[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 43 (Thursday, March 17, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1578-S1580]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NOMINATIONS OF BETH COBERT AND MICHAEL MISSAL
Mr. CARPER. Thank you, Mr. President. It is good to see the Presiding
Officer on this St. Patrick's Day, and I am pleased to have a chance to
rise and to urge my colleagues to confirm two very important nominees.
Some of my colleagues have scattered across the country to go home for
a 2-week recess, but the Presiding Officer is here. Hopefully, the
words that I am saying here today will find their way to our colleagues
wherever they are or wherever they are headed.
One of the nominees is a woman named Beth Cobert, who has been
nominated to be the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, and
the other is Michael Missal, who has been nominated to be the inspector
general of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Like many of my colleagues, I have grown frustrated over the years
as, too often, senior positions in the Federal Government have been
left vacant or filled by someone serving in an acting capacity for far
too long. A lack of critical leadership at agencies can--and oftentimes
does--undermine the effectiveness of Federal programs. I know all of us
want Federal agencies to work more efficiently to provide the most
value to American taxpayers, and having strong leadership in place is
key to that effort. I hope we can move to quickly confirm both of these
nominees when the Senate returns after the recess.
Let me start with a few words about Beth Cobert. I don't know if the
Presiding Officer has had a chance to meet with her. She is one of the
most impressive leaders of this administration or any administration
whom I have had the privilege to know. She is an excellent nominee to
head OPM. Right from the start, I have been very impressed with her
work, with her leadership, with her work ethic, and with her ability to
get people to work together at OMB and now during her time at OPM in
this acting capacity. Before that, she was Deputy Director for
Management within the Office of Management and Budget. I just think we
are really lucky in this country that she is willing to continue to
serve in this capacity as well as serving in her previous capacity. She
comes out of the private sector, from McKinsey & Company, a brand new
California operation. She did that and had a number of senior positions
within that company and a great career.
The Office of Personnel Management performs critical functions
affecting the entire Federal workforce. What they do every day has a
direct impact on the quality of work at all executive branch
departments and agencies. As my colleagues know, Ms. Cobert's time at
OPM began in the aftermath of one of the worst cyber attacks committed
against our government last year. One result of that incident has been
a major effort to overhaul the information technology infrastructure,
which
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requires great levels of management attention and expertise.
Even before she came to OPM, Ms. Cobert was deeply involved in the
OPM response to the breach from her Senate-confirmed role at OMB. If
you look at her management and technology experience in the private
sector, her experience at OMB, and the time she has already spent
leading the Office of Personnel Management, she is the ideal candidate
to lead OPM at such a critical time. I am only one of many who have
been impressed by Ms. Cobert. In addition to receiving a unanimous vote
from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on her
nomination to lead OPM, she has the support of Chairman Jason Chaffetz
at the House and of Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, who lead the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Representatives Chaffetz
and Cummings sent a letter to Majority Leader McConnell and Minority
Leader Reid supporting Ms. Cobert's confirmation.
Here is a taste of what they had to say about her: ``[Ms. Cobert] is
a qualified and competent choice to lead OPM, which is in need of
strong leadership, and we urge the Senate to approve her nomination
swiftly.''
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
the full letter.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform,
Washington, DC, March 3, 2016.
Hon. Mitch McConnell,
Majority Leader, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Harry Reid,
Minority Leader, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Majority Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Reid: We
write in support of President Obama's nomination of Beth
Cobert to serve as Director of the Office of Personnel
Management (OPM). She is a qualified and competent choice to
manage OPM, which is in need of strong leadership, and we
urge the Senate to approve her nomination swiftly.
On February 1, 2016, the Inspector General of OPM, on his
departure from federal service, sent a letter to President
Obama praising Ms. Cobert's leadership:
``I am also comforted by the fact that Acting OPM Director
Beth Cobert appears to have wrapped her arms around the
multitude of challenges currently facing OPM. Further, she
seems to be arduously striving to institute high standards of
professionalism as she works to reinvigorate this great
agency.''
We further expect that as Director, Ms. Cobert will
continue to assist the Committee's ongoing investigation of
the data breach that OPM announced in 2015, which resulted in
the loss of personally identifiable information for over 21.5
million individuals. On February 3, 2016, the Committee
issued a subpoena to Ms. Cobert--who has served as OPM's
Acting Director since July 10, 2015--for documents related to
the data breach investigation. The agency produced some
responsive documents by the February 16, 2016, deadline and
has agreed to produce outstanding documents on a rolling
basis; however, there are still outstanding documents that
have not been produced to the Committee. We expect the agency
to fully comply with the subpoena and produce all outstanding
documents.
Please contact Katie Bailey of the Chairman's staff or Tim
Lynch of the Ranking Member's staff with any questions. Thank
you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Jason Chaffetz,
Chairman.
Elijah E. Cummings,
Ranking Member.
Mr. CARPER. Ms. Cobert is a highly qualified nominee. We are
fortunate indeed that she is willing to serve in this capacity and take
on the many challenges that are currently facing OPM.
I urge my colleagues to quickly confirm her so she can continue to do
the good work that she is doing at OPM.
I have known people who are show horses and folks who are workhorses.
This woman is a workhorse--I like to think people look at us as
workhorses as well--but she is focused on getting the job done. She is
especially good at surrounding herself with terrific people. She did
that at OMB, she did that at OPM, and she did that before when she was
in her very significant position at McKinsey & Company.
Let me just turn the page and talk about Michael Missal. I want to
talk about him and thank him for his willingness to step up and serve
as the inspector general for the Department of Veterans Affairs. He
served 5 years of Active Duty in a hot war as a naval flight officer in
Southeast Asia and another 18 years as a P-3 aircraft mission commander
in the Navy right up to the end of the Cold War.
As Governor for 8 years in Delaware and commander in chief of the
Delaware National Guard, we send people from Delaware. Right now we
have people in Afghanistan. We have sent people over the years to any
number of places where they are in harm's way.
I care a lot about veterans. My dad was a veteran. A bunch of my
uncles were veterans. One of them got killed in World War II, the
victim of a kamikaze attack on his aircraft carrier in the western
Pacific. So veterans' concerns run deep in my family.
As we all know, our inspectors general play an extremely important
role in our government. Their work helps us to save money while also
revealing and prosecuting wrongdoing, promoting the integrity and
efficiency of our government, and hopefully increasing the confidence
and faith that the American people have in their government. I believe
the work of inspectors general, along with that of GAO, is invaluable
with respect to the work of the Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee, in which I am privileged to serve, and the whole
Senate as we look for ways to get better results for less money and
further reduce our Federal deficit down from $1.4 trillion a half dozen
years ago to about close to a quarter of that--which is still too much.
We are making progress, but we need to make more. The IG is a big part
of helping us to meet that goal. I think it is critical that we have
qualified, experienced people in place to serve these important roles.
This is tough work. We are blessed by the many IGs we have.
We have seen far too many IG positions, including the one Mr. Missal
has been nominated to fill, sit vacant or be filled by someone serving
in an acting capacity for far too long. In fact, the VA, of all
agencies, given the concern we have heard and seen across the country
in recent years--the IG vacancy at the VA--has been without a
permanent, Senate confirmed inspector general for more than 2 years. In
the past several years, I have joined all the members of the Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in sending letters to the
President, urging him to nominate people to fill all the IG vacancies,
including one letter that specifically pointed out the importance of
the one I am talking about today, the inspector general position at the
VA.
Our committee held a hearing last year on IG vacancies and pointed
out the importance of having permanent IGs in place to ensure the
independence of this office.
I want to thank the President for responding to our committee's
letters. He has done this by sending the Senate a number of well-
qualified nominees, including Mr. Missal, for our consideration. These
words have been heard in the last couple of weeks. He is doing his job,
and now it is time for us to do our job with respect to these
nominations.
I was pleased that both the Veterans Affairs' Committee and our
committee, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee,
were able to move quickly to consider Mr. Missal's nomination. I want
to thank my colleagues on our committee for making it a priority.
However, since early this year, there has been no action by the
Senate on Mr. Missal's nomination. This is an inspector general vacancy
in Veterans Affairs, where we know there have been hospitals and
facilities across the country that are troubled, and we need the best
leadership we can find at the VA in this position. Again, I think the
President has given us a very good person. He is willing to do the job.
We need to get him confirmed.
As we know, the VA has been facing significant challenges over the
last couple of years. I believe that confirming a permanent IG at the
VA will help provide much needed oversight, while helping to point out
and resolve some of the problems at the VA that are negatively
impacting the lives of our veterans every day.
Leaving this position vacant impedes much needed progress on
identifying and addressing serious issues at the VA that impact our
veterans. If we want to do more to fix the VA, we need a strong
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and independent inspector general to be our partner in that effort.
Delaying this nomination also delays improvements to the services that
our veterans receive.
Permanent leadership of the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of
Inspector General is long overdue and will go a long way toward
providing stable leadership and oversight of the agency. I urge my
colleagues to quickly confirm Mr. Missal so he can go to work on behalf
of our veterans and the American people--not in a couple of months or
later this year; we can do it now, as soon as we come back from the
recess that begins tomorrow.
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