FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL 

GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2012 

HEARINGS 

BEFORE A 

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT 

APPROPRIATIONS 

JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri, Chair 

RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana 

JO BONNER, Alabama 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

TOM GRAVES, Georgia 

KEVIN YODER, Kansas 

STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas 

JOSE ́ E. SERRANO, New York 

BARBARA LEE, California 

PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana 

ED PASTOR, Arizona 

NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full Committee, and Mr. Dicks, as Ranking 

Minority Member of the Full Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees. 

JOHN MARTENS, WINNIE CHANG, KELLY SHEA, and ARIANA SARAR, 

Subcommittee Staff 

PART 6 

Page 

Judiciary .............................................................................................................. 1 

District of Columbia Courts and Court Services and Offender 

Supervision Agency ....................................................................................... 79 

U.S. Supreme Court .......................................................................................... 141 

Office of Management and Budget, Government Accountability 

Office, and General Services Administration—Information 

Technology Oversight ................................................................................... 177 

Executive Office of the President ................................................................. 321 

( 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations 


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Part 6 


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FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2012 


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FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL 

GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2012 

HEARINGS 

BEFORE A 

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT 

APPROPRIATIONS 

JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri, Chair 

RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana 

JO BONNER, Alabama 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

TOM GRAVES, Georgia 

KEVIN YODER, Kansas 

STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas 

JOSE ́ E. SERRANO, New York 

BARBARA LEE, California 

PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana 

ED PASTOR, Arizona 

NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full Committee, and Mr. Dicks, as Ranking 

Minority Member of the Full Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees. 

JOHN MARTENS, WINNIE CHANG, KELLY SHEA, and ARIANA SARAR, 

Subcommittee Staff 

PART 6 

Page 

Judiciary .............................................................................................................. 1 

District of Columbia Courts and Court Services and Offender 

Supervision Agency ....................................................................................... 79 

U.S. Supreme Court .......................................................................................... 141 

Office of Management and Budget, Government Accountability 

Office, and General Services Administration—Information 

Technology Oversight ................................................................................... 177 

Executive Office of the President ................................................................. 321 

( 

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

66–756 WASHINGTON : 2011 


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COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky, Chairman 

C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida 1

JERRY LEWIS, California 1

FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia 

JACK KINGSTON, Georgia 

RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey 

TOM LATHAM, Iowa 

ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama 

JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri 

KAY GRANGER, Texas 

MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho 

JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas 

ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida 

DENNY REHBERG, Montana 

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas 

RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana 

KEN CALVERT, California 

JO BONNER, Alabama 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

TOM COLE, Oklahoma 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

STEVE AUSTRIA, Ohio 

CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming 

TOM GRAVES, Georgia 

KEVIN YODER, Kansas 

STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas 

ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi 

————— 

1 Chairman Emeritus 

NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington 

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio 

PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana 

NITA M. LOWEY, New York 

JOSE ́ E. SERRANO, New York 

ROSA L. DELAURO, Connecticut 

JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia 

JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts 

ED PASTOR, Arizona 

DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina 

MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York 

LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California 

SAM FARR, California 

JESSE L. JACKSON, JR., Illinois 

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania 

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey 

SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR., Georgia 

BARBARA LEE, California 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California 

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota 

WILLIAM B. INGLEE, Clerk and Staff Director 

(II)


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(1) 

FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL 

GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2012 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2011. 

THE JUDICIARY 

WITNESSES 

HON. JULIA S. GIBBONS, JUDGE, SIXTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS, 

AND CHAIR, COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET OF THE JUDICIAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED STATES 

JAMES C. DUFF, DIRECTOR, ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE OF THE U.S. 

COURTS 

CHAIRWOMAN EMERSON’S OPENING STATEMENT

Mrs. EMERSON. Welcome. We are going to go ahead and start. I 

really want to thank you for being here today, Judge Gibbons and 

Mr. Duff. Unfortunately, we are having votes called right now. We 

are going to have three votes. Joe and I will do our opening statements, and we will do our best to see if we can get through at least 

one of yours. So thank you very much. 

First, let me make a comment on behalf of the subcommittee expressing our deep condolences over the death of Judge Roll. What 

a terrible, terrible tragedy. He served Arizona and our Nation so 

well. I know that the loss of him is truly felt throughout the judicial system in a very, very sad, sad situation. But it is something 

that we take very seriously, and certainly we hold his family and 

friends in our thoughts and prayers, along with all of the rest of 

the victims of the senseless shooting in Tucson. 

An independent judiciary that holds the trust and respect of all 

of our citizens and can resolve criminal, civil and bankruptcy disputes in a fair and expeditious manner is fundamental to our Nation. In addition, the judiciary’s probation and pretrial service officers perform a critical public safety mission by supervising more 

than 200,000 offenders and defendants living in our communities. 

We will do our best to ensure that you have the resources needed 

to accomplish your important mission, especially since your criminal, bankruptcy, and probation workload is growing. 

However, something I have to say to everybody who comes before our Subcommittee when we have a $14 trillion debt: It does compel 

us to reduce spending. And I am committed to reducing spending 

substantially throughout this budget process. 

The judiciary’s budget request proposes a discretionary spending 

increase of $424 million, or 6.6 percent above the fiscal year 2010 

level. This is more than the Subcommittee and the Nation can afford right now. So I want to work with you, I want to work very 


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closely with our Ranking Member, and my good friend Joe Serrano, 

to identify savings in the Federal judiciary’s costs while still providing the courts with the resources needed to fulfill your constitutional duties. I appreciate the important work that you do and look 

forward to your testimony. 

Now let me recognize my very dear friend Joe Serrano. 

RANKING MEMBER SERRANO’S OPENING STATEMENT

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. 

I would like to associate myself with the chair’s remarks regarding Judge Roll. By all accounts, he was an outstanding jurist, caring husband and a father; an active member of the Tucson community. His tragic loss is felt by all of us. We mean that sincerely. 

Please pass along again our heartfelt condolences to his family and 

to his colleagues. 

I would also like to join with the chair in once again welcoming 

Judge Julia Gibbons and Director James Duff to the subcommittee. 

They have been here several times before, and they are going to 

keep doing it until they get it right. That is an old joke. I can’t help 

myself. They have always done a wonderful job of addressing our 

many questions. 

Yesterday we heard testimony from the General Services Administration, which, for the second year in a row, has not included any 

funding for new courthouse construction. It will be interesting to 

contrast the answers we heard from the GSA on this issue with 

any further information that you provide today. I suspect that 

there may be differences in the priorities of the Federal judiciary 

and that of the GSA, but I am sure we will get a chance to hear 

more about that. 

Additionally, and I mention this at every hearing, I believe, that 

there are important questions we in Congress need to ask in order 

to understand the impact of a government shutdown on the Third 

Branch. For instance, if there is a government shutdown, what limitations are placed on judges; will access to the court system be restricted? It would be extremely troubling if a government shutdown 

doesn’t just limit access to the executive branch, but to our Federal 

judicial system as well. The Federal judiciary plays a crucial role 

in our democratic system, and we must make certain that you have 

all the resources you need to ensure our Federal justice systems 

continues to set an example for the rest of the world. 

I look forward to your testimony and welcome you again. And I 

apologize for the fact that we are interrupted. That is part of our 

job, to vote. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Judge Gibbons, I would now like to recognize 

you. If you would be so kind as to keep your remarks to 5 minutes 

or less, we will have more time for questions. 

JUDGE GIBBONS’ OPENING STATEMENT

Judge GIBBONS. Chairwoman Emerson, Representative Serrano, 

and Members of the Committee, I am Judge Julia Gibbons of the 

Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and Chair of the Judicial Conference 

Committee on the Budget. As you know, with me today is Jim Duff, 

Director of the Administrative Office of the Courts. 


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JUDGE JOHN M. ROLL

I thank you both for your remarks about Judge Roll. He was a 

fine judge and a fine man. And I use those terms in the way my 

mother would have used them, to mean the highest of compliments. 

There is a special poignancy to the way in which he died, as we 

are here today together, because he died trying to nurture the relationship between our two branches of government in speaking to 

his friend Congresswoman Giffords. 

IMPACT OF FUNDING CUTS ON THE FEDERAL COURTS

I begin today by expressing our deep concern about the impacts 

on the judiciary of various proposals offered by some Members of 

Congress to shrink the size of the Federal Government through 

deep spending cuts. We have seen proposals to reduce spending to 

fiscal year 2008 levels and to fiscal year 2006 levels even. Such a 

budget-cutting approach may prove effective in some areas of Federal spending, but it would have a devastating impact on the Federal courts and the administration of justice. 

Unlike many executive branch agencies, we do not have programs that we can cut in response to a budget shortfall. So deep 

funding cuts would not reduce the scope or volume of our work unless Congress also makes dramatic reductions in law enforcement 

programs. We do not have the discretion to decline or defer cases 

based on resource constraints. In fact, the opposite is true; we are 

required to adjudicate the cases that are brought to us regardless 

of staffing and resource levels in the courts. 

Through new laws enacted and resources provided for law enforcement programs, Congress determines the jurisdiction and, to 

a large extent, the workload of the Federal courts. The President’s 

policies carried out through the Department of Justice also play a 

role in our workload. Hundreds of new Federal laws have been enacted over the last 30 years that have significantly increased our 

jurisdiction. In turn, we have seen rapid workload growth, and our 

workload currently is at or near record levels in most filing categories. 

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS’ FY 2011 FUNDING APPEAL

With this increase in workload in mind, I respectfully ask you to 

consider the March 18 letter from Chief Justice Roberts in which 

he asked Congress to provide a total fiscal year 2011 appropriation 

to the judiciary of $6.92 billion, which is slightly above the 2010 

appropriation. This is the amount needed to maintain our current 

staffing levels and provides no additional court staff to meet growing workload needs. 

FY 2012 BUDGET REQUEST

Turning to the details of our fiscal year 2012 request, we seek 

$7.3 billion in appropriations, which we have described as a 4.3 

percent overall increase above the fiscal year 2011 assumed appropriations level. In the absence of a final appropriation, we assume 

the funding level included in the full-year CR passed by House in 

December 2010. The 6.6 percent figure used by Chairwoman Emerson is the 2012 increase over the 2010 enacted level. We listened 


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carefully, and we heard what you said about being unable to afford 

6.6 percent, and I think you know that while we have a history of 

requesting what we think we need for the courts to fund the growing workload, we also have a history of working with the Subcommittee in recognizing what is possible. Of the request before you, $258 million, or 86 percent, of the increase is for standard pay and nonpay inflationary adjustments 

and for adjustments to base reflecting increases in our space, information technology, defender services, and court security programs. 

The remaining $41 million is for new court support staff positions 

largely in probation and pretrial services offices and in bankruptcy 

clerks’ offices, program improvements in our IT program, four new 

magistrate judges, and several smaller program enhancements. We 

are subject to the 2011 and 2012 freeze on Federal pay, so our request does not include a cost-of-living adjustment for judges or 

staff. 

COST CONTAINMENT

Our request reflects our ongoing efforts to contain costs. We are 

in our seventh year of an intensive effort to reduce costs throughout the judiciary, and our cost-containment program is producing 

results. We have achieved the most significant cost savings to date 

in our space and facilities program, and GSA has been very cooperative with us in this area. My written statement includes more detail about cost containment, which continues to be a top priority for 

us. 

STATEMENTS FOR THE HEARING RECORD

I ask that my entire statement be placed in the record, along 

with those referenced in my written statement. I will, of course, be 

happy to answer questions. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Without objection, Judge Gibbons. 

[The information follows:] 


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HEARING RECESS

Mrs. EMERSON. I think if you all don’t mind, let us take a brief 

recess while we go vote. We have got the three votes. Then we will 

begin again with Director Duff’s statement and then questions. 

So thank you all. I apologize. 

Judge GIBBONS. We are at your disposal. We are appreciative of 

the opportunity to be here. 

[Recess.] 

Mrs. EMERSON. Director Duff, we would love to hear from you. 

And if you could keep your remarks to under 5 minutes, or close 

to, then we can spend more time on the questions. Thank you. 

DIRECTOR DUFF’S OPENING STATEMENT

Mr. DUFF. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Emerson, 

Representative Serrano, and Members of the Subcommittee. I am 

Jim Duff, Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. 

It is a pleasure to appear before you today. 

I also want to thank you both for expressing your condolences 

concerning the death of Judge John Roll. We will certainly pass 

them along to his family. He was a hero and will be greatly missed. 

Since 1939, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has provided a broad range of support to the Federal courts nationwide. 

We have evolved over the years to meet the changing needs of the 

judicial branch, but service to the courts has been and remains our 

basic mission. 

FY 2012 BUDGET REQUEST

For fiscal year 2012, we are seeking an appropriation of $88.5 

million for the Administrative Office of the Courts. The requested 

increase is primarily made up of base adjustments to maintain current operations. As Judge Gibbons noted earlier, however, this 

budget request was developed last fall based on assumptions at 

that time, and once we receive the final fiscal year 2011 appropriation, we will update our fiscal year 2012 request and provide that 

to the committee. 

The fiscal year 2012 request also includes funding for the same 

three new positions to address high-priority program requirements 

that are critical to the operations of the courts that were requested 

in the fiscal year 2011 request. Specifically, two of the positions 

support a comprehensive modernization and consolidation of the judiciary’s nationwide accounting system. It is a multiyear effort that 

will provide the judiciary with significant improvements in its accounting of appropriated funds. 

The third position is requested to support an initiative to address 

judges’ Internet security concerns, including Internet threats and 

the availability of judges’ personal information on the Internet. 

This request, also originally in the fiscal year 2011 budget request, 

was the first request that we made to fund additional staff from 

the AO’s appropriation in 6—and now 7—years. As I have said previously before, before the Subcommittee, I implemented a hiring 

freeze when I joined the Administrative Office of the Courts, a 

freeze for a couple of years. So we have not requested positions for 

now 7 years. 


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COURTHOUSE CONSTRUCTION

Before I close with these openings remarks, let me mention briefly something Congressman Serrano mentioned, and that is funding 

for courthouse construction. For the second year in a row, the 

President’s budget for the General Services Administration does 

not request funding for new courthouse construction projects that 

reflect the priorities of the Third Branch, as detailed in the Judicial 

Conference’s 5-Year Courthouse Construction Plan. For 2012, the 

judiciary’s courthouse priorities are Los Angeles, California; Mobile, Alabama; Nashville, Tennessee; Savannah, Georgia; and San 

Jose, California. Each one of these is critically needed to address 

major operational deficiencies at those locations. And I would like 

to include our 5-year plan in the official record. 

[The information follows:] 


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I urge the Subbcommittee to consider the priorities of the Judical 

Conference with regard to courthouse construction projects and include funding in your 2012 bill for the five projects I just mentioned. 

That concludes my oral remarks. I would be happy to answer 

questions and would like my full statement submitted for the 

record 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you very much. Without objection, your 

full statement will be entered into the record. 

Mr. DUFF. Thank you. 

[The information follows:] 


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IMPACT OF FY 2008 FUNDING FOR FY 2012

Mrs. EMERSON. So we are talking about the budget and the need 

to address our country’s unsustainable debt. As I said earlier, we 

are going to have to reduce spending of our Subcommittee and 

have been asked to try to reduce it to 2008 levels. But I must say, 

since 2008, the courts’ workload has increased significantly in 

many areas, such as criminal and bankruptcy filings and supervision of offenders and defendants living in our communities. So I 

imagine it would be somewhat difficult for the judiciary to reduce 

its funding to 2008 levels. 

With that said, could you all describe to me the impact on the 

judiciary if we did reduce your funding to fiscal 2008 levels? 

Judge Gibbons. 

Judge GIBBONS. Well, as you have referenced, this would be a 

very, very, very difficult situation for us. A hard freeze at the 2008 

level for 2012 would require a reduction in current onboard staffing 

levels as of February 13 of this year of 7,872 positions, or 3,936 

FTE. And you will recall that we have—in total, the judiciary has 

about 31,000 employees, and 22,000 of those are in clerks’ offices 

and probation and pretrial services offices. Historically any cuts 

have been taken from among that 22,000, the remaining being 

judges and judges’ personal staffs. 

Funding for the courts would be 18.9 percent below the 2012 

budget request level. We would see serious and longstanding problems for the courts in terms of supervision of convicted felons who 

have been released from prison, delays in case processing, and that 

has different impacts depending on what kinds of cases we are delaying. Obviously, if we are talking about bankruptcy cases, we are 

talking about sometimes an economic impact. If we are talking 

about criminal cases, we are talking about potentially having to 

dismiss indictments under the Speedy Trial Act if we cannot get 

those cases handled in a timely fashion. In civil cases we are talking about serious hardship to individuals and businesses if they 

cannot get their disputes timely resolved. 

We are talking about a decline in service, reduction in clerks— 

the hours that clerks’ offices are open; delays in improvements to 

our automation program, such as the updates to the Case Management/Electronic Filing System that we need to do. In the court security area there would be another very significant impact. We 

would have to eliminate 73 percent of our request for security systems and equipment. We would cut or lose approximately 685 court 

security officer positions, or 16 percent, of the current positions. 

To give you a little bit of a feel for both the statistical side and 

the policy impact side, it would be a serious situation for us and 

for the public whom we serve. 

Mrs. EMERSON. And I appreciate that, I really do. But let me also 

say that your requested 2012 levels are probably not feasible as 

well. 

Judge GIBBONS. We understand. 


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IMPACT OF FY 2010 FUNDING FOR FY 2012

Mrs. EMERSON. It is interesting when you hear people come in, 

usually people would say, could we just have a marginal increase, 

and I notice that this year people are happy with flat funding. 

What would happen to you all, or could you sustain a 2010 level? 

Judge GIBBONS. Well, better. Let me just point out, one figure I 

gave you was not dependent on 2012 levels. But the first figure, the 

employee figure, the 7,000-plus positions was based on onboard 

staffing levels, not fiscal year 2012 request levels. 

Here is what we look like at 2010 levels for 2012. About 552 positions would be lost, again, measured below current onboard staffing; the suspension of panel attorney payments for about 15 

weeks—and, of course, that is all dependent on what might happen 

with respect to whether we would have to delay panel attorney 

payments in 2011; again, eliminating 73 percent of security equipment requests; 168 CSO positions, we feel. Some of the same impacts that I described from a policy standpoint, but, again, obviously, to a lesser extent. 

BOWLES-SIMPSON COMMISSION

Mrs. EMERSON. Right. The Bowles-Simpson Commission proposed significant reductions in travel, printing and vehicle budgets. 

What are you doing to save money in those areas? 

Judge GIBBONS. We spent about $111.7 million on travel in 2010, 

or 1.6 percent of total judiciary obligations. We spent $18.7 million 

on printing and reproduction. A lot of our travel is case-related; 

that is, supervision travel by probation and pretrial services officers going to the homes of offenders to determine the extent to 

which they are complying with the terms of supervision. And then 

we also have judges and to some extent their staffs who have to 

travel to various places of holding court that may not be the residence of the judge. 

We have tried already to impose some limits on staff travel with 

judges for holding court, and we monitor very carefully the supervision-related travel. We have increased the use of video conferencing, and we have used various methods for training that do not 

require physically coming to the location. We have held our many 

national meetings at central locations that can be more economically reached. But I think that we can make some more modest improvements in this area. 

EASTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI

Mrs. EMERSON. I know in the Eastern District of Missouri, for example, we have got judges coming down to the Southern Division 

courthouse, and then the Southern Division judge going up to St. 

Louis. So there is a lot of expense back and forth. And sometimes 

what happens is they perhaps will do the trial down in one spot, 

and then they will do the sentencing back up in St. Louis, which 

is over 100 miles away. Not only do you have the expense of the 

judge and the staff, but then there is that ripple effect upon the 

Marshals Service taking the prisoners up and back. 

I do think that in some cases you can—realizing that you don’t 

have to pay the Marshals bill, but it still adds up in the whole cost 


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of doing business—that there can be some more thought given to 

saving money just with regard to that kind of travel, because for 

one judge it could be $10,000 a year, $20,000 a year, and then it 

starts adding up. Once it is $10- here, $20- there, you start talking 

about real money. 

Judge GIBBONS. Courts that have more than one place of holding 

court have to face and decide how they are going to allocate the 

cases, and it is a decision that statutorily is made by each court. 

And typically the court tries to value random assignment, which is 

Judicial Conference policy, but the courts take other things into account, too, such as geography and convenience. And it may be that 

in this era, travel costs will become something that courts should 

become more cognizant of as they work on how they are going to 

handle their cases. 

JUDICIARY’S USE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Mrs. EMERSON. Perhaps it is one of those easy things to fix—or 

easier things to fix. Certainly, I would rather save money on that 

side of things as opposed to having to furlough or lay off staff. So 

you can get your jobs done, there is more than one way to skin the 

cat here. 

Let me ask you, and then I will yield to my colleague Mr. 

Serrano, how are you all in the judiciary using automation to reduce staffing levels in district, bankruptcy and appellate courts? 

Judge GIBBONS. I can’t tell you X project has saved us X amount 

of staff costs, but we have become very fully automated, and this 

has produced very significant savings for us. Our Case Management/Electronic Case Filing system has produced savings in docketing and in just the way we used to handle paper, which was pretty labor-intensive. We have made just great advances in the way 

probation officers receive the information they receive to supervise 

defendants. This really helps them in terms of having better information, but it has also enabled probation and pretrial services offices to dramatically reduce their support staff. 

Jim referred to the new Judiciary Financial Management System, which is going to consolidate the accounting that is now carried out in 94 federal court districts. So we will be doing it on a 

national basis. 

There are just many, many things that we have done, and I can’t 

quantify it for you, but I think that we have—I think we have really done a good job within the judiciary. And going forward there 

are several other major projects we are working on that I could describe for you. But I think we have done well. 

When you asked about printing costs, I didn’t mention the extent 

to which our electronic noticing and the electronic filing—the extent to which that saved on printing costs. That is another kind of 

saving we have seen. 

Mrs. EMERSON. And thank you for that. 

Mr. Duff, do you have anything to add? 

Mr. DUFF. I was going to add a lot of it is cost avoidance. We 

can attempt to quantify that. 

Mrs. EMERSON. We are practicing a lot of medicine telephonically 

these days. Thank you. 

Mr. Serrano. 


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IMPACT OF H.R. 1 ON THE FEDERAL COURTS

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you so much. Thank you for your testimony. 

Around here in Congress these days, things are getting a little 

confusing. The last time we enacted a bill was for fiscal year 2010. 

We are working on 2011 now, with H.R. 1 sitting out there, but 

yesterday we got the budget proposal from the majority party for 

2012. So you have to keep up with the numbers, otherwise you 

could pass the wrong bill, and it will be 2 years into the future or 

something—or back. 

So my question still is how does H.R. 1—at the end of the day, 

we don’t know what is going to happen. Right now we got a message saying that things are getting closer. The Speaker and the 

leader in the Senate are getting closer. But everything could fall 

apart, and H.R. 1 eventually may be the tool. 

Speaking about H.R. 1, how would it affect you? What would 

have to happen; how many people would you have to let go? How 

would it affect the caseload? Assume for a second that H.R. 1 becomes law. 

Judge GIBBONS. H.R. 1 is not a good result for us either. It is 

$143 million below a fiscal year 2010 hard freeze level. The impact 

on the courts would be very significant. We would be affected in 

the various ways that I described for Chairwoman Emerson with 

respect to a hard freeze at 2008 levels for fiscal year 2012. 

In terms of numbers, it is a little hard to say what the numbers 

would be because we would have to make some decisions about 

how to manage it. We have said we could lose up to 10 percent of 

our current onboard workforce in probation and pretrial services offices and clerks’ offices. That is 10 percent of that 22,000 or so I 

talked about earlier. But we are a little careful in using that because we, for example, might decide that we wanted to furlough 

more people in order to terminate fewer people. 

So in order to say that it is an absolute loss, we would not want 

to—I guess we wouldn’t want to spread alarm in that way at this 

point. Nevertheless, that is the figure we are working with, although there would be decisions made as to how to manage the cut. 

We would have to stop payments to CJA attorneys, we think, for 

about 5 weeks of the fiscal year. That causes some real problems 

for us, not just because we are not paying the lawyers for work 

they have already done and because many of them are sole practitioners and those in small firms who really depend on the income, 

but also it affects their willingness to seek appointment in the future. So that would be a very serious outcome for us. 

Mr. SERRANO. You would have to furlough people? 

Judge GIBBONS. Pardon me? 

Mr. SERRANO. You would have to let people go? 

Judge GIBBONS. You mean employees? 

Mr. SERRANO. Yes. 

Judge GIBBONS. It would be very hard for me to see how we 

could avoid that. 

Mr. SERRANO. Do you know how many? 

Judge GIBBONS. As I said, we are using a figure of 10 percent, 

which would be roughly 2,200. But there is terminating, and then 


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there are things like buyouts, and there are things like furloughs. 

The Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference would have to 

figure out exactly how we were going to handle reductions at that 

level. But it would be very serious, and I would not anticipate that 

we would handle it without the loss of significant numbers of employees. 

Mr. SERRANO. So you are saying at least 2,200 could be affected. 

I know everything is in flux. 

Judge GIBBONS. I think affected, yes. Whether those people will 

all outright lose their jobs, I am not sure. 

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Duff. 

Mr. DUFF. I agree. A lot of those decisions will occur at the local 

court level as to how they go about it. Those overall figures and 

numbers are what we are facing, probably. 

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS’ FY 2011 FUNDING APPEAL

Mr. SERRANO. Right. 

On March 18, Chief Justice Roberts sent a letter to Congress regarding fiscal year 2011 for the Federal judiciary. In his letter, the 

Chief Justice appeals for a funding level of $6.92 billion for the judiciary. Could you discuss the funding level request and what it 

will allow you to accomplish in 2011? Of course, half of 2011 is 

gone already. 

Judge GIBBONS. The figure selected by the Chief Justice is $75 

million above a hard freeze at 2010 levels. What that enables us 

to do and what it would enable the Congress to do, actually, is 

avoid deferring Criminal Justice Act panel attorney payments during the year, because if you defer payments during any part of 

2011, of course, you have created a problem for 2012, because those 

attorneys—you are going to be paying back into 2011 obligations 

out of 2012 funds. And it would also give us a small amount of 

money for security systems and equipment that are critically needed, and it would enable us to maintain current on-board staff. 

So it is $75 million above a 2010 hard freeze and would enable 

us to maintain current staff, not have to defer payment of CJA attorneys, and buy some much-needed security equipment. 

FUNDING AND STAFFING LEVELS OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS

Mr. SERRANO. Obviously, all funding affects workload. So how 

has funding and staffing kept up with workload for the past 8, 10 

years? 

Judge GIBBONS. With your help, we think we have kept things 

fairly—we think we have kept fairly apace over the last several 

years. When I first became Chair of the Budget Committee, one of 

the big points we used in advocating our budget request was that 

our funding and our staffing had not kept up with our workload. 

But we appreciate very much the help you have given us in reaching a better place with respect to a correspondence between funding and workload. 

Mr. DUFF. I agree. And thank you for the great support we have 

been getting. 

The one area where we could use additional help along the way 

and in the past 10 years have been judgeships, in particular in 

areas of the country that are very overworked; border courts, for 


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example, where we need additional judges, frankly, to handle it. 

We have been shifting and doing intercircuit assignments to help 

ease the burdens in those courts. But that is the only area that I 

would mention additional need. 

Mr. SERRANO. As I listen to you, I have a thought. Madam Chair, 

this morning the CJS subcommittee, Frank Wolf’s Committee with 

Mr. Fattah, had the FBI Director there. We were talking about the 

increases they received over the years. And I know that there is a 

strong desire—and we have discussed this, you and I, both personally and publicly—to cut, cut, cut. And I understand the whole 

issue. 

But I think what a lot of people miss is some of those increases 

over the last 10 years, or, to be exact, since September 11, were 

related to a crisis that this country was going through. So, yes, if 

you look at homeland security as an entity, it is through the roof. 

Not necessary? Of course, necessary. If you look at, for instance, security alone for Federal judges—and it obviously unfortunately 

doesn’t work all the time, otherwise we wouldn’t have made the 

statements we made of condolences—but the security at the courthouses have gone up. 

And so much of that, the FBI received amounts of money that 

people would be upset about. But they were shifted, if you will, 

from following white-collar criminals and so on to following terrorists all over the world. I think in the deliberations of how we got 

into all this debt, if you will, no one takes into consideration that 

we were involved in three wars—one in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, 

and one at home trying to protect ourselves. That doesn’t seem to 

play anywhere. A lot of that money was spent on that. 

Mr. DUFF. Those are good points. 

Judge GIBBONS. With regard to the courts in particular, a lot of 

the money—another area is the money spent on immigration enforcement, which, of course, has had a huge impact on our needs 

along the southwest border in particular. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. 

WORKLOAD ON THE SOUTHWEST BORDER

Mrs. EMERSON. Thanks. And I don’t disagree with you about all 

of the added security costs. 

Speaking just of the southwest border, I understand that nearly 

40 percent of the felony defendants are processed in the five districts along the border where the executive branch has implemented enhanced immigration and drug enforcement initiatives. So 

describe for us a little bit how this workload has impacted the five 

border district operations, including their need for probation officers, district court staff, public defenders, and secure facilities, and 

obviously not the least of which are judicial vacancies, because having a judge with 1,200 cases under his or her jurisdiction is pretty 

tough for one person to handle. 

Judge GIBBONS. Well, the growth has been, as you know, phenomenal on the southwest border. We were very, very appreciative 

of the $20 million in supplemental funding we received to help with 

that and to help us keep apace. Nationally criminal filings grew 25 

percent between 2000 and 2010, and that growth was fueled by 

what happened on the border. As you noted, now 41 percent of all 


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criminal cases are prosecuted in 5 of the 94 districts—those along 

the border. Criminal case filings in the District of Arizona in 2010 

increased nearly 50 percent. 

Efforts like Operation Streamline, which provides an expedited 

method of handling these prosecutions, drive workload not just in 

the court, but also in the pretrial services offices, where workload 

increased 14 percent. The workload has put a big strain on Federal 

defender organizations and panel attorneys. We have put additional magistrate judges there. The probation and pretrial staff has 

increased in the border States by 11.4 percent over this timeframe 

from 2008 compared to an increase of 3.3 percent for probation and 

pretrial services offices nationally. I am looking for my figure for 

the district courts and not finding the amount. 

[CLERK’S NOTE.—Subsequent to the hearing, the Judiciary provided the following additional information:] 

Between October 2008 and September 2010, staffing in the federal district courts 

along the Southwest Border increased 4.6 percent compared to an increase of 1.8 

percent in all district courts nationwide. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Obviously, the pressure in this particular—— 

Judge GIBBONS. The pressure is across the board. 

ALLOCATING RESOURCES TO THE SOUTHWEST BORDER

Mrs. EMERSON. In order to help meet the demand in the border 

district, do you reallocate existing resources in districts that have 

a smaller workload just to help assist those courts along the border? 

Judge GIBBONS. Jim can address this in more detail because he 

is involved in what the Executive Committee does in adopting and 

executing the financial plan. But, yes, money is shifted around in 

terms of court allotments to send money to the areas of greatest 

need and not areas where the money is not so needed. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Director. 

Mr. DUFF. The only thing I would add is we also send judges to 

help in those districts that are overworked from districts where 

they are less burdened and have time available to volunteer in 

other overworked districts. 

Judge GIBBONS. That has actually been a very, very significant 

thing for a number of years now with the border States. Senior 

judges from other parts of the country have gone there. They have 

helped out within those districts. But judges will go down, say, 

okay, I will take 100 sentencings for you, which is a big thing, or 

whatever it is. They have been assisted by their colleagues in 

places with less arduous caseloads. 

COURTHOUSE SECURITY

Mrs. EMERSON. We need more judges, I guess. 

Let us talk just for a minute about courthouse security. I know 

that you all operate many courthouses around the country that 

don’t meet current security standards. So are you all working with 

the Marshals Service and GSA to identify all of those facilities that 

don’t meet your security standards? 

Mr. DUFF. We are. As we have mentioned before, because of recognition that courthouse construction is going to be more difficult 


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to obtain funding for, although the needs remain great on our priority list where we have asked for new construction of courthouses, 

we have lowered the scoring of security deficiencies in the formula—although it was always a part of new courthouse construction analysis—now having a security deficiency alone will not justify a new courthouse. We would encourage a similar priority list 

as we do with courthouse construction but have one just to address 

security needs. 

Mrs. EMERSON. But how do you address them without building 

a completely new courthouse? 

Mr. DUFF. Well, there are alterations and repairs in some instances to existing court facilities that are adequate to address the 

security concerns that we have, we found in many circumstances. 

So we are able to do for far less than we used to be able to do with 

regard to funding when we isolate the security need. It is a top priority. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Let us just say hypothetically that a pot of funds 

would be available within the GSA for courthouse security purposes. Have you identified how much money you think would be 

needed for 2012? 

Mr. DUFF. I don’t know that we have a specific figure, overall figure, for the security needs there. We think a relatively small 

amount of between $4 million and $17 million per facility that we 

are asking for would be needed. 

Mrs. EMERSON. What would be helpful for us is if you could clarify a little bit in a tighter way how much you think you would 

need. 

Judge GIBBONS. I may be off. If so, the staff will tell me. I just 

misremembered something. But I believe at some point during the 

last budget cycle, we were asked to suggest a figure, and I think 

we suggested something in the neighborhood of $25 million in order 

to give us a small—to start on several of these facilities, see how 

it goes, and then obviously over a period of years we would try to 

address all the facilities. 

Is that right? 

Mr. DUFF. That is exactly right. 

Mrs. EMERSON. All right. Well, why don’t you go back and look 

at what—the past proposal and get that to us sooner rather than 

later, and let us just take a look. I am not saying that it is something that we can do, but certainly if you give us an opportunity 

to see what the needs are, and then GSA would just use those 

funds for that purpose, that might be a little helpful. 

[CLERK’S NOTE.—Subsequent to the hearing, the Judiciary provided the following additional information:] 

Security concerns, such as the potential for prisoner escapes, threats to judges, 

weapons, bombs, and witness and jury intimidation, are inherent to courthouses and 

federal buildings. Over the years, the Judiciary has relied on major building projects 

to address these needs and more recently built replacement courthouses to meet 

modern security standards at locations where security and operational conditions 

were at their worst. However, with far too many aging buildings and competing real 

property needs, the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Buildings 

Fund (FBF) has been severly constrained, and the courts continue to operate in 

buildings with unsafe and high-risk conditions. Security deficiencies alone, however, 

do not always support the need for a new courthouse or a major renovation project. 

Currently, there is no existing appropriation that specifically addresses courthouse security deficiencies unless they are part of a major repair and alteration 


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project or a new construction project. Especially during this time of constrained federal spending, the Judiciary recommends a specific sum of money to address deficiencies in existing buildings where physical security alterations are viable. The Judiciary suggests the Committee set aside a portion of funding within the GSA’s 

FBF’s Special Emphasis Program, to address security deficiencies in federal facilities housing the judiciary. The GSA and the judiciary would work collaboratively to 

assess the building conditions, viability of long-term use, and structural capacity for 

these stand-alone architectural solutions. Such solutions could include: building additional corridors, adding or reconfiguring elevators, building visual barriers, moving air-intakes, and enlarging security screening areas. 

Types of Projects 

Projects that would benefit from improvements to security will vary in size, location, and delivery method, and would likely range in cost from $4 million to $20 

million. The Judiciary has compiled lists of locations with critical security deficiencies in existing courthouses and federal buildings that house the judiciary. 

Based on that data, the Judiciary, the United States Marshals Service, and the GSA 

would work together to identify and prioritize specific buildings where security deficiencies can be addressed with architectural solutions. The following is a list of 

projects that the proposed GSA Special Emphasis Fund ‘‘Capital Security Program’’ 

would support: 

• Providing separate circulation (corridors) for the public, jurors, and/or judicial officers from prisoner movement; 

• Reconfiguring existing elevators if a sufficient number of elevators exist, 

per code; 

• Adding a new elevator either inside the building or on the exterior; 

• Reconfiguring screening areas for the public and mail delivery to address 

crowded conditions and insufficient space for security equipment and personnel; 

• Moving or securing air intakes to higher locations so that they are inaccessible from the public street level; 

• Moving or securing air intakes to higher locations so that they are inaccessible from the public street level; 

• Building visual barriers to separate judges’ parking from prisoner unloading areas; 

• Redesigning existing loading docks or vehicle sally ports to accommodate 

secure and efficient movement of prisoners for court proceedings. 

Feasibility studies will be needed to assess existing building conditions and develop detailed cost estimates. Each location will have unique challenges such as historic elements, possible abatement issues (e.g., asbestos), code restrictions, possible 

relocation of staff and offices, and other building conditions which must be analyzed 

and planned as part of any improvements to existing buildings. In addition, the size 

of the building and the number of floors involved will affect the total cost of each 

type of security improvement. 

Based on the Judiciary’s analysis to date, as many as 45 buildings could benefit 

from this initiative to improve physical security in federal courthouses. 

REDUCING SPACE COSTS

Speaking of GSA, your budget request proposes nearly a billion 

dollars for GSA rent, including funding for an additional 538,000 

square feet of space. I know you are trying to reduce your space 

costs. This is really difficult as new courthouses—not on your new 

list—but as courthouses continue to come on line. But I think that 

in a GAO study, they found you were occupying what would be considered excess space. We need to figure out how to fix this. Tell me 

what you think the best means would be to reduce these space 

costs. 

Mr. DUFF. We have gone about as best we can in reducing projected space needs, engaging in courtroom sharing where it makes 

sense, with senior judges, for example, with magistrate judges, and 

we have completed a recent study with regard to bankruptcy 

judges where courtroom sharing makes sense. 


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GAO STUDY ON COURTROOM UTILIZATION

You have mentioned the GAO study. We have taken a very hard 

look at that study, obviously, and find some very serious flaws in 

it. I will give you one example that is utilized in that study to say 

that we overbuilt courthouses, and that there are empty courtrooms in the new courthouses we built, and our projections were 

wrong. 

In the GAO study they singled out the new courthouse in Fresno, 

California, as an example where they went out—it is a brand new 

courthouse, beautiful courthouse—and they find empty courtrooms 

there and say, well, we overbuilt, we overprojected. Well, the fact 

is the Fresno court is probably the most overworked court in the 

country. The average caseload per judge there is over 1,200 cases 

a year. Twelve hundred cases; a hundred cases a month per judge. 

It is an impossible workload. And so we requested new judgeships 

for that district in California for year after year after year, and we 

built—the new courthouse was built with GSA in anticipation that 

those judgeships would be filled to help with the overburdened 

court. 

So the GAO study is, in our view, very flawed. But rather than 

get into a discussion about that study, we have taken very seriously the state of the budget and where we can save costs, save 

rent, reduce space needs. As I mentioned, we have done courtroom 

sharing as much as we possibly can. So that is one area where we 

are trying to save. 

Mrs. EMERSON. So did you go back to the GAO and point all of 

these things out, and they come back to you and said what? 

Mr. DUFF. Well, we didn’t really get a very good response when 

we pointed out the shortcomings. We actually had a hearing on 

this, and I think our judges did a superb job of illustrating where 

the shortcomings in that study were. I don’t think they responded 

in any substantive way that satisfied us certainly. 

Judge GIBBONS. You know, if you look at this, it obviously would 

not be good stewardship of the taxpayers’ money to build a courthouse that only accommodates today’s needs. You have to look into 

the future. But when we try to look into the future, we get into this 

same point we get into with our caseload, which is that it is very 

hard to predict what is coming because it is not within our control. 

We handle what people bring to us. But in our efforts to look at 

our future judgeship needs, the number of senior judges we will 

have, our workload, I think, if anything, we have been guilty perhaps of too much optimism about the extent to which Congress was 

going to accommodate our judgeship needs. And we are now talking 

with GSA about a new planning process that would, among other 

things, inject less optimism. 

Mr. DUFF. We have revised our projections. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thanks. 

Mr. Serrano. 

RESOURCE ALLOCATIONS TO FEDERAL COURTS IN THE U.S. 

TERRITORIES

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. 


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Let me ask you about one of my favorite subjects, which is the 

American territories. We may have discussed this in the past. I 

spend a bit of time every so often, whenever a program or a bill 

comes up, reminding people that we have American citizens who 

live in the Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam, and Samoa, and 

the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Usually what happens with everything else is there is a formula that affects the 50 States, and 

then there are negotiations that take place about how to deal with 

the territories. And it is very sad, in many ways, how it is done. 

I would imagine that the Federal judiciary and the Federal courts 

are an overall situation that do not get into formulas; or do they? 

So what I want to know is how are the territories treated? I assume each territory has a Federal court system physically in place 

there. They don’t have to go somewhere else. So how do you determine the judges? Is it based on population, or is there, pardon the 

expression of the word, politics in there as it is over here? And 

what is over here, let us be honest, if Puerto Rico—this is not a 

pro-statehood statement—if any of the territories had two Senators 

and Members of Congress, the treatment would be different. But 

since they don’t, the treatment is different. 

Mr. DUFF. It is basically the same formula we use within the 50 

States. What we have found actually recently is that when a court 

in one of the territories is overworked, and we are required to send 

judges from the 50 States to a territory to help relieve the burden 

in the territory, that is an enormous expense. You talk about travel 

expenses, Madam Chair, this is one where we pushed to get a 

judgeship created in one of the territories recently and a judge put 

in place there to avoid the costs of having to send judges from the 

50 States to help relieve the burden in the territories. In one sense, 

they benefited more recently. They don’t always benefit, certainly. 

I agree that there are sometimes distinctions made that are troublesome. A recent example, we actually were able to get a judgeship and a new appointment because of the costs involved in having to send judges from the 50 States to help relieve the burden. 

But basically the answer is it is the same sort of formula that we 

use throughout the Federal court system. 

Judge GIBBONS. We have lots of different formulas. We use one 

formula for assessing judgeship needs, other formulas for staffing 

needs, other formulas for determining how other resources are allocated to the courts. The same formulas are used in the territory 

courts as are used in the 50 States. 

LAW CLERK DIVERSITY

Mr. SERRANO. That is good to hear. That is not the answer, I 

guess, with 99 percent of the people who come from other places, 

other agencies. 

As you know, in past hearings we have discussed the lack of diversity among law clerks. I understand that the Federal judiciary 

has instituted a new program to help address this issue. What can 

you tell us about this effort? Also, if you could provide for the 

record a diversity breakdown of law clerks by race and gender for 

appellate and district judges for the last say 5 years. 

Judge GIBBONS. We will be happy to provide the statistical information. 


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[CLERK’S NOTE.—Subsequent to the hearing, the Judiciary provided the following information:] 

Law Clerks by Gender: 

• In the aggregate, in 2005, 59% of all law clerks were female and in 2009, 60% 

of all law clerks were female. 

• Over that 2005–2009 time period, female law clerks for bankruptcy judges grew 

the most, from 65% to 72%. 

• Female law clerks are the majority for all judge types except Appellate Judges, 

for which they were between 44% and 48% during the 2005–2009 time frame. 

• A far greater percentage of the career law clerks are female than male across 

all judge types (currently 75%), although their percentage is lowest in the appellate 

law clerk category (currently 64%). 

• District judge term law clerks have been close to a 51–49 female-male split over 

the 2005–2009 time period. 

Law Clerks by Ethnicity/Race: 

CHAMBERS LAW CLERKS (APPELLATE) by ETHNICITY/RACE: FYs 2005–2009 

Caucasian African 

American Hispanic Asian American 

Native 

American 

Pacific 

Islander 

FY 2005 ............................................................ 86.8% 3.1% 1.8% 8.0% 0.3% 0.0% 

FY 2006 ............................................................ 82.8% 3.2% 2.0% 6.7% 0.2% 0.0% 

FY 2007 ............................................................ 87.1% 3.5% 2.4% 6.7% 0.1% 0.2% 

FY 2008 ............................................................ 86.7% 3.3% 2.2% 7.4% 0.1% 0.2% 

FY 2009 ............................................................ 87.6% 2.5% 2.0% 7.6% 0.1% 0.2% 

The Judiciary’s law clerk demographics and the corresponding percentages are generated from fiscal years 2005 through 2009 as fiscal year 2010 is not available at the time of the hearing. 

CHAMBERS LAW CLERKS (DISTRICT) by ETHNICITY/RACE: FYs 2005–2009 

Caucasian African 

American Hispanic Asian American 

Native 

American 

Pacific 

Islander 

FY 2005 ............................................................ 86.0% 4.5% 3.3% 5.8% 0.1% 0.2% 

FY 2006 ............................................................ 84.9% 4.1% 3.4% 6.0% 0.2% 0.1% 

FY 2007 ............................................................ 86.1% 3.9% 3.6% 5.9% 0.1% 0.2% 

FY 2008 ............................................................ 86.1% 4.1% 3.3% 6.2% 0.1% 0.2% 

FY 2009 ............................................................ 86.1% 3.9% 4.4% 5.4% 0.1% 0.1% 

The Judiciary’s law clerk demographics and the corresponding percentages are generated from fiscal years 2005 through 2009 as fiscal 

year 2010 is not available at the time of the hearing. 

Judge GIBBONS. You and I have talked about this before, and I 

have said we are working on it, but we are not where we need to 

be on this issue. The Committee on Judicial Resources is the committee of the Conference that is charged with working on this 

issue, and it has an ad hoc Subcommittee on Diversity. And under 

the auspices of that subcommittee, there is a new pilot project with 

the Just the Beginning Foundation in which students—minority 

students, economically disadvantaged law students—are placed as 

interns in Federal judges’ offices. There are currently 37 students 

who will be interning in the pilot program. I believe that the hope 

would be to grow that over the next several years. 

There are some outreach efforts where the Administrative Office 

staff has met with various congressional leaders, directors of the 

Congressional Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, and the Asian 

Pacific American Caucus, to discuss our minority recruitment and 

hiring efforts. I think one of your staff people, Representative 

Serrano, attended such a meeting. 

AO staff has talked with the National Latino Law Student Association. The Subcommittee is sending correspondence to law school 


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deans in an effort to recruit minority applicants; sending correspondence to hiring partners at the Nation’s top law firms, suggesting that some of their rising-star minority lawyers might want 

to come back and clerk for a year before returning to the law firm. 

They are urging various external organizations to help us improve 

our opportunities to hire minority clerks. And then there is an effort that is ongoing to urge chief judges to take into account diversity when appointing magistrate judges. So there are a number of 

things under way, but we have got a ways to go. 

Mr. SERRANO. One of the things that we should always remind 

ourselves of—and I know you know this, but I think for the record 

it has to be said—these issues are not about simply getting some 

folks into certain positions. It is about groups that traditionally 

have been left out, to a certain extent—in many cases, years ago, 

to a full extent—people who want to be part of the strength and 

the structure of the country and want to serve the country. When 

a person says, I want to be in the Federal court system, and I want 

to work there, that is not a person who doesn’t want to be part of 

the society. So it is just the opposite. 

But we have had situations here which are very delicate to discuss, but we had Supreme Court Justices who told us, well, we 

don’t have diversity because we recruit for clerks from Harvard and 

Yale. I have said, well, recruit somewhere else every so often. It is 

not just those two schools. 

I am glad that you said that there is communication with law 

schools throughout the country to make it better. 

Mrs. EMERSON. I agree. The University of Missouri graduates are 

as good as Harvard or Yale. And it just annoys me more than you 

know. 

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COSTS

Let me ask you all about your information technology request. 

This is important just because, interestingly enough, we had a 

hearing with the head of the GSA Information Technology, Vivek 

Kundra, who is the CIO for OMB and a GAO expert. We do not 

have a great track record in this government on IT, and I can’t 

begin to tell you how many probably billions if you add it all up 

of dollars have been spent. And it has not been well spent whatsoever. 

Anyway, you are requesting $550 million. Of that $550 million, 

how much is for developing new IT programs versus maintaining 

the existing systems? 

Judge GIBBONS. I am not sure I have information that is directly 

responsive to the $550 million figure. I will answer that question 

more directly. I do have information about the $396 million that is 

requested for the Judiciary Information Technology Fund. And that 

amount, it is broken down in a number of ways, but almost $100 

million, $99.7 million, is for systems and applications. And within 

that $100 million, $33.3 million is for development, $66.4 million 

for operations and maintenance. But I am told that operations and 

maintenance can also include sometimes development activities, 

such as repair of defects and some enhancements. 

And then, if you are interested, the rest of that $396 million goes 

to allotments to the courts, infrastructure and collaboration that 


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support the national IT program, voice and data transmission services and telecommunications equipment, courtroom technologies in 

new and renovated buildings, and staff who provide IT development management and maintenance for the courts. We have been 

spared the bad situation of having to fix stuff that was not done 

properly. We have had a process that, thankfully, has worked. 

[CLERK’S NOTE.—Subsequent to the hearing, the Judiciary provided the following clarification:] 

Chairwoman Emerson’s figure of $550 million refers to FY 2012 projected obligations for the entire Judiciary Information Technology Fund (JITF). Judge Gibbons 

in her response was referring to FY 2012 JITF projected obligations for only the 

courts’ Salaries and Expenses account which is the largest contributor to the JITF 

(about 75 percent). Other Judiciary accounts that make deposits to the JITF are the 

U.S. Court of International Trade, U.S. Sentencing Commission, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Fees received by the Judiciary for providing electronic public access to court information 

are also deposited into the JITF. Below is a table that breaks out FY 2012 projected 

obligations for the entire JITF. 

Judiciary Information Technology Fund (JITF) 

FY 2012 

Projected 

Obligations 

(in millions) 

Development ......................................................................................................................................................... $48.0 

Operations and Maintenance ............................................................................................................................... $121.4 

Court Allotments ................................................................................................................................................... $123.2 

National IT Program ............................................................................................................................................. $81.3 

Telecommunications Program .............................................................................................................................. $113.1 

Courtroom Technologies ....................................................................................................................................... $29.3 

Centralized IT Staffing ......................................................................................................................................... $32.3 

Total ............................................................................................................................................................. $548.6 

Mrs. EMERSON. So you have confidence that the Judiciary does 

have the IT project and contract management staff to execute such 

a large IT program? 

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PLANNING

Judge GIBBONS. Yes. We have a planning process, but, more importantly—and that includes both staff and judges through the 

Conference committees and ultimately the Judicial Conference. 

But, more importantly, I am convinced through talking with some 

of the folks in the Administrative Office that one of the things that 

really makes it work and has made it work is the way we have 

staged and tested and managed the systems as they have been implemented, and we apparently have folks who have very significant 

project management skills who have really done a good job in helping us do this. So it appears, thankfully, that so far, so good on 

that one. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Before starting any kind of IT program, do you 

do a cost-benefit analysis? 

Judge GIBBONS. Oh, yes. That is a part of the formal project 

management process, and it is also a part of the planning process. 

It is taken into account along the way. There is also something 

called identifying quantitative and qualitative tools and techniques 

to manage cost and mitigate risk. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Well, Mr. Serrano is, I think, a true geek when 

it comes to IT, which is a compliment. He loves it all. 


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Mr. SERRANO. I also played a judge on Law and Order once. I 

had to do one scene seven times because I kept stepping on the 

robe. 

Mrs. EMERSON. How did you get that gig? 

Mr. SERRANO. In the Village Voice they asked me, if you were not 

a Member of Congress, what would you be doing? I said, I would 

love to either play center field for the Yankees and act or sing. But 

I have no talent. So they said, do you want to read a part? I read 

a part. So they send me a script and they say, there is only one 

problem, you are playing a Hispanic judge, and there is only one 

problem with him. I said, oh, my God, he is not a drug-dealing 

thug. He said, no. He is very liberal. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Perfect. 

Mr. SERRANO. It was written for me. It was a great experience. 

Not that I pay attention, but it came out on DVD. It is season five, 

disk three, episode one. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Please go ahead. 

LACK OF FUNDING FOR NEW COURTHOUSES

Mr. SERRANO. You might have answered this question. If you did, 

you can either answer in a different way, or I will just go read the 

transcript. But what is the impact of GSA’s decision to include zero 

funding for new construction of courthouses? 

Judge GIBBONS. Well, we are not happy about having our priority 

projects not included in GSA’s request. Obviously, there is a pot of 

money that it has out of which it is requesting construction, and 

by whatever process they use, no courthouses were included. And 

obviously our position is we would like to have our priority projects 

on a list somewhere. 

HAWAII FEDERAL BUILDING AND COURTHOUSE

Mr. SERRANO. Of course, there is a courthouse in Hawaii. 

Judge GIBBONS. Interestingly, we have learned, after hearing 

that there were questions about that yesterday, that is not the 

courthouse part of that building. It has nothing to do with the 

courts. It is—— 

Mr. SERRANO. The President didn’t get his way and put a courthouse back home? 

Judge GIBBONS. It is a Federal building and courthouse. And the 

project that is being proposed, we understand, is not related to the 

courthouse part of the structure. And what needs to be done in the 

courthouse part of the structure, I believe, has already been done. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Well, you are wonderful to give us that clarification. 

Mr. SERRANO. Because it became a big issue yesterday. 

Mrs. EMERSON. We kind of got carried away. 

Mr. SERRANO. We were saying, well, it makes sense; the President is from Hawaii. Notice I got that in, that he is born in Hawaii. 

And the chairman of Appropriations in the Senate. So we figure 

Hawaii made sense. 

Judge GIBBONS. We were trying to figure out yesterday what this 

was we were supposed to be grateful for. Then we ascertained. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you very much. It is very helpful to us. 


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Mr. DUFF. I would say we have developed good working relationships with GSA, and I think they are under some pressures from 

OMB on what they submit. But we really would like to see our priority list for courthouse construction passed on through GSA. 

BANKRUPTCY MEGA-CASES

Mr. SERRANO. Just one last question. The so-called megacases— 

the Madoff-type things—are those cases still having an impact on 

court resources? 

Judge GIBBONS. Are you asking about bankruptcy cases that 

have been called megacases? 

Mr. SERRANO. Right. 

Mr. SERRANO. Dealing with 100 million in assets or more or 

1,000 creditors. 

Judge GIBBONS. They do have an impact. But the handling of 

those cases is really, I think, quite a success story because the 

courts and the judges that have had those cases have really rallied 

around and figured out ways to handle them, and they have done 

so. I think it is really a tribute to the courts that have figured out 

how to handle those cases properly and with dispatch. 

So, yes, they have an impact, but it is one that is seen generally 

within the budget of the bankruptcy courts as opposed to something we are saying to you we need help with. We are doing fine 

on that. 

CHAIRWOMAN EMERSON’S CLOSING REMARKS

Mrs. EMERSON. Judge Gibbons and Mr. Duff, thank you very, 

very much. 

Mr. Duff, I want to tell you before I close the hearing, we are 

really very thrilled that you were kind enough to allow Karen 

Thomas to be a detailee for the Subcommittee this year. She is 

doing a great job—seriously, a great job—and I don’t know what 

we would do without her. 

Mr. DUFF. That is very nice to hear. We are glad to be of help. 

Glad she is of help. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you. I am certainly grateful, and I know 

I can speak for Mr. Serrano when I say that you have saved us, 

and she has more than met the expectations. 

Mr. DUFF. That is great. It is good to hear. We are grateful for 

the opportunity she is getting here. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you. 

Mr. DUFF. I don’t want to make Congressman Serrano feel too 

bad; I will buy the DVD, but my great uncle did play center field 

for the New York Yankees. Earle Combs. You wouldn’t remember. 

Mr. SERRANO. Earle Combs; of course. 

Mr. DUFF. With the 1927 Yankees. 

Mr. SERRANO. Murderers’ Row. 

Mr. DUFF. Murderers’ Row. He was the lead-off hitter. From 

Kentucky. 


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Judge GIBBONS. I am surprised he hasn’t worked that into his 

testimony at an earlier time. 

Mr. SERRANO. You can tell I am no longer chairman, otherwise 

he would have. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you all so very much. 

Mr. DUFF. Thank you, Madam Chair. 


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(79) 

THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2011. 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURTS AND COURT SERVICES 

AND OFFENDER SUPERVISION AGENCY 

WITNESSES 

ERIC T. WASHINGTON, CHIEF JUDGE, DC COURT OF APPEALS, AND 

CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION 

LEE F. SATTERFIELD, CHIEF JUDGE, DC SUPERIOR COURT 

ADRIENNE R. POTEAT, ACTING DIRECTOR, COURT SERVICES AND OFFENDER SUPERVISION AGENCY 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you very much for being here this 

morning. Today’s hearing is on the D.C. Courts, and the Court 

Services and Offender Supervision Agency. Similar to how a state 

government funds state courts in the state court system, the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement 

Act of 1997 made funding for these agencies the responsibility of 

the Federal Government. It is just interesting that the budgets for 

these agencies are not even considered by the Mayor or the D.C. 

City Council. They are proposed by the agencies and transmitted 

with the President’s budget to us, so it is part of the Federal process. Three quarters of the funding provided in the District of Columbia section of the Financial Services Bill is for those courts and 

supervision activities. 

The purpose of today’s hearing is to learn more about your activities and your resource needs. So today I would like to welcome our 

witnesses, again, as I said before, it is a pleasure to have you here, 

Chief Judge Washington of the Court of Appeals, Chief Judge 

Satterfield of the Superior Court and Acting Director, Adrienne 

Poteat. 

Thank you all very much for being here today. It is a privilege 

to have you here. Thank you for your testimony. Obviously, an 

independent judiciary that all the citizens can trust and respect is 

fundamental to our Nation, to our democracy, and to our rule of 

law. Each citizen has the right to a fair resolution of any legal dispute occurring within the borders of this, our Nation’s Capital. The 

D.C. court system does an incredible job. You all are very busy. I 

understand that D.C. Superior Court has over 10,000 visitors a 

day. In addition, the Court Services and Offender Supervision 

Agency supervises just over 23,000 offenders and defendants. Still 

resources will be very limited, and you know that we, like everybody else, are in this struggle. Though resources are going to be 

very limited next year, we here in this committee will try to provide sufficient funding to complete what is obviously a very important mission, what you have to do day in and day out. 

However, we will ask you to work hard to find efficiencies, to find 

savings within your budget. So while crime rates in the District are 


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on an overall decline, Washington, D.C. still has some safety challenges; it is still a relatively dangerous city, at least at certain 

times and in certain parts. So your agencies play such an important role in protecting the people who live, work, and visit our Nation’s Capital. 

We really appreciate your hard work and your dedication, and we 

look forward to your testimonies for the fiscal year 2012 budget request. I would like now to recognize the Ranking Member, someone 

who needs no introduction, my friend, Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. This is my 

day with the Diaz-Balarts. I just finished doing an interview with 

your brother Jose ́ with the Telemundo Network at 8:45. I took off 

my makeup because I told him I did not want to come to you with 

his makeup. But as we know, it is one show you will never be 

interviewed on. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. I will never be interviewed on, unfortunately, 

that is right. 

Mr. SERRANO. But he sends his hello. He will call you later. I 

would also like to welcome Chief Judge Washington, Chief Judge 

Satterfield, and Acting Director Poteat to our hearing today. We 

appreciate your service and look forward to hearing your testimony 

today about the needs and status of the D.C. Courts and of the 

Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. 

The District of Columbia is in a unique situation in our Nation 

with the functions of both a city and a state-like entity, and needs 

the support of the Federal Government as a rule. Our support of 

the D.C. court system is no exception. We expect a level of service 

and expertise equal to that of other jurisdictions in our Nation, and 

over the past years have provided funds consistent with that mission. This year’s budget request includes slight increases in operations and services, and a larger increase in the capital account. I 

look forward to hearing more about the projects you have in mind 

for this funding. In a tight budget climate it is important that we 

are adequately able to weigh the needs of all the entities that fall 

under our jurisdiction and ensure that we are meeting pressing 

needs and getting value out of taxpayers’ investments. Again, we 

welcome you to our hearing, and look forward to asking you questions about the Courts and Court Service and Offender Supervision 

activities, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you, Mr. Serrano. If I could ask of the 

witnesses today, if you would try to please keep your statements 

to five minutes if possible, that would leave us more time to converse, and talk, and ask questions. With that, it is a privilege to 

now recognize Chief Judge Washington for an opening statement. 

Thank you for being here, sir. 

DC COURTS OPENING STATEMENTS

Judge WASHINGTON. Thank you very much, Congressman DiazBalart, Congressman Serrano, and the rest of the Subcommittee 

members who may hear this testimony. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the fiscal year 2012 budget request of the District 

of Columbia Courts. My name is Eric T. Washington, and I am the 

Chair of the Joint Committee on Judicial Administration in the 

District of Columbia, the policy-making body for the District of CoVerDate Mar 15 2010 23:40 Jul 05, 2011 Jkt 066756 PO 00000 Frm 00080 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 E:\HR\OC\A756P2.XXX A756P2

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lumbia Courts. I also serve, of course, as Chief Judge of the District 

of Columbia Court of Appeals. 

With me this morning are Chief Judge Lee Satterfield of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and Ms. Anne Wicks, our 

Executive Director, along with other staff members from our court 

system. 

Before I begin my substantive testimony here today, I would like 

to take just a brief moment on behalf of the District of Columbia 

Courts to express our concern for the people in Chairwoman Emerson’s district who have been hurt by this week’s flooding. Our 

hearts do go out to all of them and out to all the Americans who 

are recovering from the recent natural disasters that have wreaked 

havoc both in the South and in the middle parts of our country. 

Congressman Diaz-Balart, Congressman Serrano, we live in a 

changing environment, facing new challenges to our Nation, our 

Nation’s Capital, and our court system. Whatever challenges we 

face, the fair and effective administration of justice remains crucial 

to our way of life. In this time of economic adversity and heightened emphasis on cost effective government, the District of Columbia Courts are committed to responding to and meeting the changing needs of our citizenry. With careful stewardship of public resources, we work to fulfill our mission, which is to protect rights 

and liberties, uphold and interpret the law, and resolve disputes 

peacefully, fairly and efficiently, here in the Nation’s Capital. 

Focusing on issues in our strategic plan, the D.C. Courts strive 

to resolve cases fairly and timely, to broaden access to justice and 

service to the public, to build a strong judiciary and workforce, to 

improve court facilities and technology, to provide a safe and secure 

environment, and to build the public trust and confidence, Congressman, that you mentioned earlier. 

We appreciate the support of Congress, which makes possible the 

achievement of these goals for our community. Congressman DiazBalart, we look forward to working with you, of course, Madam 

Chairwoman Emerson, and Congressman Serrano, along with the 

rest of the Subcommittee members on the highest priorities identified in our fiscal year 2012 budget request as described in my written testimony, which has been submitted and—which I ask be 

made part of the record of this hearing. Thank you. A critical focus 

of our 2012 budget centers on the protection of the public. To further the rehabilitation of girls in the juvenile probation system and 

build on recent initiatives serving this population, we have proposed funding for a community-based Drop-In Center to provide 

services tailored to meet the needs of female offenders. Since the 

District of Columbia does not have a secure detention facility for 

girls, the Courts’ Drop-In Center will provide an option to protect 

public safety while keeping girls in the community under intensive 

supervision, where they can maintain contact and build better relationships with their families. 

This alternative to detention provides a structured environment 

for girls after school and on Saturdays, in which tutoring, counseling, and recreational services will be available. The drop-in center model has proven to be successful in reducing school suspensions and re-arrests. 


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Also, to enhance the safety of domestic violence victims, additional court staff are needed to enter protection orders into the police database within 24 hours of the issuance of a protection order 

by the judge, so the police can enforce these orders during the very 

vulnerable periods of time right after a violent episode has occurred. 

As part of the Courts’ initiative to ‘‘Build a Great Place to Work,’’ 

we are focused on enhancing employee engagement. Research has 

shown that a highly engaged workforce results in employees who 

are willing to put forth discretionary effort in the performance of 

their jobs. This enhances organizational performance and improves 

public service. To further our efforts in this area, funding is being 

sought to build our internal and external communications capacity 

and to foster the strategic transformation of our Human Resources 

Division to support this ‘‘Great Place to Work’’ initiative. 

Resources for capital improvements—which Congressman 

Serrano referred to, do remain a critical priority for the Courts as 

we continue to implement the Courts’ Facilities Master Plan for 

our five buildings that are located on our Judiciary Square campus. 

We do that in order to ensure that our infrastructure is sound and 

our security first rate for the 10,000 members of the public who 

visit our courthouse each day. 

We believe the Courts’ 2012 capital budget request addresses 

these responsibilities in a comprehensive and responsible manner, 

consistent with our Master Plan, which lays out space requirements and maintenance needs. Facing a significant space shortfall 

today, and not surprisingly, one that is expected to increase in the 

future, the Master Plan recognized the need to renovate the Historic Courthouse for use by my court, the Court of Appeals, but 

also calls for space to be provided through the construction of an 

addition to the Moultrie Courthouse and the renovation and reoccupation of a building we have affectionately known as Building C. 

With support of the President and Congress over several years, 

the Courts have invested significant resources in improving our facilities to meet health and safety standards and to function with 

greater efficiency for the public. As I mentioned, the Historic 

Courthouse has been renovated and is now occupied by the Court 

of Appeals. Renovation of Building C is underway and is expected 

to be completed by year’s end. However, much remains to be done. 

The Courts’ fiscal year 2012 budget request seeks resources to expand the Moultrie Courthouse to meet health and safety building 

codes and to provide appropriate facilities for the public. The halls 

of justice in the District of Columbia must be well maintained, efficient, and adequately sized in order for us to achieve our goal of 

providing excellent service to those who live, work, and do business 

here in the Nation’s Capital. 

Funding for the Moultrie Courthouse, our largest building and 

home to the majority of our Superior Court trial operations, is the 

focus of most of the Courts’ fiscal 2012 capital funding request. 

Funding is needed to continue the renovation of the interior of the 

Moultrie Courthouse and to reconfigure and backfill space that has 

become vacant in 2011, as a result of our ongoing efforts to consolidate all of our Family Court activities and related services in one 

area of the Moultrie Courthouse. 


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The creation of additional courtrooms is critical to our ability to 

timely and efficiently address the number of cases, which are overwhelming filed each year in our courts. The maintenance of the existing infrastructure, including upgrading mechanical systems and 

complying with fire code regulations, is necessary to ensure the 

safety of the building’s occupants and to preserve the integrity of 

the Moultrie Courthouse, our main trial court facility. The Moultrie 

Courthouse addition, which is the final component of our Facilities 

Master Plan designed to address the Courts’ pending and future 

space needs, will add 108,000 square feet of new and renovated 

space to our Moultrie Courthouse. 

Congressman Diaz-Balart, Congressman Serrano, the District of 

Columbia Courts have long enjoyed a national reputation for excellence. We are proud of the Courts’ record of administering justice 

in a fair, accessible, and cost-effective manner. And we are proud 

of our decade-long history of completing our capital projects on 

schedule and within budget. We appreciate the President’s support 

for the Courts’ funding needs in 2012 and the support we have received in the past from Congress. 

We recognize the funding constraints facing our nation during 

these difficult times and have focused our budget request to meet 

only the Courts’ highest priorities. Adequate funding for these priorities is critical to our success, not only next year but in future 

years. We look forward to working with you through this appropriations process and sincerely appreciate the opportunity to personally present to the Subcommittee our fiscal year 2012 budget request. Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Chief Judge Eric T. Washington follows:] 


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Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you very much, Chief Judge Washington, for your statement. I would now recognize Chief Judge 

Satterfield and ask if you have any statements that you would like 

to present to the Committee. 

Judge SATTERFIELD. I am going to be brief, because I join in 

Chief Judge Washington’s statements. I am here to answer any 

questions you may have regarding Superior Court operations, and 

I want to thank you for having us. 

[The biography of Chief Justice Satterfield follows:] 


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Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Now I 

recognize Director Poteat from the CSOSA, which is the Court 

Services and Offender Supervision Agency. Director, thank you for 

being here. 

Ms. POTEAT. Thank you. Good morning, Deputy Chairman DiazBalart, Ranking Member Serrano, and Members of the Subcommittee. I am pleased to appear before you today to present the 

fiscal year 2012 budget request for the Court Services and Offender 

Supervision Agency (PSA), which includes the Pretrial Supervision 

Agency of the District of Columbia. CSOSA received certification as 

an independent executive agency on August 4, 2000. 

With implementation of the Revitalization Act and the creation 

of CSOSA, the Federal government took on a unique, frontline role 

in public safety in the District of Columbia. CSOSA’s community 

supervision program supervises sentenced adult offenders, released 

to the District of Columbia, by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and 

adult probationers sentenced by the Court. PSA supervises pretrial 

defendants in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia 

and the Superior Court.CSOSA’S fiscal year 2012 budget request of 

$216.8 million is comprised of a $156.1 million request for the community supervision program (CSP) and $60.7 million for pretrial. 

It equals an increase of $4.4 million, or 2.1 percent, over the fiscal 

year 2010 enacted budget. The $4.4 million fiscal year 2012 increase consists of $1.1 million in program changes and $3.4 million 

in inflationary adjustments necessary to continue current program 

service levels. 

As of September 30, CSP supervised a total of 16,166 offenders, 

including 9,866 probationers and 6,300 supervised releasees and 

parolees. The demographics of our population suggest many challenges; 70 percent have a history of substance abuse; 32 percent of 

our employable offenders employed; 37 percent have less than a 

high school diploma or GED. And eight percent have unstable 

housing, most living in shelters. 

Since its inception, CSOSA has accomplished its mission through 

the use of four operational strategies, effective offender risk and 

needs assessment, close supervision, treatment and support service, and partnerships. Our Auto Screener risk and needs assessment tool quantifies the offenders’ criminal and substance abuse 

history, mental health, community and social support attitude and 

motivation and other factors that are predictive of future criminal 

activity. It also identifies the offenders’ behavioral health needs. 

Our close supervision strategies include direct supervision of 

most offenders in field units located in the District of Columbia, in 

the neighborhoods where these offenders reside. This enables our 

offices to have an active community presence, collaborate with our 

neighborhood police officers, and foster effective partnerships with 

faith institutions, local social services providers, and employers. 

CSOSA provides a range of treatment and support services to offenders based on needs assessment and drug testing results. These 

include contract substance abuse and sex offender treatment, transitional housing, education and employment-related services. In 

September, 2009, we partnered with the D.C. Department of Corrections, the U.S. Parole Commission, and the Bureau of Prisons to 

implement the Secure Residential Program pilot to provide an alVerDate Mar 15 2010 23:40 Jul 05, 2011 Jkt 066756 PO 00000 Frm 00103 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A756P2.XXX A756P2

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ternative placement for parolees and offenders on supervised release who face revocation. We are currently implementing several 

program initiatives, all accomplished through reallocation of existing resources. First, we have expanded our women’s program to address the increasing rate of women offenders with co-occurring substance abuse and mental health issues. We recently converted one 

15-bed unit of Re-entry and Sanctions Center (RSC) to serve female 

offenders and designated three supervision teams to supervise 

women only. We have also implemented kiosk-based reporting for 

our lowest risk offenders. They now report once a month to a kiosk 

to update their housing, employment, and collateral contacts and 

receive instructions for drug testing, instead of reporting in-person 

to a supervision officer. 

CSP currently supervises approximately 807 defenders under the 

age of 21, in which of 50 of them are jointly supervised by the D.C. 

Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. We are working with 

the D.C. Superior Court Pretrial Services, the D.C. Department of 

Youth Rehabilitation Services, and D.C. Court Social Services to 

improve the management of these cases. 

I will now turn to the fiscal year 2012 Pretrial Services Agency Budget Request of $60.7 million, which includes $1 million to relocate PSA’s drug testing lab. PSA conducts a risk assessment at intake for each defendant and recommends to judicial officers the 

least-restrictive conditions necessary to promote future court appearance and minimize the defendant’s potential risk to the community. They also partner with MPD to identify misdemeanor 

arrestees who can be released safely from the police station pending initial court appearance. 

As of September 30, 2010, PSA supervised 6,850 defendants. In 

fiscal year 2010, they prepared over 16,000 pretrial services reports 

and conducted over 12,000 citation release investigations. They also 

completed over 3,000 criminal history reports for consideration of 

release in D.C. Code and drunk driving cases. 

In fiscal year 2010 they performed over 300 mental health assessments and placed over 1,600 defendants in a specialized supervision unit. They also expanded support of the D.C. Superior Court 

Mental Health Diversion Court to encompass felonies as well as 

misdemeanors. PSA’s Forensic Toxicology Drug Testing Lab processes urine specimens for CSOSA and Pretrial. Fiscal year 2010, 

the lab conducted almost 3.5 million drug tests on over a half a 

million urine samples collected from both defendants and offenders, 

as well as juveniles and adults whose matters are handled in the 

D.C. Family Court. 

We continue to make great strides in providing comprehensive 

supervision services for offenders and defendants in the D.C. Washington community. That concludes my testimony. I will be pleased 

to answer any questions you may have. 

[The CSOSA testimony follows:] 


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Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you very much, Madame Director, for 

your testimony. You know, it is pretty evident that this Committee, 

and the Committee Chairman, the Sub-Committee Chairwoman— 

I think all of us are committed to addressing our country’s 

unsustainable debt. 

And you know, it is not an easy task to do, but it is going to be 

important that every agency look for ways to be more efficient. 

With that in mind, and realizing that obviously your public safety 

role is crucial, it may or may not be reasonable to expect that you 

can go back to the 2008 funding levels. What would be the impact? 

What would the impact be of reducing your funding to fiscal year 

2008 levels? 

IMPACT OF FUNDING AT FISCAL YEAR 2008 LEVEL

Judge WASHINGTON. Well, funding the courts at the 2008 levels, 

we estimate would result in an operating budget reduction of approximately $24 million, or a 9 percent reduction below our current 

budget. Approximately 73 percent of the Courts’ budget is for personnel use, so a reduction of this magnitude would result in a significant reduction to the Courts’ current work force, thereby negatively impacting the court’s operations. 

Unlike most Federal agencies, as you know, most of our work is 

dealing directly with people. We cannot control how many people 

come in, and as you know, we are extremely busy, not only our 

trial court but our Court of Appeals are some of the busiest courts 

in the country. And so a 15 percent reduction in our workforce or 

a hiring freeze would be very difficult for us to sustain and continue to provide the services that are deserved by the citizens and 

those who live, work, and do business here in the District of Columbia. We would have to cut contractual services, probably. The 

vacancy rate of agencies is typically about five to six percent. So 

just contrasting that with the 15 percent vacancy rate that might 

be realized if we went all the way back to 2008 gives you some 

sense of how difficult it would be for us to manage that and continue to provide great service. 

I can tell you that several years ago our vacancy rate had risen 

to about 15 to 20 percent because of a lack of funding. Congress 

and the President, understanding the impact on the community, 

funded our unfunded positions so that we could reduce that level 

of vacancy because of the impact it was having on service provision. 

I think it would have a dramatic impact on our ability to do all 

the things that we are trying to do to protect the community. I 

would say that felonies, child protection, child support, juvenile delinquency, that we would have to look at all of those areas when 

we are talking about cutting staff because we really do not have 

an ability to determine where we are going to have staff needs. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Let me pose the same hypothetical going back, 

as opposed to the 2008 level, to the 2010 level. How would that affect you and what is the difference? 

Judge WASHINGTON. Well, I think the Courts would clearly be 

able to operate and perform their current functions if we went back 

to the 2010 levels. But there are several initiatives that affect public safety that would not get implemented. The expansion of services for females on juvenile probation is really very important and 


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critical to our maintaining safety and security of our communities. 

And again, the lack of a secured detention facility for girls makes 

it a critical part of what we think is important and needs to be 

done in order to promote safety here in the District of Columbia. 

The reduction in the capital budget, as you know Congressman 

better than I, just delays and it pushes out and increases dramatically the cost of our capital improvements, all of which I think this 

Congress has recognized and this subcommittee and Committee 

have recognized, year after year, are critical for us to meet our 

space needs. We have been diligent and the Congress has been 

wonderful about appropriating money for us to do that, to meet our 

space needs. If we have to delay those in any significant way, 

which the cut back to 2010 levels might force us to do, it is going 

to mean that the incremental changes we will be able to make with 

the money that has been provided or may be provided at the 2010 

levels will just stretch our plan out and cost us a lot more money 

and take us a lot more time to get it done. Commending our capital 

buildings project team, we have, in every project, consistent with 

our testimony to this Committee and to others, kept to our timetable and have brought in our projects on time, within budget. And 

we would like to continue to be able to do that. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Judge, your request proposes funding for nine 

new law clerks. 

Judge WASHINGTON. Yes. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. I believe and understand that we kind of know 

that the D.C. Court of Appeals has one of the highest caseloads in 

the country. If you could tell us how the hiring of these law clerks 

will impact the disposition of the cases in your caseload. 

REQUEST FOR LAW CLERKS

Judge WASHINGTON. Thank you. Yes. We intend to use these law 

clerks. The reason I asked for nine law clerks, or additional law 

clerks, was to be able to use them in a way that was flexible to 

meet the case processing needs of the Court of Appeals. As you 

know, our counterparts in the Federal Court of Appeals have four 

law clerks per Judge. We currently have two. Originally I thought 

that we certainly could process more cases had we had more staff 

support to assist the Judges in preparing for the cases on the calendars. Many of my colleagues sit on many more calendars per 

month than typically is sat on by Judges in the Federal Circuit. 

But additionally we have one of the smallest central legal staffs 

of any appellate court in the country. The central legal staff in 

most Federal appellate courts, and in most state high courts, handle a lot of the summary cases, preparing them for the Judge’s review. At this point, because of its size, we have only five attorneys 

in our central legal staff, and the number of motions we have, we 

cannot get them involved and engaged in handling summary merits 

decision cases. So with these law clerks, I can help supplement 

those judges who need additional help, and have additional help for 

senior judges, to get merits opinion cases resolved. But I can also 

take some of the law clerk positions to help bolster our central 

legal staff and perhaps move, which I hope will move cases more 

quickly and efficiently, especially the cases that are appropriate for 


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summary affirmance or a summary decision through the process 

more quickly. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you Judge, and I want to make sure 

that we quickly go to the Ranking Member because the vote has 

not been called yet, unfortunately. So before I do that, both in the 

opening statement and your response to the question, Judge, you 

mentioned the issue of the drop-in center for juvenile girls. And it 

seems that the primary focus of supervision of the juvenile offenders has been to males. And again, your request proposed an increase for a new drop-in center for juvenile girls. Prior to this initiative, it appears that programs for young women were really kind 

of lacking. Can you explain how you supervise juvenile girls now 

and what impact the new center would have on female offenders? 

DROP-IN CENTER FOR JUVENILE GIRLS

Judge WASHINGTON. With your permission, I will turn to my colleague Judge Satterfield to answer that question. 

Judge SATTERFIELD. Thank you. We have a series of probation officers who are trained for some of the unique issues that girls pose 

in terms of supervision. Because as you mentioned, throughout the 

many years, all these systems have been geared toward supervision 

of males. So, our Director of Court Social Services, who is a forward-thinking person, created a leadership for girls program with 

the idea that they are going to focus on the specific issues and expand our ability to supervise girls. 

The Drop-In Center is another tool to help do that. We already 

have two Drop-In Centers that we use in the city, and they are designed to provide supervision during the most critical times of day 

where youth seem to get into trouble, that is in the evening hours 

before their parents are home. So, we take them from when they 

get out of school into that time period and work with them. They 

eat there, they get counseling there. This girls’ Drop-In Center is 

designed to duplicate what we have been doing in the other two 

Drop-In Centers in the city. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. And you can show quantified results of those 

two drop-in centers that you have so far, right? 

Judge SATTERFIELD. Well, we are seeing very good results. We 

have commissioned a national study on reoffending that we are in 

the process of completing through a national organization, which 

will give us a better idea of how we are doing from that objective 

view, but subjectively, yes. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. All right. Thank you. And with that, even 

though there is a number of other questions, let me recognize the 

Ranking Member while we still have the time. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Poteat, can you 

tell us how CSOSA is working with the community college, at 

UDC, to assist offenders who are furthering their education and 

skill sets? 

Mr. POTEAT. Yes. One of our members here—in fact, two of them, 

Cedric Hendricks and Jasper Ormond have been very engaged with 

meeting with the members of UDC to get offenders placed in those 

college programs. In addition, they have been trying to get the college to have a program for those offenders in the Bureau of Prisons’ 


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out-of-state facility in Rivers, North Carolina so that they can engage in some kind of college courses as well. 

We do referrals for those people that have completed the GED 

and are interested in college courses, so that they can enroll at the 

campus. 

Mr. SERRANO. And you are getting the assistance you feel that 

you should be getting? 

Mr. POTEAT. Yes, we are getting the assistance. Yes. Everything 

could always be improved significantly, but for the most part, yes. 

Mr. SERRANO. Okay. So, we look forward to a good relationship, 

you believe. 

Mr. POTEAT. Yes. 

Mr. SERRANO. Okay, because it is so important that as we deal 

with these issues, we also deal with educational needs and furthering those opportunities. Judge Satterfield, the Superior Court 

is one of the busiest courts in the nation. How have the tight quarters in the Moultrie Courthouse affected the day-to-day operations 

of the Superior Court system? 

IMPACT OF SPACE SHORTFALL

Judge SATTERFIELD. Well, it slows things down. You do not have 

a sufficient number of courtrooms to be able to carry out all of the 

business in the court. Also, in really moving cases efficiently, you 

need to work with our partners, like CSOSA and Pretrial Services, 

to have them on-site as well. We have a horrible space situation 

where we have to stop giving out space to our partners. When they 

are out of the building, out of space, it slows things down, not to 

have them present on-site. So, it does delay things. And obviously, 

having a better work environment, I think, would increase our productivity with our staff as well. 

Mr. SERRANO. And how many rooms do you have? 

Judge SATTERFIELD. I had that number in here somewhere. You 

are talking about courtrooms? 

Mr. SERRANO. Yes. 

Judge SATTERFIELD. About 80 courtrooms, we have a total of 

more than 80 judicial officers and then, in order to maintain the 

performance levels that we are at now, we use a number of senior 

judges. Without them, we would not be able to maintain the levels 

we are now. 

Mr. SERRANO. Let me ask you folks, there is a large discrepancy 

between the programs and initiatives included in the Courts’ request and the President’s request, which is not unusual. We see 

this all the time, historically. How would you prioritize the programs that were not included in the President’s request? That is, 

which programs are your highest priority? 

BUDGET PRIORITIES

Judge WASHINGTON. Our highest priority programs are the programs that we have testified about here today, primarily, programs 

that involve ensuring the public safety and increasing the effectiveness of our workforce, and on the capital side, providing adequate 

space. So, what the President has done in his budget is he supports 

these initiatives. We know that the President and Congress have 

continued to support these initiatives, which we greatly appreciate. 


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But the levels of that support have been less than we can utilize 

effectively and efficiently to ultimately reduce costs, in the long 

run, for these same programs and services. And so, what we are 

looking for, in terms of our budget initiatives, is greater funding in 

areas where the President has already provided us with some funding. 

We again, through a number of cost-saving efforts on the part of 

the Courts, have been able to reprioritize some of our resources to 

help to move some of the projects along and especially in providing 

a secure environment for our employees and the 10,000 people that 

come to our building every day. But certainly, the improvements 

that we could see if we got adequate funding in those areas that 

I have mentioned, our priorities would be the most helpful things 

for the Courts. 

Mr. SERRANO. Right. I know we have a vote pending here. But 

I just have one question that is really a follow-up to that last question. Can you describe some of the measures you have undertaken 

in these tight fiscal times? I understand that you have already cut 

drug treatment and mental health programs. These are dire steps, 

to say the least. What other costs have been cut from the budget 

in recent months? 

COST SAVINGS

Judge WASHINGTON. Well, with respect to reduction of services 

and cost savings, we try to achieve cost savings in a number of 

ways, not just by cutting operations. We have held positions open 

that we could have filled in order to slow the rate of the costs on 

our operational side. Again, 73 percent or more of our budget is 

personnel. So if we are going achieve any savings, we had to stop 

hiring at some point. And while we have not implemented a freeze 

and we are looking at each position very carefully, we are doing it 

with an eye towards being very conservative and hiring only those 

individuals we need. 

In the Court of Appeals, we had a mediation pilot program. We 

did not get the position we needed to actually staff the mediation 

program the way that we had envisioned it, and we have been 

using temporary personnel. We have stopped that because that is 

a very costly item, to bring in temporary personnel to run programs. The programs themselves really require expertise that we 

cannot get by just hiring temporary people to come in. That is one 

of those things we tried to change, use resources differently in 

order to help move and process cases. 

So, we are looking at all those kinds of cost savings measures. 

Anything that we can do that does not impact on case processing 

and the effective and efficient and timely disposition of cases we 

are looking at, Congressman. 

Mr. SERRANO. Okay. Thank you. 

Judge SATTERFIELD. And we have used technology in the system 

that the Congress funded some years ago; it enabled us to use less 

people, because we are becoming more paperless, in terms of having our cases processed and ensuring the quality of the work that 

is being done in the paperwork. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. 


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Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you, Mr. Serrano. The vote has been 

called. We have nine minutes and 40 seconds before the close, so 

that should be enough. I recognize Congresswoman Lee. 

Ms. LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good morning. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Good morning. 

Ms. LEE. Really glad you are here, and thank you very much. 

And let me just preface this by saying that many of us, as Members of Congress, are also residents of the District of Columbia at 

least two days a week, three days a week. And so I just have to 

thank you for what you are doing for the residents of the District 

of Columbia, the citizens of the District of Columbia, and the entire 

city. 

My children, in my last life, they attended D.C. public schools. 

I worked for Ron Dellums, who chaired the District of Columbia 

committee. And so the issues that are historical here in the District, we are still grappling with. And I want to thank you for what 

you are doing to ensure public safety in the city. And I think the 

discussion always, especially in this committee, always centers 

around money; it is the Appropriations Committee. The deficit, of 

course, cuts, that is the reality of what we have to deal with. But 

also, I believe when it comes to public safety, sometimes we can be, 

what is it, pennywise and pound-foolish? I think you all are doing 

a very good job with minimal resources. I wanted to ask you, have 

you looked at what happened, in terms of a possible increase in 

crime, if your budget decreased? 

Just looking at these statistics that Director Poteat laid out, in 

terms of the 37 percent have less than a high school diploma, 70 

percent have a history of substance abuse, 30 percent mental illness, mental health issues. What would happen to these people, in 

terms of the crime rate in Washington, D.C.? And what if, in fact, 

your budget were reduced to 2008 levels? I would like to see it increase but I would like to see that relationship between the budget 

and the crime rate. 

Ms. POTEAT. That is one of the things that we are tackling consistently. We realize that public safety is paramount. And so, therefore, one of the things that we have done is restructure some things 

internally. For instance, with our low-risk offenders, I talked about 

putting them on kiosk. And the reason we did that is that we free 

up some of those offenders that require minimum supervision to 

just check in on the kiosk box. That way, the supervision officer 

can now focus more heavily on the high-risk offenders. 

So, what do we do? One of the things we have been creative in 

is our call-ins. We do that periodically. In fact, we had one today 

at our Rhode Island Avenue site. Anybody that is high-risk, that 

could be a menace to the community, they could be using PCP, 

whatever the criteria, we call them in and give them a lecture to 

say that, ‘‘We are on to you, we are watching you, and we are going 

to increase some supervision requirements internally.’’ MPD attends those call-ins as well. 

Another thing that we have implemented is that we are focusing 

more on the risk and needs of the highest risk offenders: those that 

are PCP users, getting them in the substance abuse treatment programs. We realize right now that we can only address 25 percent 

of our population with substance abuse issues. That means that we 


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have had to decrease the number treated, but focus on the highest 

of the highest risk. What do we do with the others? We can do internal group sessions. We have a violence reduction program that 

three staff members are doing at 25 K Street. It is, I am going to 

say, a 30-week program; it is very intensive and conducted in various stages. They talk about anger management, critical thinking, 

and alternatives to the way that they used to do things. 

GPS: We have increased the number of GPS, so that would be 

very critical for us if we were to have to eliminate that. And we 

have trained over 800 law enforcement partners so that now they 

can monitor and track our offenders throughout the city. It is not 

just high-risk, it could be mental health cases or sex offender cases. 

Ms. LEE. Let me just ask, is it a stretch, then, to say that if your 

budget were reduced, possibly the crime rate would go up, or do 

you think it would stay the same? 

Ms. POTEAT. We feel that the crime rate would go up because 

there are other contributing factors: housing and employment. 

Without that, those offenders more than likely will recidivate. If 

you do not have jobs for them to do, they are going to commit some 

type of crime. Those crimes eventually are going to the courts, then 

the courts are going to be bombarded with cases, and then the Federal Bureau of Prisons will be overloaded with people that have to 

be revoked and go back to the institutions. 

I talked about the number of people that are concurrently homeless. When you do not have adequate housing, that is a contributing factor to people not being able to adapt well, and they may 

break into homes so they can find adequate places to sleep, because 

some of the shelters are full. Sex offenders can only reside in one 

shelter. So you are, again, putting the community at some type of 

risk. 

Ms. LEE. Thank you very much. 

Judge SATTERFIELD. Can I answer that? Because with a reduction, we do not get to our cases in a timely manner. That means 

they have to be supervised longer by agencies like Pretrial Services 

before a resolution on guilt or innocence. Then we do not get them 

to rehabilitation until that has been done. So, everything is 

stretched out. If there are reductions, we cannot get to the matters 

and resolve them in a timely manner. It just turns out to be more 

costly, and you have more people under supervision than you need 

to. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you. Congresswoman, by the way, talking about great timing, I am looking at the clock that is counting 

down here to the vote. 

Let me again thank the Ranking Member, thank our colleagues, 

but more importantly, thank you, the very distinguished panel for 

spending your time with us today. I think it was very, very important. I think we learned a lot. I clearly did, yes. If there are any 

questions for the record, obviously, we can submit them and I am 

sure there will be some other questions. And I know that the Ranking Member has some questions, and I am sure there will be others. 

But again, let me thank you for your time. It has been a privilege 

to have you here. And with that, we close the meeting. Thank you. 

[The information follows:] 


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(141) 

THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 2011. 

U.S. SUPREME COURT 

WITNESSES 

ANTHONY KENNEDY, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT 

OF THE UNITED STATES 

STEPHEN BREYER, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF 

THE UNITED STATES 

INTRODUCTION OF WITNESSES

Mrs. EMERSON. Good morning. The hearing will come to order. 

Welcome, Justices Kennedy and Breyer, and thank you all so 

much for being here today. You both have testified before the Committee several times, and we appreciate your willingness to meet 

with us again. 

Please give my regards to Justice Thomas and my colleagues: 

Joe’s and Mr. Womack’s as well. It seems strange that he is not 

here this year. 

But, anyway, we appreciate so much that you all are here and 

look forward very much to meeting with you, and we will do our 

best to meet your resource needs this year. 

An independent judiciary, trusted and respected by all citizens 

and committed to fairly and expeditiously resolving difficult and 

controversial questions, is fundamental to our Nation. Although the 

Supreme Court budget is not large in comparison to other Federal 

programs, I am pleased that you are here today. Because, outside 

the confirmation process, today’s hearing is one of the few instances when we actually get to interact with the judicial branch. 

It is, in my opinion, a worthy interaction, as we recognize and respect the prerogatives of each branch. 

As you all know, the Committee is working to reduce overall nonsecurity domestic spending to fiscal year 2008 levels, and we will 

ask you all if there are any areas of your budget that could be reduced, but, also, at the same time, be sure that we will make certain the Court has the resources it needs to fulfill your constitutional responsibilities. 

Justice Kennedy and Justice Breyer, I look forward to hearing 

from you about the resources necessary for the operation of our Nation’s highest court, as well as any thoughts you have regarding 

our Nation’s courts as a whole. 

And now let me recognize my good friend and colleague, Joe 

Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you so much, and congratulations on the 

Cardinals. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you. We finally have hit our stride hitting. 

Now all we need to do is to learn how to pitch, and we will be in 

good shape. 


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Mr. SERRANO. Don’t get used to it. It may fall apart. 

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I would also like to warmly welcome Justice Breyer and Justice Kennedy back before this subcommittee. Seeing as they have both been here before, I must really commend them, knowing what they may be in for, for showing 

up again. 

As I have said in past years, this is one of the rare opportunities 

for our two branches to interact. Because of this, our questions 

sometimes range beyond strict appropriations issues. As our Nation’s highest court, many of us look to you for important insights 

into issues affecting the Federal judiciary as a whole. 

There is no question that these are difficult budget times. However, as we look for savings, we must be careful not to affect the 

ability of our Federal judiciary to hear cases and dispense justice 

in a fair and timely manner. We must also be sure to provide the 

Supreme Court, as both the final authority on our Constitution and 

the most visible symbol of our system of justice, with sufficient 

funds to undertake not just your judicial functions but your public 

information functions as well. 

We look forward to your testimony, and I join the Chairwoman 

in having you please bring our warmest regards to Justice Thomas, 

who I know loves to come to these hearings. 

And, of course, as a person who represents the Bronx, New York, 

a special hello to Sonia Sotomayor. We are very proud of her in my 

congressional district. As you know, I was born where her parents 

were born, in Puerto Rico; and we take great pride in her ascension 

to the Supreme Court. 

Thank you so much. 

Mrs. EMERSON. You know, as a matter of fact, speaking of Justice Sotomayor, she may be playing on our congressional softball 

team this year. Just so you know. That way you will have to come 

to our game. And I know she and a couple of the—— 

Mr. SERRANO. When did she become a Member of Congress? 

Mrs. EMERSON. She and a couple of the other Cabinet Secretaries 

who are female have indicated a desire to play on the team. 

Mr. SERRANO. Talk about the branches getting together. I will 

have to show up. 

Mrs. EMERSON. I would now like to recognize Justice Kennedy. 

If you would be so kind as to keep your comments to 5 minutes or 

under, we will have more time for questions. 

Thank you so much. 

OPENING STATEMENT

Justice KENNEDY. Thank you, Chairman Emerson, Mr. Serrano, 

Members of the Committee. It is a privilege to appear before you 

with my colleague, Justice Breyer. 

The Chief Justice and all of my colleagues send greetings to you. 

We will have lunch together tomorrow, and they will be pleased to 

hear that you send them warm regards. 

You mentioned the independence of the judiciary. We talk often 

of separation of powers and checks and balances in interchangeable 

terms. We use them to cover one concept. Really, they have a different thrust. Separation of powers means each branch of the government has powers that are its own. You have the power of the 


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purse. We have the judicial power. The President, the Commander 

in Chief, and so forth. That is separation of powers. 

Checks and balances presumes that the benches can’t be completely separate. We have to interact at some points. And one is 

when we present to you our budget request, and it is the time at 

which you can inquire about our operations to make sure that they 

are efficient. 

The courts, by tradition, are cautious, prudent; and it has always 

been our tradition to be extremely careful in the budget request 

that we submit to the Congress. I can assure you that the Chief 

Justice went through the budget recommendations of our own staff 

with great care before we presented the budget request for fiscal 

2012. 

Many of those staff, our principal officers, are here today with 

Justice Breyer and me: Jeff Minear, who is Counselor to the Chief 

Justice; Kevin Cline, who is Director of Budget; Pam Talkin, the 

Marshal of the United States Supreme Court; William Suter, the 

Clerk of the Court; and Kathy Arberg, our Public Information Officer. I might say that we have a staff working under, principally, 

Jeff Minear and Kevin Cline, who talks on a regular basis with 

your staff, and this is an oversight function in itself. My understanding is that your staff has been extremely helpful and cooperative; and, Madam Chairwoman, if you could extend our thanks to 

your staff for that. 

Our budget request for fiscal 2012 is a reduction, if you take an 

assumed budget for fiscal 2011. And we worked very hard to get 

that reduction because we are quite conscious of the fact that the 

government must be extremely careful in its stewardship of the 

taxpayers’ dollars. Our budget request for fiscal 2012 is $75,500,000. That is a re- duction of $706,000 from the assumed budget in fiscal 2011. Even 

with the assumed reduction, we have been able to find cost containment measures to enable us to ask for 12 additional positions for 

the police. We actually need more than that for police. We need 

probably double, and we need other personnel. But we have, in 

light of budgetary constraints, confined our request to that. That 

is urgent that we have that. 

We have a command center that has to be manned 24 hours a 

day. It is cost effective not to pay overtime; and our police work, 

as you know, is becoming much more sophisticated. 

Our Court has its own Web site, and I can tell you about it later 

if you are interested, which has to be operated 24 hours a day, and 

so we do need those extra positions. 

We are going to ask next fiscal year for a small amount to investigate the possibility of having payroll and personnel functions contracted out to another agency of the government. We can’t use the 

Defense Department or HHS or a congressional payroll mechanism. 

We are too small. So we have an outside contractor, but we find 

out that there are certain government agencies that are also quite 

small that have a program that we can use and that will cost us 

some money for startup and investigation, but, in the long term, 

it will save money. 

We are about seeing the end of the courthouse modernization 

renovation project. It has gone way over time, but it is within 


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budget. There will be claims on both sides, as happens with a long 

project, but, pending the outcome of those claims, it looks like we 

are in budget, and the construction people will be out of the building site I think by around April 30. Then landscaping can begin; 

and our court building, which has been undergoing this renovation 

since 2004, will once again be open. 

I think that concludes my remarks, Chairwoman Emerson. 

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Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you, Justice Kennedy. 

Justice Breyer. 

Okay. Let’s go ahead, and we will start the questions. 

I know you will be very happy to have the construction work 

completed; and, it is one of those questions that I want to ask 

about because, you know, when I have so many constituents who 

come to Washington the first time, and this is the time of year they 

are visiting, they have asked about the front door of the Supreme 

Court. And I also know that there was concern raised by some 

Members of the Court and also some of our colleagues with regard 

to the fact that you were closing its main door. 

But then, again, tragic incidents like that which happened last 

year at the courthouse in Las Vegas, at the Pentagon, more recently, the tragedy in Tucson, remind us of the importance of security. It is my understanding, though, that visitors can climb the 

steps to the main entrance and still can exit the building from that 

entrance. And I further understand that the new visitor screening 

process was contemplated and funded during the modernization 

process. You know and we all know that both the White House and 

the Capitol have elaborate screening processes, and there is no reason that you all should not as well. 

Justice Kennedy, can you describe the process the Court used in 

deciding to change its visitor screening procedures? And then a 

couple of other questions along that line: Are visitors still welcome 

to climb the steps to the main entrance? Can they exit using the 

main entrance? 

And then I will ask Justice Breyer for any comments he might 

have on that. 

Justice KENNEDY. There is a symbolism in going up the steps to 

the Supreme Court and a symbolism to make sure that it is open. 

In the Cold War and just after the Cold War, when we had visitors 

from Eastern Europe, they were amazed that our courts were open. 

Well, of course, they are open; and the steps symbolize that. 

As part of the reconstruction of the Court—renovation of the 

Court, I should say—we had actually some experts on exhibits and 

visitors, and they found that the atrium to the Court, which is unair conditioned, is just stifling in the summer, quite unwelcoming. 

The minute the visitors went in to the Great Hall, we had to have 

screening devices in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court. The 

restrooms were on either side. It was just not a welcome or dignified entrance for visitors, quite apart from security. 

Then, when we looked at security, the security people said there 

is no way that you can do this, and we agreed with that and 

spent—it is classified—millions of dollars on an updated security 

facility so that they enter under the steps. When you go into the 

Court now to the ground level, it is slightly confusing for the visitor, because some visitors don’t know that they can go upstairs 

and see the Court. So we are working on new brochures, signage, 

and so forth so that it will continue to be a good experience. 

But just insofar as the looks of the Great Hall, it is greatly improved, quite apart from security; and from security, it is mandatory. 

Mrs. EMERSON. I appreciate that. 

Justice Breyer, do you have any comments? 


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Justice BREYER. Well, I wrote some comments. 

We have many difficult questions in the Court, and we don’t always agree, and that is because they are difficult and there are two 

sides to the question. This was one of the questions where, in my 

mind, it was a close and difficult question. And, as you pointed out, 

there is security considerations on one side, and the other side is 

the traditional idea of people being able to walk up the steps and 

go into the room. 

So we disagreed. I thought we should have left it open. I read 

the same papers and others read the same papers and came to the 

conclusion that we should close it off from people coming up. 

I am glad I wrote the paper, because my reason, really, is I don’t 

want it to get lost. Eventually, things will calm down, I hope, and 

eventually, at that time, the security needs may diminish, and 

eventually, at that time, I hope it will be possible for every American to walk into that plaza, walk up the steps, into equal justice 

under law and walk into the building. That is why I wrote it. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thanks. 

ADDITIONAL POLICE OFFICERS

Now, Justice Breyer, you and Justice Thomas last year—and 

Justice Kennedy discussed this briefly in his remarks—about the 

need and actually made a very compelling argument for additional 

police officers at the Supreme Court. And when we had last year’s 

hearing we never anticipated that the fiscal 2011 budget process 

would be dragged out until today. But, nonetheless, it has, far 

longer than I know our co-chair, Ranking Member Mr. Serrano, 

and I had hoped. 

But, once again, you all have proposed 12 additional police officers to operate your modern police command center and also to enable you to secure additional entryways once the modernization is 

completed. So can you all explain how this new command center is 

going to improve security at the Court? 

Justice KENNEDY. Our Court is open 24 hours a day because we 

have a Web site that is always up. I tell my law clerks, one of us 

has to work until 2:00 in the morning, and it is not me. So the law 

clerks are there late in the evening. 

We have eight acres of grounds which have to be protected, and 

a number of our officers now have to spend time learning about 

cyber security threats and so forth, and that is part of the command center. 

The command center has to be manned, and it should be 

manned, by more than one person; and we think it is unproductive 

and not sound cost responsibility to pay overtime. And so that is 

why we need—actually, our people said we needed 25, and the 

Chief Justice and the staff went over it, and we can live with the 

12. We do consider the 12 urgent, and it is in the context where 

I have explained, again, if you assume fiscal 2011 as a baseline, of 

a reduction of some $706,000, even with the new police. 

It also takes time. They have to go through special training, and 

we have to implement them. So the 12 will be quite workable. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you. 


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CHANGES IN JUSTICE PROTECTION

Can you tell me, to the extent that you can say it in public, has 

the shooting in Tucson resulted in any changes in your protection 

when the Justices are away from the Supreme Court building? 

Justice KENNEDY. Let me just say this, since you mentioned it. 

The Ninth Circuit is my circuit. I was on that circuit court, and I 

am now the circuit justice for that. 

Chief Judge John Roll was one of the fine judges in the United 

States system. We know who our good trial judges are. He was one 

of them. He had a marvelous background. He was on the Criminal 

Rules Committee, Justice Breyer, and would be called by judges 

from around the country if there were a particular problem. And 

that shooting left his wife Maureen and three children. He was the 

chief judge of the district. Arizona is a single district. 

The judges have picked up right where they left off, in part because of the commitment that he showed. Our judges are among 

the most dedicated, principled, public servants in the world, and it 

is urgent for the Congress to make provisions so that we can continue to attract to our bench practitioners who are preeminent in 

the practicing bar. 

Now, anytime there is an incident like that, we take a second 

look at our procedures. We have threat assessment going on at all 

times. Again, that is part of our police force, and we are always 

aware of security threats. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Justice Breyer, do you have any comments? 

Justice BREYER. I agree with the Justice. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Okay. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you so much. 

SUFFICIENT BUDGET LEVEL

We are always very careful on the House floor or in committee 

hearings never to speak to anyone in the audience. So I will be 

very careful about that rule and simply say that some visitors to 

this building should be aware of what is happening today, which 

is a unique situation. 

We know the Supreme Court is this body of men and women who 

interpret our Constitution and make so many important decisions 

that affect all our lives, but the Supreme Court is also a place 

where people get hired and salaries have to be paid, and the building itself is a tourist attraction. So, to some, this hearing may seem 

a little different than what you expect, but it is that other part of 

legislating and appropriating when you have to make sure that 

those places which are part of our society and our government, 

such as the White House and this Capitol Building and the museums and all the other things, but also the Supreme Court are properly funded. 

So issues of whether the door is open or not are very important, 

and going up those steps are very important, and they take on a 

new significance. We all, in a bipartisan fashion, want to make 

sure that the building is in good shape and that the tourists who 

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thing that we can be proud of, as we are, but we have to make sure 

that it happens all the time. 

Notice how I did that without speaking to anyone in particular 

directly. 

I just want you to know, later today we will vote on finishing the 

fiscal year 2011 process at last, hopefully. For salaries and expenses, the Supreme Court budget is held to last year’s level of 

$71.8 million. Is this level sufficient for your staffing needs? 

Justice KENNEDY. My understanding—and I am going to look at 

our experts after I answer the question—is we can live with it 

2011, but we need what we are requesting in 2012. Yes. 

Mr. SERRANO. That starts tomorrow, that fight. So what you are 

telling us, it may be okay what we do today, but tomorrow you 

need some other things. 

FEDERAL COURT SECURITY

The Court officers, the police officers that were mentioned, is this 

part of a larger need for security not only at the Supreme Court 

but the courts throughout the Nation? I mean, the incident in Arizona was one where a judge was stopping by a local congressional 

event. But we know in the past there have been issues in recent 

years where the security and the safety of judges throughout our 

system have been threatened. What are the security issues, if any, 

at the Court? Again, within those things that you can tell us in 

public. 

Justice KENNEDY. Remember that the Federal courts have the responsibility to adjudicate criminal prosecutions. Last fiscal year, we 

had 100,000 people indicted in the United States district courts. 

These people are in organized crimes, they are in drugs and so 

forth. Then there is the correctional population for which the courts 

have a lessened responsibility but still some ongoing responsibilities, and this population alone means, because of witnesses and 

threats and so forth, that we must be very, very careful in the 

United States district courts. 

The responsibility for security is generally divided into two parts. 

There are court security officers hired in the various districts, just 

like we have our own Supreme Court police and the United States 

Marshal Service operating out of the Justice Department, and we 

have constant studies and recommendations from those agencies. 

That is one reason why courthouse construction is so expensive. 

If you are talking about a courthouse, a trial courtroom has to have 

four entrances: one for the judge, one for the jury, one for the defendant in custody, one for the public. Well, that sounds simple 

enough, four entrances, but if you have a multiple courtrooms, then 

it gets extremely complicated, and so security drives the costs, not 

just personnel but construction. 

Justice BREYER. I would add one thing. I have been on the Court 

now—I don’t like to admit this—but for more than 16 years; and, 

during that time, I think our Court police—because that is our responsibility directly. We have the Court police. We are in charge 

of our Court police. I have always found them to be excellent. I 

mean, there has never been a moment in that time that I have experienced anyone feeling nervous or that I have experienced any 

lack of efficiency, and the public I think reacts with them well. So 


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I would say from my own personal experience that the management of the Court police by the Supreme Court and the people they 

have chosen to do that have done very well. 

CODE OF CONDUCT FOR JUSTICES

Mr. SERRANO. Recently, there have been several proposals to 

apply the Judicial Conference’s Code of Judicial Conduct to Supreme Court Justices and to make recusal decisions by the Justices 

more transparent to the public. Currently, the Code of Judicial 

Conduct applies to all other Federal judges, but it is only advisory 

for Supreme Court Justices. Do you have any thoughts on these 

proposals? Do you believe that the Code of Judicial Conduct should 

apply to Supreme Court Justices, or are there good reasons for not 

doing so? 

Justice KENNEDY. I will let my colleague, Justice Breyer, comment on my answer and add his own insights. 

The code of conduct does apply to the justices in the sense that 

we have agreed to be bound by them. Those rules are public, and 

if there is some question that we haven’t complied with the letter 

or spirit of those rules, there can be comment about that. 

Of course, the Court has to follow rules of judicial ethics. That 

is part of our oath. That is part of our obligation of neutrality. 

Insofar as making them binding, there is a legal or constitutional 

dissonance problem. Those rules are made by the Judicial Conference of the United States, which are district and appellate 

judges; and we would find it structurally unprecedented for district 

and circuit judges to make rules that Supreme Court judges have 

to follow. So there is a legal problem in doing that. 

I really think there is no problem at all, since by resolution we 

have agreed to be bound by those. We are also, of course, bound 

by the ethics and government statutes for conflicts of interest and 

so forth. 

Justice BREYER. The answer to your question, should the justices 

be bound by the same rules of ethics, I think is yes. All right. 

The second, different question is, does that mean you should legislate? Then I think the answer is no. And the reason that I get 

to the two different answers is because I personally have seven volumes of ethics rules, the same that every district judge has, right 

in my office. And when I find a difficult question, I go to those volumes, try to apply them exactly as the district judge would, and 

I have people whom I call who are ethics experts, really, if I find 

a difficult problem. 

So why not legislate? The only reason not to legislate, I suppose, 

is, one, the kind of theoretical, getting to a problem with can you 

legislate and where and the Supreme Court, which people love to 

debate, and I love, when they have such a question of where does 

the power lie, not to answer the question and to go on to something 

else because I think it produces heat and not too much light. 

The other reason I think perhaps never happens anymore, but 

when I worked on the staff of the Senate, sometimes a bill, which 

we thought was perfect, would get to the floor of the Senate, and 

the words that came out didn’t seem to be quite the same words 

that went in. And so I didn’t know always what was going to happen when legislation started. 


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But those are rather detailed, technical, and they are not real objections. Your basic question is right, and I think it is followed. I 

think all the justices do what I do, which is we do follow the rules. 

They do apply, and somehow it has gotten around they don’t. Well, 

they do. I mean, I apply them. 

And I would add one other thing. It is a different thing, which 

I discovered, being a Supreme Court Justice in respect to ethics 

and disqualification than a district court or court of appeals. When 

I was in the court of appeals or a district court and a tough question came up, I would say I take myself out of the case. Who cares? 

They will find somebody else. 

But you can’t do that on our Court. So you have to think about 

it in a different way, and you have to remember you also have a 

duty to sit. Because there is no one to replace me if I take myself 

out, and that could sometimes change the result. 

Mr. SERRANO. Right. 

Justice BREYER. So I have to think long and hard in a way I 

didn’t have to think long and hard on the court of appeals. 

Justice KENNEDY. If I may just add, as Justice Breyer indicates, 

if we have one of us recuse from a case and we come out four to 

four, we have wasted everybody’s time. It could be a criminal conviction automatically affirmed. And so we do have special problems. 

We have in the Judicial Conference of the United States the 

Committee on the Codes of Judicial Conduct, and I served—I was 

one of the—I think there were five of us that served on that committee for more years than I like to remember, and that committee 

is a very hardworking committee. It gets requests from judges setting forth what the ethical problem is. 

The judge is in the middle of trial. He or she has invested years 

and years of time. Suddenly, there is a marriage in the family, and 

there is a conflict of interest because the new spouse owns some 

stock. Does that judge have to leave after, you know, investing 

years in the litigation? 

Those are the kinds of things we try to answer. And the committee is open and receives questions from us. We can ask for advice from the Committee on Codes of Judicial Conduct, and we do 

ask for that advice. 

Mr. SERRANO. Madam Chair, let me just close by saying that I 

would accept both of your statements, that you are very careful and 

the Court is very careful how it deals with these things. So I guess 

the next question for yourselves, not for me to ask, is why are there 

now proposals floating around? What has happened recently that 

has had people ask these questions like they have never asked before? 

RECENT INTEREST IN CODE OF CONDUCT FOR JUSTICES

Justice BREYER. One thing I think is—just a guess—is that somehow people got the idea that we don’t apply these same seven volumes. That is just a wrong idea, and I think that came from the 

fact that they are not legally binding on us in a sense that they 

might be in a court of appeals judge. That was interpreted to mean 

we don’t apply them, which is wrong. Then that was written about 

in the newspaper, and everybody thought that was so. I think that 

is what happened. 


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And I suppose, also, always—not always—almost always there is 

some controversial thing going on, and the reason it is more controversial in our Court is, one, we are more visible, and, two, we 

do have this duty to sit, which can make the question of answering 

the ethics question more controversial. 

So I think those two things combined, and that is just my guess 

as to why this is going around. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you so much. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you, Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. Womack. 

ADEQUATE INCREASE IN POLICE OFFICERS

Mr. WOMACK. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and I want to 

thank the Justices for not only being here today but for your service to our country. It is an honor, as someone who respects the separation of powers and the branches of government dating all the 

way back to my civics classes—and as a new freshman in this Congress, I am honored to sit up here today and to engage you in conversation. 

Justice Breyer, particularly to you, thank you for your trip to Arkansas last week. I know I—— 

Justice BREYER. Thank you very much. 

Mr. WOMACK. I speak for all Arkansans in thanking you for exporting, if you will, yourself and your knowledge and perspective 

to the people of the great State of the Arkansas, and I thank you 

for that. 

Justice BREYER. Thank you. 

Mr. WOMACK. As I told you in conversations before the committee 

hearing this morning, I am particularly interested in security, having a wife who has spent the better part of 30 years as a trial court 

assistant in Arkansas at the circuit court level and fully recognizing the importance of security. I noticed in your 2012 budget request it is for the 12 officers, and I think if I read correctly that 

there has been demonstrated a higher need but that 12 has been 

the number that we have settled on for 2012. Is it adequate? Given 

the circumstances, the times in which we live, the recent issues in 

Tucson, is it adequate? 

Justice KENNEDY. Our experts tell us that. Our own staff, and 

they have looked at this very carefully, say that it would be adequate. As we train and implement these officers, it may be that we 

will find that we need more, but the 12 is what we can absorb and 

what we need now. 

POLICE OFFICER RETENTION

Mr. WOMACK. Given the fact that training and equipping officers 

in this line of work is a little different than what I am accustomed 

to as a former mayor and developing police officers at the municipal level, but is there a revolving door, so to speak? Because I 

want us to be very careful that we are not investing large sums of 

money in the training and equipping of officers only to prepare 

them for the next line of duty in some other organization. Are we 

pretty good at keeping our folks? 


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Justice KENNEDY. My answer would be anecdotal. I have asked 

about it. We are good about it. When they do leave, they go generally to other government security agencies. We just lost one of 

our fine officers to the United States Marshal Service. So that capital investment that the government made continues to produce results. 

Mr. WOMACK. I find it comforting that in the discussion about 

the entryway to the Supreme Court and the difference of opinion 

at the Court, it is on the Court itself of what to do, what not to 

do. It is comforting to know that, Jo, we are not the only people 

that disagree from time to time on matters of importance, the Yankees-Cardinals and the discussions that take place in the well of 

the House. It is good to know that they, too, have some division of 

opinion from time to time. 

Madam Chairwoman, I have no further questions. Again, it is an 

honor to be here with two of our Justices. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you so much, Mr. Womack. 

Mr. Diaz-Balart. 

SEPARATION OF POWERS

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. 

It is a pleasure to see you both, Justices. 

Justice Breyer, you were in south Florida on a matter, and I was 

there, and it was enjoyable to listen to you speak, but I would tell 

you more enjoyable even to be able to have a number of people ask 

you questions. We appreciate that. I think it is important. 

I am actually going to change my line of questions. I don’t have 

a lot of questions, but we were talking a little bit about, you know, 

obviously the separation of powers, which is essential for our democracy, for our freedoms. There is always, I guess, the temptation 

to creep into other branches of government. I know that you probably—I am sure the judiciary sometimes believes that Congress 

may have a tendency to try to creep into what is judicial territory, 

and we in the Congress have many times the feeling of the same 

thing, and particularly with the administrations, with the executive branch. 

So is there anything that Congress can do to, in essence, resuscitate the non-delegation doctrine within the judicial branch? Because there are many of us who feel—and it is not new and it is 

not on a specific issue—that particular agencies, Federal agencies, 

tend to try to, frankly, far exceed their congressional authority. So 

is there something that we could be doing to resuscitate that nondelegation of—— 

Justice KENNEDY. I will answer first so that Administrative Law 

Professor Breyer can be thinking about your question, a substantive question that is one of the most difficult questions in the 

law. 

You will tell a civics class, now here is a chart of the three 

branches of government: article I, legislature; article II, the executive; article III, the judiciary. 

What is an administrative agency? Does it make laws? Just try 

violating the Forest Service regulations sometime, and you will find 

out. Yes, they make laws. 


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What is it? Is it part judicial, part legislative? That is one of the 

conceptually most difficult questions in constitutional law. And I 

am not indicating that agencies aren’t important—we can’t survive 

without them—but it does seem to me that Congress has to make 

it very clear what the authority of the agency is, the congressional 

duty in establishing the agency, to give it not only its responsibilities but the limits on its powers. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. I don’t know if, Justice Breyer, if you would 

like to comment. 

Justice BREYER. When I used to teach ad law, I would say there 

you have a friend and an enemy. The friend is it is up to you how 

much power you delegate. You want to delegate less power, delegate less power. 

The enemy, the enemy I say is the enemy of us all, which is time. 

The problem is, if you have time to go into any agency and really 

understand what they are doing and really try to figure out whether they need a power to have, say, like something written into the 

statute, or it should be more general and cover all things of this 

type or this intermediate thing, if you only had the time where you 

could do that bit by bit in thousands of instances, you would have 

enormous power and you would be able to write the perfect statute. 

But we are all faced with time. We are all faced with complicated 

problems. We are all uncertain as to exactly how much authority 

is necessary to delegate in order to allow those problems to be dealt 

with as people in the country want, and, therefore, that is kind of 

almost like a cliche, and it can’t be much more helpful than that 

cliche. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. It is interesting. Because I guess in the ’30s 

I guess there were a couple of Supreme Court opinions that—and 

there is always a flip side to that because those opinions could be 

seen as also then muddling in congressional authority, but yet the 

Supreme Court then thought that I guess Congress was being too 

vague. 

Justice BREYER. They were. The very great opinion, Panama Refining and the other one was Schechter. 

Justice KENNEDY. Schechter. 

Justice BREYER. And Schechter is the really one that counts and 

even Cardoza. They had delegated a system, and they thought it 

would get them out of the recession—depression, really, where you 

would have committees of government, labor, and businesspeople, 

and they would set prices, and they would determine outputs, and 

they really ran everything. 

And Cardoza, who was certainly—he was known as a liberal 

judge. He was so well-known once somebody wrote him a letter and 

said, you are a liberal judge. Can you lend me $50? I mean, he 

made the famous phrase—— 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. I do that—— 

Justice BREYER. He made the famous phrase in that case. He 

says, this is delegation run riot. 

So you are right. There are those two cases. But they were reviewing decisions of Congress and thought that Congress and the 

President had gone too far in those instances. 

Justice KENNEDY. It was the national investor recovery act—to 

show that you were part of it. And they had codes of conduct for 


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every industry, and you put up a blue eagle on your storefront to 

show that you were compliant. It was just not working. And, really, 

the Court, in declaring it unconstitutional, I think Congress 

breathed a sigh of relief after seeing what it created, but it is the 

Congress that creates these things. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Justice KENNEDY. In Japan, the way they do it is the agency consists of the parliamentary committee. So it would be like the Commerce Committee would be on ICC as a mixture of functions so 

they know what is going on. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Yoder. 

CASELOAD COVERAGE

Mr. YODER. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Justices, we appreciate the opportunity to have you here today. 

And I know, just in reviewing some of the material, how difficult 

your workload is. And to take time to come to the Hill to visit with 

us about the financing of what we are doing here in this country 

is an important topic, and I am glad you are here to deal with this. 

I am a KU Law grad, and I want to say both of you have been 

to KU Law before to give lectures, and so I appreciate that. Certainly as a young attorney, it is a great opportunity to have you 

here today. 

I had an opportunity for 8 years to serve in the Kansas legislature, and one of the issues we dealt with there is a similar issue 

we are dealing with in the country, which is how to fund the growing pressures on our court system. We always dealt with a growing 

amount of caseloads and the pressure of having to add additional 

judgeships and, many times, because of budget constraints, we 

were unable to do so. 

I guess I want to just have a little discussion with you about the 

situation in our district courts and our courts of appeal. Certainly 

in Kansas where I am from, visiting with my local judges, they are 

concerned about the backlog. We hear backlogs in immigration 

courts. 

I guess, first of all, I want to get your comment on the severity 

of those things and what our potential responses could be, besides 

adding additional resources. 

One of the issues we dealt with in Kansas was we had growing 

areas where the amount of cases were increasing rapidly, but there 

are also areas where it was decreasing, and the courts were reluctant to move judges from decreasing court case areas to increasing 

court case areas. So we were only just adding or increasing and 

never decreasing where the caseloads were decreasing. 

So is that a factor here? And just from your perspective sitting 

on the Supreme Court, how does that affect your work and what 

would your advice be for Congress as we deal with this? 

Justice KENNEDY. Over the years, the Congress has been generous—— 

Mr. YODER. Justice Kennedy, if I might interrupt—as a young 

lawyer, it has always been my dream to interrupt a Supreme Court 

Justice, and so I just wanted to take that opportunity—— 

Justice KENNEDY. You can’t afford my hourly rate. 


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Mr. YODER. I just wanted to take that opportunity to do so, and 

I am sure if I ever have the pleasure of being before your Court, 

you will do the same. My respect to you, sir. 

Justice KENNEDY. The Congress of the United States has been 

prudent, farsighted, and wise and sensible in providing resources 

generally to the Federal courts. There are some problems with judicial salaries, but so far as resources, the Congress has given ample 

support to the Federal courts and for its infrastructure. The Federal courts are one of the most efficient, admired judiciaries in the 

world. 

In the last 3 fiscal years, bankruptcy filings have increased. I 

think it is fiscal 2009, last I looked at it, 1.5 million bankruptcy 

filings. We handled those filings. And I indicated 100,000 criminal 

defendants appeared before the Federal courts. 

We have, generally, the capital infrastructure to manage that. 

When we go to foreign countries or when judges come here, we find 

that, worldwide, legislators and parliamentarians are somewhat reluctant to give resources to their court. They think judges have an 

easy job, and they don’t know why they need all these resources. 

But I tell those people from those countries that a functioning, efficient, transparent, honest judiciary of integrity is part of the capital infrastructure. 

The bankruptcy filings, we don’t like to see bankruptcy, but we 

handled those as part of the recovery. 

So it is important for the courts to be open and flexible. Of 

course, the caseload changes, and we talk about that. We wonder. 

We are losing some of the major civil cases to arbitration, and if 

the judges—pardon me—if the bar thinks that is more efficient, 

fine. I don’t like to see us lose those cases, because it takes too long 

to go to trial. But we are working with that. The caseload is changing. There are more Federal crimes, more Federal prosecutions, immigration load. 

In some districts, we have a serious problem. My home district, 

Sacramento, California, is the Eastern District of California. The 

judicial load, the average caseload for a United States district judge 

is about 450 cases per year per judge, and that is a lot, but it is 

manageable. These judges are handling 11- to 1,400 cases. You just 

can’t do that to my judges. We need more judges, and the Congress 

should authorize the judges in those districts. 

Western District of Texas is another one. 

Some districts’ filings have dropped, not much. That can be taken 

care of over time, and we are in the happy position because article 

III judges can be assigned to other courts. We couldn’t manage in 

ninth circuit without visiting judges. We have visiting judges come 

to take up the workload. 

All right. Was that generally responsive? 

Mr. YODER. Very helpful, very helpful, and it gives me an idea 

of how things are going. And I do understand as caseloads drop in 

certain areas that through retirements, I think is that what you 

meant, you said that can be taken care of, as opposed to reassigning judges from declining caseload areas to areas that are increasing? That was always a challenge we had at the State level, 

is we knew we could move them, but it was politically too difficult 

to move the judge. 


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Justice KENNEDY. We do that on an interim basis, but over the 

long term it takes care of itself. 

SAVINGS AS A RESULT OF IMPROVED TECHNOLOGY

Mr. YODER. In terms of technology, which certainly always comes 

up and affects the Court, I wonder how much have we saved by 

moving away from paper filings and towards electronic filings? 

And I will say I did not practice in Federal courts, although I did 

practice in the bankruptcy courts, and that was I think a very efficient system for the attorneys to be able to upload the documents, 

scan them, and the Federal court was a good 30 minutes away. So 

it saved on gas and time and everything. So, in terms of attorneys, 

I think it has been useful from my perspective, but I wonder from 

the courts, does that save money and how is that—— 

Justice KENNEDY. Congressman, we have seen just since Justice 

Breyer and I have been on our Court a quiet revolution because of 

IT, information technology. 

We have a Web site. We run it ourselves. We get 59 million hits 

a month. There is a study that I have seen—I am somewhat skeptical of it—that we are about 12th or 13th of any government agency. We get 179,000 page hits a day. A page hit is where you look 

for something specific and study it. We get 179,000 of those a day. 

It used to be that I would read Supreme Court cases over the 

summer, and we would wait for months, maybe even more than a 

year, for a law review article. Now, there are blogs. Law professors 

in a specialized area, information technology, information technology crimes, antitrust, any number of specialists have blogs. 

Within weeks, days, even hours, they comment on our cases. Our 

case law is now part of the arguments that attorneys make to district and circuit judges within hours after we decide a case. It is 

very, very efficient. There has been a sea change in how accessible 

our opinions are. The system works. 

I have testified before this committee—my staff told me this is 

my 15th time, and I looked at the budget in the ’80s. It was half 

of what it is now. It is IT, and I thought that, well, maybe library 

expenses would go down, but it doesn’t. The library expenses are 

the same, plus we have the IT. But you have made that investment 

now. That is there. It is in place. It is running. As I say, it is a 

quiet revolution. It makes our courts very, very efficient and very 

effective. 

Mr. YODER. Well, and I appreciate that. 

How do we move from what is a great service, and, clearly, it has 

revolutionized how we utilize the information coming out of the 

Court very rapidly, as you described. How do we turn that into savings for the Court? Is there a point where we can reduce savings 

on the printing side? Or you said the budgets have actually gone 

up. Is there a point where the investment pays off in terms of the 

infrastructure of expenses—— 

Justice KENNEDY. I thought we needed fewer books. We don’t. No 

saving there. Printing, we used to have a printing press in the 

basement before we came to the Court, a printing press in the 

basement. Felix Frankfurter would go down and get ink on his 

hands. Now, we print the opinions electronically. 


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On paper filings, about only 2 percent of our petitions in criminal 

cases are granted, and they are handwritten by prisoners. If we 

scanned that, it would not be cost effective. But often a prisoner 

will not comply with the rules and will not attach a copy of the 

opinion of the highest court that affirmed his conviction or her conviction; and rather than send the petition back, our clerks just 

push a button and add the petition and we have it. 

So we are much, much more efficient. We are handling a huge 

volume of litigation under which our old system would have 

cracked. So when you think about cost savings, we are more effective on a case-by-case basis already. 

Mr. YODER. Thanks for your responses. 

Madam Chair—— 

Justice KENNEDY. I preempted Justice Breyer. 

Mr. YODER. Madam Chair, I yield back. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you, Mr. Yoder. 

COURT OPERATIONS DURING HIGH PROFILE CASES

Over the years, you all have heard numerous high-profile and 

somewhat controversial cases, and it is possible that next year you 

will be hearing another one with regard to the Affordable Care Act. 

And so I am curious, in situations like that, regardless of whether 

it is that or something else, how do highly publicized and controversial oral arguments affect the Court’s operations and the 

Court’s grounds, especially as it pertains to reporters and interested citizens? Does other Court business get put on hold for the 

day? I am more interested in the process, not the subject, if you 

know what I mean. 

Justice KENNEDY. We have a system that has formal traditional 

constraints and etiquette. We follow that. We don’t talk about cases 

with each other until they are argued so that we don’t have cliques 

or cabals. 

Our workload is such that we really don’t address problems until 

we have to. We, as you know, get all of our work done every year 

by June 30. Thank you very much. We are always 100 percent finished on our argued cases. And I go home and I tell my wife, you 

know, we have solved every problem in the world, there is nothing 

left, and then we find all these new problems. 

But that is the dynamic of the law. We wait until a dispute 

comes before us, and it is only in the context of a real dispute that 

we determine how to elaborate and explain the legal principles that 

are involved. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Whether it is an abortion type of case or it is the 

health care law or anything when you actually are hearing the oral 

arguments that day in the Court, does it require a lot more security? Are there different things that you have to do? Is the behavior 

of, you know, how the process works within the Court, is it 

changed from on a daily basis when you are not hearing a controversial argument? 

Justice KENNEDY. Oh, I guess there is maybe an air of anticipation in the room, as you might expect. But we will hear a so-called 

high-profile case between 10:00 and 11:00, and 11 o’clock we will 

hear the next case, and judges will start asking questions about the 


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next case. It is a set precedent-based, tradition-based, formal system that enables us to go from one case to the other. 

Justice BREYER. There might be a longer queue. There probably 

will be. And so there will be more police officers, and they will have 

to look around and see if there are any problems or so forth. There 

haven’t been any processing problems. There are more people who 

want to see the case. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Right. And so, consequently, even though you 

have got all eyes on this controversial case, the rest of the business 

of the Court goes on? 

Justice BREYER. Well, Bush v. Gore, we were inside writing, and 

it wasn’t us on the steps. It was the press on the steps who was 

taking the papers as soon as they came out and began to show all 

the papers that are being written. 

So it does cause a lot of extra work for a lot of other people. It 

doesn’t cause extra work for the nine justices. We work along as 

we would anyway, but other people in the Court may have to go 

to extra trouble. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Okay. Thank you. 

JUSTICE EXPERTISE FOR COMPLEX CASE ISSUES

You know, I am curious when you deal with cases like that, 

whether you are getting into the intricacies of health care law or 

technology, how do you all keep your skills and expertise current? 

Because you are getting into nitty-gritty technicalities that are 

quite complex. I am curious. 

Justice BREYER. I would be interested in what Justice Kennedy 

thinks, too. 

I like very much the fact that people file amicus curiae briefs, 

and in a tough case, a right-to-die case, we had one of those where 

it was one of these, you know, about medical care, or we had various computer cases, and we had 70 briefs in that case. And they 

will try to educate us, all kinds of different groups on both sides. 

And once we set up an exhibition in the library so the justices 

could come up and figure out how to work the computers in the 

particular way that was necessary to know for the case. 

In a patent case, one of the lawyers—it was a very good idea— 

in the district court, but it was still there, put the patent on the 

Internet. So they did a diagram and so anyone, anyone in the 

world, including the justices, could press a button and you would 

actually see how this thing worked in practice. 

So others, one, they are using these different methods, they know 

it is important in a case to educate us, and they have amicus briefs 

and other methods, if necessary, to try to get us up to speed. 

Justice KENNEDY. It is part of the adversary system, highly 

skilled attorneys who spend years on a case, and they have an hour 

to give, or half hour per side, to give us their argument. But there 

has to be a room in the law for generalists. We are generalists in 

a specialized world; and we, as Justice Breyer said, are educated 

by the amicus briefs and by counsel. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Well, it is important to look at both sides before 

you start. 

Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. 


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PRESIDENTIAL CITIZENSHIP REQUIREMENT

You made me a little nervous, Madam Chair, when you started 

to say something about a famous or important case next year. 

Mrs. EMERSON. What were you expecting? 

Mr. SERRANO. I thought it was about whether I can run for President or not. Having been born in Puerto Rico, that still hasn’t been 

settled by this panel. 

Justice Thomas got quoted in all the blogs as saying—I asked 

him that question, as I do, you gentlemen know that, every year, 

every hearing. And Justice Thomas answered by saying, well, you 

can serve on the Supreme Court, but he never answered the part. 

The blogs also said that a certain Justice Breyer came very close 

to saying I don’t see why not, but that does bring up an interesting 

question, and forgive me for asking it, if it is out of order. On a 

question like that, do you first have to wait to elect me President 

and then the case comes up—seriously—or can somebody bring up 

a case? My understanding—I am not a lawyer—is that there has 

to be someone aggrieved first. So does the person get aggrieved at 

the time I declare my candidacy or do I have to be elected first? 

Justice KENNEDY. I tell you, there are some lawyers I can recommend who can advise you of the rules of declaratory judgment. 

Justice BREYER. Why would anyone be aggrieved if you were running for President? Wouldn’t they be pleased? 

Mr. SERRANO. Oh, just—and I am not telling you whether I was 

born—I think some folks on the right would be very unhappy that 

I was running or maybe happy that I would be easy to defeat. I 

don’t know. Okay. So I won’t get an answer. I am just going to 

have to declare my candidacy. 

Justice BREYER. Well, what it says, it says no person except a 

natural born citizen. Well—— 

Mr. SERRANO. I am a natural born citizen. 

Justice BREYER. Okay. 

Mr. SERRANO. I can’t believe we just had a Supreme Court decision. 

Justice BREYER. Well, you said you were a natural born citizen. 

Mr. SERRANO. Well, that is what I believe I am, but it is interesting. Those folks with pen and pencil in the back I think have 

a heck of a story. 

Mrs. EMERSON. So are we to take it that this is your announcement to run in the primary against the President? 

Mr. SERRANO. No, not in 2012. 

Justice BREYER. Maybe I should point out that there are some 

people who think that means everyone except a naturalized citizen, 

and there are others who think it has a broader or a narrower 

meaning. 

Mr. SERRANO. And, on a serious note, there are some New York 

scholars who have told me that, in the 1940s, the Puerto Rico situation was resettled again where natural born was put in the language, natural born. 

MINORITY SELECTIONS FOR JUDICIARY INTERNSHIPS

Okay. So I have got to get my campaign ready. But before I do 

that, let me have a platform. So let me ask you a question that I 


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always ask. As in past years, I continue to be interested in seeing 

an increase in the number of minorities selected for Supreme Court 

clerkships. Are there any new initiatives to reach out to minority 

law students and graduates in the Federal judiciary as a whole? 

And the second question to that, I know that the Supreme Court 

Justices lecture and go to commencement exercises and so on. Do 

they use that opportunity to invite young people into the law profession, especially if they are in law school, and to apply for clerkships? 

Justice KENNEDY. When we go to law schools—and we often go 

to the smaller law schools for moot courts and spend a day or two 

with the students and so forth—I always encourage the students 

to apply for clerkships to the Federal district courts and the courts 

of appeal. In fact, I tell clerks, I say, you can really learn a lot in 

the trial court that you would never learn in the court of appeals. 

The district court has to do a lot of writing. They write a lot of 

opinions. So you will do everything a circuit court clerk does, plus 

you will learn how to try a case. I think district court clerkships 

are one of the best ways to train lawyers, and I encourage them 

to do that. 

Justice BREYER. It is not usually necessary to say apply for clerkships, because there are a lot of people that want to apply for clerkships. 

It is hard for me to say what is statistical and what isn’t. When 

I started in this—I have had quite a few minority clerks over the 

years. It was difficult at the beginning to find people who would 

come in, and then it got a lot easier, frankly. There is the problem. 

And then in more recent, last 2 or 3 years, I began to wonder, 

well, wait a minute here. Maybe there is a communications or 

something. So I am going back to the first let’s-try-to-get-the-wordout approach. 

Mr. SERRANO. Without hammering this too much, have we gone 

back to the old problem? Which I understood was that, basically, 

Harvard and Yale were the schools where people were recruiting, 

where the courts were recruiting. Has that changed? 

Justice KENNEDY. Well, I frankly don’t think that is the problem. 

I was thinking I had a clerk from Kansas last year—2 years ago, 

Kansas University, and I taught at a smaller law school for decades. I taught night law school. I know how hard these students 

work, how committed they are to law. 

I have to tell you that the bigger schools—Harvard, Yale, and 

Michigan, NYU, Stanford—themselves go out and are very good at 

recruiting minorities. So your chances of getting a minority clerk 

out of those schools is actually better than some of the smaller 

schools. So it works. It is somewhat surprising, kind of intuitive. 

COURT WEB SITE INTEREST

Mr. SERRANO. Let me just ask you one more question. Your Web 

site, last year about this time at the hearing the Web site was, you 

know, making a big splash. How has it been and what are the comments that you are getting from folks? Is it being used? Is it a positive thing that is going on? 

Justice BREYER. Very, very. That is what Justice Kennedy was 

saying, I mean, like 59 million hits a month. I guess that is maybe 


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close to a billion or something a year, I mean, some huge number 

of hits, unbelievable, and the number you just had was actually 

looking at the opinions—— 

Justice KENNEDY. 179,000 page hunt studies a day. 

Mr. SERRANO. Just think, today, you are going to get about 4 million from Puerto Rico alone. 

Well, I just want to take this opportunity to thank you—I have 

no further questions—for your service to our country, and we always meet in a light-hearted fashion, but we know the issues are 

very serious. We do ask some serious questions. We got some serious answers. I certainly got one—no—but I do personally and on 

behalf of—I know I speak for everyone else, as the chairwoman will 

lead us, in saying that we respect your service to our country, and 

we take very seriously the fact that we still live in a place on Earth 

where we have laws and we have respect for the law. And we have 

evolved and evolved and we disagree and we yell and we scream, 

but, you know something, we would rather be here than anywhere 

else. And that is so important to all of us. 

Thank you. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you so much. Well said, Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. Womack. 

JUSTICE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Mr. WOMACK. I agree with the comments of my colleague from 

New York that it is the genius I think of our country that we have 

the separation of powers and the Constitution, and it is remarkable 

what we have accomplished as a Nation. 

On the subject of the phenomena of social media, I was predisposed to asking the question, do you tweet? But I think perhaps 

the first question should be, can you tweet? I am not sure even 

ethically if you can, but are the advances of the social media changing how you do your work? 

Justice KENNEDY. I suppose in an indirect sense that our work 

is sometimes reflected and discussed in the social media in that different context, but that is good. The law lives in the consciousness 

of the people, and to the extent there is greater interest and greater awareness in public affairs and that that finds its way into the 

social media, I think that is all to the good. 

Justice BREYER. I mean, I actually have a tweeting thing. Because I was very interested in the Iranian revolution, remember, 

when they just had this uprising over a year ago. And I sat there 

fascinated, because you could actually look through the tweeting 

and you could see what was going on. You could see the violence. 

You could see women killed. It was terrible. And I wanted to keep 

track of that, and I sat there totally fascinated. The only way you 

could do it was to go through the tweet or the Twitter. So my name 

is there. 

So from time to time, since I don’t know how to take it off, I get 

requests, can we follow you? So I think for us that is very nice, 

somebody would like to follow me. Quite flattering, but I wisely 

say, no, it is not a good idea on balance. And the same is true of 

the Facebook. It is probably not a good idea. 

Judges wear black robes so that they will resist the temptation 

to publicize themselves, because we really speak for the law, and 


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that is to be anonymous. And I do fear that—you know, I wouldn’t 

want to have followers on the Twitter or people going to the 

Facebook page, but for my children, and I can get in touch with 

them anyway. 

ADVICE FOR CURRENT LAW STUDENTS

Mr. WOMACK. Finally, recognizing that we have some young people that are in this room today, and I am just making an assumption that perhaps they are law students or I would make that assumption, not knowing for sure, and given the fact that in the 

health care debate—and I have seen and talked to a lot of medical 

professionals that tell me a lot of potential physicians are not going 

into the general practice field but instead more specialization. 

What recommendations can you give to the prospective attorneys 

now matriculating through law school that would be useful as they 

make career decisions? 

Justice KENNEDY. Law is becoming more specialized, and that 

means that whatever area of human affairs and human history and 

human intellect and learning you are interested in there is a place 

for you in the law. 

Harvard, where Justice Breyer is on the faculty, I think Stephen 

now has 400 courses of law and medicine, law and animal rights. 

Whatever you are interested in the law can accommodate it, and 

that is part of the genius of the American system. 

For us, law is not a threat. It is not a dictatus. It is not a concept. It is a promise. It is an aspiration. And the law training, even 

if you do not end up practicing, can be rewarding. I love to practice 

law. I miss my clients. I miss the practice of law. 

Justice BREYER. We answer this question quite a lot, Congressman. We get it in law schools and places, and we have very similar 

answers. I usually tell the law students, you are in a great profession. I am not saying it is the only great profession, but it is a 

great profession. The reason you are in it is because it requires you 

to have a head, and it requires you to have a heart, and if you don’t 

pay attention and use your head, nobody will want your services. 

So don’t go into this profession. 

But if you only have a head and are just serving yourself, you 

shouldn’t be in the profession. Because the whole point of the profession is to use that head of yours to help serve other people. And 

I think they understand what I mean, and then I hope, you know, 

that will register for a while and they will maybe embody that and 

we will see you in a few years. 

Mr. WOMACK. Sage advice. I think we could use some of that as 

Members from time to time. 

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Thanks, again. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Indeed, thanks, Mr. Womack. 

Mr. Yoder. 

Mr. YODER. Thanks, Madam Chair. 

CURRENT CONFIRMATION SYSTEM

I have a couple of questions related to politics and its impact on 

the courts, and I am sure from time to time those issues seep into 

discussions on the courts. 


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My first question would be, what do you think about our current 

confirmation system that we have in this country? Some of the 

States do it differently. For example, Kansas doesn’t allow the Senate to approve their State court appointments. They have a nominating committee that is made up of bar members and members 

appointed by the Governor who then make three recommendations 

to the Governor, and the Governor picks one of the three. The folks 

in the State argue that that is far superior to the Federal system. 

I guess my first question would be is, what are your thoughts on 

the confirmation system we use, and is it perfect? How would you 

do it differently? 

If you can comment on these matters, and what do you think 

about the election of judges in some of our lower courts at the State 

level across the country? 

Justice KENNEDY. I am cautious about saying what I think 

should be the system. The States are laboratories for experimentation, and we can see the follies of some ideas and the wisdom of 

others as it plays out. 

My home State of California has a judiciary that is bigger than 

the entire Federal judiciary. If you said all of them had to be appointed, I think there would be some systemic consequences of that 

that might be cause for serious concern. 

The Framers said that judges are subject to the confirmation by 

the Senate, and the Senate is a political body, and it acts in a political way. The dynamic, the discipline, the challenge is to follow 

that process and to pursue that process in a way that respects the 

integrity and the decency of the judicial candidate so that it is not 

a process that discourages eminent practitioners from seeking to be 

confirmed to the Federal bench. And that is for the Senate and, to 

some larger extent, for the Congress to decide. It is not for us to 

dictate. 

We do have concerns, of course, about the delays in the process. 

If you are a private practitioner, especially in a small practice, and 

you are waiting for confirmation, can you take this case, can you 

begin consulting with this client when the nomination is pending? 

It can be very, very difficult. 

But I think it is for the Congress and the Senate to determine 

how this process should be followed in a principled way so that 

they can judge the temperament and the qualifications of the prospective judge without subconsciously asking how would this judge 

rule on issue A or issue B—I think that is improper. What you 

must ask for is a judge of independence and of commitment to the 

law and of an open mind and of a willingness to listen. 

Justice BREYER. Well, it is a big topic, and it is a topic that probably Justice Kennedy and I and Justice O’Conner and Justice 

Souter have spoken quite a lot about. And your staff is welcome to 

go online and find some of the 92 speeches I have probably given 

on this topic. And, overall, there is no perfect system there, but—— 

Mr. YODER. Would you be willing to tweet about it? 

Justice BREYER. I would if I permit myself to respond to tweets. 

But I figure that way lies perdition. I am worried about that. So 

there will be quite a lot on that. 


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And major areas of concern are the campaign contributions combined with the State election system. That is one of the areas he 

talks about and then I have, too. 

The Federal system, you are the elected officials, and the Senators are the elected officials, and I remind people of that. When 

I am asked this kind of question, confirmation, I say I was not a 

confirming person; I was a confirmed person. I was not a nominating person; I was a nominated person. And to ask me is in a 

sense like asking for the recipe for chicken a la king from the point 

of view of the chicken. 

Justice KENNEDY. I will think about that. Of course, it used to 

be, Congressman, in my hometown in California, if a State trial 

judge was challenged, if that judge was a good judge, the bar would 

come to his defense or her defense. The bar would defend that 

judge. 

Now, we have plaintiffs bars, defense bars. If X runs against Y 

and X says Y is soft on crime, Y has to answer that. Studies show 

that Y can’t just say, it is beneath me to answer it. They must answer. And you know what that means, money, and that is the process. 

I think elections were part of the Jacksonian democracy in 1840 

for judges. Judges have tremendous power in our society, and so 

there has to be some public political control at some point. I think 

it is visionary to think that we can eliminate elections. The object 

is to use elections to educate the electorate on what the requisite 

qualifications should be for a judge. This is a great chance to educate the public as to what judges do and what are the qualifications for a judge who brings dignity to the bench, and we can use 

elections with intelligent commentary from the press and from civic 

groups as to what a campaign ought to do, as to whether a campaign is dignified or not, and I think we have to pay much more 

attention to that. 

You know, democracy is pretty new in historical terms, especially 

when we consider democracy with a mass media. We are not quite 

yet sure what the balance ought to be, but it is urgent for us to 

have a public discourse that is more civil, that is more rational, 

that is more moderate, that is more productive, that is more principled, and I think judicial elections might be a good way to start. 

I haven’t seen any yet that I can uphold up as a model for you. 

CONGRESSIONAL INTENT

Mr. YODER. Madam Chair, if I might, I had one additional 

thought here. 

One of the tensions that always exists in this town is between 

the three branches of government. This has been discussed a little 

bit here already today. The often-thrown-around phrase is ‘‘activist 

court’’ or ‘‘activist judges,’’ and I know that that is probably not a 

phrase that is thrown around with quite joy around the Supreme 

Court. 

As that tension continues—and I am sure it always will in this 

country—between what Congress believes its intent is or some believe what Congress’ intent is and what the Court determines is 

the real result, what sort of resources do you rely on to define congressional intent? And what could Congress do, particularly ConVerDate Mar 15 2010 23:40 Jul 05, 2011 Jkt 066756 PO 00000 Frm 00173 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A756P2.XXX A756P2

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gressmen and -women who feel that the Supreme Court is taking 

positions that are contrary to maybe the intent of Congress, to 

make the intent clearer to do their part to do everything they can 

to make sure that the laws are written in specificity or the Congressional Record is such that it makes clear that position from the 

legislative branch? 

Justice KENNEDY. This is a question of considerable academic 

and philosophic difficulty. It is current, it is topical, but it has also 

been going on for about a hundred years. 

Of course, it is the obligation of the Congress to tell the courts 

what it means and what it intends. When I was in private practice, 

I found that sometimes in negotiations, the contract, you wanted 

to leave some things a little murky. And most of us think that precision in drafting means that you have absolute specificity, but 

sometimes leave things a little murky. 

I think often in the Congress, which cannot go back to revisit its 

legislation to clarify it, is too murky just because of the dynamics 

of the political process. That is the way the bill gets out, but you 

do that at a risk that some court will not understand what your 

intent is or misinterpret it. 

Justice BREYER. One bit of advice, and this produces argument 

within the Court. I, probably more than many members of the 

Court, I will look at the language. I will look at the history. I will 

look at the tradition. I will look at the precedence. But I think 

when that isn’t clear, and it usually isn’t, I will try to figure out 

what the purpose of this is. 

Why the word ‘‘cost’’ is in a statute that allows parents of a child 

who has now—they have sued and won and got that child a better 

education because he is a handicapped child—says you have to 

cover your costs. Does that include expert fees or not? Read the 

word ‘‘costs.’’ I mean, really? Doesn’t tell you. 

So I will look at purposes, and, therefore, I want to read the reports, and I want to read the debates, and I want to read what people have in mind. Not everyone wants to do that. I find that enlightening, because I think it is terribly important that the courts 

bring their decisions in line with the purposes of those who passed 

the bill in Congress. 

However, you say, is there anything we can do? It is hard to resist that question. Since I worked in Congress for a while, I would 

say if I have one single thing you would really do is don’t circumvent your own processes. 

When I worked on the staff, I mean, we would spend a lot of time 

over in the Senate Judiciary Committee going through hearings 

and showing the drafts to everybody interested so we could get advice from them and trying over time to get the words to mean what 

you want it to mean. That is a time-consuming process. 

So when we have in front of us a bill and the words in the bill 

are unclear and I know this is a floor amendment, I don’t say I sort 

of shudder, but I think it may not be quite as clear, and it is going 

to be harder for me than if the process had been gone through and 

there had been hearings and debate and discussion just like the 

12th grade civics books says that is what happens in Congress. And 

the more that is, the easier our job is. 

Mr. YODER. Great. Thank you, Justices. 


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Madam Chair, I yield back. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you so much, Mr. Yoder. 

CLOSING REMARKS

I really do want to thank you all so very much, not only for your 

service but for taking so much time out of your very busy schedules 

to be here today. I never thought that we would ask a Supreme 

Court Justice about their tweeting, but, nonetheless, it shows how 

times have changed and—pardon me? 

Mr. SERRANO. I tweeted on behalf of all of us. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Oh, did you? Thank you. 

Well, you have to say yes that you follow Justice Breyer, though. 

Mr. SERRANO. I said that that they were here, and I can run for 

President. 

Mrs. EMERSON. I am certain all of the people who would love to 

follow Justice Breyer will be asking him today, based on your comment, Mr. Serrano. 

But, seriously, you all perform a very, very important function 

for this government and for our country; and for that I am very 

grateful. Thank you. 


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THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 2011. 

OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, AND GENERAL 

SERVICES ADMINISTRATION—INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY OVERSIGHT 

WITNESSES 

VIVEK KUNDRA, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET 

DAVID POWNER, DIRECTOR, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

STEVEN KEMPF, COMMISSIONER, FEDERAL ACQUISITION SERVICE, 

GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION 

Mrs. EMERSON. Okay, the hearing will come to order. Thank you 

all so much. Can I ask the recorder if you can hear me? This microphone it is not doing anything. All right. Here we go. 

The purpose of today’s hearing is to examine the Federal government’s acquisition and management of information technology. The Federal government spends $80 billion a year on IT and has 

had a troubled past trying to implement well intended IT projects. 

This has resulted in billions of dollars of waste. There have been 

high profile IT development failures that have made the headlines, 

such as the FBI’s new case management system, the VA’s financial 

management systems, and the Census Bureau’s attempt to develop 

handheld computers for the 2010 census. 

But there have also been numerous other failed projects that do 

not necessarily make the news, but have cost the taxpayers millions without providing any benefits. 

Within the jurisdiction of this Subcommittee, several agencies 

are attempting major IT overhauls, including the National Archives, OPM, the SEC, the SBA, and the IRS. Among those agencies, OPM, the National Archives and SBA have all recently experienced major setbacks. As the Committee works to reduce spending 

for the fiscal year 2008 levels, we can no longer throw resources 

away on failed IT projects. 

We have asked the witnesses to be here today to inform the Committee on actions the executive branch is taking to improve the 

contract and program management of IT projects to ensure that the 

taxpayers are receiving a return on their $80 billion per year investment. 

Our witnesses today are Vivek Kundra, the U.S. Chief Information Officer. Mr. Kundra is leading the Office of Management and 

Budget’s efforts to reform IT management. He has issued a 25- 

point implementation plan to reform Federal information technology management. And the plan includes holding agencies accountable for IT development programs through periodic reviews, 

which are referred to as ‘‘TechStat sessions,’’ using cloud-computing 


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to reduce costs and improve performance; consolidating data centers across government; and improving IT development processes, 

procurement vehicles, and staff skill sets. 

We also have David Powner from the Government Accountability 

Office with us today. Mr. Powner has 20 years of experience on information technology issues in both public and private sectors. Currently, he is responsible for a large segment of GAO’s IT work, including systems development, IT investment management, health 

IT, and cyber-critical infrastructure protection reviews. 

Our last witness is Steven Kempf, the Commissioner of Federal 

Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration. GSA 

contracts acquired approximately $22 billion of IT products and 

services on behalf of the Federal government each year, and we are 

interested in how GSA is working to improve acquisition and contract management for Federal agencies and for itself. 

Many welcomes to each of you all, and we appreciate very much 

your attendance today. Before I recognize Ranking Member 

Serrano, I would like to wish him, the witnesses, and everyone else 

with us today a happy St. Patrick’s Day. And you remembered to 

wear green. I overslept, so it didn’t occur to me to remember it was 

St. Patrick’s Day. 

Mr. SERRANO. Just call me O’Serrano today. 

Mrs. EMERSON. O’Serrano today. 

Mr. SERRANO. We are all Irish, especially back home in New 

York. I would like to welcome our witnesses to today’s hearing. I 

am interested to hear your testimony on new efforts to improve and 

efficiently upgrade our government’s IT systems and to reduce duplication of services. As any longtime member of the Appropriations 

Committee can tell you, information technology upgrades across 

the government agencies have historically been the bane of an appropriator’s existence. The number of agencies that have undertaken an IT upgrade and completed it on time and under budget 

can be counted on one hand. It rarely matters what agency we talk 

about, whether it be the FBI, or the Department of Defense, they 

have all had trouble upgrading their computer systems to meet today’s needs in a timely and cost-effective fashion. 

Also, too frequently, we end up with systems that, when finished, 

are already out of date, are ineffective to the current needs of the 

agency, or both. Although some agencies, such as the IRS, have 

gotten their IT upgrades back on track, others have yet to do so. 

I am interested to hear more about government-wide policies and 

programs that can help us save money, reduce duplication, and better serve the American people. And I am hopeful that your plans 

to structure infrastructure and other technologies across federal 

agencies will help us to achieve these goals. 

Before I end, the other day we had the Securities and Exchange 

Commission, and one of the questions was, ‘‘While you are trying 

to oversee and regulate, are the folks that caused the problem in 

the first place better equipped technology-wise to outgun you at 

any level?’’ So this is more, at times, than meets the eye. It is not 

just doing our work, it is making sure we do the right work, and 

defend our agencies and our country from other folks. Thank you 

so much for being here today, and thank you. 


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Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you, Mr. Serrano. As I mentioned to you 

all earlier, we are anticipating a vote at 10:15, so I am going to ask 

that you try to keep your statements at five minutes or below, so 

we can at least hear all of them. And we will attempt to do some 

questions prior to us having to go to vote. So, let me now recognize 

Mr. Kundra for an opening statement, and thank you so much, Mr. 

Kundra, for being here, and for undertaking the incredible amount 

of responsibility you have in trying to get this all squared away for 

the Federal government. 

Mr. KUNDRA. Good morning, Chairwoman Emerson, Ranking 

Member Serrano, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you 

for the opportunity to testify on the administration’s ongoing efforts 

to reform Federal IT management and oversight. For too long, we 

have witnessed runaway projects that waste billions of dollars and 

are years behind schedule. By the time some of these projects 

launch, if they launch at all, they are already obsolete. 

At the same time, the government has built out redundant and 

inefficient IT infrastructure. Since 1998, the number of data centers across the Federal government has grown from 432 to 2,094. 

This is why, for the past 25 months, we have focused on reforming 

federal IT to cut waste and boost performance. We have cracked 

down on wasteful IT spending, eliminated duplicative infrastructure, and saved money through game-changing technologies and 

approaches. Through relentless oversight, we have delivered $3 billion in life-cycle cost reductions on major IT investments, and cut 

in half the time it takes to deliver system functionality to end 

users. 

We have already saved millions of dollars by deploying cloudcomputing technologies, and are in the process of shutting down at 

least 40 percent of the data centers across the Federal government 

by 2015. To get a better return on IT investments for the American 

people, we have transformed how we manage technology projects. 

We are using transparency to shed light on government operations 

and holding managers accountable for results. And we have 

reached beyond the four walls of Washington to make sure that we 

have access to the best technologies and the most innovating thinking on how we fundamentally change the way we manage IT. 

In June 2009, we launched the ‘‘IT Dashboard’’ to shine light on 

the performance of over 6,800 Federal IT investments. Using the 

IT Dashboard, anyone from agency officials, to the American people, can identify and monitor the performance of IT projects. 

However, it is not enough to simply shine light and hope that 

performance improves. That is why in January 2010, we launched 

TechStat accountability sessions, to make the tough decision to 

halt, turn around, or terminate IT investments that were underperforming. Our reviews have already produced results. For example, 

at USDA, after four years, and a $100 million in spending, the Department had nothing to show for an IT system that manages the 

delivery of food to 30 million Americans. As a result of the 

TechStat, within six months, the system was released to 9,000 system users and vendors. 

At EPA, a TechStat was triggered because its financial management system project appeared to be $30 million over budget and a 

year behind schedule. As a result of the TechStat, EPA de-scoped 


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their project into manageable increments, and will go live on schedule and within budget. 

At the Department of Interior, employees could not even send a 

department-wide e-mail, due to 13 fragmented e-mail systems, and 

after having spent billions of dollars on its’ IT infrastructure. As 

a result of the DOI TechStat, it is now shutting down 95 data centers, and leveraging cloud-computing, which will reduce the lifecycle cost by $500 million of its core infrastructure. Collectively, our efforts have already led to over $3 billion in lifecycle cost reductions, and have, on average, reduced the time to deliver functionality to end users from two years to eight months. We 

are also leveraging innovative technologies to lower the costs of 

government operations. Agencies such as GSA and USDA will collectively save $42 million by shifting services like e-mail to cloudcomputing technologies. 

Most importantly, we have used the learning from our work to 

date to identify the structural changes required to drive sustainable improvements across government. In September 2010, the administration released a 25-point plan to reform Federal IT management. The implementation plan, developed with input from Congress and the private sector, is focused on eliminating the structural barriers that get in the way of consistent execution. The plan 

provides specific deliverables in six month increments, and focuses 

on achieving operational efficiency and making sure that we are effectively managing large-scale IT programs. We know we can deliver results because we already have. In the past 25 months, we’ve 

accelerated delivery of IT functionality, re-scoped and terminated 

projects, and saved money. But we must continue to scale practices 

that we know work, and drive execution to make Federal IT programs perform at the level the American people expect and deserve. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to 

any questions you may have. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you so much, Mr. Kundra. Mr. Powner. 

Mr. POWNER. Chairwoman Emerson, Ranking Member Serrano, 

and Members of the Subcommittee, we appreciate the opportunity 

to testify this morning on IT acquisition oversight. GAO’s work for 

this Subcommittee has highlighted the positive effects of aggressive 

Congressional oversight at the Internal Revenue Service. IRS is not 

perfect, but the many years of this Subcommittee’s attention to 

IRS’s business systems modernization has contributed greatly to 

their success in delivering systems that process our tax returns. 

OMB plays a key role in this oversight. In fact, OMB has been required, since 1996, with the Clinger-Cohen Act, to track, analyze, 

and report to the Congress on IT expenditures, which now total almost $80 billion. 

To help carry out this role, OMB established several oversight 

mechanisms, including lists of troubled projects, starting in 2003, 

that clearly were not as effective or useful to perform the appropriate level of oversight. Under Vivek Kundra’s leadership, OMB 

improved its oversight and management of IT acquisitions by one: 

creating the ‘‘IT Dashboard’’; two: using this information on the 

Dashboard to hold agencies and CIOs accountable; and three: introducing comprehensive IT reform. I would like to expand on each of 

these three. 


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First, the IT Dashboard: In June 2009, OMB deployed a public 

website, known as the ‘‘IT Dashboard’’ to improve the transparency 

and oversight of approximately 800 Federal investments, totaling 

about $40 billion. The Dashboard presents information on cost, 

schedule, and the CIO assessment, among others. Today, the Dashboard shows that nearly 40 percent of 800 investments are in need 

of management attention due to their red or yellow status. More 

simply put, this equates to 300 investments totaling $20 billion 

that are at risk. I would like to repeat those numbers. We have 300 

investments totaling $20 billion that are at risk, and this is only 

looking at a universe of $40 billion. 

In addition to identifying troubled IT projects, the Dashboard is 

an excellent tool to identify duplicative investments that could result in significant savings. We have ongoing work for the Congress 

on this duplicative spending. Despite this improved transparency, 

data reliability remains an issue, as our work has shown that the 

Dashboard information is not always accurate and consistent with 

agency records. OMB and agencies acknowledge this, and have a 

number of activities to improve the Dashboard and the accuracy of 

what is being recorded. 

OMB has improved the management of IT investments needing 

attention by holding TechStat sessions. These meetings started in 

January 2010 and are led by Mr. Kundra and agency leadership. 

Well over 50 of these meetings have been held and the results are 

impressive. Four projects have been canceled and 11 have been restructured. OMB has claimed that these efforts have saved $3 billion. 

OMB has also identified 26 high-priority projects that have undergone extensive review and resulting corrective action plans. One 

of the high-priority projects is the National Archives Electronic 

Records Acquisition. Our work for the Subcommittee over the past 

years has highlighted the mismanagement and major cost and 

schedule issues associated with this acquisition. It is one of the 

projects that OMB is in the process of restructuring. Although 

OMB has significant results with its TechStat and high-priority 

projects, many more projects are in need of OMB and agency oversight. 

In addition to the Dashboard and TechStat sessions, OMB recently issued comprehensive IT reform that includes replicating 

TechStat sessions throughout the government to improve governance and program management. Many of the initiatives are consistent with our body of work on IT acquisition, and to its credit, 

OMB has issued aggressive milestones over the next 18 months. 

Now the challenge lies in implementation. 

In summary, OMB’s efforts to improve transparency through the 

IT Dashboard, to improve IT acquisition through its TechStat sessions, and its IT reform initiatives are encouraging. But the accuracy of the Dashboard needs to improve. Even more focus needs to 

be put on the $20 billion at risk. And the major IT initiatives now 

need to be implemented. 

I would like to conclude by commending this Committee and Mr. 

Kundra’s leadership on IT oversight. I would be pleased to respond 

to questions. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you so much Mr. Powner. Mr. Kempf. 


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Mr. KEMPF. Thank you. Good morning Madam Chair, Ranking 

Member Serrano and Members of the Subcommittee. My name is 

Steven Kempf. I am the General Services Administration Commissioner for the Federal Acquisition Service. Thank you for inviting 

me to appear before you today to discuss how GSA supports government agencies with IT purchasing. GSA is committed to improving the ease of acquisitions for customers through training, tools, 

and services that assist the government’s acquisition staff to be 

more productive, effective, and make better informed purchasing 

decisions for their agencies. 

GSA is capitalizing on our unique opportunity to use our government-wide perspective and expertise, along with our centralized 

procurement role to improve the effectiveness of government and 

delivering lower cost to taxpayers. 

The Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), as a whole, is responsible for over $52 billion in annual spending. Of this amount, approximately $21 billion reflect government spending to acquire IT products and services. FAS operates a suite of IT acquisition programs, 

including the IT Multiple Award Schedule 70, government-wide acquisition contracts (GWAC), the network services contracts, and select strategic initiatives like ‘‘SmartBUY’’. These programs offer 

our customers the complete range of IT products and services to 

meet virtually any IT need. 

Aggregated purchasing is a widely accepted practice in many organizations, both public and private and is viewed as particularly 

beneficial where unique purchasing expertise and large volumes of 

common requirements, as is often the case with IT purchasing, can 

be more broadly leveraged. For example, GSA’s Federal telecommunications contracts, like Networx, leverage the government’s 

buying power to drive aggregate annual savings to customers. 

These savings total hundreds of millions of dollars when 

benchmarked against comparable commercial offerings. 

Similarly, since its inception in 2003, GSA’s SmartBUY program 

has generated savings for the government’s software purchases approaching $1 billion. The SmartBUY program works in collaboration with DOD’s Enterprise Software Initiative to establish blanket 

purchase agreements against IT Schedule 70 contracts for frequently licensed, commercial off-the-shelf software and software related services. 

We continue to manage additional opportunities to apply this 

Strategic Acquisition Model to further realize savings for the American taxpayer. 

Another example is our Commercial Satellite Effort where we 

partnered with the Department of Defense. This commercial satellite communications initiative, we call ‘‘COMSATCOM,’’ combines 

GSA and Defense Information Systems Agency, technical and acquisition expertise and experience to reshape the Schedule 70 commercial satellite offering for services, and efficiently delivers endto-end solutions available to all our government customers by using 

a single collaborative acquisition to replace multiple existing contracts. This approach is expected to greatly reduce acquisition 

costs. 

A final dimension of our value is GSA’s ability to shape technology markets in a way that delivers better technical solutions. 


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GSA has been mentioned in various cyber-security reports as using 

its procurements to improve the cyber-security posture of the nation more broadly. Specifically, GSA partnered with the Department of Homeland Security to develop a trusted Internet connection managed service. This has shaped the government’s cyber-security market, and provided leadership to the commercial sector on 

how to effectively deliver new cyber-security solutions. By reducing 

the number of Internet connections in government networks, and 

improved security filtering, this service protects government networks against sophisticated cyber-attacks. 

GSA has also moved out to offer new and innovative products 

and services that can help to lower the cost of IT service infrastructures for virtually all government operations. One example is 

cloud-computing services, an emerging computing-as-utility service 

model, which is becoming widely embraced both within and outside 

the government. Our cloud-computing solutions have the potential 

to substantially reduce IT capital spending, while providing Federal agencies with flexibility and speed, allowing them to focus on 

their mission-critical activities, while easily leveraging technology 

advances. Last fall, we awarded contracts for infrastructure as a 

service, and are working to complete contracts for e-mail as a service later this year. The more agile IT solutions, like cloud-computing, and shared software services, reduce the need for expensive, redundant infrastructure, while lowering energy costs. For 

those customers who may not have the internal resources necessary to manage parts, or all, of an acquisition, GSA also offers 

an assisted fee-based service to support such needs. Last year, 

GSA’s Assisted Acquisitions Services program managed about $4 

billion in IT and professional service contracts. In total, our many 

programs make IT purchasing easier for our customers. We continually look to provide the latest technology, and the most effective 

way of procuring that technology, to improve our customers mission-performance while lowering the cost of government for all. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I am happy to 

answer any questions that you might have. 

[The statements of the witnesses follow:] 


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Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you so much, Mr. Kempf. Thank you all 

very, very much. I want to direct my first question to Mr. Kundra, 

and I want to commend your efforts. I think you are doing a really 

good job in what I consider to be a very complex and somewhat 

challenging role. Let me ask you, can you give any agency or Department of the government an ‘‘A’’ for their IT systems? 

Mr. KUNDRA. Unfortunately, no. And the reason is because there 

are major structural barriers that get in the way of their ability to 

actually execute. What I mean by that is if you look at IT, for example, in terms of how quickly development moves forward, but 

when we appropriate money for IT, in terms of the budget cycles, 

it takes two-plus years. And given Moore’s Law, IT is evolving so 

fast, so agencies are having to predict two years out what their 

projects are going to look like. 

Secondly, if we look at program management across the federal 

government, one of the challenges we found was that program 

management is not even a professional career tract. And these are 

people who are managing billion dollar projects. Yet what ends up 

happening too often is that somebody who has been working at a 

government agency for a while is plucked out of their role, and suddenly they are told, ‘‘Well, you managed a $10 million project, let’s 

now have you manage a billion dollar project.’’ 

Third, I think the lack of effective engagement with industry, 

where the private sector and the public sector—there are lot of 

myths around what the government can do in terms of engaging 

the private sector and some of the most innovative companies in 

this country as they are thinking about the problem. So what ends 

up happening is a lot of agency officials are frozen, in terms of 

their thinking of technology, in the 1990s, 1980s, or 1970s, for that 

matter, as they are writing out these procurements. So, what we 

found as we met with every single agency, as we sat down with 

Congress, the private sector, is that there are a number of barriers 

that actually get in the way of effective execution. And it is not because government officials or private sector companies wake up 

every day and they say, ‘‘Hey, how do I make sure this project 

fails?’’ I think we have a number of structural barriers that we 

need to take on. And that is one of the reasons we put forward a 

25-point plan, where we have been very specific. Because part of 

what we also want to do is move away from this model where the 

government has to own and build everything. Why can’t we leverage technologies from some of the most innovative companies? So 

we are trying to shift from this model of asset ownership to service 

provisioning, so that if there is a better private sector solution, that 

should be the default. We shouldn’t go out there and try to build 

a multi-million, multi-billion dollar system, when we can procure 

it from the private sector for pennies on the dollar. 

But I think those reforms, coupled with the management attention that we are bringing forward in terms of oversight, are going 

to move the ball forward. What I will point out, though, is where 

we are seeing a lot of great work happen, for example, at VA with 

extensive oversight. But we are at a point in terms of the history, 

as Dave pointed out, where you still have billions of dollars of IT 

projects that are frankly behind schedule and significantly over 

budget, and we are very focused on making sure number one, the 


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American people know how that money is being spent, and number 

two, that we are taking concrete actions to crack down on wasteful 

IT spending and eliminate duplication. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Okay, let’s just do a hypothetical example here. 

And we will use the Department of Agriculture as an example simply because, having served on that Subcommittee, I am probably 

more aware than I need to be, or want to be, about their computer 

systems and how horrible they are because I hear it from the farmers, and I hear it from the different agencies within USDA. If 

USDA is trying to upgrade, or they have several different things 

that they want to be able to accomplish with their IT system, do 

they actually go to the Chief Information Officer to discuss that? 

Do they do it among themselves? Do they go to the GSA or GAO? 

What worries me is that you say nobody, or not a lot of people, 

have program management experience or training to do this. How 

has that historically happened? 

Mr. KUNDRA. So, generally what would happen is at the Bureau 

level and Departmental level, you have got an agency CIO, and a 

lot of the IT projects are conceived early on. One of the challenges 

that we face government-wide, unfortunately, is the fact that the 

average lifespan of most CIOs is about 24 months. And so let’s say 

you have a CIO who comes in the budget formulation process at 

the agency level and has come up with a plan, a base-line, and has 

scoped the project. Then what happens is that goes through the 

OMB processes in terms of the budgeting side, where OMB will 

look at the request and work with Congress with the appropriations committees. 

Now the challenge is when you move to implementation. The 

plan was hatched two years before, and the contracting processes 

sometimes end up taking really long, especially for these really 

large-scale IT projects. And when you look at the time it takes to 

actually get the budget, get the contract in place, Deputy Secretary 

Lynn was joking one day, he said, You know, after two years, I basically get the budget, where Steve Jobs gets an iPhone. And that 

right there is a major structural problem that we are trying to fix. 

To think of how do we actually fundamentally rethink how IT is 

funded; and also, we should not be funding any IT project where 

any CIO in the government, or agency leader, says, ‘‘You are going 

to get a deliverable five years from now.’’ One of the biggest problems we have discovered throughout our TechStat sessions is that 

deliverables for some of these projects are five years out, a decade 

out. One of the projects we reviewed at the end of five years and 

$40 million: what we got was nothing more than a book, and it was 

architectural documents and business reengineering. 

So that is one of the reasons a key to our reform is to basically 

say if you do not have a customer-facing deliverable, where users 

are actually using the system, you need to halt it, and re-look at 

it. And that is what we have done during the TechStat sessions, 

where we have literally halted IT projects. 

One of the biggest problems we find across the Federal Government was actually financial systems. That is why we halted about 

$20 billion worth of financial assistance across the U.S. Government, because these were over-scoped, they were years behind 

schedule and way over budget. 


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But part of what we need to be able to do is, besides having accountability where we are providing meaningful oversight from an 

OMB perspective, is to actually solve it at the agency level, to 

make sure that the agency CIOs and the agency heads are very focused on this problem. 

Mrs. EMERSON. You mentioned barriers to leveraging private sector expertise in the newest developments. What are some of those 

barriers? 

Mr. KUNDRA. Some of it is actually just perceived, in terms of the 

number of myths that are out there, where government CIOs believe they can’t even meet with private sector. 

Mrs. EMERSON. For ethics purposes? 

Mr. KUNDRA. For ethics purposes or because they believe it’s 

going to increase the chances of a protest, it is better not to meet 

with private sector companies. 

My colleague Dan Gordon, who is in charge of procurement policy, actually issued the top 10 myths, to demystify and dispel those 

myths, and to encourage greater interaction between the public sector and the private sector. Because at the end of the day, we don’t 

have a monopoly on the best ideas, and there is a lot we can learn 

as we are thinking about some of these problems. And the other 

thing we are trying to do is we are actually building a pre-RFB 

platform that is going to be launched in the next couple of months. 

And what this pre-RFB platform would be is that the government 

would say, ‘‘This is the problem we are trying to solve, and invite 

the entire country to give us some ideas on how you would do it.’’ 

The other thing that has happened from how we actually buy IT, 

right now there are only two primary mechanisms. One is through 

grants, and second is through contracts. The third path is through 

competitions and challenges. So we worked with the Congress to 

make sure that we were allowing challenges and prizes to be part 

of how we actually can acquire solutions. 

Through the America Competes Act, there’s a provision now that allows agencies to issue challenges up to $50 million. So you can 

imagine what NASA and DARPA have been doing for years, where 

they’ve said, for example, ‘‘We are looking for a solution that will 

allow for a car to travel 100 miles an hour using traditional energy 

or alternative energy sources,’’ and they have got all these startup companies and innovative entrepreneurs to actually deliver two 

cars that did just that, instead of overly specifying what the solution was. 

That is what we’re looking to do in the IT arena. To figure out 

why we cannot put a challenge forward and say, ‘‘This is the problem we are trying to solve. What is the best thinking, and what are 

some of the most innovative companies that can provide a solution?’’ 

Mrs. EMERSON. I would say it is about time. And I am glad that 

you are leading the charge there. Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. Just listening to you, and this may not 

be totally related, but just an example, you see articles every so 

often saying, Oh, Members of Congress have BlackBerries, they 

have iPads, and they are on social media. It is a shock to people 

that we would be doing that. When the answer should be, yeah, we 

should have done it immediately when people started to do it out 


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there. Everybody was ahead of us for such a long time. And it 

seems that we are always trailing. 

So, what is the solution? I mean, can you get government to fully 

understand what we are up against, and that they have to be able 

to compete with the private sector, if you will, not only to invite 

people who may want to work in government, who have all these 

ideas. But secondly, to be able to deliver a product, deliver the 

services. And I bring you back to the whole issue with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If people like Madoff have better 

access to IT than the SEC, then how do we ever win the war? 

Mr. KUNDRA. I think there is a huge gap between the public and 

private sector, that we are trying to close. Just to give you an example, if you’re going to the valley, for example, and you wanted 

to start up a company. And if you went to any venture capitalist, 

and you said, ‘‘I need millions of dollars and six months to a year 

to build up my financial system, or stand up my e-mail system, or 

actually build out a work flow system,’’ you would get laughed out 

of the room. Because what’s happening is a lot of these start-ups 

now, the way they’re procuring IT is, for example for financial systems, they will provision using Intuit QuickBooks, or they’ll go and 

use, whether it’s Microsoft e-mail, or Google, or IBM, and when it 

comes to work flow, they may go to sales first and so forth. 

That is one of the reasons, the Administration, we are very, very 

focused on cloud-computing; and we see a huge opportunity here 

for the public sector to actually lead rather than trail. And what 

I mean by that is, we have identified approximately $20 billion 

worth of IT systems that could actually move to the cloud. And the 

reason that is really, really powerful is that we can provision these 

solutions, rather than having to build out these custom systems 

ourselves, because one of the things we will not be able to do is actually compete for talent effectively, in terms of getting the best 

programmers across the country to work on a project for a sustainable period. 

So part of what we want to do is for commodity IT, and what I 

mean by commodity IT, is that this will be infrastructure, e-mail 

systems, financial systems, some of the back-end systems, we 

should not be spending billions of dollars because people believe in 

agencies, for example, that they are so special. That is one of the 

reasons we are cracking down in these 2,094 data centers and making sure we are working with NIST and with GSA, that we’re putting in place government-wide contracts that actually adopt some 

of these innovative technologies. 

And the reason that is really important is because if you look at 

a consumer space there is Darwinian pressure to innovate because 

if consumers do not like solution A, they will move to solution B 

very fast. In government, unfortunately, what ends up happening 

is one individual or contracting officer sometimes ends up deciding 

a contract for an agency, let’s say of 120,000 people, and there are 

not the appropriate incentives to innovate and keep updating that 

software. So victory for some of the providers ends up being just 

winning that contract, and making sure that they are keeping 

down their operating costs, as low as possible, and their margins 

as high as possible. So part of what we are trying to do is bring 

that innovative pressure within the public sector. 


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Mr. SERRANO. Do we have time for one more question? 

Mrs. EMERSON. Go ahead. We’ve got one minute and 29 seconds, 

but there are 326 people who haven’t voted yet, so I think you can 

go ahead. 

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Kempf, this picture that is being painted 

today, and I believe it to be an honest picture, but it’s a pretty 

gloomy picture, in terms of where we are and where we should be. 

Yet, you have been around a long time and had a remarkable career in the IT world. Are there any success stories? Are there 

things that are going well? You know, that we should build on? 

Mr. KEMPF. Sure, recently Mr. Kundra has talked about some of 

the efforts underway. One thing that we are doing at GSA; we are 

going to be converting our e-mail system to a cloud e-mail solution 

from Google, that is actually brought to us through our Alliant contract, the GWAC contract with Unisys. We expect to save $15 million by going to the cloud. We expect 

to get better service, probably better security than we are getting 

now, better management of the version that we were having. So we 

will get a better system for less money with greater flexibility. I 

think that is a huge win for us. Our CIO Casey Coleman has led 

that effort. It is just one example of the cloud. 

Mrs. EMERSON. I think we’d better take a quick recess here. We 

have two votes? 

Mrs. EMERSON. All right, so we’ll be back. Sorry about the delay. 

Thanks. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART [presiding]. Let me just start with a couple 

questions. Thank you, again, for your patience and thank you for 

sticking around during this process of votes. 

Mr. Powner, the GSA has recently moved its e-mail servers to 

the cloud resulting in a reported 50 percent reduction in cost; you 

kind of spoke about that, over 5 years saving $15 million. Now, 

GAO looked into this reported savings? Do we know that is accurate? 

Mr. POWNER. We have not looked specifically at the savings associated with the cloud, but we are looking at, for instance, a data 

center consolidation; we are reviewing all 24 plans right now looking at savings associated with the data center efforts, in particular 

the aggressive milestone of going from 2,100 to 800; reducing 800 

data centers by 2015. So we are going through those plans right 

now and validating those savings that are being reported. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Any idea how much we could save across all 

agencies if all agencies used that kind of system, the cloud system? 

Do you have any idea what the overall savings could be? 

Mr. POWNER. No, we have not looked specifically at that. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Are you going to be looking at that? Are you 

going to have the ability to look at that any time soon? To see what 

the potential savings could be? 

Mr. POWNER. Well, one of the things we are doing as part of the 

IT reform efforts, we have a request where we are actually looking 

at all the reform initiatives, including those areas to ensure that 

the 18 month deliverables are in place; and so clearly we will be 

able to report on those savings through that initiative. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Let me ask you, are we sure that it is secure, 

and that it is dependable? Do we know that yet? For example, obviVerDate Mar 15 2010 23:40 Jul 05, 2011 Jkt 066756 PO 00000 Frm 00261 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A756P2.XXX A756P2

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ously we cannot have IRS systems go down, or be hacked into, particularly during tax season or having leaks of people’s information. 

Any idea if that is a system that we know is reliable and is secure? 

Mr. POWNER. Well, a couple things. When the Federal government enters into an arrangement like that those security requirements ought to be built in. And also when you start looking at data 

center consolidation from a redundancy point of view, you want to 

make sure there is appropriate back-up and disaster recovery. So 

that is something that clearly you cannot lose sight of. But sometimes, also too, that is used as a crutch for not moving forward and 

we do not want that either. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Sure. Let me ask Mr. Kempf, if I may move 

on to you. Can you comment on GSA’s experience moving to the 

cloud-computing? How has it been, what are the lessons you have 

learned? 

Mr. KEMPF. Well, we are just moving into it. So we would not 

have realized our savings yet, because we are just transitioning 

into it. And I think it seems to be moving forward well. I think we 

tried to look at all of those issues that you talked about as well, 

like security issues. 

One of the things that I think, with respect to security, is actually we may find that better security is that there is better application management in terms of version control and updates for security purposes. So, for instance, I think sometimes the private sector 

that is managing a very large e-mail system of systems, if you will, 

is better at getting the security updates into the system much more 

quickly, and managing the security much more effectively than 

sometimes we can. So I think we may see, indeed, better security 

than we could apply ourselves. 

I also want to add that one of the things that we are doing is 

trying to take the lessons we learned in purchasing this and applying it as part of our schedule; we are releasing a solicitation for a 

BPA for e-mail services, so that we can sell it much more easily 

to the other agencies across the Federal government. So we are 

working on that right now, we expect that to be awarded sometime 

this summer. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. And is it is certain that GSA gets a better deal 

than if the agencies did it on their own? 

Mr. KEMPF. We would like to think so. That is one of the things. 

There are two parts to the savings: there is the final price that you 

pay, and then there is the acquisition cost in order to get it done, 

and then also the uncertainties of the acquisition to get it done 

right. So I think what we try to do at GSA is one, make sure that 

we have the right terms and conditions for the contract, and then 

also the right price. And then it also makes it much easier for the 

agencies to buy. So that also gives their acquisition people much 

more time to focus in on the mission critical systems, some of the 

more complex one-up systems, rather than the commodities which 

they can depend on GSA for support. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Okay. And before we go on to Mr. Serrano, he 

and I and the Chairwoman, when we were walking to the elevators 

to go to vote, we were talking about a comment about the contract 

with, I guess it was with Google, but that it is going to Unisys, and 

we were saying, ‘‘Why do you have to go through Unisys?’’ I think 


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it was Unisys, ‘‘Why can’t you just go directly to Google?’’ And I’m 

not quite sure; I think it was you, sir, who had mentioned that. It 

would seem that you could just go directly to Google, versus having 

to go through somebody else. 

Mr. KEMPF. Right. One of the reasons we used the approach that 

was taken was to include the use of an Integrator. We wanted 

some assistance with the change management, and some of the 

other integration capabilities and collaboration tools. And so they 

are actually doing the training, and those kinds of change management responsibilities to ensure greater success in uptake of this 

system, as it gets implemented. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. And that’s something that Google, for example, 

doesn’t provide? 

Mr. KEMPF. Well, we decided to use the GWAC tool, and the 

services were combined through the integrator, so it is a little bit 

broader in terms of just turning on an e-mail system for us. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Okay. Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. Mr. Powner, your testimony very 

clearly lays out the challenges and opportunities of IT coordination 

and consolidation. As you state, the Federal government anticipates spending 79 billion on IT systems in fiscal year 2011. You 

have been involved in analyzing IT systems for quite some time. Do 

you feel that agencies are ready, at this point, to have a serious 

and productive conversation about IT improvements and cost reduction? Also, are CIOs involved enough? Are they invested in this 

effort? 

Mr. POWNER. You know, our work over the years has shown that 

CIOs and executive level attention to IT projects is not where it 

needs to be. And I will give you a couple examples. If you go to IRS 

and you look at their executives and how they are engaged with delivering the business systems and modernization. There are CTOs 

in on monthly meetings. Some of the recent failures in the government, when you look at electronic records archive, or if you look at 

what happened with the census handhelds, there was a problem 

with program management on those projects, but clearly the executives were not engaged to the level that they should have been. 

And our work clearly showed that where you have governance 

meetings, where there are executives holding program managers 

and contractors accountable. We do not see that enough across the 

Federal government. So clearly, when you look at Mr. Kundra’s 25- 

point plan, that is one of his four major areas: improving governance; and that is something he is trying to do through replicating 

the TechStat sessions across the government. Frankly, that is 

something that was called for in 1996 with the Clinger-Cohen Act 

in elevating the CIO position; so that is something that, clearly, we 

need greater attention focused on. 

Mr. SERRANO. And in areas like the census issue, where something went wrong, are those folks waiting for you to tell them what 

to do, or did they start trying to correct some of that themselves? 

Mr. POWNER. Well, it is kind of a mixed bag. On the census 

issue, we issued multiple reports. A big problem with the Census 

Bureau was that they didn’t define what they wanted with the 

handheld solution. They had a real requirements problem early, 

along with the executive oversight. So that was something that 


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there were recommendations made by the GAO, frankly, they were 

internal reports from the MITRE Corporation that were well-documented in congressional testimonies, and there was not enough attention placed on those recommendations and suggestions. 

Mr. SERRANO. Let me go back and respond for a second to the 

one that I have mentioned now twice, the SEC. Does the role of the 

CIO at the SEC and other financial regulatory agencies, in your 

opinion, need to be strengthened in order to achieve the necessary 

technology efficiencies that improve agency performance? Especially in this new regulatory environment of Dodd-Frank? 

Mr. POWNER. I have not done detailed work looking at the authorities of the CIO at the SEC, but I think, you know, collectively, 

when you look across the board, that is a government-wide issue 

with, authority issue with CIOs. I think one of the things that has 

been very helpful with Mr. Kundra’s Dashboard, where there was 

a CIO accountable for each of the 800 major investments, there is 

a picture associated with that individual CIO, and frankly, some of 

the CIOs have the appropriate authority at certain agencies, and 

many don’t. And that continues to be a major issue. 

Mr. SERRANO. And so would be, Mr. Kundra, part of what we 

need to do to strengthen these folks and to identify what role they 

play so that we can be in place? I mean, it just seems that, and 

I don’t want to sound like some of the guys on the other side, but 

in a very large government, you know, how do you get at this if 

in so many areas the agencies are so far behind? 

Mr. KUNDRA. The way I think you solve it, and part of our approach has been to be very, very execution-focused. One of the challenges that I see across the board in departments is that you have 

CIOs who sometimes have a self-image that they are policy officials. Because it is very easy to attend a lot of meetings and talk 

about issues rather than actually roll up your sleeves and look at 

an IT project, and make the tough decisions around: Are we going 

to stop this because we don’t want to throw good money after bad 

money, or are we going to terminate it because we know that the 

likelihood of success is approaching zero percent? 

Part of our reform agenda has been very much around making 

sure that we are actually more execution-focused. So we are actually re-engineering and fundamentally reassigning the roles of the 

CIOs across every major department. And also, the President’s 

Management Council is very, very focused on this. I have personally met with deputy secretaries and their CIOs to talk about the 

reforms that we need to drive. 

For example, Deputy Secretary Hayes is providing leadership at 

the Department of Interior, where he has elevated the role of his 

CIO. And on top of that, they have started ‘‘I-Stats,’’ Interior Stats, 

very similarly modeled after TechStats. What we are doing is we 

are actually productizing what we came up with a model that we 

know works; we know it produced results. And in some ways it is 

so simple, which is: Get everybody in the room who has the ability 

to fund this project, the managers who are responsible for it, the 

senior leadership, the project manager, and make a decision. And 

the reform agenda is very aligned with a lot of the findings from 

Mr. Powner’s work, in terms of what has worked, what has not 

worked over the last decade. 


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And what we don’t want to do is we didn’t want to come up with 

is some type of philosophical strategy. But that is why the 25-point 

plan is broken down into six month increments with deliverables 

that are very, very execution-focused. 

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Kundra, your testimony also talked about creating an app-economy. As someone who really likes apps, and I 

might want to show you a little one I have here. 

Mr. KUNDRA. Oh, I love it. 

Mr. SERRANO. Like I said, I am intrigued by the idea you are encouraging all people to create apps based on the information that 

the government would normally not share. Can you give us an idea 

of the kinds of apps that have been created, and how you see this 

technology growing? 

Mr. KUNDRA. Sure. So what has been really exciting in the space 

is that we launched a platform called data.gov in May of 2009. We 

started with only 47 data sets. Today, we have over 305 data sets, 

305,000 data sets in every aspect of government operations from 

health care data to data around EPA, and data around actually 

when planes take off and land across the country. That has been 

coupled with actually challenging developers across the country to 

create applications that could help the American people, support 

the American people. 

I will give you an example. At the Consumer Product Safety 

Commission, there is all this data that they have around which 

products have been recalled, which products actually have major, 

major issues that could lead to fatalities. 

There is a developer that took the data from CPSC and created 

an iPhone app called ‘‘Recalls.’’ And what this app does is it actually allows you, on your iPhone, to see every product that has been 

recalled, with a picture of it. But what is really interesting is now 

you can use your iPhone and if you are in a store about to buy a 

crib, let’s say, you can scan that crib to see whether that crib has 

been recalled or not, by literally taking a quick picture and it hits 

a database in the back end. 

What has been exciting, when I was talking to CPSC, they said, 

well, they worry, actually, less in some cases about products that 

are recalled that are on store shelves because stores move very 

fast; they worry about products that are already in people’s homes; 

because if they have bought them, they are not going and checking 

whether they have been recalled. 

So what this allows us to do, by democratizing data, getting innovative developers to take advantage of these data sets, and build 

consumer-grade apps, is that we are literally shifting power to the 

American people where they can now scan products in their home 

and see whether the product has been recalled or not. 

Another interesting app was an app where people took data from 

the FAA, on average delays and landing times of flights. And a developer took this data and built an app called FlyonTime.us, and 

used Twitter so that people who are waiting in airport security 

lines could tweet what the delays were. And now you can make an 

intelligent decision on when you should leave your house to catch 

a flight, because you can actually see real-time what the delays 

are. 


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And across the country there is massive innovation happening. 

We are not spending millions of dollars on this type of innovation, 

where we have been able to tap into the ingenuity of the American 

people to create some of the most innovative applications. And 

agencies are now being able to run competitions, to say, ‘‘Hey, we 

are looking for this type of application.’’ Who can actually develop 

this type of app for us? And it takes, literally, days to months, not 

years. And these projects are not hundreds of millions of dollars, 

and years behind schedule. 

Mr. SERRANO. And I can see where this would not create a security issue because the information would either be controlled by the 

agency, or in the case of the Consumer Product Safety Commission; 

they were just picking up what was available on a website anyway, 

they were just bringing it closer to the person on the iPhone. 

Mr. KUNDRA. Absolutely. 

Mr. SERRANO. I don’t have that app, I think I’m going to get it. 

Mr. KUNDRA. There are a couple of other apps that we would recommend. 

Mr. SERRANO. Is it free, or what? 

Mr. KUNDRA. It is free. There is ‘‘Recalls,’’ FlyonTime.us, there 

are a number of really interesting apps. Actually, if you live in 

Washington, there is an app that allows you to see, on your iPhone, 

based on where you’re standing, the closest metro station and when 

the trains are coming in both directions. So you can decide when 

to leave your office. And there are some really, really cool apps out 

there. 

But from a security perspective, what we do worry about is what 

I call the mosaic effect. If data is released, let’s say, on Medicare, 

Medicaid, it is one thing if the data is released at a State level, but 

it’s another thing if that same data is released at a zip code level, 

because in the rural part of the country you may be able to identify 

an individual. Or data that may have an impact on national security; that is why agencies go through a process to actually vet that 

data, and they are the ones who make the decision on what data 

could be put out there. And we also make sure that the combination of data sets doesn’t, in any way, lead to violating the American 

people’s privacy or national security risks. 

Mr. SERRANO. It is interesting you say that, there is an app 

called ‘‘WikiHood,’’ which tells you where you are and what restaurants are around you and so on. It also tells you what monuments are in the area, points of interest. And in the Bronx, the 

General would be interested in knowing this, it lists the elected official, so it listed my son as the local Senator, which is true, but 

it did not list me. I am thinking of getting rid of the app, even if 

it was free. But it is very exciting and there is no end to what could 

happen and it needs to be done properly and government can provide a lot of information through these apps, you are absolutely 

right. One last question for you Mr. Kundra, the fiscal year 2012 

budget request includes $60 million for a funding line called ‘‘Integrated Efficient and Effective Uses of Information Technology’’. 

What will you use these funds for, and how will this help streamline redundant capabilities at federal data centers? 

Mr. KUNDRA. So this fund is actually devoted on making sure 

that we are cracking down on these duplicative systems, and that 


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we are going through and increasing the number of large scale IT 

projects that we are reviewing. So it includes funding for the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy to make sure that we realize the 

potential savings, in the billions there; includes support for shutting down 800 data centers across the Federal government. It includes funding to actually scale the text set model governmentwide, but also to conduct text sets where we are looking at duplication across the government, and actually taking actions. What is 

difficult as you look at these text set session, is not the act of just 

conducting the text set sessions, it is actually the follow through 

and the follow up, which takes countless hours and resources to 

make sure that if Agency A has committed to making sure they are 

going live in one month, that we come back a month from there 

and say, You said you would go live, what happened? Or, if they 

need support in terms of engineering talent, to look at some innovative technologies like Cloud, and realize similar savings that 

GSA’s going to realize; that we are moving forward and identifying 

those types of projects, and actually moving that direction. 

Mr. SERRANO. That makes sense. Thank you so much. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you Mr. Serrano. When I was listening 

to you there, going back and forth, it was fascinating to see the incredible amount of innovation that is out there. Going back to the 

apps issue, basically those are Web based? I mean all of these systems are basically Web-based when you talk about all of these 

apps, whether it is on your iPhone or BlackBerry or on your iPad, 

it is all basically Web-based, correct? And when you mention all of 

these apps, are these private individuals out there who are doing 

this thing, they get the information, they do it on their own kind 

of thing, is that what we are looking at? 

Mr. KUNDRA. Right, so you have actually two things happening, 

one is you have all of these innovation happening in the private 

sector, and what we have done is, we have built the platforms, so 

government has a platform, and third parties are creating some of 

the most innovative applications that government officials could 

not have even dreamed of. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. The platform is where you basically provide 

the information right? What do you mean by the platform. 

Mr. KUNDRA. So, what a platform is, it is Data.gov, and on that 

we actually provide machine-readable data sets. And these data 

sets could be everything from Medicare, Medicaid data sets on hospital outcomes to whether it is a data set around products that 

have been recalled. A good way to think about it is in the same 

way when the United States military decided to release data 

around GPS, satellite data, it actually gave birth to a whole host 

of companies and innovations to the point where now I can go in 

any new city, or any part of the country and navigate it using GPS 

technology. That is what is happening in that space, but also what 

we are doing is, agencies are using the same platform to create 

apps. So TSA for example has created a mobile app that is available on GSAs Website that actually allows you to see what you can 

bring on a flight, warning that are happening across the country 

in terms of airports and so forth, and you also have apps that have 

been created by a whole host of other agencies that are providing 

valuable information to the American people. 


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Mr. DIAZ-BALART. This is just a comment on it, not on you, but 

it is ironic that when see innovation on the Internet, and we see 

the issues that we have, and we understand why; that is what you 

are trying to get to, the issues that we have within the government 

structures and the government systems, which are obviously not 

the most efficient. And yet now we are seeing the FCC basically to 

regulate the Internet which is frankly just crazy. If there is a place 

that has been revolutionary, I mean totally revolutionary as far as 

innovation and access and the lowering cost and everything else, 

it has been the Internet. But I guess now the FCC believes that 

Federal government can do better than what has been probably the 

most revolutionary and the most dramatic opening in the history 

of mankind. The FCC believes the Federal government can do better which is, frankly, crazy. It is absolutely insane. 

Let me go back to now the issue that we were talking about, for 

example you mentioned the issue of the Census and the handhelds. 

Now when you are looking at doing what you are doing, you were 

talking about the difference between the private sector; the private 

sector has a need to innovate because otherwise they are basically 

out of business and individuals in the private sector have a need 

to make sure they are on the cutting edge otherwise their company 

does not do well and they are out of a job. Do you have the ability 

to incentivize those who do well by, for example, bonuses, pay increases? And then what are the consequences, going back to the 

Census, what are the consequences for those that made decisions, 

the wrong decisions that cost taxpayers a ton of money? Do they 

get fired, are they out of a job, do they lose their pay? Do they get 

demoted? Specifically what are the consequences, and what were 

the consequences for example, in the case of the handhelds with 

the Census, number one, and do you have the flexibility to do what 

it takes to both have the carrot and the stick? 

Mr. KUNDRA. So I think the incentives and how they are lined 

up, and what happens from an HR perspective, that work is happening at the agency level. What I would say is because we have 

not had a formal program management career track, which is one 

of the things that we are working on right now with OPM to actually make sure that we hardwire and bake in the very incentives 

that you are referring to, to make sure that where we have good 

people, they move up very quickly in terms of making sure that 

they are recognized government-wide; and where you have non-performers that we actually identify those people that are not performing under consequences. What we need to be able to do is we 

need to make sure our incentive systems, and this is something Director John Berry is working on, and part of the OPM reforms 

around the program management career track is that, we do get 

rid of people who are non-performers; we cannot tolerate to spend 

billions of dollars in IT systems where you have program managers 

that are frankly not managing them very, very well. That is one 

of the reasons, in this administration, one of the first things we did 

is we said there is this culture of faceless accountability where everybody has pointed at everybody else in terms of why projects fail. 

That is one of the reasons we did what we did with the IT Dashboard; not only did we put every project online, but we also put the 

picture of the CIO who is responsible for those projects, and that 


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was actually pretty radical because everybody hated me at that 

point and I said, Well, who is responsible? And what you would see 

is they would point to 20 different people, well if everyone is responsible, nobody is really responsible. 

At the agency CIO level now, that picture has had a profound 

impact. I remember when the President looked at the IT Dashboard, and we took a picture and put it on a blog, for the first time 

I got calls from various CIOs who were saying, ‘‘Oh my God, for 

the first time I am getting pulled into a meeting in my Secretary’s 

office and they are asking me what happened with this project, 

why is it red, why is it yellow?’’ And that is a level of accountability 

that we are driving now through the text data approach at the 

agency level to make sure that we are focused not just on inputs, 

which are reports but results. What are you doing? And we have 

committed that we are going to be terminating and turning around 

one-third of the IT portfolio that is underperforming. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. And you think you have the tools and the ability to both do that, which is the consequences of those actions, but 

also the tools to incentivize. Obviously there is always an element 

of risk when decisions are made and so therefore you have to have 

both, the private sector has it, the carrot and the stick, you have 

to have them both. And so you think you have the tools and the 

flexibility to be able to incentivize those who make the decisions 

and may take a risk, but then hopefully will make the right decision, and then if they do they have some sort of incentive; and also 

the ability to discipline those who do not? And you think you actually have the flexibility and the tools, the agencies have them? 

Mr. KUNDRA. Right we are building that in now to the program 

management career track, that is supposed to be done within the 

first six months. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Great. Mr. Serrano, do you have any more 

comments or questions? 

Mr. SERRANO. I do not have any questions at this time, but a 

comment. Getting back to this apps thing, which really fascinates 

me. I have an app called ‘‘App Advice,’’ and every day it tells me 

what new apps are out there. It would be interesting, as government goes out there and creates its own apps for information and 

assistance, or as private sector creates apps that has government 

information on it; if there was a way, this sounds silly that members of Congress would know about this, that we and our staffs 

could have access to those, because there is no way of knowing 

when there are 100,000 out there and a couple of hundred come in 

every day, and everything from games to other stuff; there is no 

way of knowing. 

But from what I am hearing here, there is a desire and a need 

for you folks, for us, to begin to move in that direction, so there 

has to be a sort of a central database, if you will, that will tell us 

this is available when it is available. I mean this one you just mentioned today, in itself; you would be surprised how important that 

would be to offer that information to our constituents. 

Mr. KUNDRA. I think that is a great idea. What we have done is 

on USA.gov, we have put a number of those apps. But I think you 

are absolutely right, which is it would be much better if you had 


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it on a handheld while you are making the decision of which app 

to download. So we will definitely start building it. 

Mr. SERRANO. Okay. Thank you so much. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Serrano, obviously it looks like you are 

kind of addicted to apps, there may be an ‘‘Apps Anonymous’’ app 

that you might want to look at. 

Mr. SERRANO. My favorite is an app that kind of takes the embarrassment out of being at a restaurant and looking at sushi and 

saying, I love it, but which one is that? And there is this app with 

these beautiful pictures, and it makes you sound so smart, you 

know? 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. That is amazing. And I think the idea, that he 

just threw out of an app where you can look at what apps the government has for different agencies is a great one. 

The Chairwoman will have some questions that she will submit 

in writing. I appreciate, and we all appreciate your efforts, and for 

being here. And thank you again for sticking with us during the 

votes. And with that, I think this meeting is closed. 

Mr. KUNDRA. Thank you very much. 

[The information follows:] 


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(321) 

THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2011. 

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT 

WITNESS 

ALLYSON LAACKMAN, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT 

Mrs. EMERSON. This hearing will come to order. Thank you so 

much for being here today. 

And because Mr. Womack has to leave, I am going to let you go 

ahead and open it up. If you would like to make a statement or 

something, go ahead. 

Mr. WOMACK. I apologize, Madam Chairwoman, because I have 

got three meetings that I am involved in that all start right now. 

Mrs. EMERSON. I understand. 

Mr. WOMACK. I have been accused of being able to do a lot of 

things, but splitting myself three ways is just simply not one of 

those. 

Thank you very much in advance for your testimony this morning. I just have a couple of questions, and then I will excuse myself. 

IMPACT OF SPENDING REDUCTION PROPOSALS

But you know we are cutting. It is a well-known fact that we are 

attempting to cut spending back to 2008 levels or below, with emphasis on the ‘‘or below,’’ because I think that is a direction that 

a lot of my colleagues would like to have. As far as the Executive 

Office of the President, how does that level of funding affect you? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. A 2008 level would actually be very challenging 

for the Executive Office of the President for a variety of reasons. 

The President relies on the Executive Office of the President as his 

primary support in fulfilling his constitutional duties. That support 

includes things such as protecting national security and economic 

interests, working with Congress, all the way to providing secure 

and reliable IT systems that ensure we have adequate communication data and records management processes. The level of funding 

that is proposed by the 2008 level would impair our ability to deliver on those responsibilities. 

Things have changed a lot since 2008. Some of our budget categories have costs built into them that we can’t just reverse. For 

example, our career staff have wage rates that now include 2 years 

of COLA adjustments and 3 years of within-grade increases that 

can’t be reversed. 

We are also faced with rent costs that are locked in at least a 

year in advance, and they have certainly gone up since 2008. 

Additionally, our investment in our IT infrastructure, which Congress has been wonderful in supporting to address problems noVerDate Mar 15 2010 23:40 Jul 05, 2011 Jkt 066756 PO 00000 Frm 00321 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 E:\HR\OC\A756P2.XXX A756P2

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ticed in previous administrations, has grown significantly. It is now 

about 12 percent of our budget. 

And then the third impact of the 2008 scenario, as we understand it, is that it would revert back to the component-specific 

budgets which would not take into consideration the realignment 

we have done within the EOP to make sure we have addressed 

changing priorities. 

For example, given the current national security environment 

and the economic conditions, we have shifted some of our funding 

among the components to make sure all the priorities are met. As 

a result, even though 2008 levels would overall be an average 8.1 

percent cut, in addition to what we have already taken in our 2012 

request, it would actually hit the National Security Council and 

Homeland Security Council at a 33.9 percent reduction level. 

It would also impact the Office of Administration which supports, 

among other things, the secure IT environment, at a 20.8 percent 

level, as opposed to the average of 8.1 percent that we would take 

overall. 

So when you combine that with our basically static cost structure, 61 percent of our costs are for personnel, 10.7 percent has to 

do with rent, and 12 percent is for IT systems, it would be really 

challenging to be able to still support the President at a level commensurate with his constitutional responsibilities. 

FY 2012 BUDGET REQUEST

Mr. WOMACK. I have a great deal of respect for the Office of the 

President. I don’t want anything said in this hearing to infer anything otherwise. But having served in the executive branch of government, albeit at a municipal level—and there is a huge difference 

between a mayor and the President, I recognize that completely— 

when faced with serious budgetary and/or other fiscal issues, I always found that in order for me to adequately challenge or motivate my subordinate levels of government to make the hard choices 

and take those cuts, I always subscribed to the philosophy of leading by example. 

And I think if there is one thing that concerns me is we are asking Americans across the country to do with significantly less, to 

expect less from their government. And yet, if I remember correctly—and I don’t have the number in front of me—that the budget request is—what—a point and a half lower than previous budget, is that—— 

Ms. LAACKMAN. It is actually 4.2 percent for the financial services components, including our programs. 

Mr. WOMACK. Okay. But the overall—the White House budget is 

$58 million. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. That is the White House-specific budget. 

Mr. WOMACK. The White House-specific budget. And I believe 

that we should expect more leadership in the reduction of costs 

arena if we can find it. 

So, you know, I just say that. That is just a matter of personal 

feeling that I have that the chief executive officer of the organization should do everything they can to lead by example and do a 

complete analysis of all of the programs—and I realize a lot of it 

is personnel, and you have got some IT structure in there that is 


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very important and costly. I mean, Congress cut its budget by 5 

percent. The Appropriations Committee cut its budget by 9 percent. 

We are doing the things at the committee level and in the congressional office level that I think are sending that statement to Americans that we, too, are having to do more with less. So I challenge 

your office to continue looking in that environment. 

CLIMATE CHANGE BUDGET

How much of the Executive Office of the President’s budget is 

geared toward climate change, to combating climate change? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. We don’t actually assign costs to specific offices 

within the White House in particular. And recently, I think there 

was an article in the paper that announced this as well, but we 

have done a reorganization that has been a while in the planning. 

So all of the efforts related to policy development and other matters 

related to climate change are now within our Domestic Policy 

Council, so we don’t specifically have an office dedicated to that. 

Mr. WOMACK. Is it significant? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. It is part of a multitude of functions that the 

people are responsible for within there. So we have a Domestic Policy Council, and that is one of the areas for which they are responsible for developing policy. 

ECONOMIC ADVISORS

Mr. WOMACK. And then, according to my information, the intent 

is to hire and fund another economic advisor. In what area of responsibility are we talking about? And is it necessary? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. You know, I am sorry. I don’t know specifically 

about a hiring plan for an economic advisor. I am happy to take 

that back to the White House and find out what their specific hiring plan is. 

Mr. WOMACK. Okay. Fair enough. 

[The information follows:] 

President Obama was faced with an unprecedented economic crisis when he took 

office in 2009—the worst since the Great Depression—which has put corresponding 

demands on the staff and resources of the Council of Economic Advisers (the Council 

or CEA). The Council’s mission is to provide the President with objective analysis 

and advice on the development and implementation of a wide range of domestic and 

international economic policy issues. In addition to CEA’s regular functions, such as 

preparation of the annual Economic Report of the President and analytical assistance preparing the President’s annual Budget proposals, the Council now has additional responsibilities as a result of the crisis, including producing quarterly reports 

to Congress on the economic impact of the Recovery Act. An additional $203,000 is 

requested in the FY 2012 Budget Submission to provide additional staff to aid in 

the preparation of such reports, as well as conduct necessary research and analysis 

as economic policy shifts from crisis to recovery and fostering growth. This staff will 

likely join CEA through temporary fellowships from universities and research institutions, which allows CEA to draw highly qualified economists at a relatively low 

cost. 

DEFICIT REDUCTION

Mr. WOMACK. I would just go back, as I conclude my remarks. 

As everyone knows, these are very difficult times. And in your testimony I have picked up on the fact that you remind us that the 

President is wishing to aggressively get after deficit reduction. I 

firmly believe that, with all respect to the Office of the President, 


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that that is where Americans look very closely to, what we can do 

from the chief executive down, to impart this sense of fiscal responsibility and accountability so that Americans know that it is happening at every level of government; and, respectfully, I would like 

for that message to be articulated to the highest level of our government. 

Thank you very much. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I will make sure that happens. Thank you very 

much. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you, Mr. Womack. 

Mr. WOMACK. Thank you, Mrs. Emerson. 

Mrs. EMERSON. What I will do is submit my formal opening remarks for the record. 

[The information follows:] 


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IMPACT OF SPENDING REDUCTION PROPOSALS

Mrs. EMERSON. And let me just say for my colleagues, because 

we are going to have a separate hearing with the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, 

we are not going to talk about those pieces today. We will just talk 

about the White House, the Office of Administration, the National 

Security Council, the Council of Economic Advisers, and the Vice 

President. 

I also just want to just say one thing about Mr. Womack’s remarks. Having not totally finished reading the Simpson-Bowles 

Commission report, I did note, however, that they suggested a 15 

percent cut in the White House Executive Office of the President; 

and I am assuming, based on your remarks to Mr. Womack, that 

that would be quite problematic. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. It would be similarly challenging, especially in 

the near term. We support the concepts and the objectives of the 

fiscal commission’s findings. To do that within the Executive Office 

of the President in the near term could have actually a negative 

impact in supporting deficit reduction by creating the loss of personnel that are actually geared toward helping develop those solutions. We would have a disproportionate cut to the number of staff 

and IT systems that in the short term could reduce our efficiency 

and effectiveness to deal with these responsibilities disproportionately compared to the short-term savings it could generate. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Okay. And I thank you for that. 

I am going to let Mr. Serrano, our ranking member, speak for a 

minute. I am sort of doing this loosey-goosey because we are in this 

room. 

Mr. SERRANO. Yes, very much so. 

We have a request similar to Mr. Womack’s. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Ms. Lee, then you go. As long as it is fine with 

Joe, it is fine with me. Please go on ahead. 

Ms. LEE. Thank you very much, and thank you very much for 

yielding. I have another meeting to attend. 

Mrs. EMERSON. I know. It is crazy. 

Ms. LEE. So thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. It 

is good to see you. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. Thank you. 

FY 2012 BUDGET REQUEST

Ms. LEE. You know, I appreciate the administration demonstrating their commitment to reducing the deficit by this proposed 4.2 percent budget cut. But we have to also remember what 

caused this deficit in the first place: the two wars, tax cuts for the 

very wealthy, also failing to restrain Wall Street by really gambling 

the future of the entire economy on other people’s money. So we 

can’t forget that. 

And I personally believe that, of course, the White House should 

not even come in with a proposal to cut. To me, that is unacceptable. I think you should have a boost. Because I know the staff 

changes that have taken place. I know you are trying to consolidate 

and, you know, have a White House that is efficient, but I also 


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know the challenges are enormous. So I personally think you guys 

should not request that cut. But that is my personal opinion. 

A couple of things I wanted to ask you. One is, just in terms of 

the organization of the White House now—and I have got to relate 

this to the whole State of the Union speech and just how that is 

organized, knowing that there are policy recommendations in the 

speech. 

EARMARKS

But the lines in the speech that said the President will veto any 

bill that comes to him with earmarks, I am kind of interested in 

how that evolved over there, if you know, because—and I am saying this every chance I get, that cutting congressionally directed 

funding, banning earmarks now has created a huge hole especially 

in communities that I know the President cares about, in communities of color, the African American, Latino, and Asian Pacific 

American communities, community clinics, educational programs, 

after-school programs. You know, these organizations thrive and 

survive on seed money to help them leverage additional funds to 

be able to create the jobs and provide the services that the Federal 

Government won’t provide. So now they are left in a lurch, a total 

lurch. 

So I am curious about how that was put together over there, 

staff-wise, and how that recommendation came out and if, in fact, 

impacts on communities were considered and what you intend—we 

have written a letter on this—to backfill those resources that were 

lost. 

OFFICE OF NATIONAL AIDS POLICY

Secondly, let me just ask you about the Office of National AIDS 

Policy within the Executive Office. I am really pleased that the 

President is moving forward with the national aids strategy. How 

does that fit into the overall budget recommendations now and will 

that office be fully funded so that we really can begin to effectively 

implement this overall HIV/AIDS strategy? 

OFFICE OF MINORITY AND WOMEN INCLUSION

And the new Office of Minority and Women Inclusion, how does 

the White House see its role in making sure that the financial services companies will be more inclusive and diverse, given the financial regulatory reform bill that we passed and he signed into law. 

How is that happening? 

Thank you very much. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. Thank you. Those are wonderful questions. 

EARMARKS

As it relates to earmarks, though, and specific objectives of an office, those are more policy questions; and so in my role as the financial person at EOP I wouldn’t really be able to speak to that. 

Ms. LEE. Would you ask someone to respond? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I will definitely pass it back to the appropriate 

people at the EOP. And I understand you have a letter out, and 


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I am sure you will hear back. But I will make sure that they know 

that the request was made today. 

Ms. LEE. Thank you. 

OFFICE OF NATIONAL AIDS POLICY

Ms. LAACKMAN. As far as the Office of National AIDS Policy, we 

didn’t specifically ask for the set-aside amounts or the targeted 

amount of $1.4 million which we have used for the last couple of 

years; and that is not because we didn’t have any intention of 

meeting that budget. We spent almost a full $1.4 million last year, 

within $20,000 of that amount; and we have no plans to reduce 

that. 

I think our reason for not specifically isolating that funding is to 

allow for the most flexibility to support all of the objectives of all 

of the offices within not just the White House budget but then also 

within the specific components. We are very proud of the work that 

has taken place so far and ONAP can help in those efforts. 

OFFICE OF MINORITY AND WOMEN INCLUSION

Ms. LEE. Okay. And the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion 

which was included in the Frank-Dodd reform Act, how does the 

White House ensure that the best practices in all of these agencies 

are going to be implemented? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. As to their specific workings, I couldn’t speak to 

that, because that is more the policy arena and the responsibility 

of the people running those offices. 

I could just tell you in general that the way the White House 

runs its budget is to make sure all of our initiatives and priorities 

are properly staffed and funded with support, and I can assure you 

that there are no plans to do less than that for an initiative such 

as that. 

Ms. LEE. But someone within your budget will have that responsibility as part of their responsibilities? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. Staff? I don’t know this specifically. I am happy 

to go back and check and get the particulars on that. I don’t know 

specifically every initiative that is within the White House. 

Ms. LEE. I would like to, within the context, so that we can look 

at the budget and see how this function is going to be overseen by 

the White House. I would like to see—— 

Ms. LAACKMAN. You are looking towards staffing levels for this 

initiative? 

Ms. LEE. Yes, in the White House. Or if there are no staffing levels in your budget, is, say, 50 percent of X staff time allotted to 

overseeing this new financial regulatory reform Office of Minority 

and Women Inclusion? Or is it hands off, just leave it to the agencies or how that fits. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I will find out. Thank you. 

Ms. LEE. Thanks very much. Thank you very much. 

[The information follows:] 

The Dodd-Frank legislation mandated the establishment of an Office of Minority 

and Women Inclusion (OMWI) within the Treasury Department and independent financial regulators including the Federal Reserve, FDIC, and the SEC. Pursuant to 

the statute, the director of the office must be a career SES individual. Otherwise, 


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each applicable agency is responsible for determining how the office will be staffed; 

what the office’s budget will be; and how the office will be run. 

Because the agencies, rather than the White House, are responsible for the 

standup of these offices and related agency policy directives, no separate budget has 

been identified within the White House for the OMWI initiative. However, staff 

from the White House Office of Public Engagement, the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, and the National Economic Council have communicated with 

agencies to learn the status of agency OMWI efforts. In addition, OMB staff review 

the progress on establishing and implementing these offices as part of their regular 

oversight. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you so much. I am glad we could work it 

out. Mr. Serrano. 

Mr. SERRANO. Well, I had a statement. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Feel free to go ahead and make it. 

Mr. SERRANO. Well, we are doing things strangely different, so 

I just won’t read the statement. 

Mrs. EMERSON. You will submit it for the record? 

Mr. SERRANO. Yes, I guess. 

[The information follows:] 


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Mrs. EMERSON. Would you like to go ahead and ask your questions? 

Mr. SERRANO. No. That is fine with me. You can start it. 

STAFFING LEVELS

Mrs. EMERSON. Well, playing a little bit off of Ms. Lee, I am not 

going to go into any policy issues, but I am curious, because the 

fiscal year 2012 budget request does not propose any staffing reductions. In other words, even if you have a position that has suddenly been vacated, is it something that you intend to fill? And I 

realize that working at the White House is tougher on your personal life, on your family time, much more so than even the demands that our congressional constituents put on us. But I am just 

curious that you haven’t proposed any staff reductions. And while 

you said that going back to 2008 levels would be very difficult, 

would it not be possible to absorb some staff reductions in your accounts? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. So because we are so heavily focused on personnel, we focused on the overall requirements of each of the offices. 

I think our staffing levels, which you see in our submission, are 

basically our FTE estimates, not necessarily where we will be at 

in actuality for the year. It is our best estimate based on the full 

budget that we are requesting, and it is actually a little bit lower. 

But I also don’t want to mislead you. It is about 43 people lower 

than our 2010 estimate. But that is really more of a reflection of 

not using the ceiling concept as much as it is an estimate of where 

we think we are really going to be. 

Our budget approach was actually a rigorous zero-based budget 

approach. So we asked each of our components to go back and look 

at exactly what their mission was and then start from ground zero 

and build up to what they needed to fulfill their mission. 

We then took a look at all of their individual priorities, as well 

as the priorities EOP-wide, to make sure that the resulting cost 

savings and efficiencies that we identified still allowed us to support the President. So it wasn’t done specifically to say we can 

eliminate X person. We actually built it from ground zero up to say 

here is what we need to do to fully achieve our responsibilities in 

supporting the President. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Okay. It will be interesting to hear if you think 

that the way that you all have realigned things will be more efficient. Perhaps we will know that in the 2013 budget. But I appreciate it. 

TRAVEL

Last year, there were several allegations—and I want to get this 

on the table and try to get this cleared up once and for all. There 

were many allegations that the President’s trip to India cost $200 

million per day and involved over 2,000 staff. Now I will admit personally that that sounded ridiculous to me. But it was out there, 

and obviously we heard a lot about it. And I believe that those estimates are probably exaggerated. 


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But we haven’t ever been provided with information on the actual cost of the President’s trip to India or any President’s overseas 

travel. I am not just specifically talking about President Obama. 

And I also understand that there are a lot of agencies involved, 

whether it is the State Department, Defense Department, Secret 

Service, and they also incur expenses; and I assume that those are 

classified for national security reasons. So let me just say that. 

But will you explain to us just how is the President’s international travel funded, number one? Who decides which staff accompany the President? And can you just tell us those first? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. Specifically as it relates to international? 

Mrs. EMERSON. Yes. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. Actually, international is not within our budget. 

So our total White House budget for traveling in support of the 

President is projected at about $2.2 million. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Okay. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. Official international trips, are really outside of 

our budget completely. And much of the planning—actually, I believe all of the planning is done specifically outside of our travel office. I don’t know who in the administration works with State and 

whoever else decides the need for a trip. But as far as the funding 

for it, it is completely outside of our $2.2 million budget. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Okay. I wonder if it would be possible—and then 

I want to ask you a little bit about the domestic travel. Would it 

be possible for you to make a request on behalf of the committee, 

and understanding that we would have to have a classified discussion about this, about the cost of the President’s trip to India? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I can certainly take that request back. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Yes, take that request back. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I don’t know anything more than that. Of course, 

I can bring that request back. Absolutely. 

Mrs. EMERSON. So the $2.2 million that you have requested for 

domestic travel, tell us how those funds will be spent? Does that 

fund the President’s travel? Or is that the staff’s travel? And how 

that exactly works. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I am happy, if you want something written up 

for the record, to do that as well. 

But I can tell you, basically, that covers our domestic official 

travel. And what we pay for in that are the staff who travel with 

the President. So, obviously, military is not part of our budget, but 

we have got advance teams and other official travelers that travel 

to support a trip. 

It also includes a limited number of those official travelers for 

personal trips as well. It doesn’t include overnight accommodations 

on a personal trip. The President would reimburse us for that. And 

then, it does not include the out-of-pocket costs for political or personal costs. 

[The information follows:] 

TRAVEL BUDGET DETAIL

The White House Travel Budget, estimated at approximately $2.2 million for fiscal Year 2012, includes the following types of expenses: 

• International Official Trips (President or First Lady in Attendance)—None. 

• Domestic Official Trips (President or First Lady in Attendance)—Overnight accommodations and meals and incidental expenses for the President and/or First 


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Lady. Commercial common carrier transportation costs, overnight accommodations, 

meals and incidental expenses, and local transportation costs for staff traveling in 

an official capacity (including advance staff, advisors and others supporting the 

President and/or First Lady) and for official guests. 

• Official Expenses Related to Non-Offical Trips (President or First Lady in Attendance)—Commercial common carrier transportation costs, overnight accommodations, meals and incidental expenses, and local transportation costs for staff traveling in an official capacity to support the official functions of the principal when 

the principal is otherwise on non-official travel. (Note: If trip is mixed Political/Official, cost allocations are determined pursuant to hard time allocation formula and 

all non-official costs are reimbursed. If trip is mixed Personal/Official, all personal 

costs are reimbursed personally.) 

• Domestic and International Official Staff Trips (President and First Lady not 

in attendance)—Commercial common carrier transportation costs, overnight accommodations, meals and incidental expenses, and local transportation costs. (Note: If 

trip is mixed Political/Official, cost allocations are determined pursuant to hard time 

allocation formula and all non-official costs are reimbursed. 

• Motor Pool Vehicles 

EVENT REIMBURSEMENT

Mrs. EMERSON. Okay. But any kind of political event that is actually held in the White House, there is a formula, if you will. So 

with either party in the White House, the party committee puts a 

deposit down and then the President, whomever he—since we have 

only had he so far—the President then reimburses afterwards for 

the cost? Or is it all done in advance? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. You are talking about events at the White 

House? 

Mrs. EMERSON. Yes. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. No, it is actually done in advance. So we have 

a sitting deposit, and I think that has been the same for a number 

of years. And then what we do for a political event at the White 

House is we come up with a cost estimate and have them actually 

fund that in advance, and then we settle up once the bills have all 

come in. There could be small amounts that we owe back. Typically, it is that we owe back—it is conceivable that there could be 

a small amount that they owe us but typically not, because of the 

deposit we have on hand. 

Mrs. EMERSON. I appreciate that. 

Mr. Serrano. 

FY 2012 BUDGET REQUEST

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. 

I appreciate that the President is leading by example on fiscal responsibility in cutting the budget of the Executive Office of the 

President by $32.1 million, or 4.2 percent. You have outlined in 

your testimony where these cuts are proposed. Would you characterize these cuts as true savings or are we just deferring costs and 

adding to the budgets of future years? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I will look at my statement, if you don’t mind. 

What we did was use a combination of ways that we could save 

the money. Part of it is cross-agency collaborations, and that is 

where you are going to see that the Office of National Drug Control 

Policy has some savings, given the fact that they have realigned 

how the Federal drug control program agency budgets are being 

funded and they are reverting more of their efforts toward overVerDate Mar 15 2010 23:40 Jul 05, 2011 Jkt 066756 PO 00000 Frm 00334 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A756P2.XXX A756P2

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seeing and managing those programs. We have also identified operational savings to the extent possible. 

So all of those are real savings. We are actually putting those in 

place right now. It is important, not knowing how 2011 is going to 

end, to look for as many ways as we can to economize, trying to 

reduce travel costs, other than in support of the President. We are 

looking for ways to do teleconferencing. Printing is down about 30 

percent from our 2008 level. We are looking for more ways of going 

electronic, and last year we even posted the EOP’s budget online. 

In the last 2 years, that has been a change. Those are all real savings. 

The only potential part that—I can’t say is necessarily a true 

savings—is the IT budget, but we expect that there will be. 

All but the most critical IT systems are being deferred for this 

year. We need to make sure that our systems are strong. So it 

doesn’t incorporate things that we think will harm us, but we will 

be deferring some of those costs. 

Mr. SERRANO. Now when you say ‘‘with other agencies’’, you are 

talking about other departments in the White House or—— 

Ms. LAACKMAN. No. Federal agencies. 

Mr. SERRANO. Federal agencies. And how do you coordinate with 

them? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. Well, we look for things that they are already 

doing to make sure that we are not making redundant efforts. We 

are also leveraging our policy advisors to make sure that, if they 

have a larger-scale operation, that we advise if certain things could 

be done better in those agencies. 

REPAIR AND RESTORATION

Mr. SERRANO. Now on the floor we discussed during the debate 

on the CR that there are old systems at the White House that need 

to be upgraded. In fact, the plumbing system apparently has not 

been updated since the Eisenhower administration. Is the request 

of $1 million in the repairs and restoration accounts sufficient? So 

the question is, is $1 million sufficient? You know, that was a big 

debate on the floor. In fact, I was shamelessly quoting that they 

hadn’t seen a plumber since the Nixon administration at the White 

House. 

Mrs. EMERSON. That was a good line, too. 

Mr. SERRANO. Yeah, but it got me into a lot of trouble. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I enjoyed reading your statement. 

We feel it was a reasonable request. We have a lot of projects 

that are still under way. And, given the importance of being fiscally 

responsible in this day and age, we shifted the approach for funding it to $1 million for whatever emerging or required needs appear 

that are still in line with the legislation which is to protect the 

safety of the occupants, which is not just the First Family but everyone visiting as an official visitor or a tour guest. 

You specifically are referring to the plumbing, and that was part 

of our 2011 request, which was larger. We think we have got 

enough projects under way that, rather than taking on a new one 

now, we just wanted to make sure we could address the critical 

needs, as any good homeowner would do. 


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Mr. SERRANO. You know, the part that just comes to mind now 

is the White House a national monument? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. Yes, it is. 

Mr. SERRANO. Not only in our belief, but it is, right? It falls 

under which agency? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. It falls under a lot of agencies. The National 

Park Service takes cares of the grounds, GSA takes care of the outside of the building, and we take care of the inside. 

Mr. SERRANO. Oh, you take care of the inside? So there is no 

agency that could be taking care of that out of their budget? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. The East and the West Wing are separate. So 

there are a lot of different players in our complex. 

UNANTICIPATED NEEDS

Mr. SERRANO. Now the budget also requests $1 million in an account called Unanticipated Needs. We know that is not a trip to 

India, obviously. So can you give us some examples of how this account has been used in the past? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. Sure. We actually file with Congress every year. 

So there is good public information about how that has been used. 

Last year, we used money for the Fiscal Commission. You will 

see a little bit. So part of that was last year’s budget. Part of it 

will be this year’s budget. Beyond that, I know it is for things like 

the funeral of President Reagan. You know, it really just gives the 

President a reasonable amount of flexibility to address something 

that is not otherwise appropriated for. 

PARTNERSHIP FUND FOR PROGRAM INTEGRITY INNOVATION

Mr. SERRANO. Another issue is the President’s budget requests $20 million for the Partnership Fund for Program Integrity Innovation. Now this program began in fiscal year 2010 with $37.5 million. What has the program accomplished so far, in your opinion? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. This is actually an OMB-managed program, so 

I don’t have a lot of details specifically on what they have been able 

to achieve. I understand, though, that they will have obligated that 

full amount by the end of fiscal year 2011. 

Mr. SERRANO. So it is an OMB program? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. It is an OMB-managed program. It is government-wide but managed through OMB. 

Mr. SERRANO. My next question was going to be, what are the 

plans for the coming year? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. As I understand it—I am certainly not an expert 

on that one, so I would be happy to give you more information. 

That is the best answer. I could give you more detail about what 

they do. 

But, for example, one of their projects was to help the IRS reduce 

errors in the earned income credit. So they are looking for ways to 

help shore up the different methods of both benefits that are given 

out in the Federal Government and other cost savings in the agencies. But I am happy to provide more specific information about 

how that program works. 

[The information follows:] 

The Partnership Fund for Program Integrity Innovation (Partnership Fund) was 

established by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2010 (P.L. 111–117) to fund 


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pilot projects to streamline administration and strengthen program integrity in Federal assistance programs administered through state and local governments or 

where Federal-state cooperation could be beneficial. The Partnership Fund will 

award most of its intial $37.5 million appropriation to Federal agencies by the end 

of FY 2011. In the aggregate, pilots must save at least as much as they cost. However, OMB targets high return on investment pilots likely to demonstrate significant 

savings. For example, the Partnership Fund awarded its first pilot to the Department of the Treasury to test a new way to reduce the annual $12 billion of improper 

payments associated with the Earned Income Tax Credit program (EITC). Treasury 

believes that there is an opportunity to avoid as much as $100 million or more in 

improper payments by cooperating with states to access data such as income and 

child dependency from state-administered benefit programs. Thus, this $2 million 

investment from the Partnership Fund could ultimately yield a 50 times annual return if the pilot is enacted at scale. The Partnership Fund’s small investments will 

yield savings far beyond their costs. 

OMB consults with an interagency council of Federal, state and other stakeholders to develop innovative pilot proposals that refelct stakeholder needs and concerns. This council, the ‘‘Collaborative Forum,’’ is a self-directed stakeholder group 

led by state and local governments. All ideas that OMB consider for funding are either generated by Forum work groups or submitted to the Forum for open consultation by all participating members. The Forum’s web site is found at 

www.collaborativeforumonline.com. In addition, OMB consults with a Federal steering committee, which consists of senior policy officials from the Federal agencies 

that administer benefits programs. The steering committee meets to review pilot 

proposals generated either by the Forum or by a participating agency before the 

Forum consults on the proposal. Finally, the public is invited to submit ideas direct 

to OMB through www.partner4solutions.gov. 

In February, OMB received six pilot proposals from the Collaborative Forum as 

well as a proposal from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). 

These proposals can be found at http://collaborativeforumonline.com/concept-papers. 

OMB expects to make funding decisions on the submitted pilot proposals in late 

March or early April. 

OMB will continue to conduct periodic rounds of funding decisions. The next 

round of pilot submissions is expected to be submitted to OMB by the Collaborative 

Forum in April. 

Mr. SERRANO. Please. Because I would be interested in finding 

out why you are assisting the IRS. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. It is not us. It is an OMB-managed program. It 

is government-wide. So we are looking for efficiencies and improvements government-wide. These projects should be at least self-supporting. You know, the one project that was mentioned is anticipated to have a 50 times cost payback. 

TOUR NUMBERS

Mr. SERRANO. Do we know how many people come as tourists to 

the White House every year? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I can tell you in fiscal year 2010 it was over 

900,000. That is a significant increase from the past. They have 

put in a lot of improvements in their systems to make sure that 

the tours times are more accommodating. They even have a Members program now for Congress. We have got a great focus on customer service. So our tour percentage has gone up significantly. We 

are excited about opening the House up more. 

Mrs. EMERSON. I have got so many constituents who want to 

come on White House tours. And you know, of course, then they get 

mad when they call you the day before, hey, I am going to be in 

Washington, and I want to go to the White House. Can you get me 

a tour? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I face that, too. I always tell my friends, 4 weeks 

notice. Otherwise, don’t call. 


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REPAIR AND RESTORATION

Mrs. EMERSON. I know it is very, very frustrating. 

So how does it work? Just following up on Mr. Serrano’s question 

about, you know, repairs, plumbing, that sort of thing. Do people 

within the White House who have certain responsibilities, whether 

it is plumbing or wiring, do they have to come to you and say, this 

is what I want to do? How does that even work? I am just curious, 

more than anything. 

MS. LAACKMAN. I am centralized financial management, so I actually am the CFO for that account. But they have their own fund 

manager in that account who makes sure that the projects fall 

within the appropriations language. If it is a minor repair, we do 

have a plumber on staff. We are talking about major repairs. And, 

in that case, we have an architect who works there, in another role, 

but he also has the architectural experience. So he manages that 

to make sure there are good plans and that it falls within the 

budget estimate that he had for that project. In the past, these 

were always appropriated based on a specific estimate for a project. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Okay. That is interesting, how it happens. 

PRESIDENTIAL ADVISORS

I have to bring this issue up on behalf of several of our colleagues, and it has to do with the special assistants to the White 

House, otherwise known as czars. And this is not something that 

is simply an Obama White House. It was a Bush White House. It 

was a Clinton White House. It was a Bush I White House. So those 

positions exist. 

And, unfortunately, I think it frustrates a lot of colleagues, because the folks who hold those positions have a lot of responsibility 

and perhaps really have a little more power than some of the department heads but yet they don’t have to go before the Senate for 

confirmation. So there is tugging and pulling. 

In some cases, you need to have a central person, I understand, 

to do things. But can you comment just generically perhaps about 

the administration’s use of these czars to lead what executive 

branch activities? Or is this too much of a policy question? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. Well, I can speak to it in general, but I won’t 

veer too far into the policy end. 

I would start with saying that we actually disagree with the 

term ‘‘czar’’ as it relates to any of our staff. We contend that the 

President hires all advisors that he needs for critical subject matter, which is similar to, as you have mentioned, previous administrations. 

Our staff doesn’t have the powers of a Cabinet head, a Cabinet 

secretary. They really are just the staff that are there to help the 

President coordinate and collaborate in enacting his agenda with 

all of the Cabinet. 

Some of the positions that are called czars are in fact things that 

Congress has put in our office, for example, the intellectual property enforcement coordinator and the leader of ONAP. So we understand that that term is out there, but it is not one that we 

would refer to or even could identify as being any position that we 

have on board at this time. 


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Mrs. EMERSON. Right. And I think it all kind of began with the 

Office of National Drug Control Policy, and perhaps the first director of that office referred to himself as a czar or something. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I understand it was someone the first President 

Bush appointed. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Yes. And that is kind of where it all began. 

And I think, too, just to make a general comment on it, as the 

frustration level of colleagues is, you know, the person that you see 

hoping to drive policy decisions among our caucuses up on the Hill 

often are those staff people, or czars, as opposed to, for example, 

Secretary Sebelius with HHS or someone like that. Now she may 

come in later. So there is just that general perception. 

And I will make another comment. Obviously, when there is a 

head of the Environmental Protection Agency who, regardless of 

whether I agree with her, is doing a fine job of running that place, 

you know, to have that person directing, if you will, or perhaps acting almost as a director of an interagency task force, it makes people very uncomfortable. So I appreciate the fact that you all are actually moving at least the climate change person and the health 

care person, neither of whom will remain in those jobs, into the Domestic Policy Council which is where I think that all of those positions perhaps more adequately belong and then we can get rid of 

the czar title forever. 

ECONOMIC ADVISORS

Let me ask you specifically about the Council of Economic Advisors, where you are actually requesting the addition of several 

economists. I guess there is no way to know exactly how many you 

needed. But the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill created the Financial Stability Oversight Board, which includes the Treasury 

Secretary, the Federal Reserve, FDIC, SEC, FTC, and several other 

agencies. And then there is another new Office of Financial Research to support that Board and then other new offices in Treasury, the SEC, and a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

So, given all of these new entities, I guess I am a little confused 

or concerned about the need to add even more economic advisors 

to that office in the White House, as opposed to utilizing those who 

already exist throughout all of these other financial-related institutions. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I would mention that their requested increase is 

for about $200,000. So it is not a large number of people, and it 

actually is—we get a lot of advisors from different universities on 

a limited-term basis and at a reasonable cost. The CEA has a responsibility for helping monitor what is going on as an advisor to 

the President. So we are monitoring the economic environment and 

providing certain reports that he gets as part of his briefing. That 

is really their function. 

So I do appreciate what you are saying about other areas, but 

their focus very much is in the advisory role for the President, the 

direct advisory support. 

Mrs. EMERSON. No, I understand. But wouldn’t they rely on 

other people within the Federal Government for some of that information? Or you are not in the position—— 


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Ms. LAACKMAN. I don’t know that one. That would be outside of 

my area of knowledge. I apologize. 

Mrs. EMERSON. No, no, no. That is all right. And I assume that $200,000 isn’t going to buy you much more than a senior person 

and perhaps a—— 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I think they are looking for a couple of people 

because of the way they are able to have short-term employees 

come from universities to help. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Yes. And, quite frankly, they should be excited 

to come and offer to do it for nothing in a fellowship capacity, because I know you all have a fellowship program as well. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. Yes. 

Mrs. EMERSON. All right. Let me turn it over to Mr. Serrano. 

FY 2012 BUDGET REQUEST

Mr. SERRANO. Yes. I want to, first of all thank you, Mrs. Emerson, for the way in which you handled this questioning. I don’t 

know if I hurt you or help you by saying in public that you don’t 

behave like some other folks when it comes to our President. 

And we have to understand that this bill may not be the biggest 

bill of 2012. But I assure you, if this bill hits the floor in the way 

bills should hit the floor and in the way they used to in the past, 

you are going to see a lot of debate, one on Washington, D.C., and 

social riders, everything from abortion to gay marriage to things 

that men and women can’t do back home so they do in D.C. to 

prove that they are very good on those issues. 

And then the second one will be the White House expenses, and 

it has nothing to do with White House expenses. Just for the 

record, we have to remind ourselves that it has to do with the fact 

that there is an unfortunate small group but very vocal in this 

country who just can’t accept that this President is legitimate, that 

he was born where he told us he was born, that he is of the faith 

he tells us he is, and that he is a good American. 

I mean, someone even suggested recently that he is not like us 

because he never played baseball. Well, I happen to adore baseball, 

but I know that basketball is right there with American sports. 

And so what do we need him to do, wear a Yankee uniform or Chicago uniform and play nine innings? 

Mrs. EMERSON. Or a Cardinals uniform. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I think he meant White Sox. 

Mr. SERRANO. He is an intelligent President. He will never wear 

a Cardinals uniform. 

And you are going to see pettiness which has nothing to do with 

the budget. I mean, the plumbing stuff on the House floor, and that 

was only the prelude. The teleprompter. So what? You take away 

the teleprompter, he is still a better speaker than anybody that is 

coming up in 2012, I assure you of that, with or without the teleprompter. But it gets petty, and it gets silly. And Jo Ann Emerson 

is not that way. But there are some, and they are going to make 

it that way, so you have to be ready for it. Or just let it be. It will 

happen, and what will happen will happen. 

So I think it is important for the White House always to have 

its facts and figures together but not to lose too much sleep over 

the fact that there are some people in this country who just cannot 


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accept that Barack Obama is the President. And it is going to be 

a nasty debate when it comes to the White House expenditures. It 

will get pretty bad. And you have to be ready for it, to be able to 

defend that which you know is correct. Some of us will be on the 

floor basically saying that, you know, we have never done this in 

the past. 

We have always had problems with the President. You know, I 

remember once there was a picture of me shaking hands with 

George Bush. And somebody in my district said, but you don’t 

agree with him. I said, so what? He is the President. I have to 

show him that respect and admiration because he is the President. 

It doesn’t hold any longer with a lot of folks, and so you have to 

be ready for that. 

But, in the meantime—I have no further questions. I just want 

to tell you not to be shy about putting forth that which you need 

at the White House, not to be shy about saying that you have to 

do a certain job in support of the President of the United States, 

and you need these dollars to do them. You know, don’t overspend. 

But don’t be shy about saying we have to do this. Because this is 

not, you know, a city council in some small community. This is the 

Presidency, and it has to be respected. It has to be supported. 

And that building, which will be occupied by someone else in 

2016, belongs to all of us, and it has to be taken care of. It has to 

be preserved, and it has to be respected, and it has to be kept in 

good shape. 

So I applaud the efforts you are making. And don’t lose hope. 

The attacks will be tough, but you have some friends and some 

folks who won’t attack in a nasty way. And I thank you for your 

service. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you, Mr. Serrano. I just have a couple 

more quick questions to ask. And I appreciate your comments, Joe. 

Thank you very much. 

EXECUTIVE RESIDENCE

Let me ask you about the executive residence. The budget request for it is $13.7 million, which is about 1.3 percent below fiscal 

year 2010, and that does fund repairs and the utilities—or the 

minor repairs. And just following up with what Joe said, $13.7 million isn’t an insignificant amount when you add it all up together, 

especially given the fact that you have got the Park Service maintaining the grounds and others doing other things. How much of 

the funds requested for the executive residence is mandatory 

money, like utilities—I mean, there is no way you can’t pay utilities—and also for day-to-day operations versus how much is really 

for discretionary types of things? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I don’t have that detail at my fingertips. I am 

happy to give you something more official for that. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Okay. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. We have actually managed that as an overall 

budget to make sure that all of the needs are met, but I can certainly give you some of the details on some of the components. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Yes, I would appreciate that. Thank you very 

much. 

[The information follows:] 


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RENT

Mrs. EMERSON. And my last question has to do with the GSA 

rental payments. In addition to the Old and New Executive Office 

Buildings, how many locations does the Executive Office of the 

President occupy? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. Currently—East Wing, West Wing, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the New Executive Office Building, as you mentioned. We have space at the Winder Building. We 

have space at 1800 G. There is office space for ONDCP that is in 

a different location. We have some town homes in Jackson Place. 

So we are in a variety of locations. It has been more spread out 

since 2001. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Have you looked to—just in order to save money 

on rent and because I am not quite sure of the formula by which 

the GSA determines what rent is going to be—but that is another 

discussion and, fortunately, it doesn’t have to do with you. Is there 

any way to consolidate—with the exception, I would say, of Jackson 

Place and, obviously, the two Executive Office Buildings? Is there 

any way to consolidate that so that you get more bang for the buck 

in budgets having everybody in one space? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. That probably is more in the GSA area. I do 

know that when we finish the third phase in the renovation of the 

EEOB, there will be the ability to consolidate and move out of some 

of the space that is out there. The goal is to have us as close as 

we can be together, but there were obviously some more urgent 

space needs that happened in the previous administration and we 

had to do some shoring up. So until some of that is resolved, they 

put us where they needed to put us. 

Mrs. EMERSON. When is that renovation going to be finished? 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I don’t know specifically the latest. We have it 

in our 2012 request. So at some point in fiscal year 2012. There are 

other projects that may affect the exact timeline. 

TELEWORK

Mrs. EMERSON. And, finally, does the use of mobile technologies 

increase the use of telework and reduce space needs at all? I mean, 

it may not in—just because of the singular interests of the Executive Office of the President, as opposed if you work for the IRS or 

another agency. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. As it relates to what I have seen in our budget, 

it doesn’t generate savings, because it is not meant to be done on 

a full-time basis. But it has helped us with our work-life balance 

and has certainly helped us during snowstorms. So it has helped 

to keep productivity going. To the extent that there is not lost productivity, it is not necessarily a savings, but it is a good use of our 

dollars. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Well, thank you. And that is understandable. I 

appreciate so much you being here. 

I want to have your formal testimony submitted for the record. 

[The information follows:] 


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Mrs. EMERSON. I am sorry that I cut off everything. But, fortunately, Barbara got to get her questions in, too. And so we will submit all of our testimonies for the record. 

And, really, thanks very much for what you do. I know that it 

is a tough job. And I always said that if you were a CPA—it was 

to young people specifically—it is a great opportunity. You never 

know where you may find yourself. 

Ms. LAACKMAN. I appreciate that. It is a wonderful job, and it is 

a great opportunity, and it is a pleasure to be here today. Thank 

you. 

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you very much. 

Mr. SERRANO. Thank you. 

Mrs. EMERSON. We are done. 


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