You were chief of staff during the last shutdown in 19951996. What was that like . It was really tough. It was very hard and required us to do a lot of planning prior and cleanup. My favorite story if i can tell you the story from it. Iere was a group of asians think indonesian who came to visit reed hundt and i. They had to walk up eight flights of stairs because he elevate elevator was not work. They were out of breath and they said, what the heck is going on . Reed said the legislative branch decided to shut off the executive branch. They started laughing. They said not country it is the opposite. A message. Lly is the world thinks were crazy when we do things like this. The market things we are crazy. It has a longterm effect on the economy which is very negative. 38harold furchtgottroth, employees of the fcc were considered essential for this past shutdown. Lostdoes the work that got in this 16 days . There were several activities that the commission does that was not done. 1700 ory, the other 2000 employees, whether it is enforcing the rules of the onmission, engineers working cell tower placement, special temporary authorities for people to move antennas. Working on consumer complaints, license transfers, and so on. A lot of activity was put on hold for a time. Starting back up today. Was anything really lost in the 16 days . Anything vital . A couple of things. One thing that is interesting but not important in 1995 was a certification of mobile devices. , hundredsse devices of millions of americans have. They do see the fcc stamp. We have to sure they do not interfere with each other. Not in 1995, there were that many mobile phones going through the process. Now, it is really worked. You have this huge battle between apple and samsung and motorola. They need that certification. They have billions of dollars in advertising. Whatever the plants were, they got delayed. It was a real cost. It is a real cost. Another thing is the spectrum auction. When i had auction in six years. They have two planned them. It is going to put them back. That is bad for the economy. Every day the spectrum is not being used, it is a drag on the economy. You never get those back. Other stuff you get back home a i have to tell you, start stop psychologyart stop thomas we are going to go through it again. It is no way to run a railroad or business or a government. Same question. It is no way to run a government. Effects id think becoming will get through it. The question is 10 years from now will people look back and say this led to irreparable harm to the economy . I am not quite sure we are there yet. Blair is right. The product certification that got held up, a lot of license transfers. Peril. Them in more the commission, the staff will get back to work today. Hopefully, they can make up for the lost time. At the roundtable. How does the commission prioritize . Does everything concurrently get a certain amount of attention . Or do some get more resources dedicated because they had outside impact on companies . I think is practical matter. That is as directed toward the interim chair. It is fundamentally what she decides. She is doing terrific job on not just keeping getting a lot of things done. The problem is she is the interim. You really need to get the new chair Oma Tom Wheeler there as soon as possible. Theres a lot of activity you cannot do until he is there. There are key decisions to be made especially regarding the options. If he gets delayed further, it will put the option auction further. Nows even more compensated because of the interim. A very good question. I do not know the answer. Different agencies have made dramatically different judgments. Securities and Exchange Commission had a lot on their staff who have been working and continued to work throughout the shut down. The fcc hold back and really left a skeleton staff. Those are the judgments of the chairman. That, asponse to government shutdown, how do you decide who is essential . If everybody is essential, there seems to be no point to a shut down. Yes. [laughter] i do not know who makes the decisions. It seems agency by agency. How does the fcc differ from other agencies with the total shutdown of his website . I hear from a lot of lawyers it was difficult to get access to archives through the electronic on thesystem and systems fcc site. Does it seem like it was intended to cause discomfort and make a point that the government shutdowns have an effect . They have a huge effect. We in washington i am one of those lawyers who was trying to get on the website to look at certain things related to work i am doing. The pain it caused me it was less than lots of other people and families who were not getting certain kinds of support they needed or people who made the patients to national parks. Vacations to national parks. The fundamental lesson i hope we all learned arguments about budgets are legitimate. Shutting down government or the worst tactic of threatening the , those are really harangued his things. Things. Does the fcc was not alone in shutting down. Other Government Agencies shut down their websites. Reason. Cannot see any some government agents helped theres up. Kept theirs up. There are lessons to be learned about how this might be done in the future more efficiently. Unfortunately, blair is right. Disputesseveral budget we have had several budget stems from theis act of 1979. It occurs almost every year. The crisis that goes on. After 40 years of this, we still are not very good at figuring it out. How to operate the government. This is no way to run a government or a railroad. And it is not a good situation. If i could just add, in 1995 nobody cared if our website was up. I was going to come back to that. It does not relate functional part of everyday life. Modernization make a more complicated . Are you still getting in touch with people over the internet and it seems odd you cant in way that you understand a building is close and you cannot get into it because the government is not there. The internet seems like a separate entity that requires loving tender care for minute to minute. I may be underestimating. I can understand. To not be up to see things that are already up. Operations and maintenance. It is an interesting question. It shows you the way we do government has changed dramatically as a result of the internet. I want to go back to lynns question about the process of the government. In 1995, you were chief of staff. What did you do and how do you let people know what was the process . It is very boring. It takes a lot of work. You have to go in and bring in every chief and say what are we working on, what did we do . Who was allowed to be working and not . We were actually working very extensively with harold and others with a rewrite of the 1996 act. One of the principal things we wanted to do was to get to plan, so we had to do roughly in 18 months. We were doing an awful lot of planning. That got eliminated. That meant we got back to work, we were working double time to catch up. Were deadlines extended . The deadlines in terms of the fcc were extended for certain kinds of filing. Critical that congress did not give us any flack and they should not have when they passed the bill a couple of months later and said get these 12,gs done and six months, 18. It took a lot of work and were able to meet all of the deadlines. We had a shut down in the middle of a we would not have been able to. It is just a lot of extra work. Ge,ou to take a business, we do not know if we going to be operating in a couple weeks, prepare to shut down everything. We do not know how long it will last. You just go right back to work. That is an insane amount of work. Any company that did that would go bankrupt very quickly. Government is not like a normal enterprise. There are consequences of the things that is completely missed by most of the coverage. You were on the hill. The was that shut down, 1995, from your perspective . At that time, i was working on the conference for what became the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Tom at theng for time. Were meeting constantly with senate staff attracting the bills that became the law. We kept going. I remember senator pressler from south dakota, bringing sandwiches for the staff during the shutdown. Right throughing kept working right through. I cannot say it had a great personal effect on me. What about working from the fcc perspective . Did that put a crimp in your ability to move forward . The fundamental impact we were getting from the commission do how quickly could you this rulemaking. I would have to say out of all of the things you did, the one thing thats probably the most miraculous is you met over the deadlines. It was really quite an accomplishment. There were a lot of other information that Congress Needed at that point. Does the morale of agency staff take a hit in the 1995 when they came back from a long of a one short shut down . Did you sense there was a discouragement . People want to be appreciated in their job. To be tell youre not essential, not a great ego boost. There was a short term loss. Whoe were two big, reed, have the most respect for. One of his great strengths as a. Eader in getting the morale he was fantastic. He worked harder than anybody. He would do anything to make sure the work got done. The second was a couple of months later that Congress Gave the fcc the biggest mandate they have done in 60 years. Clearly, we were very Important Agency at the time. That helped the staff morale get up. Aboutwas article talking how our utility bill was an extra 500,000 in april because of how long everybody was working. Everybody felt his play moment in time when we have to. The shutdown is different. You have fox news calling it a slim down. Staff snarky. Theres a tremendous amount of antigovernment feeling that underlie to do so. It was quite different than 1995. We knew what it was about. This is not a current of we do not need government at all that is very problematic. I think the consequences for staff morale will be more severe. Bit of an a exception. In 1995, it was a realization that government may have gotten big. President clinton in the state of the Union Address in 1996 just after the shutdown had perhaps the most famous line of his administration. When he said the iran big of bigent is over era government is over. In some ways president clinton won that. Growththe message on the of government could not go on. The conversation that goes on in terms of guidance from congress to the fcc. Do you think there are Things Congress can do in acknowledging that could make life more difficult to get things done and perhaps these are things we really wanted to focus on our anyway they can help guide the fcc . The reality is the fcc is not the top priority of many members of congress. The issues that members of ,ongress are aware of probably three or four, at some the once at the top may not be the obvious. Indecency issues. I think the big overriding issue of the commission is the auction foot. The spectrum auction and what is going to happen and how it goes forward. I think there a lot of members of congress who do focus on that when they hear fcc anything broadcast auction. I think that is right. Auctiond aren uctions are important. With created rules around a network that is not a Critical Network anymore is what a freak out what is essential in terms of regulation. Outnd we have to figure what is essential in terms of regulation. Theres a lot of concern about and if were getting adequate bandwidth. I think there are number of different issues were congress can be very helpful. The problem is they often act in a way that this kind of like a creek from the sideline. That is not helpful. A critic from the sideline. I want to go back to what you said about congress not focusing on fcc issues. Or not knowing about them. Perspective, is that beneficial to the fcc . You served on both sides. Is that beneficial so you can move forward or does that stop the work you can do because congress is not focused . Would you prefer congress not to be focused on you . It depends on the issue. Let me be clear. There are some members of congress who spend a lot of time focusing on the fcc. The chairman of the subcommittee on Tell Commission telecommute patients and members focus Commerce Committee more than other members do. Issue, theres probably one member of congress somewhere whos actually interested in that. On the whole, there a lot of issues where there is not a lot of interest from capitol hill. The commission ofs routinely thousands licensed transfers every year. Hat you between small parties unless it is somebody who is a constituent and that particular Congressional District theres not a lot of attention from capitol hill. The important part of the work of the commission that needs to operate smoothly and it is not something they are hearing about every day on the hill. Some the issues that i mentioned and blair mentioned, those are issues the commission probably does hear about. That congress has been focused on issues other than those confronting the fcc recently such as budget issues and the debt ceiling issues, does that prevent legislation such as cell phone unlocking from getting forward and getting through congress . Almost any congress, there are very few piece of legislation and they any chance of passing. The number of subsistence pieces substantive pieces is one or two dozen. That is going to be related to telecommunications it every few years if that. Good bet to bet against congress on substantive legislation. It does not mean it does not happen. Law authorizing broadcast auctions. I agree with that. I do think certain small piece tolegislation are not stop buy the budget negotiations. I think you need a certain kind of force to get it through. I think it was a court out in denver that overturned the fccs do not call list order and congress to fix it within 48 hours. The risk consumer outrage. Something like that. You need some momentum to get something through. Ion. Ou both manage auct theres another one in february, a couple weeks after the deadline on the continuing budget resolution and the debt limit that is scheduled to hit again. How much gets done in a auction in those last few weeks and days place . It takes if it were to shut down for another 15 days and come back in early february, could that be devastating to try to push the auction forward . I think that auction is one consistent with the ones that have happened before. It is crucial. It may be well pushed back. There are a lot of steps that have to be taken. The incentive auction is more complicated. The most public aid the fcc has ever done. That requires an enormous amount to work. The staff is doing a great job. They cannot really move forward onto wheeler gets there. Team that is the asher going to run the option and the team that is actually going to run the auction is actually in place. Auction could get pushed back a few weeks. There are issues about who is going to show up for and some of the specific rules associated with the auction that for any auction they change up to the last minute. Every auction has had unique rules and this one will be no exception. There will be an effect. And not think it will be long term. What is the Lasting Legacy if any of the shutdown . I agree with harold in the long run it should not have an impact. I fear this one actually is the beginning of the cycle because for a variety of reasons. I think they are very troubling for how we operate government. Unless theres a clear signal from leadership and from the electorate, you disagree, right , do not shut down the government a do not play with the full faith and credit. Implicationserm for the fcc probably are quite limited. I agree we need to do something to get our budget in order. This is not a good way to run the government. I do think there are Serious Problems with the way we do budgets in the United States and we need to get those in better shape. Thank you for being on the communicators. Cspan created by Cable Companies in 1979 and brought to you as a Public Service by your television provider. On newsmakers, Chris Van Hollen is our guest. The top democrat on the Budget Committee and one of 29 conferees who will be working on a deal. Conference committee as scheduled to meet the week of october 28 and is supposed to report back to congress with a plan by mid december. Heres a brief look at the interview. We hope within the scope of these conversations we are able to move the ball forward. The conferees will have to defy decide what the scope best is . That will probably be one of the early decisions we try and reach. Again, the good news in this round is we hope anyway that our republican colleagues have fromed the right lessons the debacle we just went through. Unnecessary pain imposed on the country for 60 days. It did not have to be that way. Were hoping our colleagues will put it down the clubs and denies this negotiation should be between the two budget and nobody should try to gain advantage by threatening to shut down the government or default on our debts. If you put down those clubs and have a serious conversation, maybe it advance the ball. Youre calling the chairman, a fellow democrat, you are going to look for Common Ground. Common ground is different than compromise. In one of the areas where there might be Common Ground is to try and get rid of some or all of the acrosstheboard cuts that are hitting the pentagon and every domestic agency. What are democrats willing to give up to alleviate what is known as sequestration . We have to decide as negotiations with the full scope will be. Any part of the conversation would be to try and replace the socalled sequester. These are the very deep, immediate and acrosstheboard cuts. Import investments like transportation, education thomas science and research. The Congressional Budget Office said if you keep those lower the funding levels in place that by this time next year, you will have 800,000 fewer jobs in the United States of america. Thats a selfinflicted wound we do not think the country can afford. We want to work lays the sequester cuts with an equal amount of deficit reduction but done in a smarter way. You watch the entire interview with Chris Van Hollen on cspan. Coming up next, first ladies. After that, some the speakers at the tech front crisis. Marissa mayer and facebook ceo mark zuckerberg. Lou and Herbert Hoover came to the white house as experience world travelers who were successful and the private and public sectors. Thehs and to hoovers term market crash. Louver use her office to advocate to advocate volunteerism. Thene term ended amid story of lou hoover. The hoover administration. What an interesting life she had. To tell us about her years as we get started is connected dunlap, te dunlap. She is working on a biography on lou hoover. What interest you looking at this woman . I got interested after
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