>> good morning. welcome to the heritage foundation and r lewis lehrman auditorium. of course what those are joining us on our heritage.org website on all of these occasions. for those in-house we ask the courtesy to check our various mobile devices have been silenced or turned off as we prepare to begin and, of course, for those watching online you are welcome to send questions or comments at any time simply e-mailing speaker@heritage.org. leading our discussion this morning is david muhlhausen. dr. muhlhausen is research fellow in empirical policy analysis at heritage center for data analysis. he testifies frequently before congress on the efficiency and effectiveness of federal programs. his commentary and analyses have also been featured in numerous major publications and he frequently appears on national television as well. his book review scientifically rigorous national studies that almost unanimously fine that federal programs fai failed to e the social problems they were designed to address. dr. muhlhausen serves as an adjunct professor at george mason university where he teaches program evaluation and statistical methods to graduate students. please join me in welcoming david muhlhausen, david. [applause] >> thank you. good morning and welcome to the heritage foundation lehrman auditorium. for those of you online, welcome to today's event, reorganizing the federal government what needs to be done and how to do it. combined today our panelists with in-depth and extensive experience with the workings of the federal government. leading our discussion today is rachel greszler. rachel is a research fellow in economics budget entitlements in the thomas a roe institute for economic policy. she's leading the heritage foundations blueprint for reorganization project that is s the subject of today's event. before joining heritage rachel is a senior economist on the staff of the joint economic committee for congress. next is donald devine. donald is senior scholar at the fund for american studies in washington, d.c.. he served as presiden presidentd reagan civil service director during the president first term in office. during that time the "washington post" labeled him reagan's terrible swift sword in the civil service were cutting bureaucratic excesses and reducing buildings in spending. his new book is a guide to reforming which was recently published. it can be purchased online. this is my personal copy and i look forward to reading it. last is robert shea, a principal in the public sector with over 220 years of federal government experience. he leads the public sector strategy in communication team and is a member of the performance transformation team. he was recently appointed to the statutory create a commission on evidence-based policymaking, a subject near and dear to my heart. previously, robert was associate director for administration and government reform at the office of management and budget. robert led president bush's performance improvement initiative and administer the program assessment rating tool. before joining omb, robert served as counsel to the senate committee on governmental affairs. rachel, i will now turn this event over to you. >> thank you, david vitter is my pleasure to be here today. i've had the opportunity at heritage to work on the production of all of our blueprint for reform, for reorganization. they begin with the blueprint for balance and then the blueprint for reform, a blueprint for new administration and now this one. i will just put in it like at the beginning, blueprint for balance was her first when and what we did and that is we spelled out over 100 different recommendations that lead to $10 trillion less in federal spending, 91-dollar reduction in the deficit and balancing the budget within seven years. what we have done here is a lot of those recommendations are included in a blueprint for balance and other blueprints are also part of the blueprint for reorganization. we specified the pathways that you can achieve these reforms and no to whether not the president has the authority on what we need to be done, whether it's congress or a change in authority three that we need to take place in order to implement the recommendations that we have presented here. now with $4 trillion in annual spending, $19 trillion in public debt, and 22 different cabinet level agencies of federal government, americans are need of a government wide reorganization. our government currently knows few bounds, both fiscally and just administratively. we need the government to focus on its core constitutional responsibilities. we also need a government that is looking out for the interest of everybody instead of select groups. and we need one that is able to provide efficient services with accountability metrics attached to those. now, in this blueprint for reorganization, the first one that focused on an analysis of federal departments and agencies, we have over 100 different recommendations pick in a moment and what you you some examples of those. but first i wanted to clarify that everything that is in your something that the executive department has the authority to take on and go do immediately. a lot of the things probably most of them will require buy-in from congress. our second edition of the blueprint, which is pathways reform and crosscutting issues, specifies what the executive can you already, what changes could be made to clear the path which reform, and what things will need congressional b buying. we also look at some crosscutting issues. the first document look specifically at the agencies and in the second when we have reform such as modernizing federal government, changes to personal policy that would span across all the agencies. among our roughly 110 recommendations that we include, i will start with some of those that are for eliminating old departments of function such as a federal housing administration and the financing agency as well as the consumer financial protection bureau. when we eliminate, proposed limiting whole departments or functions that are often some core functions that we would hold and we would just transfer them to a more appropriate department or agency. there are also some functions that we consider nonfederal and that should instead be transferred to state and local governments such as fire protection and low income housing assistance. state and local governments have better knowledge of our local communities, and they are more appropriately designed to service these needs. also offices and departments that we recommend eliminating. for example, the va has 42 different offices, 42, including 14 specifically related to health. these things just create a bureaucratic nightmare for the veterans were seeking integrated services. one shop to go for all the needs as opposed to 42 different offices, then he will be responsible for having to take documentations from one to another and coordinate the services. without shutting down entire agencies we also recommend closing some certain physical offices such as the department of educations 24 different regional and field offices. when these were first established there was a need for them. we didn't have the internet at the technology we do today, but the board of education and other departments have these services, these offices throughout the country that are just no longer necessary today. we also recommend streamlining some functions within agencies. so for example, the department of justice has four separate criminal divisions, and these are located across these but they also have their criminal section. you could group all those criminal once into the criminal division itself and not have been scattered across. in certain cases programs like efficiency because they are housed in the wrong agency. that's why we recommend things like moving the food and nutrition services which is a welfare program from the department of agriculture and into the health and human services department with the other welfare programs, or the student aid programs taking about of the department of education and putting them in treasury as treasury has the information they need to determine who is eligible and did the ones or distributing the funds. what we don't recommend cuts overall to defense spending, there still room to optimize and put the highest priority functions first within the defense department. so for example, we suggest eliminating excess infrastructure that's costly to maintain on an annual basis and we also don't think the department of defense should be spending money on nondefense programs like ovarian prostate cancer research or on obama era initiatives for the energy environment. too many of the federal government programs benefit a select few instead of looking at across all americans. so that's why we recommend eliminating these programs, such as the corporation for national and community services, corporation for public broadcasting, the national foundation for the arts and humanities, the export-import bank, the minority business development agency, and the department of energies loan programs. but efficiency isn't just about rightsizing the government and reducing, eliminating or moving programs read. run. it's making sure the government is doing its job through oversight and accountability. that's why we recommend making regulations subject to meaningful review and not getting certain exemptions such as the irs exemption for tax related regulations, making them all subject to the same reviews. we recommend evidence-based policymaking within the office of management and budget. and then we do have places where there are plenty of accountability programs such as the va. we identified 31 different accountability and program management programs there, and yet they are scattered again. so if you put all those accountability programs into one place within the va you would better serve veterans as well as taxpayers. finally because personnel for such a tremendous impact on the efficiency and accountability of the federal government, we recommend a broad package of reforms to improve accountability, reward productivity and essentially let federal managers do their jobs. we also want to bring federal employee compensation in line with the private sector so that the government is in a better and more competitive position to attract and retain the best and the brightest federal workforce. without i'm going to head over to donald devine. >> all right. my name is donald devine. it's kind of a serious part of the program. i am the comic side. first thing i want to say is i very much recommend both of these books, the cost-cutting one is just super, one of the best things i've ever looked at about government management. i'm an academic by background, but in some crazy we as of 1980 election, president ronald reagan called me up and said don, i've got a job for you. what is it? i said -- he said head of the office of personal management. i said that's kind of a funny job for a libertarian conservative like me, running the bureaucracy? he said, i've got a good sense of humor. i said what you want me to do? he said i want you to cut back 100,000 nondefense employees. i want you to reduce their bloated benefits and i want you to make them work hard. i said thanks a lot. i can make a lot of friends in this job. just remember what harry truman said about doing a top job in washington, if you need a friend in washington when you're doing a tough job, by a dog. so i bought two of them to be on the safe side. and the crazy thing is we did do it. nobody thought this was possible to go out and cut and reform government. we did reduce 100,000 nondefense employees. it's on the record. they tried to hide and almost no conservative wants to know that, but we did. we cut bloated benefits, even omb, my perpetual enemy, admitted i saved $6 billion dollars which in today's money is $60 billion. and we did make them work hard. we went with performance appraisal system, merit pay. it was a miracle. but it happen. you heard in the introduction by david that the post called me reagan's terrible swift sword of the civil service. that's one of the nicest things they said about me. they called me the rasputin of the reduction in force, which is what we called getting rid of people, and we were too clever i must admit because we did the first ones at christmas, not a good time to do this in terms of public relations. the "new york times" did a big story on me, calling me rasputin -- no, that was the post. but anyway, the grinch in the pinstripe suit, trying to celebrate christmas. but anyway, we did that and, and nobody, you know, introduce myself. i'm a professor that nobody cares about, all they do is knows, care about is i knew ronald reagan and what a guy he is, or was. all right. now, what did i learn in this? the book was mentioned. really nothing has changed very much. that's a book i wrote almost 40 years ago, and i got in this room right now went to my publisher and, this is still pretty much all true, why don't you republish it? thank him for that. and things haven't changed. all the reforms we did our god, most of them were gone the next administration, which is a republican administration i might say. and government today simply doesn't work and don't take it from a libertarian conservative like me. let's take it from paul light, professor public relations on many, many serious reviews, some of them with congressional background. the government doesn't work anymore. it can't faithfully execute its laws. that's a basic fact, it can't. he says the average i think, he's a little high on this but he says that there are 60 levels between the secretary who sets the policy and doing something on the street. it's impossible to run such an organization unless you have some measurement. the great social scientist and another book i will recommend called bureaucracy said they don't have one in government. that's the problem. within the private sector you can have 60 levels, although the private sector has learned you can't do that. there's almost no private company that does that anymore. they did it back in the '30s. we still run our government like in the 1930s. but you can go down even 60 levels and you look and say, is that division making a profit or not? if it is, you keep it. if it's not you get rid of it. in the government you go down the 60 levels, and if they are failing, that means you spend more money on it. the whole thing in the public sector is different than the private sector. how did we get this thing? the biggest revolutionary in american history as a guy named woodrow wilson who said that what we have to do is bring all power together in the center and we can run everything with the experts in the whole country. he wrote a phd, i still had to read it through what i went to graduate school, saying how to make public administrations scientific. he went over to brush and he says hey, russia works. why does pressure work? all power is centered in the government, and when the chancellor says we do it, we do it. and he came back and wrote the book saying the problem with american government is it divides power rather than bringing power together to do good. look at prussia. it's got a retirement system. it's got an educational system. it's got a welfare state. we have noted that in america, especially at the national level doing it right. he comes back. he convinces all the intellectuals in america that that's the problem, the problem is dividing it. the solution is bringing it together. he starts the american society for public administration, the american political science association is influential and stuff picky changes intellectual opinion in america for saying that divided power is good, bringing it together -- or dividing is bad, bring it together is good. and, unfortunately,, every president since event except my boss ronald reagan bought into that theory. and that's why we can't run this government. that's why paul light is correct that we can't run it. i think ultimately only thing we can do is to decentralize it back the way the founders created it as ronald reagan said, the secret to the success of america is federalism. they called federalism america's contribution to the history of freedom. i've got a solution, rather than relying on all these institutions, their having an office of management and budget, having a big thing to go reorganize government, i've got a simple solution. the first book i mentioned is this crosscutting thing pathways think i guess it's called. the other one divides up the agencies departments, goes down each wanted this that, that. i've got a simple answer. don't go with the commission. send these out to the agencies, all right? tell them to do it. or if you don't like it had a good reason why you don't do it. these are serious recommendations that david and rachel and robert have given a lot of thought. if we just put this to the normal process of omb and robert is a big exception here, because he fought them. if they just turn it over to the careerists at omb is oco on for a year, two years. it will come out at the end with some halfway done thing and it will never happen. what we should do is go back and reinvent cabinet government. that's what we need, turn it over to the agents. that's their job. just come you guys did it. that's the solution. that's what i have to say. >> i wonder if i could edit the previous talks and disassociate myself with just a couple of things my panel said but i won't. i'm going to associate myself with most of it. talk to you later if you want me to pick out what i disagree with. because it's not much. i mean, it's certainly true that the commissions of the cannot have proliferated to such a degree that the government couldn't possibly accomplish all we ask it to do. and we ask it to do it with a lot of restrictions on management of people, money, systems, contracts. that make it almost impossible to get a job done. so if you find someone who is getting something done in government, that is a true talent. it's also true that as your boss said, the only thing we have close to eternal life on earth is a government program. so once in place it is very difficult to repeal or eliminate the program. david's work, rachels work documents the extent to which we've evaluated programs, and though i wouldn't say the logical conclusion is to eliminate everything found to be ineffective. it is true that when subjected to rigorous evaluation methodologies we find programs not having the intended impact. so there's an enormous room for improvement. every president, until the '80s, had the authority to reorganize the government. i think it's high time we read him our administrations with that authority -- re-empower -- because it's so hard to do it otherwise. you know, the congress, at least on the oversight committees, are pretty supportive of this kind of authority where you trip up is in authorizing committees and the appropriations committees because those are the committees that has specific jurisdiction power, money assigned with the specific agencies under their jurisdictions. what tends to drive reorganization in government are crises and, of course, the most recent example of that is the establishment of the department of homeland security. there has been a long discussion over time about whether or not our homeland security could be strengthened if we consolidated the various programs litter the government responsible for securing the homeland. that was fought until after 9/11. you will recall immediately after 9/11 we established the transportation security administration because it was fought contract workers couldn't adequately secure airlines, airplanes, commercial travel. but fairly soon thereafter we created the department of homeland security, bringing all of these entities together. and while it's true that terrorist attacks on american soil have been rare since then, i'm not sure we can measurably say our security has been strengthened because of the chaos that the department of homeland security. there's enormous, there's any enormous struggle and very struggle to combine these entities into a cohesive, well known organization. the big issue, of course, and giving president the authority did something like that is trust. congress would need to trust an executive to use that authority responsibly, and we've not had that kind of trusting relationship in a long, long time. congress in the '90s passed a law called the government performance and results act. that was my first job to oversee implementation of that act soon after it was enacted because no one really gave a damn about it. so i was the moment on the totable and got that responsibility. there are folks for whom it's intuitive that we need to drive government agencies, programs to think more about outcome. it's too easy to come to work and satisfy yourself with just producing inputs or outputs, working really hard, doing activity, presumably towards an outcome. but if you don't measure whether that's having an impact on that ultimate outcome you will never know whether not what you are doing is having a positive result. so government has struggled before then but certainly since then, identifying the outcomes that they're trying to accomplish and finding a way to measure that over time. a lot of the evaluations that david threatens about are just that, dating insight into whether or not we are accomplishing important outcomes, was our programs are having the intended impact. but if those evaluations shall programs because we do with those methodologies to be ineffective, the vast majority of programs, the vast majority of investment by the federal government isn't subject to any of that type of evaluation at all. during the bush administration, because the focus on outcomes had not really become institutionalized we divides a tool called the program assessment rating tool. a simple set of 25 questions asked of each program, is its purpose clear and is a well designed to achieve its objective? does it have short and long-term outcome oriented goals with aggressive improvement targets? is it will manage? and ultimately is the program achieving its results? we establish this tool because we wanted to have some basis with which to allocate funding. and we insisted through this tool that agencies and programs begin in a process of subjecting their programs to these evaluations. it was the beginning of what we now call the evidence agenda and that ultimately led to the commission on evidence-based policymaking that i'm involved with today. i have to admit we did make a lot of progress integrating this data into the budget decision-making process. policymakers don't have a huge appetite for listening to evidence when figure out how to make funding decisions. so a lot of those funding decisions are highly political. so there's room for improvement i would say, as a matter of understatement, in making more and more of our budget decisions and of the policy decisions based on the evidence. as far as we organizations are concerned, we were able to say that among that government programs these are the ones that share a similar mission. these are the conflicting measures of performance. in one area we tried to do a deep dive in was community economic development. there are dozens of programs throughout the government that are intended to address to improve the economic condition of the poorest communities across government. we proposed to take all of those programs and consolidate them into the economic development administration at the department of commerce because many of the programs were found to be ineffective. it was really hard to get an ineffective rating review with this tool. because the community and economic development program, the biggest of those programs, although set of programs was said to be ineffective. we moved it into the economic development in their session which we felt was more result oriented. while the overall funding level of these programs combined was lower, we thought intellectually moving into a more outcome oriented proven effective entity would mean you could get more with less. well, there were some people who disagreed with the president's proposal. and, in fact, martin o'malley is result of this great proposal that i recommended called the president the osama bin laden of american cities. that was a highlight, not highlight of my political career. but it just goes to show that the entrenched interests need to be considered when you are developing and trying to enact these kinds of proposals. so if i step back i would say the lessons that i take from my combined experience in driving these kinds of initiatives are our leadership. one of the advantages i had was -- the presence vestment of akin cleared out a lot of bureaucratic underbrush if you're trying to advance these kind of initiatives. but leadership that gets it, that's going to invest the time and energy and intellectual and political capital to get these kinds of initiatives done is absolutely critical. at lower levels you'll just that have the just to get it done. collaboration. internally collaboration was very rough because agencies are not really enthusiastic about giving up programs, funding, power to another but you can get it done. it's easier to get done within the executive branch that it is outside. but if you don't plow ground on the hill and among other stakeholders, it will be very difficult to get these things enacted especially in the absence of a crisis like 9/11. so collaboration was your broad set of stakeholders, executive branch, legislative branch and externally, absolutely critical, as difficult as that seems. perseverance. there are many bytes of the apple, and if you are unwilling to keep going at it, then you're not likely to make progress over time. because there are so many things come in so much easier to kill thinks in washington, d.c., and is to get things done. perseverance is a quality that is essential as well. and then follow through. just because you pass a law creating the department of homeland security doesn't make the homeland more secure. just because you consolidate programs in the economic developmendevelopment of the def commerce, that's really the beginning of the journey. you've got to make sure that these consolidated entities assume a singular culture, a focused mission and that you're measuring progress over time to ensure that what you've tried to do, being more efficient and effective, is actually working. gao is given as the incredible roadmap in their annual inventory of overlap and duplication across government. they will tell you that consolidation of programs isn't always the right answer. there's a lot of room for improved collaboration across governments, programs and agencies with similar missions, and that's true but i will say that consolidation can give you an enormous degree of efficiency and improved focus on mission to those consolidations. so i just want to reiterate on delighted to be up to with my fellow panelists and thank heritage for hosting this today. it's great subject on a wet august afternoon. >> thank you for all attending. at this i will move toward a question and answer. period. >> i need a nickname. that's one thing i've learned by being on this panel. >> what we'll do is where going to take questions and if you would step up to the podium and pose your question, it would be greatly appreciated. >> if you could say your name and organization, we would greatly appreciate it. >> i am the founder of the center for accelerating innovation, former staffer in the nixon administration, worked for reagan at the commerce department. i had the opportunity just after school to work for roy ash and that was the last major attempt by an administration to do a governmentwide type of reorganization. one of the proposals, some of the proposals that went to work epa and noaa, domestic counsel, omb. but there were also proposed a limited eight candid agencies,, consolidate them into four major functional groupings. i have two questions. these proposals for the cabinet reorganization were not very successful primarily because of the way congress is organized. the structural nature of congress, committees, subcommittees and special interests, make it very difficult to move any of these we organizations through the congress. so one question i have is whether the really ought to be commission on reorganizing congress? and because even agencies like the department of homeland security report probably 15 different subcommittees, et cetera, it's all so fragmented regardless of the wonderful name that's over it. secondly, i wonder whether something like a brat commission which is set up in order to close down the fence facilities, which was successful, and closing down 4 40 or 45 of these military facilities might be an approach? i understand the idea of a regionalization authority for the president which i think makes a lot of sense, but i'm not sure that that would be the best pathway forward and it seems to me that we had a good example, a successful example of the defense realignment commission in which the congress takes an up-and-down vote on the proposals within a certain number of days. let's put it this way. have to disapprove with a certain number of days on the list to be close. so my question is what about reorganizing congress? secondly, what about strategies for action in plenty of reorganization? thank you. >> i think both of those are great ideas. the former will be more less popular than the latter. because i think congress would be loath to give authority on its own reorganization to someone else. but it's a major barrier. it's a major barrier to collaboration, consolidation of like programs. the latter idea is brilliant, because i actually wrote a bill for george w. bush that did just that. modeled on the brac commission where you would submit a proposal that was considered under expedited procedures by the congress, the three being it's the only way you get around these jurisdictional issues. right now the oversight committees and government reform have authority over reorganizations ostensibly. but it will be nonetheless real difficult to get around committees, authorizing committees will be reluctant to relinquish that kind of decision-making to a broad oversight type committee. i think it's really, we'll see. in february with the president's budget you have some of the most ambitious reorganization proposals we've seen in a long, long time submit to congress. i don't think congress is prepared for those because there's a lot on its plate. we will see just what kind of progress congress to make those kinds of things without that kind of authority but i agree with you, in the absence of it i'm not optimistic will get a lot of progress. >> let me just mention on congress something robert was involved in. the best thing that happened in my area of personal management in living memory at least since jimmy carter civil-service reform act which i was so lucky to walk into and get all the benefits of was this, what do you call the national security personnel system, like a miracle these guys got this thing through congress. it was in the wake of 9/11 and they were to have a real personal system again, of evaluating peoples performance and giving them pay based on performance, and in them, reaction to 9/11 what they did at the department of defense and homeland security. that's half the government, civilian government really. had this great game gathered through congress, well, a couple years later under the obama administration, it's out. the unions didn't like it. and voted out by congress. it's so rare to get congress to do something brave like that, and the same thing happened with jimmy carter's civil-service reform act. started nibbling away at it right from the date it took effect. i was there, maybe it was my fault we didn't get along too well with congress, but, but you mentioned ash and i've got to tell ash, one of the greatest stories about government management. i always tell it. he was giving his speech and u.s. chairman of intel or presidenpresident of intel befoe went into the government -- [inaudible] >> whatever it was. and he goes in and he's talking to his chief executives in the private sector and he says, you have to understand the government is so different from your private sector. he said, what would you do if your board of directors had on your union leaders, your opposing business you are competitive with, a bureaucracy you couldn't fire, and he goes through severa seven '08 thingse says, would you run your business different if you had that? well, of course, in the government and, of course, during those days, congress which is your board of directors was controlled by the other party. but even when it's your own party as we find out it's very difficult to get things done. he made a wonderful analogy. he said going from the private sector into government isn't like going from the minor leagues to the major leagues in baseball. it's like going from softball the ice hockey. it's a whole different kind of ballgame and it's got to operate by different principles. and jimmy carter, god bless him, actually the guy was my former professor to come in and write the civil-service reform act, 1976. but all the right performance to give the government political appointees the ability to run the government. if you want to know how to go, just go back and you can read my book because it's all about it. jimmy carter, a guy named scotty campbell, colin campbell was my professor. he devised the whole way to do it. the problem isn't getting good ideas or even getting the past. the problem is once you put them in it so hard to get them done. much of the problem, most of the problem is congress. >> next, please. >> nine years ago i wrote the background for the heritage foundation about federal funds to states. i think the number is 2136, but i am going to talk a little bit of a wrench into this. i think you are going about this the wrong way. let me take an example relating to federal funds. the special meal program picks of the federal government takes money out of my paycheck. the department of treasury since it to the department of agriculture. the department of agriculture center to what i the food and nutrition service. the food and nutrition service in the back to the state of wyoming where i live, which then sends the money down to laramie county school district one which sends it to east high school so my daughter can have milk with her lunch. i could of course just take money out of my pocket and get to in the morning. went to go through this loop -- >> she would have bought chocolate milk. >> probably or coke or something. >> i know. >> but i want to thank donald devine to your service with the reagan administration to $60 billion in in today's money is a lot of money, but the federal aim is about ten times as big, and if we could rehash the purpose of the federal government and rein it in to only deal with federal matters and not with state matters, i think you would see some major opportunities for reorganizing the federal government. thank you. >> i think this question is very good in that if you look at the first blueprint of career report, there's a consistent theme that w we're calling for downsizing or eliminating agencies that do not perform a core constitutional responsibility to the federal government. so while the id is permeated throughout, but the ideas come what of the things we need to do when we are rethinking the executive branch and how it should be structured is what activities should the federal government do that it's uniquely situated to do? i think today the federal government has its hands in every state and local matter, it's too encompassing to administer all those programs effectively. >> i would just say during my tenure i don't recall a single point which that question was asked. it was really how much more or less the program is going to get, maybe should persist but not because of federalism issues. and so don't expect a dramatic change in the missions of the agency, i do think just a subtle introduction of tha of the quesn the policy making process could make major positive improvements in certain areas. i'm not sure what those are, but it isn't as is this an appropriate role for the federal government, that was one of the questions that was in the draft of the program assessment rating tool that we designed but it was thought to be too political so it was removed. but asking that question more and more i think would be really useful. >> i would just add one thing. i didn't make my point there he clearly because my whole point was federalism is the answer and we are doing too much. but i'll tell you something is going to happen. as certain as we're sitting in this room, and why a real smart progressives of the government people are not so worried. the entitlements are going to eat up the discretionary spending of the federal government, period. clearly you can't even raise the issue or your hating all people of whatever. and it's happening already. the entitlements are growing more and more, and they're going to have to cut these things. the opportunity is when this is happening, and it's happening and is going to accelerate dramatically. i'm too old to be around, but most of his audience looks like you can. you are going to have to make these kind of decisions. they're simply not enough money possible to be raised by the federal government to do, pay for the entitlements and to do this. it's a marvelous opportunity to change the nature of government, and is going to happen whether congress wants it, whether people want it or anything. it's just straight table looking actuarially. that's what's going to happen. >> next, please. >> i am totally on board with all federalism sort of solution, ultimate solution but it want to bring back to civil-service reform which have a paper out on. federal civil service reform since it affects all of the states having to do with the federal agencies. we've had more than a century of civil-service protections. it's nearly impossible to fire career civil servants. we're 2.8 million million people with definite political leanings to make decisions about -- without any democratic candidae and we talk of landing teams, the fact that the political officials were elected by the people who are chosen by those by the give up to land like it's almost beach, lay it in entrenched bureaucracy that have an opinion about how to do how to make government decisions. i recognize what you're saying about the fact that it's gone back and forth in any sort of advances we've made on civil-service has been rolled back by congress but i was wondering especially donald devine is give recommendation, you spoke about the carter before. >> would you recommend going back to the entrance of which are paul's recommendation recommendation before the actual process by which civil servants are hired and fired? >> well, there are basically two teresa public administration. one is this experts when everything very, the administrators state, back to wilson and back back further. that's the theory we've been running it on pretty much ever since, especially franklin roosevelt. the other is cabinet or political government, and that is what jimmy carter civil-service reform act was all about. let's do political appointees power over the bureaucracy. bureaucracy has a lot of good expertise out there but you just can't let them run off and do whatever they want. you've got to somebody who's there to implement the ideas of the new administration and out it is supposed to act, whether it's liberal or conservative. and it is important that democrat, in fact, the one to put the civil-service reform act as i said literally. they were working it out, all the bugs and they got it voted out and i walked in and out and give it a new -- in my opinion, opinion of a lot of people at work for four or five years, even with congress putting appropriations limiting one part or the other of it. so there's a model to use. you put the political appointees in charge of the agencies, or the system that put in the bush administration for national security personnel system a fine, solid plan. .. >> civil service reform in my opinion. >> a couple too bad. we have a background that talks about comprehensive federal employee forms and a lot of it has to do with the ability to hire and fire appropriately in the so-called performing rating system that we have whereby allegedly employees get raises based on their performance, but you have 99.6 percent of all federal employees receiving their performance increase every year so this is not truly a performance-based system. some things that you could do to give managers more ability to have the workforce they need on the front and , when people are hired instead of having a one year probationary period where you can hire and fire at will, you can increase that to three years to give more time to assess employees and managers if they want to give an employee anything less than a fully successful rating they have to submit a performance improvement plan. it's a long, arduous process. it takes up a lot of their time.they can't do their other jobs so in talking with federal managers, they just don't do this. that's why you have 99.6 percent of employees success because they don't want to implement that plan. what you could do is only have to implement a performance improvement plan for an employee that you want to fire. then on the fire inside it takes a year and a half on average to fire an employee because they can go through three different venues of appeals process along the way. you need to reduce that and give them one option, they can pick which appeal process they would want to go through i don't know if i fully endorse all of that. but i want to emphasize the severity of this issue. it is the central issue that impacts the ability of the federal government to accomplish its mission. you can't recruit and retain a qualified workforce to do what we are asking the government to do. we recruit from a half dozen public administration schools across the country so in a few weeks i will fly out to university of indiana and i'll interview a dozen candidates. and in the taxi ride to the airport, i will collaborate with my colleagues and a half dozen or so willmake an offer to so those kids will have an offer for a job within 24 hours of being interviewed . but the government cannot compete with that. i'm suggesting that's where i want to get to but we need to improve the hiring process. the appeals process, too many avenues for people to complain about adverse action. that they are suffering from, that means that managers are loathe to even begin a discussion of holding people accountable for their performance. so it means and whatever facet of government operation you're talking about, we don't have a workforce well equipped to do what we are asking you to do. so in my view the reorganization but there's no more important priority. >> i would say just in racial's to not blow her own horn, her chapter in that pathways book, it's just super on this issue. >> any other questions? >> i'm mike, an air force legend made it official and fellow and you said the crisis is the catalyst to facilitate change in government structure. what do you guys see the crisis being to force that reorganization, you think it's an external factor, russia, north korea or something internal like the budget crisis or the national debt? >> i gave my opinion, i think it's the only thing that will force, national security crisis could also but they're pretty hard to predict. >> i was going to say i think you're talking about the reorganization, that's the crisis that's going to be worth this? >> but you also a bridge that a plane will fall from the sky, a kid in a foster home will be mistreated. trafficking, human trafficking will flip up, any one of those can bring a focus to overlapping duplication of the performance in the specific area, it's hard to predict where that will fall.>> my name is eric hassam, a reporter with government executive. you mentioned how you made a bunch of enemies out of the gate, the risk assessments and that kind of thing and we talked about the importance of engaging the stakeholders and getting by in from a group of people so to what extent as this administration goes through its reorganization process and this puzzle that is going to put forth to congress and what it can do internally, is it important to include the civil service itself in that buy-in? is it critical that the federal employees who are possibly going to be subject to these changes are themselves included in the deliberation and on board with some of the proposals that are going to be put forward? >> so yes, it's critical but there are two, the collaboration with congress is critical. if congress is not prepared to undertake the legislation acquired to accomplish these organizations, they won't happen. and i don't think they are right now so that's a real gap in the initiative to reorganize the government. if you reorganize the government, or if you try to reorganize the government, the civilian workforce is potential, to your progress and ultimate success. collaborating with the existing civil service can be accomplished directly or through the employees. in my experience, for the republican administration, the federal employee unions for the most part are unwilling to even take a seat at the table. and that's from my experience trying to engage them. >> they will tell you that we didn't engage in civil service reform but we tried pretty diligently to engage them and they were unwilling to do that and fought us to the nail throughout the entire process so whether you are, whether you are able to engage in their unions or directly, engaging them , does that answer your question? >> i should probably just keep quiet. >> unlikely. >> yeah, in theory you should. and interestingly, jimmy carter's die, ... real smart democrat. as they say he was my professor at syracuse university. we saw in the democratic state central committee politics, he came up with the right idea to reform government. he did not, he met with the unions through the process but he didn't really open anything up to them. he got the thing through, got the approval for all the executive branch, the president signed off on it. they take it up to capitol hill. they won, the unions come out and say hey, we're not going to do this. you know, we don't have a civil service system. we have two systems working on top of each other in the federal government. we've got a civil service system that works up approvals through the merit systems protection board and we've got a union collective bargaining system that goes up to the federal labor relations board. when my predecessor put it, he just had the one with the civil servant. the unions were the whole second part, so many delays in the deals and everything because we have two systems working on top of each other. this doesn't make any sense. not answering your question but it's explaining the difficulty in doing it. >> i'd like to thank everybody, time to conclude this program. and thank john, robin and rachel for attending. and thank you all for attending. [applause] >>. [inaudible conversation] >> book tv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer. >> i attempt to read different books. i love reading history about our president. the library of congress has these things where every so often they will bring in the author of a book on one of the presidents. the last one we had last week happened to be on andrew jackson. so they give you a book, there is a book signed by the author and i love reading those books. it has everyone from lbj of course to andrew jackson but one of the books i want to read now is one called the geography of genius by eric weiner. now, why is that important? as an example, why is it that you have ancient offense and the 21st century silicon valley? they were separated by not only thousands of miles but also thousands of years apart so what is it that you have to innovation, creativity and athens, many years ago and now you look at silicon valley also you have this innovation creativity so what happens? what's the catalyst in a certain area? it's not only offense, it's silicon valley but you have different places across time in different cities and different continents and that's what's interesting to me. >> focus on reading history books or do you have any other interests when you read? >> i love history. i love also pigment but i have to say i'm a sci-fi fan. from reading the princess of mars many years ago to you know, of course not only reading the books but princess of mars, they turned into a movie, john carter. of course, star trek and of course some of the other science fiction. that's my reading but i love history. i know that in high school and back in even in college, some of my colleagues like history but to me it's important because the wheel has been reinvented. it's all a matter of rearranging things. if you look at discoveries, a lot of the things, it's all a matter of rearranging things. if you look at history, there's a lot of ideas that you can look now and come up with a new niche, a new idea and therefore you start a new innovation of creativity, whatever the area might be. >> and finally congressman, what are some things you are using that you can add reading to your schedule, what are innovations you are using? >> i love the ipad and in the ipad the right different apps. one of them is called blank list which is in app that will give you summaries of books and you can have the option of reading or do it by audio. then if you're interested in looking at the whole book, of course you buy the book itself but it will give you a snapshot and at the very end it will give you the key message, what's the take away from this book? the other one is called serious where you get an email every day and it has different things from humanities to music to science, whatever the area might be in. every day it will give you something in one of those areas so those are the ways you've got to keep your mind active. and especially somebody like myself, where i have to go from foreign affairs to appropriation to issues and when you look on the airplane, fly fly from laredo to houston, houston to washington, you spend a lot of time on the plane so this is where you use some of those apps to make sure you keep your mind active but at the same time you are constantly learning. >> book tv wants to know what you are reading. send us your summer reading list via twitter book tv or instagram at bookótv or posted to our facebook page, facebook.com/book tv. book tv on it c-span2: television for serious readers. >> this week on c-span, tonight at 10 live coverage of president trumps rally in phoenix. wednesday at 8 pm former presidents george w. bush and bill clinton on leadership. >> i thought i can have somebody else and i liked it. i had this guy and i got lucky, i don't care what anybody says. all these people will tell you they were born in a long cabin, they're fooling themselves. >> thursday at 8 pm with the budget for congress that handle will look at the pending proposals for the federal budget and friday a profile interview with agriculture secretary sonny perdue. >> my political history was i tell people when i was born in 1946 in perry, georgia they said democrat on your birth certificate. i made a political decision and i call it truth in advertising in 1988 to change parties and became a republican at that point in time. >> followed at 8:30 p.m. with a conversation by a desk on founder jeff moss. >> there were no jobs in information security for any of us. only people doing security were people in the military or maybe banks so this is really a hobby. the internet brew and there were jobs and people were putting things online and there's money at risk. all of a sudden actors started getting jobs doing securities. >> watch on c-span and c-span.org and listen using the free c-span radio app. >> last month food network channel host mark summers talked about his challenges as a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder, known as ocd and overcoming those perceptions. he was one of several speakers at the respectability you asked for him on capitol hill. it runs about three hours. >> hello and welcome. my name is jennifer laszlo mizrahi and i am the founder of respectability, a nonprofit organization working to fight stigmas and end real prejudice and to advance opportunities for people with disabilities.we are a nonprofit, non-organization and there are 57 mil a

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