[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 14 (Monday, February 1, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S364-S365]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NOMINATION OF MARTHA N. JOHNSON
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, later this afternoon, the Senate will
vote on a cloture motion on the nomination of Patricia Smith to be
Solicitor of the Department of Labor. Last Friday, I believe, Senator
Reid also filed a cloture motion on another nomination, and it is that
nomination I would like to talk about because it comes out of the
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which I am
privileged to chair. That is the nomination of Martha Johnson to be
Administrator of the General Services Administration.
It has become unfortunate practice, I believe, that Members have been
holding up Executive nominations, in some cases, and I am confident it
is the case with regard to Martha Johnson, for reasons unrelated to her
qualifications. She is extremely well qualified and very much needed at
the General Services Administration, as I will note in a moment.
As I understand the process we will follow this week--presuming, as I
hope will be the case, that cloture is granted later this afternoon,
when we vote on the nominee for Solicitor of the Department of Labor,
whenever the vote on that nomination occurs--hopefully, sooner than
later this week--immediately thereafter, we will go to a vote on
cloture on this nomination of Martha Johnson. In anticipation of that,
I wished to speak to my colleagues about what is coming.
She is an extraordinary nominee, in my opinion, for a job that is
critically important to the efficient operation of the Federal
Government, about which a lot of us have been speaking with intensity
in recent times. She is a former Chief of Staff at the General Services
Administration, so she comes with some background that will give her
the opportunity to hit the ground running, and that is important in an
agency that has not had a permanent leader since April of 2008. Here we
are in February of 2010. GSA has not had a permanent leader since April
2008, when the former Director was asked to resign by the previous
administration. Since then, the agency has had five Acting
Administrators. It is obviously time for stable leadership.
The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously
endorsed her nomination last June, more than a half year ago. Since
that time, GSA has undergone several changes in top management,
including the departure of the Chief of Staff and the retirement of the
Deputy Administrator. So it has been very frustrating for the members
of our committee to see such a qualified nominee being held up in the
Senate for more than a half year because of a hold that had nothing to
do with the nominee's qualifications.
I wish to speak for a moment to my colleagues about the full scope of
GSA's responsibilities. It is a critically important agency of our
Government that mostly works out of the spotlight. GSA is often called
the Federal Government's landlord because it provides workspace and
office services for almost every Federal office and agency across our
country, from court houses to ports of entry. With 8,600 buildings and
$500 billion in assets under its control, GSA must be either the
largest property management organization in the world or certainly one
of the top and largest property management organizations in the world.
But GSA actually is far more than just the Federal Government's
landlord. It has 12,000 employees spread across the country in 11
districts. They help guide Federal spending on everything from basic
office equipment to the Federal fleet of
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more than 200,000 vehicles owned and leased by the U.S. Government.
GSA's purchasing divisions have broad effect on the rest of the economy
since, as an early acquirer of new technologies, including green
technologies, the agency has helped and will continue to help spur
production that brings down costs and makes these technologies
available and affordable to the broader consumer market. GSA is that
important, that it can help build a market for an innovative
transformational technology.
In fact, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known
as the Stimulus Act, which we adopted last year, gave GSA specific
responsibility to help green the Federal Government by providing $5
billion to make Federal buildings more energy efficient and $300
million to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles for the Federal fleet.
GSA also has wide responsibilities for providing information
technology and telecommunications services for Federal agencies. With
its leadership, GSA can ensure that the Federal Government is using
cutting-edge technology to lower costs, better engage with citizens and
detect and defend against cyber threats. In other words, GSA spends so
much money every year acquiring information technology systems that if
it requires the providers to put together systems that are resistant
and defensive to the kinds of cyber attacks that, unfortunately, public
and private information networks are under today, it can drive that
technology development, which then will be more broadly available to
the private sector as it acquires information technology equipment.
A lot of big and important responsibilities are there, meaning the
agency is in need of strong leadership. If confirmed, Ms. Johnson will
face many challenges, and I wish to take a moment to lay out for my
colleagues a few which have come to the attention of our committee,
which has oversight of GSA. In the area of procurement, contracts
negotiated by GSA must leverage the vast buying power of the Federal
Government so agencies get more value for the taxpayers' dollar. Last
year, Federal agencies bought approximately $53 billion of goods and
services right off GSA schedules and other GSA contracts, which offer
everything from office supplies to human resource services, to security
equipment, to energy management services and through other contracts
negotiated by GSA. Having GSA negotiate these procurement agreements
lets these customer agencies stay focused on their core missions. In
other words, the agencies do not have to get into all the back-and-
forth details on negotiating these contracts. The experts at GSA do it
for them. The agencies can focus on what they are supposed to be doing.
Some agencies, if I may speak directly, have lost confidence of the
ability of GSA to provide the best products at the best prices and have
begun to negotiate their own contracts or interagency contracts. This
duplicates services offered by GSA. It is effectively a waste of
Federal money and effectively also defeats the purpose of GSA, which
was created by President Harry S. Truman, in 1949, with the specific
intent of streamlining the Federal Government's purchasing process so
every agency of the Federal Government did not have its own
separate purchasing division that may have done well or not so well but
certainly not as efficiently as one for the whole Federal Government.
The second problem, similar to this one, exists in GSA's property
management activities, with agencies sometimes questioning whether GSA
has now met their needs in the most cost-effective manner.
Another problem a new administrator must address is the amount of
excess or underutilized property owned by the Federal Government. The
Office of Management and Budget has reported--these are stunning
numbers--that the Federal Government owns 21,000 buildings, worth about
$18 billion, that are underused or no longer needed, but they are
sitting there. In effect, the GAO, the Government Accountability
Office, has put the management of Federal property on their high-risk
list for this reason. Not all those properties are under GSA's control,
but one of its jobs is to help other agencies dispose of excess
property. That is another reason why we need a full-time administrator
there.
Think about it, $18 billion. The freeze the President has announced--
which I support--doesn't come to much more than that, when you think
about the potential for selling some of this property and bringing more
revenue to the government.
Let me come back to Martha Johnson. This is a job with big
challenges, as I have described, in part. She brings a tremendous
wealth of experience in the private, nonprofit, and government sectors.
She has a B.A. in economics and history from Oberlin College and a
masters in business from Yale Business School. After graduating from
Yale, Ms. Johnson began her career in the private sector at Cummins
Engines Company. She had a series of other management positions in the
private sector and then was called on by the Clinton administration to
be the Associate Deputy Secretary of Commerce and then, as I mentioned
earlier, Chief of Staff of GSA from 1996 to 2001--very relevant and
indispensable experience.
After leaving government, Ms. Johnson was a vice president for the
Council for Excellence in Government, which is a nonpartisan, nonprofit
organization dedicated to increasing the effectiveness of government at
all levels, and most recently she has served as vice president at
Computer Sciences Corporation. She is extremely well qualified, has
broad qualifications, including extensive experience at GSA.
All these varied experiences make Martha Johnson a perfect fit for
the responsibilities and challenges she will face as GSA Administrator.
The fact is, she, Martha Johnson, has had broad bipartisan support. I
urge my colleagues to vote yes on cloture. I even preserve the hope
that there may be a decision to vitiate the cloture vote, that we go
right to a final vote, and we confirm this excellent nominee so she can
go to work for the American people.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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