U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

70–055 cc WASHINGTON : 2001

S. Hrg. 107–4

NOMINATION OF MITCHELL E. DANIELS, JR.

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

ON THE

NOMINATION OF MITCHELL E. DANIELS, JR. TO BE DIRECTOR OF THE

OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET

JANUARY 19, 2001

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

(

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office

U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee, Chairman

TED STEVENS, Alaska

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi

JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut

CARL LEVIN, Michigan

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

MAX CLELAND, Georgia

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware

JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri

HANNAH S. SISTARE, Staff Director and Counsel

JOHANNA L. HARDY, Counsel

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Democratic Staff Director and Counsel

LAWRENCE B. NOVEY, Democratic Counsel

PETER A. LUDGIN, Democratic Professional Staff Member

DARLA D. CASSELL, Chief Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Opening statements:

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 1

Senator Thompson ............................................................................................ 3

Senator Carnahan ............................................................................................ 5

Senator Voinovich ............................................................................................. 5

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 9

Senator Domenici ............................................................................................. 11

Senator Stevens ................................................................................................ 13

Senator Cochran ............................................................................................... 14

Senator Collins ................................................................................................. 15

Senator Levin .................................................................................................... 30

Prepared statement:

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 43

WITNESSES

Hon. Richard G. Lugar, a U.S. Senator from the State of Indiana ..................... 16

Hon. Evan Bayh, a U.S. Senator from the State of Indiana ................................ 17

Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. to be Director of the Office of Management and

Budget ................................................................................................................... 19

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Bayh, Evan:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 17

Daniels, Mitchell E., Jr.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 19

Biographical and financial information .......................................................... 44

Pre-hearing questions and responses .............................................................. 54

Post-hearing questions and responses ............................................................ 92

Lugar, Richard G.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 16

(1)

NOMINATION OF MITCHELL E. DANIELS, JR.

TO BE DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET

FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 2001

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC.

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:35 a.m., in room

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

Present: Senators Lieberman, Levin, Carper, Carnahan, Thompson, Stevens, Collins, Voinovich, Domenici, and Cochran.

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good morning. The Committee will please

come to order. This morning we are holding a hearing to consider

the nomination of Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Daniels, welcome to the Committee. We are very happy to have you with us today. I would also

like to extend a warm welcome to Senator Carnahan, who along

with Senator Carper are two new Members of our Committee. We

are very pleased to have you join us and look forward to working

with you on this Committee during this session.

This is a weekend full of history, not the least of which is the

fact that this hearing that I have the honor to preside over today

is the one official act I will perform during this fleeting period of

my chairmanship of this Committee. I am honored to have that

honor, particularly in your case. I wonder if Senator Lugar and

Senator Bayh have the time to hear Members of the Committee

make opening statements. Then with the power vested in me as

Chairman, I will proceed and then call on Senator Thompson.

Mr. Daniels, as you well know, the job for which you have been

nominated is a pivotal and demanding one. The Office of Management and Budget has authority far more sweeping than most people outside of government realize. As OMB Director, you will recommend where every Federal dollar is spent and help oversee how

every Federal program is managed. You will have a leading role in

shaping far more than just the annual budget. You will be formulating national policy. With that in mind, let me say that I hope

one of your guiding principles will be the discipline that has normally come with this position, and I know that that is part of the

very distinguished record of public and private service that characterizes your career.

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We have seen extraordinary growth over the last 8 years economically in this country, and I believe that has been fueled in no

small part by the whittling of interest rates made possible by

shrinking national debt, and growing governmental surpluses. I

think it is wise counsel to continue as best we can, though the administration’s political makeup is changing, with those policies, for

which I think there is bipartisan support here in Congress, which

means using the surplus to continue to pay down the debt, investing wisely in critical programs such as education and defense, and

enacting tax cuts that give relief to the families of America, many

of whom have continued to be hard-pressed, even in a good economy.

For my part, you may not be surprised to hear, I find it difficult

to justify a massive tax cut at a time when we are experiencing a

modest economic slowdown and at a time when the exact size of

the future surplus, though pleasing to contemplate, is uncertain,

unclear. So I would offer at the outset a word of both caution and

hope that, as the next OMB Director, you would emphasize the

value of debt reduction, the brake it has put on inflation and interest rates, the wealth it has created and the confidence it has bred.

Let us together use today’s surplus to make the future of America and all Americans more secure. OMB’s most pressing internal

responsibility may well be managing the government’s information

policies, including the shift to digital governmental or, as it has

come to be called, e-government. E-government will harness information technology to bring government closer to its citizens and

citizens closer to the government, stimulating a broader knowledge

base, greater efficiency and we think financial savings along the

way.

I was pleased that both presidential candidates talked about

high-technology’s role in the operations of government during last

year’s campaign; even both vice-presidential candidates talked

about that, as I recall. Senator Thompson and I have been working

together on a range of e-government proposals, and I hope the

Committee will report them out and Congress will pass bipartisan

legislation on this subject this year, and we look forward to your

guidance and counsel in this effort.

As to management, one of OMB’s chief duties is to ensure that

agencies implement the performance and accounting laws designed

to give taxpayers as efficient and muscular a government as possible. These laws, which include the Government Performance and

Results Act, the Chief Financial Officers Act, the Clinger-Cohen

Act and the Inspectors General Act create a framework that addresses nearly every aspect of agency operations of our government.

This Committee is proud to have played a role, again on a bipartisan basis, in developing these laws. I know that Senator Thompson and I together, regardless of which one of us happens to be

Chairman at any given moment, intend to pursue the oversight of

the implementation of these laws with vigilance, because they are

what will spur the government to high performance with clearly

defined missions that end in visible and good results. Again, I hope

the Committee, OMB and the agencies will work together as we

have in the past to prepare for the management tests that lay

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ahead at a time when taxpayers reasonably expect the most value

for the least cost.

Finally, let me discuss OMB’s oversight of the Executive Branch

regulatory process. From my perspective, this is one of the most

consequential roles played by OMB, though not one that is well

known. Through the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs,

if confirmed, Mr. Daniels, you will supervise the review of rules

that provide critical protections to public health, worker safety,

consumers and the environment. This Committee was actively involved in sorting out problems in the early years of regulatory review, problems that at that point undermined public trust in the

fairness of the process.

This morning, I would ask you to be vigilant and to oppose those

who would use the process as a conduit to influence rule-making

off the record and without disclosure. Regulatory agencies must

have the capacity to do what Congress has asked them to do, in

the full light of sunshine, to protect the public’s interest. So, bottom

line, we on the Governmental Affairs Committee and you at OMB

have a lot of work to do together. We look forward to forging a

partnership with you on these important matters in the public interest.

Senator Thompson.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR THOMPSON

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is

a great delight for me to be here today because of my friendship

with the nominee, my personal regard for him, and the prospect of

having someone with his background and capabilities working in

this important job. A lot of the nominees, I think, are being told,

‘‘You have a high level to live up to; we have peace and prosperity

and things are going extremely well and so forth. So why would

you take this job? You know you can only go downhill.’’ In terms of the management of the Federal Government, you do

not have that to worry about. We had another GAO report. The

Comptroller came and gave us his latest high-risk list just the

other day. It is obvious that we still have problems that are going

in the wrong direction, such as waste, fraud and abuse with regard

to the Federal Government, our lagging behind in the use of information technology, financial management, the security of our computers, and the fact that we now have a new risk that we have not

had before, human capital. We are losing so many good people

within 4 years. One-third of our entire workforce will be eligible for

retirement, and up to one-half if these early-outs are available.

This is the mass below the water level that now you are going

to have to deal with. So a fresh start, I think at this time, is extremely good. I don’t mean that just from a partisan standpoint,

but I think from time to time we need a fresh look, and this is an

area where we certainly need new leadership and strong, aggressive leadership with regard to the management side.

We have many budget experts at this table here, such as the

Chairman of the Budget Committee, and he will have an opportunity to talk about those issues in detail, but on the management

side of things, a few more specifics. I have mentioned that because

of years of neglect, our infrastructure is basically eroding. Many of

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the departments and agencies of government are vulnerable to

waste, poorly managed, and antiquated. We are losing many of our

best people.

Numerous reports by the GAO and IGs before this Committee,

along with a parade of witnesses from the outside who have testified before this Committee make these assertions irrefutable. The

results are billions of dollars of waste, an increasing lack of ability

to provide basic services, and an increasing cynicism among the

American people. For example, the Federal Government of today is

a crazy-quilt of agencies and programs that have evolved randomly

over time in response to the real or perceived needs of the moment.

In just about every area of Federal activity, multiple agencies

and programs stumble over themselves to fix the same problems.

Few would dispute that the government in Washington cannot do

effectively all that it is now charged with doing. Much of what

Washington does is inefficient and wasteful, and we do not have a

handle on which programs work and which programs do not.

Most Federal agencies do not adequately track receipts and disbursements and cannot account for billions of dollars in property

and equipment. No one knows how much waste, fraud and mismanagement cost taxpayers, since the Federal Government makes

no systematic effort to keep track of it. Based on just a few examples from GAO and the IG reports, our Committee staff came up

with a figure of $220 billion, $35 billion in just 1 year alone.

The Federal Government seems utterly incapable of using information technology to enhance its efficiency and effectiveness. One

agency after another has wasted billions of dollars on failed information technology projects. Weaknesses in government information

systems make them vulnerable to computer attacks from international and domestic terrorists, crime rings and everyday hackers.

These weaknesses jeopardize government operations and threaten

the privacy of our citizens.

In recent years, the Federal Government reduced staffing without cutting back on anything that the government does. Federal

downsizing usually is just a numbers game carried out randomly,

rather than strategically. Consequently, many agencies now face

severe shortages of employees with the necessary skills and expertise to carry out their mission. There is mounting evidence that

workforce deficiencies are an emerging crisis in the Federal Government, and the Comptroller the other day, of course, acknowledged that was the case. It came as no surprise when he put it on

the high-risk list.

Agency regulatory programs impose tremendous costs and burdens on our businesses, State and local governments, and citizens.

However, the Federal Government in general and the OMB in particular are not doing nearly enough to ensure the benefits of these

rules justify their cost, and respect principles of federalism. Over

the past decade, Congress enacted a number of laws designed to

change how Washington works. Foremost among them was the

Government Performance and Results Act, known as the Results

Act. As its name implies, the act seeks to change the mind-set in

Washington from what the government does—spending money,

issuing regulations and so forth—to what actual results those activities produce. However, we still find that most agencies have

5

trouble explaining what results they are trying to achieve and certainly in measuring how well they achieve them.

Problems like these would attract the urgent attention of almost

any executive in the private sector. They understand that investing

adequate capacity and resources and then managing them effectively are key to achieving their missions. On the other hand, management problems are considered too mundane and too boring to

warrant the attention of Washington leaders. Our leaders prefer to

focus on policy issues. However, inattention to management and

performance problems are just as devastating for the Federal Government as in the private sector, because they cost the taxpayers

countless billions in waste, limit the capacities of agencies to

achieve their stated and statutory missions, and threaten the ability of Presidents to carry out their policy agenda.

The only answer to these problems is strong leadership from the

top, and I believe it will be met with strong, bipartisan support.

People implementing programs have to know what is important to

people in charge. People they put in charge of government programs have to know that management is important. That has not

been the case recently, and I hope it will be the case on your watch.

Thank you very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Senator Thompson.

Senator Carnahan, would you like to make an opening statement.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARNAHAN

Senator CARNAHAN. Yes. I want to welcome you to the Committee, Mr. Daniels, and certainly commend the President for sending us such a capable and respected nominee.

Mr. DANIELS. Thank you, Senator.

Senator CARNAHAN. I am really quite intrigued by the possibilities of your position. You have the chance to change the perception

of government. In a significant way, you can impact the quality of

services that are delivered to our citizens by government. At a time

when Americans hold the view that government is working against

them, not for them, you will have the opportunity to restore the belief of the American people that their government is, in fact, working for them.

Making government accessible, accountable and agreeable is a

priority of mine. In order to achieve this goal and all the other priorities that will fall within your jurisdiction, I see it as an imperative that we work very closely together, and I look forward to that

opportunity. Thank you very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Carnahan.

Senator Voinovich.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I

would like to welcome our two new Members of this Committee,

Jean Carnahan and Tom Carper. I got to know Jean through the

Spouses’ Organization of the National Governors’ Association, and

Tom and I served together as chairman and vice-chairman of the

National Governors’ Association. We look forward to working with

you on this Committee, and I think share some of the same perVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:28 Apr 06, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 70055.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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spectives because we have had a little experience on the management side of government.

I would like to welcome Mr. Daniels and say that you have a

very difficult job ahead of you. Mitch and I have known each other

for a long time. I got to know him when I was Mayor of Cleveland

and President of the National League of Cities and he was a member of the Reagan Administration, and I found him to be bright,

hard-working, a man of integrity and a man of his word.

I just want to say that you do have your work cut out for you,

and as Senator Thompson has said, we wonder why you are willing

to take it on. I think my colleagues know that I am a debt hawk,

and I shared that with you when you were in my office. One of the

main reasons I ran for the Senate was to bring fiscal discipline to

Washington, just as I tried to do as Mayor of Cleveland and Governor of Ohio.

In the first 2 years of my Senate term, we have had some good

news and bad news on that front. The good news is that we did

not use the Social Security surplus in 1999, 2000, and 2001, and

we did not use the Medicare surplus in 2000 and 2001. For all intents and purposes, we lockbox those surpluses. I would hope that

this year Congress would pass legislation formally lockboxing the

Social Security surplus and the Medicare Part B surplus so we take

it off the table and it will not be spent in the future.

The bad news is that, in my opinion, we have spent far too recklessly during the past 2 years. Non-defense discretionary spending

in fiscal year 2000 rose 9.3 percent over 1999, to $328 billion. Fiscal year 2001 discretionary spending rose 8.1 percent and non-defense discretionary spending rose 12 percent—think of that—this,

despite an inflation rate of only 2 percent. The only silver lining

is that due to our roaring economy, we were able to see $87 billion

of our on-budget surplus go for debt reduction. I have got to tell

you that would not have happened had it not been for us doing

hand-to-hand combat to make sure that money was not spent. Fiscal year 2001 estimates show we will have a $98 billion onbudget surplus. That money cannot be used for tax reduction, but

I can assure you that between now and the time this budget fiscal

year ends, there are going to be lots of people out there wanting

to spend that $98 billion.

The Heritage Foundation has come up with some recommendations on how we could pass legislation to take that money now,

write a check, and put it into an account so we guarantee that it

will not be spent and that it will go to reduce the on-budget surplus

this year. I am also concerned about the overconfidence being

placed in 10-year budget surplus projections, projections that are

being used to make far-reaching policy decisions. Just recently we

have seen it has been a ping-pong between the outgoing administration and the new administration.

I think it is ridiculous to base this country’s economic future on

10-year projections. The main problem is that those projections are

prone to errors and they depend on Congress to rein in spending,

something Congress has not been dong a very good job of lately.

Remember that in 1997, CBO projected a $167 billion unified budget deficit for fiscal year 2000. Last July, CBO re-estimated that it

would be a surplus of $268 billion. That is a swing in 4 years of

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$435 billion—in 3 years. We should also remember that the budget

surpluses can swing back to deficits just as quickly, decreasing our

ability to pay for tax cuts or spending increases without increasing

the national debt.

Reducing the national debt has been a priority in this country for

a long time, a long time we have talked about it, and now that we

have the chance, I think we should get it done. We owe it to our

children. We owe it to our grandchildren and we owe it to fiscal responsibility and the future 10-year projections that we have for

Medicare and Social Security.

Reducing the national debt would help decrease the 13 cents out

of every dollar that is spent for interest costs, which is more than

we spend on Medicare in this country. Paying down that debt

would also shift investment capital to more-productive uses in the

private sector and stimulate economic growth, and I would say that

it would work more quickly to deal with a downturn than even reducing taxes at this time, because it will take several years for the

reduction to take effect.

In fact, Alan Greenspan has said that to continue to pay down

that debt is the best thing we can do for our economy. Mr. Daniels,

I would hope you would present a budget that gives high priority

to reducing the debt. I was pleased with what Senator Lieberman

had to say about reining in the growth of Federal spending. Senator Stevens will tell you that a lot of this money is going to entitlements and securing our national defense and, yes, providing for

tax reduction.

Your budget submission and the budget resolution that Congress

passes will be the first test of bipartisan cooperation and will set

the tone for the rest of the 107th Congress. How we work that out,

I can tell you, will set the tone for the rest of what we do. One

other concern that I have is the need to implement a biennial budget process, and I applaud President-elect Bush’s support of a biennial budget. I can tell you that Senator Domenici was the main

sponsor of that in the 106th. He is going to sponsor it again in this

session, and I am going to be glad to support that 2-year budget.

Another area of concern is the GAO’s high-risk list, which shows

the Federal agencies or program areas most vulnerable to waste,

fraud, abuse and mismanagement. I will not get into them because

Senator Thompson has spoken to them eloquently. In 1990, that

list comprised 14 agencies or programs. The 2001 list, which was

published last week, has 22. The only addition to the list this year

is the human capital crisis. I would hope that you tackle that highrisk list and develop a serious strategy on how you intend to work

it down.

Long ago, I concluded that because Federal employees and

human capital management have been overlooked, for all practical

purposes there is no M in OMB. Indeed, government management

has not been a priority; perhaps dealing with our annual budget

leaves no time and you spend all your time worrying about the

budget every year. The ‘‘A-team,’’ the men and women who do the

work, have been neglected for years. Instead of Federal workers

being looked upon as something to cut, we should treat them as assets to be valued and nurtured. It is the only way we are going to

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get continuous improvement in government today. We have got to

get at our workers and get them involved in quality.

Many of the political appointees that run our Federal agencies

will need to rely on the best management practices or experience,

and one of the challenges for this next administration, that was not

addressed by the outgoing administration, is ensuring that management gets attention.

As Chairman of the Oversight and Government Management

Subcommittee of this Committee, I have been able to look into the

manner in which the Executive Branch manages its people. I held

six hearings in the 106th Congress to examine the human capital

management policies of the Federal Government. I have developed

two goals for those hearings: One, to empower Federal employees,

just like businesses have done. The businesses in this country that

have empowered their employees in quality management are the

ones that are successful today and competing. Two, deal with the

human capital crisis that is draining talent and experience from

the Federal Government. Again, Senator Thompson has laid that

out for you.

On the latter issue, the American people need to know the magnitude of this pending crisis. By 2004, 32 percent of all of our Federal workers will be eligible for retirement and another 22 percent

will be eligible for early retirement. Think of that, almost 50 percent of the Federal workforce could go out the door by 2004. I

talked to Joe Allbaugh, who is the President-elect’s designee for the

Federal Emergency Management Agency, the other day and I told

him that he could lose one-third or up to one-half of his people. He

had panic on his face, because floods and hurricanes do not wait

for a government program. They come on you without any warning.

This past Wednesday at Christie Whitman’s confirmation hearing, I told her that over at the EPA, research and enforcement

could be affected as scientists and lawyers retire. Last month, I released a report to help the new administration respond to this crisis before it reaches critical mass. OPM should tackle this emphatically and immediately, reaching out and teaming up with EPA to

develop solutions to the crisis. One key component will be the selection of a strong Deputy Director of Management.

In Congress, we stand ready to work with the administration to

resolve this coming crisis. We must ensure that people understand

how serious it is. In the meantime, Mr. Daniels, I hope you quickly

familiarize yourself with the government’s overall human capital

needs and take quick action where you can, in order to respond to

the challenge.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Daniels has his work cut out for him. I believe he will make a terrific Director of the Office of Management

and Budget. I congratulate the President-elect for his choice and I

want you to know we all look forward to working with you as you

take on the challenge.

Mr. DANIELS. Thank you, Senator.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Senator Voinovich.

Senator Carper, I welcomed you in absentia. It is a pleasure to

now welcome you in person as a Member of this Committee. You

bring your considerable experience as a Governor to this Committee, one of whose responsibilities is federalism, the relationship

9

between the Federal and State Government. So thank you and we

welcome an opening statement at this time.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER

Senator CARPER. Chairman Lieberman, thank you very much for

the warm welcome. I am delighted to be joining you and Senator

Thompson, and other colleagues around the table. To our nominee,

welcome. Congratulations on your nomination. We look forward to

serving with you, and I suspect that some folks in this room today

are your family, and we welcome them as well, and we thank you

for your willingness to share a good man with the people of America.

As Senator Lieberman had suggested during his remarks, before

I was elected to the Senate I served as Governor of my little State

for 8 years and served with Senator Biden, the National Governors

Association, and with George Voinovich and with now-Senator

Carnahan, as well. If you have been looking at me instead of

watching Senator Voinovich speak, you would have seen my lips

moving, and the reason why is because I agree with much of what

he says, and that has been the case for a long time on a lot of subjects.

I found as governor—I chose a great time to be governor—8

years of economic expansion, robust revenue growth. Before I was

Governor, I was a congressman for 10 years when we had a real

tough time trying to balance our budgets. Before that, I was State

Treasurer for 6 years, of Delaware, when we had the worst credit

rating in the country, at a time when we initially would always underestimate spending and overestimate revenues, a classic recipe

for running deficits and we were pretty good at that back in the

1960’s and 1970’s.

I found, though, that with robust revenue growth in the last 8

years, that sometimes it is easier to budget when resources are

scarce than when resources are plentiful. We are now in a time of

plentiful resources. As Senator Voinovich had suggested, the Congress and the President have spent willingly. I know there are a

lot of important nominees that the President-elect has sent to us

for consideration. I really believe yours might be the most important, and I hope you are as good as your supporters and admirers

say, because we are going to need someone with great skill and intellect and ability.

I want to mention a couple of things I want you to think about,

and when we get back to questions, I will follow up on these. We

have, I think, a great opportunity before us in the form of a budget

surplus of some great magnitude. The question for us is what do

we do with it, and I would hope that we use a significant portion

of it to pay down our debt and to really make us debt-free as a Nation over the course of the next decade. If you look at the tax cuts

that have been proposed by the President-elect, many of those tax

cuts, the biggest part of them kick in towards the end of this decade, which is when, a lot of times, a lot of our baby boomers want

to kick out or step out or step down and to retire. We just have

to be mindful of that.

I hope as we go forward, Congress and the President and the

new administration working together, we can decide to use a porVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:28 Apr 06, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 70055.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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tion of these surpluses to pay down our debt with an eye toward

making us debt-free as a Nation by the end of this decade. I hope

we can use some of the savings that flow from that debt reduction

to shore up, particularly, the Medicare trust fund.

I am a Democrat who likes to cut taxes, and we cut taxes 7 years

in a row in my little State. We put in place a litmus test for those

tax cuts that said they ought to be fair, they ought to stimulate

economic growth, they should simplify the tax code, not make it

more complex, and finally they should be sustainable throughout

the full business cycle. We have had 8 wonderful years—actually,

9 wonderful years of economic growth, but what was that Harry

Truman used to say? The only thing we do not know today is the

history we have forgotten—something to that effect. I am sure you

recall his actual quote.

We are going to have recessions again, and the OMB and CBO

forecasts that we see assume no economic recession. I think it is

just important that we keep in mind that the laws of economics

have probably not been reinvented, at least not on our watch.

The last thing I would say, in addition to cutting taxes, that in

accordance with some kind of litmus test, I hope roughly aligned

with what I have laid out, I hope we can do something good for

people who don’t have health care. I applaud the President-elect’s

proposal for a refundable tax credit, which I think has a lot of

merit. I also like the idea of putting in place a prescription drug

program for folks that are older and who need prescription drugs,

and finally to invest in our schools.

As Senator Voinovich mentioned—maybe to do a little on the defense side to ensure our readiness and our ability to deploy forces

does not diminish. That is a lot to do. We have a lot of money to

do it with. At the end of the day, I hope we have acted wisely, rationally, and not foolishly, and have not frittered away a wonderful

opportunity to do great good for our country with the dollars that

are now at our disposal.

Again, congratulations on your nomination, and Mr. Chairman,

I would ask unanimous consent to add to what I have just said, a

written statement for the record.

[The prepared statement of Senator Carper follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER

Mr. Chairman, Senator Thompson, and Members of the Committee, it is a privilege to be joining you today for the first time. I am grateful for the opportunity to

serve on this distinguished Committee, with its distinguished Chairman and Ranking Member, and I am looking forward to working with all of you on the issues that

lie before us.

Certain of the President-elect’s nominees are obviously attracting more attention

from the media than others, and I can imagine that Mr. Daniels would count it as

a blessing that he is among those who are attracting less rather than more attention in this regard. Nevertheless, let me just start off by saying that there is no

more important post in the new administration—in my opinion—than the one to

which Mr. Daniels has been nominated at OMB. When the President-elect chose Mr.

Daniels to head OMB, he let it be known that Mr. Daniels will be one of his key

advisers and one of the people most responsible for ensuring that the Federal Government maintains fiscal discipline. Mr. Chairman, given the record of the last decade, and all that we have learned over the last decade about the importance of fiscal

discipline to the health of our economy, this responsibility is clearly one of the more

important responsibilities that will fall to the new administration.

11

At this moment when the responsibility to manage fiscal and economic policy is

being passed from one administration to another, I think we need to be clear about

the role that fiscal policy has played in fostering the economic expansion of the last

decade. As you know as well as anyone, Mr. Chairman, the current expansion has

been fueled primarily by an unprecedented wave of private investment and innovation, unleashed in no small part as a result of the concerted effort that has been

made, on the part of the President and the Congress—on the part of Republicans

and Democrats together—to restore a modicum of fiscal discipline here in Washington.

Now some of these days are espousing the view that a concern for fiscal discipline

is an outmoded view—that fiscal discipline is ‘‘no longer a problem.’’ Indeed, some

have even suggested that—as a long-time fiscal conservative—I may soon need to

find myself a new set of budget priorities, and a new economic outlook, now that

the era of deficits has given way to a new era of surpluses. I want to use this opportunity, if I might, to make it very clear that, as far as I am concerned, fiscal discipline remains critically important—indeed, in certain respects it has never been

more important than it is today.

The rate of private savings in this country is currently negative, Mr. Chairman,

and despite all the progress that has been made in moving the Federal Government

from a position of a borrower to a position of generating net savings, our economy

remains highly dependent on borrowing from abroad—and thus highly susceptible

to a loss of confidence on the part of foreign investors in our commitment to maintaining a responsible fiscal posture. Many economists are warning that a loose fiscal

policy—whether it comes from irresponsible tax cuts or from excessive spending—

could potentially undermine confidence in the dollar, leaving the Federal Reserve

with a lose-lose choice between raising interest rates in the face of a slowing economy or allowing the dollar to deteriorate unchecked, thus risking a return to the

days of 1970’s-style stagnation. When one considers that the retirement of the baby

boom generation—with all that that implies for the Nation’s long-term fiscal outlook—lies just around the corner, it seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that now more

than ever, we need to proceed with a realistic view of the surplus that might be

available to the President and the Congress for the purpose of tax cuts or new

spending initiatives. It also suggests to me that we must make a point of paying

off our national debt in this decade and shoring up Social Security and Medicare

sooner rather than later.

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing from Mr. Daniels today and, particularly,

to discussing his views with respect to the responsibilities of the Director of OMB

for promoting fiscal discipline and presenting the public with an accurate picture

of the Nation’s long-term fiscal outlook.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Without objection, so ordered. Thanks,

Senator Carper. We are honored on this Committee to have a couple of the real powerhouses of the Senate seated next to each other.

Senator COCHRAN. Just a couple? [Laughter.]

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Oh, yes. I am sorry. Excuse me. There are

an unlimited number of powerhouses on this Committee. I will not

enumerate the number, but one of them is Senator Domenici.

Senator DOMENICI. Well, you’re getting a bit cocky around here.

[Laughter.]

Senator COCHRAN. I really had in mind Senator Lugar.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DOMENICI

Senator DOMENICI. First, I want to apologize for leaving. I have

a very important engagement, and I came early in an effort to

make sure that you heard my views on a few things, but most importantly my views about you. Congratulations. I commend the

President on appointing you and I hope we confirm you quickly.

I do want to say that I have observed, as you work to put together a staff, that you look for the very best. As a matter-of-fact,

you have taken some of my staff from the Budget Committee, and

I just want to tell you enough is enough. I, too, have to produce

a budget and do something, but in any event I think you’re putting

12

together an exquisite team and that is what is necessary. I will not

comment today, Mr. Daniels, about management.

These are experts at the various laws that we have. I tell you,

though, it is not a very politically sexy thing, so it is left to lag.

When you try to do it from the top, it does not work. You just have

to dig at it and it is just not easy. I share Senator Voinovich’s concern about the Federal workforce. He has worked hard on that and

we ought to listen to him.

I am here to tell you that the U.S. economy, U.S. fiscal policy,

is in very good shape. By the end of this year, we will have applied

to the national debt, $600 billion. There are some good friends of

mine that would say, ‘‘That is not enough. Every bit of surplus

ought to go on the national debt.’’ I predict for everyone here that before we finish the debate this

year on the size of the surplus, that there will be experts telling

us we should not use the entire surplus to pay down the debt as

quickly as it would mathematically permit. We are going to find

that we are not going to be able to pay down a lot of the debt without an enormous cost. I can say to all three of you that are there

that 20- and 30-year Treasury bonds are going to become so valuable that we are not going to want to buy them up, because people

think they are the greatest investment in the world and the premium we are going to pay is going to be extremely high.

Nonetheless, let me give you a few numbers and, in my statement, pose a situation for you. We need your estimates and your

economic forecast sooner rather than later. We have talked about

it. You need to do it right, but you need to do it quickly. What we

are finding out, Mr. Daniels, through our investigation and what

we think the Congressional Budget Office is going to tell the Congress, that the surplus over the next decade, whether my good

friend from Ohio wants to use 10 years or not, we are going to do

that and he can argue the fallacies in it, but it is going to be used

and here is what it is going to show: It is going to show that the

surplus accumulating over the decade is $5.7 trillion.

Nobody in this room really understands that. That is a huge

number, and the question really is over the next decade are we taking too much money from the American taxpayers or not? I think

that is a very interesting question that should be debated. I have

concluded that we are, because I think we can put every penny of

Social Security on the debt, and you have already looked at that.

It belongs on the debt and it will pay down the debt in 11 to 12

years. I happen to think that is very fast and maybe when we get

near the end, it may even be too fast, in which event I do not know

what to do with that.

I tell you, if the Federal Government has cash after debt payment per year sitting around in a drawer, we have never heard of

anything like that and nobody on God’s Earth knows what should

happen to it. In any event, you are going to prepare for us your

budget, and then we are going to ask you to help us work with the

Budget Committee to come up with a budget that the President of

the United States can support, also.

I just came today to tell you that we are going to try to work bipartisan, but there is also another player, and he got elected to be

the President. I can tell you I am going to try as chairman to do

13

as many things as I can in the budget resolution so that his desires

for this Nation are met, and among those clearly are to look at this

surplus from the standpoint of whether or not there is sufficient

money in that surplus to give some of it back to the American taxpayers.

Frankly, there has not been a lot said lately about whether the

President’s number of $1.3 trillion, which was the estimate of his

tax cut is too big or not. I can tell you the amount of the surplus

has grown so much since he put that on the table that it is a very

different number versus the surplus. Just to put it in numbers, there will be $3.2 trillion left over

after you pay Social Security, and if you were to give the President

$1.3 trillion, just do the arithmetic, and you will have the rest of

that to add to government, where government needs priorities, government needs defense, government needs education, government

needs a lot of things. Let’s hope we are not going to try to grow

government astronomically, but rather relatively well.

Those are the numbers. How we apply them and how soon you

get to them is going to be your business, but I cannot see how you

are going to be far off, because the Congressional Budget Office is

very close to this, and they are the ones we normally follow. We

hope you are close so we can follow both of you, because you understand there is an anomaly in the law. If you have to sequester, you

sequester off your estimates, not off of CBO’s, but we follow Congressional Budget Office in what we do. If they are close, we are

on the same wavelength in terms of your responsibilities.

Mr. Chairman, I am sure we will not be calling you that for very

long.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. But I appreciate it.

Senator DOMENICI. It is a pleasure to do that.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, sir.

Senator DOMENICI. Frankly, I mean that. Thank you for all your

hospitalities, and to the new Senator—there is only one here—look

forward to working with you on various assignments.

Thank you very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Domenici. I know you

had a previous commitment. I really appreciate that you took the

time to come and make that statement today. With regard to my

previous statement, is there any Member of the Senate here who

would disagree with the description of Senator Stevens as a powerhouse? [Laughter.]

Senator COLLINS. Only at great risk.

Senator VOINOVICH. I certainly would not.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Any Member of the Senate who does not

have matters pending before the Appropriations Committee?

[Laughter.]

Senator Stevens, thanks for being here.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR STEVENS

Senator STEVENS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I, too,

have some of your colleagues on the President’s nomination list

waiting in my office, but I wanted to be here to welcome you. I

wonder if we could ask the Chairman’s agreement that we ask your

family to stand so we can say hello while we are still here?

14

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Please.

Senator STEVENS. Would you do that? I think that Cheri, Megan,

Melissa, Meredith, Margaret—how many are here today, Mitch?

Mr. DANIELS. We have got about two-thirds complement, Senator.

[Applause.]

Senator STEVENS. We welcome you and I welcome you as a

former Hoosier, so that is why I am happy to see you here. When

I was Chairman of this Committee, I tried to enforce the rule that

opening statements were no longer than 3 minutes. I think we can

all see the advisability of that rule this morning. I hope it will soon

be restored. My only comment would be thank you for taking this

on.

I think you will spend more time with Senator Domenici and I

than you want to spend, and our colleagues in the House, and our

counterparts now, particularly here. Senator Byrd and I spend a

great deal of time with the OMB. It is, as other Members have

said, probably the most important position in government now,

short of being the President. I think Vice Presidents—pardon me,

Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Under the circumstances, go right ahead.

Senator STEVENS [continuing]. Do not have the responsibilities

that you will have, and I remember when you worked with Dick

Lugar. We worked with you over the years and I commend you for

having the commitment to our democracy to return, because it is

an awesome obligation that you are undertaking. You have heard

a little bit here about some people who think that the past has

been a prologue of excess.

I am afraid that the slowing down of the economy triggers a lot

more expenditures than people realize. As a matter of fact, it is

going to be very hard to deal with the budget, with the cap we

have, that still lasts for one more year, and we have a 50/50 split

here in the Senate. I told the Vice President-elect that he is going

to find that he is going to keep his own seat warm in the Senate

for a long time this year. It is going to be a difficult thing to deal

with your issues more than anyone realizes.

I am delighted that you have the experience in government and

business that you have. We need both right now. We need some

common sense as to how to keep this expanding economy expanding even more, whether it is jobs we need for new people and for

the residents that I think comes to the whole democracy if we are

healthy. I look forward to working with you. I can tell you that

there are some immediate problems on your desk, Mitch. So we

will be seeing you next week early.

Thank you very much.

Mr. DANIELS. Thank you, Senator.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Stevens.

Senator Cochran.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COCHRAN

Senator COCHRAN. I am going to stay well within the 3 minutes.

I want to congratulate Mitch Daniels on his nomination as Director

of Office of Management and Budget and wish you every success

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15

cerns and some views on the subject that we will be discussing, and

I will reserve those questions and comments until we get around

to that part of the hearing.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks.

Senator Collins.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS

Senator COLLINS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I know

that you and the once-and-future Chairman agree on many, many

issues, but I did hope that during your short tenure as Chairman,

you would reverse the previous Chairman’s decision to buy water

from Tennessee and go back to the pure New England water from

Maine. [Laughter.]

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right. I apologize to you and the farsighted, wise people of Maine for not having seen that momentary

opportunity and seized it.

Senator COLLINS. You could have seized the moment. I do commend you and Senator Thompson for holding this hearing today on

what, as my colleagues have noted, is a very important position in

the Federal Government. Mr. Daniels, it is always nice to see another former Senate staffer do so well, and I want to commend you

on accepting the President-elect’s request that you serve in his administration in this very critical position. With your experience in

government, as well as your experience in business, and particularly the terrific service that you gave to Senator Lugar, I believe

that you have abundant expertise to handle this very important position.

Many Americans may not be that familiar with OMB, but its crucial role in the Federal Government in budgeting and management

issues affects us all. The agency you are nominated to head plays

a critical role in formulating the Federal budget, in setting priorities and in overseeing implementation by Executive Branch agencies. The work of OMB is often unseen, but your important mission

includes a careful review of the effectiveness of government programs, as well as budget issues. Moreover, as we discussed in my

office, my concern, which has been echoed by many of my colleagues this morning, is that previously OMB has neglected the

critical management role that it plays in the Federal Government.

I think that this neglect is very unfortunate, because neglecting

management increases the cost of government programs, and it

also means we are missing out on opportunities to improve their

quality and make their delivery more effective. Reversing this is a

heavy burden, but it is one I am confident you have the skills and

the background and the commitment to undertake. So, again, I am

delighted that you have been nominated for this important post. I

am pleased to see your distinguished home-State Senators with

you, as well, today. I look forward to working closely with you.

Mr. Chairman, I do need to return to the Health Committee,

which is holding a hearing on Governor Thompson’s nomination, so

I would ask unanimous consent that the questions I would have

asked if I could stay be submitted for the record.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Senator Collins. Without objection, we will do that and we will ask Mr. Daniels to answer for the record. Thank you very much.

16

Senator Lugar and Senator Bayh, our colleagues, thanks for your

patience as Members of the Committee held forth. I think we view

this as an opportunity to state our priorities to the nominee.

Senator Lugar, I must tell you that I have not had the privilege

of knowing Mitch Daniels personally before, but when I looked over

his record, what jumped out at me was that he was a graduate of

what might be called the Dick Lugar School of Public Service. That

is a pretty proud school, so it spoke well for him and I am glad you

are here this morning.

STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, A U.S. SENATOR

FROM THE STATE OF INDIANA

Senator LUGAR. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me. I appreciate Mitch inviting my colleague, Senator Evan

Bayh, and me. This is a very rare privilege that each one of you

will understand, that someone who has been a very close personal

friend for 30 years is nominated by the President for this responsibility and is willing once again to serve.

I want to describe just for a few minutes how this came to pass

over that period of time. Mitch Daniels was a brilliant student in

the public schools of Indianapolis, North Central High School; was

designated for the Lyndon Johnson award as the outstanding high

school scholar in our State in 1967; not surprisingly, succeeded

with honors at Princeton University and subsequently received a

doctorate of law at Georgetown.

I found him through his family, and his parents, Mitch and

Dottie Daniels, who are here today, and his wonderful sister,

Debbie, who in herself is a distinguished attorney and public servant. They were a talented family, and still are in our town. He

came to the mayor’s office as a senior from Princeton University 30

years ago, a brilliant student but filled with idealism, a capacity for

enormous imagination and a desire for public service.

He proceeded to help me during a period of intergovernmental

relations that was very exciting. We had revenue sharing in those

days. We had new federalism. We had the whole proposition of the

alternative model cities, in which we set up under the administration’s guidance about every urban experiment known, at least at

that time, and Mitch Daniels was at the forefront of those innovations.

He came with me to Washington after the election of 1976. Each

of us has been through that process, and I occupied Bill Brock’s offices at his sufferance for awhile. Mitch determined to bring the

best that he could for us and the best sense of our own budget in

those days. He was remarkable in his administration of my Senate

office for many years, until I succeeded in winning the chairmanship of the Republican Senatorial Committee after the election of

1982. He was my major domo, right here in this building on the

fifth floor.

Then he went on to political duties, to help me fulfill that situation in the political cycle of 1983–1984. It was inevitable that the

White House would note his political prowess. The White House

did, and seized Mitch Daniels shortly thereafter, when President

Reagan was reelected, and he became the chief political strategist

for the President of the United States and responsible for intergovVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:28 Apr 06, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 70055.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
17

ernmental affairs in the White House, a remarkable responsibility

in the second Reagan term.

He returned to Indianapolis, because we had been successful in

our town in obtaining the Hudson Institute. As he was looking for

a permanent home, he became the chief executive of that remarkable think tank for 3 years, until he was identified by a very great

firm in our city, Eli Lilly and Company. Mitch has served in the

last capacity, and I will move in descending order, as senior vice

president for corporate strategy and policy for the last 3 years and

on the important policy committee of the company, its top management body. He served as president of the North American pharmaceutical operations from 1993–1997, and joined the company originally in 1990 as vice president for corporate affairs. For 10 years,

he has had a senior management position, and in the case of North

American operations, the executive management position for a very

great American firm.

I mention that because the idealism that was true at North Central and at Princeton proceeded through the Senate and through

his responsibilities at the White House, through his responsibilities

at a great think-tank, and broad corporate responsibility at the

highest levels for the last 10 years. These have been very successful years for that firm.

Let me just simply add, in addition to that, Mitch has been a remarkable citizen, as you might anticipate, of Indianapolis and of

the State of Indiana. The legion of boards on which he serves, the

honors that he has received, are remarkable and have been noted

by the Committee. I simply commend him to you as a very good

person. I would say that Mitch is a person in whom I have trusted,

who is not only honest along with his brilliance, but likewise caring

about people. This is why he ran a good staff and why we had a

good shop right here in the Dirksen building some time ago.

I thank you for allowing me to make this statement and I appreciate the nomination.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Lugar, for that very special, personal statement.

Senator Bayh, thanks for being here and offering bipartisan Hoosier support for Mitch Daniels.

STATEMENT OF HON. EVAN BAYH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE

STATE OF INDIANA

Senator BAYH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be

with you today and the other Members of the Committee, and my

esteemed colleague from Indiana, Senator Lugar, for whom I have

enormous respect. I should also say, Mr. Chairman, that I am

pleased to be here today to introduce and support the nomination

of Mitch Daniels to be Director of the Office of Management and

Budget.

I find this exercise to be of some personal use, as well, following

up on the comments of Senator Stevens, who had to leave. I am

going to exercise some restraint in my own remarks when I am on

the other side of the dais here. Someone came up to me not long

ago and said, ‘‘Senator, you know that in order for a speech to be

immortal, it need not be eternal.’’ I am going to try to bear that

in mind.

18

I am here today, Mr. Chairman, to support Mitch Daniels’ nomination, because I think he combines the right set of skills necessary

to do a good job, quantitative, analytical and interpersonal. Senator

Voinovich, you will be pleased to know it is my strong belief that

Mitch Daniels believes in fiscal responsibility. As a matter of fact,

I believe he has previously embraced some of the very reforms that

you mentioned in your remarks, such as biennial budgeting. I know

he has written about the need for entitlement reform, in particular

to address some of the concerns that you outline that will face us

in the years to come if nothing is done.

Senator Carper, I personally have discussed with him the need

for sound budget analysis based upon solid numbers, not wishful

thinking or political considerations, so that we do not undermine

the credibility of our public policy decision-making, and he agreed

with me along those lines, and I think would agree with you in the

points you made.

He has the business experience, Senator Thompson, that you indicated is important, and I agree. He knows how the decisions we

make here in Washington will affect real people and real places

across the country, and he will bring the kind of management expertise that Senator Lugar outlined to the task of trying to bring

more coherence to the finances and the management of the Federal

Government.

Because of his private sector experience, he understands that we

compete today in a global economy and he knows the importance

of investing in research and technology so that we can have greater

innovation in our society and create the high value-added jobs that

are important to the future economic prosperity of America.

Finally, I would note that Mitch Daniels has a long and honorable record, as my colleague mentioned, being an active participant

in the Republican Party. I, of course, am a member of the other

major political party. I am here today in the spirit of bipartisanship

to support his nomination, because I think he will do a good job

for the President-elect, he will do a good job for this country, and

I wish him well in his public service.

Mitch, I am pleased to wholeheartedly support your nomination

and look forward to working with you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Bayh.

Thanks to both of you for being here. You are free to stay or leave

as your schedules dictate.

Mr. Daniels, for the record, let me just indicate first that you

have submitted responses to a biographical and financial questionnaire; that you have answered pre-hearing questions submitted by

the Committee and additional questions from individual Senators,

and that you have had your financial statement reviewed by the

Office of Government Ethics. Without objection, this information

will be made part of the hearing record, with the exception of the

financial data, which is on file and available for inspection in the

Committee’s own offices. In addition, the FBI file has been reviewed by Senator Thompson and me, pursuant to the Committee

rules.

19

1The biographical and financial information appear in the Appendix on page 44.

Pre-hearing questions and responses appear in the Appendix on page 54.

Post-hearing questions and responses appear in the Appendix on page 92.

Mr. Daniels, our Committee rules require that all witnesses at

nomination hearings give their testimony under oath, so I would

ask you to please stand and raise your right hand.

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

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

help you, God?

Mr. DANIELS. I do.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you. We would welcome any opening statement that you would like to make.

TESTIMONY OF MITCHELL E. DANIELS, JR.1 TO BE DIRECTOR

OF THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET

Mr. DANIELS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; a brief one, if you

please. I think I am safe in saying this is the sixth-biggest day of

my life. It is a five-way tie for first, as each of the five Daniels

women came into my life, starting with my bride and partner,

Cheri, and the four Daniels girls. The two interior members of that

set are with us today. Their younger sister, Maggie, is stricken

with the flu and otherwise would be lighting up this room today,

and their older sister, Megan, is attending to her studies.

I want to stress, Senator Voinovich, that she was prudent enough

to choose a school in Ohio, Denison University. I would like to tell

Senator Thompson that Melissa, who is here, was farsighted

enough to choose a school in Tennessee, Vanderbilt University. In

recent days, I have been drawing to the attention of our senior in

high school, Meredith, several fine schools in Connecticut.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Excellent. [Laughter.]

Mr. DANIELS. But we were unsuccessful in securing her admission in a timely fashion. [Laughter.]

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I wish you had called.

Mr. DANIELS. I thank the Committee also for welcoming my

other family members. My Mom and Dad are here, my sister, Deborah, and my brother-in-law, Lyle. Of course, I thank my two homeState Senators for coming by on a very busy day.

My fitness for this office is, of course, for this Committee to

judge. I only say that to the extent I am prepared, I owe this to

a string of people for whom I have had the pleasure to work or

with whom I have been associated; beginning, as was remarked,

with Dick Lugar, including President Reagan, the trustees of Hudson Institute, who entrusted me with responsibilities there, and the

chairman of Eli Lilly and Company, who gave me increasing opportunities to learn and grow.

I want to thank my predecessors in the office that I may soon

hold. I was able to speak to most of my recent predecessors and expect to speak to all of them when schedules coincide, but let me

single out Jack Lew, a fine public servant, obviously, and a gentleman who welcomed me in his office immediately after I got to

town and with whom I have spoken on other occasions since. He

has been very forthcoming in his advice and has offered to help us

make a smooth transition.

20

Last, I’d like to compliment the staff of this Committee, an unusually vigorous group which has helped me prepare, through the

rare opportunity to answer a significant number of questions and

also to visit the other afternoon at this table in what was a very

helpful session in concentrating my thoughts on the interest of

their principles.

Let me say finally that this nomination would be a great honor

for a person at any time. I think this is an especially unique moment for this honor to come. Much about this job will be new to

me, of course. I guess I take some comfort in noting that much

about this situation will be new even to the most seasoned veterans

here.

We are new in the area of surpluses. This is unfamiliar ground

and it will take some getting used to. I believe that in its way, a

time of surplus is a time of greater danger, imprudence, and mistake than a time of deficits. We are also in a rather unique moment with a closely divided Congress, and this will require, if

progress is to occur, probably a greater level of cooperation and bipartisanship than has often occurred in our history.

The President-elect has committed himself to that. We have

heard it spoken of here this morning. I hope we will all maintain

our resolve to do that in the days just ahead of us. I have been

studying diligently the work product of this Committee, both its

legislative and oversight capacities, and I do want to say that in

full view of the difficulties that may attend it, I am resolved to try

to capitalize the ‘‘M’’ in OMB. This Committee, as I read through

the record, has built an extraordinarily strong foundation, or

framework, as you put it, Mr. Chairman, of bills that offer the opportunity and the charge to the Executive Branch to try to uplift

its standards of performance and accountability.

I detect in the record that I have read some frustration that this

framework has not been fully implemented, and I know that is so

despite very sincere efforts on the part of my predecessors. I know

they have encountered a reality that I have been advised about

since the first moment I accepted the job, which is that in our current all-day, every-day, all-year budget process, the time and attention of people at OMB will be totally devoured in that responsibility.

I do not deny that that may be our fate, too, but I am determined

to try to do honor to your efforts and to this 10-year history of important legislative breakthroughs to meet your expectations.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Mr. Daniels, for that excellent

opening statement. I appreciate the last part, and we have talked

about it a bit, the ‘‘M’’, the management part, and I thank you for

that. To say the obvious, the Federal Government is an enormous

enterprise that is, by its essence, free of the normal competitive

pressures that tend toward efficiency and good management and

the rest. There are internal forces, obviously, that do that, but one

of the roles we have always seen here is to try to play that role

and, of course, to ask the Director of OMB to do that every day,

and I thank you for the emphasis you put on that.

Let me say on the questioning that we are going to follow the 7-

minute rule. My clock is already going, and I ask my colleagues,

21

as the lights begin to flash, to try to keep within that time limit.

I am going to start by asking certain questions that we ask of all

nominees. So first, Mr. Daniels, is there anything that you are

aware of in your background which might present a conflict of interest with the duties of the office to which you have been nominated?

Mr. DANIELS. No, sir.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Do you know of anything personal or otherwise that would in any way prevent you from fully and honorably

discharging the responsibilities of Director of OMB?

Mr. DANIELS. No, sir.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Do you agree without reservation to respond to any reasonable summons to appear and testify before any

duly constituted Committee of Congress if you are confirmed?

Mr. DANIELS. Yes, I do.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much. Several of us

asked questions or made statements along the way about Federal

Government fiscal policy, and for those who may be watching on

television who focus in on, ‘‘I am not quite sure what OMB does,’’

as you well know, the Director is essentially the chief fiscal adviser

to the President of the United States and is the key bridge, or certainly has been in the years that I have been here, between the Executive Branch and Congress on the major fiscal questions that we

determine.

So these matters are going to be right—you are a lot more, for

those who are watching, than an auditor or a kind of budget enforcer. You are a policy-setter. Let me ask you to first speak, if you

would, about the surplus projections. These are obviously good

news, numbers that, for most of us, are unimaginable, $5.7 trillion

projected in surplus. Yet, I think many of us on both sides of the

aisle here are concerned about how much validity we can give to

a 10-year projection, and in that sense, how much of the surplus

that is projected over the next 10 years is it—I am about to use

a favorite Bush family word—prudent? Is it prudent to commit

today, which is to say if we commit all of it during this 107th Congress, won’t future Congresses have little in the way of fiscal flexibility to address either unforeseen problems or new priorities?

Mr. DANIELS. I think those cautions are well stated, Mr. Chairman, and with Senator Voinovich and others, I would certainly

agree that—with Ben Franklin—we ought to resolve to doubt our

own infallibility when it comes certainly to projections of the kind

that we have made. I note that the error bars around even nearerterm projections have been very sizable, certainly when measured

against the large base of the Federal revenue and spending structure that we now have. So I take the point.

I guess I am impressed, and positively so, at the narrow range

in which most forecasts do now trade. There is, to me, striking convergence certainly on the economic side. We are trading in a much

narrower range than I might have expected coming to town. That

is not a reason to believe we can take that money to the bank, but

I think it does give some confidence that the long-term outlook is

very strong, remarkably strong, and while we ought to keep an eye

on it day by day to make sure it is not eroding, as we all know,

22

the recent trend has been upward, not downward, and I take some

heart from that.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. How about the priority that you would

give or you would advise the President-elect to give to debt reduction? Not only has it value in itself, but in its way, if circumstances

change over time and the surplus projections are not quite as rosy

as we believe they are now, money set aside over the 10 years for

debt reduction has a little bit more fungibility to it than money we

have committed to spend. What priority would you give, in response to the statements Senator Voinovich, Senator Carper, I and

others made about debt reduction?

Mr. DANIELS. I think I would give it a very high priority, and I

believe that is pretty near a consensus view. Again, there may be

what I would describe as relatively modest differences about the

degree and the pace of debt reduction. Senator Domenici alluded to

some rather striking and happy new problems that we might encounter if we are able to pay down the debt at a rate that soon

tests our ability to actually do so in a practical matter.

The answer to your question is, I think, debt reduction is the

price of admission to the budget debate. It certainly is an important part of the fiscal mix that the administration will present the

Congress, and we look forward to working with this Committee and

others on the exact swiftness and degree at which that occurs.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I appreciate that. As you know, the President-elect’s tax cut proposal is controversial here on Capitol Hill,

but I want to try to take it out of a partisan context and just ask

you to comment from two points of view. One is consistent with the

questions I have just asked you and your own comments; when you

think about the priority given to debt reduction, about the uncertainty of 10-year projections, isn’t $1.3 trillion, leaving aside whether we think it is not progressive enough or whatever, isn’t that too

large of a chunk to take out of the resources that are available to

us?

The second question about it builds somewhat on the latest arguments that I have heard for the proposed tax cut, which is it may

help to take the economy out of the slowing down it is in now. I

was interested in that regard to note the comments that Secretary

of the Treasury-designate Mr. O’Neill made the other day, where

he, as I read them, seemed to raise questions about—obviously,

there are arguments he did make and one could make for the tax

cut proposal—but he seemed to be saying, ‘‘Don’t put too much emphasis on its ability to help us out of a slowdown, because it takes

awhile, a tax cut of this kind, to work its way through the economy, and it is no substitute for the kind of action that the Federal

Reserve has already begun to take in lowering interest rates, which

immediately runs through the economy.’’

I wonder if you could offer responses to both of those questions.

Mr. DANIELS. Yes, Mr. Chairman. A tax cut along the lines the

President-elect proposed during the campaign will be part of the

budget and should be, in my judgment, for several reasons. The

first is simply that it honors a commitment and a promise, and I

think the American people have a right to expect that officeholders

will honor faithfully those commitments on which they ran.

23

Second, the American people today are taxed at record peacetime

rates, and I think that level, now running closer to 21 than to 20

percent, argues for some moderation over time. Third, I think, and

perhaps here we will have a difference of opinion, but that the

long-term growth of the economy can only be benefited by a wellcrafted tax cut. If there is concern about the sustainability of the

surplus numbers, which depend in large measure on steady, real

growth in the economy, then this is an argument for, not against,

a measure like that, that the President-elect will propose.

Last, I would say that, in my judgment, the greater threat to the

eventual reality of the large surpluses we have comes in some of

Senator Voinovich’s writings on this subject, can speak to this same

point, really comes on the spending side. I do believe that the

greatest danger to the surpluses of the future does not come from

leaving more money in the hands of the people who earned it, but

comes from leaving more money in the hands of people here in

Washington, where we might be tempted to spend it at an imprudent rate.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Let me ask you just briefly, because my

time is up, to respond to Mr. O’Neill’s statements the other day,

about the major argument for this tax cut, its effect on stimulating

the economy right now.

Mr. DANIELS. Yes, excuse me for answering that only indirectly.

You notice I did not make a near-term stimulus argument among

those that I listed. That does not mean that a tax cut could not

have a near-term effect, and I think it would be a mistake to deny

ourselves one of the two tools of economic policy, and rely simply

on monetary policy. I will certainly defer to the Secretary-designate

of the Treasury in his caution about making that claim, and I will

simply stand on the statement that I think there are multiple, very

sound reasons for the tax cut we will propose, even if one doubts

that it will have a near-term effect.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks.

Senator Thompson.

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you very much. I had the privilege of

discussing this very issue with Mr. O’Neill in the Finance Committee when he testified, and there is nothing inconsistent with

what you have said and what he said in that context. I do think

we should not make the mistake of trying to justify the tax cuts

strictly on the basis of current economic conditions or make the

mistake of relying totally upon the monetary side of the equation

to correct things. That is always in response to something else and

it is also something that we have no control over, basically, in

terms of monetary policy.

It looks to me that, in addition to what you said, the greatest

danger to the debt retirement in the long run and the greatest danger to our ability to get a handle on the demographic time bomb

that is facing us is lack of growth in the economy, and that the real

justification for the tax cut, and especially the rate reduction, is the

stimulation to investment and thereby creating growth, long-term

growth of the economy.

With that kind of growth, we can do something about all those

things, and without sufficient growth, we cannot do anything about

any of them. Although I think there is some justification for nearVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:28 Apr 06, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 70055.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
24

term considerations and current economic considerations, as you

have said, and obviously it can be made so that withholding taxes

can be adjusted and have an immediate effect, I would urge you to

still put the major emphasis on the long-term benefit to the economy and the country in looking down the road and not simply trying to react to what is going on today or depending on the Fed to

react to what is going on today.

Getting back to these management issues, this is not something

that we get a great deal of personal pleasure out of dealing with,

at least I do not—these green eyeshade issues—when you have

more important things going on, but we are, if not the only, the

main Committee that has to deal with this. In looking at it, we

have no choice, and I have become more and more convinced that

this is the fundamental underpinnings of everything else.

It is like so many other things in government, long-term systemic

problems, whether it is entitlement program reform—the things we

all know we have to do—are so difficult to do anything about. So

we have to be extreme on the subject. That is why our staff may

be the only staff that does such a formal pre-interview in the entire

Congress, as you went through, and we appreciate that.

We have to keep coming back and back and back again. A survey

of historians and political scientists across the ideological spectrum

recently ranked improving government performance as among the

least successful of the Federal Government’s 50 greatest endeavors

over the past half-century. In looking at restoring OMB’s management role, a case can be made that OMB, in some respects, has abdicated its management responsibilities and that it has provided

little direction and leadership to agencies in implementing the Results Act, for example, that we talked about earlier.

OMB’s own Results Act strategic performance plans are among

the worst in government. They are supposed to be supervising the

Results Act and they are doing a worse job than almost anybody

else in doing what the Results Act requires these agencies to do.

That is not sustainable. One of the things we have looked at is this

1994 reorganization of OMB and the effect that has had.

It shifted most of its management staff to the budget side. The

reorganization eliminated most of the OMB positions dedicated to

management and integrated them into the budget side, the theory

there being that management issues would carry more weight if integrated with funding decisions. In practice, however, budget issues

crowded out management issues. Now you have certain people in

Congress suggesting that we ought to have a separate office of

management, outside of OMB.

So we are still reshuffling the chairs and organizational charts.

Have you had a chance to look at all of that and come to an opinion, if not a conclusion, as to what we ought to do in terms of either

reorganization or ensuring that the management side of the equation gets its due deference?

Mr. DANIELS. First, I have had a look and I have formulated

what I reserve the right to call a preliminary view, and that is this

is not an issue of structure. It may be an issue of resources. It certainly is an issue of management attention, that is, OMB management attention and follow-through. At least on the surface, prior to

an opportunity to sort of count heads and, more importantly, assess

25

talent levels. The 1994 reorganization of the outgoing administration makes good common sense to me.

Ideally, the authority vested in OMB to organize the President’s

budget, and negotiate it with the agencies and departments, offers

the greater potential when unified with the management responsibility for driving through the necessary changes. At least up to this

point, the least-promising idea I have seen would be to completely

separate management and have it as a free-floating responsibility

of an organization that might or might not have the clout and everyday contact with the agencies to get things done.

My going-in attitude is that we need to make sure that the resources are there, that the talent levels are there and certainly

that the attention is there. I do believe that it is not acceptable for

this organization or the government, in its entirety, or the Executive Branch in its entirety, to be in default on so many counts, as

apparently is the case today, across the range of this legislation

that you have enacted here. I come across areas where reports

have not been filed, where action has not been taken, therefore

where the results you seek have not been achieved.

I have a business customer who taught me the rule that if you

are not keeping score, you are just practicing, and that is a pretty

good rule. I’m careful not to too loosely analogize business and government, but there are respects in which I think the analogy is a

good one, and that is one.

Senator THOMPSON. I appreciate that. I think my time is up.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Thompson.

Senator Carper.

Senator CARPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me follow up, if

I could, on a couple of things that I mentioned in my opening statement, as well. Could we talk a bit about revenue forecasts over the

next 10 years or so? I had asked a member of my staff to bring and

to share with me a list of tax expenditures or tax credits that are

expiring or have expired. The revenue assumptions prepared by

CBO and OMB, I believe do not assume that these expired or expiring tax credits will be restored or extended, and if you look

through this list, my guess is most of them will be. I think there

is pretty broad support for extending them.

There are some related concerns with the alternative minimum

tax, that if we don’t change the current law, then a lot of folks who

are really middle-income families, and not much higher than that,

are going to end up being caught up in the alternative minimum

tax. Just share with me some thoughts you have about how much

we keep in mind those expired or expiring tax credits and what we

might need to do with the alternative minimum tax, and how that

plays back against the revenue forecasts that we are going to be

building our budgets on.

Mr. DANIELS. I think the answer comes at two levels, in terms

of a baseline, and that is what you are probably reacting to, various baseline forecasts. They are not meant to be predictive of

eventual outcomes. They are only a starting point, as we know, for

making policy decisions, whether that is the renewal of existing tax

advantages or spending programs, many of which are equally popular, but are not necessarily assumed in the baselines we use.

26

I think that at a second level, the very practical political level to

which you have directed our attention, we cannot take our eye off

that ball. The President-elect’s tax package at least partially responds to this by incorporating some, but not all of those expirations to which you allude, and partially, but not entirely, to the

AMT issue.

It is one we will have to work on together. Beyond that, I think

it would be premature for me to comment about the eventual revenue forecast we will be making.

Senator CARPER. I hope this is a fair question, but have you had

an opportunity to look at the budget surplus forecast prepared by

OMB, the most recent, and by CBO? Are you familiar with those?

Mr. DANIELS. Yes, to an extent.

Senator CARPER. Could you just take a minute and share with

me what you know, just in broad terms, of what the surplus is expected to be in either or both instances?

Mr. DANIELS. The difference, as you will have noted, is from just south of $5 trillion to just above $5.5 trillion aggregate surpluses

over 10 years. These are very large numbers, although not so large

in a 10-year context. I am struck less by the size of the differences

than by the degree of general consensus in terms of the end point

of these numbers and also the assumptions underlying them. The

range of differences, certainly on economics, is narrower than we

have often seen in the past. It does not mean they are right. They

could all be wrong, but I think it gives us a reasonable basis for

starting out the construction of a new budget, since the disparities

between these various starting points are relatively modest.

I do not know, after we have worked on the new OMB forecast,

where they will fit, but I suspect they will fit in and around that

range.

Senator CARPER. Those $5 trillion figures, do they include revenue inflows into and expenditures from the Social Security-Medicare trust funds?

Mr. DANIELS. I am sorry. Again?

Senator CARPER. Are those revenues, the budget surpluses, inclusive of inflows and outflows from the Social Security and the Medicare trust funds?

Mr. DANIELS. Yes, I believe they are.

Senator CARPER. If we back those out, and they are rather substantial, do you recall what we are left with?

Mr. DANIELS. Somewhat greater than half would be in the socalled on-budget accounts and somewhat approaching half in the

Social Security accounts.

Senator CARPER. I am a boomer. I was born in 1947, 54 years

ago next Tuesday. And in recognition of that, I have been assigned

to, among other committees, not only this one, but the Aging Committee. Among a lot of us in my generation are going to be retiring

and drawing down on Social Security roughly in 10 years, and how

will that affect those surplus numbers beyond this 10-year period

of time and should we be mindful of that?

Mr. DANIELS. We should be more than mindful, Senator. When

I think about this rather new era that we have entered, of large

surpluses, I think of it as a window of opportunity which, if seized,

can enable us to deal with the problems to which you are just

27

drawing our attention, and if passed, will make addressing them

a much more painful and severe process. As we all know, reform

done early, certainly in the entitlements area, can be much more

moderate and much less difficult than reform done at the eleventh

hour.

Now, our process has not always been known for long-term

statesmanship and for acting before the wolf is at the door, and yet

I hope, particularly presented with the opportunity of these large,

impending surpluses, whether they are closer to five or closer to six

or even somewhat lower than either number, I hope that we will

find ways to work together to bring reform to the programs on

which our generation will depend, and that would be a salutary accomplishment for all concerned.

Senator CARPER. One last question before my time expires. I

hope we will be mindful as we go forward that, again, we need to

show great caution about supporting substantial tax cuts, and I am

going to support a number of tax cuts. I think we ought to return

some of the money to the taxpayers. We need to be mindful of supporting tax cuts which kick in largely at the end of this 10-year period, at the same period of time when a lot of folks in our country

are going to be retiring and drawing down on Social Security and

Medicare.

I would ask us to continue to be mindful that we probably have

not seen the re-invention of the business cycle or the economic

cycle. There will probably be downturns. We have been lucky for

8 or 9 years. For us to assume we are not going to have a recession

for another 10 years may be the triumph of man’s hope over experience. Last point, Senator Voinovich and I have served the National

Governors Association, led it for a period of time. One of the entities we established within the National Governors Association to

help governors be better managers was something called the Center for Best Practices, which I believe he chaired and which I

chaired, as well.

One of the great things about the National Governors Association

is it really exists as an entity not just to lobby the Congress and

so forth, but to enable us to identify what is working, to solve our

problems in our various States and to enable us to steal those best

ideas. Too often, it seems to me that Federal agencies exist to issue

rules and regulations, but not so often to share ideas of what is

working. As you go forward on the management side of your quest

here, as others have spoken to earlier, you may want to keep in

mind how we share best practices amongst governors and to see if

perhaps the Federal agencies could not some how encourage that

as well at the Federal level.

Mr. DANIELS. I appreciate that advice very much, Senator, and

my interest in doing that is not conditional. It is clear to me that

the ties between OMB and the new administration in general, and

the State and local officials of this country should be much tighter

than they may have been recently, and better management practices is a good place to start, but I am a Federalist, and I think

we have seen a great reinvigoration of State Government, and also

local government, over the last couple of decades. You were a leader and a participant in that.

28

I think that, on a host of fronts, we will be well advised to consult very carefully and I plan to do so on a regular basis, with the

National Governors Association and with like organizations, to

make sure that, in all the ways in which we interact, in all the

ways in which our fiscal policies are tied to each other, as well as

the management successes that are happening there in the famous

laboratories of democracy, are learned about and are brought home

to the benefit of the Federal Government and Federal taxpayers.

Senator CARPER. Thanks very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr.

Daniels.

Senator Voinovich.

Senator VOINOVICH. I can testify that you are a Federalist. I was

President of the National League of Cities, and working with you

as Mayor of the city of Cleveland, there is no question about it, and

I am glad to hear you reaffirm your commitment to that. I would

like to build on the questions that Senator Carper mentioned, the

baby boomers. We talk about the 10-year budget surplus and, by

the way, one of the Senators pointed out that the end of that 10-

year period is 2 years after President Bush will leave office. Also

at the end of that 10-year period is the baby boomers.

We talk about global warming. I think we need to talk about

global aging. It seems to me that any of the decisions that we make

about our financial decisions ought to also have that in the backdrop of that decision-making, because 1 day we are going to have

to pay the piper, and too often in this government we have not

done that.

Second, the projections—there is going to be a lot of debate about

the projections, and I think Senator Carper mentioned the assumptions that some of the tax benefits that we have will go off. I do

not think they will. I think most of them are pretty good. We will

extend them, and that will change the number. You talked about

the surplus in Medicare Part B. As you know, supposedly the Social Security surplus is not included and we have taken care of

that, but the fact is the budget projections also include on the onbudget surplus Part A of Medicare, I think that, from a fiscal point

of view, they ought to be taken off the table in calculating your onbudget surplus.

You get the issue of growth in the economy, spending. There are

certain presumptions about spending and I can tell from the last

couple of years around here, God help us if we do not have a President that shows some restraint about spending. So all of those

things, I think, are things you are going to have to contend with,

because we will be debating those assumptions and those projections. Also, something maybe you have not thought about, but we

do have a $98 billion projected surplus for the 2001 budget.

I heard Senator Stevens say he is coming over to see you, and

I can assure you that you will get some supplementary appropriations bill suggested to you. Right now, we have already spent 12

percent more in the 2001 budget for non-defense discretionary

spending and 8 percent more for discretionary spending than last

year. Any new supplemental spending is going to add to that percentage increase, and so you are going to have a battle with that.

29

On the other side of the coin, I think you better look at the projections in this budget in terms of Medicare and Medicaid spending. When I became Governor of Ohio, Medicaid was the Pac Man

in State Government, eating away at education, secondary and primary, and other State spending. We brought it under control, and

the reform of the welfare system has helped us.

In fact, in 1997, we spent less money on Medicaid than we did

the year before, but last year, and Ohio is in a crisis in terms of

Medicaid, 15-percent increase in Medicaid spending last year. I do

not know what the projections were in this 2001 budget, but the

Federal Government has benefited from what the States have done,

and now we are a 60–40 State. So you pick up 60 percent of that

Medicaid spending. I am saying there are some things right now

that need to be looked at, and we have this tendency to just use

these big numbers and forget about the details, and I think that

is a real problem.

The last thing is—in response to a question in your pre-hearing

questionnaire—you said that you planned, ‘‘To make sure we retain

and hire quality people at OMB and ensure they have the necessary resources to meet their responsibilities.’’ As you will find, I

think this is going to be easier said than done. Many talented

young people view the Federal Government as an employer of last

resort, and agencies across the government are finding it very difficult to attract the best and brightest people.

The question I have is how you are going to accomplish your goal

of hiring and retaining high-quality personnel at OMB, and then

beyond that how are you going to deal with some the problems that

other agencies are going to be having in the Federal Government,

as we talked about in the report that we gave the President, ‘‘The

Crisis in Human Capital.’’ GAO has also designated human capital

management as a high-risk area. I would like to know your

thoughts on it, and as Senator Thompson was asking, how do you

manage that? Are you going to have a management czar? How are

you going to make sure you do not get so involved in the budget

side of this that management is neglected, as it has been for so

many years around here?

Mr. DANIELS. All very fair questions. First of all, with regard to

quality at OMB, and I do not for a moment want to underestimate

the challenges we may have, I do suspect OMB may prove to be

the exception that proves the rule. It is a place full of tremendously

talented people today. I suspect they are there and that their successors can be recruited for reasons often mentioned at this hearing, the opportunity for service, a real service there, across the

range of the budget, management, and regulatory policy, I hope

will continue to excite and attract the top talent. That has certainly

been the case in the past. It was my observation in my previous

tour of duty and it is my impression in these few short days back

in town that OMB is fortunate enough to reflect the highest standards of public service and the highest ethic of public service.

That said, if it is true, I recognize we may be uniquely graced

there, and everything I have read in your report on the human capital problem tells me there is not a moment to lose in trying to coordinate progress across the rest of the government. Moved by your

words and this Committee’s work, I added to my schedule of visits

30

last week a lengthy visit over at GAO with David Walker. I plan

to make that a very tight partnership. As far as I am concerned,

their work, like your Committee’s work, provides us with marching

orders.

I have told my potential colleagues-to-be we have got our hands

full, but one problem we do not have is figuring out what to do.

A roadmap has been laid out for us and our initial challenge will

be deciding where to start. I thank you for your cautions on the

spending side. I already have detected most of the visitors I receive

are not there to help me get the $98 billion figure up into three

digits, that they are probably interested in using some of it to some

good purpose.

We like to say in Indiana, I was born at night, but not last night.

Last, I, for one, believe that we ought to take an open stance, at

least temporarily, on this whole matter of a supplemental, which

you mentioned. This may again be sort of a newcomer’s prerogative, but I hope that in some respects, and this may be a bad example, that as the new kid in town I will have the privilege for a little

while to ask exactly why do we do things this way.

One of the few instances I could give is the notion that before

the ink is even dry on the budget just written, that we have suddenly discovered a lot of other things that have to be addressed in

a supplemental appropriation bill. I recognize that events can intervene and there may be new needs, but I, for one, hope that we

will at least ask this as a new question each time, not allow it to

become, as it may have, sort of an annual rite of spring.

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Voinovich.

Senator Levin.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN

Senator LEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, let me add my

congratulations to you on your appointment. Thank you for your

willingness to serve again in government, and thank your family

for their support of you again coming back into really one of the

most difficult jobs that there is in government, to both spend the

right amount of money and spend it wisely, the budget side and the

management side both equally important.

There is nothing more important at OMB than to tell it straight,

no cookbooks, no shading, no politics in forecasting. OMB has done

that recently. Your compliment of Jack Lew, by the way, your very

gracious compliment of him in your opening statement is very

much appreciated and is offered in the most bipartisan of spirits,

and that is also appreciated.

I have a couple of questions on the disclosure question that you

answered in your answers to the preliminary questions that were

submitted to you. When reviewing rules, the question is whether

or not the public should know where that rule is being reviewed,

and we had an experience at OMB many years ago where the office, the OMB, through its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, was playing a major role in the regulatory process, but it was

secret. Nobody knew it. No one knew when a regulation was going

from an agency to OMB, and therefore it happened too often that

people who had access to OMB, who were using that access, while

31

people who had no access were not even aware of the fact that the

rule was at OMB.

I happen to think it is legitimate for OMB to have that role because I think we ought to hold elected officials, the President, accountable for regulations. I believe in that accountability, so I have

supported the OMB role. But we worked out finally, during the

Bush years and during the Clinton years, a process to make sure

that was an open process. The key question, your response to the

question for the record was that documents that flowed between

the agency and the OMB should be made public, but you left out

of your answer the question of whether or not the public should be

made aware, as it is now, that a rule has been forwarded to OMB

for its review, so that anybody who wanted to weigh in with OMB

would have the opportunity to weigh in with you or OIRA.

So my question is whether or not you would support the continuation of that kind of openness? You, in general, said you favor disclosure, but specifically do you believe we ought to continue the

current disclosure rules, including the notice to the public that a

rule has been forwarded to OMB?

Mr. DANIELS. I will say, Senator, that I think that the moves

that were made to have greater transparency in the process were

necessary and useful and, in general, should be preserved. I will

say that I have not yet had the opportunity to read through the

current executive order in all respects. I cannot say there is not

some respect in which it ought not be amended, but as a general

rule, I think we are in better shape today, a better balance has

been struck than may have been the case before, and I think these

changes certainly took the process in the right direction. So I would

like to stop short of a promise, but I am sympathetically inclined.

Senator LEVIN. Thank you. Will you work very closely with this

Committee before any changes are made in that process? It took a

long time to put in place. Would you notify us and give us an opportunity—and we may not all be of the same view, I do not want

to suggest that, but this Committee, as a Committee, has been

deeply involved in this and before any changes are made, would

you notify our Chairman and Ranking Member of any proposed

changes in that?

Mr. DANIELS. Yes, I think that is not only appropriate, but necessary under the circumstances.

Senator LEVIN. Well, it is an executive order, so it may not be—

whether it is or not——

Mr. DANIELS. It may not be legally necessary, but I think that

given the legitimate interest of this Committee and the way that

responsibility is undertaken at OMB, that it is a more-than-appropriate request and we would consult.

Senator LEVIN. Thank you. I know that Senator Carper and, I

think, others have asked you about some of the budget projections,

and I missed some of the earlier testimony perhaps on this. Senator Lieberman asked a number of questions for the record in

which you addressed what the projected surplus is and how the

Bush tax plan fits in with that and so forth. Let me start by asking

you whether you believe that Medicare should enjoy the same protection of its surplus as Social Security does of its surplus?

32

In answer to Senator Carper’s question about that $5 trillion, I

think you left out the Medicare surplus in your calculation and

only included the Social Security surplus. But, in any event, why

should Medicare not receive the same protection in terms of its surplus as you want to give to the Social Security surplus, or do you

agree that it should?

Mr. DANIELS. I do not agree. I think we need to be very careful,

not talking too loosely about Medicare surpluses. Viewed in a unified fashion, Medicare does not run a surplus. Medicare costs more

money than it raises in its dedicated revenue stream. Therefore, I

think that we need to be careful not to delude ourselves about the

long-term issues facing Medicare, which I think most people would

agree may be even more foreboding and serious than those facing

Social Security.

So I think that a degree of real caution is in order. We could

allow the concept of a Medicare surplus, which exists in Part A, but

not in toto, to obscure the need for real reform, to which this administration will be committed as a fairly early priority. So for that

reason, I would be very hesitant to see us treat those funds in the

same way we do Social Security, which I think is quite in order.

Senator LEVIN. Whether you treat them that way or not, you start with that approximately $5 trillion figure. If you are going to

protect a Social Security surplus of $2 trillion, that leaves you $3

trillion. If you are not going to cut into the expenditures for Medicare or not cut into the surplus, however you want to frame it, you

are down to $2 trillion, roughly. The estimate by OMB of the President-elect’s tax cut, starting with fiscal year 2001, is $2 trillion,

which leaves nothing for debt reduction, prescription drug program

or any of the other things to which commitments have been made,

including here, and I am glad to hear you make that strong commitment to debt reduction, by the way. I think that is absolutely

essential and I was delighted to hear you phrase it the way you

did.

But if you are committed to debt reduction, as I believe you are,

and if there is going to be any room for things like a prescription

drug program, and unless you cut into the Medicare expenditures

or surplus, however you want to frame it, and if you protect the

Social Security surplus, there is no room for that full $2 trillion

President-elect’s tax cut. Something has got to give, and I would

like to know what are your priorities, as between the tax cut proposed by the President and the debt reduction which you so strongly support. As between those two, which has the higher priority?

Mr. DANIELS. It’s an essential priority that we deliver tax relief

to the American people, and I am absolutely confident that can be

done consistent with dramatic levels of debt reduction. The numbers you just cited, you will not be surprised to know, I don’t subscribe to, at least from my preliminary look. I think that there will

be substantially more flexibility than might have been suggested

there. I already know a few reasons, perhaps honest errors in assumption, why that would be the case.

To answer your question directly, I think these are both imperative priorities for the new administration and I think we can walk

and chew gum.

Senator LEVIN. Thank you.

33

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks. Mr. Daniels, it strikes me that

the fact we are sitting here and you are sitting there deprives you

of the pleasure of watching your parents as you are testifying, and

they are very proud. Your mother has a particularly maternal look

of pleasure and pride, so I wanted to report that to you here halfway through your testimony.

Senator LEVIN. Except for that last answer, where she totally

agreed with me, I want you to know that. [Laughter.]

Mr. DANIELS. The Committee has no way of knowing this, but

this is easily the longest my mother has ever sat this close to me

without either giving me advice or talking in a way I can hear. So

it is a measure of her respect for you all. [Laughter.]

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Ms. Daniels, if you would like to come up

to the microphone—— [Laughter.]

Thank you.

Senator Cochran.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the things

that I have come to observe during my tenure here in the Congress

since 1973, 6 years over in the House and the rest of the time here

in the Senate, is that the budget process, like almost no other process in government, is the victim of a lot of political gamesmanship.

A phrase you just used, I think, illustrates one of the problems.

You talked about honest errors in assumptions being made. Well,

in the budget process, I think there are a lot of dishonest errors

in assumptions that are made, and not just by the Executive

Branch, but by the Congress, as well. We are operating under a

statute right now that prescribes limited caps on discretionary

spending, the Budget Act of 1997, which the Congress passed and

the President signed.

The appropriations in this fiscal year exceed those statutory

budget caps. The budget that is going to be submitted by the Executive Branch shortly for the next fiscal year has to be under the

terms of that law, within the caps. That forces the administration

to make dishonest errors in assumptions. And here is how some of

that works, just from my previous observation as chairman of one

of the Appropriations subcommittees, which I have had the responsibility of chairing for the last 12 years, the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. The administration, in its budget request, will

ask for funds for the Department of Agriculture, for discretionary

spending within the budget caps, but it provides in the budget submission assumptions that there will be user fees imposed by Congress through the enactment of legislation for such things as meat

and poultry inspection, egg production inspection, a wide variety of

other user fees. In the Food and Drug Administration area, for example, which is funded also in this bill, there will be the assumption that the pharmaceutical industry, with which you are familiar,

will have to pay new user fees in response to legislative enactments

by the Congress.

The Office of Management and Budget and the President himself

have to know full well that the Congress is not going to enact those

bills that are assumed to have been agreed upon by Congress or

will be enacted and provide the revenues in time for them to be

available to offset increases in expenditures that are being requested by the administration in its budget. So we start off the

34

process with it being contaminated and we wonder why there is no

credibility when Congress talks about balancing the budget, brags

about it. The President brags about how his policies have forced a

balancing of the budget and all these surpluses are being generated

because of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and it is not on the

level. It is not an honest error in assumption or pronouncement.

So I hope that as you embark upon this new undertaking, which

is enormous in its importance, in my view, that you lend a voice

in the administration to suggesting that we at least start out talking in an honest, forthright way with the American people and

with each other on the subject of budgeting. There are a lot of buzz

words that capture imagination and people think this will fix it.

Let’s do biennial budgeting. That will fix it. It may help. I support

that. Let’s try that. There are other suggested fixes.

Lockboxes have a great appeal. The pollsters will tell you, when

you talk about putting Social Security trust fund monies in a

lockbox, the American people respond favorably to that. So, if it

feels good, do it. If it sounds good, say it. I mean, we have come

to government by pushing buttons to see if something is warm or

hot or cold, positive or negative, on some kind of graph. We are not

thinking through to the realities of the process and what really is

going to be required in order to achieve the results we want. It is

about who gets the credit and who gets the blame.

So I am hopeful that you can help breathe some new candor into

the process as Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

I wish I could promise the same for all the Committees and Subcommittees of the Congress or even the Senate, or even this Committee, but I do not have the power to deliver that. But I do want

you to know that it would, I think, do a great deal to restore confidence in the integrity of the budget process and confidence in government, in general, if we could accomplish that in some way.

A couple of other things that have been said—I am supposed to

be asking you questions and not making a speech. So my question

will be what is your response to that? [Laughter.]

Let me get my other question asked and then you can respond

to two things at once. There has been much said about restoring

management responsibilities to your office and that, of course, is

very important. But one thing I think ought to be encouraged, as

well, and that is: Do not go too far to extend the ‘‘M’’ in OMB to

the management of the judiciary or the legislative branch.

This administration that is coming to an end now got off to a

pretty shaky start by vetoing the first legislative appropriations bill

that was submitted to the President. I am still trying to figure out

exactly why it was done, other than to just say, ‘‘We are going to

be tough. We are going to require Congress to live within its

means, too.’’ It was a political signal, I think. It was part of the

gamesmanship that we were going to endure or deal with for 8

years. It led to all kinds of difficulties, shutting down government,

all kinds of things that we can look back on now and say should

not have happened.

The judiciary, for example, is required to submit a budget request, but the Office of Management and Budget has been massaging it and taking out things, deleting things from the Judiciary

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tion, for example, and then adding the money for other things, to

stay within the caps probably, if we go back to the real reason. It

is not just to be mean or to exercise power, but I think there is

some arbitrary exercise of power by OMB over the other two coequal branches of government that has been unnecessary and illadvised.

I hope as you embark upon these duties, you will look at that

and see if that aspect of the job cannot be improved. What is your

response to my two observations?

Mr. DANIELS. To thank you for two important questions, which

I will answer, and a third you did not ask that I will answer by

way of augmenting my response. First of all, I do not doubt that

in this arcane world of budgeting, the processes and disciplines

that have been put in place in recent years, that I will collide with

brute reality on a regular basis. But I do want to say that my attitude as I embark would be to try to establish a reputation for candor and honesty and a starting point that either creates a consensus or is near the consensus.

It has struck me recently that for the last 14 years in two different endeavors, I have lived in places where data really was held

sacred. Integrity of data was decisive. In the company I may be

leaving, we make life or death decisions over hundreds of millions

of dollars in spending—small potatoes, I know here, but large to

us—and trust the data and allow ourselves to be driven by it. We

have a saying at our place: If you torture the data long enough, it

will confess. I hope that to the extent data has been massaged or

occasionally bent or misused here, we can begin to bring that down.

With regard to the other branches of government, I guess I have

two comments. One, that both constitutionally, and in the practices

that we bring to the budget, OMB is not meant to have much to

do with those levels. Two, as was illustrated throughout this hearing, we have got more than enough to do worrying about the parts

of government for which we are responsible.

So I take that caution and I will look into the subject. I am

aware there have been some recent controversies and I would hope

they would not be renewed in the future. One last comment. It

seemed to me that as you pointed out, the caps, the disciplinary

mechanisms that have been in place recently have led now—certainly in an era of surpluses—have led to these perverse situations

and maybe some gamesmanship and so forth. My reaction looking

at this in these last 2 or 3 weeks is we do need to work together

with the Congress on some mechanism that is suited to the new

era, but I think some mechanism will be needed, for the reasons

I gave. The temptation to excess that we could face if the surpluses

materialize, I think will be a risk if we do not find some new mechanism, some modernized, updated mechanism, to replace that

which is due to expire next year.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much.

Mr. Daniels, it is my intention to have myself and the other

Members who are still here to have an opportunity for a 7-minute

round. Do you want to take a personal break or are you OK to go

forward?

Mr. DANIELS. I am OK to go forward.

36

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Great. I wanted to get back to the question of economic growth and government policy toward it. It seems

over time we have learned some things about all this, and one of

them is government does not create jobs or economic growth, but

it can certainly create the context in which the private sector can

create growth. One of the best things we can do is what we talked

about earlier, and that is debt reduction and a balanced budget.

It seems to me the other thing we have learned, certainly in recent years, is the central role of innovation that has driven so

much of the growth in our economy, and that is a critical area

where the government, through supporting education or research

and development grants for basic research, can actually plant the

seeds that lead to economic growth. The second element of growth,

of course, is to match up capital with that innovation, the money

to make it go.

So I have two questions in that regard. One is if you would generally speak about what you would take to be the position of the

incoming administration on the question of governmental support

of basic research and development. Talk about a subject that is not

sexy, this is it, but it seems to me this is what has led to so many

of the extraordinary new industries that we have.

The second is about the availability of capital, and clearly balanced budgets, lower interest rates make access to capital easier,

but tax policy can, too. For much of the 1990’s, I was involved in

an effort to reduce the capital gains tax, which reached bipartisan

fruition in the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, or as part of that, and

I do think it has been one of the factors that has helped the growth

over the last years.

I am interested that President-elect Bush, as far as I can tell,

has not included a capital gains tax reduction in his tax proposal.

So my second question is whether you would urge him to consider

a capital gains tax reduction in this next stage of our economic history?

Mr. DANIELS. On the subject of investments in R&D, it seems to

me that a pretty strong consensus has grown up that at least

through certain vectors, such as the NIH, as one example, these

are excellent investments that ought to be increased. The President-elect has certainly committed himself to a policy of substantial

further increases, and you can look for those in our budget.

I think that these ought to each be examined individually as we

move forward. The fact that some government spending on R&D

has proven successful does not mean that it always does, and I

think we have seen many examples in the past in which we went

down a dead end, spent a lot of money, but in the end found that

government was not particularly skilled at identifying the highestreturn investments, long-term investments of this kind.

Where we can see it is working, it ought to be reenforced. On the

capital gains question, I will just associate myself with the comments of the Treasury Secretary-designate, who I believe indicated

that we think that the reductions of recent years have proven

themselves and there may be a time in which that is appropriate

again. As a matter of priority, the outline of the President’s tax

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duction, along with the other lesser pieces of that proposal, ought

to come first.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I understand what you are saying, but

you are open to considering capital gains reductions in the future?

Mr. DANIELS. Within the context of preserving surpluses at an

appropriate level.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Let me just say a brief word in response

to your answer on innovation, which is I agree that NIH has been

a productive place to invest our funds. One of the things that I

have learned around here over the last several years is that we

have tended, I suppose for the reason we all as people naturally

identify with NIH, because it is directly related to cures for illnesses that plague us, but that not only the new economy, but also,

in fact, health depend as well on investments in the more traditional physical sciences, like chemistry and physics, for instance.

I hope that the administration will—and that is the National

Science Foundation and other recipients like that.

Mr. DANIELS. Yes.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Let me go for a moment—one of my other

major Committees is the Armed Services Committee, and to me

this is one of the areas that is really crying out for additional support. Both candidates for President spoke to this, Members of both

parties here have spoken to it. It was true of the hearing last week

for Secretary-designate of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld, but I must say

the numbers that at least have been talked about thus far, seem

to me to be below the need.

The President-elect proposed a $45 billion increase over 10 years for defense during the campaign, $9 billion for, roughly, pay increases and $36 billion for R&D. Vice President Gore and I, I do

not know whether it suggests that we are hawks or big spenders,

but doubled that to $110 billion over 10 years. You will find— maybe you already have—that the Joint Chiefs are well beyond either of those numbers and can make a pretty good case. In fact,

Secretary Cohen just this week, in his fiscal year 2002 request, has

recommended $52.7 billion additional funding for the 5 years.

So I wanted to ask you what priority you would put on defense

spending from the $5.7 trillion projected surplus that we have?

Mr. DANIELS. It is an easy question to answer in the first instance, Mr. Chairman. The national defense is the first priority of

government, above and beyond all others. I think that is true constitutionally and in every other respect. With regard to how that

plays out in the budget, I think it is premature to talk about numbers. The President-elect, I think quite correctly, in more than one

context during the past year, talked about reform before resources,

language to that effect, and I think that general approach ought to

apply here, too.

Now, there may well be some very immediate needs, some backlog, some problems that need to be addressed right now, and the

appropriate officials in the administration will weigh that. But it

is also the right moment for more than one reason—new administration, time for a quadrennial review and so forth—for a good bottom-up look. We are looking at a very different world, as more

learned people than I have frequently talked about lately. We want

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edly will over time involve more spending, that we are designing

and funding the true needs of tomorrow.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I look forward to working with you on

that. Thanks.

Senator Thompson.

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you very much. Your discussion with

Senator Lieberman reminds me of some things that I have been

concerned about for a long time, and that is how important it is

to keep the focus on the real problem here, and that has to do with

the mandatory spending side of things. I sometimes think that we,

especially those of us who call ourselves conservatives, spend so

much time on the discretionary part and how we are doing there

that we convince people that is where the action is.

The fact of the matter is the Federal Government needs to be

spending more money in some areas on the discretionary side. We

are in some respects letting our infrastructure crumble. You can go

down to my State and see the Great Smoky Mountain National

Park really deteriorating markedly because of environmental concerns. I am sure at other national parks the same things are happening. Regarding our weapons facilities, which people do not care

much about these days, there is not a lot of discussion about them,

but they are really in very bad condition.

Research and development is one of the things the Federal Government does better. We have dozens of programs for juvenile

crime, for example. We have no idea which ones are working and

which ones are not. Why can’t the Federal Government do more in

terms of studying the problem—call it research, if you want to— and be a clearinghouse for all the things that are going on out

here, all the programs that various States have and all the various

programs that we have, and see what is working and then tell the

States what the results of that are?

We could do the same thing in education, I think. So research

and development can save us money. All those things on the discretionary side where we really need more. I think the term investment is a legitimate term to use there, but none of it can be done.

It is one-third of the budget now. Two-thirds are out here. Unless

we reform that, unless we do something markedly different with

regard to those two-thirds, the one-third is going to continue to get

squeezed out. The most ardent fiscal conservative needs to recognize that there are some things the Federal Government ought to

be doing better and more of.

So to the extent you can keep the focus where it needs to be and

reminding people over and over again, as we should here, that we

ought to keep our eye on the ball and how important it is to do

something in terms of real reform with regard to some of these

mandatory spending programs.

Getting back to the management, you are familiar with the biennial GAO high-risk list. We mentioned that earlier. I know that

you are aware of the fact we started keeping up with this in 1990.

Since then, over half of the agencies that were on the list when we

started out in 1990 are still on the list. What do you think about

that? What can be done about that? I know when you look at that

as a manager and as a businessperson and as a person experienced

in how government operates, some thoughts come to your mind

39

about what might be done about that. Can you share any of those

with us now?

Mr. DANIELS. Yes, sir. I think disclosure and honest assessment

is always the predecessor to accountability, and I think that, on the

one hand, one cannot claim that some of these problem areas have

not been amply disclosed before. Your reports point out several

areas in which that disclosure has been incomplete, in the area of

improper payments, for example. So I would look forward to more

active, more aggressive, more candid assessment of where our problems lie. This alone can sometimes spur action on the part of the

entity about whom the disclosures are being made, but this has to

be followed up by intense focus. We will have to pick our shots. We

will not be able to do all 25 or 26 of those areas, let alone those

urgent areas you have marked off that are not yet on that list. We

will look to start somewhere.

Senator THOMPSON. It seems to me it is a matter of accountability. Clearly people are not concerned about remaining on the

list. They are required to come up here once a year and get fussed

on a little bit, and then they go back. We ought to do away with

the list if we are not going to do anything about it, because we are

sending a bad message. We are sending a message to managers

that it doesn’t matter, that nobody really cares, and they can continue. I would be embarrassed to be part of an organization that

did not make any improvements in areas like that after a decade.

Mr. DANIELS. This is why I favor the continued and maybe

strengthened integration of budget and management functions.

Senator THOMPSON. I was exempting the U.S. Congress from

that, of course, as I think about it.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. The record will so note. [Laughter.]

Mr. DANIELS. Again, I do not want to too blithely compare business and government, but in the businesses I have been a part of,

a budget plan would not be welcome, would be sent back marked

incomplete, if it did not indicate the results that it was intended

to accomplish in some well-defined way that can be measured later

on. Another of what I am sure is a long list of naive hopes I have,

but on which I am going to try to act, is to inform my new colleagues in the Cabinet and elsewhere of the opportunity we have

to do a little better if they will join with me, with you, in trying

to behave in this way.

Senator THOMPSON. You mentioned more people being required

to report. As you know, most agencies do not even keep up with

that. I think you are right as far as that is concerned. Regarding

the area of personnel flexibilities, what role do you see for OPM?

Should more agencies be granted personnel flexibilities outside the

scope of the current framework? If so, do you favor an agency-byagency approach, or do you believe we ought to develop a systemwide approach in granting flexibility—the IRS and others, as you

know, and some ask the question, I think legitimately, where the

more trouble you get into the more flexibility you get, is that good

and if it is a good idea, why shouldn’t we apply it governmentwide?

Mr. DANIELS. Maybe we should. Obviously we deal with the

trade-off here between flexibility and fairness to those who are the

workers who live under the—maybe the relaxed rules. But from

40

what I have read and learned so far about the urgency of the problems across these agencies, I think that flexibility may need to take

priority. It is very hard for me to imagine that the Federal Government can even maintain, let alone restore the sort of productivity

levels, high talent levels, attraction to new people and so forth that

we obviously need with archaic rules that bind too tightly the

hands of the folks who are supposed to get that done.

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you.

Senator Voinovich.

Senator VOINOVICH. On the high-risk areas, I think you and I

talked about it—I did not talk to the Chairman about it, but I

thought we would have early hearings on the high-risk area, then

bring in the departments that are responsible for dealing with

them, and then bring them back every 6 months to see what

progress they are making, so that at the end of a period of time,

we will find out whether or not we are making progress.

In terms of the flexibility, the areas that have the best flexibility

for hiring today are the IRS, the FAA, and GAO. As you know, Mr.

Chairman, we have made some recommendations on how we would

become more flexible, but my feeling is that perhaps you ought to

identify those agencies that are most vulnerable and maybe come

back to Congress and ask for the same kind of flexibility that you

have in those other three agencies to get started, as we study your

utilizing the tools you already have and then think about other

ways that maybe we can go government-wide to deal with this hiring problem that we have.

I used to have a saying when I was governor: If you cannot measure it, do not do it. I have got to tell you something. You have got

a real problem measuring things here. I know in response to our

questions about coordinating programs among agencies, that we

looked into that early last year. In HHS and Education on early

childhood, there was no coordination whatsoever. They subsequently put together a 40-member task force and finally came up

with some really good things, but it seems to me that one challenge

you are going to have is to see those agencies that have similar

programs and see if you can get them to work together better, and

then determine how you measure.

We have 69 early childhood programs in 9 agencies, and I asked

GAO, how do we determine whether any of them are doing any

good, and they still have not come back with an answer as to how

you evaluate whether they are working or not. All we do, it seems

to me, is add programs and we never look at the ones that we already have to determine whether we still need those programs. You

need to put something together, and I do not know whether you

have thought about it or not, but I would be interested in your

thoughts.

Mr. DANIELS. My thoughts are very parallel to those I read in the

output of this Committee. You have spoken about results, not intentions, and that is really a good place to start. We have got to

get away from a mentality in which the measurement of our commitment to progress in any of these areas is dollars of input. It

needs to be insistence on output. I tried to respond to some of the

written questions about measurement and metrics on the basis of

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mistakes I have made and seen made in the past, measurements

that suffer from false precision, over-complexity, measuring too

many things. This can be a way to obfuscate the whole question.

If, in fact, there are—and the number I memorized was 90 early

childhood programs in 13 agencies, or if there are 50 homeless programs in 8, and that is the tally that I think you came to, then

somebody has got to get about the business, even if it is in a roughcut way, of figuring out which are the best 10 or 15, which probably deserve more emphasis, and which are the worst 10 or 15 or

20 that ought to be scrutinized very severely?

Our first goal, I think, ought to be to get the agencies themselves

to live up to their responsibility under the Results Act, and where

there are duplications, to try to get to some kind of reasonable conformity. But if they will not, maybe we can find a way to do it.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Voinovich, for your

contributions to the hearing.

Mr. Daniels, it pains me to end this hearing, because with it also

ends my brief, but, I am sure you will agree, impressive term as

Chairman of this Committee. [Laughter.]

Mr. DANIELS. I feel uniquely privileged to have been the subject

of your leadership.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Mother Daniels, do you have anything

you would like to say?

Mr. DANIELS. Please. [Laughter.]

Mrs. DANIELS. No. You have been very kind.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you. I was thinking, there is an

old—I have heard it credited to Hubert Humphrey when he was

once introduced with very flattering words; he got up and he said

he wished that his mother and father had been there to hear the

introduction. His father would have enjoyed it and his mother

would have believed it. [Laughter.]

I think both your mother and father have enjoyed and believed

all the good words that had been said about you, and you have

done very well this morning. I appreciate your testimony.

Senator THOMPSON. I got the impression that you probably experienced some of the things that some of us experience sometimes,

that our mothers are surprised how smart we are, supposedly.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Mr. Daniels, the record will remain open

for the rest of the day on this hearing for the submission of written

questions for you and any written statements for the official record,

and then we will try to act with dispatch to consider and I would

guess approve your nomination and recommend it favorably to the

Senate.

I thank you very much for your testimony today.

The Committee stands in recess.

[Whereupon, at 1:02 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

(43)

A P P E N D I X

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA

Mr. Daniels, I join my colleagues in welcoming you and your

family today. The office to which you are nominated is one of the

most influential in any administration, and I believe you are wellqualified to carry out its responsibilities.

Although we were unable to meet personally before today’s hearing, I have reviewed your qualifications and understand why the

President-elect has great confidence in your ability to serve as a

senior economic advisor. As the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, you will influence all budgetary and policy matters within the Executive Branch. It is an undertaking that will require laying aside personal views in order to bring about policies

that are not only effective, but fair and equitable as well.

As the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on International

Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services, I am interested in sitting down with you to discuss how to ensure that the Federal Government attract, retain, and train qualified employees to carry out

the functions of government. There are many issues facing our Federal civil service, and I am committed to their well-being. I also

look forward to working with you on the implementation of OMB

Directive 15. I appreciate your candor in answering the Committee’s questions this morning.

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