Our guest serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University where he teaches Program Evaluation and statistical methods to graduate students. Please join me in welcoming david more housing. Clocks good morning and welcome to Heritage Foundation auditorium. For those of you online, we are organizing the federal government that to be done and how to do it. Today we have panelists with extensive experience in the workings of the federal government. Rachel is a Research Fellow in economics. She is leading the Heritage Foundation reorganization project, that is the subject of todays events. She was a senior economist from the staff of the joint economic committee. Donald is the senior scholar at the fund for americans dollars. The served as Ronald Reagans civilservice direct your. During that time, the Washington Post labeled him reagans swift sword. He cut bureaucratic excesses and reduced billions in spending. His new book is a guide to reforming. You can purchase this online. I look forward to reading it. Last is robert, a principal at the center. He leads the communications and is a member of the performance transition team. He was appointed to the commission in policymaking. Previously, he was associate director for administration and government performance at the office of management and budget are in budget. It administered the Program Rating tool. He served as counsel for the committee on government affairs. Rachel its my pleasure to be here today. I am working on production of our blueprints for reform. We begin with the blueprint for balance. The blue plant for reform and new administration, we will put in a plug at the beginning. The blueprint for balance was the first one. We spelled out 100 different recommendations that lead to 10 trillion lesson federal spending. What we done here is a lot of those recommendations we included in the blueprint are part of the blueprint for reorganization. We set aside the pathways you can have reforms. We noted if the president has the authority for what would need to be done. That would need to take ways to implement the recommendations weve presented here. With 4 trillion in annual spending and 19 trillion in public debt and 22 different cabinet level agencys, americans are in need of a government wide reorganization. Our government does few bounds. We did the government to focus on core constitutional responsibilities. We need a government that is looking out for the interest of everybody. We need one that is providing Efficient Services with accountability attached to it. In his blueprint, the first one is focused on the analysis of federal departments. We have 100 different recommendations. I will give you examples of those. I wanted to clarify that not everything in here is something that the executive department has the authority to take on. A lot of the things will require buyin from congress. Our second edition of the blueprint specifies what the executive can do already, what changes can be made and what things will need congressional buyin. We also look at some cost cutting issues. In the second one, we look at reforms like modernizing changes to personal policy. Among our 110 recommendations we include, i will start with eliminating coal departments, such as the federal Housing Administration and the Financing Agency and the Consumer Financial protection bureau. There are often some Core Functions we would hold an transfer them to a more appropriate department or agency. There are some functions we consider nonfederal should he transferred to state and local government, such as low income housing. State and local governments have utter knowledge of their own local communities and more are providing services. We have departments and services we recommend eliminating. The v. A. Has 42 different offices. These things have been a bureaucratic nightmare for veterans. They need one shop to go to for all of their needs instead of 42 different offices, taking documentation from one office to another. Without shutting down entire agencies, we recommend closing some offices like the department of educations 24 field offices. We did not have the net in the Tech Knowledge he we do today. Technology we do today. These offices are no longer necessary today. We recommend streamlining functions within agencies. The department of justice as four separate criminal divisions. These are located they have their criminal Section Group in the division itself. In certain cases, programs like efficiency because they are in the wrong agency. We recommend things like moving the food and Nutrition Services from the department of agriculture into the health and Human Services with other welfare programs for taking programs out of education and putting them in treasury, treasury has the information they need and they are distributing the funds. What we dont recommend our cuts to defend spending. There is room to optimize irs highest priority luncheons first. We suggested eliminating excess infrastructure that is costly to maintain. We dont take the department of defense should be spending money on nondefense programs like Ovarian Cancer research. Too many of the programs benefit a select few instead of working across all americans. Thats why we recommend eliminating programs, such as community services, public broadcasting, the arts and humanities, the import export bank, minority business development. Efficiency isnt just about rightsizing the government and eliminating and moving programs around. Its making sure the government is doing its job through oversight and accountability. Regulation should be subject to meaningful review. We also recommend evidence based on policymaking. We do have places where there are plenty of accountability programs, such as the v. A. There are 31 different programs there and yet they are scattered. If you put them into one place, you are better serving veterans and taxpayers. Finally, because personal has such impact on efficiency and accountability, we recommend abroad package of reform to a prove improve accountability and let managers do their jobs. We also want to bring compensation in line with the private sector, so the government is in a more Competitive Position to retain the best workers. With that, i am going to hand it over to don. Don my name is Donald Devine. I am the serious part of the program. The first thing i want to say is i very much recommend both of these books. The cost cutting one is just super, one of the best things i ever look that. I am an academic background. In some crazy way after the 1980 election, president reagan called me up and said got a job for you. It was head of the office of Personnel Management. Thats kind of a funny job for a libertarian conservative like me, running the bureaucracy. He said ive got a good sense of humor. He said i want you to cut back 100,000 nondefense employees, i want you to reduce their loaded benefits and make them work harder. Just run the harry truman said about doing a tough job in washington, in either washington when youre doing a tough job. I bought two dogs to be on the safe side. The crazy thing is we did do it. Nobody thought this was possible, to reform government. We did reduce 100,000 nondefense employees. They tried to hide it. No conservative wants to know that, but we did it. We cut bloated benefits. Even my enemy said ice a x billion dollars, which in todays money is 60 billion. We made them work harder. It was a miracle. It happened. You heard the introduction by david, they call me reagans terrible swift sword. That was one of the nicest things they said about me. They called me the rasputin of the reduction in force. Thats what we called getting rid of people. We werent clever. We did the first ones at christmas, not a good time to do this in terms of public relations. The New York Times did a big story on me, calling me rasputin. The grinch in the pinstripe suit, trying to celebrate christmas. We did that. Nobody i am a professor, nobody cares about that. All they care about is that i knew Ronald Reagan and what a guy he was. What did i learn in this . The book was mentioned. Nothing has changed very much. Thats a book i wrote almost 40 years ago. I went to my publisher and said this is still pretty much all true, why dont you republish it. Things havent changed. All the reforms we did are gone. Most of them were gone by the next administration, a republican ministration. Administration. Government today simply doesnt work. Dont take it from a libertarian conservative like me. Lets take it from a professor of public relations, many serious reviews with congressional background. The government doesnt work anymore. It cant execute its laws. Thats a basic fact. He says there are 60 levels between the secretary that set the policy and doing something on the street. Its impossible to runs such an organization unless you have some measurements. The great social sciences said they dont have one in government. In the private sector, you can have 60 levels, although they have learned cant do that. There is no private company that does that anymore. They did it back in the 30s. You can go down even 60 levels and say is that making a profit or not . If it does, you keep it. In the government, you go down the 60 levels and if they are failing, you spend more money on it. The whole thing in the Public Sector is different than the private sector. How did we get his thing . The biggest revolutionary in American History is a guy named Woodrow Wilson who said that what we have do is bring all power together in the center and we can run everything with the experts. I still had to read his phd when i went to graduate school. He went over to prussia, why does it work . All power is centered in the government and was chancellor says we do it, we do it. He wrote a book. The problem with American Government is it divides power rather than bringing power together to do good. Its got a retirement system, its got an educational system, its got a welfare state. Weve got none of that in america at the national level. He comes back, he convinces the intellectuals thats the problem. The problem is dividing it, the solution is bringing it together. He starts the American Society or administration. He changes the intellectual opinion from saying that divided the power is good and bring it together dividing is good in bringing together is good. Every president since then except my boss bought into that very. Thats why we cant run this government. Thats why we cant run it or it run it. The only thing we can do is decentralize it back to the way the founders created. Ronald reagan said the secret to the success of america is federalism. That is americas contribution to the history of freedom. Ive got a solution. Rather than relying on all these institutions and having an office of management and budget, ive got a simple solution. The first book i mentioned was this cross cutting thing. The other thing divides up the agencies and departments and goes down each one. Ive got a simple answer. Just send these out to the agencies. Tell them to do it. If you dont like it, have a good reason. These are serious recommendations they have given. Dont let this to the normal process of omb. Robert is a big exception here. If you just turn it over to the careerists at omb, this will go on for years. It will come out with some dumb thing. What we should do is go back and reinvent cabinet government. Turned to the agencies. Thats their job. You guys did it here in thats the solution. Thats what i have to say. I wonder if i could edit with just a couple of bullets. I want her in talk to me later if you want me to take out what i disagree with. It is certainly true that the government has proliferated to such a degree that it could not accomplish what we ask it to do. We ask it to do it with a lot of restrictions on the management of people, money, systems, contracts that make it almost impossible to get the job done. If you find someone who is getting something done in government, that is a true talent. It is also true that the only thing we have close to Eternal Life Fund government is government program. Its very difficult to repeal or eliminate the program. Davids work, rachels work, evaluating programs. I dont think the logical conclusion is to eliminate everything that isnt effective. We find programs not having their intended impact. There is enormous room for improvement. Every president until the 80s had the authority to reorganize the government. I think its high time we reempower administrations with that authority. It is so hard to do it otherwise. The congress, at least from the oversight committee, is supportive of this authority, where you trip up is in authorizing committees and the appropriations committees. They have jurisdiction power, money assigned with specific agencies under their jurisdictions. What tends to drive reorganization is crisis. The most recent example of that is the establishment of the department of Homeland Security. Could it be strengthened if we consolidated the programs responsible for securing the homeland. That was fought until 9 11. Youll will recall immediately after 9 11, contract workers could not adequately secure airlines, airplanes. Commercial travel. Fairly soon thereafter, we created the department of Homeland Security, bringing all of these entities together. It is true that terrorist attacks on american soil have been rare since then, im not sure we can measurably say our security has been strengthened because of the chaos the department creates. There has been an enormous struggle to combine these entities into a cohesive, well honed organization. The big issue in giving the president the authority to do Something Like that is trust. Congress would need to trust the executive to use that authority responsibly. We have not had that kind of trusting relationship and a long time. Congress in the 1990s passed a law called me government performance and results act. That was my first job, to oversee implementation of that. No one really gave a damn about it. There are people for whom we need to drive Government Agencies to think more about out come. Its too easy to come to work and satisfy yourself with just producing inputs or wants. Outputs. If you dont measure whether that has an impact on the ultimate out come, you wont know if what youre doing has a public positive outcome. Government has struggled to identify the out, they are trying to outcome they are trying to establish. David has written about that, getting insight into whether we are creating important out comes and if the programs are having the intended impact. If those evaluations show they are effective, the vast majority of programs and the federal government are not the subject of that sort of evaluation at all. During the Bush Administration, the focus on outcomes was not really institutionalized. We established to this tool because we wanted to have some basis with which to allocate funding. We insisted through this tool that agencies and programs begin a process of subjecting their programs to these evaluations. It was the beginning of what we. All now the evidence agenda i have to admit, we didnt make a lot of progress integrating this data into the budget decisionmaking process. Policymakers do not have a huge appetite listening to evidence when it comes to funding decisions. Are highlyse political. So there is room for improvement , as a matter of understatement. As far as reorganizations are concerned, among the government programs, these are the ones that share a similar mission come other common or conflicting measures of performance. Deeprea we decided to do a dive in was an Economic Development. There are programs throughout the government that are intended to improve the economic condition of the poorest communities across government. We proposed taking all those programs and consolidate them into the Economic Development administration at the department of commerce. Many programs were found to be an effective. To get anlly hard ineffective rating with this tool. But because the community and Economic Development program, the biggest of the set of programs was found to be an effective. We moved that into the economic administration. While the overall funding level of these programs combined was thought intellectually giving them a more improvement entity, it meant you could get more with less. There were people who disagreed with the president s proposal. Omalley called the ofsident the Osama Bin Laden americans cities. That was not a highlight of my political career. But he goes to show you the interests and needs to be considered when you are developing and trying to enact these kinds of proposals. So if i step back, i would say the lessons that i take from my combined experience in driving these kinds of initiatives are leadership. Leadership that gets it, that is willing to invest the time and energy and intellectual and Political Capital to get these initiatives done is absently critical is absolutely critical. Collaboration, internally, is very rough. Agencies are not enthusiastic programs,ng up funding, power to another. But it is easier to get it done within the executive branch. Plow ground ont the hill and among other stakeholders, it will be very difficult to get these things enacted, especially in the instance of a crisis like 9 11. Collaboration whether broad set of stakeholders absolutely critical, as difficult as that seems. Perseverance, there are many bites at the apple. If you are unwilling to keep going at it, you are not likely to make progress over time. Is so much easier to kill things in washington, d. C. Perseverance is a quality that is essential. And then follow through. Just because you asked a lot creating the department of Homeland Security doesnt make the homeland more secure. Just because you consolidate programs in Economic Development at the department of commerce, that is really just the beginning of the journey. You have to make sure these consolidated entities assume a single culture, a focused mission, and that you are measuring progress over time to make sure that what you tried to , being more effective, is actually working. Theirredible roadmap in annual inventory and overlap across government. They will tell you the consulate the consolidation programs isnt always the right answer. There is a lot of room for improved collaboration across government with agencies with similar missions. Thats true. But i will say that consolidation can give you an enormous degree of efficiency and improved a focus on missions through those consolidations. Am happy reiterate i to be up here with my fellow panelists. Thank you for all attending. Move to a questionandanswer period. I need a nickname. Thats one thing i have learned from being on this panel. We will take questions. If you would step up to the podium and pose your question, we would greatly appreciate it. If you can say our name and organization you are affiliated with, we would appreciate it, too. On the center for accelerating of asian. Acceleration of innovation. I had an opportunity to work for roy. That was the last major attempt by an administration to do a governmentwide type of reorganization. Some of the proposals that went through were epa, domestic council, omb. That there were proposals to eliminate eight cabinet agencies. I have two questions. These proposals for the cabinet reorganization were not very successful primarily because of the way congress is organized. The structural nature of congress, the committees, subcommittees ands National Interests are in trying the relationships, etc. Toy make it very difficult move any of these reorganizations through the congress. One question i have is whether there really ought to be a commission on reorganizing congress . Even agencies like the department of Homeland Security report to 15 different ubcommittees, etc. It is also fragmented, regardless of the wonderful name that is over it. Secondly, i am wondering if Something Like a brick condition, which was set up to facilities,efense which was successful in closing down 40 or 45 facilities, might be an approach. I understand. They Reorganization Authority for the president makes a lot of sense. But im not sure that would be the best pathway forward. It seems to me we have a good example, a successful example in the defense realignment president , where the had taken an upanddown vote on the proposals within a certain amount of days. So my question is what about reorganizing congress secondly, what about strategies for implementing a reorganization thank you i think both of those are great ideas. Ideas. I think congress would below to give authority on its own reorganization to somebody else. Its major barrier to collaboration, consolidation of like programs. Brilliant idea is because i actually wrote a bill for george w. Bush that did just that, modeled on the brat commission, where you would submit a proposal that was considered under procedures by the congress, the theory being the only way you can get around these jurisdictional issues. Right now, the oversight havettee, this guy can authority over reorganization. But it will be difficult to get around those authorizing committees will be reluctant to relinquish the kind of decisionmaking to a broad committee. Well see. In february come over the president s budget, he will have some of the most ambitious reorganization proposals we have seen in a long, long time, cemented to congress. I dont think congress is prepared for those. There is a lot on its plate. I dont know if youve read. Of progressat kind can make on those kinds of things without that kind of authority. But i agree with you, in the absence of it, i am not optimistic we will see a lot of progress. Mr. Devine let me mention on Congress Something robert was involved in. The best thing that happened in my area of Personnel Management in living memory, at least since jimmy carters civilservice reform act, which i was so lucky to walk into and get all the benefits of, was this what do you call it the National Security mr. Shea personnel system. Mr. Devine personnel system. By a miracle, he and his guys got this thing through congress. It was in the wake of 9 11, and it was to have a real personnel system again of evaluating peoples performance and giving them pay based on their performance. And the reaction to 9 11, what they did at the department of defense and Homeland Security that is half the government, the civilian government, really. Oh, boy, had this great thing gone through congress, well, a couple years later under the obama administration, it is out. The unions did not like it and voted out by congress. It is so rare to get congress to do something so brave like that, and then the same thing happened with carters civilservice reform act. They started nibbling away at it right from the day it took effect. I was there, and maybe it was my fault. We do not get along too well with congress. But you mentioned ash, and i get to tell one of the greatest stories about government management. I always tell it. He was giving a speech, and he was chairman of intel or the president of intel before he went into the government whatever it was. And he goes in and he is talking to these chief executives in the private sector, and he says, you have to understand the government is so different from your private sector. He said, what would you do if your board of directors had on it your union leader, your opposing business that you are competitive with, a bureaucracy you could not fire, and he goes through seven or eight things, and says, would you run your business different if you had that . Of course, in the government we have, and during most of his time, congress, which is your board of directors, was controlled by the other party. But even when it is your own party, as we find out, it is very difficult to get things done. He made a wonderful analogy. He said, going from the private sector into government is not like going from the minor leaks to the major leagues in baseball. It is like going from going from softball to ice hockey. It is a whole different kind of ballgame, and it has got to operate by different principles. And jimmy carter, god bless him, actually the guy was my former professor who came into rewrite the Civil Service reform, 1976, but all the right performance to give the government political appointees, the ability to run the government. If you want to know how to go at it, you can go back, read my book. With jimmy carter, a guy named scotty campbell, alan campbell, my professor. He devised a whole way to do it. The problem is not getting ideas or even getting the past getting them passed. The problem is once you put them in, it is so hard to get them done, and most of the problem is congress. Dr. Muhlhausen next, please. Hi. Nine years ago i read the backgrounder for the Heritage Foundation for federal funds to states. I think the number is 2136. But am going to throw a bit of a wrench into this. I think you are going about this the wrong way. Let me take a special program. The federal government takes money out of my paycheck. The of treasury sends it to the department of agriculture. The department of agriculture sends it to the food and Nutrition Service. The food and Nutrition Service sends it back to wyoming, where i live, its then sends the money down to Laramie CountySchool District one, which sends it to the East High School so my daughter can have milk with her lunch. I could take money out of my pocket and give to her in the morning, but we have to go through this loop chocolate milk. Or coke or something. I know, i know. I want to thank Donald Devine for your service to the reagan administration. 60 billion in todays money is a lot, but the federal desk is about 10 times as big. And if we could rehash the purpose of the federal government and rein it in to only deal with federal matters and not with state matters, i think you would see some major opportunities for reorganizing federal government. Thank you. Dr. Muhlhausen i think this question is very good because if you look at the first blueprint for reorganization report, theres a consistent thing that calling for a downsizing or eliminating agencies do not perform a core constitutional response ability of the federal government. While the idea has permeated throughout, but the idea one of the things we need to do when we are rethinking the executive branch and how should it be structured was what activities should the federal government do that it is uniquely situated to do. Today the federal government has its hands in every state and local matter, and it is too encumbersome for the federal government to administer these programs effectively. Mr. Shea a single point at which that question was asked. Was how much more or less a program would get, maybe should it persist, but not because of federalism issues. Although i dont expect a dramatic change in the missions of the agencies, i do think just a subtle introduction of that question in the policymaking process could make major positive improvements in certain areas. Im not sure what those are, but if you simply ask him is this an appropriate role for the federal government . That was one of the questions that was in the draft of the Program Assessment rating tool that we designed, but we thought it was too political, so it was removed. Asking that question more and more i think would be really useful. Mr. Devine i will add one thing i do not make my point very clearly. My whole point was federalism is the answer. We are doing too much. I will tell you some thing that is going to happen as certain as we are sitting in this room. And why the real smart progressives, biggovernment people are so word. The entitlements are going to eat up Discretionary Spending of the federal government, period. And clearly you cannot even raise the issue or you are hating old people or whatever. And it is happening already. Entitlements are growing more and more, and we are going to have to cut these things. The opportunity is when this is happening, and it is happening, and it is going to accelerate dramatically until i am too old to be around, but most of this audience looks like they can. You are going to have to make these kinds of decisions. There recently not enough money possible to be raised by the federal government to pay for the entitlements and to do this. It is a marvelous opportunity to change the nature of government, and it is going to happen whether Congress Wants it, whether people want it, or anything. It is just straight table, look at actual or real data. That is what is going to happen. Dr. Muhlhausen next, please. Hi. I work for a legislative exchange council. Im totally on board for the federalism as the total solution. I want to bring it back to Civil Service reforms that affect all the state having to deal with federal agencies. We have more than a century of Civil Service protection. It is nearly impossible, as mr. Devine pointed out, to fire career Civil Service. You have people who make decisions without democratic accountability. And the political officials elected by the people have to land like it is omaha beach into entrenched your agencies that have their decision about how to make government decisions. I recognize what you are saying about the fact that it has gone back and forth, and any advance has been rolled back in congress. I was wondering if you had special regulations. Would you go back to the carter reform . What would be your recommendations by which Civil Servants are hired and fired . Mr. Devine there are two theories of Public Administration. One is that experts run everything theory. The Administrative State goes back to wilson and to max weber, and that is the theory we have been running it on pretty much since, especially franklin roosevelt. The other is cabinet or political government. And that is what jimmy carters Civil Service reform act was about, which was give political appointees power over the bureaucracy, and brewers he has a lot of good expertise out there, but you cannot just let them run around wherever the want. They have to have somebody that implement the ideas of the new administration and how it is supposed to act, whether liberal or conservative. And it is important. There was one who put this Civil Service reform act. Literally, they were working it out, all the bugs, and i am given a new Civil Service and my opinion and a lot of people who work for four or five years, even with congress putting in appropriation riders, eliminating what part or the other of it. So there is a model to use. You put the political appointees in charge of the agencies. Or the system that is put in the Bush Administration for National Security personnel system. A fine, solid plan. I do not think the problem is the plans. The problem with this is implemented, first with a president , which means you have to focus on making political appointees throughout the government, and a congress who will give you a little rome to operate room to operate for a well. This are the secrets of Civil Service reform in my opinion. Ms. Greszler we have a backgrounder that talks about comprehensive reforms, and has to do with the ability to hire and fire properly. In the socalled performance Rating System we have, whereby allegedly employees are given raises based on their performance, that you have 99. 6 of federal employees receiving their increase every year, so this is not truly a performancebased system. The thing you can do to give managers more ability to manage the workforce they need, on the front end, instead of having a oneyear probationary period, you could change that to three years. And managers, they want to give an employee any less than a fully successful rating, a have to institute a Performance Improvement program. It is a long process. It takes a lot of their time. You cannot do that after other jobs. In talking to federal managers, they do not do this. That is why you have 99. 6 of employees rated fully successful because they do not want to implement that plan. What you can do is only implement a performanceimprovement plan for an employee you want to fire. This is because they can go through three different venues of appeals process along the way. You need to reduce that and give them one option. They can take which appeal process they want to go through mr. Shea i fully endorse all that. I want to emphasize the severity of this issue. It is the central issue that impacts the ability of the federal government to congress its mission. We cannot recruit and retain a qualified workforce to do what were asking the government to do. We recruit from a half a dozen Public Administration schools across the country. In a few weeks i will fly out to the university of indiana. I will interview a dozen candidates. In the taxi ride to the airport, i will brief my colleagues on the halfdozen so people i will offer two. Those kids will have a job within 24 hours of being interviewed by my firm. The government cannot compete with that. I suggest that is where we want to get to, but we need to improve the hiring process. The appeals process, too many avenues for people to complain about adverse actions that they are suffering from. It means that managers are loath to begin a discussion of holding employs a couple. It means in whatever facet of government operation youre talking about, we do not have a workforce well equipped to do what we are asking it to do. In my view, reorganization is no more important priority than Civil Service reform. Mr. Devine i would say just to rachels, not to blow her horn, her chapter in the book is super fantastic. Dr. Muhlhausen any other questions . Hi, i am an air force legislative fellow. You mentioned a crisis could be a cannot to facilitate change in government structure. What do you see the crisis being in the future in that reorganization . Is it an extra factor, like china, north korea, or something internal like a budget crisis or the National Debt . Mr. Devine i gave my opinion. I think it is the debt. It is the only thing that will force of course, a National Security crisis could also, but pretty hard to protect ms. Greszler if youre talking about the reorganization, the crisis will force this. Mr. Shea but a bridge will crumble, a plane will fall from the sky, all of that will bring attention to overlap or duplication that is impeding performance. It is hard to predict where that will fall. Dr. Muhlhausen next . Donald, you mentioned the riffs on christmas, and we talked about the importance of engaging the stakeholders and getting buyin from different groups. To what extent this administration goes through its reorganization process and the proposal that will be put forth to congress and what it can do internally, is it important to include the Civil Service itself in that buyin . Is a critical that the federal employees who are possibly going to be subject to these changes are themselves included in the deliberations and onboard with some of the proposals that are going to be put forward . Mr. Shea yes, it is critical, there are the collaboration with congress is critical. If congress is not repaired to take the legislation needed to a congress these reorganizations, they will not happen. That is a real cap in the initiative to reorganizing government. If you reorganize the government or if you try to reorganize the government, the civilian workforce is essential to your progress and ultimate success. Collaborating with the existing Civil Service can be accomplished directly or through the employee unions. In my experience, with a republican administration, the federal employee unions for the most part are unwilling to even take a seat at the table. And that is from my experience trying to engage them. They will tell you that we did not engage in Civil Service reform, but we tried pretty diligently to engage them, and they were unwilling to do that and fought us tooth and nail throughout the entire process. So whether you are able to engage them through their unions or directly, engaging them is essential. Does that answer your question . Mr. Devine i should probably just keep quiet. Mr. Shea unlikely. Mr. Devine yeah, in theory, you should, all right . And interestingly, jimmy carters guy, real smart democrat. He was my professor at syracuse university. He was on the Democratic State central committee, new politics. He came up with the right ideas to reform government. He met with the unions to the process, but he did not really open everything up to them. He got the things through, got the approval for all the executive branch. The president signs off on it. They take it up to capitol hill. They won. The unions come out, said, we are not going to do this. We are not going to have a Civil Service system. We have two systems working on top of each other in the federal government. We have a Civil Service system that works up to approvals to the merit system protection board, and we have a Union Collective bargaining system that goes up to the federal Labor Relations board. When my predecessor was there, he just had one. The unions is the whole second part. That is why there are so many delays, because we have two systems working on top of each other. This does not make any sense. I am not answering your question, but it explains difficulty in doing that. Dr. Muhlhausen i would like to thank everybodys time. I want to thank don, robert, and rachel for attending, and thank you all for attending as well. [applause] cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up this morning, Bruce Bennett of the Rand Corporation discusses north korean tensions. Then American Historical Association executive director James Grossman talks about the debate over removing confederate monuments. And from the Cook Political Report on the 2018 midterm elections. Cspanso watch washington journal coming up at 7 00 a. M. This morning. Join the discussion. On newsmakers, Senate Majority pack president talks about 2018 senate races, the impact of the president s comments following the violence in charlottesville, the role of race in the economy in the midterm elections. Arizona andaces in missouri. Newsmakers at 10 00 and 6 00 p. M. Eastern. Fromw, former officials the george w. Bush and obama administrations discuss the impact of the new russia sanctions bill signed into law by president trump. This is about one hour and 40 minutes. Everyone very much for joining us today. Why dont we get started . Im