[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 91 (Thursday, June 23, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4098-S4099]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. LIEBERMAN (for himself, Ms. Collins, and Mr. Akaka):
  S. 1268. A bill to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the 
Government by providing for greater interagency experience among 
national security and homeland security personnel through the 
development of a national security and homeland security human capital 
strategy and interagency rotational service by employees, and for other 
purposes; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental 
Affairs.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today, with my colleagues 
Senator Collins and Senator Akaka, to introduce legislation to improve 
the efficiency and effectiveness of our Government by fostering greater 
integration among the personnel who work on critical national security 
and homeland security missions.
  The national security and homeland security challenges that our 
nation faces in the 21st century are far more complex than those of the 
last century. Threats such as terrorism, proliferation of nuclear and 
biological weapons, insurgencies, and failed states are beyond the 
capability of any single agency of our Government, such as the 
Department of Defense, DOD, the Department of State, or the 
intelligence community, to counter on its own.
  In addition, threats such as terrorism and organized crime know no 
borders and instead cross the so-called ``foreign/domestic divide,'' 
the bureaucratic, cultural, and legal division between agencies that 
focus on threats from beyond our borders and those that focus on 
threats from within.
  Finally, a new group of government agencies is now involved in 
national and homeland security. These agencies bring to bear critical 
capabilities, such as interdicting terrorist finance, enforcing 
sanctions, protecting our critical infrastructure, and helping foreign 
countries threatened by terrorism to build their economies and legal 
systems, but many of them have relatively little experience of 
involvement with the traditional national security agencies. Some of 
these agencies have existed for decades or centuries, such as the 
Departments of Treasury, Justice, and Health and Human Services, HHS, 
while others are new since 9/11, such as the Department of Homeland 
Security, DHS, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 
ODNI.
  As a result, our government needs to be able to apply all instruments 
of national power, including military, diplomatic, intelligence, law 
enforcement, foreign aid, homeland security, and public health, in a 
whole-of-government approach to counter these threats. We only need to 
look at our government's failure to use the full range of civilian and 
military capabilities to stymie the Iraqi insurgency immediately after 
the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, the government's failure 
to prepare and respond to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the 
government's failure to share information and coordinate action prior 
to the attack at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, for examples of failure of 
interagency coordination and their costs in terms of lives, money, and 
the national interest.
  The challenge of integrating the agencies of the Executive Branch 
into a whole-of-government approach has been recognized by 
Congressionally chartered commissions for more than a decade. Prior to 
9/11, the Commission led by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren 
Rudman, entitled the U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st 
Century, issued reports recommending fundamental reorganization to 
integrate government capabilities, including for homeland security.
  In 2004, the 9/11 Commission, led by former Governor Tom Kean and 
former Representative Lee Hamilton, found that the U.S. Government 
needed reform in order to foster a stronger, faster, and more efficient 
government-wide effort against terrorism.
  In 2008, the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass 
Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, led by former Senators Bob 
Graham and Jim Talent, called for improving interagency coordination in 
our Nation's defenses against bioterrorism and other weapons of mass 
destruction.
  Congress has long recognized that a key way to better integrate our 
Government's capabilities is to provide strong incentives for personnel 
to do rotational assignments across bureaucratic stovepipes. The 
personnel who serve in our Government are our Nation's best-and-
brightest, and they have and will respond to incentives that we 
institute in order to improve coordination across our government.
  In 1986, Congress enacted the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense 
Reorganization Act. That legislation sought to break down stovepipes 
and foster jointness across the military services by requiring that 
military officers have served in a position outside of their service as 
a requirement for promotion to general or admiral.
  Twenty-five years later, this requirement has produced a sea change 
in military officers' mindsets and created a dominant military culture 
of jointness.
  In 2004, Congress enacted the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism 
Prevention Act at the 9/11 Commission's recommendation and required a 
similar rotational requirement for intelligence personnel. The Director 
of National Intelligence has since instituted rotations across the 
Intelligence Community as an eligibility requirement for promotion to 
senior intelligence positions, and this requirement is helping to 
integrate the 16 agencies and elements of the Intelligence Community.
  Finally, in 2005, Congress enacted the Post-Katrina Emergency 
Management Reform Act to improve our Nation's preparedness for and 
responses to domestic catastrophes and instituted a

[[Page S4099]]

rotational program within the Department of Homeland Security in order 
to integrate that department.
  This proven mechanism of rotations must be applied to integrate the 
government as a whole on national security and homeland security 
issues. Indeed, the Hart/Rudman Commission called for rotations to 
other agencies and interagency professional education to be required in 
order for personnel to hold certain positions or be promoted to certain 
levels. The Graham/Talent Commission called for the Government to 
recruit the next generation of national security experts by 
establishing a program of joint duty, education, and training in order 
to create a culture of interagency collaboration, flexibility, and 
innovation.
  The Executive Branch has also recognized the need to foster greater 
interagency rotations and experience in order to improve integration 
across its agencies. In 2007, President George W. Bush issued Executive 
Order 13434 concerning national security professional development and 
to include interagency assignments. However, that executive order was 
not implemented aggressively toward the end of the Bush administration 
and has languished as the Obama administration pursued other 
priorities.
  Clearly, it is time for Congress to act and to institute the 
personnel incentives and reforms necessary to further integrate our 
government and enable it to counter the national security and homeland 
security threats of the 21st Century.
  Today I join with Senator Susan M. Collins and Senator Daniel K. 
Akaka to introduce the bipartisan Interagency Personnel Rotation Act of 
2011. Companion legislation is being introduced in the House of 
Representatives on a bipartisan basis by Representative Geoff Davis and 
Representative John F. Tierney.
  The purpose of this legislation is to enable Executive Branch 
personnel to view national security and homeland security issues from a 
whole-of-government perspective and be able to capitalize upon 
communities of interest composed of personnel from multiple agencies 
who work on the same national security or homeland security issue.
  This legislation requires that the Executive Branch identify 
``Interagency Communities of Interest,'' which are subject areas 
spanning multiple agencies and within which the Executive Branch needs 
to operate on a more integrated basis. Interagency Communities of 
Interest could include counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, counter 
proliferation, or regional areas such as the Middle East.
  This legislation then requires that agencies identify positions that 
are within each Interagency Community of Interest. Government personnel 
would then rotate to positions within other agencies but within the 
particular Interagency Community of Interest related to their 
expertise.
  Government personnel could also rotate to positions at offices that 
have specific interagency missions such as the National Security Staff. 
Completing an interagency rotation would be a prerequisite for 
selection to certain Senior Executive Service positions within that 
Interagency Community of Interest. As a result, personnel would have 
the incentives to serve in a rotational position and to develop the 
whole-of-government perspective and the network of contacts necessary 
for integrating across agencies and accomplishing national security and 
homeland security missions more efficiently and effectively.
  Let me offer some examples of how this might work.
  An employee of the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, 
who specializes in development strategy could rotate to the Office of 
the Secretary of Defense to advise DOD in planning on how development 
issues should be taken into account in military operations, while DOD 
counterinsurgency specialists could rotate to USAID to advise on how 
development priorities should be assessed in a counterinsurgency.
  A Treasury employee who does terrorist finance work could benefit 
from a rotation to Department of Justice to understand operations to 
take down terrorist cells and how terrorist finance work can help 
identify and prosecute their members, while Justice personnel would 
have the chance to learn from the Treasury's financial expertise in 
understanding how sources of funding can affect cells' formation and 
plotting.
  Someone from HHS who specializes in public health could rotate to a 
DOD counterinsurgency office to advise on improving public health in 
order to win over the hearts and minds of the population prone to 
counterinsurgency, while someone from DHS could rotate to HHS in order 
to learn about HHS's work to prepare the U.S. public health system for 
a biological terrorist attack.
  The cosponsors of this legislation and I recognize the complexity 
involved in the creation of Interagency Communities of Interest, the 
institution of rotations across a wide variety of government agencies, 
and having a rotation as a prerequisite for selection to certain Senior 
Executive Service positions. As a result, our legislation gives the 
Executive Branch substantial flexibility, including to identify 
Interagency Communities of Interest, to identify which positions in 
each agency are within a particular Interagency Community of Interest; 
to identify which positions in an Interagency Community of Interest 
should be open for rotation and how long the rotations will be; and 
finally, which Senior Executive Service positions have interagency 
rotational service as a prerequisite.
  To be clear, this legislation does not mandate that any agency be 
included in an Interagency Community of Interest or the interagency 
personnel rotations; instead, this legislation permits the Executive 
Branch to include any agency or part of an agency as the Executive 
Branch determines that our nation's national and homeland security 
missions require.
  In addition, our legislation gives the Executive Branch 15 years in 
which to implement this legislation and contains a substantial number 
of exemptions and waivers, especially during but not limited to the 
phase-in period.
  The legislation contains a number of provisions designed to protect 
the rights of our government personnel under existing law.
  Finally, this legislation is designed to be implemented without 
requiring any additional personnel for the Executive Branch. The 
legislation envisions that rotations will be conducted so that there is 
a reasonable equivalence between the number of personnel rotating out 
of an agency and the number rotating in. That way, no agency will be 
short-staffed as a result of having sent its best-and-brightest to do 
rotations; each agency will be receiving the best-and-brightest from 
other agencies.
  Let me close by answering a common objection to government 
reorganization. To quote the 9/11 Commission, ``An argument against 
change is that the nation is at war, and cannot afford to reorganize in 
midstream. But some of the main innovations of the 1940s and 1950s, 
including the creation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and even the 
construction of the Pentagon itself, were undertaken in the midst of 
war. Surely the country cannot wait until the struggle against Islamic 
terrorism is over.''
  I urge my colleagues to take bold action to improve the efficiency 
and effectiveness of our Government in countering 21st century national 
security and homeland security threats by promptly passing the 
Interagency Personnel Rotation Act of 2011.
                                 ______