Transcripts For CSPAN3 Hearing On Constitutional Role Of Congress 20240713

Okay the committee will come to order the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the committee. And this time article one, restoring capacity and equipping. I get myself five minutes to give an opening statement. Its our first hearing of the new year, this committee has had an incredibly productive last year, passing 45 recommendations focused on making congress more effective and efficient so that they can better serve the American People and i am proud of what we have conceived and accomplished with this committee so far and what weve accomplished together. Every member of this committee has been fully engaged, the work has taken time to consider the work in the mandate, and really working consider the colleagues. Finding Collaborative Solutions to the challenges this institution faces. Successful institutions what you are talking up businesses or organizations or governments, depends on people who are invested in the work they are doing. And that is fundamental. Invite successful institutions invest in their cells, their employees, their infrastructure, and the overall Work Environment and experience. They think can plan with an eye towards the future. Bottom line is, it is hard for people to be fully invested in their work if their work is not fully invested in them. Congress has been lucky to get extremely dedicated staff, and continue to be productive despite the many challenges that they have faced. Fulfilling the mission has become harder over the past couple of decades, primarily due to the decisions and choices that congress has made. Today is about looking inward, what the framers created of congress, the first coequal branches of government. Article one, has the congress and numerous powers. Congress capacity to uphold these powers as we can. This across many of our hearings from last, year and drastically effects congress is ability to help the American People. And we felt it good to put article one front and center. Todays hearing will help us understand gore the factors that has been the Congress Power since world war ii. And look how congress has reduced its own capacity to fulfill its constitutional obligation. Also we will consider what to be done to return congress to a coequal branch of government. The no decision should be made by one branch of government. That is the beauty of our, system and i look forward to hearing recommendations from our Witnesses Today and how to strengthen congress and the legislative branch. We have a group of students here from virginia tech, who are here to look at oversight, and i think these issues are very important, and i think its people its great that they want to learn about this, stuff and thank you for taking an interest in our work. applause i even see them coming in thank you students for being here. I would like to ask are vice chair for opening remarks. I am going to im going to echo the chairs thanks for a productive and historic, in history making here for this committee. 45 recommendations in total all bipartisan with a lead significantly piece of legislation to match. Which is a testament to this committee and what we can do. I want to see what we can accomplish this year this year weve been granted and grateful for. And 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 today 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 west welcomed 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, are next witnesses kevin costar, Vice President of research non, profit non partisan, Public Research organization. Doctor closer directs our codirected our governance department. Are working, group which aims to strengthen congress, and establish an online hope for congressional reform and scholarship. Doctor costar work for the Congressional Research service for more than a decade, where he served as an analyst and research manager. No pressure. Third is the washington codirector of the 11 center, from 1985 to 2014, it has been working for carl leaven, including 15 years at the Senate Subcommittee on investigations. Supported chief staff her, legislation on matters such as money laundering, corruption and tax abuse. 2014 senator 11 retired, and has been joining the senator, at the federal state and local and international levels, to perform investigation an oversight. And last john hudak. Senior doctor who tax questions the president ial power, personnel and Public Policy. His book president ial report white house influence over the distribution of federal grants, looks at pork barrel politics, and his other work shows how institutional structure, facilitates or hinder, president ial power and influence. Witnesses are reminded, that youre oral testimony will be limited to five minutes, and without objection, your written remarks will be made part of the record. Doctor potter you are now recognized for five minutes to give us an oral already representation of your presentation. Thank you for the opportunity, todays hearing focus on congressional capacity, my testimony focus on changes in the capacity of the executive branch for our time. The executive branch, George Washington had a small personal staff a few individuals. And the cabinet consisted of three departments. Obviously thats a very different executive branch than the one we are today. Which is sophisticated, complex, and large. Much of the transformation from the executive branch occurred after the period of world war ii. And thats 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 knew agencies was created this year. Today there are estimated 278 agencies in the executive branch. The growth in the capacity of the executive branch is reflected in its line. Each year federal agencies issue an average 2500 proposed rolls and 3005 under finals. Many of these expand and entrench the executive branch. No doubles about the bureaucracy, is that while it has amassed more and more responsibility over time, they have not been, increases in staffing. Civilian employment has hovered and approximately 2 million individual since 1950. This may seem confusing, how is it that the executive branch, is accomplishing so much more, without commensurate increase in staffing. A key factor is that contractors increasingly perform the work of government. One estimates puts the curtain ratio of employees to contractors at one to three. This means that in practice, the executive Branch Workforce has grown, but in a less visible and accountable way. Second at the same time the federal bureaucracy has grown, the officers as the president has seen a significant expansion in its ability to make policy. At least three ways. First president s have increasingly relied on unilateral action to accomplish policy wiggles. Well executive orders received the lions share of attention, there are many ways a president can actually achieve this laterally. Across this broad class of actions, it has been one of consistent time and growth second the president has amassed increase powers. Despite congressional attempts to limit unilateral authority in regards to war, the president remains autonomy one comes to deploying troops abroad and inducting military operations. Initially the president has a niche increased number of authority. Third the president s policy making advisory and supervisory capabilities have also grown substantially. For instance the executive office of the president , which is created in 1939, now employs about 2000 people. This organ provides a president with a sophisticated ability to develop new policy and manage the executive branch. My final point is that these trends have persisted under both democratic and republican administrations. And they could be attributed to numerous factors. First domestic and international crises, have expanded the region of the executive branch. When the country is that crisis, there is demand for coordinated National Response and the executive is well positioned to fulfill that role. Second policy complexity, contributes to the and dry and dies meant of the branch. The executive branch is saint indepth attention to heart problems. It means when new problems observed, the executive branch is off to want to respond to them. Polarization also magnifies the power of the executive branch. When congress does not act, problems to not go away, this means the president or the bureaucracy off and steps up to the plate. Going forward, delegation to the executive branch will remain a necessary part of governance. The challenge of confronting these Important Committee then, is how to conduct oversight of the executive branch, without stymied being its ability. Thank you for your time. Doctor costar i recognize you for five minutes. Thank you. Thank you chairman kilmer, for holding this hearing and inviting. They just heard from professor parlor about the growing scope of the executive branch, and to be sure, there is just no doubt about, it government is widening the expanse of its efforts. Policy is becoming ever more complicated, my written testimony is one thing i cite is that the original Landmark Education act, the education act 1965, was a mere 32 pages long, 40 years later, we have updated that in 2000, two the no child left behind act, was the hundreds and hundreds of pages. One side of government growing. Unfortunately, preponderance of the evidence indicates that the capacity has not kept up. With the expensive government. Increasingly you have an executive branch that is not directed by the legislative branch. And that runs contrary to the plan laid out by the constitution, and creates real accountability troubles. Noted in my written testimony are all sorts of factors of congressional capacity, we dont have time to cover them all, and i was asked to focus on just, one which is people. The people whose efforts produce governance. And in particular to focus on legislative staff. Legislative staff branch, support agencies, the trend since 19 eighties are very troubling. The number of total Congressional Staff, have declined, the number of Committee Staff have declined, percentage of personal staff working in d. C. Has gone down,. Representative staff doing communication work has grown. And the number of staff working for the legislative Branch Support agencies, how also has gone down. The number of people who can help out with it, within the legislative branch as actually contracted. Two troubling trends, also worth merit mentioning, with regard to staff, first of which, Congressional Staff salaries have been stagnant for many years, we all know the price of living in d. C. Maryland Virginia Area has skyrocketed, and the result of the stagnation, is unpredictable will. There are significant turnover of staff, folks who are here every day of the week, trying to help you all govern. Committees in the house and senate, saad annual turnover rate of 21 in 2017. Its a big number. And when we surveyed staff two summers ago, about their plans for the future, more than two thirds said the they were working to get out of congress within five years. And where are the staff going . Not surprisingly to other lucrative positions. One of which is lobbying. Its a second troubling trend. The amount of aid to have joined this industry has risen, and it trains expertise from the legislative branch. And that, behind all this, is basic fact which was alluded to, which is growing government. Congressional need for information to try and understand policy, a various issue, you get jammed with every single, day goes up and not because governments operation get bigger and bigger, but if capacities like behind, it what do you guys do . You just triage the situation the best you can. Sometimes you get notforprofit folks, are others will who will come and help out. Frequently you have to depend on lobbyists. And 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 nations make, which Means Congress needs to grow its capacity to direct government, and also solve public problems. With that i thank you for you my testimony i would be happy to answer any questions. Thank you doctor closer. Think 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 senate itself, and that 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 senator 11 championed. 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 cross issues. And part of the reason that we just heard, is a staffing problem. We have staff that is underpaid, that is fewer in number. But 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 senator 11, i found it if you investigation 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 has gone 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 severed the executive branch. Congress has no progress admits 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. I Want Congress is forced to go to court, he would helps in the courts as well. Right now executive branch has that we dont. And that is one of our recommendations. The second one is more mundane, and 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, a majority minority parties get together, higher administrate of staff, pay their salaries on a 50 50 basis, but in the house, into many cases we have a democratic her 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 could to 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 is a 45 minutes to each side at the beginning of the hearing. Who had a more coherent heating, you are able to have leadership make the points they wanted, it 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 partisan basis, each side we get the same out 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 for which the public views congress. When a hearing is partisan, chaotic, hard to follow, that loses Public Confidence in congress. Where their coherent, members are prepared, they can speak in an easy, way Public Confidence 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 50 1 49, that is how the funding is flip, 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 the 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 miss been, 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 beneficial position of the institution. 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. No or is this issue more important, and more damning, than in the arena of spending power. Article one and 89, congress is charged to pass laws, Fund Government operations, i would argue that in the past 20 years in particular, congress has undermined its own spending power, and simultaneously empower the executive beyond practical necessity. Congressional choices have led to an untenable scenario, which requires significant reform. Specifically this is happening three ways. The breakdown in the appropriations process, the weakening of congressional oversight, and the decision to ban congressional landmarks. In my written testimony i discussed each of these with my limited time now i will focus on the last decision the one to ban congressional earmarks. I believe one of the biggest mistakes they made, an exceeding spending authority, involved banning remarks. During the 2000 and culminating in the 2010 earmarks as were painted as a coveted for corruption. Funding of needless projects, to support friends members and donors of congress. Much of this was hyperbole, as earmarking was used by only a handful of members of the past. In response to those pieces, congress tried to get structure world. It puts frictions on what they could request, the acted unprecedented levels of transparency. That transparency allowed public oversight, to compliment congressional oversight. Those rules imperfect but a step in the right direction, were deemed insufficient to sustain the practice, and politics rather than prudence, ultimately won the day. Our legislators on both sides of the aisle,s legislators who rarely agreed on anything, oppose the ban. Recognizing this was a separation of powers issue, that would weaken the legislative plan each and strengthen the executive. They understand the needs of their district in their states but is and bureaucrats in appointees, the beer the tea of legislators to deliver on those knees will not be seen as an abuse of power, it is not seen. The earmark ban was not only that policy, but the just kick vacations for it were off the mark. One justification for the earmark ban, was false claim that youre marking led to exploding deficits. Youre marking did not grow the federal spending. It just decide on the size of the slices. In earmarking it can be done with the individual spending decisions changed. Bipartisan policy center for instance is proposed effective safeguards to protect the integrity of earmarking, should congress returned to this practice. Another part of the justification for the earmark, was that politics rather than need, entered into the practice in corruptive ways. Surely politics affects legislative earmarking as it affects any spending decision. The political is not synonymous with corruption. It transferred Political Considerations from one branch to another. The chairman in his introduction was kind enough to plug my 2014 book, calls president ial pork and ill plug it again, in that book i example examine all spending decisions from 1996 to 2001. Over a trillion dollars worth of spending. It shows that the president s an election individuals, it gives disproportionate sums to present the president s needs. Congress has made choices as to which branch will engage in earmarking, right now as in the press, president ial earmarks are happening, while congress refuses to engage in the practice. Congress when they exceed authority, over spending excision to the executive, branch taking back power from the executive branch is often a challenge that requires overriding the president ial veto, which is polarized Congress Finds increasingly difficult. However a return to normal appropriations, increase of legislation oversight, by spending authority, and earmark reform, returns the practice, while strengthening its integrity, requires no president ial sign off. In fact each step much solely purview the progress. And recommit to the spirit of leather article one in the constitution. Thank you we are going to head into questions, and i will yield my time to representative scanlon. Thank you so much i appreciate. It and thank you vice chair for holding this hearing. Weve had a number of hearings talking about kind of the Practical Impact of issues. So it is into interesting to get to the constitutional underpinnings of what were trying to do here. I am new to the body but, i know quite a bit about ceding power to the executive. And we probably need to take some pressure to fly back. I have been astonished by the brilliance of our staff, both on the committee, and the folks who are willing to work for members. But because of funding, etc, they do not stay very long. And as brilliant as they maybe, if they cannot afford to have a mortgage, or to start a family, they end up liking some Life Experience that may be how helpful, and we end up with the brain drain, very interested in i guess maybe ill just turn to doctor pose, or if you could speak a little more about the effect of the disparity between permanent staffing and the executive, and whats become kind of a revolving door in the legislature. The effect that this has on our ability to function as a cool equal branch. Absolutely, from the perspective of the staff, the incentives are extremely strong to either go to the private sector, or go to the executive branch, anys case it pays better. You look at the general schedule, and the pay their it regularly gets increase. Adjustments all that stuff it goes up enough. Congress meanwhile, has kept the cap not only on pick them bars, but also triple down and affect staff. So we suffer can make what amount to a lateral move, and over to the executive branch, and very quickly see 10 20 30,000 different in pay, plus they get to be tethered to a schedule that is a little more controllable. Which as you decide to do the family, thing or you just get tired of doing the chaotic hill sort of exercise, it can be extremely appealing. And when it comes to the private sector, tim le perot has put together some data on that, and it gets into the low level multiples of what you can get, from opting off to go elsewhere i can tell you myself. A couple years ago i have the staffer who is looking to get off the hill, had less than ten years of service, but have appeared on some Important Committees, come in and talking about getting a job at a think, tank and rapidly noted that figured that his fair market value was 225,000 dollars. He did find a job quite promptly that we can before that but he did one job. Raising pay is one, thing and i know when i look over the charts, that you noted that the member allowances, and member pay, hasnt increased, and then you know 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 try to keep it in line, is to hire less staff. Which would also have an impact. Absolutely and that sort of effect is also happening at the legislative branch towards agencies. The agency i used to work for commercial Research Service employed 900 people, now theyre down to under 600. If you keep the spending the same and the salaries are going to increase up a little bit, only by definition you are going to end up with your people. There are just hefty east less of them to do the work there. Do you have other staffing recommendations that you would like to highlight . Sure we did a survey, of Congressional Staff, in the summer of 2017, we got a good wide range of responses from both chambers, people in a variety of positions, and certainly the conversation, 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 enough to cover housing, the number of things you make its kind of a trap. There was also a concern about the lack of an obvious career ladder. You come in, and its not as if there is a clear path forward to some degree, and feels like there is this brutal competition. To put someone else aside so you can take the spot. Or you have to stay in the same spot. Or you have to bail from. There or go somewhere else, because thats it. And that is nerveracking. And it is not to everybodys taste. So Career Development need to show folks, that yes you can build a career here, there is a way you can move up, to the various opportunities to moving up, and coupled with that is the training again the field of being pitched into a sea, told to go and catch a couple seminars near spare time, but you know theres pressing legislative business so dont be gone too long. Everyone arrives here in d. C. As an amateur, none of us come professionally trained to do this work, we just pause and give staff a little more time, to invest in their skills, so they can deal with the deluge coming at them, that would be quite valuable. One more question your testimony in addition to the member directed spending issues, addresses on the spills and the breakdown of the appropriations process, and the effect that has an are biloxi to do oversight. Can you comment on the on staff reduction and lack of attention and those issues. Thank you for the question the staff reduction really hits the Appropriations Committee in a outsized way. If there is significant staff turnover, on a committee that requires ongoing yearly negotiations, those relationships are so critically important to the success of subcommittees, and ultimately the committee, and then the work across the chambers as well. Being able to trust in an individual, who youve worked on with before. Its critically important to make sure that you can have a working relationship in the future. And every, my fellow panelists said, every committee faces the same challenges. And because of the constitutional requirements for appropriations, this is so important to think at least a little differently about in terms of training, in terms of salary, in terms of even the relationship and the environment that they subCommittee Chair, or the chairman of the committee, creates within, in order to see it more as a family. More is an ongoing working relationship. It is not driven by partisanship, it is not driven by whoever the chairman has to, be but by the constitutional commitment of the members of the committee, and the staff of that committee. It is bound to. And so i said i think we should think about capacity across all committees, but nowhere is that more important. I have seen some extremely vigorous head not nodding from both members and the audience. Thank you i yield back. Thank you vice chair graves, is also yielded, so im going to call on mr. Newhouse for five minutes. Does that mean i get to go somewhere else to there . Think you all for being here, this is a tremendously interesting topic, and i cant help but think about all discussion about congressional capacity, and the growth of the executive branch, and its power and privileges, congress has been helpful in that, and very complicit, so i guess we cant blame the president or the executive, branch we have allowed it to happen. We begin the congressional legislative branch. Now what we do about that. So i guess there is a lot of things we can talk about, doctor hudak, we did notice your shameless plugging of your book but thats okay. President ial pork, that something weve been talking about for a long time here. Congressionally directed spending, and that truly is a constitutional responsibility of the legislative branch. Not the executive branch. So in your your observation, you talked a little bit about it, but i want you to if you could, expand on some of the things, if this is put back into place, and debate is ongoing, if we do go back to some kind of congressional spending, tell us some of the things that is for transparency, structure, help us avoid some of the pitfalls that led to its demise to begin with. And how we could structures it would be successful. To return to earmarking, there has to be a policy aspect of what needs to change in congress but also a political conversation that needs to happen. I think that return to earmarking has to be bipartisan cooperation. In order for one party not to be able to accuse another party or one chamber to accuse another chamber of trying to corrupt the process or bring corruption back to the process. Earmarks are not about corruption, earmarks are serving your constituents. And that messaging needs to come from the leadership of both parties, and both chambers first. Second i feel i think that the types of reforms that were put into place in the late 2000s, were a good first step in terms of publicizing and members name, who is requesting any are marked, recipient of that, the purpose of the earmark, and swearing that the member, and the member spouse, do not have a financial connection to the recipient or the company that is receiving. It that is a great first step, i think Greater Transparency is necessary. Perhaps having an independent entity was in congress, having it run through the ethics committee, or having a select Committee Formed that vets each of these earmarks, or in groups that 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. Most constituents love earmarks, they did not like the other type of earmarks. Understanding that congress is looking out, as the guardian of this process. And that there is enough transparency so that we researchers like knee, media organizations, and those institutions within the congress can make sure that this is being done right. It will be a very heart helpful part of reform. I agree with your statement, certainly we as elected representatives of the people, know of our positions. Mr. Kushner, in your testimony, the look at the difference Staffing Levels of from a few decades ago to now, i think the only offices that i know that have increased staff is in leadership. And so certainly, while we have ceded power to the executive branch, would you say that perhaps there has been some seeding from the rank and file to house leadership because of staff disparages. Oh absolutely the model of congress in the last 50 years has transformed fundamentally. This used to be a place where there were incredibly powerful chairs, who were often interlock with these kind of iron triangles of rock russi, and they commanded resources, they drove policy they had large staffs. They were powerbrokers. Lyndon johnson speaking of the chairman, referred to them as the whales on the hill. Everybody else was the. Minerals and that has gone away, the powers of the chairs has resigned, Resources Available have declined, and the number of staff that leadership have in both chambers has increased dramatically. Its a different model of running the place. Its much more hierarchical. Top down. s many of us lament the fact that happen. Thank you all for being here. I yield back mister chairman. Thanks so much, im sorry i missed most of the oral testimony, but ive had a chance to read the written testimony, and i think there is a lot of good ideas in there. Can we just ask couple of questions. This being used as you suggested, the house have kind of rival offices for council, reports, which is interesting, some of us have thought, that we ought to require the publication of the office of Legal Counsel opinions, in a way its got a secret law, nobody has approved it, no in some cases even knows the positions being taken. I would think not only should we require that but also if the houses counter positions, we should equally publicized that. What do you think that would do . I agree with you, there are a lot of opinions that nobody knows about. That is controlling federal agency policy. And the ones that are made public, for example recent opinion that said, White House Council has an absolute immunity for to have any testimony from congress. That is completely opposite to the courts, that have considered that opinion. And yet that is the policy of the executive branch. So i think publicizing it, is important but even more than that Congress Needs to have its own answer, in a bipartisan thoughtful well supported legal opinion. So we go to court we can say, we have had this opinion for 20 years, and those people are subject to congressional subpoena and they should testify. Let me ask you this, and several people miss new has mentioned, its been over a period of decades, that power has shifted, from the legislative branch to the executive branch, and i think that clearly is the case. How we rebalance that is a challenge. Not only in terms of the Institutional Capacity which youve addressed, but also in a fight between the ledge branch and the executive branch. And i have a couple of idea which id like each of you to comment on and if you have an idea about it. First when the house or senate believes the executive branch is violating a statute, ordinarily we dont have a standing, to bring a case, and so if that is a legitimate belief, he could be wrong i suppose, but if you feel that the statute is being violated, you really look to others to bring litigation number one. Number two when there is a challenge of that nature, the courts take their own sweet time, we have the capacity to require accelerated consideration in such matters. And the final question along those lines, are the use of emergency powers, i have asked that we Congressional Research service, to compile all of the emergency exceptions, because there may be circumstances, where congress thinks that the emergency ex exceptions being misused. Obviously its the third branch that is going to arbitrate that. It only works if the congress has standing, if there is an accelerated review, and if there is some standards for the court to look at. What are your thoughts on that . Ill just offer the thought that i think youre completely right. That congress, this is part of the process of taking back some of the authorities that weve given away to create a system where we, were legislatively say, yes we have a sanding, and yes we can have an expedited process. Now in some of those cases, that might require that the president , to sign on, or to override a veto, its 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 a more equal playing field. Because when they delay in the courts, a lot of time that delay, because something doesnt happen you dont get the testimony, you have to make a decision, or if for example the law is being misread by the executive, and the two or three years goes on before its result, there really maybe nothing left to argue about. Yes. The final thought, in order for us to successfully counter the executive branch and fulfill our proper will, we need to function and youve addressed as an stuffing, but we have problems not only in partisanship, but in terms of the senate and their rules, one any member can stop any thing from happening. It is very difficult for the senate to legislate. Have you given some thought on what we could ask the senate to do, to become more functional . I am a strong supporter of the filibuster rue, it had a can stop bad things are happening. When the senate wants to work quickly it has to be on a bipartisan basis, i wouldnt agree with weakening the rule even further. When you look at the judicial nominations we are getting now, when you would filibuster, and both sides had to have nominees that were okay with both sides. Now that you could have a simple majority, we are getting judicial nominees that one party thinks is good, and the other party thinks its good and cant do anything about it, so from my point of view, to push for a bipartisanship, i would have a stronger, not a weaker filibuster rule. My time has expired thank you mister chairman. Mr. Woodall. Thank you mister chairman, i am going to take miss beans advice about using my five minutes, and ask three questions that i hope you will submit back to me in writing and to the committee. The first as it relates to the house at an equitable funding of staff on the committees, nobody believes nancy pelosi is a leader of the house, she is the leader of the democratic party, they dont believe that john or was that leader of the house it was more the Republican Party, we are distribution. In an institution that is designed to be majority, run not run on the slimiest of margins, can we adopt the same model, are we a Different Institution in that model. And that model would not achieve our constitutional. The second questions about the appropriate staffing level, weve looked at lots of charts about stuff going up staffing down, my staff, i wasnt llc on capitol hill in 1994, i sometimes have to response to more people in the short amount of, time with a greater degree of complexity, than we ever dreamed of doing. So what is a different level of capacity measurement. What is a different standard that i can use the number of people. Because i dont really think that speaks to what were trying to do in article one. It is just the most convenient one that i can find. And third, we have talked about bipartisan staff, versus non partisan staff. I thought mrs. Beans point was well taken, when you do the investigation, having people who have dont have any ideology, might be not the right answer, but having people from opposing ideology might be the right answer. What i found valuable about this committee, is that not people it they dont believe anything, but they believe deeply about things, but they are able to have that conversation together. Do we disadvantage ourselves, by hiring more nonpartisan people, at sea aires for example, as opposed to hiring a conservative budget analyst and a conservative budget analyst and having them produced that report together. My conversational question, i appreciate mr. Hudak standing up for article one, 89, is not that congress should return to the practice of earmarking, and the fact that were so politically sensitive these days, we need to fight i, wanted to ask you all about something that doctor potter testimony, issues are complex, there is more capacity, we are passing legislation and asking the executive branch to implement, i would be perfectly happy to bring that capacity back to the house. Passing all the bills to doctor casarez point, contain more details, but not leaving that to an unelected expert downtown to solve. In two days 2020 information flow, historically i would have been worried, that congress cant respond fast enough. Today with litigation the executive branch often responds more slowly, than congress can, is now the appropriate time to restore article one, to bring back all of those regulatory responsibilities from the executive branch and begin to have the energy of the Commerce Committee and right Carbon Control policy. Rather than having epa right up. And you raise that in your point i will start with you. So i think there is much to be said about all these points, the point i want to make a response to your comment about complexity, is that complexity is increasing, i think that came across in a written testimonies, i one thing about making these reforms, that they dont want to, do is sort of checked the executive branch so much that it cant do its own job. So what youre suggesting, is that congress should take back some of that role. I think a lot of the reforms have suggested help in that regard. But in terms some of these issues, theyre so very very complex, that i would think it might be useful to have someone who has their hoping career on working on air pollution at the epa. I think there is some benefit to have career been do this work. You think that that air pollution expert should reside on the Commerce Committee i think that depends on whether as doctor closer say if a lot of my students have come to me, they want a career in government, and they asked about careers in the executive branch, because there is a career path. And right now that same career path, option for these experts, dont lie as much in the legislative branch. The capacity is not there, if it could be built over, time i think there is room, and doctor closer has written some ive made this beans point, i have one answer from one winds and my five minutes has expired. I blame myself on time management. Next up miss still banner. Thank you for being here this is a very important discussion, i want to start with you, you talked about how the executive branch has grown, but not in staffing contractors, i wonder if you stop can talk a little bit about what the impact of that is. To they have the same incentives, is there an incentive to keep having more work to do for the sake of making money, what impact do you think that has . So i think we dont know a lot about contractors in the executive branch, something as a researcher, that is very frustrating to know how many there, are what theyre doing. Because there is not a lot of transparency. So contractors, theyre great, they are excellent temporary workforce, if we are having a peek at a workload, its great to turn to the private sector. But a lot of the issues that we are facing our long term and complex problems, and we rely on contractors to do that work. In terms of what kind of problems that creates, they are not subject to the same legal legal requirements that bureaucrats are, so the freedom of information act, to dont apply the same contractors. So i think in terms of long term, government management, contractors are not the way we want to run our goverment, but it is currently how we are running a lot of our government even though we dont see it. There is a lot of reasons, that we ended up here, but i dont think this is what we want to be doing with our workforce in the long term. From an oversight stand point if you dont have the transparency to answer some of the questions you are talking about, that clearly is a problem too. Yes absolutely. Thank. You doctor hudak, you talked in your written testimony, he spoke about the remarks, in our discussion, but your written testimony, you talk about the link between oversight and appropriations, can you elaborate on that and talk a little bit about why you think those are if we dont do a good job on the appropriations, process the challenge that creates for us on oversight. Absolutely this congress, the house i should say, in the past year did an admiral 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, is important for the Appropriations Committee. But it is 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, agency by agency, to understand what is going on within the executive branch. There are a lot of issues, in congress, in Public Policy broadly, that are true 50 years ago, and they are true today. But there are other issues, that need to change over that, time in dramatic ways, are no longer an issue, that necessarily requires federal governments attention. If you are not on an annual basis, looking at these programs, you are not doing your job as overseers of the executive branch. You are not finding problems, you are not finding successes as well, places that perhaps needs more funding to do better work. Or to continue that mission. But beyond the sort of direct way in which this is 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 that is Donald Trumps executive branch or george bushes or rock obamas, we are not doing the hard work and it is going to be hard for us to identify problems. Or to identify bad actions. Every administration has bad actors somewhere. Whether they are, civil servants, the nature of the large organization, and if the people who are supposed to do the accounting, and the accountability, are refusing to do that, you are as i said telegraphing to certain actors, that are probably not going to get caught. That is not what congress is charged you in the constitution, and certainly what your constituents charged with when they send you. Here but it is increasingly what is happening in congress. And i guess if we dont get it done, beforehand, so that is done and there is clear visibility for phil fiscal year, it makes a harder on oversight, because there is a complexity that agencies are going through, and are trying to work in short term in the short term world, waiting for a long term bill to pass. In that context its may its much easier for mistakes to be made to. As much as congress is there to catch malfeasance, they are also there to catch when these mistakes happen, and to help agencies make those corrections as. Well thank you thank you thank you mister chairman i yield back. Thank you let me recognize mr. Timmins. Thank you mister chairman thank you for having this hearing, thank you all for coming, taking the time to testify today. My priorities this year, are clearly divided into two categories, one is calendar, schedule, for votes and the second is budget. That is my priorities for this committee, i think the chairman has weve talked about this, length and im optimistic that we can find a path forward. I want to focus i want to ask you all about the calendar, the calendar this year we will be at 55 full days. Last year we were here 65 full days. My constituents what i tell them that, it kind of starts making sense why we are so dysfunctional. We mean more time to do our work. And we need to be scattered less. One of the conversations we had, was to make a recommendation surrounding the, ratio the number of days that we are here for days. Forces a number of travel days. If we do to week on to week off schedule, we would actually be here 108 full days, we would travel 24 days as a force to last year where we were here 64 days and traveled 66 days we spent. A lot of time at the airport. And i think our time could be much better spent if we found more opportunities to do our work. Here in regards to the schedule at the end of this im going to ask you your thoughts about that. In regards to the schedule, we often have overlapping committees, subcommittees, for votes there is just overlapping obligations. As you can tell someone already had to leave, and leave early, because they had somewhere else to be. So we can create a block schedule format, that does not facilitate to facilitate these overlapping obligations, and it wont be forfeit, because you are always going to have committee meanings at weird hours, and thats not gonna change, but what we can do to minimize overlapping schedules, if we are here more, we can really nailed down when we are going to be on the floor. And we could say the floats are from five to 6 30, from one to 1 30, those are the only options. There is never gonna be a situation where floor votes might be the next half hour, like there in two hours, so if we hear more, it would allow more predictability, floor votes would we would be getting an incredible amount of time back, and with the calendar changes that we proposed. Do you all think that one of the problems we, have with this issue we are talking about, ceding power to the executive branch, is at the process, that we have, is flawed and if we worked on it on the calendar of the schedule for votes, we could potentially spend more meaningful time getting back some of the legislative branches power . Yes. No i mean really its time on task. And the amount of time that is allocated for you all to be here. You cant have a hearing when youre home. Thats contracted, and when you hear, often i often used the phrase swiss cheese your schedule has been swiss cheese. So all the sudden you have to go to a fundraiser there was two hours, then you gotta go to the rnc to make some calls, you got to sue the sort of duty, a try to figure how can you possibly tell you what youre supposed to do, when all these other things are picking away at you. And figuring out ways to extend the time here, to reduce the time burnt in airports. But also the time that gets torched on stuff, that is not really valuable. The after hours speeches, some of the staff at the start of the day, that is really valuable time, but it is not actually achieving a whole lot. Im thinking about can we knicks some of that stuff, so we can get more of our schedule. Absolutely. Id also like to mention that when i talked to doing oversight, members are pulled in so many directions, that it is hard to find time to focus, in a concentrated way on documents, or witnesses, you go to this hearing maybe youre setting yourself up on the way over, you have a few minutes before you get calls, and that shows that you have an oversight hearing and its televised. The lack of preparation, and familiarity with documents, not because youre not conscientious hardworking people but simply because you have too much going on. Theres too much travel theres too much time at airports so yeah, and the other thing think about is social interaction. What we found at our subcommittee, we had a rolling Cocktail Party 15 years and every few weeks we get together and have drinks with the other party. And the reason we did not as we found that it strengthens our social fabric, it encourage 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 very hard to partner with people that you dont know and then you only see in passing in the hallway. Thats very true for staff and i think its true for members as well, so if you had two weeks on, two weeks off, there might actually be opportunities for people to get to know each other, and that would improve bipartisanship as well. That was actually how i was going to close it and i think we do not have enough opportunities to build relationships with our colleagues across the aisle, and i think that is part of the problem, thank, you mister chairman, i yield back. Thank you. Mr. Putin. Thank you, mister chairman, im going to associate myself with these remarks, i spend more time in the detroit airport than i do in the Wisconsin Office on a daily basis at the restaurant i go to the most often is the delta sky clubs rather than anything in my district. As far as frequency. So, we spend a lot of time, when you live in a Smaller Airline market, it takes me sometimes, it has taken me up to 14 hours to do what is a 12 hour drive from wisconsin and flying, and that is all tied time that you are not doing your job so i just want to echo those. My questions around staffing both of the input and output side. On the input, side we pay remarkably low for an expensive town, the best way to get a job here is to be an intern, the best way to be an intern was until recently to work for nothing, now to work for next for nothing, which right away decide to come up here and probably get jobs and then when you finally get that staff assisted job, and you make 30,000 dollars, one bedroom apartment is 30,000 dollars a year. Its just impossible, so there is an input problem we have on staff, which kind of self select a little bit. And then on the output side, i recently had a communication staff leave, and they took a job just riding a beds, and they said, is there anything we can do financially, and they, said im making 50 cents on the dollar, a new offer, and so it is hard to keep people in that longer level. Some of it is, salary and some of it is the issue you brought up and we just dont have the same thing so on those two parts of employment, the input side and the output side, what are some extra suggestions that we could be looking at . I mean, obviously the pay issues, there is no question, i think that is a universal but what else can we be doing to help on that career path and on who comes in here to make sure we have as diverse as our district, people come into, work so it is not just people who are coming already from an economically advantaged three point . Well, two things on the input. First of which is last year, congress decided they were actually when you put aside a little bit of money to be able to pay interns and i think that is valuable, but the amount it is provided really has not been sufficient to help somebody who is a person of needs to be able to be here anyway versus one who is not so i think we think that policy and asking where it needs to be upped. The second is the housing issue. That is the real cost, i mean, staffers are a dedicated, to fund, you will get biomedicals on whatever, they will cut costs necessary by the only place they can live is a place you will be stuck with a high, bill that is an issue, and one of the things i have marble that for years is that we have sitting on capitol hill, unbelievably valuable asset sitting there, and why cant that be converted to housing . Why cant that be privatized sold off and the value of that put towards dealing with the problem in some way, shape or form, that is just sitting there so, figuring out a way to deal with the housing thing, to defer the cost of housing, to reduce the cost of housing, i think would be a huge help as far as getting folks here who might not otherwise be able to afford it. Id also like to mention the oversight committee, often like you have a lawyer and when i was on the subcommittee we were able to hire lawyers. The most acute offer it was like 85, 000, and the people i was hiring were willing to take a more than 50 cut to come work here because the work is so interesting and important so, if people are willing to work for less but how long can they do, it and their spouses are complaining and after three, four or five years they are just like, i cant do it anymore, act paper collagen so they take off. We know about that problem. One thing that can help i think its training. The center i am working, with we do this the zoo camps twice a year for staff. We get house, senate, democrat, republican, we put them on bipartisan by carroll teams, give them fixed candles and then take them through the process and they learn not only investigative skills, we are very good views on your own and you find out there is actually a value to that rather than a penalty and i think one of the things that staff has really told us is they dont like working environments that are very partisan where everyone 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. And 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 fact based oversight would actually make staff a lot happier and when they come to our training they enjoy working with the other side. It challenges them. They find it interesting but it is hard to find that environment on the hill. If i could add one thing which is, i think there is something instructive in the executive branch so i have had a lot of former students who join the president ial management fellowship as well as the Pathways Program which is the program for students can in turn in college and then after they graduate get hired at the executive branch. And i bring these programs up because the given introduction, youre getting great people and, they got him to stay because they might do rotation a different parts of the executive branch and they are really getting exposure so, some of those models might be borrowed from the executive and pretty neatly applied in the legislative branch. If i could really quickly, congressman, i agree with doctor potter completely, i think one of the challenges that exists is not looking to other models about how to get this right, whether it is the executive branch or whether it is private business, and within the congress, i think a lot of people see staffing as 435 Small Businesses, right . They dont see congress as a Large Institution like a large corporation, but you can take lessons from about how we do professional development, how we do staff relations, how we think about something as basic as the feedback loop within an institution to understand what can be improved and where fixes need to happen. And whether you even continue to think about the congress is 435 Small Businesses. Maybe you think of them as like, franchises. How does a company like starbucks or mcdonalds or subway allow individual units to have freedom, to have some level of autonomy, and put in some sort of basic requirement that each has to do, 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 i yield back. Mr. Davies, i see my good buddy mr. Kogan went ahead and took care more recommendation for more time for question the witnesses. Good job. Where to go. That was a little slide, buddy. No, actually i think it is a great recommendation, for communities the size, and for the committee i am the Ranking Member of, and which ms. Law frontiers, the House Administration committee, five minutes of questioning is not enough for us to do not only proper questioning of witnesses but proper questioning of witnesses during a hearing but proper oversight and, i cant get the questions asked for each of the agencies that we have. But i will tell you, this lebron and i Work Together to do second and third round of questions so a lot of the stuff can be easily solved at the committee level. If you had a cooperatives chair who i would ask for extra time, but he would not give it to me, right . If i ask for unanimous consent, my colleagues with all objects. I guarantee it. So im also the Ranking Member of the largest subcommittee in congress, highways and transit. We have 59 members. Now, you use the Intelligence Committee during the impeachment process as kind of an example of what to do. I dont know if that would necessarily be a good idea on a Committee Like ours. Is that the process of the power of the staff of the members did not ask him any question they were still pushed for time. We can add to the time of questions and i think a lot of it has to do with the social media side. Got a committee of 59 members. By the time we get down to the end, we are asking the same questions again not because they want the committee to hear the answers, but because they want to put something on social media. That is a problem as well, so that is something to think about. Thank you for your recommendation. Doctor hudak, im glad you brought up congressional directed spending, earmarks, what we want to call it. I had a staffer back in the day when the process became much more transparent, what would it take for this institution to allow for congressional directed spending to happen again. Would statutory rule changes . What is your Research Show . So, right now the ban on earmarks exists because of formal or informal agreements within the caucuses and conferences within the house and senate. It would even take a statutory, issue. It would not even require a rules change. There are people who made bad decisions before the area of transparency. Remember we used to have to post all of the requests online. Now, if you look at just the last year of congressional directed spending back then, that they called the remarks, and you want 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 that i am not proud to represent that have projects that have really help us grow economically in certain areas that started with an ear mark. A highway, project other types of projects so, how the health was starting with an ear mark in my district now is everywhere in those are things i do not think get out enough. Where you guys stand as far as helping us compiled a researcher talk about the good things that actually happened . 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 eye saying, this is what weve done. This is the project that we are finding. This is the new technology that is going to help, the help because of what congress is doing. I understand that but every time a member of Congress Tries to sell the benefits of a project, there is somebody on the other side, with a political, issue or sometimes it outside groups, maybe on your side traditionally, will find a reason why it is not a good investment. Hector, maybe members of the senate that will tell how they are not good investment. My point is, what our associations like yours and groups like yours what are you doing to help talk about whether that was a good investment or not . We can say it to were blue in the face, and we can talk about what it means to our communities what has anyone done any substantive research on whether or not in the last round of earmarks, or another round, actually help the communities they said they were going to help when they offer their transparency on their website . So, there is certainly research that shows the economic benefits of congressional directed spending, and i can get you a list of some of that research after the hearing. One of the challenges with a period of time that youre discussing, mr. Davis, is that that period of transparency was actually quite narrow in time, right . It is a bit easier to study. It makes it harder to study in terms of having fewer cases to look at as we had a china 50 year. Theres enough in that last year. Surely there is enough to conduct studies, but my point, is if we can have an additional period of time in which we have transparency, where we can look at this more rigorously across time, across face, a process across programs, many ways you can shop up congressional direction spending, we will have a better idea of that impact. We will also be better idea of the value of the transparency, whether it is actually doing what it is supposed to or not. Congress has done, however, has limited research into space by shifting from, lets say a wild west version of earmarking to a transparent version of earmarking, to an environment now where earmarking frankly still exist in some ways, it just happens behind closed doors, it happens in the shadows, and so the worst part of the earmark ban, i would argue, is it drove all of this into the shadows and removed any transparency that exist in the process and those who are in powerful positions, those who are Committee Chairs and others, have the ability to slip language and in the right ways in a way that a freshman member of congress or a backbencher is just not able to do and what else is not possible more Research Organizations and media to be able to attract that issue as effectively undo the kinds of research that you are talking about as well. Thank, you if i had more time i would ask you, doctor costar if the Committee Chairs, when they were more powerful, had a better grasp on the oversight process, but im out of time until we get your suggestion. I want the record to show that you are out of time two minutes ago. , mr. Flavor. But it was, right he was, right i support that. A couple of things, first of all, the new year and then we always overreact, i counted i was here, well actually you are here, when we did earmark. We had three people who got in trouble. Three out of 435 and 16 years and it was horrible, oh, it was just the worse the three people and theyre all in prison, which is what is supposed to happen so i think we have taken it way past the logic and today we were told that mr. Defazio is going to begin the process of putting transportation bill together. They used to be a time that everybody was, hallelujah, i mean, republicans, democrats, dancing because this was like the time to be saved and so all of a sudden, it was just blase, because everybody knew that the Little Bridge in our communities that have been falling in 45 years, to get fixed and i think it is an embarrassment that we cant do that, cant do this. The missouri delegation had lunch today. Every single one of us, when i was asked to give a report, mister chairman, mr. Ranking member said, are you guys going to submit earmarks, and can you do it now . Like, today . I mean, everybody, when senator, and he is a senator, he would not mind me he was a good friend of mine, we did damage, i think it was 2010, if i remember, president obama for whom i served as national cochair for his reelection, said, during the speech, were not signing anymore bills with the remarks in it. The next day i was put in newspapers all of the country saying, the president is out of line. That is not his responsibility. I dont care if he is a democrat or a cleaver, got out of line. Thats our responsibility. Thats our constitutional responsibility so it leads me to the thing that, i dont know if we can get addressed and that is, i think human beings may be psychologically hardwired for tribalism you know, you do with basic kinship and facial features and football teams, we are just hardwired and so it has to be intentionality for us to the wire it, and i think that is where the problem lies because as long as we are tribal, president obama, i, mean he will tell you, and i would vote for him again, whenever he went south, i did not go south with him and i dont care today whether somebody says well, you are not loyal to the president. Im loyal to those 800,000 people in my Congressional District and when retired i was a keynote speaker at his retirement dinner. He is a republican and one of my dearest friends. When i was a mayor, who would come and sit down with me, to deal with america st. Louis and say. Were going to do earmarks. One of the things you guys are interested in . And i just think we are bypassing an opportunity to really do stuff for our community. We have earmarks now, except they are done in the white house. Obama did them and boasted them and trump is doing them and were the ones sitting over here talking about, taking out power. We gave it away. Anyway, that is my sermon. Say man, lets move on. Im group. Okay, for a yield to miss brooks, on the point of mr. Cleaver just made, mr. Hudak, or, doctor hudak, you spoke about not only the authority has been given to the executive but how that is gone so, can you take a minute or so in just talk about so, how is it worked with the executive branch not in the show . Has it all been sunshine and rainbows or has that authority been abused . Mr. Cleaver, thanks for your remarks, they were spot on, both with the history of iraq and i think the bipartisan support for that type of the participation in those behaviors. In the executive branch there is far less transparency about earmarking which is problematic. Certainly visavis where the congress was before the ban went into effect, and what happens within federal agencies is that there is an easy understanding of where a president s political interest 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 agencies get wrong. This is very easy and does not need to be telegraphed. You dont need the president to be pulling a spring the strings. You do not need meetings to be held. Everyone knows what president s are interested in, and president s of both parties are interested in the same thing and so what the Research Shows is that yes, when given the opportunity, the executive branch is not direct all the funding to swing states, obviously but there is strong statistical evidence that you are looking at additional tens to hundreds of millions of dollars being directed to swing states in given years and who is losing out on that . Again, it is not growing the pie. You guys at the size of the pie. What happens is if you are from a non swing day, youre from washington or youre from georgia, although maybe georgia will be cashing in soon, i dont know, you are not going to be doing as well as a florida or a michigan or a wisconsin. And so that is politics interfering with at least part of the distribution decisions over federal funds. Now, if we take for granted that politics is going to be part of it, i think most americans would far prefer that their member of congress the engaged in this politics then a president or bureaucrat who is directing money in a variety of different places but certainly not back to the 45yearold bridges in missouri that need repair. Thank you. Mrs. Brooks. Thank you for your flexibility on that there. Think you also much for being here. I do not have the history that my good friend from across the aisle has, but it is interesting that you remind us that only three people, but it was three people who essentially caused congress in the American Public to ship dramatically in how they thought about earmarks. Im afraid that many of us come here, and while im in my eight year here, we come here and are often told the beginning that we are a 435 kind of independent offices and Small Businesses and we dont view it as the institution. Now, ive got placed in my first term i speak urbane are on the House Ethics Committee, and then became chair of the House Ethics Committee last congress, but the House Ethics Committee is all about the institution and it is bipartisan committee, it is evenly divided and it focuses on the house rules and protecting the institution, not individual members but yet often in campaign, congress as an institution gets bashed. All the time. We are constantly, as Political Parties and as members, bashing even the office were trying to run for and so im curious and i will start with you, doctor who are, what how do we sell Capacity Building to the American Public about us investing in our offices and in ourselves, not ourselves personally but in our staffs so when they truly believe we have far more than we need, no one believes we need more staff. That i know of. Most of my constituents, my constituents dont say, i need a nicer office, or i need 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, how much it cost anybody, so, how do we saw capacity when as to the best investment to all believe we need to be making in our institution. Lets start with you. Sure, it is a wicked hard problem and the polling data are pretty clear that the public to congress overstaffed which, that is what it is. I would say the first thing would be to consider coaching capacity investment in terms of better customer service. You know, youve got tons of constituent outreach coming to you, constantly harassed for being out of touch, that is the accusation, youre not paying enough attention, youre not responsive enough. Well, we can be more responsive if we had better systems and more people able to deal with this pressure on communications so there is that aspect. The second thing is to perhaps let them know that financial savings can actually occur when you have better oversight. Gao frequently likes to tell the fact that it can save a lot of money by identifying waste, fraud, abuse etc and bringing them to light. If they are not doing that you cannot act, so there is also that part of it. Candidly, though, i think a lot of the capacity investment in the state are going to have to be done in a way that this does not politically salient. I mean, you say for example that yes, members of congress are going to be able to shift the cost of say, student on reimbursement from out of their personal pot of money into kind of collective office and the house, no one america will Pay Attention to that. It is just complicated. It is not interesting, it is not salient, the practical effect of that means that you have more dollars to spend on the stat that you have anybody able to increase your any other ideas . I just want to mention, i think that you pointed out that one of the basic problems that members of congress bashed the congress. If you had the airlines talking about how dangerous they are at all of the problems with them, people would not want to fly and you would not be able to get the investment that you need for Safe Aviation so, part of the problems with congress itself, to say that we actually do an important function here, oversight i think is part of, it waste fraud and abuse in my subcommittee, we actually kept track for a while of how much money we saved. It was well over a billion dollars and we are, like we only have 1 of the money that we say, it would be worth it, but right now congress does not value itself enough to make the investments needed to make it effective and when you have ratings as low as they are with the public, what is going on now, is not working. We need to do something else, we need to talk about congress in a respectful way. It is a constitutional obligations, and make the investments that we need for congress to operate in a better way. Thank, you i yield back. Thanks. Let me recognize myself. I will start with doctor costar. So, the data you provided about Congressional Staffing levels i want to put on this threat miss brooks had. How do you explain that the Staffing Levels in the senate remain relatively steady in contrast to what seems like a pretty pretty big drop in the house . Well, that was a deliberate choice in the early 1990s. When you look at the senate in the 19 eighties, you look at the house in the 1980s, the senate had a pretty good reputation. The house, it was a little bit wild. There was abstain, whole bunch of bad things happening, the house banking scandal, there was a lot of stuff going wrong. It is also the case that the staff that were there at the time were not always well used. Congress kind of went on a hiring binge in the early seventies and eighties, you had this cresting in a lot of staff running around and you did end up with members in the house saying that staff are getting in the way. Some of these guys are getting big heads. You know, it was a sort of thing you would predict what happened when there was this massive influx of new employees and no system to really manage them particularly well and so it provoke a reaction. It gingrich was quite adroit in pointing out that things were not running properly, when republicans took congress they roll it abandoned it said under new management, addressing the popular concerns that the house had turned into animal house. The senate did not have that sort of salient scandal situation. I mean, there was pages, there was all sorts of bad thing happening in the house that invited this. I also want to get at this issue. Clearly, self flagellation is more popular than investment in the institution and im just trying to think through method through which this committee could look at Capacity Building. Im wondering if you have any thoughts as to how so, you know, it is one thing that we could elect the lead right appropriations subcommittee to try to get the institution more in line with the senate, or with the executive branch. We could get to a Third Party Entity and say, you know, form a Blue Ribbon Panel on Institutional Capacity, and within five years try to get to their mark. You, know you understand, im just throwing out ideas there. If you were on this committee, what would you recommend . Acknowledging the tricky dynamic that mrs. Brooks asked about. Well, i think i would first consider that yes, you want to increase capacity, particularly i think there is a value and doing the increasing capacity in the form of staff. Where do you put those stats . I think it does not look great when you say we will put a whole bunch more in my personal office. But if you start saying, well, we are going to increase the quantity of employees who are at sonorous or cbo. Nobody outside this town is going to get particularly upset about, that and in fact that sort of stuff has been happening. There had been increase in the appropriations these agencies and only as far as i can tell is getting clobbered in the polls because of it so, that would be one way to look at doing it. And committees also, again, it is very hard to be accused of hiring a new limo driver because youre paying a personal staff well and if you are having this expertise in committee and who knows of oversight, oversight, oversight, this will strengthen oversight, i think you will be largely insulated from those sort of backlash that you might face. I would like to agree with that that on the committees, virtually every committee is required by law to do oversight within the jurisdiction theyve been given and people want their government to work better. They worry about waste, fraud and abuse. You cannot get your government to work better unless you have good oversight. You cant do good oversight of unless there is more staff and more resources to focus on the executive branch and all of the things that are going on there and the other real problems that we are facing. The other thing i will say is that you if you want to do this stuff in a bipartisan, way by partisan 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 but we spent an entire year on it and got to an agreement and then we were able to tackle some problems so i had fewer hearings, less partisan topics and i would justify that additional money as in terms of trying to address the problems that we all know our government has, even in our government there is always follows and if they do the oversight, it will not get fixed. I think part of the responsibility here also rest was leadership. I think for the speaker, the minority leader and the heads of the Campaign Committees to effectively call a truce of what you said, attacking the institution and saying we are going to hold our members to account, and that if there is a valid critique about what is happening, let that gallagher take the arid out, but if there is a proposal from members or vote for members to increase the capacity of this institution, that needs to be politically off limits. Now, that might be fantastical, the idea that a truce like that could hold, but if it keeps 75 of the members in line around that, its going to be part of a discipline system that would need to be enacted from a political perspective in concert with trying to change the internal policies of the congress. Let me recognize mr. Braves for five minutes, and then we will do a second round if time permits, and if you are not all sweated out of this room, goes watching on cspan, it is 9000 degrees in here. Thank, you mister chairman, and for the benefit of the millions of viewers, let me say what they cant see is that for the better, what, an hour and 15, minutes our half, this room was packed with participants of people wanting to, learn in, fact standing room only, all Committee Members in attendance, which is rare in this place unless there is something more highprofile going on so that is a compliment of this panel, and to the subject matter. And thank you for doing that in this way. I wanted just to have doctor who tiktok for a second about what you were just speaking. About you phrase a minute ago, you used the term in our earmarked which is an older term and if i think if we are ever to condition back to what you referred to but not in practice, but our constitutional, duty it probably has to be modified in a way that is much more responsible in accepting politically there are certain challenges, which we have heard broad support among his committee, and i think other Committee Members have expressed broad support for other groups within the parties, but there is a political aspect to it, and i would be interested in each of the panels perspectives on his comment and his restoration of this power, but what you did emphasize, it was obvious to me and yet i had not noticed it, is that it does not change the amount of spending that occurs in this place, it just redirect how you might spend it and in fact its a little bit sharper of a pencil so to speak as to how we might operate. But you get a unique perspective, i just happen to notice the tie on doctor cohen here, and adam smith tie if i know right, which would lead me to think, stereotypes, to be more said to, rightfully thinking, what is your response . Or what is your perspective on the proposal as it was mentioned earlier and the restoration of this duty . It makes perfect sense to me. In terms of accountability, you, know if you remember you directed by just spending on something that turned out to be a boondoggle, youre going to hear about it. Youre going to get hammered. If it happened somewhere in the bowels of the department transportation, no accountability whatsoever. It also, i think, for sure nobody wants to go back to the days of casino jack and that sort of stuff, and that is very easy to prevent from happening. But the whole conversation around earmarks is very anchored, and as mr. Cleaver noted, on the few bad things that happen and mr. Davies mentioned that the positive is not often talked about. I mean, those are just not interesting stories. Media frequently do not pick them up. You might release a press release say, we did have a good help but, here you might get a bit of a little coverage but that is about all you. Get but it is absolutely appropriate and i would like to see some sort of, an honest, congressional directed spending happens all the time, every time we drop a formula in law, even if it is collectively bargained across two different chambers, somebody is going to get more than others. But we dont call that youre marketing. Why . You know, so. Thanks very perspective. I think you are right. But i dont think anyone on this panel would agree that we need to go back to the way it was. I think there is genuine intent to try to understand how do you restore an article one action and remove power from the executive branch, and restored back in the legislative branch in a way that is noted, and nonoes, and will be seen as responsible and guarded, protected, transparent and you have shared a few good concept with us today that might help with that. You know, i know this is my last term but i suspected someday in the future, mister, chairman whether we address this, some other congress will and i dont know how they might address that and i hope that the spirit of this committee and what we have learned, what we have, seen will really lean into this to try to find a responsible solution as we move forward. Would you have any thoughts on this . Is this something you put any thoughts toward or have any recommendations to us as to how we might repurpose, rebrand and provide a Better Process for the American People . So, i cant say that i have recommendations but i wanted to make two points. One is returning to doctor food acts excellent book, there was a longtime sears in that book it shows us that president ial directed spending happened. An important part of that is that his time series starts way before the iranian were talking about, right . To this president ial directed spending has been around and its probably going to stay around. It is not something that will be easy to change so, thats one thing, that is kind of something that only earmarks part, for congressional direct funding account for about 1 of spending so it is a very small portion so the executive branch is still going to retain some authority here for better or worse and i think that in thinking about this, you might think about how to bring earmarks back in a more targeted way so not just congressional directed spending, but can we put it in places where it makes sense where you can bring members expertise about their districts to bear. In large infrastructure projects, as we talked, about might be a really good place and there might be other types where congressional directed spending is less appropriate. Any thoughts . I also support bringing back congressional directed spending, not only because its a constitutional obligation but also because it actually promotes bipartisanship. When you have to be transparent about your earmarks, there has to be a meeting of the mines on the Appropriations Committee, its all out there in the public and youre going to make some decisions and you know, if this was gonna let you do, it theres going to be some trading back and forth and, saying well, if i want my bridge in my district, then there is all the support for it and the Research Behind it, when there is something similar in your district, lets put go forward so i think it actually promotes bipartisanship as well and i was here when we had that whole process, and we moved a lot of bills forward. Transportation as mr. Cleaver said used to be a very happy time, this it is a very painful time now. Doctor who, just sort of clothes, here and now, youve given a great explanation and you have great knowledge of the past of earmarked, president ial remarks. You have any experience on as it relates to grant . When i think it would be earmarked or, more congressional directed spending, i wonder what we dont have the same conflict when we talk about tiger grants or Community Grants or other groups that Congress Funds and provides and moves forward, it does not seem to be the same negativity about it. Why is that . I think dr. Costar is right. These are perfect examples of four in a different package in a different form, block grants, package, brexit sandra. I think because the benefits are widespread by nature of a block grant it is harder for an individual member to attack and it is easier than for an individual constituent to understand the benefits to the district, but at the same time, because earmarks typically around federal grants are very specific, project oriented, funding streams it is easy for one person not necessarily to recognize the benefit for the district individually. Now, as a whole, as of some of their part, a lot of constituent are go to benefit from this type of spending. Im typically not one for splitting hairs around naming things but i think youre right. Earmarking has just been blacklisted, essentially, is the term, and i dont think congressional directed spending is something that is terribly powerful because the onus is on you, and if congress is an institution, as mrs. Brooks, said is in the gutter, in the basement, congressionally directed spending is not going to be that helpful either. What it is is that constituent focus, spending the beneficiaries or not you, the beneficiaries are your constituents and i think framing thing is the more individual public constituent or in the conversation is much easier, freeman as customer service. That is where district offices do. That is what some of your staff here does. That is easy for an individual constituent to understand benefits of, rather than being a focused member to focus on the institution and, i think it is true for project grants as well. Thank you. Yes, we have a few members who have some followup questions if you are not following, them too bad. I wanted to ask miss dean about your idea, an office of Legal Counsel. Im a former United States attorney so relying on those olc opinions from the Justice Department, the Justice Department being an institution within the executive branch, how would you see and when i came, here i was amazed but, say the Republican Party was highly no lawyers and filing a lawsuit and the Democrat Party now files against executive branch. How would you see an office of Legal Counsel functioning . And what type of work would you see them actually doing . And i know we certainly have non partisan staff, thats what we hire in the ethics committee. I assume the parliamentarian, as not partisan staff, but the sergeant of arms, nonpartisan, staff i did not know about how seidman, it is still partisan staff, but there arent many officers within congress that are not a partisan staff. Im just curious, that is the first time i ever thought that. It certainly makes some sense. What kind of issues or problems we do see it olc for congress . Would it be for the primary reason of debating olc had justice . Or i just had not thought about that, and thank you for all the focus on bipartisanship. I obviously come through indiana, comes to senator lugar, and love the work of the bipartisan senator and we miss him dealer. You just share with me a little bit more but what we what you think of what has been supposed to have also type of office . I think it is very important legal opinions have bipartisan support. Thats number one. If they dont have bipartisan support, and its not on behalf of congress, thats going to open up a new can of worms. There are different ideas about how to get to bipartisan, thoughtful, well supported legal opinions. Some say the opposite general counsel is the place to do it because there whole reason for being was to defend congress as an institution, so they are really and they have to go to court and they are the ones and all of this court case is going on right now defending the right of congress to get information. And that is how im looking at it in terms of oversight, is a legal opinions we need, the ones im thinking about, enabling congress to get information so that is one possibility. Some say, you should use cra, is that they have a traditional not be partisan at all and they would be the place to do this. Others responded, well, see arrest is an academic institution, or not in the court, didnt know you need to really win the case in court. So this plus and minus is for those two options. Im sure there could be other options as well. One of the things the senators doing right now, with the help of others to do things like the lugar center is we are actually launching a website next week, gathering all of the information about a dozen cases that are going through the court, having to do congress try to get information and usually the administration but sometimes private sector parties fighting those information request, and trying to create one stop shopping place where you can find out information about what is going on in the courts and it is overwhelmingly favorable to congress, as opposed to the administration, not many people know about that. They do not know there is more than one dozen judges from all different perspectives that support congress in its ability to get information, but it all of those court cases, by reading all of those pleadings, olc comes up all the time with their opinions, with the justice saying well, we had this opinion for 50 years that white house counselor shouldnt have to respond to congressional subpoenas, congress as, well we have two judges that have said they should but they dont have that sort of bipartisan legal opinion so i think your instinct is right that it needs to be bipartisan. I think the office of general counsel is one possibility. How would you staff that . Well, the same way Office General counsel his staff to know. You have lawyers there who are actually filing briefs in these dozen cases, lower core, appellate court, supreme court, that they do amazing fantastic work, on another cranking out all this work but is everybody in congress does, they just get the job done, despite the difficulty. Thank, you i had to question, one is, where the Inflection Point is on reclaiming some of these powers. As the chair and Ranking Member explain this has not been talk a talk about something committee, and me to do something but it committee, so i would say my republican premier in 2010 i campaigned in favor of congressional directed spending because i said, who do you trust or, barack obama or maybe . That was my time to win. I go home with that same line today the answer is, well, we touched trust donald trump more than we trust you, and so, the season, weve got to find the right season to make this work. Can you give me advice on when you believe the season is for reclaiming our power . I would pause, it a divided government is that time, but other ideas . I think it is a little bit easier at the start of a new presidency. I think there can be a conversation, to be frank, i have actually been floored by the lack of conversation with democratic president ial debates that have not focused on what to do about the office of the president. There is a lot of complaints in the democratic primary about what donald trump is doing. There are things that the courts have said cross the line, but there is a lot of the president is doing that stretches delegation from congress, in ways we have not seen before. That problem, to be my office i think that is a donald trump problem, is really dismissive of congress as an institution. The problem is not the president. The problem is the presidency and i think a broader conversation about the powers of the office the need to happen in both parties is important. In particular, the partisan nature of the institution is now is probably not the greatest time to have this sort of a heave home moment but certainly as the Campaign Rolls on and whether the president is elected this year or in four years, this is going to be an important moment to think about all of this. At the same time, that is an issue that would require overcoming a president ial veto. A Republican Democratic president are probably equally going to try to veto this effort. There is a lot can be done in congressional rules and informal norms and through a variety of process within the institution that you dont need donald trump or barack obama or some other president to sign on to and for those issues, now is the moment for that, not to wait for the next congress to do it. Counsel on that line . Back to close our . One challenge ive been wrestling with is, how do we make adverse powerful again . For john he publicly looking and hearing folks a four out of control presidency that has grown crazily a big, president cannot return to the treasury grab anybody he wants. Yes to be appropriate by congress among the last several years, the ability to use the purse to control action, whether it is simply saying well, you did this, it seems like that sort of thing is not happening and maybe it is the fear that if you try to place that kind of hold on things will pop up the offer was going through it and the government was shut down and it will be fox and everyones house. Im not sure. Getting this back, so it is a factual thicker misused, one of the problems we have right now, the executive branch is doing stuff anyway, and how do you make him pay for it . The public purse seems to be the only option to me. If i could stipulate everyone supports reclaiming article one authority, strengthening legislative branch to ms. Beans point about the Intelligence Committee hearing, that was a more potent hearing than many that we have had. I would argue rank and file members were disadvantaged, Committee Leadership, house leadership advantage. If our shared goal is increasing, restoring article one responsibility, is that happen in your mind by increasing rank and file influence in the house . Does that happen by increasing leadership influence in the house. I know exactly how to make the speaker more powerful, a news act we had to make Ranking Members more powerful. Im not sure which one helps me to balance my influence with articles to agree. I would say in the case of hearings, those are controlled by the committee,s leadership is not running that hearing as the Committee Chair and the vice chair, and if they can have a more cogent hearing, more power to them because you, have millions of people watching. You dont want to turn away and say, that was painful to watch. You want to say well, i may agree or disagree with those people are prepared, they are serious, they made a point, and simply having a little bit more time to do it is helpful. Now, doesnt empowered the Committee Chairs and Committee Leaders . Yes, but the rank and file i mean, what they have to do is be willing to sit through that and stay longer. Sarah lemon was famous for his very long hearings. His record was 11 hours. He started at nine in the morning, and we finish at 11 00 at night because he wanted to give every member as much time as they wanted to ask whatever questions they wanted. No that is not easy. That can be very difficult with your schedules and other demands on you, but that is one answer is to have a cogent hearing. In 45 minutes i had never actually seen that long before, it seems 15 minutes, 20 minutes per side but i thought it worked well. Stronger Committee Chairs is stronger work. Yes, and stronger committees as well which it is important. The committees have lost a lot of power and having better hearings based committee stronger. I think the model we have evolved towards which is a leadership driven model has become a trap. I mean basically, your job as a members a line and a leadership for your job is to stand in opposition and the notion that keeps getting put out there as well, if we just do, this will be able to retain the majority forever. Well, weve seen the days since 1994 pinballing back and forth. The strategy is not a long term governing strategy so, when ours in these are clobbering each other year after year and you keep turning states over and moving people around people coming into people coming out, the executive branch just keeps on chugging. Id also like to point out that all these suggestions we have better oversight, bipartisan factors oversight, not require statute. None require the president sign on. It is really under the control of congress itself. When you. House thank, you mister chairman. A really easy question just to anything, doctor, he just touched on it for thank you for the good segue. Im trying to sit here and think, okay, what is different or what is similar between the house in the senate, or the house and the executive branch . Why have they been arguably able to be more successful at either maintaining a growing of strength and power, when the house has and, i dont know if i have the answer or not. I want to throw that out to you. But when you talk about this conversation over the last few minutes, or back to the staff issues of continuity and career paths and effectiveness and all of that, we literally stir everything up every two years. Is it as simple as well, not a simple solution but, would it be a twoyear term . Does that lend itself to the house being as effective and as officials and allow all those other good things to happen when you have to essentially change everything every two years or, and im not suggesting a constitutional change but an exact rate is four, years seven has six years, or can we do it otherwise . Has i dont, know the whole history, hundred years ago we didnt have much staff. Members of officers on the floor, at their desk and there is an old adage the government will grow in the space provided. Build an Office Building, guess what . Staff will suddenly appear and then another Office Building in the third Office Buildings so im not sure thats the answer, but any opinions on, can we do this . Is it just a matter of different houses choices were made and especially the senate that will be more successful . Yes, the twoyear election cycle is brutal. Its very strong incentives, to politics and do things that are much more politically salient and were in a really peculiar era. For the longest time, 1900 through early 19 eighties. Democrats were always the majority. Republicans were always the minority. The thought that republicans could ever be the majority was considered heads of also people got along very consensual way. That changed. And you know how it works. You get your eyes very quickly youre being told to think about how youre going to win the next election, how you will take back majority, or send the others into the minority, type thing, and the incentive structure was very strong that way, and impart goes back to the leadership driven model. The idea is that all powers of the trump chamber, and whoever is at the top of the chamber gets to do everything and if we win that, and we can just ran our journey down the other size throat and it does not work. In the senate, meanwhile, a much more consensual, model as majority area. Longer ten, years improper something the sort of stuff. It also means they do not get things done as promptly as possible, the appropriation process, the bills, youre hustling them through them they go there and then there is a set. There are costs for that. But yes, at some point the members are going to have to decide if they want to keep the leadership driven model, because otherwise this is going to perpetuate itself, there is just no way it is not going, to the logic of the situation is all authority rests with leadership and then of course there will be a vicious scrum to grab that authority. I would also mention this whole thing about, we now have, for the foreseeable, future very narrow majorities and for the majority to get two thirds of the committee finding and a minority to get one third just leads to partisan anger and backlash. You have staff fired staff brought back people putting Committee Offices with no windows, you just see these things sort of spin out. If in the senate that Committee Funding reflects the majority so, you have 50 1 49, you get 51 of the funding, and if it flips the next year, so its 40 9 51, you lose a little bit as you should, but is not the sort of dramatic partisan punitive sort of action. So it does mean that the Majority Party gives up some money, but on the other hand, when things flip, you know, the other thing is, what happened in the senate where we actually made the transition from the one third two thirds to the more, you know, reflecting the actual majority, what happened is everybody kept the funding that they had so nobody lost money, and they just added whatever was necessary to bring those amounts of money in the parity, so that have been done in the senate and it has led to a much less partisan situation and also you dont lose institutional staff ways to. Back to product . If i can bring some Political Science research to bear on this question, what we know about tournament is that when states an act tournament, what we see is a production expertise at the legislature and also a great in return for a lobbyist so, if we take that on friday to about longer term limits for members of the house, we might see, we probably expect to see an increase of capacity and expertise in the house, certainly, but i think we have to return to this principle of why we have to, and this is really this is the Peoples Chamber and keeping that in mind, right, can we build capacity in other ways while still keeping this important principle that was from our founding . By the way, i counted five mentions of the book. This committee is killing it on amazon. Before we wrap, the doctor who act, i want to ask one final question of you. Obviously a lot of the conversation has been around appropriations. I think we all know the rule that appropriations has here, but appropriations is not the only committee that is engaged in earmarking to mr. Cleavers point that historically we wanted to transition authorizing bill came out we would all look at that opportunity authorizing committees having a role as well. I just wanna get your sense of. That is that a good thing that authorizing committees were engaged in that as well . A bad thing . Does it make legislation more bipartisan . What should this committee take away from the role of those other committees, outside of just appropriations . I think having authorizing committees involved in that process, transportation is, one defense another, homeland, security etc. That spreads around the congress, the ability to engage in that action, to deliver for your constituents and it does not then put up the several dozen appropriators on into a path is still, to whom everyone else in the Congress Needs to go to in order for their constituents to be served, and so when you start to have, for you return to have authorizing committees that are engaged in this process, it requires both more members to be involved, for members who have access to that system but then also, for even greater cooperation that already exist between the authorizing committees and the relevant subcommittees and the authorizing committees and the broader Appropriations Committee. All of that was cooperation in action. All of that requires members to take together, and work, together and any way you can increase that with the institution, is a way to improve the institution as a whole. Mr. Graham to follow up on that. Follow up on that, point a large part of the federal government is being funded but not, authorize not reauthorized. Is it your thought then that no congressional directed spending or grant, whatever you want to call it, earmarks, would take place without authorization and just because something is authorized, doesnt mean that the funds will be released . Its certainly an interesting sort of hostage taking approach to improving authorization and i dont mean that pejoratively, although im not pro hostage taker either. I do think that when you look at some of the most contentious fights around we authorizations over the past decade, especially faa, you really understand how the failures of Public Policy can present really serious safety challenges for americans, great industry disruptions where the government should be disrupting industry and putting those two together is part of the process and making one dependent on the other i think facilitates policymaking in this country and as you pointed out, when you have huge numbers of agencies on temporary we authorizations including the department of agriculture, you have to worry where does that end. , why is that constituents that seem protecting this, and what effect have in business in, policy, of our everyday americans, and it is a creative way to think about forcing the hand of individual members and committees in general by bringing congressional directed spending back and using it in fairly innovative ways him. In a way in, which i think what im hearing is suggest is they, are both appropriated, here we are here for british on this panel, actually, inappropriate or should not have that soul power, that may be a congressional directed spending should not be appropriated without inappropriate authorization alongside. Is that what youre suggesting. I certainly think that is an approach. I think its gonna be a really hard sell in the Appropriations Committee but i do think that that is one additional beans to check. I talked earlier about having Different Institutions within the congress to ensure greater accountability. That is certainly one way to have greater accountability. One thing that you know about inappropriate or on, say, the defensive committee is that they do not see it also on the authorizing committee and so it is an automatic check on an earmark if you are requiring that to happen. Again, politically, probably a difficult sell. Institutionally and functionally, i think probably something that would be helpful in at least for storing americans trust, or additional trust in that process. So this was really meaty, thank you, i want to thank our witnesses for their testimony today. I want to thank the ways and Means Committee for letting a spot in their room. Thank you to cspan cameraman, thank you for sweating with us in here and to the person doing the transcription, thank you, and to our Committee Staff for putting together such a thoughtful panel. Without objection, all members will have five legislative days within weeks to submit additional questions for the witnesses to the chair which will be forwarded to the witnesses for their response. I ask all witnesses to please respond as promptly as you are able. Without objection, all members will have five legislative days with which to submit extraneous material for inclusion in the record and with that, this hearing is adjourn. Thank you, everybody