that we can get
management oversight of like programs like money, it is going
to improve general management efficiency. It is not the only
way.
Mr. Palmer. Also, the data systems, we can----
Ms. Weichert. Absolutely.
Mr. Palmer. The savings that you can generate from some of
these reforms and reducing improper payments can go back in to
replacing data systems.
Ms. Weichert. Absolutely.
Mr. Palmer. Which should really improve that area. You also
mentioned the GAO's high risk list and that not every Federal
agency has taken action to get.
We know that from hearings here that not every agency has
taken action. Will this effort to improve accountability from
the Federal agencies, will this effort improve that?
Ms. Weichert. That is absolutely one of the objectives.
Mr. Palmer. Will it help increase our oversight and our
effectiveness?
Ms. Weichert. That is absolutely the goal.
Mr. Palmer. I also want to get into an area that I think is
of great importance, and that is the whole issue of
infrastructure and the permitting process, and you mentioned in
your testimony the need to reduce the permitting time.
Madam Chairman, I would like to introduce a couple of
reports into the record.
Ms. Foxx. Without objection.
Mr. Palmer. One is 2 years, not 10 years redesigning
infrastructure approvals. It is from an organization called,
``Common Good.'' And they make this point that a 6-year delay
in starting construction on public projects costs the Nation
over $3.7 trillion. That is more than double the $1.7 trillion
that is needed to upgrade America's infrastructure through the
next decade, and that is everything--that is rail service,
water infrastructure, roads and bridges, inland waterways,
power generation, power transmission.
I really think that what you are trying to do and what this
administration is trying to do in regard to infrastructure is
critical. And to give you a more local example of that, I would
also like to introduce this report into the record: Assessing
the Costs Attributed to project Delays in Texas.
Ms. Foxx. Without objection.
Mr. Palmer. There was a rural road, a four-lane project,
2.7 miles, it was delayed 33-1/2 months and the delay was
$96,000 a month. That added $3.5 million to just a 2.7-mile
rural road project in U.S. Highway 59 in Texas, 2.6 miles they
were going to widen that stretch of road. A 5-year delay at
$297,000 a month, that added $17.8 million to the project. And
then I-10 and I-410 in the San Antonio area, adding an
interchange, is 1.5 miles that was affected, it was delayed 11
months at 447 a month. That added $5.1 million.
We are literally throwing our infrastructure dollars down
the drain with these delays, and if you would like to comment
on that, I think the committee would be very interested in
hearing your thoughts on how we are going to make these changes
that will reduce the permitting delays.
Ms. Weichert. I absolutely appreciate that, and reducing
burden and actually increasing the economic output are
definitely, you know, important missions that we have out of
this plan.
I think the Army Corps' proposal for the civilian work is a
great example of just what you are talking about--very good
intentions to preserve various people's rights around our
waterways, to protect fish, lead to very complex, and you know,
hard to navigate conflicting regulatory burden that make it
very difficult to do improvement projects of any type, and I
think that is an example of exactly what you are saying.
Mr. Palmer. Well, one other point here. We have had
hearings on cybersecurity breaches, particularly at the Office
of Personnel Management, and one of the problems that we have
is hiring highly qualified people. We have a program at the
University of Alabama at Birmingham called the joint forensics
research--I mean, ``The Center for Information Assurance and
Joint Forensics Research,'' one of the top guys in the world
running this.
His students have a job before they graduate, but if they
try to get a job with the Federal Government, it is months
before they can even hear back from them. And I just wonder if
part of this restructuring is going to enable us to hire the
very best that is out there to work in the Federal Government
on cybersecurity.
If the chairman may--she may answer?
Ms. Weichert. Thank you. So absolutely, and that is one of
the key areas of why we wanted to elevate the OPM function
because getting to the bottom of that challenge requires
strategic emphasis and a real commitment at the top of the
house.
Mr. Palmer. So the bottom line is we have got to change.
Ms. Weichert. Absolutely.
Mr. Palmer. I thank the chairwoman for her indulgence, and
I yield back.
Ms. Foxx. The gentleman's time has expired.
Ms. Plaskett, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Good afternoon.
Ms. Weichert, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about
the implementation if this plan takes place.
The executive order advised for looking for opportunities
for the private sector to take over some of these government
functions. We have heard discussion about post office and air
traffic control. What other agencies or areas do you think that
privatization might be appropriate?
Ms. Weichert. So the other place that I think has gotten a
lot of attention, not just now but practically in every
administration in recent history, is around the Tennessee
Valley Authority. Our proposal is a fairly narrow proposal
around transmission assets, looking at, you know, whether the
Federal Government really needs to be in the business of
providing the transmission of power.
Ms. Plaskett. Okay. And in discussing the privatization or
even the merging of these businesses, how much input was given
to those career individuals, civil servants? Was discussion had
with them about how this implementation might affect the civil
service?
Ms. Weichert. So the agencies were absolutely involved in
providing bottoms-up feedback as part of a process that took
place between June and December of last year. Some of the
proposals that resulted out of that were included in the
February release of the 2019----
Ms. Plaskett. When you say bottom-ups, what specifically?
Ms. Weichert. So as I mentioned in my opening statement, we
did the analysis in three phases. We did a data collection
phase that included bottoms-up input from agencies and from
public comment. We got 106,000 public comments.
Ms. Plaskett. When you say ``from agencies,'' do you mean
the employees or the management of the agency?
Ms. Weichert. Presumably, both.
Ms. Plaskett. How do you know presumably?
Ms. Weichert. So in almost every case, the proposals
required a depth of knowledge that require that the civil
servant population had to participate in the----
Ms. Plaskett. So in the outside--the comments, you said
that you also received public comments.
Ms. Weichert. Correct.
Ms. Plaskett. Did you receive public submissions or
submissions from employee unions?
Ms. Weichert. I can't say for sure whether those were
included in the public comments.
Ms. Plaskett. Did you seek out the unions' input in these
discussions.
Ms. Weichert. So we--the requests for comment was generally
made public after the executive order so----
Ms. Plaskett. But did you engage the unions as a whole?
Specifically, did you engage the unions?
Ms. Weichert. Specifically, no. As I indicated earlier, one
of the reasons we did the deliberation the way we did is, in
the recent past, no reform effort--despite the fact that there
have been reform efforts and reorganization efforts proposed in
every administration, no reform effort has successfully moved
forward with the exception of one that took place after 9/11,
precisely because entrenched interests essentially negotiated a
way around----
Ms. Plaskett. I didn't ask you if you were negotiating. I
just asked you if you requested from them their comments or
their positions?
Ms. Weichert. We requested public comment.
Ms. Plaskett. But not specifically from unions.
Ms. Weichert. Not specifically from anyone individually.
Ms. Plaskett. Now that, you know, you are talking about a
negotiation, which would be the implementation of the process.
Ms. Weichert. Correct.
Ms. Plaskett. Would you be engaging--and I would assume,
how would you engage the unions because they would need to be
engaged in the implementation, which then becomes this
discussion that you were talking about just a moment ago.
Ms. Weichert. Yeah, absolutely, and this is something that,
you know, we released the plan last week. We are--you know,
this is the first truly public conversation we are having, but
we anticipate having many public conversations. And what I
would say is there are great examples in the not too distant
past of where unions and management of a variety of ilks have
gotten together and looked at, you know, how do we achieve the
mission of our business, serve the customers----
Ms. Plaskett. So I am assuming then that you are going to
engage those. Is that what you are saying?
Ms. Weichert. Absolutely. Yes.
Ms. Plaskett. So when you talk about influencing the plan,
you said that, you know, you discussed bottoms up, you also
asked for public comment. You did not necessarily speak
specifically to the unions about this. Were there other outside
groups that you spoke with? Were there think tanks or others
that supported your ideas?
Ms. Weichert. We didn't speak to anyone. As I mentioned
again, there were three phases to our----
Ms. Plaskett. I heard the three phases. I am just asking
did you speak to them?
Ms. Weichert. The second phase involved looking at things
in the public realm, including GAO reports. We looked--our
bibliography on page 128 of the report articulates all of the
knowledge----
Ms. Plaskett. So did you engage the Heritage Foundation who
has specific reports about this?
Ms. Weichert. There is a Heritage Foundation report that
was reviewed as part of this.
Ms. Plaskett. And what would be the name of that report?
Ms. Weichert. It is on----
Ms. Plaskett. If you could get that back to me, I would
appreciate that.
Ms. Weichert. Absolutely.
Ms. Plaskett. Ms. Chairwoman, I would ask to insert into
the record an article from the New York Times entitled: ``How
One Conservative Think Tank is Stocking Trump's Government. By
placing its people throughout the administration, the Heritage
Foundation has succeeded in furthering its right-wing agenda.''
Ms. Foxx. Without objection, and the gentlewoman's time has
expired.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you.
I will recognize myself for 5 minutes.
As the chairwoman of the Education and Workforce Committee,
I take our oversight responsibilities very seriously with
respect to the worker protection agencies within the Department
of Labor, evidenced by the many hearings and other oversight
actions we have conducted during this Congress.
Under the Trump administration's reorganization proposal,
Labor Department worker protection agencies, such as the
occupational safety and health administration and the wage and
hour division would be housed within the, quote,
``enforcement,'' end quote, agency at the newly created
Department of Education and the Workforce.
Would this enforcement agency continue the administration's
approach of providing needed compliance assistance while also
effectively enforcing the laws, and do you foresee any impacts
on the enforcement of worker protection laws because of the
proposed realignment?
Ms. Weichert. So the answer is: There are no changes in
direction in terms of compliance and enforcement support, and
the goal would be to continue to provide that support at the
highest level.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you. You said the proposal was built around
mission and purpose, and this proposal seems to focus better
the work of the agencies when it comes to helping students, job
seekers, and employers.
By having a seamless approach to programs for students
pursuing postsecondary and continuing education from one office
in bringing the programs focused on elementary and secondary
schools into another, do you expect it will be easier for
students, families, school officials, and employers to find the
resources and guidance they need to improve and/or provide a
better educational opportunity for students?
Ms. Weichert. That is absolutely the objective.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you. What safeguards would be in place to
ensure students will not lose valuable protections, especially
for students from vulnerable groups in the restructuring of
these offices?
Ms. Weichert. So it is a great point, and disability
employment, OSHA, mine safety, office of civil rights, none of
those are expected to change at all under this proposal.
Ms. Foxx. And we appreciate that, and I assume you will
want to work with the Congress and the relevant stakeholders to
maintain those protections. I think it is important for the
administration----
Ms. Weichert. Absolutely.
Ms. Foxx. --to assert that.
Ms. Weichert. Yes, we absolutely assert that we believe
that the oversight responsibilities of Congress are paramount.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you. To what extent did OMB ensure that GAO
and Inspector General reports and recommendations were fully
considered in developing the crosscutting proposals?
Ms. Weichert. So they were very important in considering
the crosscutting proposals. As I mentioned earlier,
reorganization is one tool among many, and we wanted to look at
those things where there were known problems and intractable
problems that did not seem to get traction without a
reorganization purpose, and so much of the thinking really was,
you know, where are there places where time and time again has
GAO said this is a problem.
Ms. Foxx. You have indicated several times that this is
right in the beginning stages.
Ms. Weichert. Correct.
Ms. Foxx. But has the--how does the administration propose
Congress address authorizing the government reform plan
proposals which require congressional action if you have such
plan already?
Ms. Weichert. So what we are planning to do this summer--so
we were genuine about saying this is a framework and a plan but
that we need to engage with key constituencies, especially
Congress but also other stakeholder groups, including unions
and civil servant--service representatives. And so, over the
course of the summer, we will be working with agencies. I am
very happy to take feedback and input on highlighting what is a
proposed implementation construct and what would require
legislative input, what could be proceeded with
administratively, and then what would be expected to be in the
2020 budget.
Ms. Foxx. And the last question. If the administration
believes the proposal does not need congressional approval, can
you commit to notifying Congress in advance of any proposed
action so we can evaluate to propose change?
Ms. Weichert. So what we can do is commit to the dialogue
around all of these proposals and incorporate the feedback and
the insights from the people who have oversight over those.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you very much.
Mr. Sarbanes, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for being
here today, Ms. Weichert. I want to thank you for your
testimony.
My understanding is that part of the proposal would be to
eliminate OPM or absorb its functions into the executive office
of the President. Is that correct? Can you explain that a
little bit more?
Ms. Weichert. Sure. So the proposal is not to eliminate
OPM. It is actually to take and follow leading practice for
modern human capital management and take the administrative
transaction processing, essentially the paperwork functions,
and move them into shared services context, and then focus the
efforts of the core human capital elements of the organization,
focus those more strategically on workforce needs for the
future, reskilling, redeploying civil service reform, and
elevating that into the executive office of the President,
ensuring it gets the right level of attention, resources, and
priority.
Mr. Sarbanes. So let me express the concern I have. From
what I can gather, looking at the way the executive office of
the President has operated, there is a real kind of partisan
edge to it.
There is plenty of evidence of a kind of ethical blindness,
which has afflicted the office overall, which is a bad
combination, politicizing things, being overly partisan, not
observing ethical boundaries, transparency, accountability, you
put all that together, and it can really undermine and corrode
the effectiveness of government.
Mr. Sarbanes. And what I worry about is pulling more
functions and key decisions around how human resources are
deployed across the Federal Government and all of its various
agencies, pulling that into an environment where you've got
this kind of partisan politicized outlook, where there's--
there's these examples of not observing transparency
accountability, ethical norms, et cetera, which could just make
the overall situation that we see even worse.
So I'm extremely concerned about the potential for this
reorganization to the extent some of the human resources
decisionmaking is being into a place that has that edge to it,
how that will ripple through. So what I'd like you to address
is, you know, how are you going to have safeguards?
What kind of safeguards will be in place to prevent
nepotism, because we've definitely seen that, operating close--
in the close quarters of the White House and the executive
office, to safeguard against political patronage in the
executive branch, and others things like that, which, frankly,
undermine the confidence of the public in government's ability
to act on the public's behalf and in the public interest,
rather than to act to serve special interests or insiders or
what have you.
So what kind of safeguards are there going to be in place
to address that potential concern?
Ms. Weichert. So I appreciate the question. I think it's a
fantastic question. And it's actually one that has good
precedent.
So the office I run--so deputy director for management has
responsibility for a range of functions that expand across the
Federal Government, around IT, around--so the Federal CIO is in
my office. The Comptroller of the United States is in my office
and is responsible for finance and accounting policy,
procurement policy. The Office of the Federal Procurement
Policy administrator is in my office. And Congress has actually
put in safeguards around those key functions and elevated them
into the Executive Office of the President precisely so that
they can get the attention that Congress over time has felt
it's needed.
The lack of an office of equivalent heft in the EOP for
people is actually in some ways conspicuous by its absence. I
mentioned earlier that most OECD countries have people up there
with IT, with finance, accounting and----
Mr. Sarbanes. Okay. Well, thank you. I'm still nervous,
because you take functions of heft and you put them in a place
where ethical boundaries are ignored on a daily basis, And I
think it complicates the situation.
Ms. Weichert. I push back, though--I appreciate, absolutely
appreciate the concern. What I would say is if you could--and
I'd be happy to talk to you more about your concerns. But when
it comes to the functions that are already there, we have a
range of vehicles, including performance.gov, data.gov, and
other vehicles to ensure not less, but more accountability and
oversight. We work very closely with the congressional
committees that have oversight----
Mr. Sarbanes. Well, then I'd just ask you to work harder at
that, because I'm not necessarily seeing the results that
you're suggesting when it comes to observing accountability and
transparency and all.
I'll yield back my time. Thank you.
Ms. Foxx. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Raskin, you're recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Welcome, Ms. Weichert. I notice you're planning to
reorganize a whole bunch of departments, from the Postal
Service to OPM, but curiously absent on the list was the
Department of Defense, which has a $700 billion budget. And our
committee has seen a report just a couple of years ago saying
$125 billion could be saved in efficiency. So I'm just
wondering why it's missing.
Ms. Weichert. So we looked at the areas where, again,
mission, service, and stewardship were having the most
challenges in moving forward. I absolutely appreciate the
concerns. And we did look at GAO studies in that realm.
In order to focus this activity, we wanted to look at those
things where we had enough information, we had the ability.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. I'm going to get you this report. You
check it out. There's about $125 billion that could be saved
almost overnight by improving efficiencies there.
I represent Maryland's Eighth Congressional District, which
is home to more than 88,000 Federal employees who've come under
some harsh rhetorical treatment by this administration, but
also some attacks on their pay and benefits. And also, I hear
regularly from Federal employees who love their jobs and love
the country, as do you, and you're committed to your government
job, whose mission has been interfered with for political
reasons, they believe.
And I'm wondering, what are you doing now or what are you
hoping to do in the future to protect the Federal workforce,
the integrity of the civil service, and to prevent corruption
by political interference?
Ms. Weichert. So I think it's a great question. And again,
I will say it as many times and as many ways as I can, that it
is enlightened self-interest for us as the largest enterprise
employing people to really understand and internalize the
importance of the Federal worker to the----
Mr. Raskin. Cool. So that's your value, but do you have any
specific actions that you're taking to protect the Federal
workforce today?
Ms. Weichert. Absolutely. So one of the cross-agency
priority goals that was released in the President's Management
Agenda is looking explicitly at people in the workforce in the
21st century and the civil service reforms we need to do that.
And we're focusing very heavily on the areas where the
employees themselves have said that, you know, the merit
systems principles that were enshrined in the 1978 Civil
Service Reform Act where they are not actually being aligned
with----
Mr. Raskin. If I could, I've got to cut you off there
because I've got a few more questions, but I'd love to hear
more specifics from you about that.
Ms. Weichert. Absolutely
Mr. Raskin. The administration's been rolling back proudly
workplace, consumer, and environmental protections deemed to be
overly intrusive. For example, Mr. Mulvaney has ordered that
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau drop enforcement
against payday lenders. Do you have any plans to somehow honor
the commitment of the CFPB to protect borrowers in the wake of
that announcement?
Ms. Weichert. So I am not involved in the activities of the
CFPB.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. Similarly, you might not be involved in
this one. What about in the area of HUD? Do you have any plans
to follow through on HUD's commitment to fair housing in the
wake of the administration's nullification of the fair housing
rule that had been promulgated to address patterns of
discrimination and segregation?
Ms. Weichert. So I can't comment on that specifically.
Mr. Raskin. I saw yesterday, there's a rule called the hog
carcass cleaning rule which says, quote: All hair, scurf, and
dirt, including all hoofs and claws, shall be removed from hog
carcasses and the carcasses thoroughly washed and cleaned
before incision is made for evisceration or inspection.
This is for food protection. Sounds like a pretty good idea
to me. But the Department of Agriculture just posted its intent
to repeal this rule last month. Do you know how that particular
mechanism of deregulation would work to protect consumers or is
that being done at the behest of the slaughterhouse operators?
Ms. Weichert. I am not familiar with that.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. Can you tell us what the role of The
Heritage Foundation was in the development of this plan?
Ms. Weichert. So there was no specific involvement, other
than the review of the materials that are listed on----
Mr. Raskin. Do you know of anything that The Heritage
Foundation recommended that was not incorporated in the final
plan?
Ms. Weichert. I don't have the plan in front of me, but if
you actually compare our document and the document that we
reference, there's a significant difference.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. I didn't see it, but thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Ms. Weichert. It's page 128 of the report.
Mr. Raskin. I'll check it out. Thank you.
Ms. Foxx. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Scott, you're recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank you for your
courtesies.
Ms. Weichert, I agree with you that you shouldn't question
people's motives in legislation. But in this case, isn't it
true that many Republicans have run on platforms that include
the total abolition of the Department of Education?
Ms. Weichert. So I'm not aware of anyone specifically. If
there's information, I'd be happy to look at it.
Mr. Scott. You're not aware of any Republican who's run on
a platform that included the abolition of the Department of
Education?
Ms. Weichert. So I'm a management consultant who came to
Washington in August of last year. I haven't spent my time
focused on the political realm. What I've spent my time looking
at is how to drive transformational change----
Mr. Scott. Okay. Well, let me just say that a lot of
Republicans have run on that platform, and so you have to
understand why there's skepticism----
Ms. Weichert. Absolutely.
Mr. Scott. --when you want to merge. And some think it's
submerge the Department of Education.
The Department of Labor is essentially law enforcement at
its core. It enforces wage and hour, it enforces OSHA, labor
standards, like unfair labor practices; basically a law
enforcement agency. A very small portion is in job training and
unemployment situations. Education is education policy.
You see the difference in their missions when you look at
their civil rights focuses. You're aware that the Department of
Education, when you say civil rights, you're talking about
Brown v. Board of Education, desegregation, equity in
education, rights of disabled students, disparities in
discipline. And when you talk civil rights in the Department of
Labor, you're talking about affirmative action, and contracts,
implementing the Janus decision that just came down today,
employment discrimination, and things like that.
How would a civil rights division of this combined thing
actually operate?
Ms. Weichert. So I think that is one of the areas where we
would look forward to working with the Oversight Committee on
the operationalization of this. Most of the enforcement
components were going to simply be moved as they were and then
look at if there were synergies going forward.
To the extent the missions are distinct, and particularly
the skill sets or the core needs or the players involved are
different, that is absolutely a reason you could have
organizationally distinct activities. But our belief is that
there probably are some synergies to the extent enforcement
involved a range of like skill sets. Whether it's law or
compliance, that would be something to look at.
Mr. Scott. Is this expected to save any money?
Ms. Weichert. So the vision for all of these things is to,
at a minimum, improve mission and service and not cost any
more. The goal in a perfect world would also save money, but
that----
Mr. Scott. But you don't expect to not necessarily save any
money. One of the rationales was overlapping workforce
programs. When we passed the Workforce Innovation and
Opportunity Act in 2014, we thought we had taken care of the
unnecessary overlaps. Can you name any programs that are still,
quote, duplicative?
Ms. Weichert. So I would submit that if there are 40
workforce development programs or 46 or 47, that there would be
duplication among those.
Mr. Scott. Can you name the ones that are duplicative?
Ms. Weichert. I cannot.
Mr. Scott. Can you say a word about what would happen in
the school nutrition programs from a public school perspective?
I know we have the school lunch program and one agency. Most of
the child nutrition programs are under Agriculture and they are
going to be moved around. Can you say from a school perspective
what's going to happen?
Mr. Cummings mentioned WIC and other programs kind of moved
around.
Ms. Weichert. So only SNAP and WIC, which are near-cash
programs, would be proposed for moving. All of the commodity
assistance programs, particularly as it relates to school
lunch, would remain as is.
Mr. Scott. And would--this Child and Adult Care Food
Program moves to the Department of Health and Human Services?
Ms. Weichert. So, again, the SNAP program and the WIC
program would move to HHS.
Mr. Scott. And how would that operate in a school system?
Like an afternoon snack program.
Ms. Weichert. So, essentially, the programs that would move
to HHS are the near-cash programs that are largely administered
by States and local entities. And what this would essentially
do is streamline the provision of resources, the dollars from
the Federal Government to those agencies that actually
administer them. So presumably, it would make the job of anyone
whose doing that administration at a State or local level
easier.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Scott.
I'm now prepared to make some closing comments.
Ms. Weichert, I want to thank you very much for the
excellent presentation that you made and the superb way in
which you have handled the questions, and some animosity, it
appeared to me, directed at you, which I think was
inappropriate, but I appreciate very much.
And I read the paragraph given to us about you. And I can
understand that you are a consummate professional. And I think
we are extraordinarily fortunate to have had someone with your
experience come in and help shepherd this study that was done
and be able to explain it to us. I will compliment Director
Mulvaney very highly for having the good sense to bring you in
to work with him on this project.
I particularly appreciated the fact that you kept coming
back to mission, service, and stewardship as your guiding
principles. I do think that--we do that with the committee too.
When we propose legislation, we outline what our principles are
in putting forward the legislation and make sure they are like
a North Star for us. And I believe you have come up with three
very, very good ways to anchor what it is you've done.
I think, again, many of the comments and questions that
were directed to you were not in your bailiwick to answer and I
appreciate, again, the way you handled that.
I believe that we here have a great responsibility to spend
hardworking taxpayer dollars as well as we can spend them. We
are taxing the American people at a very high rate, in my
opinion. And when we take on a responsibility to do something
for the American people here at the Federal Government level,
then I think we need to be doing the best we can.
And the world is changing, and it's changing rapidly. And
again, with your background in information technology and other
areas, you see that. Unfortunately, I think people who get
entrenched in government jobs, who get entrenched in elected
office, sometimes cannot see what is happening out there in
terms of change and the need to change that.
I heard you say one of your missions is to have the Federal
Government better serve the public. That should be the mission
of all of us here. And if it requires change with an
organization, then we should be out there joining you in saying
this needs to be changed.
I've always believed we should sunset every piece of
legislation that passes here. That would help us gain much
better control over making the adjustments that need to be made
every 3 years, every 5 years, whatever, instead of having to
wait for these reports to be done and these studies to be done
periodically, and then have agencies be very defensive because
they do not want to make the changes that are necessary. I
think they forget, people in the agencies, often why they are
here. They think the public is here to serve them. We are here
to serve the public.
I also want to thank you very much for emphasizing that
this is the beginning of a conversation which Congress should
engage in and not just discount out of hand the kinds of
comments you made because the motives are questioned. I think
you did an excellent job of representing the administration.
And I realize you came into the administration, I believe from
the comments, to specifically do the thing that you have done
and that you do not have a political agenda. And I appreciate
that very much.
If the Federal Government does not make the kinds of
changes that you all are recommending here and many, many more,
we are failing the American people. And the American people, I
believe, will hold us responsible for that, and they should
hold us responsible for it. Again, and I think what we are
seeing--while I don't like the vitriol that's going on, I think
that there are people out there very frustrated because the
Federal Government is not doing its job. In some cases, it's
doing jobs it has no business doing, and we need to sort those
things out better.
So I want to thank you very much for the excellent
presentation and for the way that you have responded to members
today in a very open and fair and honest way.
I would like to take a point of personal privilege and
recognize Nathaniel Wallace and his parents, who are here.
Nathaniel is the art competition winner for the Fifth District
of North Carolina. And I'm a little late for my appointment
with Nathaniel and his parents, as they're going to go over to
the reception for the art competition winners who are here in
town today.
I'm sure, Mr. Scott, you want to mention yours?
Mr. Scott. Yes. Right over here. Please stand.
Thank you.
Ms. Foxx. Great. We're glad to have both of you all here.
And I appreciate Mr. Scott speaking up.
So again, I thank you for being here today, Ms. Weichert.
The hearing record will remain open for 2 weeks for any
member to submit a written opening statement or questions for
the record. And if there is no further business, without
objection, the committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:21 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
----------
Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]