Date: 2004-01-28
Speaker: TOM DAVIS (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Virginia

Mr. Chairman. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman. for years we have been sounding the alarm that the Federal Government faces grave danger when it comes to losing highly specialized employees. NASA is certainly no exception. In fact. it leads the pack. Fifteen percent of NASAs workforce is currently eligible to retire. A quarter of the agency will be eligible to retire over the next 5 years. Scientists and engineers over 60 outnumber those under 30 by nearly three to one. The potential loss of institutional knowledge is staggering. Why are we in the midst of a human capital crisis? When it comes to the kind of very smart. very welleducated. highly specialized people who work in our space program? It is largely because we are competing directly with the higherpaying private sector firms. But it is also because when it comes to the civil service. preserving traditions has become a tradition unto itself. and I think it is time to change that tradition. NASA. as well as the country as a whole. scored a major victory this month by safely landing two unmanned rovers on the face of Mars. In order to make sure that NASAs successes such as this outweigh its failures. we need to provide NASA with as much flexibility as possible in order to recruit and retain the best and the brightest that this country has to offer for our space program. . The simple fact is that NASAs personnel policies are dated and are holding the agency back. The modernization that this bipartisan legislation promises marks a significant step in the right direction for NASA. for the government. for science and for taxpayers. It has been over a year since NASA Administrator Sean OKeefe first came to Capitol Hill requesting these muchneeded personnel flexibilities. And while I wish we could have responded sooner. I am pleased to be here today to see the legislation finally making its way through the process. The Committee on Government Reform. which I chair. marked up similar legislation last May. and the House Committee on Science marked up the legislation last July. I want to thank my friend and colleague. the chairman of theCommittee on Science. the gentleman from New York for his tremendous efforts in moving this important legislation forward. as well as the subcommittee chairman. the gentleman from California . and the ranking minority members as well. and I look forward to working with them in the future to improve workforce flexibilities available to NASA. as well as to other Federal agencies that work to expand the frontier of science. One of the difficulties we have in recruiting employees today for NASA and other agencies. is that when they go to a job fair and they talk to a college recruiter. by the time they go back and go through all the rules and regulations in hiring. sometimes background checks. it is months before they can put an offer on the table. In the meantime. the private sector is up there withhiring bonuses. and they are up there with an offer on the table immediately with a job guarantee. We cannot compete in that kind of environment. I know some of my friends on the Committee on Science on the other side of the aisle are concerned about paying bonuses. but this is commonplace in the private sector with which we are competing. We are talking about some of the brightest people in the world. scientists. engineers. literally rocket scientists that we want running our space program. We do not want to go second tier with people who are salaried and getting bogged down making sometimes onetenth of what they could make in the private sector. It does not work that way. So I support this legislation. and I am proud to see it moving forward. Mr. Chairman. I reserve the balance of my time.