Different chap it terse in the book so some of the rich Historical Context is lost in my presentation today. I will ask your forbearance to offer you a few indeath glasses. Any questions about the details, the contest or other i would be happy to answer in the q a. Politicians this congress and many soldiers and their families made decisive distinctions between themselves and their social Welfare Benefits and civilians in theirs. Claiming soldiers and benefits isnt new. They had organize the after the civil war, for example, that soldiersere entitled to pensions and to soldiers homes, for example. But i would say in the late 20th century without conscription, without mass armies, the divide between civilian and soldier grew wide and army leaders made very special efforts to distinguish soldiers of the volunteer era from civilians and benefits from quite different. Id like to focus on the moment of origin of this politics of separation, a moment of origin for the volunteer force and the moment of the origin of the vast expansion of the creation of new ones. This moment of origin really, i think, it becomes distinctive for all the arguments that are made afterward. Let me take you back to the 1970s to this moment and think about the ways this argument of separation was made. So the 1970s is the moment when the army decides to survive the transition it will need to provide extensive benefits not only to its personnel and officers but to every rank and this, it says, will be essential to surviving this transformation. It will not be able to recruit without it. In the 70s as some of you might remember was also time of Enormous Economic crisis and the military state ran right into that. There was the energy crisis, precipitating and also joining in with a larger economic recession that begins in 1973 which is the same year of the switch to the volunteer force. Theres incredible inflation that accompanies this leading to the new term stagflation, and theres tremendous budget pressure in congress. And all sorts of Government Spending is on the table. For cutting. Theres civilian social welfare programs on the table for cutting. Theres the pay and the benefits of federal work eers and also benefits of the army right at that moment is arguing needs to be expanded. So some famous faces from this moment, william proxmayer made a specific argument against mi military benefits saying they are to generous and to expand more is too costly and they should take the skcalpel to military programs. Statements like this caused the deputy chief of stuff for personnel for the army to worry that, quote, it was the word possible time, is what he said, to switch to an allvolunteer force. So in this context soldiers are feeling embattled. And soldiers and the army make their case before congress. They make their case through professional Service Organizations and they make their case in the pages of army times. And there i started to see a pattern of Something Interesting happening. What was happening military personnel started to make explicit comparisons between their programs and civilian social welfare programs and to argue if there were going to be cuts as congress was threatening, the should come from civilian social welfare programs and not from military social programs. This is a letter to the editor from an army wife and what shes saying here is what a difficult time shes having, she and her husband, in making ends meet. As they consider the prospect their bin feenefits might be cuy are suggesting the savings be given to military personnel and their programs. She says i feel the money should come from h. U. D. , housing and urban development, welfare, medicare and food stamps, to name a few and then she talks about the millions and probably billions of dollars she believes are wasted on these programs and could be better spent on military benefits. These show up in another example. In this particular one a member of congress had made a suggestion that perhaps the military families who used the program that at that time was the champus for the families of personnel, that it might in some way use a kind of medicare or medicaid type of single pair option, and this was too much for this woman and what she said is i dont even want to hear those two in the same sentence. There really is no comparison between military medical programs and civilian ones. She saw it as down grading and discouraging to have any kind of those comparisons made. So in this context really what we started to see was the pulling away of military personnel and the army from any kind of identification of their growing programs with civilian social welfare. There was an irony here and that is in switching to the volunteer force the demographics of the army shifted marketly in this period in a way that i think it was fair to say, and people in the army feared, that their graphics were not dissimilar from social welfare programs. Among the white soldiers they became poorer and less educated. There were a much higher number of africanamericans in the 1970s and, of course, increasing numbers of women at the same time. Perhaps, in spite of this or perhaps because of this military Army Personnel and Army Leadership really felt a need to make a growing distinction between recipients of social welfare on the outside and those of expanding programs on the inside. Im going to turn to a second defining moment now and this, too, is the product of the austerity of the 1970s. So in the middle of this federal Employee Benefits were swept into the budget crisis and also into the labor unrest among employees, local, state, and national of the 1970s. And into this walks the federation of Government Employees, the largest, at that time, federal employee union. In the late 1975 they say they are going to try to unionize the allvolunteer force. Theyre doing this, they say, because of the threat to benefits so their pay is on the table for cost cutting but as i said before so too were military benefits. To protect military benefits, we offer you the opportunity to join, and if Congress Wont protect your benefits, the union will protect your benefits. Interestingly about a third of Service Personnel seemed to have serious interest and the greatest interest was among senior noncommissioned officers and Career Personnel not surprising since they had been long invested in these benefits and were going to continue to be long invested in these benefits. In the event the unionization never happened, not the least the dozens of bills introduced to outlaw military unionization, but even though it never happened, it was a really decisive moment for social welfare programs in the military. And for this reason it was at that moment that military personnel and military leadership and members of Congress Took yet another step to distance the growing programs of the military from civilians and this time from civilian employees. Show you here, it might be too small for you to see, this is a cartoon from army times and it sort of gets to the heart of what will be the comparability controversy. This has to do with whether or not imposing the idea you could unionize soldiers but the idea civilian work and military work is somehow comparable. For much of u. S. History no one had gone to Great Lengths to distinguish in part because of conscription in times of war people cycled in and out of the military and in the long cold war period they did as well. These distinctions become more important. And so the army and army leaders fight back against any notion of comparability between work and soldieri soldiering, between the benefits that are allowed for federal employees and the benefits that might come to military personnel. Here is a giant, really stereotypical looking union man complete with a dunce cap on his head and what he is saying is the more they shave it down to any old job, the sooner ill take it over. The idea military service wouldnt be Something Special but would just be employment was seen as dangerous. This is in the army times. It was seen dangerous by army pen he will and seen dangerous by army leaders. What you see as a result are arguments, real specific arguments that fight for this notion of comparability. Here i have a couple of different quotes that you can look at. One from secretary don rumsfeld in his first stint. Both are notable to the degree they not only refuse any notion of comparability between employment and military service but they say its degrading. They work a kind of evaluation where employment ends up decidedly less valuable than doing military service. And this moment of distinction is a further moment, not only has the army distanced itself from civilian social welfare programs but its distancing itself from all civilians and all government benefits of all kind and creating instead a different wrong slide a different category this would be a category in which there was nothing comparable to a soldier. The third defining moment has to do with taking these two previous moments of distinction of separation and the armys thoughts about what then if it was not like the social welfare state. What was the growing military welfare state. The argument that they make uses a metaphor and a very important metaphor, of the family. The army describes itself in the 1970s for the first time very selfconsciously in congress and its own publications and advertisements to soldiers as a family. Inward looking Distinct Group of people and then the army further says that what this family will do is take care of its own. This is a revised phrase from world war ii when the red cross assisted the many people who are drafted and their families into the war and becomes a hallmark of the volunteer force and a hallmark of military benefits. Distinct from civilians, its an army familiy and that army famiy takes care of its own. Distinction, separation and elevation and these arguments which were created and deployed in the first years of crisis become were key throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. For all of these efforts to separate the military welfare state and it to protect its growth the truth is it was never secure and this brings me to my second argument. And this was formed by their understanding of not just the military but of civilian welfare programs and what it meant to bring those programs, programs like those into a military setting. It was from within actually for military leaders or recently retired critics who opposed the military state. And a key early moment in which this opposition was expressed was the occasion of the beard report in 1978. The only active duty member of congress. He was serving in the reserves at the time, a fierce critic of the volunteer force and he had many reasons why he was a critic. One of the most important among them, the one that sam nunn when he asked to testify in the senate asked him about first was this one, the military was turning into a welfare institution. Now the beard study expressed the fears of many noncommissioned staffers who were interviewed and key retired figures. What they feared was this. They feared that the military with these benefits expanded to all ranks and with the benefits growing attracted the dregs. That word is in quotes because theyre not my words. So the army became worried the last poor refuge of those unwilling. They worry about the lower case origins of the new volunteers in the 1970s. A kind of welfare heaven, if you will, and this came out in a variety of ways and have a vari military leaders and came out most strongly in the beard report. These people were not comfortable with transforming the army in this way. The other thing that made them worried, and this came out this the beard report and in other ways in the 1970s, they feared the new social welfare programs were with the femininization of the army. That came with changing demographics. While the military had been composed of just over 1 women, by 1980, thats up quite high to around 9 and so theres a rapid increase in the number of women. Over half of all women by the 1980s who are in the army are africanamerican women. The fears of feminizing also come from wives, actually, military wives. The all volunteer force is a much more married force than the draft army had been. In fact, they formed what i describe in my book as a kind of social movement in the late 70s and early 1980s and they force army leader shship to expand ths like child care, for example. Also counseling and other civil services. Those for employment for wives. These sort of create an atmosphere of uneasiness that the new benefits and programs are somehow associated with the fem aininization and both in th beard report and in a famous article published by jim webb, worry about the military becoming a babysitter. The army is becoming filled with welfare workers. The key is this. In their view the army cannot be both a war fighting machine and an institution that provides social welfare. Its going to have to choose one or the other. While it abates somewhat, i argue that it never really goes away and we can talk about in the q a other instances in which it arises. I want to turn now to a second way that the opponents of the military welfare state are influential. And this comes from outside the military and here i want to turn your attention to the influence of welfare reform which is becoming a new policy consensus in the united states, both among governors and also at the federal level, maybe most famously candidate bill clinton running for office in 1992 says that hes going to change welfare as we know it. To do so he and other policymakers are relying on scholars who study what they call multiproblem families or welfare families trying to figure out how to switch them from welfare into the labor market and to diagnose what they see as problems of dependency. These people make themselves make their ways into the army in the early 1990s and the context for this is Operation Desert Storm, Desert Shield in 1991. The army for the first time in the volunteer era goes fully mobilizes for war. And in that instance it judges itself and its after action report has done quite a good job but nevertheless its cautious. It worries actually that too many spouses relied on the army for army support, that perhaps the support had been too good, in fact. And here im showing you a political not a political cartoon but a cartoon done as part of the Operation Desert Storm cartooning contest and this was quite familiar with the roles of rear detachment. There he is and i dont know if you can read this but hes fielding questions from about a dozen wives and theyre quite demanding questions, everything from i have no mail for my husband, why is the late . When is my husband coming home, i need a babysitter and i need help. This is what the army thought of its spouses. So concerned was the army that it hired the same civilian scholars who studied civilian programs to study army wives and Army Families and actually what they did is develop then a theory coming out of this of the overly dependent spouse, the overly demanding spouse and in a term that comes directly out of decades of work on welfare the multiproblem family. After the action report decides army policy should change, the care that it had created and would take care of its own should be clarified in their words and, instead what they recommended was that the army benefits and social Services Start has selfsufficiency. It would make soldiers and families responsible for their readiness. This comes out in the way the army portrays its programs to the public. The morale, welfare and recreation, Public Affairs office. They start to discuss how they can talk differently about the military benefits and army benefits to the public. This is from a strategy session they say theyre not going to talk about support about how it is geared towards prevention and theyre not social services and theyre not going to help peo e people. Working its way up over the years by 1995 the army decides that it will change its philosophy in thinking about its benefits and social services for soldiers and families. Rather than saying the army will take care of its own, the Army Takes Care of its own by teaching its own to take care of it self. And in case the metsage was lost on anyone in this power point theres the eagle with the giant word selfreliant at the bottom. I want to talk about one last way in which the military social welfare programs were resisted by outsiders. And here we turn to a different group, to free market economists. Some people dont know but free market economists were actually responsible for the idea of the modern all volunteer force. Economists at the university of virginia and syracuse had begun studying the military in the same way that they studied other government institutions in thinking about ways they could take the institutions and make them models of free market. In the case of the military what they thought about was a Cash Incentive Program not only for luring and retaining people but also for providing benefits. Rather than allowing the mi military to expand its social Welfare Benefits, the free market economist, name ly milto freeman, he and Alan Greenspan and the other free market economists actually ran the president s commission on the allvolunteer force and did all the research for it. They refused to endorse any expansion of benefits. Instead what they hoped would happen was that they would either be outsourced or privatized or that they would offer soldiers simply more cash and then soldiers could, not unlike in a School Voucher program, simply choose which support or which benefits they would like to have in their own terms. But it would not be provided directly by the government. Now these proposals which came as early as 19681969 were handily beat back by the mi military in the 1970s as it made the transition or otherwise these programs wouldnt have grown, as im telling that you they had. However, i think its fair to say free market economists and, by the 1980s, many corporate leaders, many defense contractors, and many members of congress sympathetic with the approach really watched in horror as the military social welfare programs and benefits grew and the National Review referred to them as pure socialism at the heart of the reagan administration. With the end of the cold war, however, the tide turned for them, the end of the cold war meant the drawdown. It meant cuts in military budgets. It meant cuts in the overall federal budget as well because of the recession and it was at this moment the decisive change took place. At this moment the privatizing they had hoped for began to come true. And it came true from a couple of different places. The support for this came, number one, from the National Performance review of bill clinton and al gore. It emphasized efficiency and in actual effect a great deal of what it did was outsourced federal government activity in a range of federal departments. In the military this meant sending a man named joshua to Economic Security in the pentagon where he was advised to bring his expertise in the private sector to the goal of outsourcing and privatizing more of Defense Services especially those highly costly military social Welfare Benefits. He was also supported and npr was supported by the defense science board. This is their well known outsourcing and privatization report, National Security was also a group that issued in 1997 a report strongly in favor of outsourcing and privatizing and members of congress were also quite sympathetic to doing this. On the republican side there were bills to try to outsource more of all Government Departments and so there was tremendous support. As a result of this Major Military social Welfare Benefits were privatized and outsourced and the two most costly were probably housing and health care and its in this period we see the reecertificate generamergen. The results of this, you may be able to see here in this particular figure oops. Maybe you cant. There you go. The result of this is that military services, which are the purple, grow. They grow over the course of the 1990s. These are army spend iing on services, and then they grow, of course, into the 2000s. Now some of these services during the war are what we might think of as contracted military services, most people think of blackwater. Actually the real big money is in military social welfare and, in fact, if you look at the change in military contractors, the Largest Military contractors, really from the period of the late 90s to the end of 2009, part of what you see is the growth of this military contracting of social welfare because some of the see in 2009 are health care firms. Humana, triwest, for example, health. But unbeknownst to you or benoens to you because youre a savvy washington audience, some of these major lockheed, northrup, kdr and l3 have actually in the intervening years picked up pieces, other units of social welfare. Some of them do housing and housing management. Some of them do health care. Some of them bought social work, private social work companies. So there are lots of military contractors now who are actually engaged in this. So it actually turned out that by 2000 and now, especially by the time we are now, military benefits had actually changed quite substantially. They were no longer publicly provided set of benefits that took care of an army family. They were, instead, a collection of publicly funded but privately provided through contractors, through outsourcing set of programs that were largely focused on encouraging independence among soldiers. And this, again, to draw your attention back to something i said at the beginning is the paradox. Its actually not too dissimilar from what happens to civilian social welfare over the same period. Now there are a lot of things that we could talk about in terms of implications of this. We could talk about, for example, what it might mean to go to war if youre a soldier or member of a soldiers family with this kind of transformation having taken place. We could talk about what it means for the volunteers for the viability of the volunteer force. We could talk about what it means for military contracting. But i guess as a scholar of politics and social policy what interests me most is what it might mean for civilian social welfare to have even the benefits of bonded military personnel outsourced and privatized in this fashion. At the very least, the story reminds us that the connections, actually, between the military and civilians are closer than we think and we should all probably pay more attention to them. Thank you. [ applause ] all right. Now we turn to our question discussion period. Weve got some basic ground rules. Please wait to be called on. Please wait until the microphone reaches you. Please use the microphone when you get it, and please identify yourself when you make your comment or question. Who will start us off. Sonya michelle . Sonya michelle from the university of maryland. Jennifer, this is wonderful. I was there at the beginning. I remember when we first talked about it. It was a very exciting idea to me then and its really materialized in an incredible way. It sounds terrific. Its great. A lot of questions but maybe just one to start out with. Going back to this moment in the early 70s when the military when military personnel were trying to distinguish themselves from the civilians, and when you started talking about it, i said, oh, thats because it was a racial difference but, in fact, as you point out, there were i mean, this was a time when, as you know, there were a lot of challenges to welfare because of africanamericans because of various Court Decisions were getting more and more welfare Welfare Benefits but the military was also becoming more africanamerican. So could you sort of drill down and tell us exactly what was going on . Was it because of the attacks on civilian welfare people in the military felt they would be stigmatized by association or what exactly was going on . Was the holdover from the 60s . The antiwashment movement, was that a factor . I think there was a lot going on. The sources that i looked at were a lot of sources in army times, both in letters to the editor but also a lot of coverage that the army times did. The army times really covers benefits wall to wall. Its maybe one of the main goals of that particular publication to keep track of benefits. Look at professional services organizations. Association of the u. S. Army and i look at testimony in congress. I look at the sort of state of the army that the army publishes ever year and the informal one that it does in army magazine, and to tell you the truth, no one says explicitly that its attacks on civil welfare may be more hostile. What i tried to think about when i was putting this story together was the way in which it made sense that it was under attack in this period and both changing in very similar ways. The army clearly perceived that it often expressed antiwelfare sechblt imts of the like that, well, i never went on welfare. Instead i left my neighborhood and i joined the military. I think theres a sense in multiple ways, the broad political sense of danger in linking the two together and the trends happening among both being similar, that delinking would be similar. Then i think there was a very individual sense in which many Service Personnel really come to feel in the volunteer era like their service like they want to think about how their service is different from what other people are doing, that its different from work, that its different from all kinds of civilian life, that it is Something Special and unique, that there is no comparability and that they have done what other people from their neighborhoods and places have not been able to do by joining the military and in their view, avoiding actually partaking of the civilian social welfare state. So i think theres a lot going on and it is quite complicated, but very telling, i think, at the same time. Hi. Steve lipson. What is the relationship between military social welfare and Veterans Benefits . Has support and opposition tended to go hand in hand or are there efforts to separate them as well . Well, i have to admit that in taking on this project i had a lot of really almost like reeducation to do. It was like going back to graduate school. I spent an enormous amount of time really trying to understand the volunteer army and its Service Personnel. And i admit that quite early on i made the decision that i would not be looking in the archival records of the Veterans Administration and i would not be telling that history per se. What i will say though, just for my own observations because ive come across a fair amount, is this. I mean, i would draw your attention to the moment of the 1970s again, for example. Congress decides that it will not continue with the gi bill with the end of the vietnam war, and that is taken, i think, by many veterans as a kind of insult. Its phased out over a period of years, but it is seen really as a kind of den know gradennigrat diminution because they will not be able to partake in the gi bill. However, just as military social welfare for active duty personnel begins to rise and especially in the 1980s which is a period my talk really didnt talk about, yet its the apage of the military social welfare under reagan. Its when reagan and others agreed to revise the gi bill and becomes known as the montgomery gi bill actually. I couldnt make a very broad and general statement about the relationship between Veterans Benefits and benefits for active duty personnel, but there were particular times and places when i did see a kind of equivalent moment for both of them. Thank you. Amanda . Front here. Amanda with the National History center. Fascinating. I learned a lot. You spoke mainly about the domestic context, but at the beginning of your presentation you showed us an example of the book about the European Military welfare system. So i was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about International Comparisons or precedents that shaped the American Military welfare system. In particular what im curious about, allied nations and whether or not military leaders are drawing on those, and im curious about during the cold war where you just talked about a big expansion in the 1980s, if the cold war context is how thats shaping whats being done here. Are american leaders looking to soviet examples or not . Okay. Im so glad that you asked that question. And, again, ill go back to this moment of the 1970s when the army is thinking about the necessity to expand these benefits and then when its thinking about the crisis, for the threat in cuts from congress and the unionization. It quite explicitly studies european models to try to see what, if anything, it can learn from them. So on the one hand it is looking at a few european militaries, which are unionized, and off the top of my head, i think its denmarks in this period. Netherlands . Netherlands. Thank you. That is unionized. And theyre considering sort of what that means and the consensus is it doesnt mean anything good. Its not something that that the army would like to incorporate. It also thinks when it originally decides that its going to try to argue for these benefits, when its facing off against free market economists one of the lynchpins of their argument for this is the fact that benefits and social Services Given by the military will offer the military in the u. S. Context a comparative advantage in recruitment and retention. Why . Because it does not have universal benefits like European Countries for all of its citizens. So, militaries in europe, actually, dont have the same level of what we would call expolice silt military personnel support and Family Support. Yes, theres housing because militaries are unique and theres times when you need to put people on posts or posts in strange places and so there are support systems in place, but people get health care because all people get health care, right . Families in brittain of military personnel get their health care because they are british citizens, right . Its the same thing with a variety of other programs as well. And so the military actually quite consciously used a point of comparison European Countries and their militaries and benefits as it made the case for why the u. S. Could really benefit from creating its own vastly expanded military benefits. I actually never saw anything in the records in the 1980s about using the soviet union as a model and if anything i think i think it was an uncomfortable reality that the u. S. Was, in fact, the service joke that i showed you at the beginning that had to do with the way that the u. S. Was fighting the soviet union with the most Socialistic Union in the united states. I think in terms of what i looked at in the primary sources, it was more an attempt, actually, to downplay those services in the context of fighting the soviet union rather than to draw any attention to them. Jennifer, if i could get a question in here that has to do with language or terminology. And so the framework here is welfare, but another way of looking at it is simply employment and if you take many large firms, they provide health care. They provide a wide range of benefits. Today Many Companies provide, you know, Substance Abuse counseling and the like. Housing is different and you just mentioned that theres something distinctive about the military obviously, but whether youre working for general mow torts in the 50s or 60s or even my institution, gw today, we dont call it a welfare system when Employee Benefits include taking courses at the university and earning degrees. Its part of the benefit package and thats how we sell it in order to recruit people to the university in an otherwise competitive environment. I know that scholars talk about the rise of the private welfare state in the absence of universal benefits in the post world war ii period. Many of these services are privatized, but im wondering about if you could just reflect on the utility of using the language of the welfare state as opposed to the military is doing in various ways what big employers do generally speaking, which is to offer in some industries at any rate competitive packages to attract employees and to retain them. So i would say a couple of things in thinking about that. The first is this. The army, like many enormous bureaucracies, is not monolithic and it is true that in the era of the volunteer force there were some leaders at various periods over the course of the last few decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st who talked about the military as if it were a kind of corporation, as if it were a Large Employer of some kind and that soldiers were employees. This sometimes came out in especially in recruitment when recruiters and people in the recruiting command would sort of speak the language of the job market to people that they wished to recruit. It sometimes came out in congress when they wanted to say talk about the social role that the military played. It sometimes came out when they talked with corporations and wished, for example, to be perceived as a more corporatelike institution, particularly in the 1990s when the army joined the Conference Board and started sending many of its officers to business school. So it does come out in that way, but in large part i actually took my cue from the army in thinking about the military as a welfare state, and that cue really comes from so many people who are in the army refusing, actually, to accept that soldiering is employment. And actually rejecting that model of military service as employment. And thinking of it as something different. Its sometimes not quite clear what theyre thinking. Maybe its more of an avocation. Maybe its more of a unique family that has sacrificed to do this particularly very difficult thing but they reject language of employment and they embrace a language of caring. The Army Takes Care of its own even if they have their concerns about it. But i think i would say this, too, eric. I would say that your benefits package is welfare. I mean, i would come back and i would insist on that, as is mine. Im an employee of rutgers university, State University of new jersey, and so as a Government Employee there is a very important case and other scholars have made it as to why we should think of Government Employment as part of the welfare state, but also private institutions because of the incentives that the government offers to institutions, whether theyre for profit or not for profit, to provide private benefits or for the mandates that the government makes that they should be provided, that this, in fact, is part of what makes the american welfare state unique. So for these reasons, yeah, i want to say that this came to be the model that seemed like it made the most sense when i considered all of these benefits and social services. Very good. Questions . Yes. In the civilian welfare, of course its very could you please introduce yourself . Oh, im sorry, kay oschell. Formerly with the department of labor. In the civilian welfare state its common for cases of fraud, abuse, outrage and everything. Is there much fraud and abuse in the military, the military igs that they have to investigate . Its interesting that you raised this question. I dont know of any studies of fraud and abuse. What i can tell you about, however, are two persistent strains of discussion that permeate this era of all volunteer force and relate to the benefits that i think partake of the fear of fraud. So one is a pervasive discussion among single soldiers about how people with families get over because they get so much more than single soldiers get because the military provides according to your need, right . So they dont provide it on an individual basis. Youll get a higher allowance and youll get a larger place to live if you have a spouse and children than a single soldier will get. And this sometimes as i read, this was persistent through army times. It comes up in congressional testimony. It comes up in the Service Organizations. It sometimes tends all the way to a kind of accusation of fraud, that people are, in fact, getting married just to get more stuff. Right . And this actually you will find among nonsingle personnel. The place where i noticed it recently was on Military Spouse blogs which i started following as part of my sort of anthropological sociological study. I read these come pulls civilly for the past seven or eight years. Theres a particular term that comes up that i think is relevant here that i dont know if any of you have heard of. Its pretty offensive and the term is a dependopotamus. It refers to women who are married to Service Personnel who are assumed to be large and lazy, not unlike the kind of classic critique of a welfare client, and simply depending on the largess of the military to survive rather than doing anything particularly productive or supportive. So i think that those kinds of examples, that kind of persistent discussion of perhaps i wil i will i will legit at this ma si might come as close as i can to answering your question. Yes . Ken moscow, former Foreign Service officer. There are parallels to the benefits although on a different scale than what we have with the state department. I was struck by when you were trying to articulate how military work is different than a computer programmer. Going back to the recruiter where you started. You talked about benefits and not about service, not about duty and that element of patriotism, but not just in military but others in public service, state department, thats a big component of it. Thats a big part of the reward, as big as the benefits. I thought that was missing from the presentation. Did that did it occur to you that the benefit recruiter wasnt mentioning that or is that part of the recruitment package now . Im confused at what youre asking. Are you asking about because those those werent my quotes up there. Those were quotes from other people who were talking about this noncomprability. Im not saying anything about whether or not duty or service or patriotism are important or not. I mean, in point of fact, i think they are important. Surveys of military personnel after they join as to why they join, you know, theyre sort of scatter shot, but theyre always there on the list of why people say that they join and theyre certainly things, therefore, that recruiters mention and that officers will mention to their own personnel when they are asking them to reup again and to reenlist. They will mention that and its important. What i would say though is this, which i think is a different question. In the minds of the people who are trying to make the differentiation between what military personnel were getting in their benefits and civilians and what they were getting with their employment benefits. Yeah, i think i think not so much patriotism but sacrifice would be the word that would come up. Not even so much duty but the difficulty, the sheer difficulty of the position was thought not to have an analog really in civilian life but whats interesting is that if you look back at earlier periods of military history, when we have i mean, just back to world war ii, you dont see those kinds of arguments being made about the special arduousness about military service in large part because there is conscription and civilians cycle in and out and, in fact, dont see military service as something incredibly unusual but something that most american men have some passing relationship with and have participated in. And its more connected to citizenship rather than to a notion of voluntary sacrifice. So i think that moment of switch to the volunteer force is really a moment of reconceiving what military service means in a volunteer era. And it means in terms of social welfare, which is the story im interested in, these special distinctions. Its not social welfare. Its not employment. But to your point, i think that this development of an idea of sacrifice does become more important in the volunteer era and it is used after this moment in the 1970s to legitimate the benefits that military personnel and their families are receiving. You filled out the picture well. Fascinating. That was a question over there. Yeah. Carl henry, independent scholar. Following up on that question, im also wondering whether there are, in fact, other parts of the federal government that are also making the argument that, hey, we are special. My brothers also in the Foreign Service and hes certainly encountered danger there. People in the Intelligence Services encounter danger. The other part im wondering about is, again, analogous to the broader historyography of the welfare state, tax expenditures. Both Service Members and members of the Intelligence Agency get all kinds of tax breaks by virtue of their employment. That is now another way in which sort of welfare is being provided to them. Yeah. That latter point is a very important point and an astute observation. I cant remember if that original wheel that i showed you, that particular one showed the various tax benefits, but absolutely. Thats an important component of the benefits of military service. I would just go back a little bit because your first comment reminded me of something, which was whether or not there were other professions which had this concept of special sacrifice, and it reminded me, too, of the work that the army did and the military did in general in the 1970s and trying to think about why they could talk about these benefits as special and noncomparable. There was a brief period in which the Defense Department as part of one of the quadriennial reviews considered whether or not it should talk about firefighters as a kind of analogous group in american society. This came up both with unionization and benefits because after all, its quite a dangerous job. Youre also working quite irregular hours in many cases and you also is a highly masculinized field. They have to think about whether they want to do this for comparability purposes. They decide not to do this for two reasons. They consider the firefighters unions, in the 1970s, they have struck, right, and they dont want to provide a model of a unionized work force that strikes. Think of that in a military context, right . Ultimately they decide that the better argument is to make no analogies with civilian work and to make no analogies with other federal employees but rather to demarch ka kac demarchka demarkate this. In the back. Hi. Im with Research Services with veterans. My question is did you have review about how the Services System change for disabled veterans or particularly health care for disabled veterans or for hiv aids veterans. The quick answer to that is, no, i did not. As i sort of mentioned earlier, i decided early on that i couldnt take on both a history of the active duty military and a history of veterans. Those are quite distinct federal government institutions and the united states, its worth noting, that they havent had the same trajectory theyre not the same point now so there are questions about, as you may know, about whether or not to privatize the va and Va Health Care right now. Well, i mean, the militarys already made those. The active duty military has made those decisions long ago to take that route. Theyre not at the same point in time. Thats about, you know, one of the only observations that i can make not having gone into the archives at all of the veterans administrati administration. Thank you very much. Benjamin tur. It seems to me that at a time when the military is becoming much more like the civilian work force, i mean, the idea of danger, for example, in the military applies maybe to 10 or fewer because you have the computer programmers, you know, so on and so forth uhhuh. The tail thats supporting these jobs, very similar to the civilian jobs. Even the people operating the drones, you know, these days are not really in danger and so on. So how is the military dealing with this problem of not wanting to have comparability and yet being faced with the fact that in so many way it is more and more like the civilian work force including the addition of women, you know, on a more or less equal basis . Thank you. Yeah, thats a great question. And it is an irony that i dont think came out really in the talk but that this moment of differentiation is strangely also a moment of true convergence. And if you look at the work of military sociologists who are studying the military in the 1970s and the 1980s, 1990s, one of the key terms is civilianization of the military. And the civilianization of the military occurs in all kinds of ways. Its the fact that with the volunteer force, a lot of People Choose not to live on post, they live off post in, you know, the various branches or off base, for example. The civilianization also occurs in a kind of merging of civilian culture and military culture. The advent of credit cards in the military, for example, in the 1990s is considered one of these key points of civilianization when finally the military lets Service Personnel use credit cards. The jobs that theyre doing in a highly technical era because the volunteer era coincides with war fighting. Theyre jobs not dissimilar from civilian positions. And, of course, the all volunteer force doesnt mobilize for a major war until 1991. Thats actually relatively brief and there are about 150,000, 160,000 who are immobilized who specifically go there to the gulf and then its not mobilized again in any huge war, right, until iraq and afghanistan. There are, of course, in the 1990s deployments for what we might think of peacekeeping and operations other than war, which are significant to be sure. So it is an irony, and i dont know what to say about that except for, yes, youre astute. It is an irony. It makes one think about the hard political work that has to be done, actually, in making these arguments. If the arguments are to be successful at a time when actually theres convergence between civilians and military life. I would say this though. One of the things thats happened, i actually think theres ways in which its much less similar since the 1990s and into the 2000s. That is, military service is less similar from civilian life. I think that that is because so much of the tail, as you said, has been outsourced. So that part of what you have with the outsourcing and privatization is a revolution in military affairs as its called. This revolution in military affairs is an attempt to sort of think about making the army more i keep speaking about the army. Its the entire military, more tooth, less tail. To think of it being a smaller, more lethal force, a force that is made up of a higher percentage of what they would call war fighters or warriors and a smaller percentage of people who are doing things like logistics. Indeed, largely logistics has been outsourced, right. So those computer programmers are very few, actually, relative to the amount there probably were in the 1980s who are still in the military. If you talk to officers in the logistics, they will tell you frankly that they can do very little without military contractors and most of the people they might be supervising would be contractors. Maybe actually since the outsourcing and privatization, theres less of a convergence between civilian employment and military service. Were quickly running out of time so lets take two final questions, i think, in the back. Blue sweater there and i think no . You want to take the final question. First the lady in the blue sweater there. You. You didnt have a question . Yes, actually, a couple of points. Art hacker, American Museum of american history. Very briefly though. Very briefly. Were almost out of time. Unfortunately okay. One is that the historical depth of your argument seems very shallow in the sense that many of these trends about civilianization of military support services were very common in the 17th and 18th century. There was a kind of professionalization of the military in the 19th century which changed all would substantially change that, but the specific question has to do with rather than firefighters, police forces, which historically, again, have been very closely related to the military as a kind of civilian in fact, military often police force in europe. I just wondered if that had entered into the military discussions of the kind that you were talking about with firefighters . If you can hold it, well go to the gentleman right there. Very brief question. Final word. Im here at the wilson center. Quick point. I think danger is only one part of the distinction between the military and civilian sectors. Theres a whole multitude of hardships and things that go along with that. The question is once the privatization started, publicly funded, private organizations doing these services to create more independence. I would like for you to elaborate on what do you mean by more independence. More independence for the soldiers or branches and how it was creating it. Thank you. Very briefly, first of all, ill speak to the question of the shallowness of the research. So this is a presentation but the book talks about actually thinking about this privatization and outsourcing as a reprivatization and it does put it in that monger in larger context because militaries themselves, the Actual Services have been contracted but so, too, have the support of various kinds been contracted. And with the creation of large state armies this is, indeed, i think a reprivatization. People who study mercenaries now, the for profrtd military providers have made the same argument. The book talks about that and i concur. More detail about the independence. The independence refers back to the armys decision in the 1990s to pull back from its promise to take care of its own and to instead empathize in many of its support programs selfsufficiency. That selfsufficiency came through retooling programs like Family Support into family readiness, for example, readiness and pulling back then on the amount of support that was offered. It came through a new program called Army Family Team Building which came through the idea of spouses and families to serve the military and know the military rather than to have army helping them and through a variety of other things. I mean, today i see the echos of it in the emphasis on resilience, frankly. So we could talk more about that because i think were running out of time, but i think its a very important theme in military social welfare. On that note, we have to draw this unfortunately to a close. The conversations can continue at a reception afterwards. Please note that the book is available outside for purchase. Please join us next week for our final session of this years washington history seminar with albert jones of Saint Anthonys college. Talks about crimes of the security of the nation, world war ii, the cold war and mexicos antisedition laws. Thank you to our audience. Thank you to jennifer mittelstadt. Thank you. [ applause ] on the agenda this week in the house, the 610 million pentagon policy and programs bill. Also, work on military construction and veterans spending and emergency spending to combat the zika virus. See the house live on our companion network cspan. Judicial confirmation coming up. Military construction and veterans spending as well as money to deal with zika also on the schedule in the senate. See the senate live on our companion network, cspan 2. The House Oversight Committee Last week held its second hearing on allegations of misconduct at the Transportation Security Administration. The head of the agency testified that since he took over last year the entire tsa work force has been retrained. Utah senator Jason Chafitz sthard. The committee will come to order. Without objection the chair has authorized to declare a recess at any time. An important hearing today. The public comes in regular contact with the Transportation Security Administration. We have a fairly new administrator who ive had a chance to visit with and but it is important as the Oversight Committee that we continue to take a look at whats happening or not happening at the tsa. So today were going to have our second hearing examining the Management Practices and misconduct that we have heard about and seen about and investigated at the Transportation Security Administration. At this time of year traveling public picks up kids and families and people are traveling sometimes at record levels. People get frustrated, they go to airports, theres long lines. We have to find a balance to make sure that the airplanes are properly secure because the enemy, terrorists and whatnot, they only need to get by once and they deal with millions of passengers on a weekly basis at the tsa. We have a lot of good men and women who serve on the front lines who are trying to do the best job they can in dealing with a frustrated public. Sometimes theyre hot, theyre sweaty, theyre late. There are a lot of issues to deal with. Last summer the inspector the department of Homeland Security inspector did covert screening and found failures in the technology, failures in tsa procedures and human error, end quote. There were very alarming rates of success for penetration beyond the lines and being able to bring something nefarious on to an airplane. Although some of the Inspector Generals recommendations are still outstanding in the wake of the testing, the tsa claims theyre making progress in training the employees to be more thorough in resolving the security concerns, yet the progress may be undermined if tsa employees continue to quit at their current rates. Agency loses around 103 screeners each week through attrition as the administrators told me, a lot of these are parttime employees. Nevertheless, its very expensive to get somebody trained up and bring on to only have them leave later on in the process. In the year 2014 the agency hired 373 people but had 4,644 departures. You can see where if you think of it as a bathtub, if youre pouring water into it but the drain is going out faster than you can keep people in that tub, that there gets to be a problem. Very concerned about the morale at the Transportation Security Administration, the tsa. The government does do, i think, a good thing. It goes out and ranks, does surveys, comes up with a scientific way to assess the various agencies. Of the 360 agencies, the tsa ranked 113th. Th 313th. There are a number of agencies including the secret service and others that are near the very, very bottom of agencies that are ranked. Its something that has to be assessed and there are probably reasons for this and we want to understand that we have a duty and obligation to the federal employees and you worry that people in a securitytype of situation with low morale, you dont necessarily get the best security and the best product out of that. Two weeks ago one of our witnesses testified that he believed, quote, while the new administrator at the tsa has made security a much needed priority once again we remain an agency in crisis, end quote. He attributed poor leadership and oversight of Senior Leadership appointments as major contributing factors. The testimony before this committee alleged a double standard within the tsa. Weve heard Senior Leaders are treated with far more leniency than the tsas rank and file employees. Now we have one situation. I dont know this man. I dont believe ive ever met him. If i did, i dont remember it. He is a very senior person. The assistant administrator of the office of Security Operations. Theres a gentleman whose name is kelly hogan. He receives a base compensation of 181,500. A very healthy salary. Since his promotion to that position in 2013, Security Operations at tsa have been abysmal. Again, the Inspector General i think will hear testify today the penetration tests that were done previously were nothing close to successful. They were successful in getting objects and items through security but they were from a security standpoint absolutely rock bottom in terms of their performance yet exact during this time in september 2014 the Inspector General found that despite spending 551 million on new equipment and training the tsa had not improved its checked baggage screening at all since the ig report found full ner ra bills in 2009. Last summer covert testing revealed an alarming failure rate reporting by the media. Instead of being held accountable for the failures mr. Hogan received an amazing amount of bonuses beginning in 2015. I want to show you a slide here. Not to pick on this person, but this is whats so frustrating in the rank and file sees this. Hes earning a base salary of 181,500 and in 13 months he gets 90,000 in bonuses. Thats just his bonuses. Nine times hes getting bonuses over a 13month period. Thats in addition to his health care and all the other things, retirement that hell get. People dont understand that. Let me go to this next slide. So here you have here you have John Halinski who i dont believe works at the administration anymore. He makes a recommendation to the person at the bottom, guy named Joseph Salvatore who makes a recommendation that kelly hoggan gets a bonus and then halaniski recommends sal va tore gets a bonus and it happens four times. Go back, if you could, to that first slide. Youve got rank and file people working hard trying to do the right thing. Having massive security failures based on what the Inspector General is doing. And this person at the senior part of the food chain gets 90,000 in bonuses. I dont understand that. This didnt even happen necessarily during this administrators watch but we want to know whats being done to clean this up. Go to the next you can that i can slide down. Thank you. How did he get this done . In the normal situation the president has to approve bonuses over 25,000. This doesnt apply to the tsa and thats why i think were going to have to go back and review this. When the ig investigated that after a whistleblower tip it found in july of 2015 tsa had no clear policies prohibiting an arrangement such as we have just seen and only, quote, loose internal oversight of the awards process, end quote. I hope we are going to hear that this has been cleaned up and be more fair and more equitable in truly rewarding those people that are having success. The frustration is its not as if we are having success. The bonuses were given to somebody that oversees a part of the operation in total failure. This is contributing, i think, to the massive problems of morale and other challenges that we have. Administrator neffenger has many challenges to overcome in restoring the confidence of the rank and file and even the perception that some of the current leaders have been part of the problem can consider to harm morale within the ranks of the tsa. More significantly can deter them from speaking up which impacts the correspondsbility of the agency to keep americas transportation safe. Last november the Inspector General testified, quote, creating a culture of change within tsa and giving the tsa work force the ability to identify and address risks without fear of retribution will be the most critical task and something im sure were going to talk about today. We have somebody on our panel who has spent a considerable amount of time dealing with the tsa and transportation. The chairman of the Transportation Committee here in the congress and id like to yield some time to mr. Micah of florida. Thank you, mr. Chairman and Ranking Member for conducting this part two. There are some very serious concerns about performance of tsa. That first hearing that you held just a few weeks ago. We had for the First Time Since we created tsa came in from responsible positions and were willing to testify to the almost sheer chaos that exists, both in the management and in the operations. Of course, i expressed my concern about the meltdown that weve had to date, and i had prepared, actually, yesterday and staff had got me like one figure during the break. We had 6800 American Airlines passengers miss their flights due to checkpoint delays, and thats you know, we hear that members of congress and others. Last night i had the night from hell. I had three people who i invited to washington who came to washington, spent most of the day with me. All of them missed their flight standing in a tsa line. Ill tell you what, i am so livid. Wednesday night is a particularly bad night. Traffic was bad. They were late getting there. The tsa people wouldnt have the courtesy to accommodate people who could have caught their flight even though they were somewhat late, the plane was there. I was on the phone for hours. One of the individuals whose family is leaving on vacation today had to get back to orlando to accompany his family. I actually had a staffer drive him to and bought him a ticket home last night. So i could put a face on it. You cant get ahold of a damn person in tsa even as a member of congress nor would they take your calls. Ill tell you what, its just unbelievable. The operation and youve got your 100,000 people standing around accommodating members of congress to get them on congress and you cant get a passenger on a plane that has to get home to leave with his family. I want a list of all of those people standing around that that that that chauffeur members of congress and vips up to the front of the line and you cant get one you cant get three people, one lady with some physical disabilities ill tell you what, i am so disgusted with this. It makes you, mr. Chairman, lose your focus. But let me go back to you can delay these people and then heres my gao report. 17 known terrorists have flown on 24 different occasions passing through your tsa. What was the very most troubling of the testimony that i heard, and you can fail and you will fail and your attempts on the training and recruiting and all that will be a failure, i can tell you that. I told you that on my cell phone when you came in because you cannot recruit, you cannot train, you cannot retain, and you cannot administrate. Its a huge failing Government Program and it will fail. But the most troubling thing was the testimony from mark livingston, former assistant administrator fortsas office of intelligence and analysis who testified its my testimony today that we have a nonintel professional running our office of intelligence and analysis. Thats the core of the government responsibility. Connecting the dots. Hes telling us i questioned him about what was going on, and hes saying that that that important government function, the most important government function, the find the bad guys, not stop the innocent 99 of the travelers, that we have a we have chaos in that operation. I yield back. Thanks the gentleman. We will recognize Ranking Member, mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. There have been few times that in my 20 years on this committee that i have felt so strongly about an individual. Administrator neffenger is a person who i have a phenomenal amount of respect for. When i was the chairman of the subcommittee on the coast guard and maritime matters, it was mr. Neffenger, admiral neffenger who cleaned up a mess called deepwater horizon where the coast guard was buying ships that didnt float. Radar systems that were supposed to have surveillance of 360 degrees with 180 degrees, radios that when they got wet, they didnt work. He cleaned up the mess and saved this country and the coast guard probably hundreds of millions of dollars. And, sir, no matter what happens in this hearing, i thank you. I really do. Last month our Committee Heard testimony from three Transportation Security Administration employees. They raised troubling allegations about Personnel Practices that stretched back several years in some cases. The employees who came forward deserve to have their allegations thoroughly and fairly investigated. Are and i emphasize that. Its one thing to allege, but we need all the facts so that we can be about the business of not only hearing testimony but bringing about the reform that is necessary. Im sure you would agree with that. Unfortunately, the committee has not yet had the opportunity to fully examine or substantiate their claims ant let me pause here for a moment. Mr. Rock, in your testimony, i want you to do me a big favor. I want you to distinguish between what happened post pre neffenger, admiral neffenger and post. The chairman spent rightfully so the discussion about the 90,000 bonus. Theres probably nobody in this congress who has railed against bonuses going all the way back to aig than i have so i want to make sure that we are putting responsibility where responsibility belongs. I hope youll do that. Nevertheless, during our previous hearing i was struck by how highly those whistle blowers spoke about our witness today, vice admirable neffenger. Despite what they en2k50urd, these whistle blowers repeatedly told the committee that administrator neffenger was taking positive steps at tsa. They made clear that he is setting a course for the agency that puts the top priority exactly where it should be, on security. For example, mark livingston, a Program Manager in the office of chief risk officer testified that administrator neffenger is, quote, a man of integrity. He also said, and i quote, tsa is not going to compromise our mission to expedite passengers though at the expense of our mission, end of quote. He went on to say what were going to do is were going to get better. Were going to keep pushing precheck, were going to keep pushing a better process, were going to get more people and were going to get better at this. Mr. Neffenger has made it his priority, end of quote. Similarly they testified and i quote these are whistle blowers. Certainly since mr. Neffenger has been here there has been a shift in security in trying to get the pendulum to go back so we strike a balance, end of quote. Mr. Branard also said, and i quote, its important for us to make sure that we reassure our officers so that regardless of the fact that somebody is going to have to wait a few extra minutes, we still have their back, end of quote. And we have an administrator who fully supports that, who fully supports that and that is part of the culture that he established with tsa. Thats a very difficult job. Its certainly not the most popular job and we appreciate it. End of quote. I have to say during my many years to you in the Oversight Committee, i have rarely seen employees simultaneously come forward to report what they believe to be abuses. While at the same time commending an individual who is in charge of the agency for efforts to address them so vigorously. I can never remember in these 20 years and i have been at just about every minute of all the hearings. An administrator testified last november that tsa faces and i quote, a critical turning point, end of quote. And i agree. He cannot turn around the agency on a dime. I dont think up here could. In the ten months he has been on the job, i emphasize ten months, he has taken bold actions. In february he directed reassignments in process. You will remember the committee when a lot of the complaints were about people who felt they were being punished and being retaliated against by being moved from place to place. The wife would be sent to the northeast and the husband be sent to the southwest. And all kinds of mischief. So im glad you addressed that and i hope you talked about that. That was a large part of our hearing. They issued a memo that had approvals whenever the assignment is requested. He strengthened the controls over special achievement awards. The transparency to the resources counsel and appointed a chief operating officer in charge of agencies operating divisions. Critically he worked to address the security shortcomings identified by Inspector General roth who is with us today. I have a tremendous amount of respect for you. He retrained all screening personnel and created a new academy to train newly hired screeners. Inspector general ross testified last november and i quote, he has deactivated certain Risk Assessment rules that granted expedited screening through the lanes. Despite all of the changes, the number of screeners has dropped by nearly 6,000 over the past four years. I agree with the chairman. Thats something that we all should be concerned about. We all need to find and get to the bottom line of why that is happening. We want to retain our vote folks. That is not a situation that we found with the secret service where people had gotten to a point because they did the same job over and over and over again. I concluded that they had moved into a culture of complacency and mediocrity. The tsa has to do their job, but congress has to do ours as well. They top the ensure we have the resources they need to accomplish the mission and i want you to let us know whether you do have the resources including right sizing the number of screeners. I look forward to hearing from you about what more he needs to continue the improvements he put in motion. I anxiously look forward to hearing from mr. Rob about the work he is assessing in the changes. We are well on our way to making the tsa a Better Organization and if it is a morale question, i would like for you to address that forthrightly and let us know what you plan to do about that. With that, im going to thank you and i yield back. We will have member who is would like to submit a written statement. Todays one panel and administrator of the transor theation security adadministration. Inspector ynl of the department of Homeland Security. All witnesses are to be sworn. You testified here previously, but if you rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth . Thank you. Let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative. As you know, we like to limit the oral testimony to five minutes, but your entire written statement will be entered into the record. You are recognized for five minutes. Thank you. Good morning. Distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for the student to appear before you today. I appreciate the oversight of the Management Practices at tsa. This has been a great concern to me as well. I commit to you and the American People that under my leadership, tsa established High Performance and accountability. I want to thank the Inspector General for his support. I value the oversight that he provides to improve and i have been working closely with him during my tenure. My leadership is shaped by more than three decades in crisis leadership. I emphasized professional integrity and dutied emission as foundational elements for myself and for the dedicated Civil Servants and military members. Since taking the oath of office on july 4th, i traveled throughout the country and around the world to meet with employees at all levels. I have been impressed by the patriotism and sense of duty. They have performed demandings and i deeply respect and appreciate their work. They have risen to a mission and taken an oath of office and loyalty as a continue of employment. They require the utmost professionalism to the most Senior Leaders. My priority is to fulfill the mission to secure the nations transportation systems. In ten months they have undertakenests and prioritized our Counter Terrorism mission. I set a renewed focus and revised procedures and made investments in technology and retrained the workforce. We are holding ourselves accountable and supporting our frontline officers in the critical mission. We have reinvigorated the partnership with the airlines, Airport Operators and the trade and travel industries and working closely to address our security mission. We under took a Broad Mission of the enterprise with respect to that mission and our people. I am systematically and deliberately leading that transformation and we are focused on the security mission. Most importantly i am investing in our people. With congresss help, i directed a complete overhaul of the approach to how we train our workforce at all levels of the agency. We established the first ever academy on january 1st of this year. This training will enable us to develop a common culture and instill values and raise performance in the workforce. Establishing a culture of mutual trust and the workforce instills confidence and pride and is a prudent investment. I ordered a review of policies and practices that led to a number of changes. Among which are elimination of the use of directed reassignments, restrictions on permanent change of relocation cost and controls on bonuses at all levels. We are overhauling practices and i conducted a review of acquisition and we are building a planning and budgeting and execution process and building a Human Capital system to address promotion, assignment, and retention. To ensure the integration of our team, i graut in new leaders and a new deputy administrator and chief of staff. A chief of operations, a new head of intelligence and other key positions and with respect to the intelligence, i want to note that our Intelligence Office just received an award from the center for the work they have done to analyze recent attacks on the system. I assure this committee under my leadership, they treat employees fairly and affords them every legal means to exercise due process rights. We review Management Controls regularly and revise them and investigate and adjuteicate misconduct and hold them appropriately accountable. My experience told me that good leaders set high standards and inspire people to perpoerm at their best. I have set high standards and expect them to work hard and supervise them closely. We must deliver a hely effective capability and to do so we must have trained and motivated employees supported boy a mature agency with a common set of values. My guiding principals which i expressed are focused on mission, invest in people and commit to excellence. We are pursuing these objectives every day as administrator. Until we achieve and sustain success in every aspect and in every mission and office and location where we operate and with every single employee. Thank you for the opportunity and the committees support. I look forward to your questions. We will recognize Inspector General roth. You are recognized for five minutes. Thank you for inviting me here to testify this morning. I testified before this committee at a hearing on tsas programs and operations njs we remain deeply concerned about the important mission. Tsa had challenges in every area of operations. At the time i testified that the reluctance to securing vulnerabilities that the audits reflected had the failure to understand the gravity of the situation. Six months ago i testified before this committee and stated they believe that the new administrator had begun the process of self evaluation and aided by the workforce of the tsa was in a position to address the issues. I predicted that the most challenging task would create a culture of change by giving them theability to identify and address risk without fear of retribution. Today i still believe that to be true. However we should not minimize the significance and the challenge that is the tsa faces and the grave risks that failure brings. The task is difficult and will take time. In the meantime my office will conduct audits and investigations and bring an independent look and professional skepticism as we are required to do. In light of part one, i would like to discuss the offices work and misconduct within the workforce. We are organizationally independent from both dhs and tsa and have a crucial in ensuring that the crimes and misconduct will be investigated by a fact finder. The department employs an equal number of contractors. We have fewer than 200 investigators and available to conduct the investigation. This amounts to 2,000 employees for every investigator. In 2015, we received 18,000 complaints, about 350 per week. A substantial number allege that dhs engaged in misconduct. Some of these involve tsa personnel and in the last fiscal year, we received 1,000 complaints from or about employees. Our criteria for case election had assessment of the seriousness and the rank or grade with the that is necessary to ensure that the case is handled roeptly. We value the contributions that they identified. Federal law provides protections who disclose wrongdoing. They may not take or threaten to take action because they report misconduct. We have the right to protect the identity of witnesses. We invest getted a whistle blowers allegation that they were granted through a precheck. They were a traveler from a Domestic Terror Group and involved in activities that led to arrest and conviction. After terveing a multiple year sentence, the traveler was released from prison. The officer recognized the traveler from news coverage. We kwound that the officer was correct. Because of the policies, they were given expedited screening. We gave notification to think and thanks in part to this whistle blower, we were able to illustrate the danger and they redraught the issue of managed conclusion. The description of the bonuses and our investigation was the result of an employee who notified us of the situation. When i arrived, i was better thanned about how we were managing our protection program. My goals to make sure we have a program that is good or better than any in the federal government. We will ensure that whistle blowers are listened to and their blames are fairly and independently investigated. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my woman. I welcome any questions you or any may have. Im sure that you heard or watched the proceedings when i had three officers in here. As i said in opening remarks, one of the major areas of concern in Intelligence Analyst offices and that capability, i never heard more damaging testimony than i heard under oath from that matter. And we have detailed information we acquired about the personnel that are there. The qualifications and the background are lacking, but what do you want to say to this . Thank you for the question. I had questions about the capabilities. You reviewing the allegations . I have a new chief of intelligence who is here. I would like an outline to the committee. The screening function is fine and you may find those, but the intelligence is a government responsibility. We dont have good intelligence. Known terrorists are going through the system. This was a riskbased system. Can you provide us with an outline of what you intend to do to correct the situation . Yes, sir and i will provide examples of how we built an enterprise which is one of the best in the country. It has been recognized by the national Counter Terrorism center with one of the awards and the analysis they have done. Its most troubling and another thing they have been giving this line, its a lack of funds that creates the problems in the lines that has been put out by tsa. I have not said its a look of funds. I have seen it from tsa. Its staffing. Last night like at reagan they closed the lines. They cannot staff to traffic. I have seen it all over. I had a report last week of a member that told me at one airport they were backed up, lines forever. The other side there was a concourse. There were not thousands standing around, but everybody standing around and someone cant shift them. In the lanes they were leading, two were closed. I have been at national airport. People cant make a decision to staff to traffic. We to to look at the money you are spending. The last could we are spending on administration and at one point, nine billion on screening. Thats a lot of administration. We need to pair the numbers down. The bonuses that the chairman said 80,000. How much can we pay screeners. You are losing 30 and 30 of the screeners and 38 of the nontsa employees leave their job within one year. You can be training these people and you have a boat with a leak in it that will sink. Again, how much is the bonus you can be giving to a screener . Can someone tell us . Im told its about 300. That guy will knock off the one month. You have 80,000 in bonuses and people that are doing the work, not sitting in an office. I want a full accounting of all the people working in the area. There were 4,000 people work within ten miles of here making on average 103,000. I would like that figure into the record. Can you provide us with that . Yes, sir. We will provide that. Finally, im not a management analyst, but these folks testified that you went from a riskbased system to the system we see out there with the long lines and everything. We have the summer coming and if you think the day after thanksgiving was bad, we will see that every day. What is plan b . We have gone from a riskbased its to thoroughly examining everybody and no plan b. You can tell us about it . We still have precheck and we are growing that population and we have doubled that over last year and the approach is more people like that, the more i can move through and focus on those who are not. We discontinued the process of assigning people from an unknown population into that population called managed conclusion. We have a Larger Population of travelers this year than previously. It grew faster at a higher rate than predicted by those who set the predictions by the budgets built in the past. When i came into the organization, i fountain organization with 5,800 fewer screeners than it had four years previously. That was in the face of higher traffic volume. That was to halt further reductions because it was my suspicion that we did not have enough people to staff the lanes. My suspicion was correct. We do not have enough people currently. We have been scrubbing. I respectfully disagree and yield back. Now the gentle woman from new york for five minutes. Thank you for walling this important hearing and nothing is more important than securing the lives of American People. I want to thank you for your work to really make the tsa Security System more effective. I would like to remind my colleagues that tsa was built not for speed or created by government, but to protect our citizens. They were murdered on 9 11 merely because they woke up and did what each one of us are doing today in this room. They went to work and sat at their disks and they were murdered. Not on a military site, but the work site. This happened at other sites around the country. If you remember i would go to the airport just to see what was going on. It was closed down. No one would fly. Our commerce was crumbling. Everything was dead until government put security measures in place to protect the American People. 500 of my constit weuents and friends of mine died on 9 11. This is horrifying and we know the Airlines Continue to be a terrorist target. We know. I talked to the pilots. They will me they continue to test the system all the time to see if their weaknesses and they find it often after they leave the plane and see where they were meddling. I want to thank both of you for your focus on security. When we created tsa, it was debated for months. There was a division between both sides and some thought it should be privatized and others thought the government should have the responsibility. If our police and fire are maintained and supported by the government, surely the tsa makes sure that america does not get on a plane that is going blow up should have that same support from the federal government. I want to thank you for your statements before this committee and im going to quote you. You said you were red justing the measurements of success to focus on security rather than speed. I will say to you that i dont see tsa pandering to passengers. I get stopped all the time. Sometimes i say why am i being stopped. They said its a random number. You are that random number. Sometimes the bells go off. Like every other american, i have not seen anyone protest the fact that they were stopped. They realize that they are there to help make it more secure for us. And i study the lines like all of us, i travel every week back and forth. Sometimes the precheck line is longer than the other. It is really growing. I study my fellow residents and i dont see them angry. If they lose their flight or miss the flight, they should have been there earlier. We are supposed to be there an hour early and we rarely are. They are not upset. They realize they are stopping people to make sure they dont get killed when they get on the plane. I want to support the oversight strength of our nation and the igs office saying it wasnt Strong Enough for security. They have responded and he has ten points he is implementing. What have you done to make sure the screeners are assessed on the security results they achieved. I top the reiterate, i have never, never since 9 11, it has been 15 years. I have never seen a resident business to being stoppeded and because of their feeling that there is an emergency they may miss the plane. The one complaint i hear is is it secure enough . Whats the overside . Someone gets on a plane with a knife or weapon and say how did this happen . If people do not believe their planes are secure, they are not going to fly. The country hurts and fear is terrible in under mining the american spirit to get things done. I want to know what are you doing to improve security . If you need more people, let us know and give us a report on how you can keep the security at the top level, but you may have to have more people. I know new york is a bisy place, but no one is complaining about a pressure on security. I want to thank you for the job you do. It needs to be tougher in my opinion. I will provide a fuller comment. Let me highlight a few points. The results of the test last year, the first thing we did was a true cause analysis. What happened . What i found were systemic problems in agency focus and training and in the way in which we deployed our equipment. I took two months. A rolling stand down hours at a time and including myself. I made my Senior Leaders go through it as well. We called that and followed up with a quarterly version of mission essentials. We increased our covert testing, internal covert testing and we do immediate feedback into that. We provide i work from as i say, the Positive Side of the e kwigz and we provide rewards for those who perform well and we turn those people into trainers for the next round of
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.