[Senate Hearing 117-580]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 117-580

                             NOMINATIONS OF
                       ROBERT H. SHRIVER III AND
                           RICHARD L. REVESZ

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
               HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS


                             SECOND SESSION
                               __________

      NOMINATIONS OF ROBERT H. SHRIVER III TO BE DEPUTY DIRECTOR,
         OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT, AND RICHARD L. REVESZ
             TO BE ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF INFORMATION AND
          REGULATORY AFFAIRS, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
                               __________

                           SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov

                       Printed for the use of the
        Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
        
        
                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
                  
                              __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
49-379PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2023                 
                  
                  
        

        COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

                   GARY C. PETERS, Michigan, Chairman
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware           ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire         RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona              RAND PAUL, Kentucky
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada                  JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
ALEX PADILLA, California             MITT ROMNEY, Utah
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  RICK SCOTT, Florida
                                     JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri

                   David M. Weinberg, Staff Director
                    Zachary I. Schram, Chief Counsel
         Matthew T. Cornelius, Senior Professional Staf Member
              Devin M. Parsons, Professional Staff Member
                    Nikta Khani, Research Assistant
                Pamela Thiessen, Minority Staff Director
   James D. Mann, Minority Staff Director, Government Operations and 
                           Border Management
                  Andrew J. Hopkins, Minority Counsel
                Ryan L. Giles, Minority General Counsel
  Clark A. Hedrick, Minority Senior Cousel, Government Operations and 
                           Border Management
                     Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
                    Ashley A. Howard, Hearing Clerk


                            C O N T E N T S

                                 ------                                
Opening statements:
                                                                   Page
    Senator Peters...............................................     1
    Senator Lankford.............................................     3
    Senator Hawley...............................................    13
    Senator Sinema...............................................    17
    Senator Rosen................................................    19
    Senator Padilla..............................................    22
    Senator Carper...............................................    24
Prepared statements:
    Senator Peters...............................................    33
    Senator Lankford.............................................    35

                               WITNESSES
                      Thursday, September 29, 2022

Robert H. Shriver III to be Deputy Director, Office of Personnel 
  Management
    Testimony....................................................     5
    Prepared statement...........................................    37
    Biographical and professional information....................    40
    Letter from U.S. Office of Government Ethics.................    56
    Responses to pre-hearing questions...........................    59
    Responses to post-hearing questions..........................    77
Richard L. Revesz to be Administrator, Office of Information and 
  Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget
    Testimony....................................................     7
    Prepared statement...........................................    88
    Biographical and professional information....................    90
    Letter from U.S. Office of Government Ethics.................   110
    Responses to pre-hearing questions...........................   114
    Responses to post-hearing questions..........................   131
    Letters of support...........................................   144

 
                  NOMINATIONS OF ROBERT H. SHRIVER III
                        AND RICHARD L. REVESZ

                              ----------                              


                      THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

                                     U.S. Senate,  
                           Committee on Homeland Security  
                                  and Governmental Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m., in 
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Gary Peters, 
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Peters, Carper, Hassan, Sinema, Rosen, 
Padilla, Ossoff, Lankford, Scott, and Hawley.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN PETERS\1\

    Chairman Peters. The Committee will come to order.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appears in the 
Appendix on page 33.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Today, we are considering the nominations of Robert Shriver 
III to be Deputy Director of the Office of Personnel Management 
(OPM) and Richard Revesz to be Administrator of the Office of 
Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of 
Management and Budget (OMB).
    Welcome to both of you and to your family members who are 
seated behind you. We welcome all of you today, and thank you 
for joining us. I also want to congratulate each of you on your 
nominations and thank you for your willingness to take on these 
important roles in the Federal Government.
    Both of the positions we are considering nominations for 
are going to require independent, non-partisan leadership to 
serve in the best interests of the American public.
    The Office of Personnel Management develops and administers 
human capital policies for the Federal workforce and functions 
as the bedrock of our nation's personnel and management efforts 
across the Executive Branch, while the Office of Information 
and Regulatory Affairs serves as the central authority for the 
review and coordination of Federal regulations.
    Mr. Shriver, if confirmed, you will be OPM's Deputy 
Director charged with setting policies for more than 1.8 
million dedicated public servants, which will require agency 
leadership that can build confidence in OPM, and maintain a 
non-partisan, merit-based workforce that serves every American.
    The Deputy Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) is a 
significant undertaking, and I believe your extensive 
experience in public service, including current and prior 
experience at OPM, will help provide an innovative vision for 
the future of the Federal workforce.
    Likewise, the OIRA Administrator is an incredibly important 
position.
    Mr. Revesz, if confirmed, you will lead six subject matter 
branches, and be responsible for ensuring the office provides 
transparency into regulatory decisions and promotes public 
participation in the rulemaking process.
    Your long history of both academic and legal analysis on 
the modernization of the regulatory process, improving cost-
benefit analysis, and ensuring greater transparency and 
participation in the rulemaking process will certainly serve 
the office well.
    While OIRA is a small, relatively unknown office in the 
Federal Government, it actually manages Federal rules and 
regulations that impact Americans' daily lives in a number of 
different ways.
    The decisions that your agency will make can affect 
everything from repairing roads and bridges, funding K-12 
schools, and protecting our air and drinking water. People in 
Michigan, and across the country, depend on OIRA to work with 
Federal agencies to efficiently and effectively implement 
important safeguards that will protect the health and safety of 
all Americans.
    While few folks outside of Washington are familiar with 
OIRA, they know all too well how delayed regulatory impacts can 
affect their lives.
    For too long, essential safeguards for lead in drinking 
water and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) substances, toxic 
chemicals that are widely used in industry and consumer 
products, remain stalled in the regulatory review process.
    Despite Federal agencies promising to take a more proactive 
approach to address this crisis, Michiganders in communities 
like Flint, Oscoda, and Parchment in my home State cannot drink 
the water from their own faucets without fearing the ingestion 
of toxins like lead or PFAS.
    While regulations are the responsibility of Federal 
agencies, they must be reviewed by OIRA before they can be 
adopted.
    That is why as Chairman of the Senate's top oversight 
committee, I know it is critical lawmakers pursue regulatory 
reforms that reduce duplicative or burdensome processes while 
maintaining important protections for health, safety, and 
economic security, and I look forward to working with OIRA to 
make progress on these important reforms.
    In short, if confirmed, both of you will have a dramatic 
impact on families, businesses, and communities in Michigan as 
well as across the country.
    I am pleased that President Biden has nominated two 
distinguished and highly qualified nominees to serve in these 
incredibly important positions.
    Today I look forward to hearing from both of you about your 
experience and qualifications and how you plan to serve. Thank 
you.
    Senator Lankford, you are now recognized for your opening 
comments.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD\1\

    Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Lankford appears in the 
Appendix on page 35.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Hearts and prayers today go out to the folks in Florida. 
They have had a very difficult past 24 hours, to say the least, 
and they will have a long recovery process on that. I wanted to 
remind folks as we are going through important business today 
that our hearts are all still in Florida as well.
    I do want to thank the Chairman for actually holding this 
hearing today. I am filling in as Ranking Member today on this, 
to be able to work on two incredibly important nominees that my 
Subcommittee is very involved in. That is the issue of 
regulatory affairs and Federal workforce policy.
    Rob Shriver III, because I just met the second as well--is 
nominated to be the Deputy Director of OPM. He is a 
professional with 25 years of experience working on the issues 
related to Federal employees.
    We have had the opportunity to be able to talk at length 
already before this hearing on several of the Federal workforce 
hiring issues and some of the challenges. There are significant 
challenges on the Federal workforce.
    Over the past decade, OPM has had to navigate many changes 
in leadership, structural overhauls, a major cybersecurity 
event, while attempting to achieve its mission to lead 
Executive Branch Federal workforce policy and administer the 
benefits programs for the Federal family, as well as handling 
retirement issues.
    OPM continues to have many challenges it needs to address. 
For instance, it takes 100 days, on average, for the Federal 
agencies to be able to hire a new employee, 100 days. Everyone 
know, for a very long time, has said that has to come down, and 
there have been benefits in the ones and twos of days, but not 
in the significant time period it really takes to be able to 
handle that.
    Another on the other end, not just the hiring, it is 
actually on the retirement process, OPM manages a paper-based 
retirement system out of a cave in Pennsylvania. This has to be 
resolved for our Federal retirees as well. If we are going to 
have a modern, effective Federal workforce, OPM has to be a 
modern, effective agency as well in leading that. I look 
forward to that conversation today.
    Dr. Ricky Revesz has a long academic career with an 
extensive list of publications, including many books, academic 
articles, op-eds. The Administrator of OIRA, as I mentioned to 
him in our extensive conversation as well prior to this 
meeting, is the most important job in Washington that no one 
has ever heard of. That task, at OIRA, sets the parameters for 
how we are going to do regulations in every single agency.
    I have long been concerned, quite frankly, that this 
Administration has been so slow to be able to nominate someone 
to OIRA, and my concern has been they have not been serious 
about the regulatory issues. I hope I am wrong about that 
because regulatory policy affects everyone. Fair, predictable, 
regulatory policy allows businesses, particularly small 
businesses, to be open, to plan for the future, to thrive. It 
absolutely affects everything in our economy, in our safety of 
how we handle our way of life.
    Drastic swings in policy from administration to 
administration creates uncertainty. We need safe food. We need 
safe working conditions. Regulatory policy has to be known, 
predictable, and it has to follow the rules that have been 
passed down by Congress.
    OIRA is the gatekeeper that ensure the Executive Branch 
follows the law, completes cost-benefit analysis, does not cut 
corners for convenience. The job of the OIRA Administrator is 
to often tell your boss and agency heads, ``No, that is not the 
way the law is actually written. We have to be able to follow 
the law.'' It is very similar to the role of the General 
Counsel (GC) in each of our agencies to be able to have that 
moment of advice to say, ``This is the right way to do it, and 
if you want to be able to do it, let us follow the law.'' It 
protects the taxpayers from years of litigation in the days 
ahead.
    Professor, there will be many in the Administration that 
are going to press, because every administration does, 
Republican and Democrat. They press on OIRA to be able to go 
faster, to do different. But you will have the unique role of 
being able to look and folks and say, ``Let's follow the law,'' 
and that is a good spot to be able to be.
    In closing, I look around this dais and I see relatively 
few people that are engaged. That says two things to me. One of 
them, it tells most folks that they have looked at your resume, 
they looked at your background and see that it is consistent, 
and so there is not a big press. It also reminds me of the last 
time an OIRA nominee was in front of this Committee. They 
actually sat by themselves, and that was Paul Ray, and they 
went through hours of blistering questions, and went through 
page after page of questions for the records afterward, 
harassing him.
    This is a different type of conversation that is actually 
happening today, and it is good to be able to see my Republican 
colleagues treating everyone fairly, because we have had 
individuals that have not been treated fairly in the past 
administration in this exact same role in this.
    I am glad to be able to see a good, fair dialog, to be able 
to go through very difficult issues today.
    With that I yield back.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Lankford.
    It is the practice of this Committee to swear in witnesses, 
so if each of you would please stand and raise your right hand.
    Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this 
Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
the truth, so help you, God?
    Mr. Shriver. I do.
    Mr. Revesz. I do.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you. You may be seated.
    Our first nominee is Robert Harley Shriver III, to be 
Deputy Director of the Office of Personnel Management. Mr. 
Shriver is the Associate Director for Employee Services at OPM, 
where he leads OPM's governmentwide workforce policy team. His 
expertise includes recruiting and hiring, pay and leave, 
strategic workforce planning, labor and employee relations, 
performance management, the Senior Executive Service (SES), 
work-life balance, and the future of work.
    Previously he served at OPM during the Obama Administration 
as the Deputy General Counsel for Policy, leading the 
development and implementation of a number of governmentwide 
initiatives. He has also served as OPM's Assistant Director for 
National Healthcare Operations, where he led the implementation 
of the multi-state plan program under the Affordable Care Act 
(ACA).
    Mr. Shriver, welcome to the Committee. You may proceed with 
your opening remarks.

    TESTIMONY OF ROBERT H. SHRIVER III,\1\ TO BE THE DEPUTY 
            DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT

    Mr. Shriver. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished 
Members of the Committee for welcoming me here today. It is an 
honor to be considered by this Committee as President Biden's 
nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Personnel 
Management.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Shriver appears in the Appendix 
on page 37.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I want to start by recognizing the hard-working employees 
of the Federal Government, and in particular those at OPM. I 
would not be here today without their dedication and commitment 
to their mission. I care deeply about the civil service, about 
OPM, and about all Federal employees, and I thank them for 
their service.
    I am also fortunate to have several family members with me 
here today. My wife, JoAnn Martinez, is here with two of our 
three children, Mitch and Justine. Our oldest son, Robby, is 
away for his first year of college so he could not be here 
today. I want to thank my kids for all the joy they bring me, 
as well as the support and patience they have shown throughout 
my career. I especially want to thank JoAnn for her 
partnership, as both of us have balanced demanding careers with 
raising our family, and for her kindness and strength 
throughout our 22 years of marriage.
    I am also blessed to have my father, Robert H. Shriver, 
Jr., my mother, Norma, and my sister, Melinda, here with me 
today. My parents are retired schoolteachers, and my sister is 
a public school administrator. They have traveled from 
Nazareth, Pennsylvania, to support me today, as they have done 
consistently and steadfastly throughout my entire life.
    I was raised in middle-class family in the working-class 
town of Nazareth, Pennsylvania. I was fortunate to be able to 
go to college, but I needed to work to contribute to the costs. 
During high school, I worked in the paint department of a K-
Mart near my house. When I went off to college at Virginia Tech 
(VT) in Blacksburg, Virginia I washed dishes and served food in 
the dining hall. Then, when I went to George Washington 
University Law School (GW LAW) here in Washington, DC, I got a 
job at a law firm, not as a summer associate but as a file 
clerk. The idea of an unpaid internship did not even occur to 
me. I needed a paycheck, and working in the file room got me 
that.
    I have carried those lessons on the importance of hard work 
into my professional career. I have had the good fortune to 
work in several positions at OPM, including my current position 
as the Associate Director for Employee Services, where I lead 
OPM's governmentwide workforce policy team. I have also worked 
in State government, for a labor union, and in the private 
sector. I have held jobs that focused on law, policy, 
operations, and Information Technology (IT). I have represented 
both labor and management. I have been a purchaser and a seller 
of services for the government. I have been a stakeholder and 
led stakeholder engagement. I have had tremendous mentors who 
taught me how important it is to help the next generation of 
employees, something that drives me every day.
    Through it all, I have been driven by one overarching 
principle: to help make the government work better for the 
American people.
    OPM is a critical agency for effective and efficient 
government operations. I like to say that ``everybody is in 
OPM's business because OPM is in everybody's business.'' What I 
mean is that strategic workforce management is critical to 
every agency in government, and OPM exists to provide expert 
guidance, advice, and support on the full range of workforce 
matters.
    OPM also exists to preserve and protect the nonpartisan, 
career civil service. Day in and day out, we balance these two 
foundational principles--how can we advance innovation in 
strategic human capital management while honoring the bedrock 
principles of our merit system that dates to the Pendleton Act 
of 1883.
    If confirmed as Deputy Director, I will strive to build on 
the successes OPM has had over the past 20 months. I will 
leverage the experience I have had working in three different 
offices to drive policy innovation and customer service 
improvements across the agency. In partnership with Director 
Ahuja, I will apply the work ethic ingrained in me by my 
parents and community from an early age toward advancing my 
overarching leadership principle--help make the government work 
better for the American people.
    I want to thank you Chairman, Ranking Member, and all 
Members of the Committee and their staffs for taking the time 
to meet with me, both today and beforehand. If I am fortunate 
enough to be confirmed, I look forward to continuing our 
conversations and, with Director Ahuja, strengthening the 
relationship between OPM and this Committee.
    I am happy to answer any questions you may have.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Shriver.
    Our second nominee is Richard Revesz, to be Administrator 
of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the 
Office of Management and Budget.
    Mr. Revesz is the AnBryce Professor of Law and Dean 
Emeritus at the New York University School (NYU) of Law and one 
of the nation's leading voices in the fields of both 
environmental and regulatory law and policy.
    In addition to his work at NYU, he founded the Institute 
for Policy Integrity, a think tank and advocacy organization 
that promotes policies for the environment, for public health, 
and consumers. He has also served as the Director of the 
American Law Institute, a leading independent organization in 
the United States that produces scholarly work to clarify, to 
modernize, and improve the law.
    He has also published 10 books and more than 80 articles in 
major law reviews and journals, advocating for protective 
environmental policies.
    Mr. Revesz, welcome to the Committee. You may proceed with 
your opening remarks.

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD L. REVESZ,\1\ TO BE ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE 
OF INFORMATION AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND 
                             BUDGET

    Mr. Revesz. Chairman Peters, Ranking Member Lankford, and 
Members of the Committee, it is a privilege to come before you 
as President Biden's nominee to be the Administrator of the 
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. I would like to 
thank all the Members of the Committee for considering my 
nomination, the Members who took the time to speak with me 
before this hearing, and the staff for their help and guidance 
throughout this process. I am enormously grateful to the 
President for the trust reflected by this nomination. I am 
deeply honored and humbled.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Revesz appears in the Appendix on 
page 88.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As I was growing up in Argentina during the very turbulent 
1960s and 1970s, when democratic rule was routinely interrupted 
by coups and deadly political violence, I could have never 
imagined that I would be sitting in this chair one day. I grew 
up speaking Spanish and learned English as a second language. I 
came to the United States to go to college in 1975, when I was 
17. I arrived two weeks before the beginning of my freshman 
year at Princeton, as Argentina was entering a six-year period 
during which between 10,000 and 30,000 people were killed 
through government-led violence in a country with a tenth the 
population of the United States. I am so grateful for the 
academic excellence that the United States offered me and for 
the safe haven it provided me during this time of turbulence.
    The United States has given me extraordinary opportunities. 
I became a U.S. citizen in 1982, when I was a second-year law 
student. Only two-and-a-half years later,
    I came to Washington, D.C. to serve as a law clerk to 
Justice Thurgood Marshall, which was an honor of a lifetime.
    I am enormously proud of my family members and deeply 
grateful for their extraordinary support. My wife, Vicki Been, 
to whom I have been married for 33 years, is my colleague on 
the NYU Law School faculty. For six of the last eight years, 
she served in New York City government, first as Commissioner 
of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and 
then as Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development.
    My son, Joshua Revesz, is a lawyer in the Civil Division at 
the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). My daughter, Mira Revesz, 
could not be here because she is a high school English teacher 
in Massachusetts and has a full day of classes today. My 
daughter-in-law, Hilary Ledwell, recently left the Department 
of Homeland Security (DHS) to serve as a judicial law clerk. I 
very much admire the commitment to public service that each of 
them displays in their endeavors and hope to emulate it if I am 
confirmed.
    I am sad that my parents are both deceased and could not 
accompany me today. My father, Nicolas Revesz, was displaced by 
the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, and at a relatively young age, 
had to cope with the murder of both his parents and five of his 
seven sisters at Auschwitz. He died when I was only eight years 
old. My mother, Nora Revesz, was also displaced by World War II 
and its aftermath. After a round-about journey, she became a 
U.S. citizen and got to see the unfolding of a significant 
portion of my legal career.
    During my 37 years as a law professor, I have worked 
extensively on areas related to government regulation. The bulk 
of my work has been on environmental, health, and safety 
regulation, but I have dealt with other regulatory areas as 
well. I have also focused on the structure of the Executive 
Branch and on the role of OIRA as a coordinator of Executive 
Branch activities.
    In addition to my academic work, I have learned a great 
deal about how the Federal Government functions through my 
service as a Public Member and Senior Fellow of the 
Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), and on 
committees of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the 
National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Research 
Council (NRC).
    Over the last two decades, I have been entrusted with 
several leadership positions, including my service as Dean of 
NYU Law School from 2002 to 2013, and since 2014, as Director 
of the American Law Institute. In those positions, I have an 
open-door, collaborative management style. I am accessible to 
my staff and responsive to their concerns. I believe in hearing 
a full range of perspectives before making a decision. I lead 
by example and not by command. I would bring the same 
management style to my position leading OIRA.
    If confirmed, I would be honored to work with the President 
and Congress to ensure that our nation's regulatory policies 
serve the interests of the American people.
    Thank you again for considering my nomination. I would be 
delighted to answer your questions.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Revesz.
    There are three questions that the Committee asks of every 
nominee, so I am going to ask each of you to respond briefly, 
just with a yes or no. We will start with you, Mr. Shriver, and 
then Mr. Revesz.
    First, is there anything you are aware of in your 
background that might present a conflict of interest with the 
duties of the office to which you have been nominated?
    Mr. Shriver. No, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Revesz. No, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Second, do you know of anything personal 
or otherwise that would in any way prevent you from fully and 
honorably discharging the responsibilities of the office to 
which you have been nominated?
    Mr. Shriver. No, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Revesz. No, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Last, do you agree, without reservation, 
to comply with any request or summons to appear and testify 
before any duly constituted committee of Congress if you are 
confirmed?
    Mr. Shriver. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Revesz. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Great. Thank you.
    Mr. Revesz, on his first day in office, President Biden 
issued a memorandum entitled ``Modernizing Regulatory Review,'' 
directing the production of recommendations to improve and to 
modernize the regulatory review process.
    My question for you is, if confirmed, what will be the 
first concrete steps that you will take to finalize the actions 
required in this memorandum, and what do you believe are the 
most important reforms that should be made a OMB Circular A4 to 
help modernize the regulatory review process in the Federal 
Government?
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I am strong believer in evidence-based decisionmaking. 
Circular A-4, which provides guidance to agencies on how to 
conduct their cost-benefit analyses is a very important 
document that is now almost 20 years old. As the President 
called for in his memorandum, ``Modernizing Regulatory 
Review,'' Circular A-4 should be updated to account for 
advances in scientific and economic understanding in how the 
costs and benefits of regulation affect the American people and 
are distributed across populations.
    If confirmed, my first step will be to receive an update 
from staff on the progress that has been made thus far and see 
what needs to be done to move forward with the President's 
command.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Revesz.
    Mr. Shriver, Federal retirees have been reaching out to my 
office a great deal to express an incredible amount of 
frustration with the length of time that it takes the OPM to 
process their retirement claims.
    If confirmed as Deputy Director, how are you going to work 
to reduce these retirement claim delays, including modernizing 
OPM's legacy retirement systems, and that means transitioning 
from a paper-based system and Excel sheet calculators to really 
an updated platform and updated tools that can expedite this 
process? If you could give us your views on that and how you 
plan to tackle that challenge, I would appreciate it.
    Mr. Shriver. Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman, and 
let me start by saying that we do need to do better by our 
Federal retirees. These are folks who commit their careers to 
Federal service, and when it comes time to retire they need to 
be getting top-notch customer service.
    I know though, I do not oversee retirement services in my 
current role as Associate Director of Employee Services, I do 
know that the team work hard, day in and day out, to serve 
those retirees.
    I think you are right in that the systems do need some 
modernization. I know there have been past efforts over many 
years and across many administrations to modernize the 
retirement system.
    Obviously there are some challenges there that I look 
forward to being briefed on. If I were lucky enough to be 
confirmed I would be excited to bring to bear my experience in 
operations and customer service that I gained in the health 
care space, and certainly as Deputy Director I would prioritize 
improving customer service for our retirees.
    Chairman Peters. Given your experience in customer service 
and the work that you did prior, give me some sense of how you 
believe we can improve the customer experience for Federal 
employees and retirees both, current employees as well, that 
rely on the OPM for their benefits and services.
    Mr. Shriver. Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman, and 
certainly OPM is rebuilding capacity. As Ranking Member 
Lankford laid out in his opening statement, OPM has been 
through a turbulent several years, and so we are certainly 
rebuilding the capacity of the agency and looking at our 
customer service capabilities.
    I think one of the things that I can say, just from my 
experience in my current role, it is really important to build 
good relationships with the agencies, not only with the Chief 
Human Capital Officers (CHCOs) but with other parts of the 
agencies that maybe work in certain policy areas or work on 
benefits, for example.
    A lot of the challenges that happen with respect to 
retirement processing have to do with the way that information 
transfers between agencies and OPM in particular, if somebody 
has worked in multiple agencies or under multiple retirement 
systems.
    But with respect to customer service writ large, agencies 
rely on OPM in any number of ways to have approvals for 
expedited hiring authority when there is a critical hiring 
need, or special pay authority, and we have been working really 
hard to build those relationships with the agencies and be 
proactive and help them problem solve so that OPM can re-
establish itself as the strategic human capital leader for the 
Federal Government.
    Chairman Peters. Great.
    Mr. Revesz, we held a hearing earlier this year in the 
Committee on the need to improve the customer experience for 
citizens as they interact with government, and we heard how the 
Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) and the Privacy Act can create 
some significant hurdles to delivering high-quality citizen 
services to the American people.
    In addition, this Committee recently passed the Disaster 
Assistance Simplification Act, which basically exempts large 
portions of the PRA and the Privacy Act to ensure disaster 
survivors can easily and quickly receive benefits they deserve. 
Likely a lot of folks in Florida are going to be interesting 
with this system after the hurricane just swept through, as an 
example, and folks often in a very difficult time in their life 
have to wade through a variety of paperwork, and different 
paperwork for different agencies, to try to get help that they 
desperately need.
    My question for you is, do you agree that the PRA and 
Privacy Act could be updated to take advantage of modern 
customer experience, information technology, and data-sharing 
developments?
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The PRA has important 
goals. It seeks to ensure that government information requests 
generate useful information and not impose excessive burdens on 
the American people. Information should also be collected in 
ways that make useful across the Federal Government, for 
example, by using consistent protocols.
    The PRA dates back to 1995. It is now more than 25 years 
old, and amendments might well be appropriate. If confirmed, I 
look forward to working with Members of this Committee and 
their staffs and learning more about what experience with 
stakeholders under the PRA has been during the period since the 
statute's passage.
    But I do agree that figuring out how best to respond to the 
needs of the American people through the PRA is an extremely 
important goal.
    Chairman Peters. I appreciate that. There is a lot of work 
to do in that area, and breaking through some of the 
bureaucratic hurdles I would hope would be a priority for you 
if you are confirmed. Will it be a priority?
    Mr. Revesz. I will be a priority, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Great. Thank you.
    Ranking Member Portman, you are recognized for your 
questions.
    Senator Lankford. I will be the Portman fill-in today on 
that one. [Laughter.]
    Chairman Peters. Oh my gosh.
    Senator Lankford. You did, actually.
    Chairman Peters. Force of habit.
    Senator Lankford. Muscle memory.
    Chairman Peters. That is exactly right. Ranking Member 
Lankford.
    Senator Lankford. Thanks for being here. Thanks again. 
Thanks to your families as well, coming in. It is a long day, 
to be able to be here, and through all the dialog and 
conversation. It is a long process to be able to go through.
    Both of these roles are nonpartisan roles. Now there is no 
question each of us have partisan preferences on this. But the 
important thing for OPM and for OIRA is we have, as Congress, 
the confidence that we are just following the law and trying to 
be able to help individuals in the Federal workforce to be able 
to both get hired, good oversight and management, good 
retirement process. Again, these should not be partisan types 
of roles and tasks in that.
    I would tell you, as we have spoken personally on this, I 
would count on nonpartisan activity happening in the Office of 
Personnel Management and the Office of Information and 
Regulatory Affairs.
    Saying all that, I do want to walk through a couple of 
things. Mr. Revesz, we talked yesterday briefly about this, 
that I have had individuals that work in companies, they are 
new in a company and they start with a process and they start 
to be able to look at the issues that are related to their 
company and guidance documents that are available from Federal 
agencies, and they start searching and they find quickly they 
have to be an expert in the Federal Government to just find out 
what guidance documents relate to their business.
    Right now, reginfol.gov exists. Is there any barrier for 
OIRA actually putting in all of the guidance documents for 
anyone who is trying to be able to search guidance documents, 
into reginfo.gov so that a new person or an experienced person 
that is trying to be able to pull up just what guidance is out 
there for my company can go find that? Because currently, that 
does not exist at this point for one central clearing house for 
guidance documents.
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you, Senator, for the question. I am a 
strong believer that transparency needs to be a key requirement 
for well-functioning regulatory process, and guidance documents 
play a very important role in that process, and it is therefore 
important that guidance be made available to the public and be 
made available in a user-friendly way. As you know, it is not 
enough that it exists somewhere, but it is important that 
people be able to access that information efficiently.
    I am a long-time public member and senior fellow of the 
Administrative Congress of the United States, which, in 2019, 
endorsed the policy on the public electronic availability of 
guidance documents. I understand that having guidance documents 
be available on the websites of individual agencies might not 
be as useful as having them available all in one central 
repository.
    If confirmed, I look forward to learning from my colleagues 
at OIRA and elsewhere in the Federal Government what the 
experience has been in working with you and other Members of 
the Committee to seek what can be done to make guidance 
documents as accessible to regulated entities and to the 
American people, generally, as possible. If a central 
repository is the best way to go, I look forward to learning 
how best to accomplish that.
    Senator Lankford. OK. Thank you. I would appreciate that 
because you have to be an expert in which agency handles which 
issue to be able to find guidance documents. I would tell you, 
as a member of the Senate, I still have to hesitate and say, 
wait, is that the Department Energy (DOE) that has that? Is 
that the Department of Interior (DOI) that has that? Or is that 
EPA that has that? If I have to struggle to be able to figure 
out which one that is, at times, certainly people that do not 
deal with this every single day go through that same process.
    You and I had a very good conversation yesterday about 
cost-benefit analysis. For whatever reason, this has become 
controversial to be able to discuss just the most basic thing 
in cost-benefit. This goes back decades. This goes back to 
Executive Order (EO) 12866. This should not be a controversial 
thing, just to be able to look at the cost and the benefit of 
any regulation at this point.
    But I want to go past that to be able to say, how do you 
handle cost-benefit analysis and how will you actually 
implement that on things like equal amounts? You cannot have 
the cost be five years and the benefit be 100 years. You cannot 
have the cost be American but the benefit be global. It has to 
be equal in its analysis so that you really get a good feel of 
what that cost-benefit really is, and sometimes that also means 
getting other models that disagree in trying to get the best 
possible data. How will you handle that, as the leader of OIRA?
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you, Senator Lankford. I am a strong 
supporter of the use of cost-benefit analysis and evaluating 
regulations. A great deal of my academic work has been about 
that and has been supportive of the use of cost-benefit 
analysis. Executive Orders 12866 and 13563, which President 
Biden reaffirmed, made clear that the benefits of regulation 
must justify the costs and that regulation should maximize net 
benefits except where precluded by statute. President Biden 
reaffirmed these executive orders in this memorandum, 
``Modernizing Regulatory Review.'' I support cost-benefit 
analysis so strongly because it is critically important that 
regulations deliver value for the American people.
    On the specifics of your question, I do not see cost-
benefit analysis as a Democratic or a Republican discipline. 
There is one right way to do it, and it is a way for the 
Federal Government comports with OMB Circular A-4, which 
provides guidance to agencies and with well-accepted 
professional norms of the economics community.
    In terms of timelines, the timelines for the evaluation of 
cost and benefit should be chosen to capture all of the 
effects, whether positive or negative. It would be wrong to 
have a long timeline for benefits and to truncate costs, and it 
would be wrong to have a long timeline for costs and to 
truncate benefits.
    For this to be a valuable analytical tool it has to be 
carried out in an even-handed way. That is what I promoted in 
my scholarship, and that is what I would do if I were lucky 
enough to be confirmed to this position.
    Senator Lankford. OK. The Supreme Court has recently made a 
decision in the West Virginia case dealing with the major 
questions doctrine. It is an analysis that, in some ways is 
subjective and in some ways pretty clear. It is like the famous 
statement in the Supreme Court, ``I know pornography when I see 
it.'' The major questions doctrine is Congress is not trying to 
hide an elephant in a mouse hole.
    The basic question of this is, every agency is going to 
come and say, ``I think I have the ability to be able to do 
this,'' and OIRA becomes the place to be able to say what on 
the major questions doctrine, because this will be come an 
issue of litigation and the taxpayer, significantly, years of 
confusion if there is not a basic push-pull that happens with 
the general counsel and also with the leadership of OIRA.
    How will you handle the major questions doctrine?
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you, Senator. A very important role of 
OIRA review involves making sure that the regulations are 
legal. Legality review is contemplated in Execute Order 12866, 
and that is something OIRA does alongside its review of the 
costs and benefits, and so on.
    West Virginia v. EPA is the law of the land. The Supreme 
Court decided that case. Clearly agencies need to think about 
whether regulations that have vast economic and political 
significance have been explicitly authorized by Congress. If 
they have then agencies have the authority to do that, and if 
they have not then under the Supreme Court's decision they do 
not.
    Ensuring compliance with that Supreme Court decision is 
part and parcel of ensuring compliance with legality, with all 
kinds of other questions that might come up in the context of 
OIRA review. It would be my job, if confirmed, to ensure that 
was the case.
    Senator Lankford. OK. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I will yield 
back.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ranking Member Lankford.
    Senator Hawley, you are recognized for your questions.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HAWLEY

    Senator Hawley. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks 
to the nominees for being here. Congratulations on your 
nominations.
    Mr. Revesz, if I could start with you, I want to come back 
to President Biden memorandum issuing priorities for OIRA back 
from January 20, 2021. Those included addressing, I am quoting 
now, ``systemic racial inequality and the undeniable reality 
and accelerating threat of climate change.''
    I want to start with that second one first, if I could. You 
have dedicated a substantial part of your career to working on 
environmental issues. You have written a series of books, 
articles, and other publications on environmental matters, 
including Environmental Law and Policy, Struggling for Air: 
Power Plants and the ``War on Coal,'' Environmental Law and 
Policy, Second Edition, the Globalization of Cost-Benefit 
Analysis in Environmental Policy, Air Pollution and 
Environmental Justice, the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, and 
Destabilizing Environmental Regulation: The Trump 
Administration's Concerted Attack on Regulatory Analysis.
    I think it is fair to say this is a deep interest of yours. 
Is that fair?
    Mr. Revesz. It is, Senator.
    Senator Hawley. You were also, I think, the faculty 
director for a time, for a number of years, actually, for the 
Program on Environmental Regulation. That is right, is it not?
    Mr. Revesz. Yes. It actually became the Institute of Policy 
and Integrity, but I have led those programs for a long time.
    Senator Hawley. Yes. Very good. I want to ask you about one 
of the most significant environmental rules of the last decade, 
which is the Obama-era Waters of the United States (WOTUS) 
rule. I am sure you are familiar with that rule.
    Mr. Revesz. I am familiar with the rule, Senator.
    Senator Hawley. Tell me what your view on it is. Did you 
agree with the rule at the time that it was issued in 2015?
    Mr. Revesz. Senator, I have actually not done as much work 
on water as I have done on air, so I would not say I have deep 
expertise on issues surrounding that rule. But in general, I 
agree that Waters of the United States definition needed to be 
clarified, and I thought that the Obama Administration has done 
a good job attempting to clarify it.
    Senator Hawley. You think that EPA had the legal authority, 
to expand the definition of Waters of the United States in the 
way they did in the rule?
    Mr. Revesz. At the time, Senator, I thought they did. There 
have been intervening judicial decisions, and we may be in a 
different place. But at the time that that regulation was 
promulgated I thought the Obama Administration had that 
authority.
    Senator Hawley. You say that there have been intervening 
decisions and now we are maybe in a different place. Explain 
that to me. What do you think?
    Mr. Revesz. I have not followed those decisions closely, 
Senator, and so I cannot give you a full answer, but I know 
that the courts have been issuing decisions in this area, and 
obviously if I was in the OIRA position when a proposal 
involving a revision of that regulation came before me I would 
seek to get up to speed on where things stand.
    Senator Hawley. As it is likely to do. Correct?
    Mr. Revesz. I do not know what the timing is, and I do not 
know whether I will get confirmed for this position.
    Senator Hawley. I am sure you do know that the 
Administration has proposed a substantial revision and 
extension of the Waters of the United States rule. The comment 
period on it, I think, is closed. If you are confirmed you are 
likely to see it for OIRA review.
    I guess my next question would be will you weigh carefully 
the interest in having a safe and reliable food supply in the 
United States, the livelihood of farmers and ranchers who 
depend on access to their land, use of the waters on their 
land? Will that weigh in your cost-benefit analysis?
    Mr. Revesz. It definitely will. From my perspective again, 
as I indicated, there should not be the cost-benefit analysis 
of this administration or that administration. This is an 
academic discipline. It is a professional discipline with 
professional norms. All the facts, whoever bears those 
consequences, and whether they are positive or negative, all 
that has to be accounted for, and a properly conducted cost-
benefit analysis would do that, Senator.
    Senator Hawley. But just to come back to my first question 
and to the main issue, it is your legal opinion, as an expert 
on environmental law, that the EPA did have the authority, at 
least in 2015, to define transitory bodies of water, like 
ditches filled with rain, as Waters of the United States, under 
Supreme Court precedent?
    Mr. Revesz. It was my view then, Senator, and I have not 
rethought this issue since then, and I am not completely up to 
speed with all the intervening decisions.
    Senator Hawley. I have to say I find that disturbing, and 
as the Attorney General (AG) of Missouri I was one of the 
States that sued the Obama Administration and then continued 
that suit into the Trump administration in order to get that 
rule repealed precisely because my review of the case law is, 
and I think that subsequent courts have agreed, that the EPA 
was substantially outside of its jurisdiction in expanding the 
definition in that manner.
    I have to tell you that the effect, the real-world effect 
on farmers and ranchers in the State of Missouri is little 
short of catastrophic, which is why you saw so many groups of 
farmers and ranchers--and I might just add, particularly small 
farmers and ranchers.
    Corporate interests are one thing. They can absorb the cost 
of these regulations. But when we are talking about family 
farms and family ranchers, the costs of complying with these 
draconian regulations, that frankly I think are unauthorized by 
law, or case law, statutory law or case law, is truly crushing. 
I have to say that worries me, and this will be something that 
you will be looking at.
    Let me ask you about another set of interests. The Biden 
Executive Order talked about accelerating climate change and 
racial inequality. Do you think cost-benefit analysis should 
also consider harms like religious liberties?
    Mr. Revesz. Yes, Senator. I think cost-benefit analysis 
should consider impacts on any individuals who feel an impact. 
Actually, for example, the Obama Executive Order 13563 talks 
about human dignity as one of the factors that should be 
considered, and I consider religious liberty to be part and 
parcel of human dignity.
    Senator Hawley. Good. Let me ask you, how would you 
evaluate the costs and benefits of a regulation like 
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA's) vaccine 
mandate for employers that was struck down by the court in the 
National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) case earlier 
this year? Did you support that rule at the time, the OSHA 
rule, at the time it was issued?
    Mr. Revesz. I did not do any professional work on that 
rule, Senator.
    Senator Hawley. Did you have a professional opinion on it?
    Mr. Revesz. I try to stay in my lane. I express views when 
I have studied things, and I have not studied that issue.
    Senator Hawley. Let me ask you then to walk through how you 
would evaluate the costs and benefits of a regulation like that 
one, where you have very significant religious liberty concerns 
on one side of the ledger. Give us a sense of your thinking.
    Mr. Revesz. Right. I think those are cognizable 
consequences that should be evaluated. Now, as you know, not 
every cognizable consequence can be quantified and monetized 
because the techniques for doing that are not there. 
unquantified benefits should be taken into account in a well-
conducted cost-benefit analysis, and actually the Executive 
Orders and OMB Circular A-4 provide for that and say that 
should happen.
    Exactly how they get weighed against quantified 
consequences is difficult, and there is no cookbook approach to 
doing that, but that is what makes it an important and 
challenging endeavor. I would try to do this as well as could 
be done, taking advantage of any economic and other work, 
thinking through these issues. At the end of the day, 
qualitative judgments need to be made, as they need to be made 
with respect to other unquantified benefits as well.
    Senator Hawley. My time has expired and I know that there 
are other Senators who are waiting to question so I will have 
some more questions probably for the record and for you as 
well, Mr. Shriver.
    I would just say, Mr. Revesz, in your case I think we have 
seen, in the first two years, not quite two years of this 
Administration some truly outrageous and outlandish regulations 
that have not survived court review, and the OSHA mandate is 
one of them but there are others.
    I would hope, if you are confirmed, that you would be a 
check on these, frankly, sometimes illegal and unconstitutional 
actions. I am glad to hear you say you think it ought to be 
nonpartisan sort of review, and I hope that you would be a 
nonpartisan and neutral check. Given your long background in 
the law, your very distinguished record in the law, I hope that 
you would be someone who would stand for the rule of law 
against what I think, frankly, have been some outrageous 
actions by this Administration.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Hawley.
    Senator Sinema, you are recognized for your questions.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SINEMA

    Senator Sinema. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to 
our nominees for joining us. This is not an easy process, and I 
appreciate your willingness to serve.
    Mr. Revesz, when I hear from Arizonans and Arizona business 
owners, they are concerned with complex and burdensome rules 
coming out of Washington. Hard-working Arizonans want to comply 
with sensible rules, but regulatory agencies do not do a good 
job of looking back and making sure that the rules in place are 
achieving their goals and limiting impact on businesses.
    My Setting Manageable Analysis Requirements in Text (SMART) 
Act makes sure that agencies commit to reviewing their most 
extensive regulations when they are initially published by 
requiring that each major rule include a review plan. This plan 
will include methodologies for the review and a proposed 
timeline.
    If confirmed, will you commit to working with me to pass 
this legislation, and more generally, will you comment on the 
institutionalization of retrospective review in our regulatory 
process?
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you for the question, Senator. I will 
definitely commit to working with you on this important issue. 
I strongly favor evidence-based decisionmaking. It is critical 
that the benefits of regulation justify the costs.
    Now under Executive Order 12866 framework, that analysis is 
generally prospective, but Executive Order 13563 does 
contemplate a retrospective review.
    I think it is important to learn wherever we can about the 
impacts of regulation. We do it at the front end, in deciding 
whether regulations should be promulgated, and I agree with the 
sentiment that you expressed that retrospective review is 
important. I also agree that it is good to be able to have a 
data-gathering plan adopted that would make retrospective 
review possible.
    If confirmed, I really look forward to working, consulting 
with the OIRA team and working with you and your staff on how 
to make retrospective review a real part of the regulatory 
process.
    Senator Sinema. Thank you. While guidance documents do not 
have the power to bind they do have the power to significantly 
influence the behavior of private parties. Understanding this 
influential nature, what do you believe is the proper treatment 
of guidance documents by OIRA, and specifically, what 
flexibility should agencies have in the publication of 
guidance, and should these documents be subject to centralized 
review? Then finally, what standards do you believe should 
apply to such a review?
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you, Senator. I think guidance documents 
are a very important part of the regulatory process, and they 
should comply with transparency and public participation norms. 
They should be public. They should be public in a user-friendly 
way. Significant guidance documents currently undergo OIRA 
review, and I think that is appropriate. We are operating under 
an OMB memorandum dating back to 2007.
    If confirmed, I would make sure that there is in place a 
guidance process that is transparent, that the American people 
have access to the information, that it has opportunities for 
meaningful public participation, and undergoes OIRA review 
where the guidance is labeled to be economically significant.
    I think those are all important components of a well-
functioning guidance process, and I will do whatever I could in 
this position to make sure that the guidance process is working 
as well as it can for the American people.
    Senator Sinema. Thank you. I am a strong believer in the 
benefits of cost-benefit analysis, as articulated in Executive 
Order 12866 and OMB Circular A-4. Unfortunately, it seems that 
many individuals believe that this analysis is simply a code 
for deregulation and weakened Federal engagement.
    First, could you provide a brief overview of your 
understanding of the correct role of cost-benefit analysis in 
our rulemaking process, and second, what steps will you take, 
if confirmed, to highlight the positive outcomes associated 
with robust analysis and a strong, independent OIRA?
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you, Senator. In all of my work I have 
stressed the importance that cost-benefit analysis should play 
in the regulatory process, except where prohibited by statute. 
The reason is that regulations should evaluate all 
consequences, positive and negative, on the American people.
    I believe that properly conduct, cost-benefit analysis 
should not have, and does not have, an anti-regulatory impact--
I wrote a book about that--which does not mean that it has not, 
from time to time, been conducted in ways that had that impact. 
I think the important thing is to make sure that all costs and 
benefits are considered in a fair and even-handed way.
    For example, at time when unquantified benefits were 
ignored or when the indirect consequences of regulation were 
taken into account if they were negative but ignored if they 
were positive, if that happens cost-benefit analysis will have 
an anti-regulatory effect. I will make sure, if confirmed, that 
I will do everything I can to seek cost-benefit analysis be 
carried out in an even-handed way so that it is neither a 
Democratic tool nor a Republican tool, neither a tool that 
favors a large amount of regulation or opposes regulations, so 
that it does an accurate, even-handed, fair weighing of the 
consequences of regulation. That is what I see it doing, and I 
see that as being extremely important.
    Senator Sinema. Thank you. For my last question, as one of 
his first actions in office, President Biden issued his 
Modernizing Regulatory Review memorandum. The memo included a 
request for recommendations concerning how OIRA can become more 
proactive in promoting and undertaking regulatory initiatives.
    First, considering the limited size of OIRA, do you believe 
that it is feasible for desk officers to undertake the 
promotion of discretionary regulatory actions by agencies, and 
second, considering the need for an independent OIRA, will this 
unduly politicize the office?
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you, Senator. OIRA's role is primarily 
reactive and consists of reviewing regulatory impact analyses 
prepared by agencies. But since the promulgation of Executive 
Order 12866, OIRA has played somewhat of a proactive role with 
respect to the submissions by agencies of their unified 
regulatory agendas. When John Graham was the OIRA administrator 
in the Bush Administration he instituted a practice of issuing 
prompt letters. One such letter resulted in a requirement that 
certain large buildings have defibrillators, which as a 
requirement has led to the saving of a large number of lives, 
of people who would have died from heart attacks.
    A proactive role is not completely foreign to OIRA, and 
President Biden asked OIRA to consider what proactive role 
might be desirable. If confirmed, I would work on how best to 
implement the Presidential directive. I do not think that a 
proactive role would politicize OIRA, because OIRA's 
intervention will be limited to what OIRA does under Executive 
Order 12866, which is to ensure that the benefits of regulation 
justify their costs.
    When Administrator Graham in the Bush Administration issued 
the prompt letter that led to defibrillators, he did that 
because he understood, from his background as a public health 
expert, that there were large benefits that would come from 
this requirement that were being left on the table because 
agencies had not moved to do that.
    Senator Sinema. Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. I have a 
question for Mr. Shriver and I will submit it for the record. 
Thank you.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Sinema.
    Senator Rosen, you are recognized for your questions.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN

    Senator Rosen. Thank you Chair Peters, Ranking Member 
Lankford, and thank you both for your willingness to serve 
these important roles.
    I am going to move a little bit over to talking about IT 
modernization in OPM. Mr. Shriver, I really thank you for being 
here today. I would like to talk about Government 
Accountability Office (GAOs) high-risk report. It comes out 
every two years, and identifies areas in the Federal Government 
at high risk for fraud, waste, or mismanagement. The last 
report made a number of recommendations for addressing these 
high-risk areas, and OPM, of course, has a large role to play 
in addressing them.
    Specifically, in the area of IT modernization and workforce 
training, one of the report's recommendations for improving the 
Federal Government's management of tens of billions of dollars 
of IT investments was establishing key IT workforce planning 
processes.
    Mr. Shriver, if confirmed, what are your plans to work with 
individual Federal agencies to ensure that they have these 
workforce planning processes in place, and how, in your new 
capacity, will you work to recruit and retain specifically 
cybersecurity staff?
    Mr. Shriver. Thank you very much for your question, 
Senator, and I think certainly the IT modernization issues that 
you have raised have been priorities at OPM and will continue 
to be priorities for us. If I am fortunate enough to be 
confirmed as Deputy Director it is an area that I would be 
happy to plan active role. Currently in my day-to-day role as 
the Associate Director for Employee Services I am not as 
involved in that.
    I can say that I think with respect the GAO high-risk list 
and recommendations overall, our strategy at OPM has been to 
embed those into our strategic plan. We have a new OPM 
strategic plan that we released earlier this year, and that 
plan is informed by the recommendations from the Government 
Accountability Office, including on IT. We have metrics that we 
are using to measure progress. We have regular leadership-level 
meetings to talk strategically about implementation of that 
plan and those recommendations. I would continue to play a 
role, and as Deputy Director would actively engage on the IT 
issues.
    With respect to cyber talent, we have major challenges in 
the Federal Government, and there are some good practices that 
have begun. I was happy to work with the Department of Homeland 
Security on deployment of its cyber talent management system, 
which has some interesting innovations when it comes to hiring 
and compensation and the way that cyber talent is deployed 
across DHS.
    I think there are a lot of lessons to learn there, and I 
would welcome to the opportunity to work with you and this 
Committee on how we might develop a governmentwide cyber talent 
strategy that puts the rest of the agencies on more of a level 
playing field with DHS and the Department of Defense (DOD), who 
also has its own authority.
    Senator Rosen. I would very much like to work on that 
because we do need to do IT modernization across the whole 
government, and we have a skills gap issue. GAO's most recent 
high-risk report also identified strategic human capital 
management as a high-risk area. It is downgrading the Federal 
Government's progress rating in this area from its 2019 report.
    In doing so, it cited that what was at the time, in 2021, 
the lack of a Senate-confirmed leadership at OPM for 18 of the 
prior 24 months, it really led to a mission-critical skills gap 
across the Federal workforce. We know this in every area.
    Thankfully, OPM now has a confirmed director in place, but 
as deputy you will still have a key role to play in addressing, 
again, the skills gap required to do this modernization as 
still persists.
    The training, the skills gap, how do you think you can 
address it? What can we do here to help you address it as you 
think about your new role?
    Mr. Shriver. Thank you for your question, Senator, and 
thank you for acknowledging that the lack of consistent 
leadership in the past at OPM has been a major contributing 
factor in that area. Under Director Ahuja's leadership, and if 
I were to be confirmed as deputy, we would be certainly 
prioritizing. I am excited about making progress in this area.
    We have been doing a lot of work on the skills gap at OPM. 
One of the things that I think is important, Senator, is 
actually hiring people based on skills instead of proxy for 
skills. Many agencies, historically, have been hiring folks 
maybe because they have a college degree or because they rank 
themselves on self-assessment questionnaires. We have been 
implementing a new skills-based hiring initiative, where we 
work with agencies to really define what the qualifications are 
that are needed for the jobs and then how they can assess 
candidates, based on the actual skills that they have.
    One of the techniques that has been successful in some 
pilot projects is actually engaging subject matter experts in 
the hiring process. The subject matter experts know what to 
look for on a resume, they know what to listen for in an 
interview, and they know what to look for in a writing sample. 
That is critical.
    I think in addition to looking to hire people based on 
skills we certainly need to work on our career development, on 
our training opportunity, work on up-skilling. I know OPM has 
had some successful up-skilling pilots in the past around 
cybersecurity, around the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and I 
think that we have an opportunity to build on those efforts and 
help align workers' existing skills to new jobs and make sure 
that we provide the training they need to be successful.
    Senator Rosen. Yes, I particularly like the up-skilling. I 
think that really helps. You have employees that are already 
there. It helps move them around, someplace they are already 
familiar with. Of course, the proxy for skills, that is really 
great because people do have a lot of skills they bring to the 
table, and it is important for us to identify them.
    Just in the few seconds I have left I know Senator Sinema 
was talking about science-based rulemaking. Mr. Revesz, in the 
prior administration any rulemakings were heavily influenced by 
politics rather than science or legal principles, and it is 
crucial that all Federal agencies, including the EPA, 
Department of Interior, Department of Energy use the best 
science available in order to protect public health and, of 
course, the environment.
    I know you spoke a little bit to Senator Sinema's question, 
but you talk about your analysis and how you are going to do it 
and how you are going to keep it free of politics. Is there 
anything else that you would like to let us know about how you 
want to work on those things and make sure that we have the 
best rulemaking for the agency, for the people, and the 
environment as well?
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you for the question, Senator. As I 
mentioned, I think it is just important that in the analysis 
all of the consequences be taken into account. I wrote a book 
about some of the analytical failings in the analysis done by 
the prior administration, and actually the courts ended up 
striking down a number of those rules based on the poor quality 
of the analysis.
    For example, one mistake was to essentially equate 
unquantified benefits as non-existent, just because the 
techniques for quantifying them had not been developed, as 
opposed to trying to figure out in a qualitative way how to 
take them into account. There were also regulations that 
essentially ignored the indirect consequences of regulation if 
they were positive but took them into account if they were 
negative. That is putting a thumb against regulation.
    All of those are erroneous techniques, are not consistent 
with the methodology and with professional understandings, and 
if confirmed, I would make sure that the best professional 
understandings of how to do this work are followed by OIRA.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you. My time has expired.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Rosen.
    I will be shortly recognizing Senator Padilla but I am 
going to need to step out to another hearing and Senator Carper 
will take the gavel in my absence.
    Senator Padilla, you are recognized for your questions.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PADILLA

    Senator Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, Mr. 
Revesz, it was a pleasure spending some time with you in my 
office earlier in this week. My first question is for you.
    One of OIRA's most significant functions is its centralized 
review of, quote, ``significant Federal regulations,'' which 
impact millions of Americans. Similar to elections and election 
administration, I believe our democracy works better when there 
is greater public engagement from all groups and a broad range 
of relevant stakeholders that can contribute to, in this case, 
government processes, not just turning out and voting. I 
believe this should also apply to the regulatory process.
    What populations do you think are currently underserved by 
the way the regulatory process is functioning? I know you have 
done some research in this area in the past.
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you for the question, Senator. I think it 
is very important that in addition to having aggregate 
estimates of costs and benefits we understand how regulations 
affect subsections of the American people. It could be farmers. 
It could be business owners. It could be workers. It could be 
people with asthma or other respiratory illnesses. Because not 
everyone is affected by pollution or by other consequences in 
the same way, and it is very important to understand that.
    I do not think the regulatory process has done a 
particularly good job at disaggregating this information, and I 
think for a while that was because the techniques for doing 
that were not available. I think they have improved 
significantly since then. President Biden has called for this 
work to be done as part of his modernizing memorandum.
    I have written about some very simple improvements that 
could be done in the regulatory process, which is, for example, 
to look at the distributional consequences of different 
alternatives to a particular proposed rule and not only to the 
rule that is actually proposed. we look at alternatives in 
connection with the determination of aggregate costs and 
benefits, but we have traditionally not looked at alternatives 
to determine distribution. As a result, we cannot make the best 
decisions that could be made.
    If confirmed, I would very much want to work with the 
agencies and with the OIRA staff and get advice from Members of 
this Committee on how best to make sure that we have the most 
sophisticated understanding of the disparate impact of both the 
adverse consequences the regulations seek to address and of the 
regulations themselves on different groups of American people.
    Senator Padilla. I appreciate your thoughtfulness on this 
and already coming forward with some suggestions or 
recommendations on how to improve the process and frankly make 
it more equitable as a result.
    I know some of my colleagues--Senator Peters, Senator 
Sinema and others--have talked about the process for 
modernizing regulatory review, recommendations to revise 
Circular A-4 specifically, so I will not be repetitive on those 
items. But I did want to associate myself with their concerns, 
their questions, and their prioritization.
    In the time remaining I will turn to Mr. Shriver, and this 
is a little bit of a follow-up to questions from Senator Rosen. 
She was specific to cybersecurity, sort of workforce concerns 
in general, and I want to weave in two items I have asked 
questions of from your colleagues that have come through the 
Committee for consideration before.
    We talk specifically about the need for science, 
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) talent as you 
recruit, as you retain workforce, and diversity within that 
cohort. Yes, I am proud to speak as a graduate from 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a mechanical 
engineering degree, trying to up the ranks of STEM talent on 
this side of the dais.
    In May, the Senate passed my resolution expressing the 
Senate's support for increasing the number of Latino students, 
specifically, and in professionals entering STEM fields, not 
just in the private sector but in the public sector as well, in 
all levels of government. Latinos make up 17 percent of the 
overall workforce in the United States but represent less than 
8 percent of the workforce in STEM fields.
    The Federal Government is the nation's largest employer, 
with hundreds of thousands of STEM employees. I am interested 
in helping Federal agencies fill the needed positions with 
qualified, diverse perspectives from various backgrounds. Mr. 
Shriver, I would appreciate any thoughts you may have on how to 
build a more diverse STEM pipeline and workforce for the 
Federal Government.
    Mr. Shriver. Thank you, Senator Padilla, for your question, 
and I think you have put your finger on a critical issue for 
the Federal Government. We absolutely need to have diverse 
pools of talent, pipelines of talent, into Federal positions.
    We have been meeting with colleges and universities around 
the country, including Historically black colleges and 
universities (HBCUs), minority-serving institutions (MSIs), and 
what we are hearing from them is, No. 1, that they would like 
to see more recruiting from the Federal Government, but No. 2, 
only if that recruiting actually leads to real positions. We 
have had a real drop-off in the number of interns that have 
been brought into the Federal Government.
    One of the priorities that I have been working on in my 
current role under Director Ahuja's leadership is how we can we 
reinvigorate our early career talent hiring. There are multiple 
ways that we are working on that. We did implement some 
streamlined hiring authorities that had been enacted under the 
previous administration for post-secondary interns and college 
graduates.
    We are taking a fresh look at our Pathways program, which 
is the primary program that agencies use to hire interns and 
recent college graduates. We are working on new guidance on 
paid internships. Under President Biden's Executive Order on 
diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility he directed OPM 
and OMB to issue guidance to agencies on how to increase the 
number of paid internships and decrease agency reliance on 
unpaid internships, which of course are obstacles to 
participation in Federal opportunities.
    I look forward to OPM with OMB issuing that guidance later 
this year, and we will continue to engage with the communities 
to make sure that we are living up to what the law requires, 
which is the Federal Government should be recruiting from all 
segments of society.
    Senator Padilla. Great. Thank you very much. I look forward 
to following up on both of these items with both of you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER

    Senator Carper [presiding.] Senator Padilla, you are 
welcome. We just swapped out chairs here. One in, one out. I 
just joined you from another hearing and I am happy to be here 
at this one.
    Mr. Shriver, good to see you. I heard, Mr. Revesz, name 
pronounced in a number of ways. How do you pronounce it?
    Mr. Revesz. Re-vez [phonetic], Senator.
    Senator Carper. That is great. That was my only question 
for you.
    Mr. Revesz. I hope I answered it well.
    Senator Carper. You did. Thanks a lot for joining us today. 
I thank you both for your willingness to serve in these two 
very important positions.
    Mr. Shriver, my understanding, and I think it is our 
understanding, is OPM is rebuilding its staff and its 
operations after experiencing insufficient resourcing during 
the last administration. What are some of the challenges ahead 
for OPM as it rebuilds its organization, and what are the 
opportunities? I like to say in adversity lies opportunity. But 
what are some of the opportunities, and how would you, if 
confirmed as Deputy Director, build on those opportunities to 
help OPM drive efforts to modernize the Federal workforce 
policy across the Federal Government?
    Mr. Shriver. Thank you so much for the question, Senator 
Carper. It is both a challenging and an exciting time to be at 
OPM for the very reasons that you identified.
    In my current role as Associate Director for Employee 
Services I have been leading the Administration's 
governmentwide Federal workforce policy, and I have been doing 
it with a team that is not as staffed up as it had been 
previously, a team that lost a lot of subject matter expertise. 
What we have been attempting to do while we rebuild that is 
also reestablish OPM as the Federal Government's strategic 
human capital leader.
    It has been very exciting to work on the President's 
ambitious agenda for the Federal workforce. We want these 
challenges, but there has been much work to be done. We have 
talked about several of the issues here today that OPM has been 
working on and needs to continue to work on. It has been really 
important to prioritize and to work hard toward those 
priorities. It has been really important to think strategically 
and use our resources wisely because they are scarce.
    Now I think the opportunity that is here is re-imagining 
what OPM means as the strategic human capital leader. We worked 
very closely, for example, Senator, with the agencies that were 
receiving substantial funds under the Bipartisan Infrastructure 
Law (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act), and we worked 
with them right when the law was passed to understand what 
their human capital needs would be. We brought together teams 
of people from across OPM to serve them. I think what we saw 
were some successful early results on how an approach like that 
can bring efficiencies into the Federal human resources (HR) 
process. We are going to take those lessons learned and build 
that out at OPM writ large.
    That is one example of where there was an opportunity to 
kind of transform the way that OPM is serving agencies.
    Senator Carper. Proving once again that in adversity lies 
opportunity. Albert Einstein.
    Mr. Shriver, in the past when meeting with agencies Chief 
Human Capital Officers about modernizing the Federal workforce 
and the hiring and retention practices, often we have heard 
from them that OPM was an obstacle rather than a partner in 
developing and implementation demonstration projects to improve 
hiring and retention. Do you believe that OPM should be a 
partner in these initiatives, and if so, if confirmed, how 
would you ensure that OPM is truly a partner to these Federal 
agencies?
    Mr. Shriver. Thank you for the question, Senator. I 
absolutely believe that OPM should serve as a partner to 
agencies. Of course, we have an important compliance role that 
we play too, and that is critical. But I think I would build on 
my previous answer and say that we really are looking to re-
imagine how OPM can be a strategic partner to agencies and help 
them address the human capital challenges that they are facing, 
day in and day out.
    It was really wonderful that the Chief Human Capital 
Council was returned to OPM at the beginning of the 
Administration. We have been working hard to build our 
relationships with the so-called CHCOs, day in and day out. We 
have not only regular meetings with all of the chief human 
capital officers, we have instituted a number of different 
engagements, including personnel policy office hours, where we 
bring our subject matter experts to the meeting to answer 
questions that CHCOs are having.
    We have been engaging prior to issuing regulations and new 
policy with the chief human capital officers to ensure that 
their views, as critical stakeholders, are encompassed. We have 
encouraged them to make robust use of the OIRA process for 
interagency review of regulations so that we can get all of 
their perspectives. Again, like we did with the infrastructure 
implementation we are looking for how we can engage early with 
them as strategic partners to bring human capital to the top of 
the list when it comes to implementing these major programs.
    Senator Carper. Good. Thank you. One question for Mr. 
Revesz and then I think we are going to have to break off.
    Mr. Revesz, on January 20th last year, President Biden 
signed a Presidential memorandum to modernize regulatory 
review, as you may recall. If confirmed as Administrator of the 
Office of Information and Regulatory Administration, it will 
fall to you to lead the agency in implementing this memorandum. 
What is your approach in striking a balance between social, 
environmental, economic, and public health consideration when 
reviewing regulations?
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you, Senator. I think the implementation 
of the memorandum is enormously important. The President gave a 
clear direction, and if confirmed, I look forward to working 
with the OIRA team to do that.
    One important component of the memorandum is bringing OMB 
Circular A-4 up to the present. It is a very good guidance 
document. It is 20 years old. We need to make sure that all 
relevant benefits of regulation are taken into account, if they 
can be quantified that they are quantified, same on the cost 
side, and that we better understand how regulations affect 
different groups of Americans in different ways, and that 
regulatory process will work better if we have that 
understanding.
    We already do it, for example, under statutes for small 
businesses in the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) and the 
Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Act (SBREFA). The 
President asked for this work to be done more broadly, and if 
confirmed, I very much look forward to implementing the 
President's directive so that regulations can work better, not 
just for the American people in general but for individual 
groups of the American people.
    Senator Carper. Thank you for that response.
    I think I am going to hold it right here. Senator Lankford 
is going to be joining us. He has asked that we hold and wait 
so he can ask some questions as well. He is very mindful of 
these issues and very knowledgeable about the issues that we 
are talking about, and I know he very much wants to be part of 
the dialog.
    In the 30 seconds that we have until he gets here, do any 
of you have, in the audience, a family member? Mr. Shriver, do 
you?
    Mr. Shriver. Yes, Senator. I have my wife.
    Senator Carper. Would your wife raise her hand? What is her 
name?
    Mr. Shriver. Her name is JoAnn Martinez.
    Senator Carper. Hi, JoAnn. I noticed that while you were 
speaking her eyes were rolling. (Laughter.]
    That usually happens with my wife and me. It is a trait I 
admire in women.
    Anybody else besides your wife?
    Mr. Shriver. I have two of my three children. My other is 
off at school.
    Senator Carper. Sons and daughters, raise your hands, 
please, the Shrivers.
    Mr. Shriver. Mitch and Justine.
    Senator Carper. All right. Good to see you guys. Thanks for 
sharing your husband and your dad with all of us.
    All right. James, my friend. Happy to pass the gavel to 
you.
    Senator Lankford [presiding.] Senator Carper, thank you for 
vamping for me. I appreciate that very much. I never have to 
worry if you are going to run out of words. [Laughter.]
    Senator Carper. We make it up as we go along.
    Senator Lankford. I got it. Thanks again for the 
conversation, and let me ask some additional questions.
    Mr. Shriver, we did not get a chance to be able to talk in 
the last round of questioning so I want to walk through several 
things back with you. Thanks again for the long conversation 
that we had to be able to walk through a lot of issues in 
greater depth than we will have the opportunity to be able to 
do here.
    There is a challenge in some of our agencies on the Federal 
workforce getting back to the office post-Coronavirus Disease 
2019 (COVID-19). Some of them have been very effective with 
that. some of them are continuing to be able to work through 
what is going to be telework, what is going to be remote work, 
what is going to be in-office work.
    But there is some in-office work that is still not actually 
in-office, and it is slowing down and we have a backlog in 
multiple different agencies right now, noticeably the IRS, 
State Department and passport work. We have a lot of issues and 
backlogs in multiple of our entities, in Social Security, that 
have face-to-face needs to be able to connect with folks.
    How do we get folks back to work so we can catch up with 
the backlog? Most of corporate America, most private businesses 
around the country are open again and engage. How do we get the 
Federal workforce back in?
    Mr. Shriver. Thank you for the question, Senator, and I 
think I want to first start by acknowledging that during the 
pandemic fully half of the Federal Government continued to show 
up in the workplace, day in and day out, to do the work of the 
American people, and we owe them a debt of gratitude for that.
    You are right that for the rest there was a different 
footing. There was, in many places, a maximum telework footing, 
and there was a process that the administration ran around re-
entry, and that process was laid out in a memorandum, M-21-25, 
that OMB, OPM, and General Services Administration (GSA) issued 
together. The thing I want to highlight from that is that these 
decisions need to be made with delivery of the mission in mind. 
Productivity, delivery of the mission, those need to be 
paramount.
    So agencies conducted their re-entry back. Most of them got 
done in April and a few took a little bit longer, but that re-
entry has occurred. Now we are in that process of evaluating. 
Now that we have re-entered, how are these new hybrid work 
arrangements working? What is the impact on productivity? What 
is the impact on mission delivery? It is important that 
agencies continue to make that assessment.
    I think the one last thing I would say, Senator, though, is 
that I think if an agency were to just go back to the way 
things were prior to the pandemic in February 2020, I think 
that they would lose a lot of talent to other sectors. This 
needs to be done strategically, but I think we can all agree we 
need to put productivity and mission delivery first.
    Senator Lankford. We do. Actually, strategically does not 
mean delay. It can be intentional, and that has been the 
challenge that a lot of my constituents have in Oklahoma, that 
will contact me and say, ``Hey, I cannot get hold of somebody 
face-to-face in Social Security'' or ``I cannot get my passport 
done'' or ``I cannot get access to IRS.'' It is always there 
was a person there, I have to meet with a person, I have to be 
able to answer it, and they are not there. They are confused 
because their bank is open, the restaurants are open, their 
business is open, everybody else is open, and they are saying, 
``Well, we are still trying to be able to work through the 
process of coming back in.''
    I think that is the issue that really infuriates Oklahomans 
is to say we are all open and suddenly it is, OK, we are 
different than you. We are not open yet. But it is also behind.
    So getting the mission done is incredibly important, as 
well as protecting those individuals that are also in the 
workforce, because I have great respect for the Federal 
employees as well, and to continue to be able to protect them 
as we do everybody else.
    You and I had a good conversation yesterday about the 
world's largest pilot program for telework that just happened 
with COVID. It is interesting to me, the Federal studies that 
were done in agencies just a few years ago said about 19 
percent of their employees could go telework. Then COVID 
happens, and in some agencies we had 80 percent plus that were 
in telework posture on it, and everybody kind of figured out 
how to be able to make this work.
    Now, post-COVID, we have people back in the workforce but 
we have also learned that we can do things teleworking and we 
can do things remote work.
    My question to you is, in remote work, that is an 
individual that is not living around the headquarters, is not 
expected to be sometimes in the office and sometimes working 
somewhere else, that is not expected to be in the office, a 
true remote work individual, what are your thoughts and 
opinions about expanding the highly qualified pool of workforce 
around the country to be remote work individuals and those 
individuals that may be spouses of military that work in very 
remote military installations that have a very difficult time 
having a career, that may be able to get a job on the different 
base or post but they cannot really build a career anywhere 
because they move every two to three years with their spouse, 
giving them the opportunity to build a career in the Federal 
family, based on doing remote work wherever they may be?
    Mr. Shriver. Ranking Member Lankford, thank you for the 
question, and I enjoyed talking to you about this topic because 
I think it is really a game-changer for the Federal Government. 
I think that agencies are experimenting right now with some 
remote work pilots. There was a little bit of remote work that 
happened prior to the pandemic. I think they are experimenting 
with where maybe we can think more broadly about it.
    One of the things that is exciting about remote work is it 
opens the possibility of Federal employment to communities all 
throughout the country, where previously those opportunities 
were only available if people moved, sometimes into a different 
State, many hundreds of miles. Remote work makes that a new 
possibility for those community.
    I especially appreciate your connection to military 
spouses. We have special authorities in the Federal Government 
that allow for a streamlined hiring process for military 
spouses, and I think that is sound public policy and something 
to build on.
    They are rather underutilized, and I think that if we were 
able to pair those hiring authorities with remote work 
opportunities, where exactly as you say, military spouses could 
stay in their same job, no matter where their spouse might be 
deployed, I think that would be a good thing for the civil 
service, a good thing for the folks that serve our country in 
the military, and a good thing for the spouses, because I know 
they have a lot to add to what we do day in and day out.
    Senator Lankford. Yes. Thanks for mentioning the hiring 
authorities on it. We have about 120 hiring authorities, but 
every agency still calls me and says, ``I want direct hiring 
authority. I do not like any of the 120 that are out there as 
possibilities.'' The vast majority of the 120 are not ever 
used. They are niche, different hiring authorities that are out 
there.
    But the whole structure of how we do hiring, 100 days to 
hire, the process, you mentioned in some of your written 
documents in advance you want to speed up the hiring process 
and make that a more efficient process. What are your ideas for 
that?
    Mr. Shriver. Thank you for the question, Ranking Member. We 
certainly do lose out on good candidates for Federal jobs 
because of the length of time it takes, so this is something we 
must address.
    I think one of the top new tools that we have been working 
on with agencies is to move away from just the old model of one 
job announcement, one job, let us go one at a time and hire 
people into the Federal Government, to more pooled hiring. What 
I mean by pooled hiring is agencies have similar jobs, right? 
Like they are looking for people with similar skill sets. How 
can we do a pooled hiring action where we get a whole bunch of 
qualified candidates and multiple agencies can then hire from 
that? That would make a dramatic impact on the time to hire 
because you would do all of this good work--recruiting, 
assessing candidates--and have this big pool of well-qualified 
folks that any agency could hire from.
    I think that is important. I also think it is really 
important that we focus on the assessments that we are using to 
determine the skills of applicants, because I think too often 
what happens, if we do not do a good job of recruiting and 
assessing the talent then the hiring manager is not happy with 
the candidates they get at the end of the day and they may 
start the process all over again, which adds exponentially to 
the time to hire.
    Senator Lankford. Right, and then you deal with the 
dynamics of people self-assessing their own skill level with 
that, and they are being taught, make sure you mark yourself at 
the highest level of all of them or you are not going to get 
there, and you have people say, ``Well, I still have areas to 
grow in this.'' They would be a very highly qualified candidate 
but they just do not self-assess them as high as their actual 
skill level is.
    There was a story I heard when I was in Oklahoma several 
years ago in one of our Federal facilities that we needed to 
hire a forklift driver, and it took over 100 days to be able to 
hire someone to drive the forklift. They were having a real 
struggle with it because forklift drivers would go to other 
companies and they would get hired faster, and then by the time 
we got back to them in the Federal entity they have already 
worked at some other place another two months and they are not 
going to quit.
    The other thing was they would say, ``I am not going to 
rank myself the highest level as a forklift operator because I 
have only driven a forklift three years. I know a friend of 
mine that he has driven a forklift 20 years. He is a lot better 
than I am, so I am not going to rank myself as high as him,'' 
though they are highly qualified. They have been doing it for 
two, two and a half, three, four, five years, and would 
definitely meet the standard of what we are actually looking 
for it, but they have their own challenge with the whole 
assessment process.
    We are very interested in this as a Committee on what we 
can do to actually fix the hiring process, to be able to 
expedite this, to get more transitions from interns into 
positions, more highly qualified individuals within the pool 
nationwide, more individuals that will want to be able to 
engage in this process and it be a faster process, to be able 
to work through it.
    So just know that this Committee is very interested to be 
able to work with you to be able to accomplish that in the days 
ahead.
    Mr. Shriver. Thank you for your interest, Ranking Member. I 
would be happy to work with you and the Committee on these 
issues.
    Senator Lankford. Again, this should not be a partisan 
issue. We should go get the best possible people to be able to 
serve their neighbors and their friends across the Nation, 
serving in the Federal family on this.
    Mr. Revesz, I want to be able to follow up on a couple of 
things as well. I asked you yesterday a very difficult 
question. Independent agencies are independent of who? Because 
independent agencies often feel like they are independent of 
everyone, but I do not believe that is actually so. I am not 
sure, based on your response yesterday, that you believe it is 
actually so as well.
    The challenge is getting OIRA's oversight to be able to 
help independent agencies to actually do the rulemaking process 
and the regulatory process for them, to be able to make sure 
they are making good decisions. Again, we do not want to end up 
in years of litigation based on they just did not have good 
accountability. How do we deal with the issue of independent 
agencies?
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you, Senator. As I indicated, I strongly 
believe that the benefits of significant regulation should 
justify their costs, and the regulation agencies should seek to 
maximize and add benefits of regulation as the Executive Order 
provides, except where statute dictate otherwise.
    I have written about how the quality of analysis has been 
better in the Executive Branch and independent agencies, and I 
believe that OIRA's role in diffusing good practices throughout 
the Executive Branch accounts for these differences.
    There are ways in which OIRA could help analysis in 
independent agencies, short of extending the Executive Order. A 
model for that is memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the 
Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and OIRA following 
the passage of the Dodd-Frank legislation.
    On the specific question of extending the Executive Order, 
in 1981, the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued an opinion 
stating that the President has the authority to extend the 
Executive Order to independent agencies, and the Executive 
Order already extends to independent agencies with respect to 
the requirement that they submit their unified regulatory 
agendas to OIRA for review every year.
    If confirmed, I would like to work with the OIRA team to 
ascertain ways in which OIRA can help improve analysis across 
the Federal Government, not just in the Executive Branch but 
across independent agencies as well, and I look forward to 
working with you and members of your staff on that question.
    On the specific decision whether the President should 
extend the Executive Order to independent agencies, while it is 
one for Congress and the President to make, I think Presidents 
for the last 40 years have known that they have that authority, 
and for whatever reason Presidents for the last 40 years have 
not extended it with respect to this aspect of OIRA's work, 
even though they have extended it with respect to other aspects 
of OIRA's work.
    Senator Lankford. OK. I look forward to that ongoing 
conversation.
    One final question for you on this, and it is dealing with 
some of the environmental review studies, modeling, and such, 
that actually goes through cost-benefit analysis. Occasionally 
the studies that are used for regulatory and cost-benefit 
analysis are not made public. They are proprietary models, is 
typically the conversation that is made. The American public 
has a new regulation imposed on them but actually cannot see 
the model of why this is actually a benefit or what the cost 
could be because the model is proprietary.
    The challenge is if the regulation is going to be public, 
the reason the regulation should be there should also be 
public. How do we deal with these secret studies that are in 
the background, to say, ``Trust me. This warrants this, but you 
cannot see it''? How do we deal with that?
    Mr. Revesz. Thank you, Senator, for the question. I am a 
strong believer in transparency in the regulatory process, and 
scientific studies are often the building blocks of regulation 
because they are what tells us that pollution is causing this 
number of deaths or this number of illnesses or this number of 
lost work days, and so on. I believe that scientific studies 
should be public, and the underlying information should be 
public.
    There is an issue about how to protect the individual 
identities of the subjects of scientific studies. I think, 
probably all of us would be a little worried about 
participating in studies if we thought that our sort of full 
health records for the rest of our lives would be available on 
public websites. In days of large data, it is sometimes 
difficult to mask that information, because there have been 
studies showing how this information can then be put back 
together and associated with individual people. That is a 
challenge.
    I think the scientific community has norms about this, and 
in general, agencies do rely on peer-reviewed studies, and 
should rely on peer-reviewed studies. Peer-reviewed studies 
have to meet the standards of scientific journals, which deal 
precisely with this issue. It is an issue I care about and I am 
interested in, and if confirmed, I would see how best we can 
promote the transparency norms that I hold so dear while, at 
the same time, protecting the privacy interests of individuals 
who are subject to these studies.
    Senator Lankford. Right. The challenge of that is a peer-
reviewed study is still a limited group of individuals to be 
able to see it, and you are still into the ``Trust me, we have 
looked at it and it is OK'' model. We have to be able to have a 
way to be able to have models, systems, processes, that if we 
are going to have transparency, we have full transparency. It 
is the joy of us, as Americans. We love each other and we do 
not trust each other at the same time. We try to work through 
the process of saying if we are going to make this decision 
together, being ``we,'' the people, then we need to be able to 
have the access to look at it. Whether they actually look at it 
or not, when you tell somebody I cannot see it, then 
immediately the suspicion is, what is in it? That is a fair 
question through our history to be able to ask, and it would be 
one of those things that we have to be able to work through.
    Mr. Revesz. I agree, Senator. I think generally, scientific 
journals have increased the requirements for making data 
public, and there has been a significant trend in that 
direction. I think it is a salutary one.
    Senator Lankford. Yes. It is one we have to resolve.
    Gentlemen, thanks again. Thanks to your families for being 
here for a long day of questioning. All of this will go on the 
record. There will be additional questions that will be coming 
for questions for the record, and we will get those to you.
    The nominees have filled out their responses to 
biographical and financial questionnaires,\1\ answered pre-
hearing questions submitted by the Committee,\2\ had their 
financial statements reviewed by the Office of Government 
Ethics (OGE). Without objection, this information will be made 
a part of the hearing record with the exception of the 
financial data, which is on file and available for public 
inspection in the Committee offices.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The information on Mr. Shriver appears in the Appendix on page 
40.
    \2\ The information on Mr. Revesz appears in the Appendix on page 
90.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The hearing record will remain open until noon tomorrow, 
September 30th, for the submission of statements and questions 
for the record.
    Again, thank you very much for the hearing today and we 
look forward to the ongoing process. This hearing is adjourned. 
[Whereupon, at 12:14 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

                            A P P E N D I X

                              ----------                              

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                 [all]