[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 110 (Wednesday, September 4, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8180-S8183]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            ORDER FOR RECESS

  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
stand in recess from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. today for a briefing by 
Secretary Rumsfeld.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut 
for the statement he has made today and for his leadership, once again, 
on this issue, and for his contribution toward our being here today. He 
speaks eloquently as to our need to do things differently with regard 
to this Government and with regard to the reorganization of a very 
important part of our Government. His analogy of gasoline and engines I 
think is right on point. It doesn't matter how much gasoline you put 
into a faulty engine, it is still a faulty engine.
  We need to do better than that. There is no reason that at end of the 
day we can't pass a bill that is going to make this country safer than 
it was before, and that is our common goal.
  Few need to be reminded why we are here. While September 11 was not 
the opening salvo, it was the event that forced us to confront the 
scope of the threats to our country and to recognize the need to do 
something significant and meaningful to address those threats.
  Prior to the 1980s, most terrorist groups were regionally focused and 
lacked the means and the connections to operate on a global scale. They 
relied upon state sponsors for financial support and often fought for 
ideological reasons. The few exceptions were those who fought to 
destroy the Israeli state. During the 1980s, this trend began to 
change. With the increase in militant Islamic attacks against Israel, 
the rise of revolutionary Iran, and the formation of Mujahedin in 
Afghanistan, terrorism began to take a more extremist tone. Then, in 
1983, a small group in Lebanon, now known as Hizballah, began using a 
devastating new tactic to target Western troops: suicide bombings. The 
United States was the first to experience the destructiveness of this 
form of attack. In April 1983, a suicide bomber drove a 2,000 pound 
truck bomb into the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63. The full impact 
of suicide bombings, however, was not felt until 6 months later. On 
October 23, 1983, a lone suicide bomber drove a truck laden with 
explosives into the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 
American servicemen and injuring dozens more.

[[Page S8181]]

  Since 1983, we have experienced other terrorist attacks as well. In 
1989, terrorists downed Pam Am 103, killing over two hundred; in 1993, 
extremists tried to destroy the World Trade Center by detonating a van 
laden with tens of pounds of high explosives; in 1995, Timothy McVeigh 
exploded a rental van outside the Oklahoma Federal Building, killing 
168 people; in 1996, religious extremists blew up the Khobar Towers in 
Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring another 372; 
in 1998, extremists blew up truck bombs outside the U.S. embassies in 
Tanzania and Kenya, murdering 252 people, including 12 Americans, and 
injuring at least 5,000 more; and in 2000, extremists blew themselves 
up alongside the U.S.S. Cole, nearly sinking the ship. 17 American 
sailors were killed and another 39 were wounded.
  The list does not include a number of planned terrorist attacks that 
were disrupted or prevented by U.S. or foreign intelligence, military, 
and law enforcement operations. It is easy to imagine, however, that 
this list could have been much longer.
  Over the last 10 years, Congress literally held dozens of hearings on 
what we should do to combat terrorism. We have also had report after 
report highlighting the dangers of terrorism. The General Accounting 
Office alone has issued over 50 reports on various ways to better 
protect our country against terrorist attack. Several independent 
commissions have also recommended measures that would have addressed 
many of our vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, we did not implement 
measures because they were either costly or unpopular. We lacked both 
consensus and a sense of urgency.

  If anything positive can be gleaned from the tragic attacks of 
September 11, perhaps it is the appearance of a national consensus for 
change. Most Americans today believe that the deficiencies in our 
homeland security must be corrected and are willing to bear the costs 
of doing so.
  President Bush has personally embraced this task and employed every 
tool at his disposal. Some of the actions that he has taken to date 
include: Destroying terrorist camps in Afghanistan and helping to 
restore a civil government in that beleaguered land; tracking and 
eliminating funding sources for terrorist organizations; deploying 
greater intelligence resources around the world to hunt down 
terrorists; fostering an international consensus and forming a 
diplomatic coalition against terrorism and its supporters; creating the 
Northern Command in the Department of Defense to manage and coordinate 
the defense of the territory of the United States; and, doubling the 
``Homeland Security'' budget to $38 billion; and developing a National 
Homeland Security Strategy.
  A critical element of the Administration's response to terrorism is 
the President's proposal to create a Department of Homeland Security. 
this proposal is not a new idea. Seven months before September 11, the 
Hart-Rudman Commission released its third comprehensive report on U.S. 
national security. To the surprise of many, the commission proposed the 
creation of a new federal department to better counter the threat posed 
by terrorism. Unfortunately, most considered such an idea at that time 
to be impractical. Even after September 11, many of us were less than 
enthusiastic about the creation of such a department. To their credit, 
Senators Hart and Rudman continued to push for a department. Our 
colleagues, Senator Lieberman and Senator Specter, eventually took up 
their cause and offered legislation that would create a Department of 
Homeland Security.
  Over the last eleven months, the President's Office of Homeland 
Security has carefully examined every facet of our homeland security 
weaknesses, our needs, our effort, our allocation of resources. It 
considered numerous proposals for a homeland security organization from 
outside studies, commission, and members of Congress, including the 
Hart-Rudman proposal. The President eventually came to the conclusion 
that reorganization on a large scale was necessary. The President's 
proposal would not have been possible had the Administration not taken 
the time to conduct its comprehensive review.
  The President's June 6 proposal was unusual in several respects. 
Reorganization of the executive branch on this scale has not occurred 
or been attempted for 55 years. The proposal would move 22 federal 
agencies and programs with some 170,000 employees into a single 
department with a total budget for fiscal year 2003 of nearly $38 
billion.
  Upon receiving the President's proposal, the governmental Affairs 
Committee held a number of hearings and subsequently marked up a 
substitute amendment to S. 2452, the bill we are moving to consider. 
While there is broad overlap between the President's proposal and the 
committee's substitute amendment, there are significant differences as 
well. The debate will mostly focus on the differences. Before I 
highlight some of these areas, let me also take some time to summarize 
the Committee's substitute and explain the importance of some of its 
provisions.
  As it currently stands, our country's homeland security effort is 
disorganized and disjointed. Many Federal agencies responsible for 
homeland security have many other responsibilities as well. The guiding 
principle of the proposals to reorganize Federal agencies into a new 
department of Homeland Security is the recognition that the Nation 
needs a reinvigorated and refocused effort on the part of these 
agencies. A new department will force agencies whose missions only 
partly involve homeland security to refocus their efforts to make 
homeland security their primary effort.
  Both the President's proposal and the committee's substitute 
amendment to the Lieberman-Specter bill would enhance border security 
by bringing in under one roof all the agencies responsible for border 
control. The Border Patrol, the Customs Service, the new Transportation 
Security Administration, the appropriate components of the Animal and 
Plant Health Inspection Service, and the coast guard will all become 
a part of the new department, with an eye towards developing a fully 
integrated approach to border security operations.

  On border security, I do want to point out my concern that the 
committee substitute keeps the components of the Immigration and 
Naturalization Service intact in a new Immigration Affairs Directorate 
of the new department. I think the Border Patrol must not only become 
part of the new department, but must be made a part of the Border and 
Transportation Security Directorate if the new Department of Homeland 
Security is to be as effective as we need it to be. I hope we are able 
to take a look at this structural issue as the debate proceeds.
  The President proposed that the new department contain a component to 
assess the Nation's vulnerabilities to terrorism, analyze information 
regarding threats to our homeland, and match the threat assessments to 
the nation's vulnerabilities to help prioritize our homeland security 
efforts. The President's proposal was designed to fill a gap in the 
Federal Government's intelligence capabilities. While a number of 
agencies conduct a variety of threat assessments, and a few agencies 
conduct narrowly focused vulnerability assessments, no one in the 
federal government married the threats with the vulnerabilities to 
develop national policy. The committee substitute differs from the 
President's proposal by splitting the intelligence analysis component 
of the new department from the infrastructure protection component and 
creating two distinct organizations within the new department.
  I support the establishment of an intelligence capability in the new 
department, but I believe the President's proposal is more sound than 
the Committee's approach. I will discuss this later.
  Clearly, one of the greatest strengths we have to employ against 
potential enemies of our nation is technology. The President proposed a 
component of the new department to focus on weapons of mass 
destruction, which the President believes are not receiving adequate 
attention from existing agencies. Building on the President's proposal, 
Chairman Lieberman, Senator Domenici, Chairman Bingaman, and I worked 
to develop a Science and Technology Directorate to develop and focus a 
concerted national effort, relying on resources the Federal Government 
has already deployed, primarily the National Laboratories and their 
partnerships, that will develop new technologies to combat terrorist 
threats.

[[Page S8182]]

  Thus far, the department that both the President and the Committee 
propose focuses its efforts on prevention, on before-the-fact counter-
terrorism activities. The proposals go further, however, by bringing in 
as part of the new department the responsibilities for consequence 
management, for the after-the-fact efforts. The main component of this 
aspect of the proposals is the inclusion of the Federal Emergency 
Management Agency in the new Department of Homeland Security.
  By bringing together the management of the prevention 
responsibilities and the consequence management responsibilities, we 
hope to eliminate bureaucratic impediments and unify diverse 
bureaucracies, improve coordination, find and exploit appropriate 
synergies, and strengthen the Federal Government's entire homeland 
security effort.
  We must be realistic about this reorganization. It is mammoth. It 
will take years of exacting effort to get it done. Congress may be 
called upon again to legislate changes to the new department. Let us 
not forget that many believe that the Defense Department was not fully 
realized until 1986, almost 40 years after it creation, when Congress 
enacted the Goldwater-Nickles Act.
  When the President first proposed this massive homeland security 
reorganization, I did some research into the mergers of private 
companies. My staff and I have consulted with management and merger 
experts in the private sector and in academia. I regret that their 
analysis of the prospect for success was largely pessimistic. Many 
private sector mergers fail. The problems are obvious: blending 
corporate cultures and product lines is not a simple task. chief 
executive officers who have been through mergers that were smaller and 
much less complicated than this one give us only about a 20 or 30 
percent chance of success. These odds are not promising. It makes me 
wonder what we need to do to improve those odds. The transition period 
will be particularly difficult. In some ways, it will be like an 
elephant on roller skates attempting to learn to juggle.

  The proposed reorganization will be greatly complicated by the fact 
that several of the agencies being transferred currently are themselves 
dysfunctional from a management standpoint. A lack of coordination, 
improper payments, waste, missing equipment, human capital 
shortcomings, and program inefficiencies are all serious problems 
confronting the Federal Government at large. These problems will piggy-
back their way into the new department with the incoming component 
agencies and will limit its effectiveness unless we address them here.
  The management challenges facing this Department are in many respects 
a reflection of the Federal Government as a whole. For years, the 
Governmental Affairs Committee has had parades of witnesses and reports 
telling us that the executive branch and Congress must together do a 
better job of managing the taxpayers' money. Simply put, we are a 
government that cannot pass an audit.
  Last year, the Government Affairs Committee released a report titled 
``Government at the Brink,'' that highlighted some of the waste, fraud, 
and mismanagement that pervades our Federal Government. Unfortunately, 
this new department is inheriting a number of agencies that were the 
focus of that report. The Immigration and Naturalization Service lacks 
sufficient staff resources to perform intelligence functions; the 
Customs Service cannot rely on its data systems to determine where the 
workload is heaviest and therefore where to assign its employees; the 
Federal Emergency management Agency, FEMA, faces significant problems 
in managing its grants, and the list goes on and on.
  These are not partisan problems. They developed and have existed in 
both Republican and Democratic administrations. They have flourished 
when Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress, when Republicans 
controlled both Houses of Congress, when Republicans controlled both 
Houses of Congress, and when there was split control of Congress.
  While we cannot cure these government-wide problems in this bill, we 
must recognize them, learn from our experience with them, and try to 
avoid these problems in the future as we create this new Department.
  The current management paradigms for the Government that try to 
address these problems are largely the creation of the post-World War 
II expansion of the executive branch. They are largely premised on a 
command-and-control approach to management. These paradigms are out of 
date for the modern, largely white-collar, technological workforce 
needed by the Federal Government to meet the challenges of the 21st 
century. The current management structure throughout the executive 
branch puts no premium on accountability. Managers find it difficult to 
reward good performers, and even more difficult to sanction poor 
performers. Efforts by employees and managers to find new ways to 
meeting agency missions are rebuffed, often by political appointees who 
have only short-term goals in mind. These appointees rarely see the 
value of major management reforms whose benefits may not accrue to the 
agency and its leaders for years to come and long after they are gone.
  For a number of years, both the legislative and executive branches 
have been promoting performance-based management. The 
primary legislative reform to promote a new emphasis on results is the 
Government Performance and Results Act--we call it the Results Act--
which was enacted by a Democratic Congress during a Democratic 
administration. President Bush and his staff at the Office of 
Management and Budget have made great efforts to make performance-based 
management a reality throughout the executive branch. The President has 
developed a management agenda that, when fully implemented, will force 
agency managers to focus more closely on the results they are achieving 
with the resources Congress and the taxpayers provide to them.

  Congress, which started the revolution toward performance-based 
managing in Government, should encourage the executive branch to 
continue to increase its emphasis on managing for results. We should be 
a partner with the President in encouraging new management techniques 
and giving Federal managers the tools they need and the flexibility 
they require to accomplish the missions we assign to them. In return, 
we must demand greater accountability from the President and those he 
appoints to manage Federal agencies.
  Even with this emphasis by both branches of Government on better 
management, the results are mixed at best. Each year, the GAO continues 
to place the same agencies and the same Departments on its list of 
entities that are at high risk for waste, fraud, and mismanagement, 
demonstrating how deep and seemingly intractable this problem is--which 
brings us to our present consideration: We simply must give this new 
department and this new Secretary the management tools with which to 
carry out this new massive and vitally important job.
  The sheer volume of people, property, and assets involved in the new 
department is overwhelming. Coupled with our expectations that this new 
department will be the cure that will strengthen our domestic security, 
I fear that we are setting ourselves up for failure if we do not 
provide the new Secretary with the flexibility to manage the department 
properly.
  By maintaining the status quo, not only will the Secretary be 
required to pay the same salary to two counterterrorism experts with 
vastly different performance and ability levels, we are also 
prohibiting the Secretary from accessing a single cent of the 
unexpended funds from agencies that are transferred to the new 
department to assist in the transition. Instead, the Secretary must 
appeal to Congress to enact enabling legislation each and every time 
the Secretary of the new department needs some flexibility to 
reorganize or get this department up and running successfully.
  Supporters of the legislation before us disagree. They argue that the 
Secretary does not need additional managerial tools or flexibility to 
take on this monumental task. It is true that flexibility is not needed 
to set up another Federal bureaucracy that resembles the rest of 
Government. Flexibility is not needed to replicate the problems that 
pervade our Government in terms of Federal workforce management, 
financial management, information technology management, and program 
overlap and duplication. Managerial tools and flexibility are not 
needed

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to create another Federal Department that ranks at the top of the 
General Accounting Office's ``high-risk'' list of agencies in the 
Government that are most vulnerable to waste, fraud, and mismanagement. 
Managerial tools and flexibility are not needed to create a civil 
service, that, according to one expert, Paul Light, of the Brookings 
Institution, and former staff member to the Governmental Affairs 
Committee:

       Underwhelms at virtually every task it undertakes. It is 
     sluggish at hiring, hyper-inflated at appraising, permissive 
     at promoting, weak-kneed at disciplining, and mind-numbingly 
     elongated at firing.

  Our goal in this new department must not be to replicate the failures 
Mr. Light outlines, but, rather, to make improvements. If we cannot 
improve our well-known operational shortcomings now that our Nation's 
security is at issue, when in the world will we ever be able to do so?
  According to the legislation before us today, the mission of the new 
department is to ``promote homeland security,'' ``prevent terrorist 
attacks,'' and ``reduce the vulnerability of the United States to 
terrorism.'' I question how this new department will possibly be able 
to fulfill its mission if it is bogged down by the same old persistent 
management problems that have faced the rest of our Government for so 
many years.
  First and foremost, I think most of us would agree with Paul Light, 
and other experts, that the Federal civil service system, the process 
the Federal Government uses to hire and promote workers, is broken.
  Madam President, this is a logical stopping point for me. If I am 
reading the clock correctly, we are very close to the time of recess 
for our briefing. So, with that, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________