[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 208 (Monday, December 18, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6014-S6015]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Nomination of Martin O'Malley

  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I rise in strong support of the 
nomination of former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley to be the next 
Commissioner of the Social Security Administration.
  The Social Security Administration is confronting a consumer service 
crisis. Today, SSA is serving 50 percent more customers and 
beneficiaries with the same staffing it had in 1995. This has resulted 
in unacceptable service delays, including 37-minute average hold times 
on the 800 number and as much as a 2-year wait for disability 
determinations and appeals. The American people deserve better. Recall 
that about 66 million Americans--one in five--receive some benefit from 
Social Security each year.
  Governor Martin O'Malley is the strong operational leader the Social 
Security Administration needs right now. He has demonstrated time and 
again that by focusing on performance management, smart government, and 
data-driven results, he can bring change and accountability to large 
organizations and significantly improve government service for the 
American people.
  His leadership credentials include decades of public service, 
including two terms each as mayor of Baltimore and then Governor of 
Maryland.
  I saw his hands-on approach firsthand as a longtime Baltimore 
resident. I was at city hall when Governor O'Malley set up CitiStat 
when he was mayor. This is a novel approach I had never seen really 
carried out by a chief executive of a city. He brought his agency heads 
in on a regular basis with specific objectives they needed to 
accomplish, and then on a regular basis he had the statistics to see 
whether they were performing as they should, as they indicated they 
needed to. That is called accountability. He held his

[[Page S6015]]

team accountable, and the results were incredible.
  His signature CitiStat and StateStat initiatives are widely cited as 
a model for data-driven government efficiency and effectiveness and won 
Baltimore the Innovations in Government Award from the Harvard Kennedy 
School in 2004.
  Former Maryland Senator Mikulski said at his confirmation hearing 
this fall:

       The hard-working men and women of the Social Security 
     Administration need a strong, confirmed operational leader 
     and the American people need a Social Security Administrator 
     that works for them. . . . Martin O'Malley would provide the 
     leadership and the management skills to do that. . . . He has 
     a knack for organization, understanding the new technology 
     and how to use technology to be data driven. . . . Governor 
     O'Malley is not a big government guy. He's a smart government 
     guy. He believes you use modern management tools to organize 
     a workforce around a mission, measurable objectives, and also 
     stay within the budget.

  For the nearly 60,000 employees of the Social Security Administration 
nationwide, including about 12,000 in Maryland at the Woodlawn 
headquarters in Baltimore, I am confident that Martin O'Malley will 
honor their service to the American people and that he will lead the 
SSA with respect and support for a strong union workforce.
  The Governor said at his confirmation hearing:

       As mayor, I learned there is no Democratic or Republican 
     way to fill a pothole. And as a governor, I learned that the 
     biggest and toughest challenges can only be tackled with some 
     degree of bipartisan consensus and cooperation. But as both a 
     mayor and a governor, I developed a discipline . . . for 
     harnessing data and information technologies in ways that got 
     the best out of large, siloed organizations of people that 
     many inside and outside of government thought were too 
     unwieldy, too slow, or too steeped in excuses to change.

  Governor O'Malley continued:

       There are two people that are going to be forefront in my 
     mind. . . . How is the customer being served? And directly 
     related to that, what is the experience of the front-line 
     worker? . . . We need to understand what's happening where, 
     whether we're on track or not, who's doing it well, and who's 
     not doing it well. When people are actually listened to, when 
     their word is respected, when their experiences [are] 
     respected, and we create a winnable game, it has been my 
     experience, as it was in Baltimore, that people rise to the 
     occasion. . . . Small things done well make bigger things 
     possible.

  I strongly urge my colleagues to vote in favor of Martin O'Malley to 
be our next Social Security Administrator.