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74–374 PDF 2012

WHY RESHUFFLING GOVERNMENT AGENCIES 

WON’T SOLVE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S 

OBESITY PROBLEM 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT 

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

FEBRUARY 15, 2012 

Serial No. 112–138 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

http://www.house.gov/reform 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California, Chairman 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

TIM WALBERG, Michigan 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona 

RAU ́ L R. LABRADOR, Idaho 

PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

JOE WALSH, Illinois 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

DENNIS A. ROSS, Florida 

FRANK C. GUINTA, New Hampshire 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Ranking 

Minority Member 

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio 

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois 

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

LAWRENCE J. BRADY, Staff Director 

JOHN D. CUADERES, Deputy Staff Director 

ROBERT BORDEN, General Counsel 

LINDA A. GOOD, Chief Clerk 

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Staff Director 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on March 8, 2012 .............................................................................. 1 

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Mark A. Warner, United States Senator from the State of 

Virginia 

Oral statement .................................................................................................. 4 

Written statement ............................................................................................ 8 

The Honorable Ron Johnson, United States Senator from the State of Wisconsin 

Oral statement .................................................................................................. 11 

Written statement ............................................................................................ 13 

Paul C. Light, Ph.D., Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service, New 

York University 

Oral statement .................................................................................................. 22 

Written statement ............................................................................................ 24 

The Honorable Dan G. Blair, President and CEO, National Academy of Public 

Administration 

Oral statement .................................................................................................. 34 

Written statement ............................................................................................ 36 

Mr. Robert Shea, Grant Thornton LLP 

Oral statement .................................................................................................. 46 

Written statement ............................................................................................ 48 

Mr. Max Stier, President and CEO, Partnership for Public Service 

Oral statement .................................................................................................. 55 

Written statement ............................................................................................ 57 

APPENDIX 

The Washington Post Article: Government continues to shrink, despite ‘obesity problem’ rhetoric ........................................................................................... 80 

The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings, Ranking Member, A Member of Congress 

from the State of Maryland: Opening Statement .............................................. 82 

List of the 108 committees and subcommittees .................................................... 84 

(1) 

WHY RESHUFFLING GOVERNMENT AGENCIES 

WON’T SOLVE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S OBESITY PROBLEM 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2012 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, 

Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:34 a.m., in Room 2154, 

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Darrell E. Issa [chairman of 

the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Issa, Walberg, Lankford, Labrador, 

DesJarlais, Gowdy, Kelly, Cummings, Towns, Norton, Kucinich, 

Tierney, Connolly, Quigley, and Murphy. 

Staff Present: Michael R. Bebeau, Assistant Clerk; Molly Boyl, 

Parliamentarian; Lawrence J. Brady, Staff Director; Adam P. 

Fromm, Director of Member Services and Committee Operations; 

Linda Good, Chief Clerk; Tyler Grimm, Professional Staff Member; 

Jennifer Hemingway, Senior Professional Staff Member; Frederick 

Hill, Director of Communications and Senior Policy Advisor; Ryan 

Little, Professional Staff Member; Justin LoFranco, Deputy Director of Digital Strategy; Mark D. Marin, Director of Oversight; 

Tegan Millspaw, Research Analyst; Jeffrey Post, Professional Staff 

Member; James Robertson, Professional Staff Member; Laura L. 

Rush, Deputy Chief Clerk; Rebecca Watkins, Press Secretary; 

Kevin Carter, Detailee; Krista Boyd, Minority Deputy Director of 

Legislation/Counsel; Beverly Britton Fraser, Minority Counsel; 

Kevin Corbin, Minority Deputy Clerk; Carla Hultberg, Minority 

Chief Clerk; and Paul Kincaid, Minority Press Secretary. 

Chairman ISSA. Good morning. The committee will come to order. 

We on the Oversight Committee exist to secure two fundamental 

principles. First, Americans have a right to know that the money 

Washington takes from them is well spent. And second, Americans 

deserve an efficient effective government that works for them. Our 

duty on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee is to 

protect these rights. Our solemn responsibility is to hold government accountable to taxpayers because taxpayers have a right to 

know what they get from their government. We have a responsibility to work tirelessly in partnership with citizen watchdogs to 

deliver the facts to the American people and bring genuine reform 

to the Federal bureaucracy. 

I will now recognize myself for an opening statement. Today we 

are at the core of our responsibility. President Obama recently unveiled or announced in the State of the Union a reorganization 

2 

plan. His request for authority comes without any specifics, simply 

the need for reorganization. Although we recognize that there may 

be a specific plan that the President can work with us on, I believe 

this committee has an obligation to go far beyond what the President has in mind. 

In fact, under both this President and his predecessor OMB has 

told us that Congress won’t, in fact, be necessary, that we can do 

it with limited authority. That is simply not true. The history has 

shown since the Hoover Commission that the only way to get genuine change in the Federal bureaucracy is to have buy-in in advance from the House, the Senate, the community at large and the 

Executive branch. Reorganizations, like the first major reorganization, require multi-term occurrences. Congresses change, the House 

and the Senate changes significantly and the White House is likely 

to change who is in it, not because this President may not win reelection but because reorganization takes more than 4 or 5 years. 

A good plan is in fact a plan for at least a decade and one that 

takes years to accomplish. Just bringing together disparate databases that in fact have grown up over a generation into a single 

cohesive interactive system would easily take two presidencies. 

So as we begin today talking about waste in government anew, 

let’s understand that since 2008 spending on Federal programs has 

increased by hundreds of billions of dollars. We simply cannot reshuffle the deck chairs on this Titanic. The truth is that uncollected debts total over $290 billion, improper payments total at 

least $115 billion in 2011, the Federal Government has grown its 

workforce by 200,000 employees. Last year the duplicative programs reported by the GAO identified numerous areas that overlap, and in fact none have changed during the interim. 

It is very clear that the administration is on the right track by 

saying that we need a major reorganization, but this committee 

more than any other committee in the House has an obligation to 

look at the big picture. We have to look at last Sunday’s announcement of the new budget which will add $1.3 trillion to the deficit. 

Clearly we cannot tax our way out of it and we cannot cut our way 

out of it. Reorganization that brings efficiency; in other words, winwin situations in which you make changes in which all the essential services get delivered but they get delivered for less. 

Additionally, every Congress we talk about how much is not collected and yet we haven’t made the fundamental investments into 

making sure that next year and the year after collections are more 

and more honest because of the kind of transparency that real reform and database and in cooperation between Cabinet positions 

can bring. That is why I am excited to have not one but two Senators as our lead panel. And before we go to them I now recognize 

the ranking member, Mr. Cummings, for his opening statement. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I 

would like to welcome all of our distinguished witnesses here 

today. And let me thank you, Mr. Chairman, for agreeing to my request to invite Senator Warner who has been a champion of government reform efforts for many years, both as Governor of Virginia and now as the head of the Senate BudgetCommittee’s Task 

Force on Government Performance. I would also like to thank the 

chairman for agreeing to my request to invite our witness on the 

3 

second panel Max Stier, the President and CEO of the Partnership 

for Public Service, which issued a very good report on government 

efficiency issues last year. 

Now on the topic of today’s hearing I confess I am a bit confused. 

The hearing title suggests that the Federal Government has an 

obesity problem that somehow caused the Nation’s budget deficit. 

But according to economists and financial experts, the most significant causes of the Federal deficit are, one, the Bush era tax cuts 

for the wealthy; two, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and, three, 

the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis. Unfortunately, we will 

not be addressing any of these issues today. 

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record 

an excellent Washington Post column published yesterday titled 

Government Continues to Shrink Despite Obesity Problem Rhetoric. 

Chairman ISSA. Since it is excellent, without objection so ordered. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. It so happened to be by Joe Davidson who did 

a great job. The column addresses today’s hearing and describes 

how the size of the Federal workforce has decreased and the government is doing more with less. 

The hearing title also refers to a recent proposal by the President 

to reorganize and consolidate a number of our Nation’s trade agencies into a single department that will be more effective and save 

billions of dollars in the process. Unfortunately, we will not be addressing the details of this proposal today either. 

Instead, today’s hearing appears to be a survey of proposals to 

reduce the size of government and cut the pay and benefits of Federal employees without focusing on the negative impacts of these 

proposals on core services that the American people depend upon. 

I think it is safe to say that every member of the committee and 

this Congress agrees that the Federal Government can and should 

work better. We should always strive to ensure that agencies work 

more effectively and efficiently on behalf of the American taxpayers. Our differences come in figuring out how we get there. I 

do not believe that the way to reform government is to attack millions of hard working middle class workers who are already contributing $60 billion towards deficit reduction as a result of the existing 2-year pay freeze. Yet the House is scheduled to vote this 

week on a bill approved by this committee that will take an additional $44 billion out of their pockets by slashing existing pension 

benefits for new, current and retiring Federal workers. 

This is a wrong approach. We should not try to solve our budget 

problems on the backs of middle class Federal workers while we 

refuse to ask the wealthiest Americans, refuse to ask them to contribute even one penny more towards these goals. Instead, we 

should reform government by cutting waste. For example, there are 

billions of dollars waiting to be saved through contracting reform. 

The mission on wartime contracting identified between $31 billion 

and $60 billion in waste and the United States continues contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Congressman Tierney to his 

credit has introduced a bill to enact one of the Commission’s recommendations by creating a special inspector general for Overseas 

Contingency Operations. 

4 

Congress should also promote greater competition in Federal con- tracts. Federal agencies awarded about $170 billion in noncompetitive contracts in 2009 alone. The administration is also taking a 

number of actions, such as improving agency systems to reduce improper payments by the Federal Government by $50 billion by the 

end of the year. One key tool that we already have in place is 

GPRA Modernization Act on the House side. This new law came 

out of this committee and it was signed by President Obama on 

January 4, 2011. It requires the administration to develop crosscutting agency priority goals and to track progress toward meeting 

those goals. 

Finally, I know that Senator Warner was one of the biggest proponents of this law on the Senate side, and I understand he has 

been pressing the administration to fulfill each and every provision 

of the new law. I look forward to hearing his testimony, as well as 

that of Senator Johnson and all of our witnesses today. And again, 

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. 

Chairman ISSA. Would you yield to the gentleman from Virginia 

for a moment? 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Of course. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank the 

ranking member. I just wanted to of course welcome both of our 

Senators, but I particularly wanted to welcome my home state Senator, soon to be the senior senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia, Mark Warner. Senator Warner and I worked together when 

he was the Governor and I was Chairman of Fairfax County. And 

now we have the privilege of both serving our constituents here in 

the Congress. And I want to thank him for his leadership, his willingness to try to find bipartisan solutions, his leadership on trying 

to find creative solutions to our fiscal problems, and of course his 

championship for the Federal workforce where the Commonwealth 

of Virginia hosts so many Federal employees. 

So I just wanted to welcome him to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. And I thank the chair. 

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

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. We now go to our distinguished 

panel of witnesses. Whether junior or senior Senator you are still 

distinguished. Senator Mark Warner represents the Commonwealth of Virginia, and of course Senator Johnson representing the 

State of Wisconsin. If you were not members of our body you would 

be required to be sworn pursuant to committee rules. Since all of 

us on both sides of the dais at this time are sworn officials we 

would like to hear your testimony. Since you are Senators we have 

to tell you that we do have this clock. It runs for 5 minutes. And 

it means not that much but try to summarize as close as you can 

to 5 minutes. 

Senator Warner. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. MARK R. WARNER, A UNITED 

STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF VIRGINIA 

Senator WARNER. Thank you, Chairman Issa and Ranking Member Cummings, for inviting me today, and members of the committee. I am proud to be here with my good friend Ron Johnson. 

I want to make sure the record shows that both Senator Johnson 

5 

and I were here at the committee on time. And as the chairman 

mentioned a little bit earlier, since we are both fairly junior in the 

Senate we will soon get over this affliction and start treating you 

House Members as House Members as opposed to just new Senators. But we really look forward to the opportunity to be here and 

discuss the way government works. 

I also want to thank the chairman for the collaboration we have 

had on the data bill, something I think that is very important in 

terms of bringing across the board financial transparency to government operations, and I look forward to seeing if we can get that 

passed into law. 

I want to echo what the ranking member said. I looked at the 

title for the hearing today and I had to think it was a colorful title. 

I am not sure that our government is obese, but I am sure it could 

use a bit of housekeeping. 

Chairman ISSA. Senator, it is kind of like when you have a really 

good article but the headline is different. Different groups write 

them. 

Senator WARNER. I get it, I get it. I think we would all agree 

though that for too long we have added programs, regulations and 

policies layer after layer without ever taking time to step back and 

review the structure of government to see if these existing programs and policies really make sense. And this is something that 

Senator Johnson and I have worked on on the Budget Committee 

together and I know it is the function of this committee. I have got 

a lot of ideas, and recognizing the time constraints I want to try 

to hit these very quickly and would love to have the opportunity 

to come back and share in more detail any of the subjects that I 

am going to briefly discuss. And I do think that, as Ranking Member Cummings said, that in a number of these areas President 

Obama has made progress. 

Let’s start with the overlap and duplication of Federal programs. 

I recall as a Governor how frustrating it was for me when we 

looked at things like workforce training, when we looked at teacher 

quality programs. Trying to rationalize them at the State level was 

virtually impossible because we had so many different Federal programs with different streams of funding. We should not have 82 

teacher quality programs across 10 different agencies. We shouldn’t 

have 56 financial literacy programs across 20 different agencies. 

I do believe that reorganization and consolidation of similar and 

duplicative programs can provide more effective services and at the 

same time save taxpayer money. There is a couple of different ways 

we can go about this. Ranking Member Cummings mentioned the 

Woodlace bill that probably most folks have never heard of other 

than members of this committee, the GPRA bill, the Government 

Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010, which I was 

proud to co-sponsor. One of the requirements of that bill was to try 

to limit the number of goals an actual agency has. Because anybody who has been in business knows that if you have 10, 20, 30 

goals you really have no major goal. Unless we can limit this to a 

more limited number and start looking across the function of government, not just by program and by agency, we are not going to 

be effective. 

6 

On Monday, when the President outlined his budget, he outlined 

14 cross-agency priority goals in the 2013 budget. As I mentioned 

previously, there was no requirement. This was one of the requirements of GPRA. The 14 goals I think that the President outlined 

were clear. One, for example, was the goal to double exports by the 

end of 2014. That is clearly in the Nation’s interest and cuts across 

a series of agencies. 

So I think we are seeing some of the results of GPRA already. 

I would argue as well one area that the administration I think 

needs to do better on, we asked in GPRA for agencies not only to 

identify their top programs, but to do something that has never 

been done before, which is identify the least performing programs. 

We too often in government want to highlight our successes, we are 

not as willing to expose those areas that need improvement. And 

we need to continue to focus the administration on performance of 

least performing programs. 

But obviously we continue to do more. The President has also requested that we restore executive reorganization authority with expedited congressional review. And again, there would be a process 

for Congress to review any proposed reorganization. I urge the 

committee to consider this proposal favorably. 

As the chair and the ranking member knows, I spent most of my 

career in business and every CEO has the authority to reorganize 

and structure their company to improve results. As Governor I had 

the authority to reorganize the State agencies, and I was also held 

accountable for results. In fact, every President from 1932 to 1984 

had the authority to submit proposals to reorganize the Executive 

branch. I believe we should give the President as our Chief Executive the authority to do this job and modernize the way the government works to deliver better results, and again hold the President 

accountable. 

I think one of the things that we can include in this type of proposal is to make sure that any reorganization would actually save 

money and eliminate overhead. And I would also point out again 

that what the President is proposing would still give Congress the 

ability to vote on an up or down basis on any specific reorganization. 

I intend to be a sponsor of the President’s Reforming and Consolidating Government Act in 2012 in the Senate, and I can assure 

you that there will be broad bipartisan support in the Senate, and 

I hope again that same kind of support can be garnered here in the 

House. And I would argue since this bill is coming so late in the 

President’s term this would obviously be a tool whoever becomes 

the next President serving in January of 2013. 

Another area I believe we need to do more housekeeping on is 

regulations, and I know the committee again has worked on this 

as well. I believe regulations are like programs. We have added 

layers and layers over the years. But we rarely go back and review 

what works. We need regulatory reform to put in place basic 

metrics and incentives to provide some regulatory housekeeping. 

I am working on a proposal that will require all agencies, executive and independent, to conduct economic impact analysis for all 

those proposed regulations costing over $100 million. I have also 

got a proposal that will build on this that will try to change some 

7 

of the incentives inside the agencies. Right now an agency is basically rewarded with more personnel and more funding if you add 

more regulations. We have got to try to change that framework. So 

my regulatory reform proposal will also include a PAYGO type 

mechanism that will require agencies to identify offsets that will 

force them to modify or eliminate rules from their existing stock of 

regulations whenever they seek to put new regulations in place. 

This kind of balancing out aspect will actually, I believe, change 

the incentives inside the agency so as they move forward on proposed appropriate new regulations you have to find that offset. It 

makes I think good commonsense. And before you say this would 

be impossible to do, the U.K. Has actually implemented a similar 

system called the one-in/one-out proposal. It has been up and operating for a couple of years right now. And again, we are modeling 

after some of the very effective things that have taken place in regulatory reform in the U.K. 

In addition, as we have looked at regulatory reform I have seen 

that one of the things we don’t do a very good job of is ever looking 

back and seeing did the regulation that was put in place actually 

achieve its goal. It is remarkable, we have never done this in any 

meaningful way. And what we have instead is we have sometimes 

agencies saying here are all these benefits, businesses saying here 

are all these costs. We don’t have some level of independent analysis on this. I believe we need a legislative agency, like the CBO, 

to review the economic impact analysis every 5 years or so to determine if the regulations that we have put in place, that the agencies 

have put in place, are working and report this information to Congress. This independent analysis will provide helpful data for Congress and the agencies to modify and eliminate both outdated laws 

and regulations. 

In closing, let me just say this. We do have a lot of work to do. 

I did see recently the President identified 9,000 reports that agencies submit to Congress. If there was one, again, low hanging fruit 

that we could relieve some burden on the agencies, but also start 

to streamline some of this duplicative reporting, systems also need 

to be reviewed. I do think it is the responsibility for Congress to 

think boldly in this area. We have also got a proposal. We are 

working on a civilian BRAC process in terms of real property, 

something that as we are looking at our enormous deficits we 

ought to put in the hopper as well. 

So I would like to come back at some point, recognizing I have 

well exceeded my five minutes here, as any good Senator would. 

But I look forward to working with this committee. I appreciate the 

opportunity to appear before it. And I would want to again say, 

Senator Johnson, while he is a new Senator, has taken up this 

mantle as well and he is a good colleague and someone I know will 

be a firm ally of this committee in terms of making government 

more efficient for our people, our taxpayers and at the end of the 

day savings in dollars. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[Prepared statement of Senator Warner follows:] 

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Chairman ISSA. Thank you, Senator. And Senator Johnson, even 

though he has got you by a year and a half more or less you can 

have the same time. Please, you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. RON JOHNSON, A UNITED STATES 

SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning 

Chairman Issa, Ranking Member Cummings, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in today’s 

hearing. We are entering the fourth year of an administration that 

promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of its first term. The 

U.S. incurred a deficit of $459 billion in 2008, the year before 

President Obama entered office, yet the deficit grew to $1.4 trillion 

in fiscal year 2009, followed by $1.3 trillion in 2010, $1.3 trillion 

in 2011, and OMB has just projected another deficit of $1.3 trillion 

in 2012. 

And as a quick aside, contrary to popular belief, the total cost of 

the 2001–2003 tax cuts plus the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, approximately $300 billion, when our annual deficit is $1.3 trillion, 

or $1,300 billion, so that is not the main driver of our deficit. 

Any proposal to consolidate operations that would actually reduce spending would be welcome and should be enacted. And here 

is where I would like to commend Senator Warner as being a real 

leader in the Senate. And it is a real area I think where we can 

work on a bipartisan basis to obtain reform and enact reform in 

government. So I certainly look forward to working with you on 

that. 

But when placed in proper perspective to the magnitude of our 

budget and regulatory crisis, President Obama’s requested fast 

track reorganization authority looks more like an election year 

talking point than a serious cost cutting proposal. Why should the 

American people take this proposal seriously when President 

Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget adds $10.6 trillion to our current debt 

level and proposes spending another $47 trillion over the next 10 

years? By the way, this compares to his budget from last year that 

proposed spending $46 trillion over 10 years. Where are the spending cuts? The Federal Government is obese. For 50 years, from 

1960 to 2008, Federal spending averaged 20.2 percent of GDP. Last 

year it exceeded 24 percent. And without reform it will consume 35 

percent of our economy by the year 2035. 

As Federal Reserve Board Chairman Bernanke stated in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee last week, this dynamic 

is clearly unsustainable. Federal spending is the visible portion of 

government fat. Federal regulations are the less visible plaque 

clogging the arteries of our economy. 

According to a study commissioned by the Small Business Administration, it cost $1.75 trillion to comply with Federal regulations in 2008. That amount is larger than all but eight economies 

in the world, and is a burden imposed by Washington on job creators each and every year. Reshuffling agencies, akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, will do little to slow the outof-control growth of the Federal Government. 

Instead of saving costs, consolidation efforts could take on a life 

of their own. For example, while the mission of the Department of 

12 

Homeland Security is a worthy one, no one knows if the cost of consolidating 22 agencies has been worth the price tag. A 2011 study 

by Ohio State University estimates the total cost to the economy 

of homeland security measures tops $1 trillion. With more than 

230,000 employees, DHS is now the third largest Cabinet department. Yet an unqualified audit of its operations remains elusive 

and unfulfilled. 

And let’s face it, the Federal Government is replete with 

unfulfilled promises. Our $16 trillion war on poverty is impoverishing America. In 1965, .3 percent of the population, 561,000 individuals, received food stamps. Today that number has increased to 

46 million, or 14.8 percent of all Americans. During the same period the percentage of families living below the poverty line has 

only slightly declined from 13.9 percent to 11.1 percent, but the absolute number of individuals in poverty has almost doubled from 24 

million to over 46 million. Partly as a result of government programs making out of wedlock births financially possible, those 

birth rates have skyrocketed from 7.7 percent in 1965 to 40.6 percent last year with obvious negative economic implications for 

those families and Federal, State and local budgets. These are not 

metrics of success, they are profoundly disappointing metrics of abject failure. 

As someone new to this process, it is apparent that Washington’s 

bias is geared for addition and rarely subtraction. Last year proved 

the current critical political makeup of Washington does not possess the courage or will to adequately limit the growth of government. Enforceable spending controls, like the CAP Act, and a constitutional amendment to limit the size of government must first 

be passed to force everyone to negotiate spending priorities and entitlement reform. Everyone should be at the table and everything 

should be put back on budget subject to annual appropriations and 

75-year solvency standards. 

To address the growing regulatory burden on job creators, a regulation moratorium should be put in place until measures like the 

United Kingdom’s one-in/one-out rule and the REINS Act can be 

enacted to achieve regulatory balance. 

And finally, a bicameral sunset committee should be established 

with the sole mandate of identifying Federal rules, regulations and 

laws that do more harm than good and then recommending their 

elimination. In a government where most activities are additive a 

permanent sunset committee would provide a formalized process 

for subtraction. That would be a welcome change. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. 

[Prepared statement of Senator Johnson follows:] 

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16 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. I will now recognize myself if you 

will take some questions. Senator Warner, that distinguished document, the very good document that was entered in the record by 

the ranking member, talks about the size of the Federal workforce, 

and it takes full advantage of a million men and women who were 

taken out of the military during the era of shrinking that they 

mention. 

Do you think that the size of the Federal workforce and number 

of employees is the appropriate measure or do you believe that 

when we are looking at the size of government we should use Senator Johnson’s metrics, which is the portion of the GDP that is consumed by government? 

Senator WARNER. I would first of all point out that I have used 

those same numbers on the—— 

Chairman ISSA. Well, I knew you would go with this. 

Senator WARNER. —amount of consumption of Federal Government at 24, 25 percent. Of course I also point out the fact that revenues now are at 15 percent of a 75-year low. And any time we 

have had, as somebody who has been more than slightly obsessed 

about the $15 trillion debt and deficit, if you look back over those 

75 years any time we have had relative balance it has been when 

spending and revenues have been between that 19–1/2 and 21 percent. So I want to get in the point that if we are going to get a 

deficit solution it is going to require both a shrinking and an increase on revenue size. 

I think in terms of the size of the Federal workforce what is the 

exact right number for the workforce I think is what is the least 

number possible to provide efficient service. As we were talking in 

the anteroom, you know, the size of the Federal workforce right 

now is a bit of a mystery because are we counting full-time employers, are we counting contractors? And those numbers, the fact that 

we don’t have frankly as good a data on the size, the fact that we 

don’t know, for example, the exact number of contractors that DOD 

has at this point, this is one area where I would completely agree 

with Senator Johnson, we ought to have at least full and complete 

data so then we can have this kind of discussion. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, and I think that is the leading question I 

asked. You know, Senator Johnson, we often debate how much we 

pay a Federal worker, whether we out-source or in-source. To a 

great extent those questions are to be a question of cost versus benefit. I think we would all agree to that. You said quite candidly 

that, well look, we have got this 24 percent that could and will likely grow to 35 percent if unchecked. We have a historic 19 percent. 

Senator Warner points out that we in fact have 15 percent coming 

out of revenue. Do you agree that we need to get—our goal should 

be to get to 19–19, so to speak, that we can’t expect to get to 19 

percent of GDP in spending and still have 15 percent in revenue 

and then say we have a balanced budget; would you agree to that? 

Senator JOHNSON. First of all, I think you have to recognize reality, and over the last 50 years prior to 2008 the total amount the 

Federal Government was able to extract from the economy and revenue was about 18.1 percent. And that is regardless of whether the 

top personal tax rate during my lifetime has been 90, 70, 50, 28, 

31, 35, 39.6 percent. So to a certain extent you have to recognize 

17 

reality. And I realize that when we had surpluses for 4 years at 

the end of the ’90s or early 2000s revenue did bump up against 

above 20 percent one year, otherwise still below 20. But spending 

was only at 19.1 percent one of those years, otherwise it was in the 

18 percent range. 

So from my standpoint I think the size of government in relationship to GDP is a key metric. And when you currently add in State 

and local spending we are at about 40 percent nationally. So 40 

cents of every dollar filters through some level of government. And 

to put that in perspective, Norway spends 40 percent on government of its GDP, Greece, anybody hear of Greece recently it is 

about 47 percent, Italy is 49. 

Chairman ISSA. A little different than how much they get from 

oil, between Greece where they have olive oil and Norway where 

they have export oil that is much more profitable. 

Senator JOHNSON. Precisely. But right now in the United States 

we are at the lower level of European style government. And we 

are seeing that economic model collapse. And it is just not a metric 

for success. And again, I think we should really be looking at 

metrics. Certainly everything the government does needs to be 

judged based on what it actually accomplishes and the metrics of 

success are not really there. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, let me quickly, because my time is expiring, and I know you have very short time here, the President has 

talked about reorganization authority. And you may differ on this, 

but let me ask sort of the rhetorical question. 

In the best case, because you both alluded to this, wouldn’t we 

plan a reorg authority in the House and the Senate that envisions, 

if you will, continuous reform, envisions the idea that reform is not 

an up or down vote one time on a change that the President thinks 

works for one or more agencies, but in fact change the whole system to be more corporate? And I will preface this by saying, Senator Warner, you and I, we agree on almost everything. But I have 

been a CEO and I have been a board member. CEOs do not have 

straight reorg authority. What they ordinarily do is they bring 

their ideas to the board and they get sort of a pre-approval. Then 

they go out and they refine it. And then they come back for a final 

approval. And during this time they periodically come for major 

chunks of money. And, oh, by the way, the CFO tries to figure out 

how to explain it to Wall Street. So when we look at the process 

of government one of the challenges is, and this is where I want 

you both to comment as much as you feel you can, don’t we inherently have a problem considering reorg authority up or down one 

time and shouldn’t we fashion our bill so that there is ongoing commission, both House and Senate, but also independent thinkers 

working in concert with whoever is in the White House to try to 

get continuous improvement? 

Senator WARNER. Well, I would agree, Mr. Chairman, that we 

need to have a process that has continuous improvement, number 

one. 

Number two, I think on any reorg authority that a requirement 

that said you have to show that the reorganization would save 

costs and save overhead would be important. 

18 

Number three, what the President is requesting would be then 

subject to an up or down vote. And I would concur with you that 

most CEOs would have to then go to their board and get approval. 

The one difference that I would point out, and I didn’t fully appreciate this until I got here, was that in the case of a business operation generally speaking the board of a company has the best interest almost always of the company at heart. One of the things that 

has been interesting as we come up here, and I could never understand why we didn’t have a rational, for example, transportation 

policy at the Federal level, now having been here for 3 years I understand that it is because of congressional jurisdiction turf battles 

that mean that I am not sure, and I say this in an ecumenical fashion, that too often rationalization of the Federal Government is 

held up by the congressional oversight and congressional jurisdiction functions that has no equivalent in the private sector. 

So giving this President, giving any President the reorg ability 

with a straight up or down with a requirement that you have got 

to show cost effectiveness and overhead savings I think is just a 

rational way to move forward on an entity as large as the Federal 

Government. 

Chairman ISSA. Before we go to Senator Johnson I would ask 

unanimous consent that a small but meaningful list of the 108 

committees and subcommittees that the Department of Homeland 

Security alone reports to in our turf battles be entered in the 

record as germane. Without objection, so ordered. Senator Johnson. 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we need to 

recognize that what motivates business and what motivates bureaucracies are two totally different things. Business actually has 

the discipline of making a profit so they have every incentive to 

keep their expenses and costs in line. Bureaucracies, on the other 

hand, their primary goal in many respects is growth, they continue 

to grow. And so if we are going to think about reorganizing bureaucracies any successful business of course does have a culture 

of continuous improvement. And the way they are able to maintain 

that culture of continuous improvement is they actually benchmark 

goals and they measure what goals they have established. And that 

is part of the problem of government, is we just simply never really 

go back and take a look what were the good intentions and measure what actually was achieved versus what the intention was. 

And that is what I was trying to point out in my testimony. That 

is where it starts. We have to establish the goals and the metrics 

for accountability. 

Senator WARNER. Mr. Chairman, if I can add one comment. And 

I am not sure we are all that far apart, you know, your concept of 

continuing—— 

Chairman ISSA. This is what we like about having the two of 

you, is that for this committee I think there is no two Senators 

closer to the view where we need to be. 

Senator WARNER. But I do think we have put in place some tools. 

I do think GPRA, which requires a consolidation of a few identifiable goals for each program or agency, is a critical first step. I 

think the notion of crosscutting agency goals so that as you have 

these 47 different financial literacy programs and 92 teacher training programs, not only do you need consolidation but you need 

19 

amongst those what are the top couple of goals around teacher 

quality and improvement. 

I do think the notion of regulatory reform, a one-in/one-out regulatory PAYGO makes sense in terms of a housekeeping approach 

so that there is an incentive inside the agency to look at cleaning 

out. I also think the notion, particularly on the regulatory front, of 

creating someplace, and CBO may or may not be the best spot, an 

independent entity that can assess the claim oftentimes made by 

the agency that X thousands of lives are saved or the cost by the 

business that X hundreds of billions of dollars are charged, we have 

no independent analysis there. And we have no analysis that says 

3 years, 5 years after the fact did the regulation that was put in 

place actually achieve the goal that was said to put in place. These 

kind of areas I think would help bring about some of the objective 

metrics I think all of us would like to see if we are going to hold 

government more accountable. And recognizing as we have to take 

on this $15 trillion debt, clearly we have got to spend smarter than 

we are spending now. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. With that we go to the gentleman 

from Virginia who was here at the start for his questions. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I thank the chair. And again welcome both of our 

colleagues from the United States Senate. Just a few questions to 

my friend and colleague Senator Warner. Senator Warner, if I understood what you were saying in terms of metrics, surely looking 

at spending, Federal spending as a percentage of GDP is absolutely 

a valid metric. But if I heard you correctly so too is revenue as a 

percentage of GDP. And right now that revenue figure is far below 

what it was last time we actually balanced the Federal budget 

without a constitutional amendment 4 years in a row, is that correct? 

Senator WARNER. Yes, I think again I have, as my friend the congressman is aware of, been very active in the effort to try to bring 

about this balance cutting spending, reforming entitlement programs, a tax reform program that generates additional revenue, because I frankly believe that debt and deficit is our single greatest 

threat to this country and in effect has become a proxy for whether 

Congress is up to solving any problem. And it is going to require 

I think looking at both sides of the balance sheet. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. And Senator, when you were the Governor of the 

Commonwealth of Virginia you had to balance the budget 4 years 

of your term. Did you only look at cutting spending to balance that 

budget? 

Senator WARNER. Thank you, Congressman, for that very nice 

easy softball you have just thrown me. You may recall Virginia was 

dealing with a $6 billion budget shortfall. We were put for the first 

time ever on credit watch. We substantially cut programs, shrank 

our State workforce. But we also put together a tax reform plan 

with a 2 to 1 Republican legislature that passed with significant 

numbers. And Virginia was reaffirmed not only its triple-A bond 

rating ranking for the best managed State in the country, and I 

would add ranked as the best State for business. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. So balance worked out pretty well for the Commonwealth of Virginia? 

20 

Senator WARNER. Balance worked out pretty well. I would also 

add one of the challenges we have, and I think this again needs 

to be reflected as we look at what is the appropriate percent of Federal spending in the GDP, is that, and again it would be an area 

where actually I think Senator Johnson and I would agree, we 

might disagree about the specifics of the reform, but we do need 

to reform our entitlement programs. One of the challenges we have 

is we have 3 million people a year hit retirement age. Whatever 

that retirement age ends up being, there are going to be costs in 

those programs that are in effect unprecedented always keeping 

upward pressure on the amount to spend the Federal Government 

will have. So this is just demographics taking place and how we 

grapple with that is terribly important. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. And Senator Warner, again, looking at metrics, 

certainly I remember, both in the Commonwealth of Virginia and 

in local government, one metric we used was the ratio of our staffing to population. We used that to see were we in fact efficiently 

using technology to create economies for our taxpayers. And I am 

just looking at data over the last 50 years. In 1962, when President 

Kennedy was President, the ratio was 13.3; that is to say 13.3 employees per thousand population. And it went up under Nixon from 

that to 14.4, which was the high watermark. And it is now the lowest it has been in 50 years, 8.4. And if you look at actual numbers, 

including Postal Service workers, actual numbers of Federal employees, it is 350,000 below its high watermark 20 years ago when 

President H.W. Bush was President. So in absolute terms and in 

ratio it looks like in the last 50 years we have actually cut out a 

lot of that fat we are so concerned about in the title of this hearing. 

Do you think it is a fair metric to suggest that that kind of ratio 

might mean we are running a leaner and more efficient operation, 

not to suggest there couldn’t be additional savings, but clearly we 

have achieved something here? 

Senator WARNER. You know, I have to say that—— 

Chairman ISSA. Feel free to disagree with him. 

Senator WARNER. No, no. I am just going to say that, you know, 

in the Senate when we make these quick testimonies we speak and 

then get out of Dodge before the questions come. You know, it is 

interesting sitting on this side of the ledger following a thoughtful 

provocative but very leading question, but I think those are good 

metrics you have put forward. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you. And I yield back. Thank you very 

much. 

Chairman ISSA. Senator Johnson, I think you had something left 

to say. 

Senator JOHNSON. I would like to provide some balance to the 

question. 

Senator WARNER. May I? I apologize to the chair. I didn’t know 

that. 

Chairman ISSA. And I apologize. We are going to let you go. I felt 

that—— 

Senator WARNER. No, absolutely. 

Chairman ISSA. —that you are both sort of Fox, not MSNBC, but 

Senator Johnson felt left out here and he is junior and I don’t want 

him to leave here feeling bad. 

21 

Senator JOHNSON. I just want to provide a little balance in answering the question. First of all, I think there is a great deal of 

agreement, certainly what I found, I would say consensus in Washington that we actually need to reform our Tax Code. And I think 

Republicans also want more revenue, but we want to grow revenue 

the old-fashioned way by increasing our economy. And so the question I would ask when you take a look at the metric of 24 percent 

of GDP in terms of government spending is why hasn’t this President in his budget actually proposed pro growth tax reform? And 

also we all recognize that the real long-term looming crisis in terms 

of our budget is entitlements, Medicare and Social Security. And 

again, the President in his fourth budget, I mean he has basically 

had four cracks at the apple here, he still has yet to step up to the 

plate and propose any type of reform that would actually save Social Security and Medicare long-term. 

So again, I am all for increasing revenue, but let’s do it the oldfashioned way by actually getting economic growth. The reason we 

are at only 15 percent revenue this year and for the last couple of 

years is because our economy is in terrible shape. And that is also 

to a certain extent driven by the progressivity of our Tax Code. 

When you have a highly progressive Tax Code that is going to be 

revenue in terms of the government is going to be far more affected 

by shocks to the economy. 

So again, I would look at pro growth tax reform. The broadness 

of the base eliminates the loopholes in special deductions. I think 

there is a great deal of consensus. And that is what we really need 

to be doing here. Let’s look at what we agree on. We agree on reforming government, we agree on pro growth tax reform, so let’s actually start doing it this year. 

Chairman ISSA. I want to thank both of you. Please tell your 

friends on the other side of the dome it is a great place to come, 

a great audience, another opportunity for a C–SPAN moment. So 

we will take a short recess just to reset. And thank you again, Senators. 

[Recess.] 

Chairman ISSA. The committee will come to order. Our second 

panel of witnesses includes Mr. Paul Light is a Professor of Public 

Service at the Robert Wagner School of Public Service New York 

University. The Honorable Dan Blair serves as President and CEO 

of the National Academy of Public Administration. Mr. Robert Shea 

is a Principal at Grant Thornton, LLP. And Mr. Max Stier is President and CEO of a Partnership for Public Service. 

You are not Senators. Pursuant to the rules of the committee all 

witnesses will be sworn. Please rise to take the oath and raise your 

right hands. 

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give 

will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? 

Let the record indicate that all witnesses answered in the affirmative. 

Since there is a few more of you we would ask that you try to 

stay close to your 5 minutes. As previously noted your entire statement will be placed in the record along with supplemental data you 

may choose to add after the hearing. So let’s begin with Dr. Light. 

22 

STATEMENT OF PAUL C. LIGHT, PH.D. 

Mr. LIGHT. It is a pleasure to be here with you today. And thank 

you for your work and the committee’s work to improve government performance. 

I would like to start by just telling you a quick story about Senator John Glenn for whom I had the pleasure of serving back in 

the 100th Congress on government reform and presidential appointments. 

I remember asking him once what he was thinking when he was 

sitting on top of the rocket that would send him into orbit, now almost 50 years ago. Were you thinking about whether the rocket 

was fueled and whether everybody was ready, whether there might 

be an accident? 

And he said back to me, of course not, I was thinking about the 

lawn, my house, Annie, you know, the whole thing. And I said 

why? He said because I had faith that the Federal employees and 

the contractors working side by side with them were doing their 

job. 

And I wonder sometimes whether he would have that same level 

of confidence given the ongoing problems actually delivering services now 50 years later. I still think he would have great confidence, but I think we have got to ask ourselves the question about 

whether government is currently working as well as it should. 

Chairman ISSA. And this was even though every other launch, 

every second launch prior to that had blown up? 

Mr. LIGHT. He was very—— 

Chairman ISSA. He was an optimist, wasn’t he? 

Mr. LIGHT. And he still is. He still is. We should all be in his 

shape, you know? 

I just want to answer a couple of questions that came up earlier. 

You have my statement. 

On the overhaul issue, you are quite right. There were two Hoover Commissions. One ran from 1947 to 1949, the other from 1953 

to 1955. They produced 50 reorganization plans. It was not a single 

up or down. Now, they did have the reorganization authority, and, 

of course, the President is asking for consolidation authority. And 

we can talk a little bit about that. I don’t think it is a bad idea, 

but I am not sure where the reorganization plans would come from, 

given the shrinking of OMB’s ability to deliver reorganization 

plans. So, you know, it is worth asking about. 

On the size of government, head-count issue, I think you have to 

include all the Federal Government’s employees, including contractors. And, by my estimates, we have about 7.5 million contract employees, another 3 million grant employees, and then we have the 

2.2 million Federal employees, plus postal, plus military. It is a big 

workforce to deliver the mission we have, you know. So I think the 

issue of head count is deceiving, to some extent. I think we could 

have the same head count but different distribution of workers and 

get the job done well. 

On the agenda, I think GPRA modernization is very important. 

I would like to see a budget table that shows the amount of money 

that we spend on the priorities that are generated through the 

Modernization Act and see whether they add up to the total budget 

or what percentage of the budget cannot be classified as related to 

23 

the small handful of priorities identified through this important 

process. 

On the thickening of government, really, what does a government 

agency look like? I think that you are on point here regarding the 

need for a more efficient government. I think we have too many 

layers of government, too many Presidential appointees. We could 

cut the number of Presidential appointees in half and do better. I 

think the baby-boom retirements, while troublesome to many of us, 

also offer an opportunity to take a good, hard look at the senior levels of government, where I think we could have some downsizing 

and redistribution of workers down to the bottom. 

You have a bill before you that has been passed by the Senate 

on some modest streamlining, a small first step really, by my view. 

And Max Stier here will argue that it is an important first step. 

I think we can move forward with it, but I still think we have too 

many appointees and we ought to do something about it. 

Let me conclude by saying that my father was an auto-parts 

man. And in his business was a machine shop, and he ground down 

pistons and engines and overhauled day-in and day-out. So when 

the President says we need an overhaul, I think of pulling the engine out, grinding it down and really working it over, not just 

changing the spark plugs. And I think, to date, we have had relatively timid proposals for an overhaul, and it is time to get big. 

I don’t necessarily know exactly how to do it. I have some ideas 

and I have a list of proposals. But I think this committee, with its 

proud history, should be the place to begin this effort. 

So good luck, and keep up the good work. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you, Doctor. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Light follows:] 

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Chairman ISSA. Mr. Blair? 

STATEMENT OF THE HON. DAN G. BLAIR 

Mr. BLAIR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. I appreciate the invitation—— 

Chairman ISSA. Could you pull the microphone just a little closer, please? 

Mr. BLAIR. Certainly. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

Mr. BLAIR. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank 

you for the invitation for me to testify today. 

I am Dan Blair, president and CEO of the National Academy of 

Public Administration. The Academy is a congressionally chartered 

nonprofit organization comprised of more than 700 fellows who are 

selected by the membership. 

I am honored to appear on this panel today with three of my distinguished Academy fellows: Dr. Light, Mr. Shea, and Mr. Stier. 

And I would also note that Mr. Shea is the vice chairman of the 

board. So I will be on good behavior today. 

Mr. LIGHT. But are we all paying our dues? 

Mr. BLAIR. Well, that is a better question, and we will talk about 

that after the hearing, Dr. Light. 

As noted in my written testimony, the Academy’s congressional 

charter precludes from taking an official position on legislation, 

and the views I am presenting today have not been formally endorsed by the Academy. 

We now use a 20th-century government organization to respond 

to 21st-century problems. The President’s proposal to merge the 

Commerce Department with other trade-related agencies might be 

a step in the right direction if done right. However, moving the 

boxes around without taking a hard look at how the actual work 

is being done is unlikely to lead to significant improvements. Organizational changes must be bolstered by additional approaches to 

improve public management. 

First, consider using the principles of ‘‘Smart Lean Government’’ 

to examine the delivery of government programs and services 

through a holistic or a cross-government approach. An SLG examination of government programs would take an enterprise architecture approach of examining the interrelationships of information, 

people, technology, and processes. For example, the trade promotion activities would not focus solely on the International Trade 

Administration, but would examine trade promotion activities and 

expenditures across the spectrum of agencies supporting foreign 

trade. This approach can identify areas where coordination can be 

improved and government activities may be consolidated, and improve how programs are operated, measured, and managed. 

Other approaches include improving productivity and expanding 

the use of technology and data. A term called ‘‘disruptive innovation,’’ which is the introduction of new technology which replaces 

an earlier technology or product, can be utilized for the benefit of 

government and the taxpayer. 

Across the government, Congress and the Executive should foster 

environments that encourage innovation and creativity. For example, Congress could require that agencies report on their use of 

35 

data accumulated from industry, other agencies, and the public in 

order to make it accessible and useful to its stakeholders. In the 

private sector, where disruptive innovation has become commonplace, consumers are used to steady price reductions and performance improvements over time. The challenge is creating management structures and environments which foster and encourage this 

type of behavior in government. 

Further, what gets measured is what gets done. So one step forward may be for the Bureau of Labor Statistics to begin again to 

measure Federal productivity. The Federal Government last measured its productivity almost 20 years ago, and it may be time to 

revisit that concept to determine what the appropriate productivity 

metrics would be to measure. 

Other tools include enhanced human capital flexibilities, increased interagency and intergovernmental collaboration and coordination, and linking budgets with program performance across 

agency and department lines. The GPRA Modernization Act gives 

OMB this type of authority to change the way budgets are developed and implemented. 

Further, Congress could consider engaging in a rigorous review 

of agency missions, functions, and programs in an effort at a strategic realignment. This approach would examine what agencies do 

as required by statute, regulation, or practice, and evaluate whether underperforming activities or programs should be shed in order 

to protect budgets for core mission and high-performing activities 

and programs. 

Mr. Chairman, by changing the way that government work gets 

done, we can dramatically improve the effectiveness and efficiency 

of government services and programs. 

This concludes my oral testimony, and I am happy to answer any 

of your questions. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Blair follows:] 

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Chairman ISSA. Mr. Shea? 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT SHEA 

Mr. SHEA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. 

I am proud to be with you today to talk about reorganization, especially at the committee that gave me my first job in Washington. 

I am also proud to be with such good friends. You will get, like on 

the last panel, a lot of violent agreement among us. 

My name is Robert Shea. I am a fellow of the National Academy 

of Public Administration and a principal of Grant Thornton. 

Reorganization and consolidation offer many opportunities to improve government’s performance, but they take time. Faster results, in my view, will come from greater collaboration among government programs and a more focused assessment of their relative 

cost-effectiveness. 

And the Federal Government, as has been discussed, has been 

grappling with reorganization almost since its inception. But I wonder what past Presidents would say about the volume of overlap 

and duplication that plagues our government today. There are hundreds of government programs, many aimed at the same problem, 

often from different organizations throughout the executive branch. 

If Congress or the executive branch were to undertake a substantial reorganization, where would they start? How would we know 

which programs to keep, consolidate, or terminate? Past efforts 

have made a dent but really haven’t provided you the information 

you need to make good decisions. After a decade of the Government 

Performance and Results Act implementation, many agencies 

began to make great strides understanding the performance of 

their programs. Unfortunately, that effort did not result in the kind 

of information you need to make decisions, like good cross-cutting 

goals or collaboration among cross-cutting programs. 

In 2001, OMB developed the Program Assessment Rating Tool to 

inventory the government’s programs and assess their relative performance. After 5 years of implementation, OMB and agencies assessed nearly 1,000 programs, nearly 100 percent of the Federal 

Government’s budget. They assigned each program a rating of ‘‘effective,’’ ‘‘moderately effective,’’ ‘‘adequate,’’ ‘‘ineffective,’’ or ‘‘results 

not demonstrated.’’ 

A number of efforts to improve the performance of duplicative 

programs flowed from this effort. For instance, the administration 

used assessment results as one factor in its decision to propose consolidation of 17 community and economic development programs. 

We also used the PART process to arrive at a common set of outcome measures with which to measure the government’s job training programs. 

For a variety of reasons, the Obama administration is no longer 

using this tool to assess and improve programs. So what tools exist 

to do this today? 

A lot has been said about the Government Performance and Results Act Modernization Act, a promising framework for improving 

the coordination among like programs. If Congress takes an active 

role holding the executive branch accountable for its implementation, the law’s requirements can be powerful incentives to improve 

coordination among duplicative programs. 

47 

The budget released Monday does include 14 cross-cutting goals, 

as Senator Warner mentioned. And you can find those goals at 

www.goals.performance.gov. I think they are a mixed bag, but I 

think they could use your attention. Your feedback on those goals 

would be readily accepted by the administration. 

Getting programs in different agencies to agree on common goals 

and a coordinated approach for achieving them is hard. Agencies 

or programs with common goals often have completely different 

congressional authorizing and appropriations committees, a situation that enables stovepipes. They also have separate constituencies who will fight to preserve the status quo. 

While there are many barriers to interagency collaboration, technology provides enormous opportunity to overcome those barriers, 

especially social media and collaborative technology. The Federal 

Government is really only just beginning to capitalize on these 

tools to enhance collaboration. 

A number of other initiatives show promise: program evaluation. 

The Obama administration is building on the Bush administration’s effort to more rigorously evaluate programs across government, a very necessary step in order to discern what works in government. 

The Administrative Flexibility Initiative is also an important effort. Overlapping and duplicative programs tend to have exponentially more cumbersome and wasteful administrative requirements 

imposed on State and local governments. The administration has 

tasked agencies and OMB with inventorying those requirements 

and reducing them, which may seem like a minor effort but could, 

when you combine them, really free up money that State and local 

governments can use to focus on outcomes. 

Improved coordination is easier said than done. Agency and program leadership are busy enough working within their own domain 

without having to be concerned with another’s activities. Active 

congressional and Presidential leadership and oversight can 

produce results sooner than what an organization may never 

produce. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Shea follows:] 

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Chairman ISSA. Mr. Stier? 

STATEMENT OF MAX STIER 

Mr. STIER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members of the 

committee. It is a pleasure to be here and, as my colleagues said, 

a pleasure to be testifying with them. I think we are all trying to 

do the same thing, and I would also say all friends. So it is really 

an honor to be here. 

Chairman ISSA. By the way, since you all in the same academy, 

do you have a quorum here? Because, you know, each of you says 

you don’t have this authority individually. Together do we? 

Mr. SHEA. We could vote on the President’s salary right now. We 

could make some savings right here. 

Mr. STIER. Exactly. And I think that Dan appropriately speaks 

for the whole Academy. 

But be that as it may, you know, we do have violent agreement 

here. And I think a real question to ask is, since there is so much 

agreement, why isn’t more happening? And I think that the execution imperative is fundamental here, and we have to focus, you 

know, our primary attention on those execution questions. 

One way to do that is look at what happened the last time that 

there was a major contraction in the government’s budget, during 

the 1990s. We have a process in government of repeating the past 

mistakes because we don’t pay attention to what has happened before. So we actually did a report with Booz Allen called ‘‘Smart 

Cuts,’’ where we examined what occurred during the 1990s and 

drew a set of lessons that I believe have great application for today. 

And I am just going to mention five of them. Obviously, we go in 

greater depth in the testimony. 

The first one is—and this is a conversation that, likewise, has 

been held with the prior witnesses, as well—and that is talent 

needs to be viewed as an asset, not a cost, in government. The bottom line is that good government begins with good people. It is real 

easy to cut costs in cutting, you know, money out of the workforce. 

But at the end of the day, we need to make sure that we are not 

really impacting mission in a way that we don’t want. 

IBM did a great study of companies during the last downturn, 

and what they saw is that the companies under pressure were actually investing more in their people because they needed more out 

of them. And I think we need to take that attitude when we examine the Federal workforce. It doesn’t mean that there are not costs 

available, but we have to be real smart about how we do it. 

Secondly, we need to make sure that we are making better 

choices about what we are doing and not simply looking at acrossthe-board cuts, which, again, is the norm and what we saw during 

the 1990s. That penalizes the efficient and effective organizations, 

when, in point of fact, if you want to save resources, you just have 

to do fewer things and do them well. But, again, the tendency and 

the easy thing to do is just say, we are going to cut across the 

board. And that doesn’t end up actually giving us what we ultimately need. 

Third, we need to—and this is building off the comments that 

you made, Mr. Chairman—we really need to look over the long 

term. This is a long-haul process. My belief is one of the root 

56 

causes of dysfunction in government is that we have a set of political leaders in the executive branch that are around, on average, 

for 18 months to 2 years. That means that they are incented to 

focus on policy development, crisis management, but not on the 

health of the organizations that they run, because, frankly, they 

are not going to be around long enough either to have that impact 

or to actually pay the piper for problems that they create or don’t 

solve. And so I think it is fundamental for to us have that longterm view. 

There are some great good examples. Patent and Trademark Office is one of the ones that I love, where they went out—they had 

to change their physical site. They chose a building with a much 

smaller footprint. They decided, we are going to change the culture, 

we are going to move to a telework environment. They wound up 

saving money on the physical plant that they had, they wound up 

producing, you know, better results in terms of their productivity, 

and they reduced their costs. We need to look for opportunities like 

that. Ask the question whenever an agency is actually moving 

buildings, why don’t see that as a transformation opportunity? But, 

again, looking at the long term. 

Fourth, we have to measure the impact of our choices that we 

are making today. And, again, you know, Robert, the work that he 

did on PART I think is a fabulous example of things that we need 

to see more of. I would present to the committee also the work that 

we have done at the partnership around the Best Places to Work 

rankings. Again, a challenge in the public sector is you don’t have 

financial metrics for performance, frequently. And in the private 

sector, where you do, smart companies look at employee attitudes 

because there is a strong correlation between those attitudes and 

ultimate performance. We should be using those numbers to tell us 

what is going on inside the Federal Government today, and Best 

Places allow us do that. 

Fifth, coming to the question of reorganization, it is a reasonable 

strategy to use, but, frankly, we ought to start with the talent 

issues. The 9/11 Commission said it best; the quality of the people 

is more important than the quality of the wiring diagram. Important to see how those boxes play together, but if you don’t solve the 

internal issues, frankly, moving the boxes, as we have heard from 

a number of other folks, won’t make any difference. 

In our written testimony, we offer 25 questions that we think are 

a good starting point in thinking about reorganization. And, Mr. 

Chairman, I salute you for also the chart you put in. You know, 

this is, again, a 9/11 Commission report recommendation. If we 

don’t see this as a board of directors for the government, if we don’t 

see the interrelationship, frankly, the executive branch won’t work 

right. 

So, pleasure to be here, and look forward to any questions that 

you might have. Thank you so much. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Stier follows:] 

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Chairman ISSA. I will now recognize myself for a first round. 

First question for all of you: In a reorganization, is a reorganization of the executive branch—we are talking about a significant 

change, not just one, if you will, Cabinet position—is there any way 

that that can be effective without Congress buying into it in a way 

in which, one, we support the change not just by a vote but by postvote, particularly, reorganizing to match the executive branch? I 

think Senator Warner said it pretty well, and, as you have mentioned, Mr. Stier, the chart says it all. 

If we vote for a reorganization, don’t we have to, in the House 

and the Senate, realign so that our committees match the new government reality? 

Mr. BLAIR. I will take a stab at that question, Mr. Chair. 

Chairman ISSA. You don’t have to say ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no,’’ but ‘‘yes’’ 

would be good. 

Mr. BLAIR. I think if you don’t look at the organization of Congress in light of the changes that take place in executive branch 

organization, you risk running into the same problems of overlap 

and duplication which you are actually trying to address within the 

executive branch organization itself. 

Can Congress, as a body, effectively conduct its oversight and authorizing and appropriating duties without changing? The answer 

is yes, but I think it is going to take a lot more effort. So I think 

that the Congress is going to have to take a look at itself in terms 

of trying to align itself better with the reorganized executive 

branch. 

Chairman ISSA. So does that, by definition, beg the whole question of a reorg the way the President is talking about, ‘‘Give me authority and I will loosely tell you what I am going to do,’’ or Hoover 

Commission, where you came up with 273 recommendations, most 

of which were accepted but accepted over a long period of time with 

multiple interim steps? 

Mr. BLAIR. Well, you can do a one-off here or a one-off there in 

terms of executive branch organization, but you really need—— 

Chairman ISSA. Yeah, but Dr. Light said that is not an overhaul. 

Mr. BLAIR. —to do it in terms of an overarching strategy and 

within an architecture that makes sense as to what your ultimate 

goal would be. 

Chairman ISSA. Let me ask, sort of, the broadest question here. 

Senator Warner is a cosponsor, or he, actually, has a companion 

bill for the DATA Act. We are trying to make interoperative fundamentally how we communicate, so that data in one place and the 

other, it doesn’t take a team of people to try to match up on a oneoff basis, but rather you can look at it transparently back and forth 

if you have the rights. Nice thought, nice idea. Clearly, I am very 

dedicated to it. 

But let me ask a more fundamental question. OMB, which has, 

I am told, six Senate-confirmed positions, is repeatedly clearly ignored when they want to make fundamental changes in how Cabinet positions spend their money and do their work. 

Do we have a fundamental problem that, even though there are 

23 Cabinet-level positions, including the OMB Director is considered a Cabinet level, do we have a fundamental problem in that 

back-office functions—sort of, OPM, OMB, all the data questions, 

64 

all the questions of how money is spent not on what the Cabinet 

position does but on the things that facilitate that—those, in fact, 

are hierarchies that belong to Cabinet positions, and unless there 

is consensus, they can ignore, if you will, the Office of the President by simply delaying? 

Is that a long but fundamental truth that every OMB Director 

faces? 

Mr. SHEA. I, as having led a lot of interagency collaborations 

from OMB, I can tell you without question, you know, there are 

going to be some who are really invested in the success of the enterprise and you have their buy-in, but there will be a pocket, almost invariably, who oppose what you are trying to accomplish and 

want to protect their turf. And when it has been successful is when 

OMB and a lead agency and Congress are all joined at the hip and 

invested in the success of the enterprise. 

Examples include security clearance reform and the Federal 

Funding Accountability and Transparency Act implementation. In 

both cases, Congress had virtually a seat at the table throughout 

the nitty-gritty of the implementation of both those initiatives. And 

they have proven more or less successful. 

Chairman ISSA. I am going to ask just one exit question, if you 

will. 

Mr. Stier, you used the PTO. The PTO currently has a backlog 

greater than it did before reorg. They have hired a lot more people. 

They now consume their entire budget even without fee diversion. 

If this were a private enterprise and basically because they 

charge the revenues that run them, wouldn’t you give them less 

than an ‘‘A’’? 

Mr. STIER. I think that the PTO, again—and on the backlog side, 

first of all, I mean, clearly there is a 3-year backlog, I believe it 

is over 700,000 applications, on the patent side. That is a massive 

problem. I think what David Kappos is doing is actually the right 

movement. I think he has gotten the backlog—my understanding 

is he has gotten the backlog down. And he is, I think, aligning his 

resources in a very smart way against their needs. And a good example of that is even around understanding how to use performance incentives to increase productivity. 

So they don’t, clearly—and I think Dave Kappos would be the 

first person to say that—deserve an ‘‘A’’ in terms of what they are 

producing today. But to your point about the time it takes to turn 

something around, my sense is—and you may have greater expertise in this than I do, but from what I can see, he is on the right 

track but he has a long distance to go. 

Chairman ISSA. And I am a big fan of his. That is the only reason that, besides having my own patents and serving on Judiciary, 

that—and I wanted to make sure we understood, he has a big job 

and a long way to go—— 

Mr. STIER. Yes. 

Chairman ISSA. —and his is a predominantly Federal workforce 

that he is trying to get to be more productive, including the telecommuting and including, by the way—they are siting a West 

Coast facility so they can recruit and retain people that right now 

just do not want to come to that little-bitty building—— 

Mr. STIER. Right. 

65 

Chairman ISSA. —because it is in an area they don’t want to live. 

Mr. STIER. Right. No, absolutely. And that is critical. And I think 

the longer he stays in that job, the better the agency is going to 

be. 

Chairman ISSA. You heard it here. 

With that, we go to the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Connolly, 

for 5 minutes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And welcome to our panel. 

Mr. Stier, I gave a town hall meeting at the PTO headquarters 

you referred to, and I can confirm what you said. I saw a lot of energy and synergy. I mean, I think that it created something in 

terms of a dynamic that improved productivity and morale. And 

those are things definitely I would hope at some point we care 

about with respect to the Federal workforce, not only at PTO but 

throughout the Federal Government. 

The President has proposed consolidating a number of international economic entities to try to achieve similar synergy and 

productivity. And I note a GAO report from last year that said, 

‘‘These practices,’’ meaning desirable practices, ‘‘include leveraging 

physical and administrative resources, establishing compatible policies and procedures, monitoring collaboration, and reinforcing 

agency accountability for collaborative efforts through strategic or 

annual performance plans.’’ 

From your point of view, does the President’s proposal make 

sense in terms of similar synergy and productivity potential gains? 

Mr. STIER. Look, I think there is no question but that we have 

a government that needs to be changed in many dramatic ways. I 

think the challenge here is that the idea, almost, is less important 

than the execution issues. And so that is why in my testimony I 

identify 25 questions that I think we really want to look for answers for before we start down this road. 

And, again, thinking about historical example, if you look at the 

Department of Homeland Security, if you look at any major reorganization in the modern era, it is after many, many years at best 

still a work in progress. 

So I think the answer to your question is that I think it is important for the President to be putting his marker down to say that 

we need to examine the form and shape of government, but what 

I would ask for and what I would suggest would make for a more 

successful ultimate resolution is that we look at a more comprehensive set of issues that include primarily some of the talent and culture issues that I think are fundamental, ultimately, to success in 

getting better productivity out of the government. 

I think you have to look at that holistically, and you have to 

build a time frame into it. So, again, I think that, whatever reorganization is imagined, we need to make sure there is continuity of 

attention and a leadership group that is around long enough to see 

that execution through. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Blair, one of the concerns I always have 

when I look at any government structure is the stovepipe structure 

and mentality. And, again, sort of keying off the suggestions or the 

recommendations made by the President, when you go to some of 

our embassies overseas, there are lots of stovepipes, seemingly unVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:16 Jun 20, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\74374.TXT APRIL
66 

coordinated, and yet sharing a common mission in terms of trying 

to promote U.S. economic interests, investment, trade, and exports. 

And I just wonder if you might comment on that. How do we— 

if not this proposal, what, to try to overcome the stovepipe mentality to achieve efficiencies and productivity gains that we desperately need? 

Mr. BLAIR. Thank you, Congressman. I appreciate the question. 

There are different approaches you could take to attack that 

stovepiping that you identified. And one of them that is outlined 

in my testimony is an approach called Smart Lean Government. 

This approach was brought to the Academy by some of its fellows, 

and we have been working with an outside group at refining this. 

But, fundamentally, what it does is takes a holistic approach, looking at government across the spectrum, not at a department or an 

agency, but by looking at the actual program that is being delivered. 

And so, one of the things that I talked about was—take, for instance, international trade. It is just not one agency; we have a series of agencies. And look at the ultimate service or product or program that is being delivered, and how is the most effective way of 

getting that to the customer? Is there overlap and duplication? Are 

multiple departments involved? If so, why? 

GAO came out with a report last year that highlighted potential 

overlap and duplication in a whole host of programs. Sometimes 

that duplication is necessary and intentional. Sometimes you want 

those belts and suspenders in order to prevent a program failure. 

But this approach would take a look at it across the government 

spectrum and say, what is the most effective way of delivery to the 

customer? Usually the customer doesn’t care who delivers it so 

much as it is done well and that it meets his or her or their industry’s needs. 

So that is one approach that could be taken. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. And, Mr. Shea, if I had a little more time, I 

might ask you to elaborate a little bit. You made a very interesting 

point in terms of expanding evaluations as a tool. I wonder if you 

might just elaborate on that, as my last question. 

Mr. SHEA. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. 

In order to find out whether our programs are working, it is necessary to conduct a scientific experiment, basically, isolating what 

we are doing from other factors so you can say without a shadow 

of a doubt what we are doing is working. Simple performance 

measurement is a very good indicator, but it often disguises other 

factors that are impacting the performance outside of what we are 

doing. 

The Department of Education has a large investment, through 

the Institute of Education Sciences, to really figure out what is impacting student outcomes throughout the country. And they are 

building a body of evidence that helps them invest in better and 

more effective practices. 

This is being expanded throughout government on a relatively 

small scale, but a kernel of information about an effective practice 

is gold if you can really use it to scale up and impact outcomes 

that, frankly, we have been working on for centuries and haven’t 

made a dent. 

67 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. [Presiding.] The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. 

Walberg, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. WALBERG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thanks to the panel for being here. 

Listening to the Senators earlier, I was interested to hear a lot 

of violent agreement, as you have mentioned, from two Senators in 

a body that has extremely violent disagreements on actually doing 

something. 

And I am reminded that we are coming up on the third anniversary of the stimulus that expanded government, that really did not 

produce an economy that would grow. I look at a little card here 

that I have that lists a number of things to deal with regulatory 

barriers that come from government and a significant number of 

bills that we have passed, including the REINS Act and other regulatory accountability reforms, that still sit in the Senate, not acted 

upon. 

So while I am not asking you as a panel of Senators on how we 

should accomplish this, I have appreciated some of the statements 

that you have made in your opening remarks. 

Dr. Light, I was raised in the home of a machinist who was also 

an extreme conservative and always thought that he could build 

his cars and engines much better and more efficiently than taking 

it to a mechanic. And so, in the grease pit that he built in our family garage, I watched him do that and then became a gearhead myself and have had engines—both light tune-ups as well as rebuilds, 

taking the whole engine out of the car, as well, when I had to. I 

know also that in the process of grinding valves, that is a fine process taken carefully, as opposed to wrenching out the bottom end of 

an engine and taking out the crankshaft and replacing it. 

I was interested in your background on that as you discussed 

what needs to be done with the bureaucracy. And so I would like 

to ask you if you would discuss a bit further and in detail your proposals to overhaul the bureaucracy, including removing engine 

parts as necessary. 

Mr. LIGHT. Well, I know how to tune and set the timing on a ’57 

Chevy, but that is not how we do it now, is it? 

Mr. WALBERG. That is right. We don’t have the points anymore. 

Mr. LIGHT. You know, I think, to continue this metaphor, the 

first thing you do is drain the oil and clean out the sludge. And 

that is something we got to do. 

I agree with my colleagues that it is difficult. And there is a lot 

of conversation about rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic, but we have a real opportunity here. We have about 50 percent of the Federal workforce moving toward retirement. And that 

can be seen as a problem or that can be seen as an opportunity. 

We have a lot of opportunity here to take a look at what we have, 

and instead of downsizing through attrition at the bottom or reductions in force, we can take a look at jobs and not fill them as they 

have been exited. 

We can take a look at the structure of government and reorganize, but we are going to have to go big. We are going to have to 

68 

take a look at the whole structure. And this opportunity is going 

to slip through our fingers, and 10 years from now we are going 

to have the same government that we have right now. I am all in 

favor of patience, but when an opportunity like this comes along, 

you take advantage of it. 

Now, how do we do that? I am not wild about another Hoover 

Commission. I am not sure we could do it with the current structure of Congress, and I am not sure that the President could relay 

the reorganization plans. I do like the idea of creating some sort 

of government reform trust, modeled on the Resolution Trust Corporation, to which we would give responsibility for collecting the 

delinquent taxes, collecting the bad loans, collecting and dealing— 

liquidating the useless property that we have, and collecting the 

money from doing so. I mean, we have some cherry-picking that we 

can do that can yield big dollar returns if we just invest in it and 

give somebody the authority to do it. 

And then we have to actually delayer the government. We have 

to take some things off and streamline the block, if you will. 

Mr. WALBERG. Well, let me follow up on that and ask maybe 

across the panel, if you would care to comment. Does the Constitution and, as one witness in a hearing last week said, the ‘‘constitutional niceties’’—I disagree with that; I think there is still authority in the Constitution—does that come into play in dealing with 

the size of government, in your minds? 

Mr. LIGHT. Well, I will just quickly say that the Constitution is 

quite clear that the executive is to faithfully execute the laws. And 

Hamilton, a particular proponent of a well-functioning government, 

argued that the jarrings of parties that we see on Capitol Hill, the 

intense conflict, is important for protecting the public from tyranny, but once the laws are passed, the President is to execute— 

period, end of story. 

And the President has authorities, properly checked by this institution. And we can figure out ways to get this done and get it done 

in a timely fashion without wasting this opportunity that we have. 

We can figure this out. You are capable of doing it, and you have 

done it already. So, I mean, I think it is possible. 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. BLAIR. One comment I would have on that is that we don’t— 

it would be interesting to see what our Founders would think about 

our Federal Government today. And to that end, and maybe in 

some shameless self-promotion—— 

Mr. WALBERG. As long as we had an EMT close to them. 

Mr. BLAIR. What I was going to mention is that—and this may 

be shameless self-promotion on the part of the Academy, but we 

are going to be looking at hosting a seminar on this in a couple 

months. And we are looking at what The Federalist Papers and 

others said at the time of the Founders and looking and comparing 

and contrasting that today. So I think that will be a good debate, 

and I think that I will be able to more fully answer your question 

after hearing from our panelists on that. 

But we have a very fundamental problem today, that we can’t deliver—or we have a hard time delivering on the products and services that government is supposed to be delivering on. And we are 

not doing it as efficiently and effectively as we have to. We have 

69 

a pending sequestration that is hanging over everyone’s heads, and 

something needs to be done. 

And it is going to take leadership. It is going to take executive 

leadership, congressional leadership, working together and working 

across the aisle. But if it is done by one side or the other side, or 

it is done to the other side, you are not going to build together that 

critical mass that is necessary to shepherd those reforms through. 

We can look back through history, like, over the last 10 to 15 

years and seeing reforms, if it has not been in personnel, in health 

care, et cetera, that didn’t have that strong bipartisan, bicameral 

support. And if you don’t have that, when the sides switch, where 

are the promoters and where are the people who are the stakeholders in that? 

And so, what I would urge this committee—this committee is 

poised and primed to serve that function, to come up with a plan 

to—maybe not the plan itself, but to direct an organization or to 

come up with the parameters for what a reorganized Federal Government should look like. Your counterpart in the Senate is 

equipped to do the same thing, and you are at a point in history 

when this can be done. 

And the American people are depending on you. They are depending on the Congress; they are depending on the executive 

branch. They want to see everyone join together at least to do what 

is good and in the best interests of the American people. And so, 

to that effect, I think that this committee has a rare opportunity 

to make that happen. 

Mr. WALBERG. Thank you. 

And thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair now recognizes the gentlelady from the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton, for 5 minutes. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to take a stab at building on the violent agreement 

among you to see if we can model it for this committee. Often, 

there is needless division in this committee, and I wonder if this 

might not be the time, when I listen to your testimony, to draw out 

something of what the committee has done with what the President 

proposes to do. 

And, by the way, watch out for your looking at the Framers. The 

Framers were so wise. The Framers knew what they didn’t know 

and what they did know. And one thing the Framers could not 

have envisioned is a global economy, the Industrial Revolution, and 

the technical revolution that we are trying to go through. So the 

last thing they did was to try to reorganize the government. That 

is up to us. 

The committee has voted to reduce the size of government—I am 

not sure where this has gone in the House floor—by 2015 by 10 

percent, some across-the-board figure. Now the President now 

wants to reorganize the government. 

My only experience with this kind of massive reorganization 

comes from having served on the board of three Fortune 500 companies. And I must tell you that it is only out of that experience 

that I can counter my inherent hostility to fast-track. Because I 

can tell you that no CEO in a Fortune 500 company would have 

70 

done anything but put the plan before the board of directors and 

that is it. And what the President faces, it is 400 CEOs, or 400 and 

some CEOs, that want to get into the act of reorganizing the government. So I guess that drives him to fast-track, and we always 

hate it. 

But let me tell you what has already happened. For decades now, 

we have had a base closure commission. And look, I have lost—I 

have lost a base. They have another one coming up. We hate it. 

They survive. This very committee has just approved a BRAC-type 

bill to allow for the consolidation and disposal of property. A bill 

from another committee, a similar bill, went to the floor last week, 

BRAC-type, civilian BRAC-type bill for agencies so you can dispose 

of or consolidate some of this excess property held by a number of 

agencies, passed in the House. Okay. 

So what we have before us now is—the committee uses the word 

‘‘obesity,’’ meaning some are concerned with the number of employees, despite figures showing a quite remarkable and steady decline 

in the number of employees. When you listen to Senator Warner’s 

testimony, it suggests that our problem has not been so much people as duplication of programs. Indeed, Senator Warner himself, in 

listing his examples, didn’t point to agencies, he pointed to programs: This one does, you know, this for the poor children, and so 

does that one, and there are 10 agencies that do it. 

So my question is, with Members of Congress wanting to reduce 

the Federal workforce further right now and with the President 

wanting to reorganize the workforce, isn’t this a time to bring the 

two together, rationally, so that, for example, instead of a 10 percent cut across the board, you may with reorganization eliminate 

whole programs altogether and therefore accomplish what you 

want perhaps with the same amount of funding in a more rational 

way? 

I think you, Dr. Light, talked about streamlining and delayering. 

Well, you don’t do either with a 10 percent across-the-board cut. 

You do what happened when I was at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, when I was chair. You know, we did the attrition and so forth, but if there were too few lawyers, we would 

have to fill those positions anyway because they were vital to what 

the agency did. 

So I would like to know whether you—I would like to hear from 

all four of you—whether you think the President’s desire to reorganize and the committee’s desire to cut employees in fact could come 

together if the President were given this authority, which I hate? 

I am trying to fight against my own bias to find what is the right 

way to go. 

Mr. LIGHT. First of all, it is a delight to be back testifying before 

you. It is nice to see you again. 

But let me say that I am violently opposed to the attrition-based 

downsizing. I don’t think it is going to work. And, in fact, oftentimes you hear people who advocate the downsizing—which hits 

the bottom layer of government with a tsunami force while insulating the higher levels of government from much turnover at all. 

So we hear people saying, ‘‘We ought to cut the workforce,’’ but, incidentally, PTO has that backlog. And SSA has a backlog. And the 

Veterans Administration has a backlog. And the backloads grow 

71 

and grow and grow because these downsizings—and the Clinton 

administration did this, too—these downsizings whack off the bottom of government because the quit rates, the separation rates are 

much higher. And Max Stier has documented the separation rates 

in the first 5 years of service. 

Now, if we start looking at the jobs that the baby boomers are 

vacating at the middle and higher levels, we can get some reductions in force there. But we should take the dollars, I believe, that 

we save from those reductions in force and hire more people on the 

front line. You might end up with—— 

Ms. NORTON. Well, can you do that without reorganization? 

Mr. LIGHT. You can do it without reorganization, but it is a multiplier effect on reorganization. You might end up with the same 

number of Federal employees, but they would be at a different level 

and there would be a different cost. You would have more inspectors, you would have more disability review, you would have more 

people looking at those patent and trademark applications. You 

would have a better-working government. And you wouldn’t have 

do it through an attrition-based downsizing that would reduce the 

number of people who are actually delivering the goods and services. 

I understand the point of the effort, but I don’t think it works 

the way people think it will. 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

The chair will now recognize himself for 5 minutes. 

Mr. Light, you proposed a $1 trillion cut in Federal spending last 

July, and there are a lot of areas that you cut from. Can you focus 

for a minute on why the Federal management has 18 layers of, I 

guess, management and you would like to reduce that number to 

6? Why does the government currently have so many management 

layers? And how does that impact its efficiency? 

Mr. LIGHT. The management layers exist for a simple reason: 

The Federal Government pays exactly no price for creating new 

layers. Every business in America pays a price—in lost productivity, lost clarity of communication—when it creates a new layer 

of management. So does Congress, which has created more and 

more layers, and the Office of Management and Budget and so 

forth, and universities. You want to see a paragon of layering? You 

ought to take a look at university hierarchies. 

It is when you pay a price for creating a layer that you reduce 

the creation of layers. That is it. And we have allowed them to be 

established, and we allowed them to spread. I counted 64 layers between the top of the departments, on average, and the bottom of 

just the administrator compartment. I mean, it is because we don’t 

pay a price for it. 

And we have used it during pay freezes, and we have used it 

during hiring freezes; we have used the creation of layers to get our 

people moved up. It is often by accident, and we just don’t do much 

about it. 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. Do you know what the total number of Federal 

employees are—the private contractors, Federal employees like 

ourselves, postal, veterans? Do you know what the total number is? 

Mr. LIGHT. The estimated number I would use is 14 million. 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. Fourteen million? 

72 

Mr. LIGHT. And that includes some number—I mean, that includes the contractors, the military, the Postal Service, the quasigovernment—you know, the full-time-equivalent Feds, the fulltime-equivalent contractors. 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. I think Chairman Issa asked Senator Warner, 

what would be the ideal workforce, and he gave an answer that, 

you know, seems acceptable: Whatever is appropriate to do a good 

job. And I think he went on to say we don’t really even know how 

many people work for us. And that is a problem. 

I ran a medical practice for 20 years, and I have had from four 

to five employees, and I can say down to probably 15 minutes a day 

I know what each one of those employees does. And the Federal 

Government, when we don’t even know what these people are 

doing, that seems like a big problem. 

And a good example, this year on our MRA accounts for all of 

the Members, we were tasked with reducing that number by 5 percent in 2011, and in 2012 we are tasked with reducing that by 6 

percent. So we have seen a 10 percent cut in 2 years. And the reason we are successful at getting that done is because I was told 

when I came to Congress that I had this budget to manage my staff 

and if I went over budget that money came out of my pocket. So 

guess what? We are meeting those levels. 

How can we transform that into a bigger approach with government and get better accountability? 

Mr. LIGHT. Well, I mean, we know everything possible about Federal employees once they are on the payroll, almost to their shoe 

size. We know nothing about the number of contract employees. 

Every time I roll out these estimates, which are pretty solid, but, 

you know, they are estimates, the service contractor association 

says, you know, these are terrible estimates, they are just estimates, they are overblown. And I will always say back to them— 

I get phone calls from my colleague over there, and I will always 

say back, you know, Stan, that is a good point, but what is your 

number? And he will say, we don’t have one, and we don’t want 

to get one, and we don’t have to get one; we don’t have to tell you 

how many people we employ. 

So we do not extract from the contract community or the grant 

community any data on what gets paid. The Project on Government 

Oversight just released a report comparing contract costs by job 

classification code in the contractor community, the private sector, 

and the Federal community. And Feds are overpaid somewhat in 

many categories to private employees and—— 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. Is it like 70,000 to 50,000, on average? Is that 

the gap between Federal and private—— 

Mr. LIGHT. But when you go to the contractor community, the 

contractors are vastly overpaid compared to the Federal employees. 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. Okay. 

One other point. I think I have heard from Ed and Workforce— 

we had a hearing, and 98.5 percent of government employees are 

retained once they join the government workforce. Have you ever 

heard of that type of retention rate of employees in any other private-sector industry? 

73 

Mr. LIGHT. You know, the turnover rate has to be somewhere between 0 and 5 percent to get that fresh blood. I mean, I would rely 

on Max here, my colleague Max, to give you something on that. 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. Okay. Actually, I did want to get to some of 

your thoughts on the unpaid tax liability that the IRS has identified, about $300 billion per year, but my time has expired. 

And so I will yield to the ranking member, the gentleman from 

Maryland, Mr. Cummings, for 5 minutes. 

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

Dr. Light, you just said something that was very interesting. You 

said the contractors are paid more than the Federal employees. Is 

that right? 

Mr. LIGHT. Absolutely correct, according to the Project on Government Oversight. In 33 of the 34 job classifications they studied—I think it was 34—contractors were overpaid—not overpaid— 

were paid more. You know, I shouldn’t have let that word slip. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And the Federal Government is spending over $500 billion on Federal contracts. We keep hearing about proposals 

to cut Federal employees. However, you recommended in your testimony that the acquisition workforce should be increased to 

strengthen oversight. 

Now, why is it so important to increase the number of employees 

focused on acquisition oversight? 

Mr. LIGHT. We need to know what is happening out there in that 

40 percent of contracts that are sole-sourced, noncompeted. We 

have a vast increase in the number of bundled contracts, which are 

nests of contractors, sub and sub and sub. We don’t know what is 

going on in there. And the acquisition workforce has remained 

pretty steady, a little bit lower now, at sort of low-60,000s since 

1990. 

We just got to take a look inside those nests, those sole-source 

contracts. That is what the Shays Commission has done on Iraq 

wartime contracting. I mean, you start looking inside these nests 

and you see these conflicts of interest and problems monitoring 

what is going on. 

We have to have more people with the skills—and this goes to 

Max Stier’s point. We have to have a stronger acquisitions workforce. And we cannot rely on contractors to write our RFPs, which 

happens in many agencies. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Well, you know, we had an experience with that 

with the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard in the Deepwater project, 

they had the private contractors pretty much write the contract. 

Mr. LIGHT. Right. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And we now have sitting in Baltimore eight 

ships that they bought, pretty much, that don’t float, because they 

did not have a decent acquisitions department. So they left it up 

to the private contractors. And they were buying radar systems 

that were supposed to cover 360 degrees that covered 180 degrees. 

That is what the private—and we lost millions upon millions of dollars in that Deepwater project. 

Mr. LIGHT. Well, we have primes on some of these bundled contractors that are subs to other primes on other contracts, who are 

subs on their contracts. You see what I mean? 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yeah. 

74 

Mr. LIGHT. I mean, we have, like, this nest of potential conflict 

of interest across the contract community, but we can’t see it. It is 

not transparent at all. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. So it is so big that we are—it is like a monster 

that we can’t control. But yet and still, we are letting go a lot of 

Federal employees. 

And it seems like a lot of people why this impression that these 

Federal employees are making a whole, whole lot of money. And a 

lot of them work right here on the Hill, and they are not making 

but so much money. But yet and still, we are chopping and freezing 

their pay. It is very interesting. 

Mr. LIGHT. Well, I don’t want to help you set your oversight 

agenda, but we ought to take a look at the implementation of the 

Service Contractor Act of 1965 in terms of what the bottom level 

of the contractor industry is paying its workers. They are supposed 

to be paying a small premium for health insurance and other benefits if they are not providing those directly. And there is absolutely 

no evidence that that goes on. 

I mean, we just need to understand more about what we are 

spending. Could we use fewer contract employees? We can’t answer 

the question until we know how many there are. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. So let me make sure I understand what you just 

alluded to. And I know you didn’t come to a conclusion; you sort 

of put it out there as a question. But are you thinking that one of 

the questions that needs to be asked is, when these contracts are 

then awarded to the private contractors, work that would have normally been done by Federal workers, and they are supposedly for 

a lower amount, I guess, but in the end a lot of times the benefits 

that would flow to the employees of those contractors are not at all 

comparable to what they would get as a Federal employee. Is 

that—— 

Mr. LIGHT. Right. Right. What happens is that we save money 

on the frontline delivery in the short term, but we have an 

intergenerational cost transfer 30, 40 years down the line. If you 

take in a worker at 22 and do not provide a compensation package, 

you do not provide any kind of pension support, 40, 50 years later 

they are going to come back to us for Supplemental Security Income. The cost of not providing compensation at the bottom of the 

contract workforce eventually catches up to us. And, of course, the 

spread between the top and the bottom is also something worth 

looking at. 

We increased the—this committee led the effort to increase the 

President’s salary to $400,000 starting in 2001. And we thought 

that might lift the top of the Federal salary structure to eliminate 

compensation for the SES. It did a little. But we still have work 

to do on that to see what the spreads are across the sectors. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I see my time is up. Thank you. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

I am just going to do a very quick follow-up. And, Dr. Light, I 

am not sure I understand the whole idea that if you pay less now, 

you are automatically going to have this tail. That would beg the 

idea that Greece had the right idea lock, stock, and barrel, that, 

you know, a job for life and guaranteed retirement at 50 and so on 

is the right answer. 

75 

Mr. LIGHT. That is a good point. 

Chairman ISSA. But I won’t go there. 

I will go to one area, because this committee—Mr. Cummings is 

on both—but this committee looked deeply into Deepwater, and 

what we found was that the Navy had all the assets necessary to 

deliver those eight ships properly. And a classic example—and I 

would like your comment on it—was the Coast Guard didn’t know 

how to build major ships at sea, the Navy does it for a living, the 

Coast Guard decided to do it itself without the resources. 

So my question to you is, rather than say you have to develop 

the Coast Guard to have the ability to build what is essentially 

identical ships to what the Navy builds every day, how do we 

change government so that, quite frankly, the Coast Guard gets 

told, ‘‘Sorry, you are just not the best to buy your own ship in this 

case; we will give you a seat at the table, but the Navy is going 

to procure it’’? How do we make that change to where that same 

dumb contract doesn’t happen again that gives us ships that break 

in half in less than 20 years? 

Mr. Stier, you look like you are anxious to answer. 

Mr. STIER. Yeah, I think that it is a great question, and I am 

quite interested in what Dr. Light is going to respond. 

I will throw in one thought, and that is that my view is that if 

we increase mobility amongst the leadership in government, that 

would actually help address—not fully address, but it would help 

address—the issue you are describing. 

Chairman ISSA. Goldwater-Nichols for the nondefense area. 

Mr. STIER. Absolutely. And, frankly, with DOD, there is a lot of 

expertise in DOD. Goldwater-Nichols has worked quite substantially to increase integration across the services, but you don’t see 

a lot of integrations with DOD and the civilian agencies. And, 

frankly—— 

Chairman ISSA. Or even DOD civilians. 

Mr. STIER. That is correct, absolutely. And, you know, it is 92 

percent of the SES come from within government, four out of five 

from within the same agency. Once they are actually in the SES, 

only 8 percent move agencies. We are putting out a report on this 

at the end of the month. 

I think if you move people around, you create relationships, you 

have people understand that there is knowledge in other places 

and they know who to call. And that is the kind of thing that I 

think would have dramatic impact. 

Chairman ISSA. So I see general consensus on that. 

Let me follow up with one more thing. This committee is very 

partisan sometimes on the Federal workforce. I came out of San 

Diego, California, where we had a formal commission process for 

outsourcing versus in-sourcing. We had a system in which you 

could in-source if you could prove you could do it cheaper. You 

could keep a contract if you could prove that you were nearly competitive to an outsource, et cetera, et cetera. 

Do we need to have a refinement in that type of analysis so that, 

in fact, the Federal workforce broadly would essentially get the 

right to—if they could beat the full-time equivalent of a contractor 

and provide the same flexibility, they could, in a sense, bid for it, 

so that we wouldn’t have this big question of, are we paying for an 

76 

outsource greater—and I appreciate, Dr. Light, your concept on the 

paying less, but in some cases we pay more. The best example that 

I see every day is what we are paying—or know of every day—right 

now in Iraq, the people who replaced our men and women in uniform are costing us three and four times as much as the uniformed 

people they replaced. And I mean not just—I mean, you know, it 

is a quarter of a million dollars per security person. And no matter 

how you load our active-duty military, you don’t get to that number. 

Is there a responsibility and a possibility that we could create 

the kind of flexibility so the question of what we used to call ‘‘bill 

or buy’’ in the private sector, but ‘‘bill or buy’’ in the sense of refining the Federal workforce? And if we do so, do we need to have a 

level of flexibility of the Federal workforce that goes with that? 

And I would go right down the line. 

Mr. LIGHT. San Diego was also a pioneer in public nonprofit and 

private competition on the welfare front. You know, very celebrated 

experiment out there. 

What we really have to do, I think, is take a good, hard look at 

Budget Circular A–76, which defines the basic terms for contracting out. It was revised—when? 

Mr. SHEA. In 2003 it was revised. 

Mr. LIGHT. I think we really need to take a good, hard look at 

how it has been implemented and how we define this term and—— 

Chairman ISSA. So after we determined that it failed, because we 

saw outsourcing for greater cost under President Bush at times, 

clearly—— 

Mr. LIGHT. Right. 

Chairman ISSA. —and now we see in-sourcing in which they tap 

the contractor employee on the shoulder and say, we are going to 

be in-sourcing, would you like a pay raise? 

I mean, we have clearly had an ignoring of these kinds of considerations under both—at least the two Presidents I have served 

under. 

Mr. LIGHT. Correct. 

Chairman ISSA. Mr. Blair? 

Mr. BLAIR. What I was going to interject—— 

Chairman ISSA. So much for briefly, by the way, but, please. 

That was my last question. 

Mr. BLAIR. It is really the question of what is inherently governmental. And if the job is inherently governmental, it should not be 

contracted out. And if the job is not inherently governmental, then 

there is a fair question of why would you have a Federal employee 

performing that function when it is not inherently governmental. 

So maybe the more fundamental issue—— 

Chairman ISSA. Isn’t the answer the lowest-cost delivery of what 

the government has determined shall be delivered on behalf of the 

government? And I say that because the question of ‘‘inherently 

governmental’’—I can come up with reasons, for example, that a 

patent examiner is inherently governmental. On the other hand, I 

look and say, well, look, if the quality of the patent is properly reviewed and the final decision is a government decision, well, then 

the government made its inherently governmental decision, which 

was only the very last step, which was the awarding. 

77 

So I can go through and have that argument time and time 

again, but ‘‘inherently governmental’’ is hard to decide, and we can 

each have our own. Once you decide the government shall deliver— 

and San Diego is, Dr. Light, one of my favorite examples. We made 

a decision that maybe the YMCA was better, maybe Beth Israel 

was better. We went through whole processes of secular and religious groups. And it was always a question of we, the government, 

are paying for it, we take responsibility, and we want the highest 

quality delivered at the best value, if you will, not just price. And 

that concept allowed us to flow in and out and, by the way, take 

away contracts even from the most sympathetic groups if they 

weren’t delivering the best value. 

How do we get to defining that, not with a circular, but with 

something that we can then check and recheck and recheck? Because otherwise, how do we reduce the total cost of delivery and, 

in fact, guarantee that quality, fully-paid-for service is delivered? 

Mr. Shea? 

And I thank the ranking member. I know this has gone longer 

than I planned. 

Mr. SHEA. Yes, sir. During the Bush administration, we had a 

program called competitive sourcing, with which you are familiar. 

Chairman ISSA. Right. 

Mr. SHEA. It was governed by A–76. A–76 sets as a target the 

completion of a competition within 2 to 4 years. So in a bureaucracy, that is a goal. You want to shoot for that 4 years. So they 

were all more complicated and time-consuming than you wanted 

them to be. 

But the vast majority of these competitions resulted in a victory 

by the in-house employees. But a majority of cases, you perform the 

same function more professionally and with a smaller workforce. 

Now—— 

Chairman ISSA. Right. In other words, it caused the Federal 

workforce to reconcile their own shortcomings and get better. 

Mr. SHEA. Absolutely. I will never forget the looks on the faces 

of employees when we concluded a competition at OMB. We were 

going to get more professional staff while this function we were 

studying was going to get more professional but smaller. And folks 

who generally opposed this were delighted at the outcome. 

That suggests that we could have done a much better job communicating it on the front end, because it does impact morale when 

you are going into this. We learned a lot from that process that I 

think would benefit future similar efforts. 

Chairman ISSA. Mr. Stier, you have the last word. 

Mr. STIER. I was just going to say thank you. 

Chairman ISSA. You are most welcome. 

The ranking member is recognized. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Just to follow up on the chairman’s questions, 

Mr. Shea, when you were talking about the comparisons between 

the government and private contractors, where does the piece that 

I was talking to Dr. Light about—let’s say, for example, we have 

a private contractor that is offering X benefits and those benefits 

don’t, say, even compare to what the government is offering, how 

does that play into that? Do you follow me? 

Mr. SHEA. Yes—— 

78 

Mr. CUMMINGS. It is certainly going to be cheaper. I mean, you 

would figure it would be cheaper if—because I get complaints from 

people in my district who say that they are sitting next to people 

who may be under a contract doing basically the same work but 

in some instances not getting the benefits that they are getting. 

Do you follow me? 

Mr. SHEA. Let me just say that I am very proud of the benefits 

we offer our employees at Grant Thornton. 

And I think—I am not sure—— 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I mean, in other words, how do you—— 

Mr. SHEA. How do you do an apples-to-apples comparison? 

Mr. CUMMINGS. That is right. That is exactly right. 

Mr. SHEA. And I am not sure exactly the parameters of A–76 in 

that regard. But I think, within some limitations, what you are 

saying is, the full cost of the government and the bill the government pays a contractor. And I think there are some requirements 

that Dr. Light mentioned about minimum benefits you pay, but I 

think generally that is taken into account when you are looking at 

the bottom-line cost that the government is paying the contractor 

versus the fully loaded cost that you are paying an employee. 

And that is what takes the time, frankly, in the competitions. 

You are trying to make sure that the cost estimates of each, the 

in-house team and the contractor, are fairly compared. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Uh-huh. 

Mr. Stier, did you have a comment on that? 

Mr. STIER. I would just add that it is also, I think, important to 

look at the cost also of the acquisition process. And one of the— 

and I say this with some hesitation only because I haven’t been 

able to verify the data. But I was told just yesterday by somebody 

in the IT world that the average cost of the acquisition in the government was somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 percent of the 

total cost of the package, including implementation, in the government space, in the public-sector space; whereas a reasonable average in the private sector was around 12 percent or 12 1/2 percent. 

And I think that, again, if we are looking at cost savings, it is 

not simply—we have to look at the process itself and the direct 

costs that are associated there. But, frankly, we also do a very poor 

job of engaging the contractor community in helping identify the 

right design according to clear requirements. 

So there is a complex set of issues that, if you are trying to really 

take this on, I think are worth examining, in which I do believe 

that there are enormous efficiencies that are available to us. 

And the last piece I would say, we are missing inside government 

not just the acquisition workforce folks that we need, but—Mr. 

Chairman, to your point, at the end of the day, what we look for 

in our government is the ultimate oversight to say that the public 

good is being looked after in the appropriate fashion. We don’t have 

the right talent today internally to make those decisions, and that 

is a real problem. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And how do you suggest we have it? 

Mr. STIER. And I am cognizant of the fact that I am using up 

your time. 

I think the starting point really is understanding what our priorities are, because, again, I think there isn’t clarity associated with 

79 

that, and then examining what critical skills that we actually need 

to achieve those priorities. And this is something that I think needs 

to take place not just within agencies but holistically as well. But 

it is a real challenge. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

And I want to thank all of our witnesses. And as I said in the 

beginning, as your thoughts go on for the next several days, we will 

hold the record open for 5 days so that you can, as we like to say, 

revise and extend. 

Chairman ISSA. And, with that, we stand adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:45 a.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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