Transcripts For CSPAN Hearing On Constitutional Role Of Congress 20240713

Coming up this morning, Theodore Johnson of the Brennan Center will join us to talk about the africanamerican vote in campaign 2020. Of the university of Virginia Center of politics will discuss the latest news in campaign 2020. Be sure to watch washington journal live at 7 00 eastern this morning. Join the discussion. Examinest, a hearing Congress Constitutional role as a coequal branch of government. We hear about the role of earmarks and transparency and how increased funding and staffing can lead to a more effective government. This is two hours, 15 minutes. The committee will come to order without objection. Articlering is titled one, capacity and equipping congress to better serve the american people. I now recognize myself for five minutes to give an opening statement. Im excited to be here today, gaveling in the first hearing of the new year. This committee has had a productive last year, passing 45 recommendations focus on making congress more effective and efficient so it can better serve the american people. I am proud of what we have accomplished so far and equally proud of how we have accomplished our work together. Every member of this committee has been fully engaged in the committees work has taken real time to think about the issues in our mandate to share their own perspectives and to really listen and consider their colleagues perspectives. This process has worked because members of this committee are vested in the committees work and finding Collaborative Solutions to challenges that this institution faces. The keyword is invested. Whether we are talking about businesses, organizations or governments, depend on people who are invested in the work they are doing. That is fundamental. Successful institutions also invest in themselves. They invest in their employees, infrastructure and overall Work Environment and experience. They think and plan towards the future. The bottom line is that is hard for people to be invested in their work. Attract is able to staff and committees like this one and continued to be productive despite the many challenges the institution faces. Congress is fueled by people who believe strongly in the mission. Fulfilling that mission has become harder over the past several decades primarily due to decisions and choices congress has made. Today is about looking inward. It appropriately to kick off by putting article one front and center. Todays hearing will help us understand the factors that have contributed to the expansion of executive Branch Powers since world war ii and shed light on how and why congress has reduced its own capacity to fulfill its constitutional obligations. Most important the, we will consider what can be done to restore congress to its rightful place as a coequal branch of government. The framers never intended for a short an error consequential decisions to be made by one person or one branch of government. That is the beauty of our system. I look forward to hearing recommendations from our Witnesses Today for how to rebuild congress capacity and strengthen the branch. I want to quickly acknowledge we have a group of students from Virginia Tech that are learning about congressional capacity and oversight. I am biased but i think these issues are incredibly important and i think it is great people want to learn about this tough so welcome and thank you for taking an interest in our work. [applause] i even see them coming it. Welcome, students. Thank you for being here. I would like to invite our vice chair some grapes. Tom graves. Thank you. About to echo the excitement for the historic in history making year for this committee. 45 recommendations in total all bipartisan with a lead significantly piece of legislation to match. Great testament to this committee and the work we have been able to do. I am excited to see what we can accomplish in this year, this new year we have been granted and grateful for your bipartisan leadership. Weve also had some good times going on a speaking tour together. We had a great group that is interested in what were doing here, but weve learned a lot, over the last year about the way the legislative branch functions, and i think weve heard a bit more about the way it doesnt function. And the founders created legislative branch to act as a coequal branch of government. Our powers are clearly laid out and we are all familiar with our day to day duties as representatives of the american people. With these rules and regulations as vision by the founders, are not as they exist today. The american peoples first branch is not truly equal. We will hear more from our witnesses about this today, of the growing power of the executive, Branch Admissions staff capacity, and a refusal to admit yourself at times, weve got a lot of work to do. Diminished Article One Branch means a diminished government for the people we serve. And that is not the goal of this committee, our goal is to return that authority back to this body. This committee is finding ways to reinvest and have strength in our congress, so we can serve better the american people. I am very excited about todays hearing, and are witnesses that are joining us, that mr. Chairman, happy to yield back. Today, we welcome the testimony of our four witnesses,. Our first witness is rachel augustine, before becoming a political scientist, she were for several government institutions, including the White House Office of management, u. S. Accountability, office the German Federal ministry of the interior. Our next witnesses kevin costar, Vice President of Research Partnerships at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Public Policy research organization. He directs the governance department. He codirects the legislative Branch Capacity Working Group which aims to strengthen n online and establish a hub for congressional reform and scholarship. Worked for the Congressional Research service for more than a decade where he served as an analyst. He is coeditor of the forthcoming Book Congress overwhelmed. No pressure. , the washington codirector of the center from 1995 to 2014. Worked for u. S. Senator carl levin, including 15 years at the Permanent Committee of investigations. Director,as psi staff she handled the investigations, hearings and legislation on such matters as money laundering, corporate misconduct and tax abuse. In 2014, after senator levin retired and she joined the center to work on strengthening legislative capabilities at the federal, state, local and International Levels to conduct investigations and oversight. Last but not least is john hudak. Deputy director for the center of effective Public Management and senior fellow and governance studies at brookings. His Research Examines questions of president ial power in the context of administration, personnel and Public Policy. Demonstrates politics exist beyond the halls of congress. His work shows how institutional structures facilitates or hinders president ial power and influence. Witnesses are reminded that your oral testimony would be limited to five minutes. Without objection, your written remarks will be made for the record. Dr. Potter, you are recognized for five minutes to give an oral presentation of your testimony. Chairman, vicechairman, and numbers of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. While todays hearing focused on correctional capacity, my testimony focus on changes in the capacity of the executive branch over time. The executive branch began modestly. George washington had a small personal staff a few individuals in the cabin consisted of just three departments. Obviously thats a very different executive branch than which ise know today sophisticated, complex and large. Much of the transformation from the executive branch occurred in the period of world war ii. That is where my comments will focus. I will make three points of the growth of the executive branch. First, the federal bureaucracy has systematically expanded its policy and implementation capabilities. Second and concurrently, the powers of the office of the president have expanded. And third, numerous factors gave rise to these situations. Allow me to elaborate on each point. First with respect to the bureaucracy, there is been an inexorable increase in size and scope. Between 1946 and 1997, an average of eight new agencies was created each year. Today, there are estimated 278 agencies in the executive branch. The growth in the capacity of the executive branch is reflected in its output. Each year, federal agencies issue an average 2500 proposed rules and 3000 final rules. Many of these expand and entrench the executive branch. One notable trend in the growth of the bureaucracy is while it has amassed more and more responsibility over time, they have not been increases in staffing. Civilian employment has hovered at approximately 2 million individuals since 1950. This may seem confusing. How is it that the executive branch is accomplishing so much more, without commensurate increases in staffing . A key factor is contractors increasingly perform the work of government when estimate puts the Current Ratio of federal employees to contractors at 1 3. This means in practice, the executive Branch Workforce has grown but in the less visible way. Time thet the same federal bureaucracy has grown, the office of the president has seen a significant expansion in its ability to make policy. In at least three ways. First, president s have increasingly relied on unilateral action to accomplish policy goals. While executive orders receive the lion share of public attention, there are many ways a president can actually act unilaterally. Across this broad class of actions, the trend has been one of consistent over time growth. Second, the president has amassed increased powers with respect to war. Despite congressional attempts to limit unilateral authority in respect to war, the president remains tremendous autonomy when it comes to deploying troops abroad and conducting military operations. Additionally, the president has an increased number of emergency authorities and broad latitude. The president s policymaking advisory and supervisory capabilities have grown. It employs 2000 people. This provides the president with a sophisticated ability to develop new policy and manage the executive branch. My final point is these trends have persisted under both democratic and republican administrations. They can be attributed to numerous factors. First, domestic and International Crises have expanded the reach of the executive branch. When the country is that crisis, there is demand for coordinated National Response and the executive is policy complexity contributes to the aggrandize mint of the executive branches dealing with capable of giving sustained in that attention to heart problems. This means when new issues or problems emerge, the executive branch has often been the one to respond to them. Third, Political Polarization also magnifies the power of the executive branch. When congress does not act, problems do not go away. This means the president or the bureaucracy often steps up to the plate. Going forward, delegation to the executive branch will remain a necessary part of governance. The challenge of confronting this important committee, then, is how to conduct oversight of the executive branch, without stymieing its ability to function. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Dr. Costar, i recognize you for five minutes. Thank you. Thank you chairman kilmer, for holding this hearing and inviting. They just heard from professor potter about the growing scope of the executive branch, and to be sure, there is just no doubt it. It government is widening the expanse of its efforts. Policy is becoming ever more complicated. In my written testimony, eyesight Landmark Education act and the original education act, the education act 1965, was a mere 32 pages long, 40 years later, we have updated that in 2002, the no child left behind act was in the hundreds and hundreds of pages, one sign of government growing. Unfortunately, preponderant to the evidence indicates that capacity has not kept up with the expanse of government. Increasingly, you have an executive branch that is not much directed to the legislative branch and that creates accountability troubles. As noted in my written testimony, there are factors of congressional testimony that we dont have time to cover them all. Asked to focus on one, people. The people whose efforts produce governance, to focus on legislative staff, and support agencies. The trends since the 1980s are troubling. The number of total Congressional Staff have declined. The number of Committee Staff have declined. The percentage of personal staff working in d. C. Has gone down. Doingrcentage of staff vocational work as opposed to policy work has grown. The number of staff working for the legislative Branch Support. Gencies also has gone down governance gets bigger and bigger, but the number of people who can help out with it within the legislative branch has contracted. Trends also merit mentioning with regard to staff. Congressional staff salaries have been stagnant for many years and we know the price of living in the area has skyrocketed. The result of the stagnation has been predictable. There is significant turnover among staff, folks who are here every day of the week, trying to help you all govern. Committees in the house and senate saw an annual turnover rate of 21 in 2017. Thats a big number, and when we surveyed staff two summers ago about their plans for the future, more than two thirds said they were working to get out of congress within five years. And where are the staff going . Not surprisingly, to other more lucrative positions. One of which is lobbying. Its a second troubling trend. Percentage of congressional aides who have joined the influence industry has risen, it regularly drains expertise from the legislative branch. Behind all this, is basic fact which the professor alluded to, which is growing government. Congressional need for information to try and understand policy and the various issues you get jammed with every single, day goes up and up every day because operations get bigger, but what do you do . You just triage the situation the best you can. Sometimes you get notforprofit folks or others will who will come and help out. Frequently you have to depend on lobbyists. Lobbyist no doubt have their interests. So to conclude, let me be clear, i am a small government guy. I think our government is too big and is trying to do far too much. I would like to see it spend less, and i am alarmed by our deficits, all that. Nonetheless, i think it is penny wise and patent foolish for congress to skimp on staff. Particularly committee and legislative Branch Support staff. Congress is supposed to be the first branch of government, for governmental action, congress is also the branch of government most accountable to the public for the policy choices our nation makes, which Means Congress needs to grow its capacity to direct government, and also solve public problems. With that, i will end my remarks and i thank you for your my testimony and i would be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, doctor. Thank you, chair kilmer and the members of the subcommittee for having this hearing on how to restore congress as a true partner for the executive branch and the judiciary. Im here we are part of the wayne state university, but my views are on behalf of the center itself and not necessarily on behalf of the law school or university. Weve just heard from the first two witnesses about how the executive branch has expanded, in numbers and funding and activities, at the same Time Congress has lost staff. Lost funding, and it is struggling to keep up. The particular thing i was asked to look at is oversight because that is what the senator championed. Bipartisan, factbased oversight. It is a key power of congress, because if you want government, you simply have to have good oversight. And yet when we look at the quality of oversight all the time, it is really very from committee to committee, and across issues. Part of the reason that we just heard is a staffing problem. We have staff that is underpaid, that is fewer in number. It does not have the expertise that you need so that is a real problem. But there is a bigger problem, and that is the whole issue of bipartisanship. I was an investigator for 30 years with the senator and i found if you investigate with somebody whose views match your own, it was operating in an echo chamber. It is only when you investigated with somebody that had a fundamentally different world view, that you started to ask questions. You look at different facts, you interpreted them differently, and you challenged each other about what happened and why. And it is really that important fact based bipartisan operation that has really fallen off, and the testimony that ive given you goes into some of the factors. One of the things that i wanted to mention our for bipartisan recommendations that remain not only by the 11 center but lugar center, government oversight, and american oversight. There are four suggestions on a bipartisan basis that we thought you would like to hear. First of all, legal opinions on issues having to do with oversight. For decades, the department of justice, the office of Legal Counsel has been issuing opinions, directing the federal agencies on how they should respond to requests for information from congress. And it is no surprise that those statements have favored the executive branch. Congress has no comparable from its perspective on how federal agencies ought to respond. If we had the kind of process, and we created a bipartisan will supported legal opinions, we would not only help committees, help members set norms for inside and outside congress. When congress is forced to go to court, it would help us in the courts, as well. Right now, executive branch has that. We dont. That is one of our recommendations. The second one is more mundane, but it has to do with bipartisan compensation of committee clerks. Clerks do a lot of work, they can create a safe space for bipartisan operations, as im sure you all know and on the senate side, the minority and majority parties get together, hire administrative staff, pay their salaries on a 50 50 basis, but in the house, into many cases we have a democratic her democratic clerk and a republican clerk. Not only does that waste money, but each of those clerks are being hired to enter to a particular Party Instead of both parties. One thing that you could do would save money and promote bipartisanship, is to follow the senate sleet, and have your administrative personnel hired and paid for by both parties on a 50 50 basis. Third suggestion has to do with hearings. That has to do with question periods. Right now, we are operating under a five minute rule. When you saw the impeachment proceedings, one of the things they did was give 45 minutes to each side at the beginning of the hearing. You had a more coherent hearing. You were able to have leadership go into details, make the points they wanted. There was time for Committee Counsel to participate. I would urge you as we did on the permanence of investigations, on a regular basis, we had much more longer than 15 minutes, on a bars on a bipartisan basis, each side would get about the same amount of time, but get away from this five minute rule, where members are struggling to get through there questions, the witnesses are playing games, it just doesnt lead to a good hearing. And oversight hearings are a lens through which the public views congress. When a hearing is partisan, chaotic, hard to follow, that loses Public Confidence in congress. When they are coherent, members are prepared, they can speak in pub confidenceur goes up. The last one i want to mention is a big one. It is having Committee Funding better reflect the composition of the house. On the senate side, the composition of the funding for committees reflects, if we have 5149, that is how the funding is split. The house right now we have 51 majority, that has 67 of the Committee Funding, well that might look pretty good to the Majority Party, but for the foreseeable future, we have very narrow majorities. We have a divided country, and what looks good now could look pretty bad if the majority shifts. As it has done many times in the senate. So that is our sort of other big bipartisan suggestion. We also have a couple of others, just for the Leaven Center of how you actually do investigations on a bipartisan basis. And im happy to talk about those as well. But i think the big point here is that all of you have made a commitment to try to restore the authority of congress as an equal partner and we certainly need your help to do that. So thank you. Thank you, ms. Bean. You are recognized for five minutes. Members of the committee, thank you so much for the opportunity to testify today. Before i begin, i need to note that the testimony today represents my own views, and does not reflect an official position of the Brookings Institution or any of its component parts. As my panel has highlighted, right now it stands at the moment in history, where the institution is weekend. Congress is ability to perform its constitutionally mandated tests have been hampered. Congresss ability to perform its constitutionally mandated tests have been hampered. Nowhere is this issue more important and more damning than in the arena of spending power. Congress is charged to pass laws, Fund Government operations, and make significant choices over the amount of money spent by which institutions under under what conditions. I would argue in the past 20 years in particular, congress has undermined its own spending power and simultaneously empower the executive jan practical necessity. Ledressional choices have to an untenable scenario that requires significant reform. Specifically, this has happened in three ways. The breakdown in the appropriations process, the weakening of congressional oversight, and the decision to ban congressional in your march discuss each of these but in my limited time now, i will focus on the one to ban congressional earmarks. One of the most significant mistakes congress mainde involved in marks. During the elections, earmarks were painted as a coven for corruption, funding needless problem projects to support donf congress. Ash of this was hyperbole earmarking was used only by a handful of members in the past to putgress chose tighter rules around the practice. That included restrictions on what members could request and for whom, the rules also enacted unprecedented levels of transparency in an effort to dissuade the bad acts that made headlines at the time. That allowed public oversight to complement congressional oversight. Aose rules, imperfect, but step in the right direction, were deemed insufficient to sustain the practice and politics rather than prudence ultimately won the day. Legislatures on both sides, who rarely agree on anything opposed the ban, recognizing this was a separation of powers issue that would weaken the legislative and strengthen the executive. They were right. Legislato understand ther needs of theirs district better than bureaucrats and appointees, and the ability to deliver on those needs is not an abuse of power. It is a constitutional obligation and constituent expectation. The earmark ban was not only bad policy, but the justifications were off the mark. One reason for the earmark ban was the false claim earmarking led to exploding deficits. It did not. Earmarking did not grow the size of the federal spending buy. It increased the size of the slices. Haveur marking system can strict appearance to a chairmans mark and other rules that ensure overall spending does not increase, but individual decisions change. Bipartisan policy center has proposed effective safeguards to protect the integrity of earmarking should congress return to this practice. Another part of the justification for the earmark ban was the politics rather than need entered into the practice in corruptive ways. Surely politics affects earmarking as it does any spending decision. The political nature of earmarks is not synonymous with corruption. The earmark ban did not read federal spending a politics. It gently transferred Political Considerations from one branch to another. The chairman in his introduction was kind to plug my 2014 book. In that book, i examine all projectbased federal decisions from 1996 to 2001, over 1 trillion worth of spending. Shows president s were election driven individuals and the executive branch gives disproportionate sums of brain dollars to reflect a president s political needs. Politics affects the distribution of the nontrivial portion of the federal budget and congress has made choices over which branches will engage in earmarking. Past,now, as in the president ial year marks are happening while Congress Officially refuses to engage in the practice. Federalticization of funding is real and when congress cedes authority over spending decisions to the executive branch, it ensures the president ial politics disproportionately influences federal spending decisions. Taking back power from the executive branch is often a challenge that requires overriding a president ial veto which congress in congress is increasingly difficult. An increasing in legislative oversight, via Spending Authority and earmark reform that returns the practice while strengthen its integrity requires no president ial signoff. Each step rests solely within the purview of congress and would allow legislators to capacity, better represent constituents, uphold their growth, and recommit to the letter of article one of the constitution. We will head into questions to i will yield my time representative scanlon. I know you have another hearing to get to. Thank you so much, chairman kilmer and vice chairman graves. Weve had a number of hearings talking about the Practical Impact of issues so it is theresting to get to constitutional underpinnings of what we are trying to do here. Body,nly i am new to the but no quite a bit about ceding power to the executive. We probably need to take some measures to claw it back. I have been astonished at the brilliance of our staff, both on the committee and those willing to work for members, but because of funding, etc. , they dont stay very long and as brilliant as they may be, if they cant afford a mortgage or to start a family, they end up lacking Life Experiences that might be helpful, and we end up with a brain drain or lack of institutional memory. I guess ied in will just turn to dr. Gosar. If you could talk to the effect of the disparity between permanent staffing in the executive and what has been a revolving door in the legislature, the effect this has on our ability to function as a coequal branch. From the perspective of staff , the incentives are extremely strong to either go to the private sector or go to the executive branch. In each case, it pays better. You look at the general ,chedule, and the pay there they regularly gets increased, locality adjustments, it goes up and up. Ongress has kept a cap paying members and that trickles down and affects staff. A staffer can make what amounts to a lateral move over to the executive branch and quickly see 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 increase in pay and get tethered to a schedule that is more controllable, which, as you decide to do the family thing or get tired of doing the chaotic hill exercise, can be extremely appealing. When it comes to the private the professor of Medicine University has put together some data on that and it gets into the low level multiples that you can get from opting off to go to k street. I can tell you myself a couple of years ago, i had a staffer looking to get off the hill, at less than 10 years of service but had served on important committees and came in and asked about a job at a think tank and valuey noted if yo market was at least 200,000. Obviously we didnt employ that, but he found a job promptly and has done quite well. Obviously raising pay is one thing and i note when i was looking over some of the charts the memberted that allowances and member pay hasnt increased and you note that in the charts, that the number of office staff has reduced because that is the only way that you can raise anyones pay to keep it in line, is higher less staff which would obviously have an impact. Absolutely, and that affect is also happening at the legislative branch board agencies. My agency, correctional research at one point employed 900 persons. They are down to over 600 now. If you keep the spending the same and the salaries are going to increase a little bit, by definition you will end up with fewer people. There is less ftes to do the work there. Rep. Kilmer in addition to pay raises in addition to pay raises, do you have other recommendations to highlight . Did a survey of Congressional Staff in summer of 2017. We got a wide range of respondents in a variety of positions. Certainly compensation was an issue. Student loan repayment was flagged as a concern, just because you can only carry so much debt so far and if you dont have a lot to cover your housing, the amount of payments you make it is kind of a trap. Aboutis also a concern the lack of an obvious career ladder. Not as ifn and it is there is excerpt at path forward to some degree, it feels like competition to elbow someone else aside so you can take someone elses spot or you have to bail from your Members Office and go somewhere else because that is it. And not toveracking everybodys taste, so career development, being able to show careerou can build a here and there is a way you can move up, there are various opportunities for moving up and coupled with that is the training. Being told to catch a couple of seminars on the legislative process in your spare time, but dont b gone too long. Everyone comes to d. C. And amateur. If we can pause so they can deal with the d coming atdeluge them, that would help. You address omnibus bills under the breakdowns of the appropriations process and the impact that has on our ability to do oversight. Can you comment on the impact of staff reduction and lack of retention on those issues . Absolutely, and thank you for the question. Staff reduction hits the Appropriations Committee in an outsized way. If there is significant staff turnover on a committee that requires ongoing yearly negotiations, those are so critically important to the success of subcommittees and ultimately to committee, and then the work across the chambers, as well. Being able to trust an individual you have worked on appropriations with before is critically important to making sure you can have a working relationship in the future. Said,fellow panelists every Community Faces these challenges but because of the constitutional requirements of appropriations, this is so important to think at least a little differently about in terms of training, in terms of salary, in terms of eden even the relationship in the environment that is subCommittee Chair or chair of the committee creates within in order to see it more as a family, more as an ongoing working relationship that is not driven by partisanship, not driven by whoever the chairman has to be, but is driven by the constitutional commitment the members of the committee and the staff on that committee it is said, i, and so as i think we should think about capacity across all committees, but nowhere is that more appropriate than approps. Vice chair graves has also yielded, so i am going to call on mr. Newhouse for five minutes. Newhouse does that mean i get to go somewhere else too . For being here. This is a tremendously interesting topic and i cant help but think all the discussion about congressional capacity and the growth of the executive branch and its power and privilege congress has been helpful in that, very guess we cant blame the president ial or executive branch. Weve allowed it to happen, we being the legislative branch. Now what do we do about that . I guess there are a couple of butgs we can talk about, doctor, we noted your shameless plugging of your book. Comedential pork something we have been talking about for a number of years. Congressionally does directed aending, and that is constitutional responsibility of the legislative branch, not the executive branch. Observations, you talked a little about it, but i want on to, if you could, expand some of the things that, if this is put back into place, that debate is ongoing, but if we do go back to some kind of congressional directed spending, tell us some of the things as far as transparency or structure help us avoid some of the pitfalls that led to its demise to begin with and how we can structure it to be successful. Earmarking,urn to there will be a policy aspect of what needs to change in congress but also a political conversation that needs to happen and return to earmarking requires a bipartisan commitment, bipartisan cooperation in order for one party not to be able to accuse another party or one chamber even to accuse another chamber of trying to corrupt the process will bring corruption back to the process. Earmarks are not about corruption. Earmarks are about serving your constituents and that messaging needs to come from the leadership of both parties and the leadership of both chambers first. Second, i think the types of reforms that were initially put into place in the late to thousands were a good first step in terms of publicizing a members name who is requesting an earmark, the recipient, the purpose of the earmark and and the at the member members spouse do not have a financial connection to the recipient or the company or the organization that is receiving it. Thats a great first step. Greater transparency is necessary. Perhaps having an entity within congress, having it run through the Ethics Committee or having a select Committee Formed that vets each of these earmarks or vets them in groups is going to be very important, i think, to ensure both to ensure the integrity of the system, but also to ensure that there is Public Confidence in the system. Lovenow, most constituents earmarks. They just dont like the other congressmens earmarks. Congress isg the looking out as the guardian of this process and that there is enough transparency so that mediachers like me, organizations, and those institutions within the congress can make sure this is being done right will be a very helpful part of reform. Thank you. Se i agree with you. Mr. Kosar, you compared the different Staffing Levels from a couple decades ago until now. Only offices that i know of that have increased Staffing Levels are in leadership, and so certainly while we have ceded power to the executive while we have ceded power to the executive branch because we are cutting back on staff, would you say that perhaps there has been some seating from the rankandfile because of to the staff because of disparities . The model of congress in the past 50 years has transformed fundamentally. There were places where there was incredibly powerful chairs who were often interlocked with these bureaucracy and Interest Group and they committed resources, drove policy, they had large staff, they were johnsonkers and lyndon root call them the whales on the hill. The power of chairs have declined, the Resources Available have declined. The number of staff leadership have both chambers has increased dramatically. Its much more hierarchical at the top down. Thank you all for being here, appreciate the discussion. Miss lofgren. Much andren thanks so im sorry i missed most of the oral testimony but ive had a chance to read the written testimony and i think theres a lot of good ideas in there let me ask a couple of questions. House haved that the office of Legal Counsel reports. Some of us have thought we ought to require the publication of the office of Legal Counsel opinions. In a way its kind of secret law. It, no oneapproved in some cases even knows the positions being taken. Not only should we require that, but also if the house does counter positions we should equally publicize that. What do you think that would do . I agree with you. There are a lot of olc opinions a lot of people dont know about that is controlling federal policy. The ones that are made public, for example the one that white House Counsel has an absolute immunity to any request for testimony from congress, that is actually completely opposite to the courts that have considered the opinion and yet that is the policy of the executive branch, so i think publicizing it is important, but even more than that, the Congress Needs to have its own answer in a bipartisan thoughtful well supported legal opinions that when we go to court we can say we had this opinion for 20 years that those people are subject to congressional subpoena. People andn several most recently mr. Neuhaus mentioned this over decades the power had shifted from the legislative branch to the executive branch and i think that clearly the case. We rebalance that is a challenge. Not only in terms of the Institutional Capacity, but also in a fight between the legislative branch and the executive branch and ive got a couple of ideas i would like each of you to comment on if youve got an idea about it. When the house or senate believes executive branch is violating a statute, ordinarily we dont have standing to bring a case and so if that is a legitimate belief, if you feel the statute is being violated, you really look to others to bring the litigation. When there is a challenge of , the courts take their own sweet time. We have the capacity to require accelerated consideration in the finalrs in question along those lines are the use of emergency powers, ive asked that we take the Congressional Research service to compile all of the Emergency Exceptions because there may be circumstances where the congress thinks the Emergency Exceptions being misused. Obviously its a third branch that will arbitrate that. But that only works if the congress has standing, there is an accelerated review and there is some standards for the courts to look at. What are your thoughts on that . I will offer the thought that i think you are completely right. This is part of the process of taking back some of the authority we have given away to create a system where legislatively we say yes we have standing and we can have an expletive process. In some of those cases, that might require the president to sign on or override a veto so its not an easy kind of thing but that is exactly what Congress Needs to do if they want to rely on the judiciary to resolve some of these disputes, there has to be more equal Playing Field because when they delay in a court, a lot of times that delay is substantive decision because something doesnt happen you dont get the testimony, you have to make a decision. The lawsren or if being misread by the executive and two or three years goes on before its resolved, there really may be nothing left to argue about. , in order for us to successfully counter the executive branch and fulfill our proper role, we need to function in terms of staffing, but we have a real problem not only in terms of partisanship but frankly in terms of the senate and their rules when any member can stop anything from happening , it is very tough for the senate to legislate. Have you given any thought on what we could ask the senate to do to become more functional. Strong supporter of the filibuster rule. When the senate wants to work quickly it usually has to be on a bipartisan basis. Wouldnt agree with weakening the rule even further. You look at the judicial nominations we are getting now, when you could filibuster, then both sides had to have nominees that were ok with both sides, now that you can have a simple majority, we are getting judicial nominees with one party thinks is good and the other party doesnt but cant do anything about it. So from my point of view to push for bipartisanship, i would have a stronger than a weaker filibuster rule. Thank you. Mr. Woodall. Beingsonna take miss advice about using my five minutes and ask three questions i hope you will submit back to me in writing and to the committee. The first is a release to the house and equitable funding of staff on committees, no one believes nancy pelosi is a leader of the house, she is the leader of the democratic party, they dont believe john boehner is the leader of the house, he is the leader of the Republican Party. We are a distant a Different Institution of the senate. In an Institution Designed to be majority run, not run on the slimmest of margins. Can we adopt the senate model are we a Different Institution and that model that model would not achieve our constitutional role. My second question is about the appropriate staffing level. Ave seen less attractive staff growing up going up and going down. Today response to more people in a shorter amount of time with a greater degree of complexity than we ever dreamed of doing. What is a different level of capacity measurement, whats a different standard i can use then number of people because i dont think that really speaks to what we are trying to do in article one, its just the most convenient when i can find. Third, weve talked about bipartisan staff versus nonpartisan staff. I thought the point was well taken that having people who dont have any ideology may not be the right answer. Having folks from opposing ideology working sidebyside may be the right answer. What i found so valuable is not that people dont believe anything but they believe deeply things but they are able to have that conversation together. Do we disadvantage ourselves by hiring more nonpartisan crs for example as opposed to having a conservative and liberal budget analyst and having them produce that report together . Conversational conversation, standingate mr. Hudak up for article 189. Its not its a constable responsibility and the fact we are so politically sensitive these days, we need to fight. I wanted to ask you all about something dr. Potters testimony , issues are complex, the exec it if branch does have more capacity, we are passing legislation asking the executive branch to implement. I would be perfectly happily happy bringing a capacity back to the house. Passing longer bills that contain more details but not leaving that to an unelected expert downtown to solve. In todays 2020 information flow , historically it would have been worried that congress cant respond fast enough. They with litigation, executive branch often responds more slowly then congress can, is now the appropriate time in restoring article one to bring back all those regulatory responsibilities from the executive branch and begin to have the energy and Commerce Committee right Carbon Control policy rather than the epa right that same policy . I will start with you. So i think there is much to be said for all of these points. The point i want to make in response to your comment about complexity is the complexity is increasing. That came across in all of our testimonies. One thing in making these aforms you dont want to do sort of check the executive branch so much that it cant do its own job. I think a lot of the reforms would help inists that regard but some of these issues are so very complex that i would think it might be useful to have someone who spent their whole career studying air pollution working on air pollution policy the epa. I think there is some benefit to having career bureaucrats do a lot of this work. Its obvious to you that that air pollution expert to reside in the executive Branch Agency rather than on the energy and Commerce Committee . I think it depends on whether we can get people to view this as the career. A lot of my students who come to me, they want a career in government and they ask about careers in the executive branch because there is a career path. Right now that same career path option for these experts dont lie as much in the legislative branch. The capacity right now is not there. If it can be built over time i think there is a rule and i think dr. Gosar has written some proposals for talking about air pollution for the Congressional Regulatory Office and i think that would be a good idea. I got one answer from one witness and now my five minutes is expired. I blame myself for time management. Next up. Thank you. Thanks to all of you for being here and participating. This is an important discussion. I wanted to start with you, ms. Potter. You talked about how the executive branch has grown but a lot of that has not been in staff but and contractors. I wonder if you could talk about what you think the impact of that is, do you think they have the same incentives, is there an incentive to keep having work to do for the sake of making money . What impact do you think that has . Dont know a lot about contractors and the executive branch. Its very frustrating to know exactly how many there are and what they are doing because theres not a lot of transparency. They arecreate an excellent temporary workforce if we are having a piquant workload, but a lot of the issues again we are facing our longterm complex problems we are relying on contractors to do that work. What he creates, they are not subject to the same legal requirements the bureaucrats are. The freedom of information act and the judicial review dont apply the same. In terms of longterm government management, contractors are not the way we want to run our government but its currently how we are running a a lot of it even though we dont see it and theres a lot of reasons we ended up here but i dont think this is what we want to be doing with our workforce in the long term. Dont have the transparency to answer some of the questions were talking about , that clearly is a problem. Absolutely. Hudak, and your written testimony you talk about the link between oversight and appropriations, can you elaborate on that and talk about why you think those are if we dont do a good job and appropriations process, the challenge that creates an oversight. This congress, the house i should say, in the past year did an admirable job in terms of the appropriations process relative to years past at least in the recent past. That is important for the function of the congress and the function of the Appropriations Committee but its a critical check on the executive branch. By going through and doing the work of appropriations, you are looking line by line, program by program to understand what is going on within the executive branch. There are a lot of issues in congress in Public Policy broadly that our true 50 years ago and true today. But there are other issues that either change over that time in dramatic ways or no longer an issue that is necessarily requiring attention. If you are not looking at these programs on an annual basis you are not doing your job as overseers of the executive branch. You are not finding problems, your not find successes as well. Places than perhaps need more funding to continue that mission. The sort of direct way in which these are happening, there is an indirect way. If congress is falling down on the job in terms of appropriations, you are telegraphing to the executive branch whether its Donald Trumps executive branch or Barack Obamas or george bushs, that we are not doing the hard work and its going to be harder for us to identify problems or identify bad actions. Every administration has bad actors somewhere whether they are appointees or civil servants, its the nature of a large organization. And if the people who are supposed to do the accounting and the accountability are refusing to do that, you are like i said telegraphing to certain actors you are probably not to get caught. Thats not what congress is charged when the constitution and its not what your constituents charge you with when they send you here. Its increasingly whats happening. If we dont get it done beforehand so that its done and theres clear visibility for a full fiscal year it makes it hard to run oversight because theres a complexity agencies are going through trying to operating shortterm waiting for a longerterm bill to pass. And in that context its much easier for mistakes to be made when youre operating in the shortterm funding ways. As much as congress is there to catch malfeasance, the are there to catch when these happen and make these help agencies make those corrections as well. I yield back. Thank you. Let me recognize mr. Timmons and i will put mr. Poe can in the on deck circle. Thanks for having this hearing and thanks for taking the time to testify. Year areties this really divided into categories. One is calendar, schedule, floor votes and the second is budget. As far as this committee i think the chairman, we talked about this at length and im optimistic to find a path forward. Allnt to focus and ask you about the calendar, the schedule and floor votes. We will be here 55 full days. Last year here youre 65 full days. My constituents when i tell them that, a kind of starts making stents why we are so dysfunctional. We need more time to do our work and be scattered less. One of the conversations weve had is to make a recommendation surrounding the ratio, the number of days we are here, full days which is number of travel days. If we did a two week on, to week off schedule we would be here 108 full days and travel 24 is a post last year where we were here 65 days and traveled 66 days. We spend a lot of time in the airport and i think that can be better spent if we find more opportunities to do our work here in regard to the schedule, at the end of this i will ask you. In regards to the schedule, we often have overlapping committees, subcommittees, floor votes, there is overlapping obligations as you can tell, someone already had to leave because they had somewhere else to be. If we could create a block schedule format that does not facilitate this overlapping obligations, it will not be perfect because you will always have rules Committee Meeting at weird hours and that will never change but just anything we can do to minimize overlapping schedules and then floor votes, i spent time, if we are here really nail down when we are going to be off and we can say floor votes from 5 00 to 6 30 and from 1 00 to 1 30, there will never be a situation where you will be like floor votes might be in the next halfhour or two hours. If we are here more it would allow more predictability, which i think would be an incredible amount of time to get back. In addition to the timely earning with calendar changes. Do you think one of the problems we have with this issue we are talking about ceding power to the executive branch is the process but we have is flawed and if we worked on the calendar , schedule and floor votes we could potentially spend more meaningful time getting back some of that legislative branch power . Yes. [laughter] really it is time on task. The amount of time that is allocated for you all to be here , you cant have a hearing when you are sitting at home. And when youacted phrasee, i often use the swiss cheese. Light by the way you have to do fundraisers so there goes two hours of your life. You have to go to the dnc or rnc and make some calls. By the way you have to do this duty. And you just try to figure how can you possibly do all what you are supposed to do when all these other things are picking away at you and figuring out ways to extend the time here and reduce the time burnt in airports, but also the time that gets put on stuff thats not really valuable, the after hours of speeches, the extended stuff at the start of the day. The really valuable time, its not actually achieving a whole lot. And thinking about could we makes some of that stuff. So we can get more out of our schedule. Absolutely. I would also like to mention that when i talk to different offices about oversight, the members are pulled in so many directions that its very hard to find time to focus in a concentrated way on documents or witnesses, you go to this hearing, maybe you are studying on the way over. You have a couple minutes before its your turn to get called and that shows when you of an oversight hearing and its televised. A lack of preparation, unfamiliarity with documents not because you are not a conscientious hardworking people but because you have too much going on. There is too much time in airports, too much travel. The other thing to think about is social interaction. What we founded our subcommittee , we had a rolling Cocktail Party for 15 years. We would get together and have drinks with the other party and the reason we did that is we found it strengthened our social fabric and encouraged people to see each other as real people with common interests and we started to find our social fabric got better and we were able to partner better. Its hard to partner with people you dont know and that you only see in passing in the hallway. Thats very true for staff and members as well. Sweating two weeks on and two weeks off might be opportunities for people to get to know each other and that would improve bipartisanship as well. I couldnt agree with you more. I think we do not have enough opportunities to build relationships with our colleagues across the aisle. I think that is part of the problem. I will yield back. Myselfgoing to associate with mr. Timmons remarks. I spend more time in the detroit inport than in the office the restaurant i go to the most often is the Delta Sky Club rather than anything in my district. We spend an awful lot of time, we live in a Small Airline market, it takes me sometimes its taken me up to 14 hours to do what is a 12 hour drive from wisconsin and thats all time not here doing jobs. I want to echo those. My questions around on staffing on the input and output side, on the input side we pay remarkably low for inexpensive town, the best way to get a job here is to be an intern, the best way to be an intern was until recently worked for nothing and now work next to nothing. Which right away decides who can come up here and probably get jobs. And then when you get that staff assistant job you make 30,000, a one bedroom apartment is 30,000 a year on average. So there an input problem on staff which is kind of still selfselecting. On the output side a recently had a communication staff leave and took a job just writing up eds and they are making, as they said we said is anything to do financially and they said im making . 50 on the dollar of my new coffer that i got so its hard to keep people in the longer level. Some of it is salary but some of the career path. We dont have the same thing. On those two parts of employment, the input side and the output side, what are some extra suggestions we could be looking at. Obviously the pay issue, there is no question thats like a universal but what else could we be doing to help on the career path and who comes in here to make sure we have as diverse as our district we have people coming to work up here so its not just people who are coming from economically advantaged point . Two things on the input. Last yearhich is congress decided we will put aside a little bit of money to pay interns and i think that is valuable, but the amount provided really is not sufficient to help somebody who is a person of means who is versus one who is not. Rethinking that policy and asking doesnt need to be opt. The second is the housing issue. Thats the real cost. Toughrs are dedicated bunch, they can get by on ramen noodles and whatever. They will cut cost of necessary but if the only place they can live as a place where they are stuck with a high bill, that is an issue. Histhing ive marveled at people and wage dorms sitting on capitol hill why cant i be converted into housing were privatized and sold off in the value of that put towards dealing with the problem in some way, shape or form. So figuring out a way to deal with housing to defer the cost of housing and reduce the cost of housing, i think that would be a huge help as far as the folks here who might not otherwise be able to afford it. I would also like to mention the oversight, often you like to have a lawyer and when i was on the subcommittee we were able to hire lawyers, the most i could offer was 85,000, the people who are hiring were willing to take a more than 50 cut to come work here because the work is so interesting and important. So people are willing to work for less, but how long can they do it. Their spouses are complaining and after three or four or five years they are like i cant do it anymore i have to pay for college and so they take off. One thing that can help i think is training. The levin center working with the lugar center. We do these boot camps for staff. We get house, senate, democrat, republican, we put them on bipartisan bicameral teams. They learn not only investigative skills but also how you work with people who have very different views than your own and to find out there is actually a value to that rather than a penalty. I think one of the things that staff really has told us is they dont like working in environments that are very partisan where everybody is supposed to hate each other. That is not pleasant for staff. They want to work in a place where you are allowed to have bipartisan relationships, you are allowed to work with the other side. Ive seen it on both sides of the aisle where the members of congress have forbidden their staff to sign letters on any issue with the other side or to sort of fraternize with the enemy, so i think one thing is a change in how members see it and making a public commitment to bipartisan factbased oversight would actually make staff a lot happier, when they come to our training, they enjoy working with the other side. They find it interesting. But its hard to find that environment on the hill. I think there is instructive examples. Ive had a lot of former students joined the president ial management fellowship as well as the Pathways Program which is a program that Students Entering College and then after they graduate get hired in the executive branch. I bring these programs up because they give an introduction, you getting great people but they get great people and they get them to stay because they are getting training. They might do a rotation in different parts of the executive branch and so some of those models might be borrowed from the executive and pretty neatly applied. I agree with dr. Potter completely. I think one of the challenges that exists in that congress is not looking to other models about how to get this right, whether its the executive or private business. Within the congress i think a lot of people see staffing as 435 Small Businesses. They dont see congress as a Large Institution like a Large Corporation that you can take lessons from about how we do professional development and do staff relations. How we think about something as basic as a feedback loop within an institution to understand what can be improved and where fixes need to happen. Whether you even continue to think about the congress as 435 Small Businesses. Maybe you think of them as franchises. As a company like starbucks or mcdonalds or subway allow individual units to have freedom, drive some level of autonomy but put in some sort of basic requirements that each has to do and that an overarching organization can help support. Thats going to be one of the ways that you improve staff relations and Staff Development and key people within the institution. Thank you. Mr. Davis. Thank you mr. Chair. Buddy took the time. I think its a great recommendation. For committees this size and for the committee that on the Ranking Member on and miss lofgren shares, the House Administration committee. Five minutes of questioning is not enough for us to do not only proper questioning of witnesses, during hearing, but proper oversight. I cant get the questions asked for each of the agencies we have. I like that. I will tell you, miss lofgren and i worked together to do second and third rounds of questions. A lot of this can be easily solved at the committee level. If you have a cooperative chair who i would ask for extra time but he wouldnt give it to me today. I would. [laughter] if i asked for unanimous consent of my colleagues would all object i guarantee you. But im also the Ranking Member of the largest subcommittee and congress. We have 59 members. Use the Intelligence Committee during the impeachment process is kind of an example of what to do, i dont necessarily know if that would be a good idea on a Committee Like ours because that process empowered the staff and the members didnt get to ask as many questions and they were still pulled pushed for time. I think a lot of it has to do with the social media side. You have a committee of 59 members. By the time we get to the end, we are asking the same questions again not because they want the committee to hear the answers because they want to post something on social media. Thats a problem. Thank you for your recommendation. Dr. Hudak. Im glad you brought up earmarks. I was a staffer back in the day when the process became much more transparent. What would it take for this foritution to allow congressionally directed spending to happen here . Would be statutory, rule changes . The ban on earmarks exist because a formal or informal agreements within the caucuses and conferences within the house and senate. It wouldnt even require a rules change. So there were people who made bad decisions before the era of transparency. I remember you had to post all the requests online. Now if you look at just the last year of congressionally directed spending back then they called earmarks and you went to what was publicly available, put up on each members website, has anybody done any research in the years since those existed to actually see what the outcome of those requests were . To see if the benefit that was put up on the website of a member actually came to the communities . I can show you areas im proud to represent that of projects that have really helped us grow economically in certain areas that started with an earmark, a highway project, other types of projects. Telehealth was started with an earmark and now its everywhere. Those are things that i think dont get out enough. Inre do you guys stand helping us compile the research to talk about the good things that actually happen . One of the best advertisers of earmarks are members of congress themselves. You are working hard to get something through and you are going to be the first person, rightly so, to help sell this to the public by saying this is what weve done, this is the project we are funding. Technology new thats going to help be helped by what congress is doing. A member ofe Congress Tries to sell the benefits of the project there somebody on the others and sometimes an outside groups, maybe on your side traditionally that will find a reason why its not a good investment. There may be members of the senate that put together books that tell how these are not good investments. My point is what are institutions, what are associations like yours, what are you doing to help talk about whether that was a good investment. We can say until we are blue in the face and talk about these in our communities but has anybody done any substantive research on whether or not the last round of earmarks or another round actually help the communities that they said they were going to help when they offered their transparency on their website when requesting that. There were certainly research that shows the economic benefits of congressionally directed spending and i can get you a list of some of that research after the hearing, one of the challenges with the time you are discussing is that that. Of transparency was actually quite narrow in time. It might be easier to study. It makes it harder to study in terms of having fewer cases to look at. If we had the 10 or 15 surely theres enough to conduct studies, my point is if we can have an additional amount of time in which we have transparency where we can look at this more regularly rigorously across time and space and programs, the many ways you can chop up spending, we will have a better idea of the impact and have a better idea of the value of the transparency, whether its doing what its supposed to or not. What congress has done however is limited research in the space by shifting from lets say wild west version of earmarking to a transparent version of earmarking to an environment now we are earmarking frankly still exist in some ways, just behind closed doors in the shadows. So the worst part of the earmark man i would argue is that it drove all of this into the shadows and removed any transparency that existed on the process and those who are in powerful positions, those who Committee Chairs and others have the ability to slip language in the right ways in a way that a freshman member of congress or a backbencher is not able to do and what else is not possible these for Research Organizations in media to be able to track that issue as effectively into the research you are talking about. Thank you. If i would have more time i would ask if Committee Chairs when they were more powerful had a better grasp on the oversight process but im out of time. Id like to record to show that you are out of time two minutes ago. [laughter] he is right, i support that. First of all with the media, wheelers overreact, i was here. You were here limited earmarks. We have three people who got in trouble. This used to be a time everybody was hallelujah. This was like the time to be saved. Sudden, it isa just blase because everybody knew that the Little Bridge in the community that has been falling in for 45 years can get fixed. Embarrassmentn that we cant do that, the missouri delegation, every single one of us when i was , the saidive a report are you gonna submit and can you do it now, like today. Verybody i think it was 2010, president obama, of whom the former i served as national cochair for the election said when i sign i wont send any more bills with earmarks in it. , thee the second day , thatss out of line our responsibility, our constitutional responsibility. To the thing, i think human beings may be hardwired fory , you do it on the basis of kinship, football teams, we are just hardwired. Dewiere has to be a way to re it and thats where the problem lies. Whenever he went south, i didnt go south with him. Whethernt care today or not somebody says im loyal to those 800,000 people in my congressional district. When kit bond retired, i was a keynote speaker at his retirement dinner. Hes a republican in one of my dearest friends. He would sit down with me and the mayor and say we are getting ready to earmarks for things you are interested in. I think we are bypassing the opportunity to really do stuff for our community. We have earmarks now except they are done in the white house. Obama did them, bush did them in trump is doing them. We are the one sitting over here talking about they are taking our power, we gave it away. Anyway, thats my sermon. Before i yield to mr. Brooks. Made, dr. Cleaver hudak, you wrote a book on this phenomena not only the Authority Given to the executive , but how that has gone. Can you take a minute or so, how has it worked with the executive Branch Running the show . Has it all been sunshine and rainbows or has that authority been abused . Remarks, mr. Your cleaver, they were spot on both about the history of earmarks and i think the bipartisan support for that participation in those behaviors. In the executive branch theres far less trans parity transparency about earmarks. And what happens within federal agencies is there is an easy understanding of where president s political interests are. They are making sure that swing states get a lot of money and that those swing states get a lot of money particularly in advance of an election. This is not some complex political dynamic that some agencies get right and some get wrong. This is very easy and does not need to be telegraphed. You dont need the president to be pulling the strings, meetings to be held, everyone knows what president s are interested in and president s of both parties are interested in the same thing. So what the Research Shows is that yes, when given the opportunity, the executive branch does not direct all the funding to swing states strongly, but there is statistical evidence you are looking at eddie traditional you are looking at tens of millions of dollars being directed to swing states and who is losing out on that . Its not growing pie. What happens is if youre from a nonswing state, if you are from washington or georgia, although maybe georgie might just georgie might be cashing in, you might not be doing as well is a florida or a michigan or wisconsin. Politics interfering with at least part of the distribution decisions over federal funds. If we take for granted that part of is going to be it, most of them would far prefer that the member of congress engaged in most politics and a president or bureaucrat who is directing money in a variety of places but certainly not back to the 45yearold bridges in missouri the needed repairs this year. Thank you for your flexibility in letting us do that. Thank you all so much for being here. Myont have a history that good friend from across the aisle has but its interesting that he reminds us that only three people, there was three people who essentially caused congress and the American Public to shift dramatically and how they thought about earmarks. Us come hereny of and while im in my eighth year here, we come here and are often 435 independent offices and Small Businesses and we dont view it as the institution. Now i got placed in my first term by Speaker Boehner on the house Ethics Committee and then became chair of the house Ethics Committee last congress but the Ethics Committee is all about the institution and its a bipartisan committee, is evenly divided. And it focuses on the house rules and protecting the institution, not individual members. Campaigns, congress is an institution gets bashed all the time. We are constantly as Political Parties and as members bashing even the office we are trying to run for and so im curious and i will start with you, how do we sell Capacity Building to the American Public about us investing in offices and in ourselves, not us personally, but in our staff when they truly believe we have far more than we need. No one believes we need more staff that i know of. ,o one, most of my constituents my constituents dont say i need a nicer office or a neat staff who are paid more and they really dont care how much it costs to live in washington, d c. How much it cost members or anything. Whenw do we sell capacity as to the investments you will believe we need to be making in our institution. Problem inked hard the polling data is pretty clear that members of the public tend to think meant congress is overstaffed which is what it is. I would say the first thing couchingto consider capacity investments in terms of better customer service. You have tons of constituent outreach coming to you. You are constantly harassed for being out of touch, thats the accusation. You are not paying enough attention or responsive enough. We can be more responsive if we have better systems dealing with this crush of communications. So there is that aspect of it. Is to perhapsng let them know that financial savings can actually occur when you have oversight. They can save a lot of money by denting identifying ways fraud abuse and etc. You cant act in zero something out. Theres also that part of it. Candidly though i think a lot of the capacity investments are gonna have to be done anyway that is not politically salient. If you say for example the members of congress are going to cost ofto shift the reimbursement from out of their personal pot of money into collective office, nobody in america will Pay Attention to that, its just too complicated, its not interesting. But the practical effect means you have more dollars to spend on staff and increased tension attention. Any other ideas . I think you pointed out one of the basic problems members of congress congress. If you have the airlines talking about how dangerous they are and all the problems with them, people wouldnt want to fly and you wouldnt be able to get the investments you need for safe aviation. So part of the problem with congress itself to say that we actually do an important function here come over said think is part of it. Waste, fraud and abuse in my subcommittee we actually kept track of how much money we saved and it was well over a billion dollars and we are likely can only have 1 of the money we saved it would be worth it. But right now congress does not value itself enough to make the investments needed to make it effective. When you have ratings as low as they are with the public, whats going on now isnt working. We need to do Something Else and talk about congress and a respectful way. And its constitutional obligations and make the investments we need for congress to operate in a better way. Myself. E recognize let me start with dr. Gosar. The data you provided about Congressional Staffing levels. I want to pull on this thread, how do you explain the Staffing Levels in the senate being relatively steady in contrast to what seems like a pretty big drop in the house . It was a deliberate choice in the early 1990s. You look at the senate in the 1980s and the house in the 1980s. The senate had a pretty good reputation, the house, it was a little bit wild. There was a whole bunch of bad things happening. There was a lot of stuff that was going wrong. It was also the case that the staff there were there at the time were not always well used. Congress went on a hiring binge in the 70s and 80s and you had this cresting and a lot of staff running around and you did it thats never getting away. It was the sort of thing you predicted would happen when there was this massive influx of new employees and new systems. , newtprovoked a reaction gingrich was quite adroit in pointing out things were not running properly and republicans took congress, they rolled out a banner saying under new management addressing a popular concern that the house are turning to animal house. The senate didnt have that salient scandal situations. There were all sorts of bad things happening. I want to get at this issue. Selfflagellation is more popular than investment in institution and im just trying to think through methods through which this committee could look at Capacity Building. Im wondering if you have any thoughts as to its one thing, we could direct the Branch Appropriations subcommittee to try and get the institution more in line with the senate or with the executive branch. We could kick it to a thirdparty entity, say form a oneribbon panel Institutional Capacity and within five years trying get to their market. You understand im just throwing out ideas. If you are on this committee, would you recommend . I think i would first consider you want to increase capacity and particularly i think theres a value in doing it, increasing capacity in the form of staff. Where do you put those staff . It does not look great if you just say we will put more in my personal office. We willou start saying increase the quality of those at crs or cbo come and no one outside this town will be particularly upset about that and that sort of stuff has been happening, there have been increases in the appropriations to these and no one is getting clobbered in the polls because of it. That would be one way to look at doing it. And committees also its very hiring a newre limo driver or something, if youre talkings expertise in committee, you are hitting the notes of oversight that this will strengthen oversight, i think you will be largely intimidated from the sort of backlash you will face. I would like to agree with that that virtually every committees required by law to do oversight within the jurisdiction theyve been given and people want their government to work together. Work better. You cant get it to work better unless you have good oversight. You can do good oversight and less is more staff and more resources to focus on the executive branch and all the things going on there and the other real problems that are facing us. The other thing i will say is if you want to do this in a bipartisan way. Bipartisan investigations take longer, they are harder because you challenge each other, you have to work through the issues, you cant have 12 hearings a year, my subcommittee had two to three hearings a year. We spent the entire year on it and got to an agreement. Id have fewer hearings, less partisan topics and i would justify that additional money as in terms of trying to address the problems we all know our government has even in a Good Government is always problems. And if congress doesnt do the oversight, they wont get fixed. I think part of the responsibility here also rests with this. To effectively call a truce. By tagging the institution and saying we will hold our members to account if there is a valid if theres a proposal for members that needs to be politically offlimits. That might be fantastical, the idea truce could hold. If it keeps 75s of in line around that. Systemrt of a discipline that would need to be enacted from a political perspective in concert with trying to change the policies of the congress. Let me recognize for five minutes. And if you arent all sweated out of this room, for those watching on cspan, its 9000 degrees. [laughter] thank you mr. Chairman, and for the benefit of the viewers, what they cant see is that for a better hour and 15 minutes, hour and a half, this room is packed with participants willing to learn and staying all Committee Members in attendance, which is rare in this place unless there is something more highprofile going on so its a complement to this panel for short and to the subject matter. Thanks for doing this. Just dr. Hudak, talk for a second about what you were speaking about. The term earmarks which is an older term and if we were to ever transition back to what you were was not a practice but our constitutional duty, it probably has to be modified in a way thats much more responsible. Politically there are certain challenges but youve heard broad support among this committee and broad support from other groups in various parties. There is a political aspect to it and i would be interested with each of the panels perspectives on these comments and this restoration of power, but what you did emphasize is obvious to me but yet i hadnt noticed it is that it doesnt change the amount of spending that occurs in this place. It redirects how you might have spent it. Sharper of a pencil so to speak as to how we might operate. To get a unique perspective i happened to notice the tie on dr. Cozaar, and adam tie which would lead me to think that you might be more centerright fiscally thinking, what is your response or what are your perspectives on the proposal as it was mentioned earlier with this duty . It makes sense to me in terms of accountability, if you are a member and direct a bunch of spending the turns out to be a boondoggle, you will hear about it. You will get hammered, it happens somewhere in the bowels of the department of transportation, no accountability whatsoever. Wantso, for sure nobody to go back to the days of casino jack and that sort of stuff. Thats very easy to prevent from , but the whole conversation on earmarks is anchored on the few bad things mr. Davisned and mentioned the positive is not often talked about. Those are just not interesting stories. We might release a press release saying we did something good, you might get a little bit of local coverage. Appropriate and i would like to see some sort of. Every time you draw a formulated law even its collective bargaining across the different chambers, someone will get more than others. We dont call that earmarking, why . Thanks for your perspective. I think you are right. I dont think anyone on this panel would agree we need to go back to the way it was. I think there is genuine intent to try and understand how do you restore an action and remove power from the executive branch and restored back. In a way that is known as an seen as youve shared a few good concepts with us today. I know this is my last term. I suspect in the future whether we address this, some of the congress will. Other congress will. What we have learned and what this,seen will leave into to try and find a responsible solution as we move forward. Would you have any thoughts on this . Do you have any recommendations repurposew we might and provided Better Process . Say i have recommendations. I wanted to make two points. Has an important part of starts the timeseries before what we are talking about. This directed spending has been will probably stay around. Its not going to be easy to change. Earmarks only account for congressionally directed ofnding, about 1 spending. The executive branch is going to retain some authority here, for better or worse. About this, you might want to think about how to bring earmarks back in a more targeted way. Can we put it in places where it makes sense . Where you can bring the expertise about districts to bear . There might be a good place, there might be other types of programs where congressionally directed spending is less appropriate perhaps. Any thoughts . I support bringing back congressionally directed spending the cousins a constitutional obligation and because it promotes bipartisanship. When you have to be transparent about your earmarks, there has to be a meeting of the minds of people on the Appropriations Committee. Its out there in the public. It, was going to let you do theres going to be some trading backandforth. If i want my bridge in my district and there is support for it, there is Research Behind it and there is something someone your district, lets go forward. I think it promotes bipartisanship. Processre we had that and it moved a lot of bills forward. Transportation used to be a very happy time instead of a very painful time now. Youve given a great explanation and you have great knowledge of the past of president ial earmarks. Do you have any experience as relates to grants . When i think about congressionally directed spending, why do we have the same conflict and we talk about Community Block grants or other andts that Congress Funds moves forward. There doesnt seem to be that same negativity about it. I think dr. Gosar is right. This is pork in a different package. Benefits arese the widespread by the nature of the formula, it is harder for a member to attack. Then an individual constituent to understand the benefits to the district did because your marks around specificrants are very and project oriented funding streams, its easy for one person not necessarily to recognize the benefit to the district. Whole, as a some other parts, a lot of constituents are going to benefit from this type of spending. , i amf the challenge typically not one for splitting hairs around naming things. Its not something that is terribly tolerable. The onus is on you. Is in the gutter, its not going to be that helpful. Constituent focused spending, the beneficiaries or not you. They are your constituents. Public,things in a more constituent oriented conversation is much easier. As one of my panelists said, frame it as customer service. District office does. Its what your staff here does. Thats easier for an individual to understand the benefits of. I think its true for project grants as well. Would have a few members who have some followup questions. Wanted to ask about your idea of an office of Legal Counsel. Im a former United States attorney. I relied on those opinions from the justice department. See. Ould you amazedcame here, i was when the Republican Party was hiring lawyers and filing lawsuits and the Democrat Party files against the executive branch now. How would you see an office of Legal Counsel functioning. What type of work would you see them actually doing . I know we have nonpartisan staff. Thats why we hire an Ethics Committee. The sergeant at arms is a nonpartisan staff. We have offices within congress that are nonpartisan staff. It certainly makes some sense. What issues or problems would you see for congress . Would it be for the reason of debating olc at justice . I had not thought about that. Thank you for the focus on bipartisanship. Can you share with me what would be proposed in the office . Any think its important legal opinions have bipartisan support. If they dont have bipartisan on path then its not to congress and will open a new pat can of worms. There is a way to get to well supported legal opinions. The office of general counsel is the place to do it. They are to defend congress as an institution. They have to go to court. The are the ones defending right of congress to get information. Thats how im looking at it in terms of oversight. The legal opinions im thinking about enable congress to get information. Thats one possibility. Other people say you should use a tradition of being nonpartisan and would be the right place to do this. Other people respond crs is an academic institution. They are not in the courts. They dont know what you need to win the cases in courts. Im sure there could be other options. One of the things 11 center is doing right now with the help of other institutions like the we are launching a website next week, gathering the information about a dozen cases are going to the courts that have to do with congress trying to get information. Usually the administration is fighting those information requests and trying to create a shopping place for you could there is a lot going on in the courts. Not many people know about that. They dont know there is more than one dozen judges from different perspectives. If all of those court cases, olc comes up all the time with their opinions. The white House Counsel shouldnt have to respond to congressional subpoenas. Congress says we have two judges that say they should. They dont have that bipartisan legal opinion. How would you staff that . Office ofe way the general counsel is staffed now. They have lawyers that file briefs in a dozen cases. They do amazing, fantastic work. I do know how they are cranking out all that work. They just get the job done despite the difficulty. I had two questions. One is where the Inflection Point is on reclaiming some of memberwer as the ranking explained. Has not been a talk about committee, this is a do something about it committee. I campaigned in favor of congressional corrected spending. That was my time to win. The season, weve got to find the right season to make this work. Can you give me advice on when the season is for reclaiming article one power . Other ideas . I think its easier at the start of a new presidency. There can be a conversation. Floored by the lack of conversation within democratic president ial debates that have not focused on what to do about the office of president. There are complaints in the primary about what donald trump is doing. There are things the president has said thats crossed the line. A lot of what the president is doing that stretches delegation from congress in ways we havent seen before. To be myopic and think that is a donald trump problem is dismissive of congress as an institution. The problem is the presidency. A broader conversation about the powers of the office need to happen in both parties. Heat now in the partisan we have involving the president and the institution, now is probably not the greatest time to have a tivo movement. Heave ho movement. That is going to be an important moment to think about this. Time, thats for issues that would require overcoming a president ial veto. They are probably equally going to try to veto these types of efforts. There is a lot that can be done in congressional rules, in informal norms and through processes within the institution. You dont need donald trump or barack obama or another president to sign onto it. This is the moment for that. Not to wait for the next congress to do it. Dr. Cozart . A challenge ive been wrestling with is how we make the purse powerful again . Its a peculiar situation to hear people say we have an outofcontrol presidency that has grown crazily big. The president cant reach in and grab out the money. Has to be appropriated by congress. The ability to use the purse to control action, whether its saying you did this, we are going to zero this out. That is not happening. I dont understand why that leverage has disappeared. Its the fear if you replace that hold on things, you have the on the bus going through the government would shut down. Getting the power of the purse back so it is curbing misuse, one of the great things we have the executive branch is doing stuff anyway. How do you make them pay for it . The purse seems to be the only option. To the point about the that wasnce committee, a more cogent hearing than many we have had. Members were disadvantaged. Was advantaged. If our goal is increasing article one responsibility, does that happen by increasing rankandfile influence in the house . Does that happen by increasing leadership influence in the house . I know how to make the speaker more powerful. I know how to make Ranking Members more powerful. Im not sure which one helps me balance by influence with article two in article three. Hearings are controlled by the committees. Thats the Committee Chair and the vice chair. If they can have a more cogent hearing, more power to them. You have millions of people watching. You dont want them to turn away and say that was painful watching. Those people are prepared, they are serious, they made their points. Having more time to do it is helpful. Does that empower the Committee Chairs . Yes. What the rankandfile have to do is be willing to sit through that and stay longer. Senator levin was famous for his long hearings. His record was 11 hours. We finished at 11 00 at night because he wanted to give every member is much time as they wanted to ask whatever questions they wanted. Thats not easy. It can be very difficult with your schedules and the demands on you. That is one answer. Seen that long before. Ive seen 15 minutes per side. Stronger Committee Chairs equals an stronger article one . The pit committees have lost a lot of power. Can the of you say that with clarity . Certainly. The model we have evolved toward which is a leadership driven model has become a trap. Your job is to line up behind the leadership or stand in opposition. Putnotion the keeps getting out there is why dont we just do this and retain the majority forever . Its gone back and forth. Thats not a longterm governing strategy. You keep turning seats over and moving people around, the executive branch just keeps on chugging. All of these suggestions we have for better oversight, none of them require statutes. None of them require the president to sign on. Its the control of congress itself. Mr. Newhouse . Its an easy question to end things. You just touched on it. Im trying to think once different . What is similar between the house and the senate or the house and the executive branch. Why havent they been able to argue more successfully about maintaining or growing their strength and power when the house hasnt. I dont know if i have the answer or not. When you talk about this conversation, or back to the staff issues of cotton annuity. Upliterally stir everything every two years. It a simple solution . Does the twoyear term lend itself to the house being as andctive and efficient allow those other good things to happen when you have to change everything every two years . The senate has six years. Can we do it otherwise . Haveears ago, we didnt much staff. The members was on the floor at their desk. Theres an old adage that government will grow into the space provided. If you build an office building, staff will appear. Im not sure thats the answer. . Ny opinions can we do this . Is it just different choices made in the house and senate . The twoyear election cycle is brutal. We are in a peculiar era. 1900 tolongest time, 1980, democrats were the majority. The thought that the republicans would be the majority was considered fanciful. People got along in a consensual way. That changed. You know how it works. You are told to think about how you are going to win the next election. Youre going to send the others into the minority. The structure is very strong that way. It was a leadership driven model. Your power is at the top of the chamber. That person gets to do everything and if we win that, we can ram our agenda through. That doesnt work. The senate has a more consensual model. It just buffers them from the sort of stuff. It means that often dont get things done is promptly as possible. The bills go over there and there they sit. At some point, the members are going to have to decide when they want to keep the leadership driven model. Otherwise, this will perpetuate itself. Theres no way its going to. The logic of the situation, all authority rests with readership. Its going to be a vicious scrum to grab that authority. I would mention this thing about we now have very narrow majorities. For the majority get two thirds of the funding, that just leads to partisan anger and backlash. You have staff fired and brought are put inn People Committee offices with no windows. You just see these things spin out. Senate, that Committee Funding reflects the majority. You get 51 of the funding. If it flips the next year, you lose a little bit as you should. Its not these dramatic, partisan punitive actions. It does mean the Majority Party lives up some money. On the other hand, when things is whate other thing happens in the senate when we made the transition, what happened is everybody kept the funding that they had. Thats how theyve done it in the senate. It is led to a much less partisan situation. You dont lose institutional staff. If i can bring some research to bear on this question, what we know about term limits is when states and act term limits, expertise. Duced that to thinking about longer term limits for expect of the house, we to see an increase in capacity and expertise in the house. I think we have to return to the principal of why we have to limit terms. This is the peoples chamber. Keeping that in mind, can we build capacity in other ways . This froml keeping our founding. I counted five mansions of the book mentions of the book. This committee is killing it on amazon. I wanted to just ask one final question. Of the conversation has been around appropriations. I think we know the role that appropriations have. Only committee thats engaged in earmarks. People look at that is opportunity. I just want to get your sense above that. Is that a good thing that authorizing committees were engaged in that . Does that make legislation more bipartisan . I think having authorizing committees involved in that process, transportation is one. That spreads around to the congress. The ability to engage in that action, to deliver for your constituents. It does not put up the toropriators onto a pedestal whom everyone else in the Congress Needs to go to in order for their constituents to be served. When you start to have or return to authorizing committees engaged in this process, it requires more members to be involved, more to have access to that system. Greater subcommittees and the authorizing committees, all of that is cooperation in action. All of that requires members to get together, think together, work together. Isway you can increase that a way to improve the institution as a whole. Followup onke to that point. The federal government is being funded, but not reauthorized. No spendingght that or grants could take place without authorization just because something is authorized, does that mean the funds would be released . Its in interesting hostagetaking approach. I dont mean that pejoratively. Im not a pro hostage taker. When you look out at some of the most contentious fights around reauthorization over the last decade, you really understand how the failures of public seriousan present safety challenges for americans, create industry disruptions where government shouldnt be disrupting industry. Putting those two together as , thisf the process facilitates policymaking. When you have huge numbers of agencies including the department of agriculture, you have to wonder about where that ends to. Our only protected for only so long and what kind of havoc does that create . In business and for everyday americans, i think thats a really creative way to think ofut forcing the hand individual members in committees in general. Congressionally directed spending back and using it in fairly innovative ways. What i am hearing you suggest is we are both appropriators here, they should not have that soul power. Spending should not be appropriated without an authorization alongside it. Is that what you are suggesting . Approach. Thats an i do its to be a hard sell. Think its going to be a hard sell. I talked about Different Institutions ensure greater accountability. That is one way to have greater accountability. The one thing you know about being an appropriate are the defense subcommittee, they do not sit on the authorizing committee. On ann automatic check earmark if youre requiring that to happen. Politically, its probably a difficult sell. Functionally, its probably something that would be helpful in restoring americas trust in the process. Thank you. I want to thank our witnesses for their testimony today. I want to thank the ways and Means Committee for letting us squat in their room. Cspanou to the cameraman for sweating with us in here and for the person doing the transcription, thank you. To our staff for putting together such a thoughtful panel. Objection, we will have five days i asked our witnesses to please respond as promptly as you are able. Without objection, all members will have five legislative days with which to submit extraneous materials to the chair for inclusion in the record and with that, this hearing is adjourned. Thanks, everybody. Newsmakersk, interviewed the number two democrat on the Foreign Relations committee. Senator vitter card and of maryland talks about u. S. Iran relations, the nuclear deal, and discusses the u. S. Mexicocanada trade deal approved by the senate. Watch today at 10 00 a. M. And again on 6 00 eastern on cspan. You can hear it on cspan radio and watch online at cspan. Org. The white house did not release a weekly address from the president. Senator kit tim kaine of virginia gave the democratic address talking about powers resolution and since impeachment trial against president trump. Sen. Kaine over the past few weeks weve seen an escalation of tensions between the United States and iran