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75–062 PDF 2001

TRANSITIONING TO A NEW ADMINISTRATION:

CAN THE NEXT PRESIDENT BE READY?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,

INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

DECEMBER 4, 2000

Serial No. 106–279

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

JAMES C. WILSON, Chief Counsel

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY

STEPHEN HORN, California, Chairman

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

JIM TURNER, Texas

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. RUSSELL GEORGE, Staff Director and Chief Counsel

EARL PIERCE, Professional Staff Member

ELIZABETH SEONG, Clerk

TREY HENDERSON, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on December 4, 2000 ........................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Barram, David, Administrator, General Services Administration; Sally

Katzen, Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and

Budget; Stuart Gerson, esquire, partner, Epstein Becker & Green, PC;

Paul Light, director, Center for Public Service, Brookings Institution;

Jonathan Turley, Shapiro professor of public interest law, George

Washington University School of Law; Todd Zywicki, associate professor of law, George Mason University School of Law; Norman J.

Ornstein, resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Policy

Research; and Dwight Ink, president emeritus, Institute of Public Administration, former Assistant Director for Executive Management, Office of Management and Budget .................................................................. 68

Watson, Jack H., Jr., chief legal strategist, Monsanto Co., former chief

of staff for President Carter, and director of President Carter’s Transition Teams; John H. Sununu, president, JHS Associates, Ltd., former

Governor of New Hampshire, and chief of staff for President Bush;

Hon. Mark Gearan, president, Hobart and William Smith Colleges,

former deputy chief of staff and communications director for President

Clinton; Bradley H. Patterson, Jr., senior fellow, National Academy

of Public Administration, former advisor to President Eisenhower’s

Presidential Transition, and staff member, Nixon and Ford administrations; and Harry McPherson, partner, Verner Liipfert Bernhard

McPherson & Hand, former counsel to President Johnson ....................... 19

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Barram, David, Administrator, General Services Administration, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 71

Biggert, Hon. Judy, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Illinois, prepared statement of ..................................................................... 11

Gerson, Stuart, esquire, partner, Epstein Becker & Green, PC, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 95

Horn, Stephen, a Representative in Congress from the State of California:

Memo dated November 23, 2000 .............................................................. 82

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3

Katzen, Sally, Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management

and Budget, prepared statement of ............................................................. 79

Light, Paul, director, Center for Public Service, Brookings Institution,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 104

Patterson, Bradley H., Jr., senior fellow, National Academy of Public

Administration, former advisor to President Eisenhower’s Presidential

Transition, and staff member, Nixon and Ford administrations, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 30

Turley, Jonathan, Shapiro professor of public interest law, George Washington University School of Law, prepared statement of .......................... 115

Turner, Hon. Jim, a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 7

Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 15

Zywicki, Todd, associate professor of law, George Mason University

School of Law, prepared statement of ......................................................... 136

(1)

TRANSITIONING TO A NEW ADMINISTRATION:

CAN THE NEXT PRESIDENT BE READY?

MONDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Stephen Horn (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Horn, Biggert, Davis, Ose, Turner, Kanjorski, and Waxman (ex officio).

Staff present: J. Russell George, staff director and chief counsel;

Randy Kaplan, counsel; Bonnie Heald, director of communications;

Earl Pierce, professional staff member; Elizabeth Seong and James

DeChene, clerks; Rachael Reddick, intern; Phil Barnett, minority

chief counsel; Kristin Amerling, minority deputy chief counsel; Trey

Henderson, minority counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority clerk.

Mr. HORN. A quorum being present, the hearing of the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology will come to order.

These are extraordinary times in American history. That there is

a need for this hearing is equally extraordinary, and disturbing. On

October 12 of this year, the President signed into law the Presidential Transition Act of 2000, which I happened to have introduced in the House. Regardless of which candidate would be the

next President, the 106th Congress wanted to give him greater assistance in assuming the highest office in the land. No one, however, anticipated the closeness of this race for the Presidency or the

unsettling events that have followed.

The Presidential Transition Act as amended authorizes funding

for the General Services Administration to provide suitable office

space, staff compensation and other costs associated with the transition process. The act also calls for the Administrator of the General Services Administration to ascertain the, quote, apparent successful candidates for the office of President and Vice President.

The Administrator, of course, does not determine the winners. That

responsibility, as set in the Constitution, clearly belongs to the

electoral college and, failing that, Congress.

Obviously, the Presidential transition period must begin well before Congress meets to tally the electoral college votes in January.

The brief transition period from the day after election to the day

of Inauguration is the time in which an incoming President makes

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crucial administrative decisions. That time is running out for the

next administration.

Indeed, the 88th Congress clearly recognized the importance of

the transition period by stating in the 1963 law that ‘‘any disruption occasioned by the transfer of the executive power could

produce results detrimental to the safety and well-being of the

United States and its people.’’ Yet today, nearly 4 weeks after the

Presidential election, the Administrator says he is still unable to

ascertain a winner, and thus is not providing the appropriate assistance required by the Presidential Transition Act.

We’ve called this hearing to examine whether the Presidential

Transition Act provides sufficient guidance to the Administrator on

how to proceed when an election such as this is disputed. Clearly

the law allows the Administrator certain discretion in complying

with its provisions. It is imperative, however, that those charged

with implementing this law most carefully consider the implications of their decisions and the precedents they establish. Our ultimate concern is to ensure the strength and continuity of the U.S.

Government, most especially in extraordinary times such as these.

We have assembled a distinguished panel of witnesses today. I

welcome all of you and look forward to your testimony. We will now

have opening statements limited to 5 minutes at the most, and I

start with the ranking member, the gentleman from Texas, Mr.

Turner, 5 minutes for an opening statement.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Stephen Horn follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think it is clear to all of us that the orderly transition from one

Presidential administration to another is a matter of utmost importance to the country. In order to facilitate this transition, Congress

passed the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, which provides

funding and guidance in order to promote the orderly transfer of

power from one administration to the next.

Prior to 1963, there was no formal provision to assist in the transition period. Under the act, the General Services Administration

shall provide fully equipped headquarters and a variety of services

for the President-elect’s transition and Inaugural teams.

The act calls for the Administrator of the GSA to release Federal

funds for transition once he or she has, in the words of the act,

ascertained the apparent successful candidate. We know that the

unique ongoing circumstances of the Presidential election of 2000

are unprecedented for purposes of the act. Additionally, there is no

precedent, nor does the statute provide guidance for the Administrator in ascertaining the apparent successful candidate. The legislative history derived from the discussion of the original act on the

floor of the House in 1963 provides perhaps our best evidence of

the intent of the Congress.

Mr. Fascell of Florida, the then manager of the bill, in response

to questions regarding how the Administrator of GSA would ascertain the apparent successful candidate in a situation where the

election outcome is in question, stated, ‘‘. . . if the Administrator

had any question in mind, he simply would not make any designation in order to make the services available as provided by the act.

If as an intelligent human being and he has a doubt, he would not

act until a decision has been made in the electoral college or in the

Congress.’’

We know that the outcome of this election remains in doubt due

to the fact that both campaigns have brought forth legal cases that

are pending in both State and Federal courts. I fully appreciate the

need for our next President-elect to begin a comprehensive transition to ensure that government operations continue running

smoothly, yet we should not allow haste to distort our view or our

implementation of the Presidential Transition Act. If the Administrator of the GSA were to incorrectly release funds to one campaign

under the act, aside from breaking the law, it could result in a loss

of public funds, waste, duplication, diminished credibility for the

winner and a breach of proprietary information.

I am pleased to learn that the Administrator of GSA has in the

interim, during this period of uncertainty, attempted to work with

both campaigns to shorten the turnover time once a winner has

been finally determined, and I commend the Administrator for

their efforts in these difficult circumstances.

I think our hearing today provides us with a unique opportunity

to review the law governing Presidential transitions. If there is one

lesson that we can learn from the 100 million votes cast almost 4

weeks ago, it is that our two parties have a mandate to work together. I sincerely hope that today’s hearing can be an opportunity

for us to set an example of bipartisan cooperation that will be most

certainly needed in the next Congress as a result of the closeness

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of this Presidential contest. Our ability to govern in the interest of

the American people will depend upon our success in this endeavor.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to hearing from

all of the distinguished witnesses that we have here today.

Mr. HORN. Well I thank the gentleman. He is a good example of

the bipartisan cooperation that we’ve had on this committee for the

last 6 years.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Jim Turner follows:]

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Mr. HORN. I now yield to the vice chairman of the subcommittee

Mrs. Biggert, the distinguished lady from Illinois.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the

subcommittee. I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this

oversight hearing on the Presidential Transition Act of 1963. Given

the unique and unprecedented situation in which our country finds

itself today during this Presidential election year, this hearing is

not only timely, but it is warranted and necessary.

Almost a month has passed since men and women across this

great Nation and overseas cast their ballots for the candidate they

hoped the next day would be President-elect. Well, here we are

today, and still the keys to the transition offices and the funding

that goes along with them have not been turned over to the successful candidate. It is not because there has been no successful

candidate. It is because that candidate’s success is being disputed,

contested and litigated by the unsuccessful candidate. So as the

litigation marches on in these few days remaining before the electors are seated and the final deposition made, I think the question

we must ask is how can we help.

Not more than 2 months ago, we on the subcommittee hailed

passage of the Presidential Transition Act of 2000. We asserted

that our bill would make it easier for the next administration to

assume office, but what happened? We did pass a good bill, but

good bills, like good intentions, aren’t always enough. What this

subcommittee did not foresee was that this year’s tight election

could make this moot, at least as they applied to this election cycle.

What we also did not take into account is how easily politics and

political considerations can overtake common sense and the common good.

It is no secret that the success or failure of a new administration,

at least for the first year of governing, often depends on how well

the transition process is carried out. As some of our witnesses

today have seen firsthand, it takes time, and in some instances a

lot of time, to put the thousands of people, policies and procedures

into place for successful governance.

Four weeks have come and gone, and January 20, 2001, is less

than 8 weeks away. One-third of the precious time allocated for the

transition has expired, and yet no individual has been afforded the

assistance provided for by the Presidential Transition Act. This assistance is needed, as the 1963 act stated, to promote the orderly

transfer of executive power.

Is this the fault of General Services Administration, the agency

responsible for helping new administrations get up to speed? Is the

GSA playing favorites or showing partisanship by not allowing the

Bush-Cheney team to access the office space and systems that have

been set up for transition purposes?

The GSA will state that it was unable to release the funding because the election is too close. Well, just because the election is

close does not mean that GSA should abdicate its responsibility.

The law gives GSA the authority to grant funds to the apparent

winner. The law does not prevent the GSA from using a little common sense and making funds available to the likely winner. But

because GSA has refused to grant funds to the apparent winner,

10

the Bush-Cheney team is compelled to raise funds for its own transition efforts.

Ironically Governor Bush now finds himself in the same position

as did all other Presidents-elect prior to the passage of the 1963

act. He must finance his own transition in order to be prepared to

take office on January 20. I commend him and Secretary Cheney

for taking this action, for, after all, they are the ones ultimately responsible for putting a good team and good policies in by January

20.

So what does this situation call for? At least for this subcommittee it calls for us to write and pass legislation to remedy the alleged defects in the Presidential Transition Act by making crystal

clear what steps the GSA must take if we again find ourselves in

a situation similar to this. That would only be good for the country.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I commend you for calling this hearing. I

look forward to the hearing from our witnesses and thank them for

joining us today. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. I thank the gentlewoman. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Judy Biggert follows:]

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Mr. HORN. And now we’re privileged to have the ranking member

of the full committee, the gentleman from California, Mr. Waxman,

5 minutes.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

We are certainly facing an interesting situation that I don’t think

anybody quite envisioned, and that is that we really after all this

time, I think it’s 27 days since the Presidential election, we’re not

clear who the next President of the United States will be. And evidently GSA is not certain about that result either, so they haven’t

released the funds for the transition period.

Now, the main legal issue under examination in this hearing is

the intent of the Presidential Transition Act and its appropriate

application in the unusual circumstances we’re facing. Now, the act

requires release of funds to support the transition efforts of the apparent successful candidate as ascertained by the General Services

Administrator. And the application of the act during close elections

was discussed when this bill was on the floor. My colleague Mr.

Turner quoted from then Congressman Dante Fascell, who was one

of the authors of this bill, and he said, if they don’t know who the

winner is, then the Administrator shouldn’t make any designation.

Well, I don’t know whether we ought to say in the future the Administrator ought to make some determination tentatively and release funds. That raises a lot of different questions, and I think we

ought to examine some of those questions. For example, should the

Presidential Transition Act consider the implications of having the

executive branch announce a judgment regarding the election outcome while the judicial branch is still in the process of considering

significant questions relating to the outcome? I would think we

would want to strive to minimize, not exacerbate, conflicts between

the executive and the legislative branches of government. In addition, we should take a thorough look at the practical consequences

both of delaying the funding of transition efforts and the funding

of transition efforts that may have to stop if the other candidate

is ultimately declared the winner.

Would the delay of several weeks in GSA funding have a critical

impact on the effective operations of a new administration? That’s

an important question. Would it be cost-efficient to expend significant taxpayers’ dollars on getting a transition office up and running and conducting training and orientation for one candidate if

the other candidate is later determined to be the winner and then

requires the same transition resources? Would it be appropriate to

move forward with briefings of transition officials that involve proprietary information or otherwise sensitive government information

when we’re not certain that these individuals will end up governing? So maybe we want to look at alternative steps.

The point is we’re in a very unusual situation right now. We

don’t know at this point who the next President will be. Now, my

colleague from Illinois presented her opening statements as if we

know; we know it’s already Bush/Cheney, and therefore they ought

to have the funds released to the Bush/Cheney transition. Well,

maybe if you keep saying that, it will turn out to be true, but the

decision as to who the President of the United States is going to

be is not based on how many times you say it’s resolved when we

still have many courts trying to sort through these issues.

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I know there clearly is a strategy on the Republican side to keep

on with the mantra, well, we’ve won, therefore let’s don’t count the

votes; we won, therefore let’s don’t go into the courts; we’ve won,

give us the transition money. That seems to me maybe good public

relations to try to change public attitudes about the idea that we

ought to ultimately decide who really won, but I don’t think it

makes good policy sense when we’re trying to adopt changes to legislation or evaluate the laws that are on the books. The law says

that there has to be an apparent winner, and we leave that up to

the GSA.

All of us want this resolved as quickly as possible. We know it

is important to have the transition funding. But let’s make sure we

deal with the real substantive issues as to how the law should

work in unusual circumstances such as this and not use a hearing

or this strange situation we’re in simply to repeat the mantra that

we won, so don’t talk about anything else, give us the funds. That’s

not really the way to make decisions for these very important

issues that are going to be before us in the future, and I doubt that

we will ever have a Presidential election as we have today, leaving

things as uncertain as they are. If we do, then we ought to think

through the best way to deal with it, and if the law needs to be

changed, we should change it.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]

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Mr. HORN. I now yield to the gentleman from California Mr. Ose.

Mr. OSE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am reminded yesterday

morning when my daughters opted to argue with each other that

at the end of the day what we need is a President who both he and

his team has had a proper amount of briefing and training and

education. And I am chuckling here somewhat because I ended up

dealing with my daughters by asking them, well, today what are

you? And they both scratched their head, and they finally came up

with, well, we’re sisters. And I said, well, on Friday what are you

going to be? And they both scratched their heads, and they both

simultaneously said, well, we’re still going to be sisters.

Well, at the end of this entire process, we’re all still going to be

Americans, and it would seem to me that the country is best

served, as Mr. Waxman and as Mr. Horn suggested, by moving this

thing forward as expeditiously as possible. I don’t understand why

under such unique circumstances we can’t take members of both

campaign teams and start the transition process. I mean, it’s not

like we’re going to spend all $5.3 million the first day.

So I am looking for answers as to how we prepare whoever is

going to lead this country for the 4 years that they’ll be in office

for. At the end of the day, it’s like my daughters. At the end of the

week, they’re still sisters. They’ll be sisters forever. At the end of

the day, we’re all still Americans. We still have to make this work.

So how do we do that? That’s why I came today, Mr. Chairman,

and I appreciate the opportunity.

Mr. HORN. I thank the gentleman.

Now I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania Mr.

Kanjorski.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I tend to agree with Mr. Waxman that we should shy away from

attempting to indicate our preferences for who may win this very

close election with the hope that it will have some influence on the

final result. I am just wondering whether or not we are not spending a lot of time worrying about how often a half dollar flipped will

land on its edge, and we can go through an awful lot of preparation

here. It seems to me if we have time to go through preparation

here, we have time to go through real reform of government rather

than trying to see what we can do after the fact of a close election

and transition. I am sure if I have any insight as to how the Congress functions, nothing we do at this committee, nothing we formulate now will ever get done in time to affect the incoming administration, and that, in fact, maybe everything that we’re doing

here has to do with affecting the final result. I hope that’s not the

case, but I have a feeling that is what it is.

I just urge my colleagues to do what a lot of wise people in the

last several weeks have recommended: Let’s step back, take a

breath and let the system go on, resolve this problem and not try

to cause a hysteria either in the country or in the Congress or certainly for the next administration.

One thing I have to say about both candidates is they have staff

and advisors around them that are eminently qualified to start the

transition process. The fact that they may not have rented facilities

or some rented computers will not in any way slow down the processes of the formulation of their government. It will not impact

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negatively on their service as the President of the United States.

If anything it will impact, it’s more our hysteria and our failure to

respond properly, act as a Congress and in a bipartisan way.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. I thank the gentleman.

I see no other Members for an opening statement. I now will call

forward panel one of the witnesses. We have 13 witnesses before

us this morning. The first is the Honorable John H. Sununu, Jack

Watson, Mark Gearan, Bradley Patterson and Harry McPherson.

There are cards here, gentleman, and we’ll swear you all in at

once. Mr. Watson, Mr. Gearan, Mr. Patterson.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. HORN. Please be seated.

Mr. Sununu will be here shortly. Let me just say how we operate. Some of you have prepared statements, and a number of you

don’t have prepared statements because of the last minute that we

asked you, and we are very grateful to you. This bit of individual

talent, some of whom I have known over the years, starting way

back in the Eisenhower administration of which I was a part, and

probably to somebody listening, they’re saying, gee, did he say the

Lincoln administration? But we have a lot of talent here, and we’re

delighted to tap your brains.

So we are going to start with Mr. Watson, the chief legal strategist for Monsanto Co., former chief of staff for President Carter,

and director of President Carter’s transition teams. Thanks for

coming.

STATEMENT OF JACK H. WATSON, JR., CHIEF LEGAL STRATEGIST, MONSANTO CO., FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF FOR PRESIDENT CARTER, AND DIRECTOR OF PRESIDENT CARTER’S

TRANSITION TEAMS; JOHN H. SUNUNU, PRESIDENT, JHS ASSOCIATES, LTD., FORMER GOVERNOR OF NEW HAMPSHIRE,

AND CHIEF OF STAFF FOR PRESIDENT BUSH; HON. MARK

GEARAN, PRESIDENT, HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES, FORMER DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF AND COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR FOR PRESIDENT CLINTON; BRADLEY

H. PATTERSON, JR., SENIOR FELLOW, NATIONAL ACADEMY

OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, FORMER ADVISOR TO PRESIDENT EISENHOWER’S PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION, AND

STAFF MEMBER, NIXON AND FORD ADMINISTRATIONS; AND

HARRY McPHERSON, PARTNER, VERNER LIIPFERT BERNHARD McPHERSON & HAND, FORMER COUNSEL TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON

Mr. WATSON. Thank you Mr. Chairman, distinguished members

of the subcommittee and the committee, for the opportunity to be

here today and to comment briefly on the subject of Presidential

transitions, and specifically on the circumstances and challenges

that are presented by the current transition.

There is no question in anyone’s mind about the importance of

the transition in getting a new administration off to a strong and

effective beginning. Under the best of circumstances, it is a formidable challenge for the incoming President and Vice President to

do in approximately only 10 weeks all those things they need to do

in order to assume office on January 20 with a ‘‘running start.’’ The

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whole purpose and intent of the Presidential Transition Act of

1963, as amended in 1976 and 1988, and of the Presidential Transition Act of 2000, are to assist the incoming and outgoing Presidents and Vice Presidents in achieving as smooth and seamless

transition of power as possible from one administration to another.

Although the circumstances of the current Presidential election

have unquestionably created an extremely trying and difficult situation for Governor Bush and Secretary Cheney on the one hand,

and Vice President Gore and Senator Lieberman on the other,

there is, in my opinion, no constitutional, Presidential, governmental or other crisis here. There is quite simply an incredibly

close Presidential election, the outcome of which needs to be, and,

I submit, will be, resolved as fairly and expeditiously as possible

in the coming days.

Both Presidential candidates have turned to the courts for help

in addressing the current situation, as both have a perfect legal

right to do, and the State and Federal courts are, as we sit here

this morning, addressing those requests and reviewing the parties’ respective positions. The courts fully understand the importance of

the issues presented, as well as the incredibly high stakes involved,

and, I am personally confident, are trying to do everything within

their constitutional responsibility and authority to resolve the

issues in a legal, just, and expeditious way.

The courts have an important role to play here, and they are

playing it. Once they decide the issues to be decided, the outcome

of the election will be determined, once and for all, and the duly

elected President-elect and Vice President-elect and, thankfully,

the country itself will go on about the Nation’s business.

As unusual and exasperating as the current situation is, we

should take care not to overreact to it. The sky is not falling, and

we shouldn’t act as though it is. We should be calm, have confidence in our judicial system’s ability to deal with the current situation—if not in our rather outmoded and outdated voting machines—and let the system run its proper course as the Constitution intends it to do.

Having said that, Mr. Chairman, there is something very important and very significant that we can do to address another serious

problem related, not only to the Presidential transitions, but to the

proper functioning of the Presidency itself. The problem is that we

have a nomination and confirmation process that is broken and

needs fixing. The appointments process in the Federal Government

takes far too long, and the lags in getting people into office are taking a terrible toll on good governance. The gathering of seemingly

endless, questionably relevant, but legally required background information and the filling out of redundant forms takes too long; the

FBI field investigations take too long and, in many cases, are of

questionable value to begin with; and the Senate confirmation process itself also takes too long. This is a problem, as all of you well

understand, that will not easily be solved and which can only be

addressed, much less fixed, by a genuinely determined and broadbased bipartisan effort.

Groups as varied as the 1989 National Commission on Public

Service, chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker,

the 1996 20th Century Fund Task Force on Senate Reforms, and

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the Transition to Governing Project of the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution have all recommended much

needed reforms in this area that deserve careful review and considered action by the Congress and the executive branch. I respectfully submit, the sooner, the better.

For the sake of the country, we need to put partisanship aside

and institute reforms regarding the Presidential appointment process that will permit our Presidents, irrespective of their party affiliation, to form their administrations and exercise their leadership

without undue delays and unreasonable impediments.

Although time does not permit a fuller discussion of this crucially

important matter, I strongly commend to the committee’s attention

an excellent article on the subject which appeared in the November/December 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine. The article

was written by Norman Ornstein, one of the witnesses you will

hear from, I believe, this morning, and Tom Donilon. The article

not only concisely discusses the nature and extent of the problem,

but outlines several specific recommendations for change.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be happy to take questions at

the appropriate time if the subcommittee wishes.

Mr. HORN. Well, I thank the gentleman.

And I see that Mr. Sununu has arrived. If you will stand and

take the oath, we will swear you in.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. HORN. The clerk will note that all witnesses have now taken

the oath, and we were going to start with Mr. Sununu, so here he

is.

Mr. SUNUNU. I apologize, Mr. Chairman. I hope that you had

been informed that I was going to be arriving at that hour.

Mr. HORN. We were.

Mr. SUNUNU. And I thank you for your indulgence.

I will try to be very brief, but I want to emphasize a couple of

points. With all due respect to what I did hear of Jack Watson’s

testimony, the issue is not whether it is a crisis or not a crisis. The

issue is whether it is good not to facilitate transition or not good

not to facilitate transition, or more specifically whether it is right

or wrong to not take advantage of tools that have been put into

place very wisely by legislative bodies, the Congress, and the executive branch in the past having gone through the pain and difficulty of the reality of a transition process.

Most of the needs are relatively mundane. There are needs for

space, there are needs for phone, there are needs for communication, there are needs for travel, there are needs for staff. But they

come in a concentrated time—in a concentrated way at a time

when there is a premium on that commodity of time.

It is so important to permit a new administration to get started

correctly, and I suggest that whatever we do under the breadth and

capacity of existing law, we find a way to fund that process as soon

as possible. It is not just a matter of a 1-month delay. There is no

time that will be as precious for transition to any new administration as these days and weeks. It is, in fact, the only time where

they can focus on presentation rather than focus on fulfilling responsibilities of office. A 1-month delay now will be reflected in a

6-month to 1-year delay in getting things really started.

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I’m doing this by memory because I did not have time to research

the exact number, but my recollection is there were 40,000 to

60,000 resumes that arrived at the transition office within the first

2 weeks of opening the Bush transition office following President

Reagan’s service, and that was in a transition of like party where,

sadly to say, most of the people who are already in office as Republicans, had been appointed as Republicans, thought they were

going to be reappointed. And I would suggest to you that the hardest transition is a like-party transition, not a different-party transition, because the hardest thing to do is to do the preparation to get

people out, not to get people in. They are both challenging, they are

both demanding, and they are both a very important part of the

time that is in front of us.

Having said that, I want to emphasize that the impact of delay

is not linear. A 1-day delay is probably equivalent—now is equivalent to 6 to 10 days of delay after Inauguration.

I am not a part of the current transition. I do not expect ever

to be asked to be a part of the current transition. I have not offered

my services—I have received about two dozen resumes, unsolicited,

of people who want me to somehow impact the appointment process.

I will reiterate what Jack Watson has said about reform of the

process of appointment and confirmation. It is one of the most critical things we can do to make government work better, and it is

part of this transition process. One of the most disappointing

things to me as one who had a responsibility during the transition

and as one who had a responsibility serving as Chief of Staff to

President Bush in trying to continue the efforts of the transition

in the early days and then fill in voids as they occurred is the reluctance, in fact, sometimes clear unwillingness, of individuals to

go through the pain of the vetting process, not because they have

anything to hide, not because they’re uncomfortable with revealing

data, but because of the cumbersome nature of the process and,

frankly, in some cases the unbelievable cost.

It is not unusual for a major potential appointee to spend between $10,000–$60,000 on legal and accounting fees in preparing

the forms to be named to a senior position in the Federal Government. That is ridiculous. It makes that position in some cases unable to be attained by people who are not of significant means. The

process of the forms, the process of the field investigation, and,

frankly, the long delay between appointment and confirmation is a

discouraging factor to the best and the brightest and those that we

should have in government. And so if there is any dividend that

you might achieve out of this set of hearings which are focusing on

the needs of transition, may I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that it would

be extremely worthwhile to the country if you could somehow make

a very pointed comment and recommendation in that direction.

Having said that, I would recommend that whatever you do, you

find a way to encourage the allocation of some of the existing

funds, even if it has to be done initially in a somewhat divided way,

to get the two candidates who are still in somewhat doubt as to

which one has been selected, to get the two of them started in an

effective way. To force them to rely on private funds is exactly the

wrong thing to do, and the history of the legislation that wisely

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provided the structure and funding will tell you very clearly how

much people understood the value of the legislation that was eventually passed.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to participate this

morning.

Mr. HORN. Both you and Mr. Watson have had a good opening

for us, and I agree with the practicality that both of you faced, and

you all made some good points. I think we can work out a situation, but we’ll save that for the question period. And we would like,

obviously, all of your views as how do you split it up in the short

time we have before the administration has to take office one way

or the other.

So we will now go to Mr. Mark Gearan, now president of Hobart

and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY, one of the youngest

presidents. He was former Deputy Chief of Staff and Communications Director for President Clinton in working on various transitions, but he was also the director of the Peace Corps, which is

dear to all of us.

Mr. Gearan.

Mr. GEARAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for that nice

introduction. You observe that at the time of my appointment as

president of Hobart and William Smith I was at a young age, but

I believe your tenure as a distinguished college president named at

the age of 38 far exceeds my youthful appointment.

So I thank you for this invitation. I am glad to be in your company as well as the other members of the committee, and I appreciate the opportunity to be here.

I come before you today to answer the question that you have

posed to this panel: Can the next President be ready? I come to you

as having gone through a Senate confirmation process myself as

the Director of the Peace Corps and as a member of President’s

staff having gone through the requisite clearance and vetting procedure. So in that context I offer my testimony, in addition to my

service here on Capitol Hill as an aide, and I appreciate this opportunity.

You have asked us the question: Transition to a new administration, can the next President be ready? My answer without hesitation is yes. The next President can indeed be ready to take over

the office on January 20, 2001. While we are witnessing an extraordinary transition to be sure, I have full confidence that the next

President will be able to start his administration with the necessary complement of White House staff and members of his Cabinet in the beginnings of the more complete administration as they

take power.

In fairness, I think it should be observed that the answer to your

question has different dimensions for Vice President Gore and Senator Lieberman than it does for Governor Bush and Secretary Cheney. To state the obvious, the Vice President has the opportunity

to continue to rely on members of the Clinton administration political appointees as holdovers, while Governor Bush would undoubtedly wish to bring in his own team. Nevertheless, it is the case,

that both transitions are currently under way as we speak and are

being coordinated by exceedingly able individuals that I know very

well. Roy Neel for Vice President Gore and Secretary Andy Card

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for Governor Bush are knowledgeable about the intricacies of a

transition and are well-positioned to deal with this unprecedented

set of facts. Indeed, Secretary Card was my liaison as the Deputy

Director of the Clinton transition, while Secretary Card represented the Bush administration.

But when one considers your question, ‘‘can the next President

be ready?’’ I answer the following reasons for my very affirmative

response: First, when you work backward from Inauguration day,

what must the President-elect, the newly sworn-in President, indeed have? Certainly a White House staff that must be named and

cleared, and while those appointments obviously do not carry Senate confirmation, those clearances are important; and second, the

Cabinet officers as well in place early in the administration. Given

that most Cabinet appointees come generally from Federal or State

elected or appointed office, the procedures, the necessary background information is frequently known about these appointees.

I was pleased to read a recent report in which the FBI has stated

they have already taken steps to increase the number of investigators to clear top appointees in a week to 10 days compared with

the usual 3-week period. I’m sure that will help. The upper level

of Presidential appointees, the second, third and fourth-tier appointees, generally follow the Inauguration day.

Second, President Clinton’s recent Executive order creating a

transition coordinating council will, I think, serve as a useful vehicle for streamlining and facilitating this process. This seems to be

a good idea in any transition but it is particularly propitious this

year.

And, third, the President-elect and his team will have the benefit

of some very important source materials for their appointees. Notably, the recently released Brookings Institution ‘‘Survivors Guide

for Presidential Appointees’’ that was issued in coordination with

the Council on Excellence in Government provides a treasure trove

of information for political appointees.

In my judgment, this abbreviated transition from the expected 73

days may cause some delays into the administration, but there is

no doubt in my mind that the new President can be ready with his

key appointees. The second, third and fourth-tier appointees may

take some longer period of time into the administration. However,

to the extent that Cabinet secretaries and agency heads have the

opportunity to work with career public servants in their departments, in their agencies, this may very well be a silver lining in

our current dilemma. The new appointees will have the chance to

see firsthand the skill, the dedication, and the commitment and

competence of career employees of the Federal Government.

In addition, I am hopeful, like Governor Sununu and Mr. Watson, that this abbreviated transition and the spotlight it is placing

on this entire appointments process may lead to some very longneeded reforms.

Scholars from the Brookings and Heritage Foundation have

noted the increase in delays, confusion and embarrassment in the

appointment process. They’ve also found that the entire appointment process favors individuals who have had prior government experience. Indeed, when one observes the growth and the sheer

numbers of top-level executive branch appointees, going from 196

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in 1961 to 809 in 1993 to 774 in 1998, when you combine those

numbers with the sheer length of time it takes to get an appointment, it’s not surprising that we witness such inefficiencies. At a

time when we need able and competent, dedicated women and men

to come into public service, this is very troubling.

On my college campus at Hobart and William Smith, I see a

great deal of interest from our students in public service. There is

a great deal of interest in contemplating coming to Washington or

in State governments and local governments and serving in public

service. Anything you can do to streamline this process would be

critically important.

So I commend the reforms that have been suggested to encourage

more training and orientation for new department heads and agency heads and Presidential appointees to enhance their focus. And,

again, the spotlight on the antiquated system of the Presidential

appointment process will lead to streamlining and standardizing

and coordinating the financial disclosure reports and avoid the duplication of effort that is frequently so vexing and frustrating to appointees, in addition to reducing the burden of filing in both the

White House, the Office of Government Ethics and the U.S. Senate.

And finally, I think one other aspect—that I am not sure that

even any kind of funding issue would result from your part, but

one element—of this transition that will be missing is the opportunity for the President-elect to build and develop a honeymoon, to

put chips in the political bank that will serve him well in his tenure as President. Transitions traditionally allow for that reintroduction, if you will, to the American people of the newly elected

President and his priorities and his values with his statements. I

am not sure any legislation will take back that time.

Nevertheless, it is my view, to answer your question again, will

the next President be ready, most affirmatively yes. This is a resilient country. The Presidency has been tested in the past many

times in this decade and in this century, and I have full confidence

that with the capacity and competence of the individuals involved

on both sides in this present transition, and with your good effort,

that the next President can come in ready and proceeding in good

faith.

I appreciate the opportunity to testify, sir.

Mr. HORN. Thank you very much. Those were very helpful comments, and I am sure more questions will come out between different transitions once we get to the questions.

The next gentleman is truly an American civil servant as well as

a political appointee to several Presidents. Brad Patterson started

in the State Department in 1945, and when I first knew him, he

was putting together the Cabinet secretariat of President Eisenhower.

Needless to say, when President Eisenhower, who probably had

more experience than any President in terms of international coalitions and all the rest of it, when he got in there, he couldn’t believe

it. There was hardly any staff around, and he was used to a staff

in the military as Supreme Commander in Europe. And Mr. Patterson helped pattern all of that.

And he has also written a major book now put out by Brookings,

the White House Staff: Inside the West Wing and Beyond. That

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has nothing to do with the current TV West Wing, but they might

well take a few examples from Mr. Patterson’s book. It is bipartisan. Lloyd Cutler and Dick Cheney have endorsed the book.

We’re delighted to have you here.

He’s helped everybody from the Indians to the Alaska earthquakes and all the rest of it. So, Mr. Patterson, we’re glad to have

you.

Mr. PATTERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your very kind

introduction.

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I am honored

to appear before you this morning and doubly honored to be in the

company on this panel of such distinguished fellow veterans of

service on the White House staff.

I think the contribution I could best make to the subject of the

Presidential transition would be to address two aspects of the transition which are important, but not right now in the limelight.

First, let me speak about the implications of the transition for the

professional staffs of the modern White House. And second, I would

like to mention the pertinency of the transition for a major enterprise also occurring on January 20 next: the Inaugural activities

which accompany the swearing-in.

About the professional staffs of the modern White House. In my

recent book, the White House Staff, Inside the West Wing and Beyond, I give the total number of what I call the White House staff

community. It is 5,915 men and women. That figure includes the

domestic, economic, and national security affairs staffs; the White

House Office, including the First Lady’s group, the Vice President’s

Office, the Residence, the Military Office, the Secret Service units

directly serving the President, the National Park Service, Postal

Service and GSA support teams, the White House fellows,

detailees, volunteers and interns. It excludes the rest of the Executive Office except those in the Office of Administration directly supporting the White House. So that White House staff family numbers nearly 6,000 people.

On January 20 what will happen? Will all the desks be vacated,

all the file cabinets cleaned out, all the shelves emptied? Fortunately, no. As to people, there are two traditions in Presidential

service. The first tradition is that no person has tenure in his or

her desk at the White House. That means that every person’s service in the White House staff community is entirely at the pleasure

of the President. The second, equally strong, tradition is that while

policy officials change, hundreds of the technical and support personnel of the modern White House are invited to stay on to serve

the next President. In fact, many have served several Presidents

over three or four decades. One executive clerk, Bill Hopkins,

served 40 years under 7 Presidents. One of Mr. Hopkins’ predecessors, Maurice Latta, served 50 years.

The Office of the Executive Clerk is a particularly good example

of professional continuity at the White House. That’s the office

which handles all of the public papers of the President: enrolled

bills coming through Congress, Executive orders, proclamations,

commissions, messages to Congress—A little vignette: In the years

past, such messages to Congress were delivered by the clerk

dressed in formal attire, riding a bicycle to the Capitol.

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The Executive Clerk’s Office is a treasure house of wisdom on

White House procedures. On January 21, for instance, if a brand

new White House staffer exclaims, ‘‘How do we get an Executive

order issued?’’ He or she can ask the executive clerk and find out

immediately. The present executive clerk has been there for 21

years.

The new First Family will be welcomed into the executive residence by the Chief Usher, a 32-year veteran. Some of his 91-member staff have served in the mansion for more than three decades.

The new First Family can bring in a new chef, of course, but they

would be damn fools if they fired all the butlers and waiters or the

telephone operators or the 2,200 men and women who staff the

Military Office, fly Air Force One and the helicopters, manage

Camp David, and who set up the incredibly sophisticated communications equipment which keeps a U.S. President, while visiting a

hamlet in China, tied into all his worldwide military commanders.

100 National Park Service Staff maintain those White House 18

acres; 133 GSA engineers keep up the EOB and the East and West

Wings; 1,200 Secret Service professionals protect the First Family

wherever any of them are. The President, the First Family, the Nation are fortunate to have such dedicated and strictly nonpolitical

associates in the modern White House. They personify the Presidential transition at its best.

One Reagan White House veteran remembered, ‘‘When we came

here, there were some people who wanted to dismiss every single

person who was on the White House payroll. Now, the President

certainly has the authority to do so, but there had been a time-honored group of people within the White House who basically live

from President to President, serve the Presidency, were proud of

that association, but kept things working. The White House telephone operators are a perfect example of that. And yet there were

some in our transition who said, ‘Let’s get rid of the White House

operators.’ I fought those actions, and the President agreed. We

were successful in preventing inexperienced people from the campaign from coming over to the White House and getting jobs that

might embarrass the White House or the President.’’

As for those file cabinets, not totally empty luckily. I have peeked

at the executive clerk’s current files. The first entry is dated 1911.

The clerk’s office maintains a collection of loose-leaf notebooks, the

pages of which set forth the statutory authority for every single

Presidential appointment. The clerk lets no nomination document

pass up to the Oval Office unless it conforms to the legal parameters. That card file and those notebooks stay right in the White

House.

In the counsels’ and chief of staff’s and the President’s physicians’ offices is another vital collection of papers, the emergency

manual. When, following the Reagan assassination attempt in

1981, Counsel Fred Fielding started to discuss the 25th amendment and saw the Cabinet’s eyes, as he said, ‘‘glaze over,’’ Fielding

and his successors, among them C. Boyden Gray and Lloyd Cutler,

worked to compile a manual covering every possible contingency of

a Presidential disability. That compilation remains in the White

House.

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So, hopefully, will the new 131-page staff manual which the Clinton White House has put together summarizing White House procedures and rules of the road for its employees: how to book a conference room, how to arrange for a foreign visitor. The staff manual

lays out all the laws and regulations about ethics for White House

personnel. Such a compendium is surely designed to survive the

transition.

In finishing this section of my testimony, allow me to quote one

paragraph from my book: ‘‘The White House then is not empty at

the inaugural noon. Throughout its expectant halls, in its foyers

and kitchens and its switchboards and guardposts, men and women

are on duty who will serve tomorrow as they served yesterday.

Some have walked taller in the mornings of two, three or four decades, skilled committed and proud, to support the office which they

honor and the house which they revere. They will continue to be

unknown to their fellow Americans, and some of them even to their

President, who years later will depart as they again remain. Their

respectful loyalty is always transferred to each new chief executive,

and President after President is rewarded by their service.’’

Now, in addition to empty transition offices—about which the

subcommittee will hear other testimony this morning—there is another contingent of nervously expectant men and women in town:

those preparing for the Inaugural. There are three Inaugural institutions here. There’s the Joint Congressional Committee for the Inaugural, which is in charge of all the swearing-in preparations and

the ceremony itself. I’m sure the work of that committee is well

under way; although committee members will be needing to get

word about the list of dignitaries and friends to which to send the

formal invitations.

There’s the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee [AFIC], which is

also already organized and at work, since the Department of Defense, the Military District of Washington and the various armed

services contribute so much to all the Inaugural activities.

The overall direction of the Inaugural will however come from

the Presidential Inaugural Committee, the chair and vice chair and

members of which must be chosen right away by the Presidentelect.

And the Inaugural program consists of much, much more than

the swearing in. Typically those include: a reception for distinguished ladies; the Inaugural gala; a Governors’ reception; a reception honoring the Vice President-elect and his wife; a dance for

Young Republicans/Democrats; an Inaugural medal; Inaugural

decorations; Inaugural license plates; an Inaugural concert; the Inaugural parade; a cocktail buffet for the national citizens for Bush/

Gore; and the Inaugural ball held in eight or nine separate downtown locations.

It was expected that the transition period this year would be, as

usual, some 74 days, and, as you can appreciate from our listing

of Inaugural activities, every last day of those 74 is desperately

needed as lead time for these massive events. Having thousands of

enthusiastic celebrants at the Inaugural concert; designing and

striking the special Inaugural medal; engraving, addressing and

mailing 100,000 invitations to the ball; organizing and staging a 3

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or 4-hour parade and so forth. We used to have 74 days. Now only

47. To quote Senator Slade Gorton, ‘‘I am cautiously pessimistic.’’ I’ll finish my testimony a little early. I do want to compliment

the General Services Administration for setting up not only the

Presidential transition offices as per the legislation, but there is

another piece of legislation, Public Law 90–626, which authorizes

the GSA to support the Inaugural, and there is another separate

suite of empty offices which they’ve established with a little committee and staff of 30 already there at 600 Independence Avenue.

So the GSA is poised and ready to go. The question is, are we?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Patterson follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you very much. That’s most interesting, and

I think probably everybody’s ears went up when you said 5,900

staff members at the White House and when you think that the

Brown, Lowe Commission suggested to President Roosevelt that

you could get along with six anonymous assistants, and he ran the

Second World War on that basis, both civil and international.

We now go to a gentleman that has been here many years, both

in the Capitol for the legislative branch and in the various White

Houses, as well as various departments. Harry McPherson is sort

of a legend around here, and if you want to read the finest book

that has ever been written on the Senate of the United States in

the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s, read ‘‘A Political Education,’’ Atlantic-Little Brown 1972. Mr. McPherson is not only a great observer,

he’s also a very literate writer. It’s the finest book I have ever seen

on the House and the Senate and the executive branch.

So, Mr. McPherson, we’re delighted to have you here.

Mr. MCPHERSON. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for that more than

I can say. You and I go back to the days of Lyndon Johnson and

Tommy Kuchel in the U.S. Senate, and it’s wonderful to be before

you today.

I’d adopt almost everything that’s been said here, because I think

it’s all right on, and I hope the subcommittee has absorbed it. I

have no prepared testimony, but I have a few observations and

anecdotes to tell, as anyone has who’s been around here too long.

One is that I share Jack Watson’s view that this is not a crisis

at the moment for the reason that both campaigns, both potential

Presidents, are surrounded by veterans of Washington. This transition procedure that the Congress has encouraged and developed

over the years I think is most valuable for the administration coming in from the hinterland with very little experience in Washington. That’s not the case with either the Bush or the Gore campaigns.

Governor Bush himself was here with his father. His Vice President served as chief of staff in the White House as well as Defense

Secretary. Vice President Gore, Senator Lieberman, that doesn’t require dwelling on. Both of them are surrounded by veterans of past

administrations, from the Pentagon and State Department and

elsewhere. This is not, ‘‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,’’ somebody

coming from the country who’s never seen the White House or the

Washington Monument. That’s not the situation at all, and so I

think the transition assistance that is most desperately needed by

an ingenue administration is not so required by either of these.

In my view, the biggest question for a new administration is not

so much where it’s going to be housed or how many bucks it’s going

to have to pay for this or that transitional assistance; it’s an attitudinal one. The biggest question is whether the incoming group is

prepared to listen to the people who are already here. If the Bush

group is willing to sit down and pay attention to serious people in

the Clinton administration as they talk about the issues they have

confronted, it will help alot. There is just no way for even these

veterans I have just been talking about to be thoroughly up to

speed on the big issues that a new President will confront right

from January 20th on.

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The Middle East, relations with Russia, with parts of Asia, Latin

America, the foreign policy issues are the most obvious. But there

are domestic ones, as well. My own experience in 1968, made this

a particularly poignant question. Lyndon Johnson was determined

that his administration would leave behind not only a Great Society, but would have the best transition effort that any administration ever had. So each one of us in our offices was told to prepare

everything that anybody would need coming into our office.

I prepared two enormous notebooks for my successor, a guy

named John Erlichman. I’ve told this story before in Erlichman’s

presence, so I don’t feel as if this is abusing the departed. I spent

2 hours talking to John about what the special counsel to the President did, and I showed him memoranda that I had written to Lyndon Johnson that were quite revealing—in fact, maybe even dangerous by revealing—because Johnson had told us to do that, tell

him everything that we have had to confront.

He never asked a question and, you know, after a while, even if

you’re special counsel to the President or a Congressman or whatever, if you have described what you do for about 2 hours, you’ve

pretty well run out of steam.

So I said, well, what would you like to do and he said, well, could

we have some lunch. So we went down to the White House mess,

and he said, ‘‘I do have two questions. Who gets to eat here in the

White House mess?’’ That was one, and the second one was, when

do you get to use White House cars for personal purposes. I mean,

you can say that John Erlichman really had his eye on the ball and

not on all this talk about policy and stuff. But I was rather appalled because I had done my best.

When I talked to him about it—I have to say this—when he got

out of prison and he and I were on a panel one time, I mentioned

this story, and he said, you know, I was such an arrogant jerk

when I came in, I just didn’t want to hear anything from anybody

in the Lyndon Johnson administration.

So my point in telling this story about Erlichman, who I came

to like a lot and was a good guy—my point in telling the story is

that both sides, both the incumbent administration and the new

one coming in, have got to really talk, to really open up, and it’s

a matter of attitude more than statute or appropriations.

To go back to what the gentleman from California said in his

opening remarks, I don’t see any reason on Earth why the current

administration can’t work with both campaigns about serious,

emergent issues right now. I’m talking about sitting down with

them and saying, here’s what’s going on in the Middle East.

There’s no reason why that has to wait until this Florida recount

is resolved. It can happen today, it can start today; and it’s the

kind of urgent issue that if we want our new President to be able

to handle, that’s something that can be done if they will it to be

done.

The last thing I will just say is just ‘‘amen’’ to what everyone has

said about the appointment process. It is nuts. The press has a lot

to do with it. I don’t know how you can change the press and get

them off this business of nitpicking every appointment and somebody’s holding of a mutual fund that may have 50 stocks, one of

which will ultimately be affected in some way by that person’s deciVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:11 Dec 04, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00058 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\75062.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sion in the executive branch. We have to get real because otherwise

people are simply not going to put themselves through this mess

of an appointments process.

Thanks.

Mr. HORN. You’re not quite done yet.

Just before, since you’re under oath and you want to swear to

this, were you there in the meeting that President Johnson called

with his six top aides and what he told you about what you should

do with Members of Congress. Valente tells the story very well.

Mr. MCPHERSON. No.

Mr. HORN. Well, every administration coming into the White

House, regardless of party, ought to take that advice, and I believe

what he said was, look, when you get a call from a Member of Congress, the Senate or the House, you answer it this day, even if it’s

2 a.m. or 3 a.m., and if you don’t I’m going to kick you right out

of here.

Mr. MCPHERSON. I have heard Jack tell that story.

Mr. HORN. I didn’t do the other things that Johnson said, of

course, to make it really register, but that was a very fine administration in relating to the Hill, obviously because he had been a

former leader.

Well, thank you very much. We appreciate all the wisdom we’ve

had from all of you here, and now we’ll open it up to questions. I’m

going to start with the ranking member, Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It seems to me that all

of our witnesses today have talked about the difficulty of the appointment’s process and confirmation of potential appointees, the

vetting process that must take place.

Mr. Watson, I know you addressed that in your remarks. Give

us some concrete suggestions here. You’re talking about this subcommittee perhaps trying to make improvements in this area, and

yet I’m not sure I have gotten a handle on exactly what we ought

to consider doing as a matter of change in the law to improve that

situation.

Mr. WATSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The article that I commended to the committee’s attention, is an

article that appeared in the November-December issue this year of

‘‘Foreign Affairs.’’ It is written by Mr. Norman Ornstein of the

American Enterprise Institute and Mr. Tom Donilon, who in the

Clinton administration, served as chief of staff to the Secretary of

State.

In that article, Mr. Turner, are numerous recommendations as to

what can be done by both the executive branch and the Senate and,

indeed, the Congress at large to improve the appointment’s process.

A great deal of the change, as Mr. McPherson said and as John

Sununu and others would agree, is a matter of attitude. It is a

matter of a genuinely profound bipartisan determination to do

something about a system that’s not working as the Nation needs

it to work.

One of the things the article points to is the custom in the Senate to place a ‘‘hold’’ on nominees, that frequently has absolutely

nothing to do with the merits or demerits, the qualifications or lack

thereof, of the prospective appointee, but rather with matters totally impertinent to that issue.

56

Another example of change is that there are literally a half dozen

different complicated forms, Mr. Turner, that have to be filled out

in which there is an enormous redundancy. As John Sununu said,

people have to spend between $10,000 and $60,000 in retaining

lawyers and accountants simply to fill out those forms, much of the

information of which is of extremely doubtful relevance to the issue

of the person’s fitness for office. So, eliminating redundancy and

duplication of forms, creating—as the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution are recommending—a common

electronic nominations form that will serve all purposes is another

idea.

Another is to decriminalize the appointment process. Under current law and practice, information that is provided in the course

of filling out those forms can serve as the basis for a criminal investigation, when I think it was not the intent of Congress to do

that in such a wholesale way. So, again, that’s a subject that requires careful congressional review. I’m not suggesting that we suspend the judicial process in all these matters, but I do believe this

is a subject that needs to be looked at.

Still another is to streamline the FBI background check, setting

a clearer set of standards as to what it is we should be looking for

in terms of information that pertains to the qualification of the

man or woman who is being nominated to fill a particular post, and

focusing on that information and no other. It has also been suggested, and I think this deserves careful congressional consideration, that we have full field investigations only for the most sensitive national security and defense positions and not for other,

even high-ranking, but less ‘‘sensitive’’ positions in the government.

A fair question, Congressman, is, do we really need full field investigations for an Under Secretary of Health and Human Services

or an Assistant Secretary of Transportation? I say that, not meaning to imply that those positions are of any less importance, but

rather that the nature of their role and responsibility in the government is so radically different that it calls into question, certainly in my mind, whether we need full field investigations for

them.

There are several other Senate procedural reforms that were outlined in that 1996 20th Century Fund Report I mentioned in my

testimony, to which I would refer the committee’s attention; but, by

way of example, Congressman, these are some of the things I think

deserve very, very close attention and reform.

Finally, virtually no reforms would make a great difference unless the Democrats and the Republicans come together and say, we

are going to fix this process together, no matter who the next President is.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Watson.

Mr. HORN. I now yield 5 minutes for questioning to the vice

chairman of the subcommittee, Mrs. Biggert, the gentlewoman

from Illinois.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In a memo dated November 13, 2000, John Podesta, the White

House Chief of Staff, issued a memo to the heads of executive departments and agencies in which he said that, and I quote, you

may continue to provide the kind of information or assistance, if

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any, that you typically provide to Presidential candidates and to

continue to prepare for the transition so that we are able to provide

full assistance quickly to the Office of the President-elect.

Do you think within those parameters that either the Republican

or the Democrat receives the necessary information? You were talking about sitting down and having policy discussions, and yet I

wonder if—as a President or Presidential candidate, whether they

really have access to some of the information that they might want

to start on early on.

Maybe—Mr. Gearan, I think you talked about that.

Mr. GEARAN. Thank you, Congresswoman.

Yes, I think Mr. Podesta’s intent there certainly is clear. And I

think it underscores as Mr. McPherson’s point which I think is the

salient point here. As I mentioned, I was Secretary Christopher’s

deputy and walked into my very first meeting in the Roosevelt

Room with the outgoing Bush administration. Mr. Baker and Andy

Card, with Mr. Card being our main liaison, and because of our

friendship and because of his personal integrity and character, the

relationship of that transition was vastly enhanced. And certainly

I believe it’s a credit to Mr. Card in particular. But they were honoring that process as well.

It would be my hope that’s the intent of Mr. Podesta and certainly the President who would want to provide that kind of access.

I think the President’s Executive order certainly is consonant with

that; it is a tonal dimension to this transition that can end the

awkwardness, whether it’s a friendly takeover or a hostile takeover

of administration. But those relationships, I think, starting with

the top would be access provided and with that goodwill. Certainly

they would provide any incoming transition team with the access

and support that they would need.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Governor Sununu.

Mr. SUNUNU. I don’t want to be the one that is on the other end

of the spectrum here alone, but I don’t mind doing that if necessary. I think something is being missed here.

The transition void that is being created is not in being able to

name a true handful of the complete Cabinet in kind. It is not in

not being able to name the 10 top staff members in the White

House. The problem is not being able to have the detailed interaction, for example, that allows the potential President and his

staff to prepare a budget for presentation to Congress with full access into the Office of Management and Budget.

It is an inability to put together the full structure of a personnel

office that will move into the White House and then begin to add

personnel after the Inauguration date. It is the inability to prepare

a staffing structure and have them begin to interact fully with the

existing press office and begin to prepare for a smooth transition

there. It is the inability of the legal counsel and the supporting

members of the legal counsel’s office to begin to prepare all the materials and assist everybody in filling out these unbelievably complex forms and to begin to inform them of the subtle issues that

are involved in the criminalization aspects that were addressed by

Jack Watson. It is the inability of putting together a staff support

structure and having them interact and have full access to the

manuals that Mr. McPherson and Mr. Patterson referred to, and

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all the archives that are there, on a full basis so that they can

begin to deal with the issues that are associated with paper flow

for the President, the issues that are associated with making sure

the staff is aware of all their responsibilities, not just the mythical

responsibilities of each position that are there. It is the telecommunications access that is necessary to begin to communicate

back and forth all the details that are necessary for potential members that are going to be appointed to understand what is happening.

So it is not the problems at the top. It is the problems and layers

through—2 through 10 that are not being supported in this void,

and it is that that is going to be the most dramatic problem.

Let me give you one example from my own personal experience

that was absolutely critical, and it had to do with the savings and

loan issue. If we had not had full briefings and opportunities to go

into details with second, third, fourth and fifth-tier members of the

departments that were associated there, we would never have had

the capacity to get a good head start in making a new policy decision on what should or should not be done to deal with the savings

and loan crisis, and I think one of the most important things President Bush did is immediately, on coming into office, having had

his—what was then his transition group and then his new Cabinet

speak directly and forcefully on the basis of their briefings. He

made the quick decision of fix it and fix it fast, which I think was

absolutely critical in restructuring the financial institutions in this

country; and I believe it was the critical factor in fueling the kind

of recovery that we eventually had.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. My time has expired.

Mr. HORN. If I might, since I think that’s a relevant question for

all of you, let me put it this way: What’s the biggest mistake made

by administrations you belonged to that could have been avoided

by a more complete or comprehensive transition? Because that’s

sort of what you’re talking about, Mr. Sununu.

I’d like to hear, I think the panel would, from each of you, where

would a shortness of it and, you know, the little we’ve had of it,

it’s an evolution here, but did you see mistakes made because of

the impression of that?

Mr. Watson.

Mr. WATSON. Mr. Chairman, it would take too long to get into

all of our mistakes in 1976, but on a more serious note, any transition, whether it’s 10 weeks or less, absolutely requires the people

running the transition to exercise a process of exclusion, to keep

things off the agenda that don’t need to be there, in effect, focussing only on matters that the President must deal with in the first

6 months of his administration, for example.

The purpose of a transition is not to plan for an entire Presidential administration; it is to get the President and his new administration off to a running start and deal with those issues, key

appointments, and so forth that must be addressed, in the period

between January 20th and the first August recess of the Congress.

So I would say, Mr. Chairman, a mistake we made in the 1976

transition in some respects, and that almost every transition makes

to one degree or another, was trying to focus on and deal with too

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elect to put things on his transition agenda are overwhelming. Everybody wants to have their issue, their perspective, their priority,

their item on the agenda, and you have to be very careful to limit

what you try to do.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Gearan, anything you want to add?

Mr. GEARAN. Well, I think that’s very well said, Mr. Chairman,

and similarly, I’d agree. We do not have the time to detail all of

our——

Mr. HORN. Give us a few horror stories at least.

Mr. GEARAN. I can easily do that. I would make one observation

from our point in Washington, where we put together briefing

books and cluster groups to study all the Cabinet departments and

agencies, everything from the Tuna Commission to the Department

of Defense. But what we did not study, per the then-President, was

the White House in any kind of detail and rigor. I think the President would certainly join me in his observation that the transition

team, should study the Cabinet, agency departments in detail, and

would be well-placed to have that kind of rigorous study and analysis of the White House.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Patterson.

Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. Chairman, as you will recall, precisely what

Mark was talking about, about conservations between outgoing and

incoming White House staff. The objective of the very helpful

amendment which your committee approved and the Congress approved in the Presidential Transition Act of 2000, namely for providing workshops and briefings, that had not been the case in the

past and now is the case.

Of course, the problem is, the time is creeping shorter and shorter, but that authority is there, and the public Administrator such

as the distinguished gentleman you will be hearing from later— Dwight Ink, behind me—and many others and your committee and

the committee in the Senate were wise enough to approve that

amendment, and it is on the books. So as soon as a new team is

for sure, definite, those new provisions will be there, and I know

that many of us in the public administration community commend

the Congress for that wisdom.

Mr. HORN. Mr. McPherson, because the compression of that thing

is of course different, it was a party within an executive branch

when you started with the Cabinet members and other key advisers after the President was tragically assassinated, President Johnson had his hands full.

Mr. MCPHERSON. He did. I was not in the White House for that

first year, but I was fairly close to him and others; and I believe

that if Lyndon Johnson had a heyday in the Presidency, if he really

made a gigantic contribution that people in both parties would acknowledge, it was in his handling of the government, of the Presidency, in that first year after November 22, 1963.

He did it using his tremendous knowledge of Congress, but going

far beyond that. He connected with everyone of significance in the

life of a Presidency—business leaders, labor leaders, civil rights

leaders; he made it a practice to bring in everybody who hated him

and whom he hated, but who was significant. He lined them up.

I was with him 9 days after he became President, one Sunday.

I spent Sunday sitting in the Oval Office with him just listening

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to him talking to people whom I knew he despised and who certainly didn’t like him, but whom he needed if the government was

to function. And each of those people came out and said things to

the press that were very supportive: We really want to help this

President, he’s really going to try to work. He was on the phone

constantly with every person, and Charlie Halleck and the leaders

of the Republicans in the Congress. He really worked it 16, 18

hours a day. His staff, as Jack Valente would tell you and would

tell you if he was sitting here, was worked down to the bone by

Johnson, who was determined not just to win the election in 1964,

but to make the country work again after it had been brought to

a shuddering halt in Dallas.

Mr. HORN. Any other addition?

Mr. Sununu, you opened that question, so do you want to close

out on it?

Mr. SUNUNU. Well, the biggest mistake I think we made is, even

though we heard to a great extent everything you’re hearing today

about the difficulties of the appointment process and about how

hard it is to get good people to come in, I think we underestimated

to some extent the burden that would be in getting the good people

approved and confirmed and through there.

You hear the words, you read the words, you get good counsel,

and until you do it, you don’t understand how serious that problem

really is; and I think we underestimated it a bit.

Mr. HORN. Well, let’s see, go over here now to—we’ll yield to the

gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Kanjorski, for questions.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In listening to the observations and some of the testimony, I see

us going in what I think is a very positive direction, that is, the

real problems associated with transitions of administrations as opposed to the immediate problem that we’re faced with of not having

a certainty of who is actually the next President. I’m glad to see

everyone taking that course, because there’s nothing that should

come out of this hearing that gives any indication of who should

be the winner or the loser of this contest that’s before us.

But, Mr. Chairman, I have to confess that I have been around

here long enough now to have experienced some of what the gentlemen are talking about, and that really scares me. So maybe I have

been here too long. I agree with Mr. Sununu.

I sat on the Banking Committee and the most impressive activity

of President Bush was on January 8th, some 12 days before his Inauguration, he sent the formulation to the Banking Committee of

how to handle the S&L crisis, and I have to say, I’m a Democrat,

as you know, Mr. Sununu, but that impressed me so much——

Mr. SUNUNU. I had noticed, sir.

Mr. KANJORSKI. That quite impressed me, so much that this incoming President would take such a difficult issue and complicated

and understandable issue by the general public, but to resolve it—

as you know, we had been trying to resolve that issue from the

early 1980’s. But I had great hopes for his Presidency as a result

of that. I won’t go into what errors may have been made later on

in the Presidency.

The experience I had in the transition in 1992 after the Bush administration, and I don’t know whether it was the court cases that

61

were going on at the time, but I remember so well being in the

White House the day after Inauguration. I remember trying to get

something done that had to be done concurrently between the new

and the changing administration, and all the computers were gone,

the guts were taken out of the computers; and we were actually

working, rather than using computers, through documents. We had

to go back to manual typewriters, and I saw the wrinkled brow. I

think it may have been a court order, some litigation that was

pending, that seized all that information to make sure they could

find out what people were thinking or writing about. But it certainly did slow down the implementation of that administration.

And then I remember a fact that everybody was astounded

about, that they had a Lyndon Johnson telephone still there, about

20 years behind times, and that situation took a little bit to rewire.

So every White House, coming and going, has its difficulties.

What I’m interested in is the observations perhaps from this distinguished panel of how badly do we do up here on the Hill. And it’s

interesting, we can put a committee together to handle an Inauguration and do a pretty nice job, but I don’t know any committee

that comes together of the Congress, the House and Senate, for

transition purposes—and it strikes me, it is much more important

than having a parade—to have a nice smooth entrance of the leadership with the new government, which we easily could facilitate

here on the Hill.

Finally, I can’t help but ask this question. Every administration

that I’ve seen come through and every transition and the last one

we had, Nannygate and drugs. Are we over those two things now

and does anybody have any idea what the next disqualifying, past,

vicious occurrence, other than hiring a nanny, is going to be for all

these people that we have to cast aside? Does anybody have any

idea out there what we should prepare the American people for?

And I’m just wondering whether or not that is a political activity

that’s occurring? Are we in the Congress throwing these things out

and trying to weaken people who are qualified to serve from coming; or is that a media circus that’s occurring, and if so, what can

we all do about it?

Remember, I’m calling the Nannygate and the drug situations, if

we think about it, the beginning years of the Clinton administration, so many very fine qualified people had to step aside and leave

and not be considered, or be terribly embarrassed those who were

considered, and drug process out—I think we’re looking at the Acting Attorney General during those hard periods there when we

couldn’t even put into place someone at the Department of Justice.

Are we doing that again? Is that a possibility, and if you will——

Mr. SUNUNU. I can’t tell you what the next Nannygate-type issue

will be. You will have to ask the press. They will find one and they

will make it.

What is incumbent upon us collectively, Republican and Democrat, is perhaps to commit ourselves not to exploit what they raise;

and the easiest way for that to be snuffed is for a bipartisan, significant bipartisan group to say, we hear what you’re saying, that

is not a qualification that we care about for Attorney General as

it was in that case. We hear that, we see that. It is a flaw that

62

can be remediated, and we are going to only address the significant

qualifications for that office.

Now, that’s not easy to do. I don’t pretend that it is easy to do

politically. We are often tempted beyond our capacity to do the

right thing, but if we keep worrying about it and talking about it

and having a dialog on how to deal with it, maybe eventually we

can give each other mutual strength and be able to come to that

point where we can stand up and say, it’s really not significant,

let’s move on.

Mr. WATSON. Mr. Kanjorski, two quick points in response to

some of what you have just said.

One, I agree with John, we can’t predict what the next one is

going to be. But what we can predict is that whatever it is, it will

take courage and common sense for Members of the Congress to

deal with, whatever it is. Focusing on the real question that’s put

to the Congress in terms of the confirmation procedure, is the person who’s been nominated for the post fit or not fit for the post,

and all information that is relevant and important to that question

is what we should consider and not other endless, intrusive, unnecessary intrusion into the person’s private life.

Point two, with respect to your earlier question about what more

the Congress can do, I can only speak from my own experience,

Congressman. In 1976, I’m afraid I bore more resemblance to ‘‘Mr.

Smith comes to Washington’’ than to the ‘‘seasoned old hand in

Washington affairs.’’ I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, that the reception cooperation and help I received as director of the transition for

President-elect Carter in 1976 from the Members of Congress, from

the committee and subcommittee chairs, members and staff, was

exemplary.

As I sit here, I’m looking at the Portrait of Congressman Jack

Brooks behind you. It was Congressman Jack Brooks that I worked

with to amend the 1963 act to increase the funding under the act

from $900,000 to the $3 million put into place in the 1976 act, and

all I had to do with Mr. Brooks was to come to him and say, Mr.

Brooks, will you help us understand and analyze what needs to be

done here, and he did it.

So I think with the transition acts which the Congress has

passed, with the funding it has made available, with the amendments it has passed in the 2000 Presidential Transition Act in

terms of briefing support and orientation support, the Congress is

doing its part.

Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. Chairman, just an observation as a footnote.

One remembers constitutionally there is no transition. Power

changes at noon on January 20.

I recall President Eisenhower in his last Cabinet meeting, at

which I was present, admonishing them, first of all, to collaborate

with the Kennedy folks and help them out in every way possible.

But then immediately he reminded the Cabinet ‘‘There’s just one

President, gentlemen, and that’s me until noon of the 20th’’; and

he didn’t want any of the new folks making statements or pretending to speak for the government. So he just reminded them that

January 20 noon had that constitutional aspect to it.

Mr. HORN. OK. I see no more answers to that question, and I will

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nia, Mr. Ose, who will be followed by the gentleman from Virginia,

Mr. Davis.

Mr. OSE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really only have one question. I want to direct it to Mr. Watson and Mr. McPherson, and any

others can respond.

From a legal standpoint, does the Presidential Transition Act

provide flexibility in a situation like we are experiencing today or

does it narrow our choices? In other words, is there an interpretation that can be made in the Presidential Transition Act that would

allow both campaigns basically to be provided the assistance they

need in anticipation that one of them will be the winner?

Mr. WATSON. Congressman, I would not present myself as an authority on the Presidential——

Mr. OSE. You’re a former Chief of Staff.

Mr. WATSON. I have read it carefully, however; and I’ll try and

answer your question.

We really have two lines of help coming here, at least two lines

of broad categories of help. One is money. If my memory serves me,

we have $7.1 million appropriated for this purpose currently. About

$5.3 million of it to be divided among the incoming and outgoing

Presidents and Vice Presidents. That’s one category. And I think

that the act is somewhat less flexible as to the release of those

funds than it is with respect to the second category.

The second category of assistance really goes to what John

Sununu was talking about. It is the ‘‘making available of information.’’ It is the sharing of briefing books that have already been prepared. That sharing, with both camps, in my opinion, would be

fully permissible under the act, of budget information, of other information related to defense and economic issues, etc.

Again, I would refer back to what I said a few moments ago, sir,

that we must keep in mind that in a transition you’re only able to

focus effectively on the most immediate and highest priority issues

with which the President is going to have to deal in the early days,

weeks and months of his administration. With respect to those

issues, I think there is flexibility under the act for the assistance

to be provided to both camps in the current situation.

Mr. OSE. If I might followup on that, Mr. Watson. The issue

you’re pointing out is that particular assistance, that second type,

is not something that would necessarily fall to GSA. As Mr.

Sununu implicitly suggested, that’s something much more personal. It’s something like the height of responsibility. One of you

is going to be President, come in here.

Mr. WATSON. Yes, exactly. And I will tell you again, from my

own experience, Congressman, in 1980, when we lost the election

to Governor Reagan, at the President’s direction, I again headed

the transition, this time from the position of chief of staff at the

White House. We had prepared in all the departments and major

agencies of the government briefing books for the new people,

which we immediately made available to Governor Reagan and his

people.

I believe—I’m not a part of any of the current transition efforts,

but I believe, based on what I have read and understand to be true,

that such briefing materials are available now, and it would be my

64

recommendation that, on that informal basis which is permitted

under the act, that information be made available to both sides.

Mr. OSE. I want to go to Mr. McPherson.

Mr. MCPHERSON. I don’t see any bar to the kind of cooperation

we’ve been talking about between the incumbent administration

and both campaigns, not at all so far as the serious stuff is concerned, the issues that they’re going—the new guy is going to confront.

Mr. OSE. From a practical side, Governor Sununu, any observations?

Mr. SUNUNU. Yeah. In order to share materials you have to have

people with a place to be where that material can be shared. You

have to have people in place and you have to have offices for those

people in place and you have to have telephones for them to use

in a coherent basis, not picking a phone up in one law office or another office in town but in a concentrated area. So, in theory, what

Jack has addressed can be done. In practice, I don’t think it can

be done unless GSA makes available facilities, phones, and a support structure so that the people that are going to share this material have a place where they can come together as a coherent entity

and start working to take advantage of what is being shared.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Chairman, may I have, just with the liberty of the

committee, ask one other question?

Mr. HORN. Certainly.

Mr. OSE. Are you aware of any bar under the current Presidential Transition Act that precludes GSA from providing such assistance today to both campaigns?

Mr. SUNUNU. I am not a lawyer, and I thank the Lord for that,

so I can’t give you a legal answer to that, but from what I have

read in the documents there is nothing that would do that except

that they would be giving less money eventually to the one that is

chosen. In other words, some of the funds will have been expended

on someone who would end up not being the President, but other

than that bar in terms of the total amount of money that’s there,

I do not believe that there is a problem.

Mr. OSE. So if we had $4 or $5 point something million, split it equally $2.65 each—I mean, we spend $2.65 million in the space

of time I’ve had to question the panel. So I mean I don’t see this

as something that’s—— Mr. SUNUNU. It’s not a problem except that someone would have

to make do with only $2.65 million until such time as that you

added it, and the question is whether you feel you can add to the

process when the final winner is selected.

Mr. OSE. Do any of you know of any bar that would prevent GSA

from offering such assistance to both camps?

Mr. WATSON. I know of no such.

Mr. PATTERSON. The statute, of course, says that ‘‘the terms

President-elect and Vice President-elect shall mean such persons as

are the apparent successful candidate for the office of President as

ascertained by the administrator.’’ Mr. HORN. The Administrator is in the room; and we will, after

those questions of Mr. Davis, why we will get to that with the Administrator.

Gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Davis.

65

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, again, I guess you

could give it to both—probably give it to both and come back to

Congress. We’re still in session. I’m sure we could make it work.

I’m concerned that the fact that the funds haven’t been transferred,

they’re out in the fundraising mode trying to get money up to get

the transition working smoothly, I think that is going to have an

effect in the early days of a new administration. What is your judgment on the impact the delay of releasing transition funds would

have on a new administration? Anyone want to take that?

Mr. SUNUNU. I go back to what I said originally, Mr. Davis. I

think it’s a very nonlinear effect. One, this is quality time for transition. You can focus on it, you can do the background work, you

are not burdened by the responsibility of administering under the

duties that you will eventually get after January 20th. So there’s

a very disproportionate non-linear impact. My guess is that if you

lose a month in transition it will delay you being up and running

by about 6 months in the process.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Watson.

Mr. WATSON. Mr. Davis, again, not being part of the current

transitions, I can’t give sworn testimony as to what they are, or are

not, doing. But based on what I read and understand about both

the efforts of Governor Bush and Secretary Cheney and Vice President Gore and Senator Lieberman, they are under way informally

with the kinds of efforts they need to have under way to vet their

appointments, make their appointment decisions and so forth; and

indeed I think I saw Secretary Cheney has established transition

offices in Virginia for that purpose temporarily.

So I think we should not assume here—because I do not think

it would be practical or realistic to assume—that nothing’s being

done right now in these two camps. I think a great deal is being

done, point No. 1.

Point No. 2, I agree with John Sununu that the other thing we

need to keep in mind is that this Presidential election is going to

be decided very shortly. So that the period of time we are now dealing with in terms of selection of who the winning candidates are

here is a very short window. We are not talking about another

month, but, I suspect, another week or so.

Mr. DAVIS. No, but we’ve lost a month.

Mr. WATSON. But we can’t do anything about that lost month at

this point. It’s lost, and so the question is what can we do prospectively.

Mr. DAVIS. Yeah. Well, you still worry about bringing people on

and having to hire; and it just seems to me these are distractions.

It’s on the margin but didn’t have to happen. And Mr. Ose’s suggestion, maybe you give a little bit to both sides and you come back

and have Congress sort out, these are really small amounts in the

scheme of things that the new administration can get up and operating on a timely manner instead.

Mr. GEARAN. Mr. Davis, if I might, I share Jack’s view that this

is time that has been lost certainly. But I believe as Mr. Light will

tell you from the Brookings Institution, that long before the election they had a whole project of the Presidential appointee initiative, a bipartisan effort, and estimated at that time, even with a

full transition, even with a landslide election that could have ocVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:11 Dec 04, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\75062.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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curred, that it would have been October in the year 2001 before all

Presidential appointees were at their desks. That was their estimation, which underscores what I tried to present in my testimony:

the need for reform. This month is lost. I think the President-elect

can go forward with it, but hopefully the kind of streamlining reforms that could be put into place will be prospectively helpful.

Mr. DAVIS. Let me just ask, do you think Congress ought to do

anything? Instead of putting the burden on the GSA Administrator,

we could do something legislatively to define an apparent winner

by certification or something like that? Is there any particular language anyone would suggest?

Mr. WATSON. I have a strong view on that, Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS. I’d love to hear it.

Mr. WATSON. It is that our judicial process has before it now the

election contest issues which the parties have a legal right to have

before them; and it is my most respectful but firm view that neither the legislative branch nor the executive branch should interfere with the proper functioning of the judicial process in this situation. Let that process work and run its course, as it is about to

do, without interference.

Mr. DAVIS. Let me followup. What if you had an electoral vote

that was clearly going to the House? Under those circumstances

here, you couldn’t release anything to anybody until the election

went to the House of Representatives in January, where you probably would be better off giving money to each side to at least plan.

Mr. WATSON. That’s why I think we are unanimous in our view

on this panel that everything as an informal and practical matter

that can be done to share information and make these people, both

sides, both groups of people prepare, facilitate and expedite their

preparation should be done.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. HORN. I might add to that question just some figures. We

have it easy if we want to pursue that, because the Vice President,

it would be part of the $1.8 million we have designated for President and the Vice President, the outgoing administration. That

would be, according to the Congressional Research Service, our fine

support staff is $305,000. If Mr. Gore was made President, that

money would revert to the Treasury because he’s not leaving.

But I think it’s pretty simple and the principal witness will be,

I am sure, helping us with some of the figures. And that’s the next

panel, with the Administrator of the General Services Administration. That is a solvable problem, and it makes it easy because nobody is losing anything. The Vice President at that point is coming

out.

The concern most of us have is, good heavens, can’t we get some

money to them so they don’t have to go hat in hand, which I think

was pointed out is not a good thing to be doing because somebody

will make a lot of hubbub about it. And we ought to at least give

them some decent planning space and communications and so forth

so they can do the necessary things that all of you so eloquently

have noted.

Gentleman, I have no more questions, and I don’t think my colleagues do. We thank you very much for sharing your experience,

and I must say, Mr. McPherson, I enjoy C–SPAN on Saturday

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afternoon when it tells me all about Lyndon Johnson’s phones and

who he’s talking to. And as you say, he hit the ones that liked him

and the ones that didn’t like him; but he was a dynamic President.

Thank you all for coming.

We now call forward the second panel. The second panel will be

the Administrator of the General Services Administration Mr.

Barram; Ms. Katzen, Deputy Director for Management; Stuart

Gerson, a partner in Epstein Becker & Green; Paul Light, director,

Center for Public Service at Brookings; Jonathan Turley, Shapiro

professor of public interest law at the George Washington School

of Law; Todd Zywicki, associate professor of law, George Mason

University School of Law; Norman Ornstein, resident scholar,

American Enterprise Institute for Policy Research; and we will

close with the Honorable Dwight Ink, president emeritus, Institute

of Public Administration. He’s probably served more Presidents

than everybody else put together.

If we have everybody behind the right sign, we will administer

the oath. If anybody is going to be, for those in the administration,

assisting them, please have them raise their hand so the clerk can

note if you are dependent upon any aides. We don’t want to have

to give the oath in the middle of the hearing. So if you’ve got people

that are going to give you information for the record, let’s have

them in back of you.

I don’t see any, so we’ll deal strictly with the witnesses that are

listed.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. HORN. The clerk will note that all witnesses have affirmed

or sworn.

Now we will get the star witness, and he’s at the edge of the

table. Maybe that’s because the door has closed, but anyhow we

have a very distinguished member. He has been very helpful to

this committee and Congress in the years we’ve been here, and

that’s the Honorable David Barram, Administrator of General

Services Administration. They have a fine job they do during the

year, and this one probably surprises GSA Administrators to get

into it, but the Congress thought that would be sort of a neutral

way, and they were in charge of getting all those fine things like

space and documents and all the rest in collusion, we will say, with

the National Archives which—we now turn to Mr. Barram, and

we’re delighted to have him, and please proceed.

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STATEMENTS OF DAVID BARRAM, ADMINISTRATOR, GENERAL

SERVICES ADMINISTRATION; SALLY KATZEN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND

BUDGET; STUART GERSON, ESQUIRE, PARTNER, EPSTEIN

BECKER & GREEN, PC; PAUL LIGHT, DIRECTOR, CENTER

FOR PUBLIC SERVICE, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION; JONATHAN TURLEY, SHAPIRO PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC INTEREST

LAW, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW;

TODD ZYWICKI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF LAW, GEORGE

MASON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW; NORMAN J.

ORNSTEIN, RESIDENT SCHOLAR, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE

INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH; AND DWIGHT INK,

PRESIDENT EMERITUS, INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, FORMER ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET

Mr. BARRAM. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee. As I’ve said many times to you and anybody

who will listen, this is not your father’s GSA, and never has it been

so profoundly interesting as it is right now.

I am very pleased to be here to talk about the implementation

of the Presidential Transition Act and how GSA plans to assist in

an orderly Presidential transition of 2000/2001.

By the way, I would like to put into the record or make sure it

gets into the record an opinion by the Department of Justice about

whether we can fund two candidates, and their answer is no. Although I think, like a lot of people, it would be nice if we thought

the law would work to do that for the reasons you said.

But, anyway, under the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 as

amended, GSA is the provider of a fully equipped headquarters and

a variety of services for the President-elect’s transition team. Most

of the facilities and services we provide to the President-elect and

his transition team are generally the same as we provide to all our

customers: office space, telecommunications, IT services and equipment, and furnishing supplies and other things they need to do

their job.

Because GSA is the custodian of Federal transition funds, we

also serve as the financial advisor, accountant and payroll office for

the transition.

Under the Presidential Transition Act of 2000, GSA was given

two new responsibilities. The first is coordinating orientation activities for high-level nominees and appointees. The second is to

work with the National Archives and Records Administration and

others on a transition directory. Congress has appropriated $5.27

million for the 2000/2001 incoming transition to pay for those services and facilities as well as compensation for transition staff. $1

million of that will pay for the orientation activities and directory.

In order to facilitate an orderly transition, we have been working

with both campaigns since August, and we continue to do so on a

daily basis. We have leased office space, provided security for it,

fully furnished and equipped it, and arranged for telecommunications and information technology services to begin as soon as the

President-elect is apparent. We have begun planning the orientation activities and have prepared a working draft of the transition

directory.

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The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 makes it my responsibility to ascertain the apparent successful candidates for President

and Vice President before the funds, services and facilities authorized by the act become available to the transition team. While the

act gives no explicit criteria or deadlines for making this ascertainment, as the legislative history demonstrates, Congress made it

perfectly clear that if there is any question of who the winner is

in a close contest, this determination should not be made.

As Representative Fascell explained during the 1963 discussion

of the bill, ‘‘in a close contest, the Administrator simply would not

make the decision.’’ Representative Fascell went on to explain that

‘‘There is nothing in the act that requires the Administrator to

make a decision which in his own judgment he could not make. If

he could not determine the apparent successful candidate, he would

not authorize the expenditure of funds to anyone; and he should

not.’’

A few people have speculated about whether the GSA Administrator is the right official, but the law seems quite clear to me.

Under the Presidential Transition Act, GSA has no role in determining who the next President will be or affecting the contest for

the Presidency. The law does not authorize me to pick the next

President or predict who the next President will be. Instead the

law creates a simple common-sense requirement for me to identify

the President-elect after it is clear that one candidate has won the

election.

In this unprecedented, incredibly close and intensely contested

election, with legal action being pursued by both sides, it is not apparent to me who the winner is. That is why I have not ascertained

a President-elect. In extremely close elections State laws provides

for various means to ensure that the results are correct. The country is going through that process now.

I don’t intend to predict when it will be apparent who the winner

is, but I am confident that we will all know and probably all agree

when the winner is apparent. Both candidates are honorable men,

and each is convinced that he has won this extremely close race.

I intend to respect the integrity of their public statements.

During the last 3 weeks our American political system has faced

a huge test. In my view, our system as usual is working. We Americans trust each other enough to believe we can get through this

challenge.

Because the President-elect will have a shortened transition period, we at GSA have been working diligently to give the transition

team the tools it needs for a smooth transition. We continue to

work closely with both campaigns to shorten the turnover time so

that what once took a week or more can now be done in a day or

within hours. We have talked with both campaigns before the election to ensure that we were setting up the space and systems so

that they could use them productively. In the last few days we

have suggested additional steps to speed the turnover, such things

as creating Local Area Network and e-mail accounts and passwords, providing their staffs with remote access to the transition

intranet, preparing financial and contractual documents for goods

and services their teams will need, even ordering stationery. We

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are acting professionally and with no bias toward either candidate

as we have been since August and will continue to do.

With so many rapid technological changes, I think this may be

actually the last transition where the transition team will need

90,000 square feet of office space and 500 computers in one location

in Washington, DC. For example, staff of both campaigns are already linked in virtual space. Compare this to the last transition

in which laptops were invisible, and wireless technology barely existed. We already see that many of the administrative paper-based

transactions of 1992 will now be done electronically, saving time

and money for the taxpayers. We think that the preparations GSA

has already made, including taking advantage of technology, will

help make the 2000/2001 transition, though short, a smooth transition. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. We thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Barram follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Before we go to questions, I would like to hear from

Ms. Katzen, the Deputy Director for Management of the Office of

Management and Budget.

Ms. KATZEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me here to testify about OMB’s

implementation of the Presidential Transition Act. Given the

events since November 7, 2000, we do not know who the next

President will be. Nonetheless, much work has already been done,

and we are ready to ensure that a smooth transition from this administration to the President-elect, whoever that may be, will, in

fact, occur.

The Presidential Transition Act of 1963, as amended, provides

for an efficient transfer of authority from one administration to the

next, and it outlines specific roles for a number of Federal agencies,

including GSA, the Office of Personnel Management, the Office of

Presidential Personnel and the U.S. Archivist.

OMB does not have a specific role outlined in the act. Nonetheless we have been doing our part to assist in a transition process.

As you know, OMB was instrumental in obtaining funding for the

Presidential transition and specifically in helping secure funding in

the continuing resolution so that funding would be available for out

successors. Funding was, in fact, appropriated for the incoming administration, and the $5.3 million in funds that was provided for

the incoming President was apportioned by OMB and is available

for GSA to release when the Administrator determines that the

statutory test has been satisfied.

In addition, OMB, like every other Federal agency, is doing everything it can, preparing briefing materials on the organization,

function and duties of the organization, that were referred to by

the previous panel to assist the President-elect and his staff. We

are preparing to share that material with the next OMB Director

or other appropriate representatives of a President-elect. The delay

in identifying the President-elect has absolutely not affected our

work in this area.

As you know, the bulk of OMB staff are career professionals

whose mission is to serve the Presidency and the Nation, not any

individual President. Our senior career staff is actively working

with OMB leadership to prepare for the transition. The expertise

and institutional memory of OMB’s career staff will be invaluable

to the next President regardless of which candidate ultimately is

inaugurated.

In addition, several weeks ago OMB began work on an Executive

order that the President issued on November 27, 2000, creating a

transition coordinating council. OMB Director Jacob J. Lew is

OMB’s representative and member of the Council. The Council will

provide the President-elect’s team with coordinated services and

will ensure that we are as prepared as we can be for an orderly

transition to the new administration. Specifically, the Council will

oversee the transition activities of the agencies and departments

and direct that training materials and orientation sessions be prepared for appointees nominated by the President-elect. In addition,

the work of the Council will memorialize the process under which

the President’s appointees and the President-elect’s appointees will

collaborate during the transition process.

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The administration is seeking to do whatever we can in the way

of providing transition assistance on a parallel basis to both candidates. We at OMB are prepared to do our part in that process.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Katzen follows:]

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Mr. HORN. We thank you very much, and before we go down the

line, and I know you all have excellent ideas, I am going to stop

here for some questions on the first two administration officials,

and I want to put into the record a memorandum for heads of executive departments and agencies from John Podesta, chief of staff,

Presidential Transition Guidance, dated November 15, 2000, and

the Administrator, I know, is well aware of it because everybody

has asked him on that question.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. HORN. And in Mr. Podesta’s memoranda it says, ‘‘until a

President-elect is clearly identified, therefore no transition assistance as contemplated under the Transition Act is available. You

may continue to provide the kind of information or assistance, if

any, that you typically provide to Presidential candidates and

should continue to prepare for the transition so that we are able

to provide full assistance quickly to the office of President-elect.’’ With that, Mr. Barram, did that memo of Mr. Podesta have any

influence on your decision?

Mr. BARRAM. No.

Mr. HORN. And you stated a legal opinion, and I don’t know if

the staff and Members have it. Do we have it? If so, we’d like a

copy of it. We’ll get a copy of it so we can all see it.

Mr. BARRAM. The legal opinion I mentioned was from the Department of Justice to Beth Nolan, counsel to the President. It was fundamentally around the question that Mr. Ose raised about whether

there could be money provided out of this fund for more than one

candidate. And the answer, their interpretation of the law, is clearly no.

Mr. HORN. Go ahead, Mr. Gerson.

Mr. GERSON. I’ve looked at this as a lawyer and as a denizen,

a former denizen, of the Justice Department, and I believe the Administrator is right. I remember an old contracts case in which

there were two ships called the Peerless. I don’t think there can be

two apparent winners. That’s one of the things that I think is implied by Mr. Ose’s question and that you perhaps would like to address. I can speak about it later in my remarks.

Mr. HORN. Obviously one of the ways if we don’t have any more

signals along the way would be since the Clinton administration

has funds of $1.8 million to go out of the administration and the

offices they hold, and if the Vice President was the President-elect

one way or the other, or possible President-elect, he would return

the $305,000 for the Vice President’s Office to the Treasury. Now,

obviously one thought is if he’s already got $305,000 no matter

what he does, would it not be possible to at least give $305,000 or

something in that range to the other contender for the Presidency?

What do you think of that?

Mr. GERSON. My guess is that the Administrator would balk at

it because as he sees his entitlement, and I think he’s right, although we may disagree about how he exercised it, he is only entitled to make available the cash, space and services to the apparent

winner. The other part does take care of itself, you are certainly

correct about that. I think that’s a matter that you want to address. I mean, had he seen it another way, he likely could have

done that with respect to Governor Bush, but I think he feels constrained, and I think the plain meaning of the statute constrains

him from doing what is otherwise entirely reasonable.

Mr. HORN. I am told that the Supreme Court of the United

States has held that the Florida Supreme Court had no justification for extending the vote count deadline. The case was remanded

to the Florida Supreme Court to explain how they came to their decision. Is that a little road stone along the way, that might get

some money loose for the possible but likely President-elect of the

United States?

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Mr. BARRAM. Is that a rhetorical question?

Mr. HORN. No, it’s a question, does that give you a little more

of a signal?

Mr. BARRAM. I don’t want to predict how I could decide on the

apparent winner. I don’t think it’s going to be that complicated,

frankly, and there are a lot of things going on, and they’ll certainly

shake out. Nobody wants to have this prolonged any longer than

necessary. I don’t want to say that’s a little step or a big step, but

obviously it’s important.

Mr. HORN. Yes, Professor Zywicki.

Mr. ZYWICKI. Yes. A quick note. Section 4 of the original act says

that for the outgoing President or Vice President, that the funds

that the Administrator is authorized to provide are requested for

a period not to exceed 6 months from the date of the expiration of

his term. If the expiration of the term is January 20, one would

think that the outgoing funds would not be made available to the

outgoing Vice President until after that date.

Mr. HORN. Yeah. It says in section 4, as you referred to it, that

it shall not become effective with respect to a former President

until 6 months after the expiration of his term of office as President.

Mr. BARRAM. Actually I think it might start 30 days in advance

and proceed 6 months afterward.

Mr. HORN. Well, any other questions, my colleague, Mr. Turner,

gentlemen, the ranking member?

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it is a good suggestion that we have heard made by some of the members of our

committee. It would be nice if we could provide both Vice President

Gore and Governor Bush some assistance during this difficult period that we find ourselves in due to the legal proceedings surrounding the outcome of the election. But, Mr. Barram, I gather

what you’re telling us is that as you read the statute and as you’ve

been advised by legal counsel, you don’t have the option of sharing

the money between the two contenders. That is not an option even

available or in any way that could be construed from the reading

of the act.

Mr. BARRAM. That’s correct. Regardless of what I would personally like to see, that’s the way I read the law.

Mr. TURNER. In fact, the language of the legislation itself actually defines for you the terms ‘‘President-elect’’ and ‘‘Vice Presidentelect.’’ And I am reading from the act here, it says, ‘‘The terms ‘President-elect’ and ‘Vice President-elect’ as used in this act shall

mean such persons as are the apparent successful candidates for

the office of President and Vice President.’’ So you’re trying to follow the statute and determine who is the

apparent-to-all successful candidate, and as of yet that does not

seem to be apparent to any of us with the ongoing legal proceedings that have clouded the outcome of the election. Is that basically

the position you’ve taken?

Mr. BARRAM. Yes, yes.

Mr. TURNER. It wouldn’t even allow you under that language to

say, I think it’s probably going to be Vice President Gore or probably going to be Governor Bush, and therefore I will go ahead and

release funds.

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Mr. BARRAM. I took an oath to well and faithfully exercise the

responsibilities of the office, and I see it that way. And I know it’s

not popular with some people, and it makes some people nervous,

and it makes some people in GSA nervous. If Governor Bush would

become the President, some people are wondering whether he

would take it out on them. I don’t see it that way. I think he’s an

honorable man. Take it out on me. You are welcome to take it out

on me, but my agency has done a spectacular job of putting together the facilities, the capability, the resources, and our people

are eager for a President-elect to be apparent so that person and

his team can get working in our space.

Mr. TURNER. I noticed in your testimony before the committee,

your written testimony, that you actually had gone back and cited

in a footnote the debate on the act when it was originally passed

in 1963 where Mr. Fascell, the gentleman from Florida, was asked

what happens if there is a close election. And I noted that when

he responded to that inquiry about what would happen if you don’t

know who is the winner, he said it is an unlikely proposition,

which I guess turned out to be false because we have that situation

today. But he said, if it were to happen—and I’m reading from

page 13349 of the Congressional Record in 1963—if the Administrator had any question in his mind, any question, ‘‘he simply

would not make any designation in order to make the services

available as provided by the act. If as an intelligent human being

he has a doubt, he would not act until a decision has been made

in the electoral college or in the Congress.’’ And as I recall, you actually cited that provision in your testimony.

Mr. BARRAM. I meant to cite the intelligent human being part.

I don’t know if I did. It’s amazing to me how Florida figures prominently again.

I never thought when I came to Washington I would be reading

the Congressional Record about discussions between Members 40

years ago, but I did read that, and some things never change. The

conversation was a lot about whether we should spend any money

at all, and Representative Fascell was arguing for why this was a

good idea, and Mr. Gross from Iowa was saying, I don’t think any

of these candidates that I see coming on the scene in 1964 are

going to have any trouble buying their next sandwich, so why do

we have to give them any money? Things are funny how they go.

They seem not to change no matter how much time goes by.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. You’re quite welcome.

I now yield to the lawyers now on our side; that is, the vice

chairman of the subcommittee, Mrs. Biggert, the gentlewoman

from Illinois.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The chairman referenced the memo from John Podesta of November 13, 2000. Do you know who he consulted with before that

memo was issued?

Mr. BARRAM. Who the chief of staff consulted with? No, I do not

know.

Mrs. BIGGERT. OK. But it was sent to all the executive agencies?

Mr. BARRAM. Yes.

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Mrs. BIGGERT. And you received that?

Mr. BARRAM. Yes.

Mrs. BIGGERT. And I know in your testimony you spoke about

the type of assistance that GSA was providing to both the Bush

and the Gore teams. Could you be a little more specific about what

is actually being done right now?

Mr. BARRAM. Well, we have had extensive conversations—we

have a woman named June Huber, who is our career executive who

is leading the GSA transition activity. She has been in constant

contact with Clay Johnson and Roy Neel, and other members of the

two transition teams for a couple of months, maybe 3 months now,

to do a couple things; one, to make sure that each of them would

have the kind of productive work space that they want. So we’ve

been working and talking to them about that.

Mrs. BIGGERT. But one of the things that Governor Sununu mentioned, that it’s very hard when you don’t have the keys to the office and you don’t have the space, and you have to maybe go from

lawyer’s office to lawyer’s office, so there really is no physical space

available that these transition teams could have.

Mr. BARRAM. There’s no government-provided transition space.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Are you aware that they have a transition space

where this is accomplished, then, if you’ve been meeting with these

people?

Mr. BARRAM. You mean the space in Virginia that—— Mrs. BIGGERT. Yes.

Mr. BARRAM. Yes, I am aware that they have some space.

Mr. HORN. Could I take that point, if I might? The space you

were going to give either one, I believe, is the one where the Y2K

effort of Mr. Koskinen occurred?

Mr. BARRAM. Right.

Mr. HORN. I was told by a reporter when he leased that space, it was a $50 million operation. I said, you’ve got to be kidding.

Now, how long is that lease? Is anybody in it now?

Mr. BARRAM. Nobody’s in it now.

Mr. HORN. And if it’s empty, why couldn’t we move people into

it now, because we aren’t going to spend much money? I think

you’ve already got a lease with that building. Who does own the

building?

Mr. BARRAM. GSA has a lease for that space, 90,000 square feet,

which we are planning to turn over to a transition team soon.

Mr. HORN. What does that 90,000 square feet cost?

Mr. BARRAM. I think we’re projecting $700,000 during that period

of time.

Mr. HORN. $700,000 over what period?

Mr. BARRAM. I think it’s ’til 30 days after the inauguration.

That’s correct.

Mr. HORN. Well, Y2K was over as of January 1999, going on

2000. Was that just a long-term lease even though we didn’t have

any use for it?

Mr. BARRAM. I don’t think I know the answer. Nobody was in

that space for a period of time.

Ms. KATZEN. I can tell you that the Y2K facility, known as the

ICC, was used through at least late May, early June. There was

the problem not only of the December 31 date change, but also conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:11 Dec 04, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00090 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\75062.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cerns about what would happen with leap year. And then there

was some other problem that the technical people were concerned

about. We started backing out of the space and moving things out,

but I don’t think it was until at least end of May, early June that

the Y2K effort relinquished control of that space.

Mr. HORN. Who was put in it?

Mr. BARRAM. From May until now I don’t think anybody. We

have a 10-year lease with that building, I am told, and we have follow-on tenants in mind to go in there.

Mr. HORN. So the lease is already being paid regardless who is

in it. So conceivably you could move at least one of the ‘‘Presidentselect,’’ that have come along and give them the space at $1 a week

or something? Because, I think it’s not very smart for anybody to

be putting their hand out to have various people want influence

and this kind of thing because that’s the way it will look from some

nitpickiness, as Mr. Sununu said, I think, or somebody said it, that

a nitpicking member of the press might take it that way.

Mr. TURLEY. Mr. Chairman, can I just interrupt for 1 second, before the Administrator leaves, I was handed a note that says that

the Supreme Court has apparently ruled unanimously for Bush. I

thought that might be relevant—your staff may want to confirm it

before the Administrator leaves—to see how that would affect his

decision not to designate President Bush as the President-elect.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Chairman, if I might interject. We have not seen

the decision from the Supreme Court, and I am not quite sure it’s

fair to Mr. Barram to put the him on the spot.

Mr. TURLEY. I didn’t mean to put him on the spot, but I expect

this is a contingency that he might have thought of. If it’s true, I

thought it would be a relevant question.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Mr. Chairman, could I reclaim my time?

Mr. HORN. Yes. Go ahead. I apologize for taking so much of it.

Mrs. BIGGERT. I would like to ask Mrs. Katzen also about the detail of assistance, but do you know whether John Podesta acted in

consultation with the President as far as his memo?

Ms. KATZEN. I do not know.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Mr. Barram, you don’t know?

Mr. BARRAM. No.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Could you then return to a little more specifics on

the type of assistance that is being given to the transition teams?

Mr. BARRAM. There are a lot of things that any enterprise doing

what they’re going to do needs to deal with. How do you pay your

people? What kind of personnel services do you need? How do you

lay out space? What kind of technology support do you need? For

example, normal course of events would be for a tenant to plan to

go into a space, and we would work with them to lay out the space.

Doing it fast it might take 4, 5, or 6 days. What we have talked

to both camps about is let’s talk about how you might want to configure it if you were going to go in tomorrow.

So we are trying to do those kind of things in advance. We’ve

talked to them about what kind of resume managing system would

they like to have? How do you want the telephones to work? You

asked me for specifics. What kind of domain name do you want on

your e-mail addresses so we don’t have to spend an hour or 3 hours

or 2 days getting that simple thing fixed up? And that has nothing

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to do with ascertaining an apparent winner. It’s just mechanical,

logistic stuff that we ought to do in advance.

Mrs. BIGGERT. What about, then, briefings on foreign affairs or

things that might be security complications? Is this part of your

job?

Mr. BARRAM. GSA’s responsibility is to prepare the space, provide the support. Those kind of things you talked about are the

purview of the relevant governmental agency.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Are you aware of what the other Federal agencies

are doing then in this context?

Mr. BARRAM. I know that I’m aware that they’re doing it. I

couldn’t give you specifics about what each agency is doing. I know

that we at GSA have prepared a very extensive briefing book. We

think we can tell our story to the people that want to know very

quickly and efficiently.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Have those books been delivered to both?

Mr. BARRAM. The books haven’t been delivered yet.

Mrs. BIGGERT. So they’re waiting—you’re waiting until there is

an apparent winner.

Mr. BARRAM. Yes.

Mrs. BIGGERT. So really the only thing that has been done is

what?

Mr. BARRAM. I’ve tried to explain all the things that we have

done in preparation for the transition. We have the building space

ready. We have worked very hard on the——

Mrs. BIGGERT. But there’s been no actual contact where you’ve

actually sat down with the teams?

Mr. BARRAM. I don’t want to say no to that because we have

spent a lot of time with the teams, but I think your question is

have you started with the briefings with those teams, and the answer is no.

Mrs. BIGGERT. And, Mrs. Katzen, you would say the same thing

as far as what you’re doing?

Ms. KATZEN. I would make two different comments. First, with

respect to national security, immediately after the conventions arrangements were made to have national security briefings for both

candidates. The question of whether that was sufficient was raised,

I think, by Mr. Card in a conversation with Mr. Podesta. The

White House press secretary, Jake Siewert, announced at the end

of last week the White House was that prepared to provide more

detailed national security briefings to both parties, leading me to

conclude that, where there is a time-sensitive matter requiring immediate consultation, we will be able to work our way through the

problem.

So in response to your question, I do think on the national security front that more information is being shared with both of the

candidates. Second is that we have——

Mrs. BIGGERT. How is that being done?

Ms. KATZEN. I don’t know. It involes national security, so it

would probably be handled through the National Security Advisor

who was responsible for the briefings of both the Governor and

Vice President’s offices after the conventions. But the details of the

arrangements have not been shared with me.

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The second comment is that the OMB briefing books, which are

quite voluminous, hopefully will be very helpful. I took some comfort from the unanimity of opinion on the preceding panel that it

was important for the new people to listen to the incumbents as

they describe some of the problems they had faced and some of the

solutions they had thought of and were pursuing. But those books

are in the final stages of preparation, and we are prepared to provide those at the appropriate time.

My own experience with the 1992–1993 transition was that kind

of information wasn’t really made available until late December or

early January in some instances, but I think it would be desirable

in a perfect world for us to do it sooner rather than later.

Mrs. BIGGERT. So the kind of assistance or information that is

given to Presidential candidates would not include these types of

briefings since they have not been delivered; is that correct?

Ms. KATZEN. That’s correct.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. We thank you.

Before we leave that question that we posed, that Mrs. Biggert

and I posed to Mr. Barram, I did not have a chance, as the other

representative of the administration, Mrs. Katzen, are you familiar

with the November 13 memorandum from Mr. Podesta?

Ms. KATZEN. Yes.

Mr. HORN. Did he consult you?

Ms. KATZEN. No.

Mr. HORN. Did the President consult you?

Ms. KATZEN. No.

Mr. HORN. Because we’re told that both of them consulted each

other as you would think, the President’s chief of staff would certainly ask the President on a delicate thing. But you weren’t one

of them that was consulted on this?

Ms. KATZEN. That’s correct.

Mr. HORN. OK. Because we’re told that they all down there have

consulted on it. They just won’t admit it. So I was curious. Neither

one of you claim that anybody asked you and you weren’t consulted.

Ms. KATZEN. I would have to say that it is not customary for Mr.

Podesta, the chief of staff, to consult me on each of the memos that

he sends to the agency heads. So I had not expected to be consulted

on this document.

Mr. HORN. Well, I would think that when you’re talking Presidential transition, that cuts across the whole board. It isn’t just one

or two. So, OK, we will now move to Mr.——

Mr. TURNER. I have one.

Mr. HORN. Sure. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. I want to inquire as to one matter that caught my

attention and it hasn’t been mentioned yet today, and that is that

in 1988 the Presidential Transition’s Effectiveness Act which

amended the original bill, required the disclosure of private contributions for purposes of transition. Prior to that time, there was

no disclosure of any privately donated funds used by any Presidentelect or Vice President-elect. And I noted that in an answer to a

question propounded by the committee you mentioned that the

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Clinton administration actually expended $5.2 million in transition

expenses from private sources which were disclosed according to

law. So I gather it’s not all that unusual to have President-elects

expending private funds during the transition period.

Mr. BARRAM. We only had one really significant transition since

1988. So in the transition from Reagan to Bush there was a relatively small amount raised that I noted, and in the Clinton transition there was $5 million. I forget whatever the number was I

wrote in the answer. So that’s the sample.

Mr. TURNER. Does this include expenses such as those raised for

inaugural parties and those kind of things, or are we strictly talking about transition expenses as we’ve been talking about?

Mr. BARRAM. Transition only. Inaugural is another kettle of fish.

Mr. INK. Before 1963, that’s the way they raised money was

through private resources. However, I think everybody will agree

that was not the desirable route to follow.

Mr. TURNER. And I can appreciate that.

Now in 1992 during the Clinton transition where we were expending according to your numbers, $5.2 million in private funds,

the Federal Government had appropriated $3.5 million for that

purpose. Fortunately, we have increased that amount in the Presidential Transition Act appropriations effective for this year to $7.1

million. So at least we double the amount that the Federal Government is willing to pay to assist in the transition. But obviously,

when Clinton took office in 1992, the $3.5 million must not have

been enough to pay for the expenses of transition since $5.2 million

in additional donated funds came in to accomplish that task.

Mr. BARRAM. I wasn’t here. If Mark Gearan were still here, he

might tell us what they spent it on, why they needed it. But things

are expensive and there’s a lot of work to be done.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. The gentleman from California, Mr. Ose.

Mr. OSE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to examine something here. Mr. Barram, excuse me. I don’t know if it was Mrs.

Katzen or Mr. Barram. One of you indicated that we’ve got a 10-

year lease on 90,000 square feet costing $50 million.

Mr. BARRAM. I didn’t say $50 million.

Mr. HORN. No, I said that, what a reporter told me when Mr.

Koskinen had him in.

Ms. KATZEN. That was the total cost for the entire operation,

which included not only the space, but also all of the fitting out,

and all of the contractors who were hired to work for approximately

6 to 9 months, if not a year, before the date change. The whole ICC

was estimated initially to be $50 million; it was not the space

alone.

Mr. OSE. So you had interior improvements, partitions, demountable and otherwise, put in within the $50 million. The question I

have, this is finished space, this is carpets, walls, all this stuff.

Mr. BARRAM. Yes, but every time you change tenants, you change

a few things here and there. And in the case of the Y2K, there was

a lot of equipment that was taken out. So we had to redo some of

the space. So yeah, we’ve done a little bit of that.

Mr. OSE. Have we done any of that since late May early June?

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Mr. BARRAM. In the days up to the election, we were getting that

space fitted out.

Mr. OSE. In anticipation of someone occupying it?

Mr. BARRAM. Yes.

Mr. OSE. So you’ve had the space planning done?

Mr. BARRAM. Well, there are two parts to space planning. We’ve

had the big spaces available. But once a tenant wants to go in, he’s

going to want offices in a certain configuration and technology lines

drawn a certain way. We tried to anticipate as much of that as we

can, make it simple, like we do for all our tenants, but there’s still

some of that work that has to be done.

Mr. OSE. Have either of the campaigns given you any space planning parameters?

Mr. BARRAM. We have talked with them. Only the basics, but not

the details, and that’s what we have been talking about with them,

even in the last week, about—can you be more specific so we can

be ready to hit the ground with you.

Mr. OSE. This is the issue that I’m trying to get at. Once we determine who wins or who won, then you have the space planning

process. And from my experience that can be rather lengthy, and

then you have your construction period. Tell me how that’s going

to work.

Mr. BARRAM. These days with modular furniture and moveable

walls, and if we have CAD systems that help us design space much

faster, we think we can do this in a very short period of time. We’re

talking hours and days, not days and weeks. This should not be a

gating factor to somebody being efficient. We’re trying everything

we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Mr. OSE. That’s what I was trying to get at. I have another question, Mr. Chairman, if I might.

Mr. HORN. Certainly.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Turner referenced the act itself, and I asked this

question earlier about a bar to who might be provided this assistance, and I’m looking at the act, and I followed Mr. Turner when

he read it and he read it word for word, but there’s nothing in here.

In fact, it refers in the plural to the apparent successful candidates.

Mr. BARRAM. That’s Vice President and President. That’s why it’s

plural, I think.

Mr. OSE. Then it refers in the plural to such persons as are the

apparent successful candidates, and I suggest within the body of

the Congress, you might have some disagreement as to who are the

successful candidates, but I’m just trying to find a way that we can

start the ball rolling for whomever wins. And with all due respect,

I see Mr. Gerson shaking his head.

Mr. GERSON. I wish you were right, I really do, because what

you’re suggesting is entirely reasonable. But what I think I heard

the Administrator say, and I believe I heard him correctly, he is

correct that the operative terms ‘‘President-elect’’ and ‘‘Vice President-elect’’ are then defined as such persons as are the apparent

successful candidates. That’s the way that the statute reads. Let

me say in saying that I’m a textural literalist. I believe in following

the plain meaning. I think the Administrator could have come to

a different decision. On the other hand, I think if you want to do

the thing that you want to do, you can do one or both of two things.

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One, you can change the statute for the future; and two, the House

can deal with it as a special appropriations matter as you are still

in session. But I think that even though we are on opposite sides

of the track on much of this, the Administrator’s reading of the literal words of the statute is correct. As I said, I don’t think he applied the term correctly, but in that regard ‘‘persons’’ means President and Vice President. I don’t think there is a doubt about it.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Chairman, when we get around to considering this,

I would suggest that the word ‘‘apparent’’ offers the opportunity for

an interpretation that would allow at this juncture, in a circumstance such as we’ve enjoyed today, so to speak, it would allow

the apparent candidates to have access to this space. Somehow or

another the business of the country has to be addressed. This has

to move. I mean, this is the United States of America that we’re

talking about.

Mr. HORN. Well, I agree with you, especially when the space is

already leased. There isn’t an extension just for the President-elect

and Vice President-elect. They’ve got the space.

Mr. OSE. If we have to, I’ll go out there with my Magic Marker

and I’ll draw a line down the middle of the room, and we’ll put one

on one side and the other on the other. I don’t care. But somehow

or another we’ve got to break this.

Mr. HORN. In the British tradition of a shadow cabinet.

Mr. OSE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. Any questions from my colleagues before we move

down the line with Mr. Gerson. We don’t want to lose the precious

talent we’ve got here. We might run through this several times in

the next few decades. Anything to add, Mr. Gerson.

Mr. GERSON. Not at this time.

Mr. HORN. OK. We’ll start with Mr. Light then.

Mr. GERSON. Oh, I’m sorry. You meant in terms of additional—— Mr. HORN. I’m sorry.

Mr. GERSON. I would like to say something if I could.

Mr. HORN. Yeah, go ahead.

Mr. GERSON. I would address what I think were the real questions. Let me note at the outset two things, that there’s a certain

symmetry in my following, Mrs. Katzen. We have been opponents,

we’ve been colleagues, but at the end of all of this, like Mr. Ose’s

daughters, we’ll still be the same. We’ll still be friends. And I say

also while I’m here in a purely private capacity, I know that the

Bush/Cheney camp bears no ill will to the Administrator whom

they believe is trying his mightiest, given the way he reads the

statute and is providing a substantial assistance within the bounds

that he feels he can. So I want to make that clear as well. He’s not

on the spot. I think it’s all of us who are. While I respectfully disagree with him, I certainly think that he’s acting honorably.

In sum, it’s my view that this subcommittee will likely want to

consider clarifying amendments to the act. I believe that the act already provides the authority and the obligation to the Administrator to fund and support the transition to the administration led

by Governor Bush and Secretary Cheney, whom I believe are the

apparent winners of the 2000 election. At the same time, given the

vagaries of the statute and the dearth of definitional guidance that

has been provided, it is understandable why the Administrator has

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been reticent in committing to the expenditure of resources at this

time. We’ve learned a lot in recent weeks that we didn’t think we

needed to know about in regard to the conduct of elections, and the

very narrow question that brings this particular panel together fits

into that category.

I would say, though, at the outset that I think the questions addressed to the previous panel are at least as important, perhaps

more important with regard to the need for collegiality in the actual transition. It was in this room while I was serving as the acting attorney general at the beginning of the Clinton administration

that a now-departed Member of Congress, he’s still alive but he’s

no longer a Member of the Congress, said under the watchful eye

of Mr. Brooks, with whom I had actually consulted on the issue

that this other fellow thought was so controversial. He said, I

thought we had an election to get rid of people like that, Mr.

Gerson, who still seems to think that he’s running something. That

aside, the need for collegiality between ingoing and outgoing administrations cannot be underestimated. At the same time, though,

I think John Sununu was absolutely correct in saying you need the

facilities in order to get it done too, and I think that’s an important

issue.

In all of the functions that encompass a transition—I’ve been involved in several on either side as part of an incoming administration, on part of an outgoing administration and then sort of with

my feet in both camps in 1992, 1993 it’s readily apparent that the

national interest is best served by a vigorous transition effort that

begins early and allows an incoming administration to gain mastery of the activities of the governmental departments and put in

place the competent individuals able to serve the public forcefully

and properly starting on day one, the day that the administration

formally takes office.

The understanding of this need for promptness pervades the legislative history of the act. And recent history has shown especially

where there is a change of governing political parties, that this is

a matter of continuing national importance.

The Act defines the operative term ‘‘President-elect’’ and ‘‘Vice

President-elect’’ as the apparent successful candidates. And here,

Mr. Ose, I wanted to address in a different way, I think, the point

that you very legitimately are trying to raise. The use of the conditional word apparent as opposed to some other word voted in by

the electoral college or something else, strongly suggests that the

drafters of the statute knew that the Administrator’s determination

could be upset by subsequent events both related to the electoral

process and otherwise. Given the use of that term in the statute,

I suggest respectfully that the Administrator could have determined that the Bush-Cheney ticket were the apparently successful

contestants once the election returns in Florida were so certified by

the secretary of state of Florida. At that point, the ticket had apparently 271 electoral votes, a majority sufficient to assure ultimate election.

In declining to proclaim the success of the Republican ticket, the

Administrator has cited a number of things, one of which was the

exchange that Mr. Turner pointed out in his questioning between

Mr. Fascell and his interlocutor. These exchanges exist, but that

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doesn’t substitute for what actually gets written into a statute. And

what the statute said is something that’s conditional that is subject

to opinion and to determination.

Now, again, I respect the decision that the Administrator has

made, while I might disagree with it, and hence, I think that there

are things that you might want to address. One is changing the nature of this altogether, and creating a statute or changing the statute to the point that it can encompass the events that we have

today, an election which the sum is too close to call, which it certainly has equivocal aspects to it where it makes all the sense in

the world for the very points that have been made since Lyndon

Johnson himself was the majority leader of the Senate, and so

spoke to this very bill, that you need to get running early, quick

and hard, and that’s one thing that you might wish to do.

The second thing, of course, is to change the definition to something clearer. And the third is to alter or remove this idea, that

there is discretion in the Administrator that is otherwise

unreviewable. Now, I don’t know how a court would determine it.

We’ve had too many lawsuits, and nobody is suggesting that anybody sue anybody, but there ought to be clearer guidance, and it

ought to be clear that there is at least a potentially reviewable external decision that would allow for the encompassing of the vagary

of the term that the Congress itself chose, ‘‘apparent,’’ not absolute,

not scientifically certain, clinically certain or anything else but apparent. With that, I ask that my formal remarks be made a part

of the record and I thank the chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gerson follows:]

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Mr. HORN. I might say, and I should have the minute we introduce you, that your full remarks are automatically put in the

record.

What’s concerned me on some of this is several weeks ago after

the election, and after a number of States did get most of their ballots through the system, Mr. Card, the designated chief of staff by

Governor Bush, phoned the White House and never got any answers for a long time. Now, apparently, that’s changed. But what

worries me is, are they just trying to make life tough for their successor? It seems to me that when they raised $5 million or so back

in 1993 to do a lot of this, they certainly ought to know what the

problems were. And I would think that they would try to get a lawyer that put a broad stretch to this law. It might not be as clear

as it should be, but just say hey, let’s give them the space.

Mr. GERSON. Well, I don’t disagree. Ms. Katzen is from OMB,

and she knows more about the expenditure of public funds than I

do. But conceivably, if you’re looking to push the envelope a little

bit, that might relate to the ability, for example, of GSA to lease

the space at a marginal rate, given the real estate realities that

two or three members of this subcommittee have already pointed

out. There may be other ways to address it. I want to be clear that

what I’m addressing is this statute, and I think it does have problems, and we’re experiencing those problems. That’s not to say that

there are not some interstitial solutions that might practically be

available, the press and other inquirers notwithstanding, I think

we all know how the public interest best would be served, and that

would be to provide as much information to whomever might be the

incoming administration as is usually possible to do.

Ms. KATZEN. Mr. Horn, I simply wanted to respond to the speculation that there may be some thought in the west wing that we

should make it more difficult for the incoming administration. And

I have to unequivocally and absolutely say that is not the case. The

President made it very clear before the election that he wanted to

make the transition as smooth, as helpful, as constructive as possible. You heard during the earlier panel discussions about there

not being computers in the west wing in 1993 and in some of the

other Executive Office of the President facilities. You heard about

a number of other things that did cause us problems, and the

President was determined that this would be a constructive, helpful, supportive transition. Any thought that any action that we are

taking is designed to make it tough on the new guys is just not

founded.

Mr. HORN. Well, I’m sure they are when they work for you, but

there’s a lot of people around this place downtown.

So, let’s see, any other questions on this? Then we’ll move to Mr.

Light. Oh, go ahead. The gentlewoman from Illinois, Mrs. Biggert.

Mrs. BIGGERT. One thing is that if either the Bush team or the

Gore team is using their own finances to do this, and then later

becomes the President-elect, will they be reimbursed for funds that

have been used, private funds that have been reimbursed?

Mr. BARRAM. The law is I think clear that you can’t—until the

Administrator ascertains the apparent winner, money cannot be

expended. So money spent before couldn’t be reimbursed. One of

the things that I comfort myself with as a citizen is that in lieu

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of the conversation earlier about how much money the Bush team

is going to raise and the Gore team would raise, I imagine to supplement the amount of money that you have appropriated, hopefully it will settle out soon enough so that money will get to be

spent on the front half. We’ll see.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Would you recommend clarifying that law or do

you think that it’s proper the way it is?

Mr. BARRAM. Oh, sure. If you want my personal opinion, I’m not

hung up on the ability of the Administrator to make and ascertain

an apparent winner. I think the real serious issue in America is

the kind of voting machines that we have. So that is something to

worry about.

I would also be happy if the Congress were to tackle the question

that Mr. Ose was raising, and others, that there ought to be a way

to split this money and have enough available in this unusual circumstance. You know, Representative Fascell was right; it’s unusual for this to happen. It isn’t going to happen that many more

times. So you don’t get to burden yourself thinking if we had twice

as much available in this kind of a situation that we’re going to be

breaking the Republic. It’s not going to happen that way. I just

think the law makes it impossible for me to do anything that, to

use Mr. Gerson’s words, would be common sense.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again

soon.

Mr. HORN. Thank you very much. We now get to Paul Light, director, Center for Public Service at the Brookings Institution. Mr.

Light is probably one of the finest commentators on the executive

branch in the country. So we look for your wisdom.

Mr. LIGHT. Well, I’m afraid to say right off the bat that we’re

now looking at another statute that I encountered earlier in my career and worked on as a staff member of the Senate Governmental

Affairs Committee.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Light, can you move that microphone closer,

please?

Mr. LIGHT. I guess we’re now on. I was saying that this is another statute that I worked on earlier in my career as a staffer for

Senate Governmental Affairs. And I don’t recall ever having looked

at the apparent successful candidates problem. We didn’t think it

would come up. We didn’t focus attention on it at all. We embedded

in the 1988 Presidential Transitions Effectiveness Act disclosure

requirements as a condition of taking transition funds, the President-elect and Vice President-elect would agree to disclose the

sources and purposes of their private fundraising. And luckily, Governor Bush and Secretary Cheney have agreed to disclose, even

though they don’t have to.

I should acknowledge at the very beginning here that we

wouldn’t be arguing so much about the value of this space for the

transition if GSA hadn’t done such a terrific job in developing and

preparing this space. If this space were down at the Navy Yard and

it hadn’t been done so well, I’m suspecting that we might have a

transition elsewhere anyway. June Huber and her staff have done

a terrific job and the Administrator is to be congratulated for his

leadership in pushing the agency to be prepared on time.

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I should say that, you know, in 1988 when we did have the Transitions Effectiveness Act hearings Dante, Fascell did testify. His

testimony showed the primary purposes of the 1963 act again to be

that we have a prompt start to the transition, that we move quickly to provide the President and Vice President-elect access to resources that could help them get a hold of government. It was also

designed to drive private funding out of the transition business.

The authors of the 1963 act worried about the amounts of private

fundraising going on and they thought it was untoward that the

President-elect should be in that business.

I do not believe we are yet at a crisis point in the transition. We

would have spent the last 3 weeks doing the enrollments, getting

things set up, picking the Cabinet members, but we are reaching

the point of crisis. I believe within the next half week to week and

a half, we are at a point where action to basically define the apparent successful candidates will be needed if we’re to have a successful transition and successful first year in government.

I should say that our primary concern at the Brookings Institution and at the Presidential Appointee Initiative which is housed

at Brookings is the appointments process; that delays currently in

the startup of the transition have a multiplier effect further on

down the line. There will be no difficulty here with the Presidentelect, Vice President-elect, nominating and securing the confirmation of their Cabinet secretaries and senior-most officers. That’s not

the problem. The problem is not at the very top of the Federal Government in terms of the appointments process. The problem is at

the second, third, fourth, and fifth vertebrae of the Federal hierarchy where you have an onslaught of positions that you need to

fill in order to take firm hold of the Federal establishment. That

is the deputy secretaries, under secretaries, assistant secretaries,

and Administrators who occupy the neck of the Federal Government.

As I’ve said elsewhere, we are at risk not of having a headless

Federal Government next year but a neckless Federal Government,

meaning that we won’t have the connections between the leadership of the Federal hierarchy and the career work force. I think

that is a serious problem which should motivate us as we try to

resolve this dispute.

In my testimony I take a look at the legislative record. I am not

a legal scholar, I’m a legislative scholar. My reading of the record

is that the Administrator could have made two choices last week,

both of which would have been fine. He could have made the decision to allow the transition to begin. I believe that he had the statutory authority to do so, and I believe there’s embedded in the statute and in the record appropriate support for deciding that there

were apparent successful candidates that he could let the transition begin. I also believe that he could have denied the transition

funding, as he did, but not for the reasons that have been embedded in the ongoing conversation of these last few days.

I do not believe it is an appropriate reason for denying transition

support that we just have a close election; for in fact, the drafters

of the statute had just been through one of the closest elections in

American history, and Dante Fascell, every time the discussion

turned to the issue of doubt about close elections, when the conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:11 Dec 04, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00106 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\75062.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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versation turned to the issue of allowing the Administrator authority when he had a doubt to say no, Dante Fascell talked about the

fact that there had only been three close elections in America in

the whole of American history.

I believe by that statement the representative from Florida qualified the authority to deny funding in close elections. Closeness by

itself did not create the presence of a demand that you not release

the transition funds. It was closeness of a type. I believe the Administrator does have the authority to deny transition funds in the

close election, but he needs to make painfully clear exactly what

the conditions are in a way that does not allow future losing candidates to deny the transition funds by merely contesting an election.

That’s not to say that the Gore contest is ill founded. It’s to say

that we need a definition of apparent successful candidates that

does not put the power in the hands of the losing candidate to deny

the beginning of a transition that the drafters of this bill felt was

so important to taking hold of government. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Light follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you. Are there any questions? The gentleman

from Texas, Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. I was just reading Mr. Fascell’s testimony or his remarks in the debate as you were referring to him there. And I may

have missed a little bit of what you said, but it did strike me in

reading the full description of the debate that one of the issues that

was discussed in some detail was the concept raised by Congressman Haley that in fact under the Constitution, the President-elect

and Vice President-elect are determined officially after the electoral

votes are counted in the Congress.

And so it seems to me that one of the purposes of the 1963 legislation was to enable someone who was the apparent winner to

begin to receive funds prior to that date. But it does also seem logical to assume that the use of the word ‘‘apparent’’ was designed

to remedy what would otherwise be a problem if we said that we’re

going to provide transition funds to the President-elect, who is in

fact only determined when the electoral votes are counted by the

Congress.

So, and I read the reference that was mentioned with regard to

there being only three close election situations that you referred to,

but it was only a sentence after that where Mr. Fascell made the

statement in which he said ‘‘if it were to happen, if the administrator had any question in his mind, he simply would not make any

designation in order to make the services available as provided by

the Act. If as an intelligent human being, and he has a doubt, he

would not act until a decision has been made in the electoral college or in the Congress.’’ In another section of that debate the question is raised, which

perhaps is the question that we haven’t talked about here but is

so obviously apparent, when Congressman Haley said, ‘‘And if

there is any doubt in his mind, and if he cannot and does not designate the apparently successful candidate, then the act is inoperative. He cannot do anything. There will be no services provided,

no money expended.’’ Mr. Fascell says, ‘‘certainly.’’

Mr. Gross in this debate asked the question which I think is perhaps on all of our minds. He says, does not the gentleman—referring to Mr. Fascell—think that those designated as President and

Vice President by the present Administrator of General Services

would be given psychological or other advantages by designating

them as President and Vice President? Mr. Fascell says, ‘‘I do not

think so, because if they were unable at the time to determine the

successful candidates, this act would not be operative. Therefore, in

a close contest, the Administrator simply would not make the decision.’’

So it seems just from reading the totality of the testimony that

what the words ‘‘apparent President-elect’’ meant was that it would

be apparent to one of common intelligence as to who the winner is;

and if there was any doubt in the mind of the Administrator where

there is discretion placed, then he would simply not make the decision.

Now, that may not be the best outcome, and I certainly agree

with my colleagues who suggested that perhaps we ought to look

at amending the act to allow some funds to flow to both candidates

in this very difficult circumstance. But I certainly can understand

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where Mr. Barram came up with his conclusion not to expend public funds in a circumstance as clear as this bill seems to be to me.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. LIGHT. I wish that Representative Fascell had not, after saying these things, said that there were only three such situations in

history, because that then tempers his broad grant. Now, it’s a thin

brew we’re dealing with here in legislative history. We don’t have

anything in the legislative record really, the Senate and House reports that accompanied this legislation, to really give clarity here.

All I suggest is that the Administrator needs to come forward and

say one of the following two things: He needs to say, look, the election of 2000 is like the elections of 1800, 1824, or 1876 in the following ways, and therefore meets the test of one of the such close

elections, as Representative Fascell said; or it’s unlike the very

close election of 1960 in which Jack Kennedy won the Presidency

by 114,000 votes; or it’s unlike the election of 1888 in which we had

a popular vote winner who lost the electoral college. That’s all the

Administrator need do.

The problem for Congress is that it’s likely the Administrator

would end up saying the reason why it’s like this—you know, why

we can declare this a close election as Fascell—as Representative

Fascell said, is that the loser has filed a challenge, and that puts

the power in—or the apparent losing candidate, or the possibly losing candidate, or that somebody has filed a contest, and you end

up putting the power then in the hands of the person who may not

be the winner to deny the transition funds.

I think you need to legislate on that so that in the future we

don’t create a situation where people who are behind by very large

distance don’t try to tie up the transition in an unfair or frivolous

way.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. I might say just for the record, put in the word ‘‘apparent’’ from Random House Unabridged Dictionary, second edition, 1993, and that’s about when you came to town, Mr. Administrator. And I’m going to give you this and see if you can find the

way to, now that we have a court decision, that this fine facilities

which GSA has, and has a lease on, and is there, could be utilized.

So put that in the record, without objection, and give it to the Administrator.

It seemed to me—I know you’re leaving the GSA and those were

long plans that you had, and we wish you well on that. So don’t

go so far. You could make a lot of people happy if you just said hey,

a new factor has been in and we ought to get this going, because

otherwise we are going to be in a mess if we have to wait until the

electoral college is coming up and that’s certainly a major step in

the road.

But I just make that as a suggestion, because there’s got to be

lawyers in the administration that say yes, because they sure said

yes to a lot of things. And there are also the ‘‘no’’ type lawyers, and

you know about that. So we need a ‘‘yes’’ lawyer as opposed to a

‘‘no’’ lawyer.

And anyhow, Mr. Light——

Mr. BARRAM. Are you suggesting a no lawyer policy?

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Mr. HORN. I had long ago suggested that one. But I’m being delicate this morning.

Mr. Light, we appreciate all your thoughts on this. Mr. Turley

has to leave here and I want to get him in before the last three

witnesses. So, Mr. Turley, go ahead.

Mr. TURLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize that I have

a slight cold.

Mr. HORN. Put the microphone a little closer. And Mr. Turley is

the Shapiro professor of public interest law at the George Washington University School of Law.

Mr. TURLEY. I appreciate the indulgence of the committee and

the indulgence of my co-panelists in allowing me to go out of order.

I am sorry that I have to leave the hearing. I am very honored to

have the chance to speak to you on this subject. It’s a subject, obviously, of considerable importance.

I’d like to start out by saying, as with many of the people at this

table, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I do have a considerable academic interest in its outcome. With regard to its outcome, I should

note that I have the opinion of the Supreme Court here, which was

faxed to me during these proceedings. The Supreme Court indeed

did unanimously rule in favor of Governor Bush in the sense that

it has reversed and sent this issue back to the Florida Supreme

Court. That ruling was very narrow and it turns on the lack of

clarity as to whether there’s a Federal question in this issue. So

it will be sent back to the Florida Supreme Court for a determination on that question.

What that means is that doubt will be prolonged as to who is the

rightful President of the United States. Now, there has been great

discussion about the transition to the Presidency, and I think that

we’re at a point today where we have to speak frankly on that subject. When we had our first transition in 1791 from George Washington to John Adams, the transition was a relatively modest affair. In 1800 there were less than 4,000 people in the executive

branch. Today there’s almost 6,000 people in the White House

alone. There’s over 3 million civilian employees and there’s roughly

140 agencies. The incoming President has 11 weeks to try to fill the

necessary vacancies in this government to carry out the mandate

given to him by the people.

Governor Bush is at greater peril than Vice President Gore in

this regard. Vice President Gore has the benefit of a continuity of

policy and party. There are also great pressures upon Governor

Bush because of the concerns raised as to the needs for reform,

particularly when it comes to the White House. I have a recent article in Maryland Law Review detailing the many issues for transition that have to be looked at as to the White House alone. Those

issues will largely stay in abeyance during this point of uncertainty.

Ultimately we are left with the Presidential Transition Act of

1963 and the language of an ‘‘apparent’’ successful candidate. This

act is extremely curious and is possibly the worst statute I have

ever read in my career. I direct a legislative project. If a student

had handed me this statute, I would have sent the paper back

without a grade in deference to that student.

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Frankly it is bloody ridiculous to have a constitutional system

that labors through checks and balances as to when we announce

who the President is. We go through a bicameral process and various contingencies to guarantee in our system that these significant

political questions are dealt with in the legislative branch. That’s

where James Madison wanted most things that divided us to be

answered. But weeks before that decision is made in the electoral

college, an unknown Federal official takes an intestinal check and

determines whether he will announce one candidate is the apparent successor or another. I submit that’s simply absurd. I have no

idea why the law was written this way, except that the law was

written for extremely good constitutional weather and terrain.

Ironically, we have a Constitution that’s built for the worst possible

scenarios. It took Congress to write a statute to introduce a flaw

into that system. That’s what this statute represents.

I disagree to some extent with the statements made as to proper

interpretation of this statute. Yet, I have great sympathy with the

Administrator. I expect that he probably would have liked guidance

and he would like to do anything to have this bitter cup pass from

his lips.

I also am sympathetic with this subcommittee. This was not your

drafting, and you are dealing with a problem that you inherited.

It’s a problem I hope that you will solve. I listed various possible

changes that you can make in legislation to make this problem go

away.

The reason the Supreme Court decision today is relevant is because the interpretation by the Administrator leaves you with one

obvious question: When do extrinsic actions or rulings get to the

point that an Administrator is satisfied as to the outcome? That’s

the problem here. We don’t know if the Administrator is waiting

for the Supreme Court. I expect that he isn’t, because at issue in

the Supreme Court is not a determinative question as to who is the

President of the United States. I assume that he is not waiting for

the ruling of the circuit court judge as to Leon County, and I assume he’s not waiting for Seminole County. But that’s the question:

It’s not clear what we’re waiting for. That’s the central flaw in the

statute.

What is clear is that our present status is wholly at odds with

the intent of Congress. Congress wanted to avoid these 11 weeks

being frittered away when we have very serious business to get to.

It also wanted to avoid the need to raise private funds. We have

now realized both of those dangers in this crisis. I agree that you

cannot divide up the funds. This Administrator does not have that

authority given to him by Congress. If he makes the decision that

he has made, it is not clear what the judicial review is. This is the

first statute which I have searched to try to find a basis for judicial

review. It’s obvious that this would probably go to a fallback under

the APA. But once you go to an APA review, I’m not too sure what

the court would ask. Short of announcing that Ralph Nader is the

apparent President of the United States, I don’t see much of a

basis for a court to reverse a decision, even a bad one by the Administrator.

I will quickly note the three suggestions that I have made in my

written statement. First, this Congress should change the law so

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that the GSA Administrator does not make this determination. The

position of the Administrator has no relevant constitutional or legal

function. It should rest either in the Attorney General or a specially designed commission.

Second, the Congress should lay out language that clearly sets

forth how we deal with this type of controversy. It can do that in

two ways. It can either allow for a dual-track transition, which is

an easy issue and would be cost efficient. The government in such

circumstance as this could give initial funding to start the transition. As an alternative, it could allow a candidate to spend private

funds with the understanding that there is a qualified indemnification provision, so that, if you are in fact successful in your challenge, the Federal Government will in fact pay for those costs. We

have that already in some analogous provisions dealing with litigation and executive branch officers. Either of those would alleviate

out current problems.

Finally, the Congress needs to make these responsibilities mandatory, and not discretionary, so that we have meaningful judicial

review. I am very encouraged that this subcommittee on a bipartisan level has recognized that we are in a rather absurd situation.

That absurdity can be rectified. However, I would note that this is

not a weakness in our constitutional process, which is remarkably

strong; it’s a weakness because we tried to improve upon it. We

were acting in good faith, but we acted with the worst possible

means. I strongly encourage you to enact legislation to correct

these problems.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Turley follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Mr. Turley, I’d be delighted to have any language you

wish to submit. We won’t grade it.

Mr. TURLEY. I would be delighted to submit it, sir. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. If you can get it to us this week, we’re going to move

on it, or this next 24 hours, so we would appreciate it.

Mr. TURLEY. I will get it to you within a couple of days, sir.

Mr. HORN. OK. All right. Thank you. And I know your colleagues

will be handing this up here.

And our next speaker is Todd Zywicki, the associate professor of

law at George Mason University School of Law.

Mr. ZYWICKI. Thank you Mr. Chairman, distinguished representatives, it’s a pleasure for me to be here to speak on the Presidential

Transition Act of 1963. I’m just a law professor, I’ve never participated in a transition like some of my colleagues have, and if the

price tag is $10,000 to $60,000, I doubt my wife will ever let me

undertake such a situation. So I’m going to just talk on the law.

And as I interpret the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, unlike

some of the other people that have spoken today, I don’t see any

ambiguity in this act. I think that it is my opinion that under the

facts of the current situation, the Administrator’s refusal to release

the transition resources to the Bush-Cheney transition team is inconsistent with the language, the policies, and the scope of the discretion afforded the Administrator under the act.

We’ve heard reference to some of these things, but I think it’s

worth fleshing them out to understand this. As you said, the plain

language of the act is that the Administrator is supposed to release

the funds to the apparent successful candidates. ‘‘Apparent successful candidate’’ is not a defined term in the statute. But there are

some things that are clear from the statute and are clear from the

congressional debate surrounding enactment of the statute. First,

it is obvious that the mere fact that contingencies may intervene

that may mean that the apparent candidate is not the actual winning candidate at the end of the day does not change the fact that

the apparent successful candidate is still the apparent successful

candidate. The legislative history and debates are peppered with

discussions about what happens, for instance, if you have faithless

electors, electors that pledge to vote for one candidate, and on the

day vote for another candidate. Does that undermine the fact that

when they pledge to elect the President, that this is the apparent

successful candidate? No, it does not. The fact that they may

switch their vote does not undermine the fact that it is in fact an

apparent successful candidate.

As was discussed during the debates, Congressman Fascell remarks on the close election point, ‘‘The gentleman previously pointed out in the last election we had one that was as close as we

would want to have an election and nobody had any trouble in deciding who was the apparent winner.’’ During the 1960 election, of

course, my understanding is that Richard Nixon had litigation

going in several States, I think I’ve read as many as 11 States after

the election, recounts were ongoing for weeks if not months. Florida—or Hawaii didn’t complete their recount until late December.

There was litigation and recounts ongoing for weeks after the 1960

election. And Congressman Fascell says nobody had any difficulty

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determining that John Kennedy was the apparent successful winner in that election.

You can imagine all kind of different contingencies that might

arise in addition to recounts and litigation. You can imagine, as I

said, court challenges, faithless electors, any variety of contingencies could intercede that would make it such that the apparent

successful winner does not actually turn out to be the actual winner.

Second, I think under a functional interpretation of the policies,

I don’t think we need to dwell on this, but it’s obvious that the apparent successful winner is in fact the Bush-Cheney team. There

are two policies that are embedded in here. First is for an orderly

and speedy transition. Second is to insulate the process from the

appearance of impropriety arising from having to rely solely on private funding.

Clearly as to the first one, an orderly and speedy transition, this

suggests that there is a one-way street built into this legislation,

that money can be replaced, time cannot. So that the idea is that

there is a reason why we swiftly and promptly determine who the

apparent successful candidate is and release the money.

Second is concerns about reliance on the private funds. My understanding is that the Bush-Cheney team has undergone heroic

actions well exceeding what is provided for under the law in order

to prevent that from happening, from actual influence being a problem. But the perception is what the drafters were concerned about

first. And second they were concerned about the fundamental unfairness of this—this is a governmental function. They defined it,

the transition, as a governmental function. It is simply unfair and

inappropriate to have that be held hostage purely to private funds.

So what this all means is that if you look at the legislative history and the plain language, it is clear what they have in mind is

a majority of pledged or certified electors is sufficient and

mandatorily triggers the apparent successful candidate provisions

of the statute, and the fact that might later be reversed does not

change that result.

Finally, there’s been question about the scope of the Administrator’s discretion. I think if you read the statute in its full context,

and the legislative history is clear what we are talking about, is

very, very narrow—narrowly circumscribed and limited discretion

to make a predicate factual finding that one candidate is the apparent successful candidate. Under standard—this isn’t a court of law,

but under standard legal principles, a factual finding of that sort

must be supported by substantial evidence. There is really—there

is certainly no substantial evidence that anybody other than Governor Bush is the President-elect. And there is no substantial evidence that Governor Bush is not the President-elect, given that he

has 271 pledged and certified electoral votes.

Also, the Administrator is clearly a primarily ministerial actor,

under this act at least. It is simply absurd to think that Congress

would define the Administrator’s obligations under this act as

being ministerial in scope and then give gigantic discretion on the

front end to determine when he has to release the funds. It is simply in this—to some extent is related to what Professor Turley said.

It is simply not a reasonable understanding of the statute to think

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that they meant for the Administrator to have sort of a free-ranging portfolio to make that sort of determination.

I see I’m over time, but I might ask if I could have leave for a

minute or two just to comment on some of the other arguments

that have been made with respect to the law.

First, I do agree that regardless of whether or not Governor Bush

is named the President-elect, Vice President Gore cannot be called

that. I don’t think there’s any basis for that, which would respond

to Congressman Ose’s question about whether or not we could release funds to both. I checked, and in fact for the Vice President,

in response to your question, Mr. Chairman, the time period does

begin 30 days. It was amended in the 1988 version.

There’s an interesting colloquy in the legislative history that specifically talks about a question to Mr. Fascell was posed: What if

we have a candidate who is three or four votes shy in the electoral

college? And Congressman Fascell specifically replied ‘‘no,’’ if

they’re basically three or—if they don’t have the majority of the

electoral college, there is no basis for considering such a candidate

to be the President-elect. The clear implication being if they do

have a majority, that it would be appropriate.

Finally on these isolated bits of legislative history that have been

taken out of context, I believe, with respect to what it means—with

respect to a close election, first, I cited the specific recognition that

the 1960 election, where in fact we had a lot of litigation and other

recounts that threatened to upset the result, was not considered to

be the sort of thing that interfered with the designation of an apparent winner. Most importantly it’s a standard technique of statutory construction that floor statements, especially isolated floor

statements taken out of context, cannot contradict the plain language and the reasonable construction of the statute.

I think if you look at the full legislative history in historical context of this statute, I believe that the Administrator’s reliance on

those provisions that he relies on is simply unfounded. First is the

reference, as I said, the question was posed: What if we have a candidate who’s three or four votes shy of having majority? The response was, Mr. Fascell’s response that the—in that situation the

Administrator would have no discretion to release the funds.

The second one that is relied upon is the one on page 13348, the

reference to a close election there, if you read the question that was

posed to that, it had special historical significance; which is the

question that Mr. Fascell was responding to, was a question of Mr.

Gross which says we apparently have a situation growing up in

certain States of the Union whereby there may be independent

electors. That is a clear reference to the 1960 election and the situation in the early 1960’s.

In the 1960 election, a number of independent Democratic electors were named who then voted for Harry Byrd rather than John

F. Kennedy for President. It is clear what he was talking about is

electors who are not pledged or certified to any particular candidate but are running on a position that they have independent

discretion to vote their conscience; the idea being that then the

southern States could then use them to broker a deal with either

the President of either party to throw their electors to whichever

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one they thought would give them what they wanted on the obvious issues that were dividing the country at that time.

Clearly what this is, again, is a reference to a situation where

you cannot predict that any candidate has a majority of electors.

Both of those situations are references to situations where no candidate has a majority of pledged or certified electors. So I think

that reference to those close elections is taken out of context. Read

in full context, it supports a reading that the Administrator is mistaken in this situation and that the plain language and the policies

of the statute further support that conclusion.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Zywicki follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you. Do any of the other members and especially the Administrator have any thoughts about Professor

Zywicki’s testimony? Does it give you some new guidance, Mr. Administrator.

Mr. BARRAM. No. I mean, am I going to change at this moment

where I have been in the last few days? No. I listened to him very

carefully and disagree with him on some issues. I don’t think we

want to get into that kind of a discussion right now. He’s a law professor, I’m just a business guy.

Mr. HORN. Modesty does not fit. OK. I’ll give you the same invitation I gave to Mr. Turley. If you want to get us some language

in the next 24 hours, we’ll be glad to have it.

Mr. ZYWICKI. I think the statute is fine the way it’s written.

Mr. BARRAM. I will make one comment if I can, Mr. Chairman.

I don’t know how important this is, but I do recall in 1960—and

I am old enough to remember that election—that Richard Nixon

was saying, well into the night, if present trends continue, you

know, John Kennedy will win. I believe he conceded the next morning or middle of the morning.

Mr. INK. He did.

Mr. BARRAM. I think that’s a fairly significant event.

Mr. HORN. I think you’re right on that one. I’m not aware of all

those other cases they cited. They must have been State Republican parties because President Nixon’s view, which I do not intend

to contend even though we knew Illinois, New Jersey, and a few

other States where there were major fraud. The Senate Committee

on Rules did send an investigator to Chicago, and when they

opened the ballot box carefully labeled, Kennedy 80, Nixon 2, and

there were no ballots at all in the box. So, just the tally. And I’ll

never forget that one. The Rules Committee in the Senate isn’t

often working on a lot of things, but this one was fascinating.

Mr. Ink, is that your recollection?

Mr. INK. Yes.

Mr. ZYWICKI. My understanding is that the litigation did continue apace just as the Seminole County litigation in Florida is not

a Gore litigation situation, it’s a State litigation brought by voters

in Seminole County but threatens to upset the election. My understanding, that there was several States in which litigation did proceed apace and recounts proceeded at pace, including Hawaii

changing their designated electors, and there was an extremely

close election, that those things did not, in Congressman Fascell’s

judgment, upset the ease with which one could be designated—that

John F. Kennedy could be designated the apparent successful candidate in that election.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Gerson, do you agree with Mr. Zywicki’s testimony?

Mr. GERSON. In part; and in other parts we might disagree a bit.

I mean, Nixon did act in the way that you described, and the two

contests that might have mattered, Illinois and West Virginia, were

withdrawn as a result of what Mr. Nixon instructed his lieutenants

to do at the time. But I don’t know that detracts from the main

argument. I don’t agree that the statute is sufficient at this time

for the reasons that we’re all discussing.

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On the other hand, Professor Zywicki and I do agree that the Administrator shouldn’t have unfettered discretion. And we also agree

that we believe he reached the wrong decision with the discretion

that he has, because ‘‘apparent’’ is a conditional term. And one can

say, I believe correctly, that Governor Bush apparently has 271

pledged electors. I think that’s a fair appraisal of where Professor

Zywicki and I might agree and disagree. I think we probably agree

more on the material aspects of his testimony. I certainly don’t

agree this is the worst statute I have seen, though.

Mr. ZYWICKI. Not my position.

Mr. HORN. Well, I thank you.

We now go to the penultimate witness, Norman J. Ornstein, resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Policy Research.

Mr. ORNSTEIN. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. I might note

at the start that I spent most of the last couple of years and intend

to spend the next several months codirecting the Transition to Governing Project done with AEI Brookings and also in conjunction

with the Hoover Institution. We’ve been geared up to facilitate a

speedy transition. It’s been a frustrating process, to be sure.

I think we have three basic questions here today that we’ve had

to deal with. The first one, on which we’ve just had some lengthy

discussion, and which we’ve just had some lengthy discussion of

whether the Administrator appropriately exercised his ministerial

function. I want to weigh in on that one also. Then come to two

very relevant questions: What can be done about this situation

now; and what, if anything, can be done to improve the law for the

future that will extend beyond this election to the next ones?

I come down on the side that the Administrator did appropriately

exercise his ministerial function. I’ve read the history and read the

language and I believe—and here I take slight issue, which is unusual for me, with my colleague Paul Light, too. I think that the

Congress was very concerned with the notion of a political judgment being made by a nonpolitical figure at a delicate time. It was

actually I think something more on the minds of Republicans at

the time, partly because you had Democrats running everything in

1963. Certainly it was H.R. Gross’ concern, the idea that by making

a judgment when there was still a question, a serious question, a

real question that could provide some psychological or other advantages to a candidate, inappropriately so.

Now, as Paul said, Dante Fascell tried to draw a line. He said

it wasn’t going to happen. It doesn’t happen very often. It has happened before clearly in three elections: 1800, 1824, and 1876. And

the question we have today is partly if we’re going to consider

those examples and that judgment and what Congress was talking

about, is this election closer to 1800, 1824, 1876, or is it closer to,

say, 1960?

To me there’s no question that it’s much closer to the former

three than the latter. Partly, as we just said, in 1960 you had a

concession; you did not have a candidate pursuing challenges. And

if they had, challenges had been pursued, it is true that 1960 was

a close election in popular vote terms, but where it matters in electoral votes, it was not one State it was several States. It would

have required a parlay from several States.

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We know from our history that Richard Nixon considered whether or not he would carry out a challenge. For a variety of reasons,

some pragmatic, some ideological, some related to his basic sense

that it would be bad for the country, he decided not to. The patriotic reasons were a part of it as well. It would have required a

number of challenges with very iffy outcomes.

What we have here is an election, in which at the moment we

have one candidate with 271 apparent electoral votes, the other

with 267 but with 25 of those electoral votes hanging in the balance of between one-fiftieth and one one-hundredth of 1 percent of

the votes in a State with challenges going forward. That is not

comparable I think to 1960. By all of the commentary we have

around us, it certainly has its parallels in the past, although it’s

also unique. So I think the Administrator acted in a reasonable

fashion, even if he might have acted differently or if he had discretionary authority to act differently.

Whether it should be handled differently in the future, I can’t for

the life of me see why turning this over to the Attorney General

is better than turning it over to the Administrator of the General

Services Administration, when the whole point of this was to make

a judgment not about who the President was but about when you

begin a transition process. It seems to me it’s an appropriate place

in which to go.

Now, what do we do about this situation in the more practical

vein? I would urge to you take one action, and that is this: We now

have, I think, a strong desire in the country and in Washington to

move in a bipartisan direction, however we go. I would urge Mr.

Horn and Mr. Turner, when this hearing ends, to call up Speaker

Hastert, Minority Leader Gephardt, also Majority Leader Lott and

Minority Leader Daschle. With Congress around and people here

this week, it seems to me that you can get an easy amendment to

this act, or ought to be able to within a day or so—I would guess

you would have the President willing and eager to sign it—that allocates these funds immediately to candidates. Do it now, give

them space.

Mr. HORN. That’s why we’ve given the 24 hours bit.

Mr. ORNSTEIN. I think we can act more swiftly than Congress

usually acts now, because it seems to me there is an overwhelming

consensus that ought to be done now and into the future; that it

is in the Nation’s interest to beginning a transition early.

Let me just very quickly address a couple of issues, and I won’t

go long. I’ve done it before in front of the committee and the subcommittee, and I hope we can do it again. I hope after this is over

or during the remaining weeks of this session in preparation for

next time, you will take an even broader look at this act. You did

some very commendable things in the last Congress, and I think

they are going to have a strong positive impact.

But I believe we ought to be encouraging a climate in which

transitions begin before the election, in which we not only encourage but almost mandate the candidates to begin a transition process before the election is over, to begin a formal transition process.

Right now, and through this contest, despite a lot of what we hoped

to get out there in the dialog in the country, it’s still considered

presumptuous to talk about or to act or to move in different ways

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before the election is over. We should start that process and make

sure it can continue.

I would also urge you to look at the possibility of codifying an

action that Attorney General Reno very commendably took, or at

least announced that she would take, just a couple of days ago.

And that is to make sure that the FBI field investigations of prospective nominees take place, begin before those nominations are

formally made. It seems to me there is an easy way to do this, if

a President-elect, or even in a situation like this where there may

be even the slightest question, puts forward a list of potential

nominees with the approval of those people—you don’t want investigations going on for the wrong reasons—that the FBI should

know clearly in advance that it can begin that process, so that we

can minimize the delays going forward.

I would hope what would flow from that as well is we would do

a full-scale investigation of all the impediments in place to get

Presidential appointees into those offices as early as possible. We

have a lot of suggestions out there on the table, some of which go

back a few years to the 20th Century Funds Task Force, some of

which I and my colleagues have made and you could do no greater

service to the country than to move on those as well.

Thank you very much.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. I ask the gentleman from Texas, the

ranking member, Mr. Turner, if he has some questions of the panelists.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Ornstein, obviously from being here and hearing my remarks, you know that I concur with your analysis regarding the

authority of the Administrator and what the statute directs him to

do or not to do. The one thing that did pique my interest about

your suggestions for the future—and I certainly concur that we

could amend the statute immediately—be able to fund both candidates in transition under these types of circumstances and should

do so. But you have suggested that we go further and provide some

transitional funding for candidates prior to the November election

day. I’m not sure I understand why you think that is as critical or

appropriate as funding the successful candidates, or the candidates,

both of whom may be successful after election day.

Mr. ORNSTEIN. Well, just briefly, Mr. Turner, I think what happens now is that for all kinds of reasons, Presidential candidates

don’t want to take the time or feel it’s inappropriate to talk about

or to plan, other than surreptitiously, a transition in advance. Now

we do have the candidates pick transition directors. They tried to

operate below the radar screen. What ends up happening is a

President-elect often doesn’t really start thinking about this process until the day after the election, or sometimes later, and at point

at which he’s entirely exhausted, when there is no other strong incentive to really move rapidly.

A lot of things could be in place earlier. And not only that, I

think it’s good and important for the country to recognize that a

transition is a meaningful exercise. It isn’t just something we

watch idly as we see a new person begin to ease into the Presidency, but involves serious, tangible steps for governing.

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We need to focus more on governing during the campaign. Candidates should focus more on governing. And it’s useful to find

ways structurally to build that into the process. I think, given what

we know, given that the last couple of Presidencies, the number of

months that it takes just to get the Senate-confirmable appointees

in place when you start just the day after the election, we need to

cut that back. If we can begin to hit the ground running even before the election, it wouldn’t hurt.

Mr. GERSON. May I dissent slightly from something Mr. Ornstein

just said? I think this committee will be able to come up with suitable language that deals with the situation post-election that we

have today, as I have. I reiterate that and urge the committee, the

subcommittee, to do so. But I think you are running into great danger if you extend that sort of license to a time before the election.

We’ve had third parties in the last two elections that have had a

meaningful effect on the outcome. And I hesitate to want to ever

be involved in the kind of litigation that one would face as to

preelection funding of such an operation, especially when some

third-party candidate might allege that his or her campaign is the

linchpin future policy.

And from a theoretical standpoint, I think it would be unwise for

the legislative process in terms of funding to supplant what the

parties properly should do in advance of the election in defining the

direction of their candidate, or the candidate in defining the direction of the party.

And so, while I think Mr. Ornstein’s suggestion is laudable from

election day on, where we have a suitably close race, that one can

say rationally that there is at least the potentiality for alternative

candidates ultimately to become President, I wouldn’t go beyond it.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Light.

Mr. LIGHT. I would say back in 1988 we did have provisions in

the Presidential Transition Effectiveness Act for doing exactly what

Norm is suggesting. We had—the U.S. Senate passed a bill that as

part of the act would have given the major parties, committees as

defined under the Federal Election Campaign Act, $250,000 each

to do some preelection transition planning sort of personnel kinds

of things, inventories of positions. And it happened at a table here

in conference where we just had a problem dealing with the

amount of money that would be wasted. And it was dropped because there were some members of the conference committee who

felt it was a waste of money to give a losing candidate $250,000

for preelection planning.

To this day, I think it was a mistake. And no disrespect intended

to the giant in the portrait above your shoulder. I think it would

have been a good investment. And the parties would have continued that activity after the election and would have built the capacity—a small investment that might have yielded a big result. I

guess I would say on this side that we came close, but no cigar.

No disrespect again.

Mr. HORN. Well, I want to get Dwight Ink into this. I was just

really looking at the lawyer questions to try to wind that one up.

And Mr. Ink has, I think, served seven Presidents, he’s testified before Congress over 50 years, and he has been acting GSA Administrator. And so——

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Mr. INK. Twice.

Mr. HORN. Once.

Mr. INK. Twice.

Mr. HORN. Or twice. I’d like to get some of his thoughts in, particularly if they relate to the legal drafting here and what you

think—who should do it; should the Controller General do it, or

whoever?

Mr. INK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Having had that experience

that you talked about, I feel very strongly that a transition has

much to do with the success or failure of a new Presidency, particularly in the first year, sometimes throughout a whole Presidential

term. We saw, of course, what happened to the Kennedy transition

in the national security area where that vacuum directly led to the

Bay of Pigs and then later to the Cuban nuclear missile crisis.

But there are many other things that are much less dramatic

that have a considerable impact on the success or failure of a Presidency. Without going into the details, my own view is that the flavor of much of the hearing today considerably understates the importance of the transition and considerably understates the problems that we’re already accumulating in this particular transition.

Mr. Sununu talked about some of them. The new budget people

are going to have to start virtually from scratch to pull together a

new budget. You cannot do that scattered around in law offices

around the town. You cannot do that. It’s almost impossible to do

it under the very best of circumstances. Policies, new initiatives,

have to be developed in such a way that they’re workable. We saw

the problem with President Clinton’s health care plan there, which

the workability dimension was not addressed during the early period.

There are a whole series of things that need attention, and we’re

already behind schedule. And much of the perception today, which

I agree with, nevertheless was from the perspective of White House

people and the outside media, not from the perspective of the agencies and the departments where the impact of these delays can be

very, very serious. And I think we’re already seriously behind

schedule.

I agree that, by the way, that I think the GSA staff—June Huber

I think has done very well. And I think that they have tried very

hard within the framework of the law as they have had it interpreted for them.

With respect to the law, I think one can make, as has been done

here, a legal argument that funds could have been released or

could now be released by the General Services Administration. I

think there’s a very strong counterargument to that. But what I

think we need to keep in mind is the public policy dimension. To

what extent would the general public accept the notion that an

agency head, head of GSA, has determined their next President?

My own view is that is wishful thinking. I do not think in a political public policy sense, it would be accepted. I think we have to

have some legislative action.

I think we need to amend the Presidential Transition Act. With

the litigation that’s been spawned in this election, that is likely

going to create I think much more litigation in the future than

we’ve had in the past.

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I have one possible suggestion. Probably there are better ones.

But in my testimony I suggest, as one example, that if 5 or 10

days, whichever you want, after the election, no candidate has

clearly won, GSA should then make available the assistance now

authorized under the law on an equal basis to each candidate until

a clear winner is determined by such means as a concession or the

legal processes have run their course. Admittedly, the amount received by the eventual winner would be reduced. Or, and what I

would prefer, is that supplemental funds would be made available

but held in reserve for such an eventuality. So that is one suggestion I would suggest that the committee take under consideration

in the next 48 hours. I think without waiting to see how that happens, I believe that this committee should move forward, as Mr.

Ornstein has suggested, I think to look at much broader than just

this provision I’ve talked about, which is something I would suggest be done immediately and see what else can be done. And I do

support the thoughts of Paul Light and Norm Ornstein on developing some way to have some advance funding in advance of the election.

Mr. Chairman, beyond the transition legislation, however, I

think we also need to look at the need for reform of election laws

and regulations. This current situation is weakening the confidence

of the public in our election process and it is exposing the United

States to ridicule around the world. I suggest a bipartisan commission to look at opportunities for removing the types of election

problems we’re now experiencing, perhaps a commission co-chaired

by former Presidents Ford and Carter, with a composition drawn

heavily from former State and local officials. I’m not suggesting

that this commission review the electoral college concept, because

I think that gets us too quickly into partisan issues that would

overshadow everything else. I do not suggest that a commission

should attempt to set standards for States. I think it could bring

State and local groups together to examine the election problems,

compare approaches that they found useful, and consider reforms

that States might find useful, and it might even spawn some State

commissions, such as the Hoover Commission did, in spawning little Hoover commissions in the 1950’s.

So, Mr. Chairman, to summarize, I think the transition problem

is not a national crisis, but I think it’s much more serious than

much of what has been described here today. And I do recommend

specific legislation, specific amendments for the Presidential Transition Act, and I recommend a bipartisan commission in looking at

our election laws.

Mr. BARRAM. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. Thank you for that. Yes.

Mr. BARRAM. For what it’s worth, and not having cleared this

with the White House—but I endorse to any notion of within 10

days, and I would think there ought to be a supplemental budget

available. I think that would be fine. We would have to figure out

how to find additional space rather than split it in half, but that’s

a small price to pay for the kind of transition that we ought to

have.

Mr. HORN. Yes. Mr. Zywicki.

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Mr. ZYWICKI. If I may just have one brief comment. Which is, it

strikes me—again my view is that the Administrator’s discretion is

virtually nil under this statute that’s triggered by the electoral college count. But if you disagree with it, it seems like there’s really

two directions you have to go.

One is either to provide for some sort of—after that, a judicial

review or some sort of administrative review of the standards that

the Administrator is using, if we are going to interpret this such

that it gives them discretion, you have got to have some mechanism for reviewing that. Alternatively, you can clarify the language

to make it clearer to remove the discretion and create more of a

bright line rule, which is what I’m proposing it does already. The

statute creates a bright line rule that relieves the Administrator of

most of his discretion, but it seems like the current situation of

unreviewable discretion on no articulated basis seems to me to be

the worst of all worlds.

Mr. HORN. Well, unlike you in the discussion here, what individual or holder of a position in the executive branch should be asked

to do that? Any thoughts, other than the GSA Administrator?

Mr. ZYWICKI. I don’t necessarily have any problems with the GSA

Administrator doing it in a way such that it triggers, say, the APA

protections and is subject to judicial review. So you could have a

situation where you clarify he has discretion to make this call, but

then say that it is a factual interpretation that is subject to judicial

review under the standards or the mechanisms that we review discretionary judgments by administrative agents, and that seems like

it could be done in a relatively expedited basis in Federal courts.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Gerson.

Mr. GERSON. I would respectfully disagree with that. I think your

questioning, Mr. Horn, implies a much better way to deal with this.

There is no problem in the abstract with the Administrator of GSA

exercising some level of supervision, but the idea—and even though

I talk about APA compliance as one way to look at reviewability,

if we are in exactly the same situation we are in now, which is one

thing, we want to diminish the number of cases like this that go

to court. We do not want the judiciary serving as the archons for

decisions that belong in the body politic or in the legislature. So I

think that is not a good idea.

The much better idea, the one that you describe, is either to tone

up the definition of ‘‘apparence’’ in the statute or, better than that,

deal on a prospective basis in the way that you are just describing,

that I think everybody would like to see you act, that when you

have a race of sufficient closeness, which ought to be defined to

eliminate fringe candidates from this discussion altogether, that if

somebody is within 10 percent of the number of electoral votes that

you need, or whatever it might be, that the Administrator is authorized to fund those candidates subject to the sorts of considerations that you are describing now.

That’s a way that the problem can be worked out in an intelligent political sense without burdening the courts or imposing an

imperial judiciary on a process where it doesn’t belong at all. This

idea that we keep hearing that these challenges to the election are

all within the rights of the candidates, true enough, and so this is

a great thing. It is not a great thing.

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Mr. HORN. Let me ask you all about the 271 electoral votes.

Were they real? I am told the opposition to the Governor have been

making phone calls all over America trying to get electoral votes

to change. How would you define it if those electors, 1 or 2 weeks

earlier, note a majority, and at that point, could the GSA Administrator make a decision or not? Is it on this topic or have you got

a substitute?

Mr. ORNSTEIN. No, it is on that topic. It seems to me that you

can’t set a specific set of criteria that will govern all the time. If

you look at 1800, 1824, 1876, the classic examples, this one is different. The next one is going to be different than these. What could

you do is lay out some of the criteria you would want to use, and

it would seem to me the absence of a concession, an election where

one State, or perhaps two, are within a small margin of error,

where the electoral votes themselves would change the outcome,

and there are legal processes in place being pursued by the candidate who is behind, are certainly reasonable criteria.

But one should note, Mr. Chairman, that just imagine if the circumstances between the two candidates today were reversed, if

Vice President Gore had 271 electoral votes to 267 at the moment

for Governor Bush. Imagine that it came down to Florida with a

margin of one one-hundredth of 1 percent and legal processes were

going on, and a GSA Administrator of the same party as the Vice

President preempted the process early and said, I’m going to declare that the Vice President is a President-elect, we would have

had a firestorm of controversy. That, it seems to me, is just what

H.R. Gross, among others, wanted to avoid, and, you know, if you

consider that context, you can find a way to inject yourself into the

political process. We didn’t consider it this time, because you have

the opposite political parties, but boy, as we have seen in other

places in the country, you can have people in the same party and

it creates a cloud.

Mr. LIGHT. I think the issue about what H.R. Gross intended in

his debate has to be measured by what Dante Fascell and the authors of the statute in Congress did eventually conclude in the statute, which was, it did not wish to wait for absolute certainty here.

They wanted to start the transition. I’m very comfortable with the

Administrator of the GSA retaining the discretion to make the

apparency decision. If he can’t make it within a date certain, then

let him begin parallel transitions, then the big debate, and one that

I’m sure that this Administrator doesn’t want to engage in is

whether you are going to put one at 1800 G Street, and the other

down at the Navy Yard and what that battle is going to be for the

best space.

But the Administrator does have the ability to make these decisions. You shouldn’t put the criteria into the statute. Put the criteria as such into your legislative report and just create a trigger

so that the Administrator can continue to use his discretion.

Mr. HORN. May I say on that last point, we faced the problem

in the Federal courts of they don’t care anything about reports,

about colloquies on the floor or anything. It has to either be in the

law or don’t expect it to be administered.

Mr. LIGHT. But if you get too detailed, you lock yourself into a

set of criteria. There was some discussion here today about who is

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the GSA Administrator after all. Well, we can see him and it is a

unit of government that has a strong record and has been an agency that has had good strong leadership, and we can allow that Administrator to have the discretion within appropriate bounds, I

think.

Mr. HORN. Let me ask Mr. Zywicki.

Mr. ZYWICKI. On that point, I think it is crystal clear from at

least the legislative history, if not the statute, but that they clearly

understood that a majority of electoral votes was going to be the

trigger here, because that is all they talk about is the scenario

where if somebody is three or four votes shy in the electoral college,

they cannot be the President-elect. They clearly contemplate that

some of the electoral votes might have the possibility to change

after an apparent winner was named, and that simply did not

deter them in that situation. That seems to me to be, at least as

originally constructed, a majority of the electoral votes is the trigger.

And I want to second something that Mr. Gerson said which is,

I’m not calling for judicial review. I think that the best situation

is to create some sort of bright line rule with respect to this because, although I’m sure Mr. Barram’s doing his best in a difficult

situation, I simply don’t think there’s any reason to believe that

when they wrote this legislation, that they expected that the Administrator was going to wield this kind of discretion. It is clear

that they thought it was going to be a bright line rule, an easy determined outcome based on electoral votes and that you’re not

going to have this sort of open-ended kind of inquiry or they would

have provided for some sort of review of discretion if they’d intended to create that sort of open-ended inquiry.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Barram.

Mr. BARRAM. Mr. Chairman, I don’t have any doubt in my mind

that in the year 2004, we will know how to count votes electronically with technology so we don’t have this stuff going on that is

going on today. And if I may suggest to this committee, I think the

most valuable thing for you to do is figure out how to get a supplemental appropriation, or some way where both campaigns can

begin to spend government money on the transition activities. I believe that you can walk into—you could have a poll—every precinct

in America could have a piece of technology where you made your

choices, and a screen flashed up and said is this what you meant,

you could push a button and now it is recorded.

The most significant problem we would have is making sure that

none of that got out until 11 p.m. in the East. But with the machine count it would be very hard to ever say, well, I didn’t mean

it when I pushed the button ‘‘yes.’’ The younger generation, who

have grown up using video games, would find this particularly sensible. If we did it at every precinct, it would be easy for me to imagine people cleverly figuring out how you could do that over the

Internet with the right kind of encryption, including absentee ballots. You could even walk into the polling booth with that little

card that we’ve all seen a million times on television, punched,

stick it into the device, and up would pop here’s what you voted

for, is that what you meant, Mr. So-and-so? You push a button

‘‘yes’’ and you are done.

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So I think the solution to this is going to be much more technological and a better voting mechanism than it is, to not be disrespectful about it, but how many angels can dance on the head of

a pin conversation that we can easily get into?

Mr. HORN. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Turner, on questioning.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to ask, maybe,

if we could get your thoughts on one proposal here to that see if

we could reach consensus. Obviously, if we are going to remedy this

legislatively, in the near term, we have got to have something pretty simple, pretty straightforward, everybody understands, everybody agrees and signs off on, and I think Mr. Light, and I know

Mr. Ornstein shared that view, that we don’t want to put the Administrator of the GSA in the position of either actually picking or

appearing to pick the President. And this suggestion, Mr. Zywicki,

that this current law is a bright line, I don’t view it as a bright

line other than to say, as I think the legislative history would support Mr. Sell, if you don’t know, an intelligent being can’t really

tell, you do nothing almost as if to say this is not any entitlement,

this is Federal dollars we’re talking about here, and if you can’t figure it out, well, you just don’t do anything, which is exactly what

happened in the instance case.

So maybe, and let me ask each of you to respond to this, maybe

we could leave the language alone regarding the apparent winner,

because as I read from the dictionary you handed us, one definition

of ‘‘apparent’’ as a synonym is ‘‘evident, obvious or patent; capable

of easily being received or understood; plain, clear or obvious.’’ And

perhaps we could leave the statutory language regarding ‘‘apparent’’ alone for the moment, and simply say that if it is not determined within 10 days, then the two candidates at the top will divide the money. That means we don’t disturb the discretion that

is there for the GSA Administrator to decide, but if he doesn’t, for

whatever reason, then he’s not in the position of actively choosing

one over the other, or even choosing that there’s not a winner. It

would simply say this failure to act within 10 days will act in division of funds to the top two candidates. Now, I’d like each of you

to respond to that.

Mr. Ink.

Mr. INK. Well, of course in principle, I think that’s a great idea.

I’m glad you suggested it. Because I think it gets the Administrator

out of the role insofar as the public is concerned, the apparent role

of having to choose a U.S. President, which is absolutely the wrong

role for the Administrator of GSA. Whether you use the word ‘‘apparent’’ or ‘‘clear,’’ I used the word ‘‘clear,’’ I don’t have a strong

view on that, but the concept I strongly support. I think relying

upon judicial remedies is the wrong road to go. You have got to

minimize the uncertainty as much as you can. You have to minimize as much as possible the role of the courts in trying to determine when funds are going to be available for the transition.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Ornstein.

Mr. ORNSTEIN. I’d only have one concern, Mr. Turner. I think

congenitally I look at unintended consequences when I think about

any of these changes, and you just need to think a little bit about

that in terms of making sure you don’t provide any incentive for

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a candidate who’s not in a position to win to avoid a concession to

get a bundle of money to keep going for a period of time. So you

still need to have a process here where you move toward declaring

a winner, except under extraordinary circumstances.

I don’t think you can specify all of those circumstances. I think

that Mr. Barram is right, we are going to move to a very different

voting system and the electronic aspect of it; the touch screen aspect of it will take away some of these problems, but I will also tell

you we are moving very rapidly toward vote by mail, vote by Internet, people not voting in the voting places, and that is going to

bring us back to a kind of corruption that we had before we had

the Australian ballot and the secret ballot in the voting booth after

1884 where we will have other kinds of problems that will emerge.

We can’t tell them all. We can probably establish some guidelines.

But I think you need to have some discretion here for an individual

to make some of those determinations.

Mr. HORN. I take it that on this suggestion, which I am not opposed to if that was a President already in office he or she would

not get any of that money, because I think H.R. Gross would say

in that colloquy, ‘‘boy, that will really be some pizza party.’’ So

that’s how he used to deal with this.

Mr. ZYWICKI. I think it raises a good idea, one that probably

needs more study, more than we have the leisure now. One easy

fix of the current situation would be to amend section 4(C) that

was enacted in 1988 that gives us 30-day reach-back period for the

Vice President and simply amend that, I presume do it retroactively, to say that trigger for the outgoing administration begins

the day of the election, so that you could open that window and

just release the money that Vice President Gore would be entitled

to 30 days before the end of the term and just open it up. I don’t

see any reason why 30 days is a better rule than Election Day anyway. So that might be one easy way of—just very small tweak

could resolve the issue that is currently going on.

Mr. LIGHT. I think you’d want to make sure you prorate the expenditures where you don’t end up in a situation where you have

spent all the money by December 18th. So you have to amend the

statute to give the Administrator discretion to make sure the expenditures are reasonable and you are not outspending the moneys

available. I think you could do that very easily in the statute. You

will have near certainty with December 18th or—I mean, you have

absolute certainty on January 20th. So you just have to roll back

and make sure the money isn’t gone.

Mr. HORN. Any other comments on this, Mr. Ink?

Mr. INK. My preference if we were to go this route, though, would

be to do it in such a way that the winner was not handicapped, not

having the amount of funds reduced. I think by having a supplemental amount that would be held in reserve for such an eventuality would be a very small price to pay for opening up the ability

to move forward with a full-fledged transition.

Mr. LIGHT. Let me also suggest that in your drafting process that

you make as a condition of accepting these funds in this sort of

dual transition period full disclosure of any private funds being

raised. I mean, I would just basically pull forward the requirements under the current 1988 amendments.

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Mr. TURNER. That is current law, is it not?

Mr. LIGHT. Yeah, but, I mean, right now the Bush and Cheney

transition have voluntarily agreed to abide by the disclosure requirements.

Mr. GERSON. The law would take care of it. The reason why the

Bush-Cheney group is where it is is because it is not getting the

funds in the transition. If it were, the disclosure provision would

be triggered. So that I think that if you make those funds available

and you continue what you have in 1988, it’s—that’s a nonproblem.

Mr. ORNSTEIN. Mr. Chairman, I would urge you to do this now

in the simplest and most neutral way possible for now. Then you

can go back when you have more leisure and think about whether

the language that you’ve used would be more appropriate without

unintended consequences for future elections.

Mr. TURNER. I agree with that. Did I understand all of you to

agree with the basic concept of having the Administrator exercise

his discretion within the first 10 days? If he fails to so exercise, and

the funds shall be divided equally between the two top candidates,

and subject to the refinements you mentioned such as ensuring

that they are accountable for the funds. They don’t spend it all at

one time, and I assume such time as the apparent winner is determinable, then the funds would cease to the losing candidate, would

that be an appropriate refinement as well?

Mr. GERSON. I think Mr. Ornstein made a very important point,

though, and I want to subscribe to that particularly, which is, don’t

legislate for all times today and tomorrow. That’s a bad way to put

the meal down. Solve this problem. You have great consensus and

very easy resolution. If you get into legislating for all time, you’re

not going to be able to push this thing through the short window

that you have. I think Mr. Ornstein and I, as this discussion has

progressed, are fairly close together on what you ought to do ultimately. There needs to be—to the extent the discretion resides in

the Administrator or somebody else, there still needs to be some

defining circumstances as to how he or she might exercise it. I

think it ought to be pegged to the electoral vote or probable electoral vote more than anything else, given the Nation’s history and

the way the Constitution works, but that aside, I think you ought

to solve the immediate problem now and then, in a more considerate way, deal with the ultimate solution to how that discretion

might be exercised.

Mr. BARRAM. While you’re solving the immediate problem, I

would really urge you to seriously consider doubling the money or

making more money available, especially now if you come up with

a solution where we end up with having both campaigns with

money, it is going to cost a little more than if we had 4 months

to prepare for it. I just want you to know that so that we don’t

shortchange either group. You could just take a submarine out of

one of the——

Mr. HORN. Let me thank the staff that put this rapidly together.

J. Russell George; on my left, your right, is staff director and chief

counsel of the subcommittee; Randy Kaplan, counsel; Bonnie

Heald, director of communications; Earl Pierce, professional staff in

back there; Elizabeth Seong, clerk; Rachael Reddick, intern; minority staff, Trey Henderson is counsel, and Jean Gosa is the minority

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clerk. The overworked court reporters are Colleen Lynch and

Melinda Walker, and we thank you both.

And I believe, Mr. Barram, in the decision of the Supreme Court

of the United States, I would urge you to look at the request from

Congressman Kolbe, the appropriator, and myself as chairman of

the authorizers last week and I hope that there would be some ascertainment as quickly as possible as to who the apparent winner

of this Presidential race is, and I would hope in the next few days

that we would have some language that might solve the problem,

but you can also stop the language if you take a look at what the

Supreme Court’s decision is today. I think you’d find nothing is

going to happen until that decision is taken a look at, and I would

hope you and your staff would go there and see if you can’t change

your mind on a lot of this because time, as one said, is going along

and money isn’t. Thank you. And we are now in adjournment.

[Whereupon, at 2:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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