[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
HEARING ON PERSPECTIVES ON HOUSE REFORM: COMMITTEES AND THE EXECUTIVE
BRANCH
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RULES
of the
SELECT COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 10, 2003
__________
Serial No. 108-15
__________
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Homeland Security
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
house
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
95-872 WASHINGTON : DC
____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800
Fax: (202) 512�092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402�090001
SELECT COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Christopher Cox, California, Chairman
Jennifer Dunn, Washington Jim Turner, Texas, Ranking Member
C.W. Bill Young, Florida Bennie G. Thompson, MississPpi
Don Young, Alaska Loretta Sanchez, California
F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts
Wisconsin Norman D. Dicks, Washington
W.J. (Billy) Tauzin, Louisiana Barney Frank, Massachusetts
David Dreier, California Jane Harman, California
Duncan Hunter, California Benjamin L. Cardin, Maryland
Harold Rogers, Kentucky Louise McIntosh Slaughter, New
Sherwood Boehlert, New York York
Lamar S. Smith, Texas Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon
Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Nita M. Lowey, New York
Christopher Shays, Connecticut Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey
Porter J. Goss, Florida Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Dave Camp, Michigan Columbia
Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Florida Zoe Lofgren, California
Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Karen McCarthy, Missouri
Ernest J. Istook, Jr., Oklahoma Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas
Peter T. King, New York Bill Pascrell, Jr., New Jersey
John Linder, Georgia Donna M. Christensen, U.S. Virgin
John B. Shadegg, Arizona Islands
Mark E. Souder, Indiana Bob Etheridge, North Carolina
Mac Thornberry, Texas Charles Gonzalez, Texas
Jim Gibbons, Nevada Ken Lucas, Kentucky
Kay Granger, Texas James R. Langevin, Rhode Island
Pete Sessions, Texas Kendrick B. Meek, Florida
John E. Sweeney, New York
John Gannon, Chief of Staff
Uttam Dhillon, Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director
David H. Schanzer, Democrat Staff Director
Michael S. Twinchek, Chief Clerk
______
Subcommittee on Rules
Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Florida, Chairman
Jennifer Dunn, Washington Louise McIntosh Slaughter, New
F. James Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin York
David Dreier, California Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Loretta Sanchez, California
Porter Goss, Florida Zoe Lofgren, California
John Linder, Georgia Karen McCarthy, Missouri
Pete Sessions, Texas Kendrick B. Meek, Florida
Christopher Cox, California, ex Jim Turner, Texas, ex officio
officio
(II)
?
CONTENTS
----------
MEMBERS STATEMENT
The Honorable Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Florida, and Chairman of the Subcommittee on
Rules.......................................................... 1
The Honorable Christopher Cox, a Representative in Congress From
the State of California, and Chairman of the Full Committee
Oral Statement................................................. 3
Prepared Statement............................................. 4
The Honorable David Dreier, a Representative From the State of
California..................................................... 7
The Honorable Jennifer Dunn, a Representative From the State of
Washington..................................................... 8
The Honorable Louise McIntosh Slaughter, a Representative From
the State of New York.......................................... 3
The Honorable Jim Turner, a Representative from the State of
Texas.......................................................... 5
WITNESSES
Dr. David King, Associate Professor of Public Policy, The Kennedy
School of Government, Harvard University
Oral Testimony................................................. 38
Prepared Statement............................................. 40
The Honorable James Schlesinger, Chairman, Mitre Corporation
Oral Testimony................................................. 9
Prepared Statement............................................. 11
Dr. James A. Therber, Professor and Director, Center for
Congressional and Presidential Studies, School of Public
Affairs, American University
Oral Testimony................................................. 25
Prepared Statement............................................. 28
Mr. Donald Wolfensberger, Director, Congress Project Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars
Oral Testimony................................................. 31
Prepared Statement............................................. 34
(III)
HEARING ON PERSPECTIVES ON HOUSE REFORM: COMMITTEES AND THE EXECUTIVE
BRANCH
----------
Thursday, July 10, 2003
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Rules,
Select Committee on Homeland Security,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:35 a.m., in
room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lincoln Diaz-
Balart [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Diaz-Balart, Dunn, Dreier, Linder,
Sessions, Slaughter, Thompson, McCarthy, Meek, Cox, Turner
also, present Rogers of Kentucky.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. [Presiding.] I will go ahead and call the
subcommittee to order. Good morning, everybody. On behalf of
the Subcommittee on Rules of the Select Committee on Homeland
Security, I am pleased to welcome a distinguished group of
witnesses to this second in a series of hearings on homeland
security and the House committee structure, and more generally
to receive ideas and proposals from witnesses on ways to
strengthen the effectiveness of the House of Representatives.
It is my understanding that Secretary Schlesinger must
leave, in an hour or so, so in hopes of getting to testimony
and questions and answers, I will certainly keep my remarks
brief. We would ask those colleagues who will be joining us to
do so, as well. All of us recognize the importance of the
committee system and the vital role that committees play in
this institution.
They are, in effect, mini-legislatures. Committees function
as our centers of policy-making, oversight and education,
through hearings, particularly, such as today's.
A principal assignment of this subcommittee is to try to
ensure as much as possible continued vigor and competence in
the committee system, specifically as that system addresses
homeland security issues.
The subcommittee recognizes that the committee system
interacts with and affects other important legislative
functions and activities, such as scheduling in the work of
conference committees, to help the subcommittee identify and
sort through some of the key issues that confront the House.
And to suggest possible proposals or recommendations for
change, we are pleased to begin today's hearing with one of the
most distinguished and experienced Federal officials, Dr. James
Schlesinger, a man who certainly needs no introduction, but I
will give him one anyway, brief.
The holder of a Ph.D. from Harvard, Dr. Schlesinger has
been a high national governmental official in both Democrat and
Republican administrations.
For example, he was chairman of the Atomic Energy
Commission from 1971 to 1973, director of the Central
Intelligence Agency in 1973, as well, Secretary of Defense
between 1973 and 1975, and the first Secretary of the
Department of Energy, between 1977 and 1979.
Clearly, Dr. Schlesinger brings an extraordinary wealth of
experience, expertise and informed judgment to this hearing. We
are particularly interested in Dr. Schlesinger's observations
concerning his time as the first Energy Secretary in the United
States, and any parallels that he may see with homeland
security.
As Dr. Schlesinger certainly will recall, the Nation
confronted an energy crisis during 1973 and 1974, and later in
the decade, as well. There were long gasoline lines throughout
the nation.
Neither the executive nor the legislative branches seemed
really prepared at that time organizationally or procedurally
to deal effectively with the crisis.
To many people, there seemed to be an absence of coherence
or coordination in energy policy-making. The House of
Representatives considered a number structural approaches to
the energy issue, and in 1973 and 1974 the Bolling Committee on
Committee Reorganization proposed an Energy and Environment
Committee, an idea that never really got off the ground.
In 1977, Speaker O'Neill created an ad hoc Select Energy
Committee to coordinate committee action on President Carter's
National Energy Plan. Three years later, in 1980, the House
rejected a proposal to consolidate energy jurisdiction in a new
Energy Committee.
Instead, the House renamed the Commerce Committee the
Energy and Commerce Committee. The House opted not to
consolidate energy jurisdiction in one committee, and energy
jurisdiction to this day remains somewhat decentralized among
many standing committees.
Needless to say, from your perspective, sir, as Energy
Secretary, this subcommittee welcomes your thoughts on how the
decentralization of energy jurisdiction in the House affected
your work in energy policy formulation and implementation.
And certainly as you reflect on your experience as Energy
Secretary, as well as your many other forms of public service,
we would ask that you look at any parallels with today's
concern on homeland security.
Like homeland security energy is an issue which certainly
clearly affects national security, economic security and
international security. Both produced a sense of crisis in the
country. Both led to the creation of new Cabinet departments,
and both are truly consequential issues that will certainly
affect the Nation for decades. Yet on energy, the House chose
not to overhaul its committee system, but to make incremental
adjustments and employ other devices to address the issue.
On the issue of homeland security, a main question before
this subcommittee is what options should it consider with
respect to the committee structure. So we are delighted that
you have agreed to be before us today, sir, and obviously look
forward to hearing your thoughts about such issues as the
interrelationships between the committee structure and the
administrative structure and congressional oversight, the need
or lack of need for, in your view, alterations in the committee
system.
We have a second panel, a very distinguished panel, which
we will introduce subsequently. And at this point, before I ask
Dr. Schlesinger to proceed, let me turn to my distinguished
ranking member, Louise Slaughter of New York, and ask her for
any opening statement or comment.
Ms. Slaughter. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I will be very brief, Mr. Schlesinger. It is a delight to
see you. Certainly, if anybody knows what it is like to create
a new agency, you do.
You have had a very significant career in Washington,
working for both Republican and Democratic administrations. And
I can't think of anybody who could help us talk about these
complexities.
Welcome. We are happy to have you here.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Mr. Chairman of the full select committee.
Mr. Cox. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And welcome Dr. Schlesinger.
Welcome to our additional witnesses.
I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this
hearing and taking the lead on this important examination of
the rules of the House as they relate to the issue of homeland
security.
The recommendations that this subcommittee makes will
become the recommendations of the full committee to the House
of Representatives in fulfillment of our charter given by House
resolution.
I am especially pleased to welcome Secretary Schlesinger.
Many of us know him as a friend, colleague and an
extraordinarily capable leader and public servant. I can think
of no individual who has had such a profound on the development
of key United States government agencies as Jim Schlesinger,
who ably led the Department of Energy, the Central Intelligence
Agency and the Department of Defense.
I am particularly eager to hear your thoughts, Mr.
Secretary, on the challenge you faced in setting up the
Department of Energy and on how you interacted with various
congressional committees in the process.
Since the attacks of September 11, our nation has awakened
to the global terrorist threat, which is why the Congress early
this year established the Select Committee on Homeland Security
and the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. It was
to give focus to our previously diverse and disparate homeland
security activities.
Today, Dr. Schlesinger and other witnesses will help us
understand the challenges we face in Congress as DHS has
organized.
The past is not always prologued, but we can always learn
from the distinguished leaders who have gone before us. On the
opening day of the 108th Congress, Speaker Hastert charged the
select committee to be the eyes and ears of Congress itself as
DHS has organized.
The Speaker noted that Congress itself needed to adapt to
the largest reorganization of the executive branch in 50 years.
This need to adapt and to integrate disparate functions is a
permanent, not a temporary, requirement.
This Select Committee on Homeland Security already has
demonstrated that if we are to succeed in the pursuit of the
President's goal to make the American people safer, the
critical coordination function with which our committee has
been challenged must become a permanent condition for the way
we do business.
A central recommendation of the recent report on homeland
security from the Council on Foreign Relations is that the
Select Committee on Homeland Security be made a permanent
standing committee of the House of Representatives, with
authority over all authorizing legislation for the department.
Currently, there is no other way to bring focus to the
multiple homeland security activities within and beyond DHS in
the Federal Government or across multiple committees and
subcommittees of this Congress.
And I don't need to remind anyone here that there are 88
committees and subcommittees of the House and the Senate that
claim jurisdiction.
In the House alone, 13 standing committees and 38
subcommittees claim a piece of the DHS pie. This is simply too
many. It is not going to work.
We need to move beyond jurisdictional turf and partisan
politics to establish a central point for substantive
jurisdiction over DHS. Without it, we will have continuing
problems with oversight, legislation and authorization for the
department.
Today's hearing I hope will provide insight for those of us
who are committed to this objective.
Finally, the Homeland Security Act states that each house
of Congress should review its committee structures in light of
the reorganization of responsibilities within the executive
branch.
So that is the purpose for your testimony today, and I look
forward to hearing from our witnesses and their thoughts about
how the House's efforts to evaluate committee structure compare
with those of the Senate.
I thank all of our witnesses for being with us.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CHRISTOPHER COX
Good morning. I would like to thank the subcommittee chairman and
ranking member for taking the lead on this important examination of the
rules of the House as they relate to the issue of Homeland security.
The recommendations of this subcommittee will help to determine the
future of this Committee and how Congress, as a whole, carries out its
responsibilities for homeland security.
I am especially pleased to welcome Secretary Schlesinger. Many of
us know him as a friend, colleague, and an extraordinarily capable
leader and public servant. I can think of no individual who has had
such a profound impact on the development of key United States
government agencies as has Jim Schlesinger, who ably led the Department
of Energy, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of
Defense. I am particularly eager to hear your thoughts, Mr. Secretary,
on the challenges you faced in setting up a new agency, the Department
of Energy, and on how you interacted with various Congressional
Committees in the process.
Since the attacks of September 11th, our nation has awakened to the
global terrorist threat. No longer can we rely upon two oceans to
protect us from attack. Driven by a new sense of vulnerability and
increased awareness of terrorist threats, Congress acted to protect the
American people. The President created the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) to enhance our capabilities to prevent terrorism, to
protect our infrastructures, and to respond effectively to any attack
that--despite our increased vigilance - might occur. The Congress early
this year stood up the Select Committee on Homeland Security and the
Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee to help focus our diverse
and disparate homeland security activities on this critical counter-
terrorist mission.
Today, we will hear from Secretary Schlesinger and other witnesses
who can help us to understand the challenges we face in Congress as DHS
is organized. The past is not always prologue, but surely we can always
learn from past experiences and from the inspired leaders who have gone
before us. On the opening day of the 108th Congress, Speaker Hastert
charged the Select Committee to be the eyes and ears of Congress itself
as DHS is organized. The Speaker noted, too, that Congress needed to
adapt to the largest reorganization of the executive branch in 50
years. The need to adapt, to integrate disparate functions behind a new
mission is a permanent, not a temporary, requirement. This Select
Committee on Homeland Security already has demonstrated that, if we are
to succeed on the pursuit of the President's goal to make the American
people safer, the critical coordination function with which our
Committee has been challenged must become a permanent condition for the
way we do business. Currently, there is no other way to bring focus to
the multiple homeland security activities within and beyond DHS in the
Federal government or across multiple committees and subcommittees of
the Congress.
With the creation of DHS, we brought together 22 agencies and over
170,000 federal employees. Between both Houses of Congress, there are
88 separate panels, committees, and subcommittees that claim some
jurisdictional authority over DHS. In the House alone, there are 13
standing committees and 38 subcommittees that claim a piece of the DHS
pie. Of those 13, six have major claims to jurisdiction over DHS. This
is still too many. Simply put, no servant can answer to so many
different masters. Not only does the proliferation of committees lead
to excessive committee assignments for the members, this
``balkanization'' of jurisdiction can only lead to a weakening of
institutional expertise and memory. Imagine, too, the amount of time
Secretary Ridge would spend testifying before six, let alone 88
separate panels or committees. When would he possibly have time to
address his responsibilities as head of DHS?
As I understand it, during consideration of the creation of the
Department of Energy, there were 83 separate panels or committees that
dealt with energy matters. I am eager to hear from Secretary
Schlesinger on how he managed this challenge in his day.
As members of this House, we must fulfill our Constitutional
mandate as a co-equal branch of government. We must speak with one
voice, not 88 or 13 or six. Countless experts have warned us that
another terrorist attack is a matter of ``when,'' and not ``if.'' When
that time comes, the American people will want to know what concrete
steps we took after September 11 to prevent terrorism, to protect our
infrastructure and to enhance our response to any possible terrorist
attack. Congress needs to be answering this question every day in the
work we are doing to exercise responsible oversight over the Department
of Homeland Security and otherwise to strengthen the broader homeland
security mission.
We need to move beyond jurisdictional turf and partisan politics to
establish a central point for substantive jurisdiction over DHS.
Without it, we will have continuing problems with oversight,
legislation, and authorization for the Department. Today's hearing will
provide insight for those of us who are committed to this objective.
Finally, the Homeland Security Act states that each House of
Congress should review its committee structure in light of the
reorganization of responsibilities within the executive branch. I hope
to hear from our witnesses on their thoughts about how the House's
efforts to evaluate committee structure compares with those of the
Senate.
I thank all our witnesses for being with us and look forward to
your testimony.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
At this time, I would like to recognize the distinguished
ranking member of the full committee who is also with us this
morning, Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Dr. Schlesinger.
We appreciate you being here and assisting us in our task
this morning.
I think during the testimony today, as well as other
hearings that have been held by our subcommittee we hear a
great deal of discussion about the many technical procedural
issues such as jurisdiction and referrals and reorganizations.
But I think the work of this subcommittee and this
committee as a whole boils down to one essential question and
that is: Does the Congress take the matter of homeland security
seriously?
If the answer is yes, and I sincerely expect that it is,
then many of the other answers to the questions before this
subcommittee become apparent.
First, I think the Select Committee should be made a
permanent committee.
Second, I think this committee should have, at a minimum,
legislative jurisdiction over all matters pertaining to the
Department of Homeland Security.
And third, the committee should have oversight jurisdiction
over the entire Federal Government's approach to homeland
security matters.
In spite of some grumbling about jurisdictional turf, it is
undeniable that this committee to date is making an important
contribution to both oversight of the Homeland Security
Department and homeland security in general.
To date, our critique of the new department has been both
probing and bipartisan.
The Project BioShield legislation that we marked up last
month is a perfect example of the work of this committee.
Recognizing the importance of that issue, Chairman Cox
arranged for numerous discussions and briefings with
administration officials. We held four hearings. We requested a
classified briefing on the bioterror threat, and we reported
out a comprehensive substitute amendment.
While other House committees contributed their particular
expertises, this committee thoroughly examined the Department
of Homeland Security's capacity to fulfill its duties under
that legislation. And we seriously explored the issue of
whether the BioShield legislation is a sufficient response to
the bioterror threat.
Furthermore, if you take homeland security seriously, you
cannot believe the oversight of this mammoth department can
properly be conducted by dozens of House committees and
subcommittees of varying jurisdictions.
The Select Committee is the single most appropriate
authorizing committee in the House to oversee the department as
a whole and focus on departmental management issues.
Without a single committee dedicated to oversight,
important issues will not get the attention they deserve.
Homeland security is a full-time job, it requires a full-
time committee.
Does this mean that the Homeland Security Committee would
take over all responsibility for any matter that touches on
homeland security and usurp the traditional functions of other
committees?
I think not. It would be inappropriate to think about
considering bioterrorism legislation without the input of the
Energy and Commerce Committee, or rail security legislation
without the input of Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee. Homeland security is such a multidimensional topic
that it lends itself to shared jurisdiction.
It is the task of this particular subcommittee to begin
sorting out those details and to come out with a concrete
proposal to present to the House.
And Dr. Schlesinger, we appreciate your presence here today
to assist in that very, very difficult task.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member of the Full
Select Committee.
At this time I would like to recognize the chairman of the
House Rules Committee, Mr. Dreier.
Mr. Dreier. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Let me say at the outset, I am particularly pleased, we
could almost have a quorum of the Rules Committee here in this
gathering with Mr. Linder and Chairman Diaz-Balart and Ms.
Slaughter, who are here. In fact, I guess there are more Rules
Committee members here than there are members of committee.
Well, it is about even now, I see.
But let me just say that this is a very, very important
issue. As I walked into the room and looked at my friend, Jim
Schlesinger, I was reminded that when I was elected in 1980
with Ronald Reagan, the first piece of legislation that I
introduced was a bill calling for the elimination of the
Departments of Energy and Education. And I have got to say that
we, obviously, did not succeed in doing those.
You recall that those were among the priorities that Ronald
Reagan set forward in his campaign back in 1980. And we are in
a much different world today, and the idea of the elimination
of Cabinet-level agencies does not have a lot of appeal.
And one of the main reasons is that we have tremendous
needs that must be addressed.
And we have seen these decisions made, the United States
Congress established this new Cabinet-level agency, the
Department of Homeland Security. But to have the input from
Secretary Schlesinger as well as the other witnesses on this
issue of ensuring that the United States Congress does it right
in looking at oversight, using, quite frankly, the last model
that we have, which was the establishment of the Department of
Energy as an example of how we should effectively proceed with
that oversight is a very important, a very, very serious
matter.
And that frankly is the reason that under Mr. Cox's
leadership we established a subcommittee of the Select
Committee on Homeland Security specifically charged with
looking at these jurisdictional questions.
And so I want to express my appreciation to all who have
been involved in this. And I, quite frankly, believe that from
an institutional perspective this is probably the most
important thing that we will do as we look at the challenge of
the multifarious committees that have been involved in this
issue.
And so I am going to begin by expressing my apologies
because I am going to have to leave. But I assure you that I am
going to be looking very, very closely at the testimony of al
the witnesses.
And I personally thank you, Jim, very much for taking the
time and effort to be here. And we thank you for your very
dedicated work and service to the United States of America.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, Mr. Dreier.
Mr. Thompson?
Mr. Thompson. Mr. Chairman, I will defer comment until
later.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Ms. Dunn?
Ms. Dunn. I am so pleased you are here, Dr. Schlesinger. I
have read your testimony, and comes from a set of experiences
that span decades. And I think we will gain a lot today from
hearing what you have to say.
I, too, have a conflict. The Ways and Means Committee is
having a markup today, and I am going to have to back and
forth.
I want to thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Chairman, to
make a few remarks this morning.
We are here today continuing to investigate how this group,
as an oversight committee, can most effectively and efficiently
serve our constituents.
The creation of the Department of Homeland Security is an
unprecedented undertaking. It is hard enough to oversee the
coordination of one Federal agency, let alone 22 Federal
agencies, as you stated, all with different cultures and
different perspectives and different sets of jurisdiction, with
their own missions, their own procedures.
Add to this the competition for oversight, whether it is
overfunding or operations, and the result is major
jurisdictional battles among congressional leaders.
We are involved in the most significant jurisdictional
reform in the House since the creation of the Department of
Energy in the 1970's, of which you are well aware, and today we
have the opportunity to hear from the first Secretary of Energy
and glean important information from the lessons learned
through that experience.
Our job through this process is to make sure that
inefficiencies and duplications are limited, if not
nonexistent. The department will only be successful if it is
empowered to truly coordinate. This means Secretary Ridge
should not constantly be faced with competing and contradictory
guidance.
In my view, it makes the most sense that a department the
size of Homeland Security will most efficiently carry out its
mandate only if Congress presents a truly unified message about
the vision we have for the department, the department charged
with carrying out the most honorable mission of ensuring the
safety of the American public.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Ms. McCarthy?
Ms. McCarthy. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for calling this
hearing today. I thank Secretary Schlesinger and all of our
experts for giving of their time and sharing their wisdom.
I want to yield back my time in deference to their limited
time so that we might proceed.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you very much.
Mr. Linder? Thank you very much.
Dr. Schlesinger, thank you very much for your presence, and
we look forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF HONORABLE JAMES SCHLESINGER, CHAIRMAN, MITRE
CORPORATION
Mr. Schlesinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you,
members of the committee, Chairman Cox.
I don't know how best to proceed. I can go through my
written testimony. It may be that you prefer that I just go
through it selectively.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. As you prefer.
Mr. Schlesinger. Okay. Let me make some introductory
comments, then, in response to the earlier comments by members
of the committee, because they have laid out the problem from
an intimate knowledge of the House of Representatives, indeed
of the Congress as a whole. I cannot improve on what Chairman
Cox has said or Mr. Turner has said or what Congresswoman Dunn
has said. You well know what the problem is.
Let me cast my net widely. Go back to 1947 and the creation
of the Department of Defense. That was easy, congressionally.
You put together two committees. You put together the Committee
on the Navy and the Committee on the Department of Army and,
with the National Security Act, you created a Department of Air
Force within the new Department of Defense. That was just a few
committees, and you combined them to create the Armed Services
Committee. That was easy.
It was not easy on the other side of the river. If one
talks about cultural differences, one has really got to
understand putting the United States Navy together with the
United States Army, and then throwing in a new Department of
the Air Force, was an uphill fight. Indeed it took, in a sense,
20 years, indeed, going down to Goldwater-Nichols before that
department settled down. But up here on the Hill it was
relatively easy.
It was more difficult with the Department of Energy, in
that we brought in a larger number of components. But once
again, it was relatively easy because most of the money came
from what had been the Atomic Energy Commission. We took over
the personnel system of the Atomic Energy Commission, we took
over the budgetary system, the acquisition system, from the
Atomic Energy Commission.
This time you are gathering together many more components,
much more equal in size, and in a sense with a greater
historical tradition.
Now, up here on the Hill it is immensely more difficult
because you now have 88 committees with a piece of the action,
and it will be a burden for the incoming department unless you
simplify its obligations to the Congress.
It is not only a question of dealing with 88 committees
that have some degree of jurisdiction. Those 88 committees have
staffs, those staffs like individual briefings, they don't like
to put together the briefings for four or five committees.
As a result, you are absorbing the time, unnecessarily
absorbing the time, of people in the new department. You have
talked in your introductory comments about jurisdictional turf.
There is no question that that is the problem, and you have
got to face it. Otherwise, you will burden this new department
with more weight than it should have.
Well, let me mention two other things. First, Osama bin
Laden. Osama bin Laden came out of the war against the Soviet
Union, and he was convinced that his forces had defeated the
Soviet Union.
There were some other contributing factors. But not in his
mind. In fact, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990,
Osama said, Keep these infidel forces out, he told the Saudi
government. I and my troops from Afghanistan will liberate
Kuwait.
A high official of the Saudi government at that point burst
out laughing, which did not endear the Saudi government to
Osama.
But what he has said more recently, since he formed Al
Qaida, is that--the people will look at the strong horse and
the weak horse, and they will naturally gravitate to the strong
horse.
They will do so naturally, and he assumed that the United
States of America was a weak horse, based upon our withdrawal
from Lebanon, based upon our withdrawal from Somalia, based
upon some faltering efforts in Haiti, based upon our failure to
support the Iranian government in 1979, and so on.
I think what he subsequently discovered was that the United
States was not that weak horse. Between the events in
Afghanistan and the events in Iraq, we have persuaded not only
Osama but many of his followers that this country is no
pushover, that the United States is the most powerful country
in the world.
I mention this because we are a democracy. We have a
constitutional government, we have a Congress, we must adapt to
demonstrate that not only in terms of military power, but in
terms of our ability to organize ourselves to respond to a
threat effectively within the framework of the Constitution
that we are not a weak horse.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is your responsibility, facing
up to this question of jurisdictional turf. Of course, you will
only deal with half of the problem: There is also the Senate,
the Senate, as you know, is a rule unto itself.
Second, going back to the chairman's introductory comments,
Speaker O'Neill in 1977 established a Select Committee. The
Senate did nothing like that. As a result, jurisdiction stayed
with each of the original standing committees, and that led to
a very slow response in the Senate to the then-President's
requests.
As a result, we had a delay of 18 months before we passed
the components of the National Energy Act. That was not the
responsibility of the House; that was the responsibility of the
Senate.
You cannot solve the problems of the Senate, but you can
solve, I think, the problems of the House.
You have 30 subcommittees and 13 standing committees of
jurisdiction. I trust that you will be able to narrow down what
the Department of Homeland Security must respond to on Capitol
Hill.
I mentioned in my statement that when I started as a
government official in 1969, government officials were called
upon infrequently to testify on Capitol Hill. That has changed.
When I became Secretary of Energy, I discovered that I was
spending half my time up here on the Hill, dealing with one
problem or another. And I suspect that Secretary Ridge and his
principal aids are forced to do that as well. It would be
desirable if you could cut back on the time that they are
obligated to deal, not only with the committees, but with the
staffs of the committees.
In the old days, the director of Central Intelligence was
rarely called upon to testify. When I was director, it was the
job of the oversight committee and the eyes of the chairman to
keep the director up there at Langley, Virginia, and keep him
off the Hill. That changed, once again, with the Watergate and
its ramifications. And as a result, the director now spends a
considerable time up here on Capitol Hill.
There are advantages and there are disadvantages in
consolidation. But that decision is beyond us now. We have
decided to consolidate in the Department of Homeland Security.
And it behooves all of us to make that decision work. The
decision is not to be reargued. I have not heard anyone reargue
it.
But the underpinnings for making that new department
effective are still under dispute. And I trust that this
subcommittee and the full committee will be able to deal with
some of the problems.
As I have indicated in my testimony, creating the
Department of Energy was child's play compared to creating this
new department simply because the bulk of the resources came
from one previously existing agency. Some of the
responsibilities, particularly in area of price control, were
shed over the course of the next 3 years. And as a result, we
have a compact, relatively compact, department.
What we have here is set of agencies brought together that
have a long tradition, Customs Service, the Coast Guard, and
newly formed agencies that have not completely jelled, like the
Transportation Security Agency. These must be helped along so
that the disparate cultures of these agencies can be brought
together.
I close my testimony with this observation: energy is
something that is divisive. It is divisive in that there are
consumers, there are producers, there are consuming states,
there are producing states, and their interests are not in
common.
Moreover, on the international scene, you cannot rely on
foreign governments to cooperate fully, because of their
disparate interests.
The advantage that we have here is that, unlike energy,
homeland security is an issue that should unite us all. It even
unites us with most countries abroad, at least with our
traditional allies who will cooperate with is in attempting to
reduce the terrorist threat.
That is different from the divisive tendencies that exist
in energy. That is an advantage. But just as homeland security
should unite us all, it also poses a upon the Congress the
responsibility of helping that unification process.
Mr. Chairman, I think that those observations will
substitute for my formal statement.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JAMES SCHLESINGER
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee:
I thank the Committee for this opportunity to discuss the
challenges of creating a new department, relevant to the Department of
Homeland Security--as the House of Representatives considers possible
adjustments in the jurisdictions of its standing committees.
Let me start with this observation. In the 35 years since I first
became a government official, relations between the Congress and
executive agencies have changed markedly, indeed, one might say
radically. In the earlier era, a senior official was called on far less
frequently to testify. There would be a number of budget hearings--and
from time to time testimony on some prominent issues. To an extent that
may seem surprising today, agencies were left to manage themselves.
Inquiries about specific issues tended to be on an informal basis--
rather than testimony in public session. When I was Chairman of the
Atomic Energy Commission, all issues were handled by the Joint
Committee. When I became the Director of Central Intelligence, the
director was rarely called upon to testify--at least up until the time
of Watergate--and that was primarily in closed session. In the
intervening years, that has changed significantly, as congressional
committees have become more deeply involved in the management of
executive agencies.
When we created the Department of Energy, in contrast to those
older conditions, I found that half my time or more was spent on
Capitol Hill testifying before various committees. Of course, the
creation of the Department had involved the jurisdictions of several
standing committees. In the circumstances of the day, with repeated
energy events or ``crises'' like the shutdown of oil production in
Iran, rising gasoline prices, the nuclear trauma at Three Mile Island,
these committees legitimately wanted a piece of the action--and
testimony. Moreover, in these last twenty-odd years, the continued
proliferation of subcommittees has only made the problem worse.
Subsequent to the dramatic terrorist attack on the United States in
September of 2001, the decision has been taken to consolidate a whole
range of security-related activities into the new Department of
Homeland Security. The longer-term benefits should be substantial. In
particular, it should gradually reorient the cultures of the agencies
coming together in the new department towards the post-911 mission of
homeland security. But there are always costs of such consolidation,
primarily short-term costs. There will be bureaucratic resistance.
There are inevitable frictions associated with the movement of
agencies. There is a clash of cultures that have to be adjudicated and,
of course, the reconciliation of contrasting personnel and acquisition
systems. It is not a certainty that the benefits of consolidation will
outweigh the costs.
For the Department of Homeland Security, however, that decision is
behind us. It is now the duty of all of us to do our best to make this
crucial consolidation work effectively. It is a monumental challenge
successfully to bring together these rather disparate elements--and
efficiently combine them in pursuit of the common mission.
Here is the crucial point to bear in mind. A new government
department does not spring, like Athena from the brow of Zeus, full
blown and ready for action. Organizing the department is not
instantaneous; it takes time. There are many organizational challenges
and organizational gaps, especially in the early days of a new
department. The Department of Homeland Security is, in a sense, a
start-up organization. Contrary to the expectations of too many, there
will be unavoidable growing pains--as the overall organization
gradually comes together. No such thing as immediate and complete
success should be expected. Inevitably, in so complicated an operation,
there will be unresolved problems and some setbacks. Consequently, for
those inclined to be critical, there will be all too many targets to
shoot at. The critics can have a field day.
In the case of the Department of Homeland Security, there are all
too many platforms for such criticism. At last count, there were 26
full committees with jurisdiction--and a total of 88 committees
including subcommittees. As problems are uncovered or take time to be
resolved, the opportunities for criticism will mount. Nonetheless,
since the stake is the security of our homeland, the new department
deserves support--and not unnecessary carping. To whatever extent the
Congress can help by simplifying the overlapping committee structure
that oversees the department, that would be a significant contribution.
By comparison, the creation of the Department of Energy was
relatively child's play. The Department was far smaller. Most of the
budget came from what had been the Atomic Energy Commission. The
incorporated entities, by and large, had a common mission either
producing energy or weapons. Additionally, there was the oversight
function inherited from the Federal Energy Administration. Yet, all in
all, it was a simpler task. To be sure, the department later ran into
difficulties. Several secretaries, by direction or personal
inclination, wanted to disestablish the department. One department head
was dismissive of the national security functions of the department.
All that contributed to later and unnecessary disorder.
Yet, at the time of the department's creation, there was well-nigh
universal support. In the House, the Speaker, to facilitate the
formation of a national energy policy, established a Select Committee,
which brought together on strict time lines the actions of the standing
committees with jurisdiction. That resulted in quick passage by the
House of the several components of the National Energy Act. But the
Senate, which had no similar mechanism, took a long time to decide on
the components. When the Senate finally acted, and the results went to
conference, the standing committees in the House were once again
empowered to assert their jurisdictions.
Some of those jurisdictional problems will likely afflict the new
Department of Homeland Security, though others will not. Nonetheless, I
underscore that we all have a vast stake in the mission and the success
of this new department. Any weaknesses in the department likely will
prolong the activities of potential terrorists. So, I repeat: it is a
monumental challenge to integrate the elements that are being brought
together in a common mission. Anything that the House can do to help
the new department, rather than provide additional perches from which
the department can be criticized would serve the national interest.
Thank you for your attention. I shall be happy, Mr. Chairman, to
answer any questions that you and members of the Committee may have.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Schlesinger.
I have found your remarks to be extremely interesting. And in
combination with your written testimony, which I had the
pleasure of reading before, very illustrative as well.
You emphasized, certainly made reference at various times,
to your view that we should attempt to cut back on the time
that certainly the secretary of the new department should have
to dedicate to Capitol Hill. And the decision, obviously, is,
as you referred to as well, has been made, and I agree with
you, that nobody's looking back, that you consolidate as much
as possible in the executive branch homeland security
functions.
But Congress has not made the decision with regard to
consolidation or lack of consolidation in the legislative
branch with regard to the oversight functions.
Could you be, perhaps, more specific with regard to your
personal preference regarding what we should do with this
Committee on Homeland Security, perhaps based on your
experience and the experience that you had in energy with the
multiple referrals and the lack of consolidation that existed
at that time, which it has continued, in the energy field?
Mr. Schlesinger. That is a complex question, Mr. Chairman.
Let me say, first, when I talk about preserving the time of the
Secretary, I did not mean that this should interfere with the
proper oversight by the House or by the Senate of the
activities of the new department. My problem is that there is
so much duplication when a senior official comes to Capitol
Hill and has to deal with five, six or eight committees. That
does not help the House. That does not help the process.
You would get better results from that secretary or from
his senior deputies if you consolidated. So the purpose is to
economize on the time, rather than to eliminate the function.
And I would fervently hope that you could bring about that
legislative miracle of making the Select Committee a standing
committee, so that there is one committee that has a primary
responsibility for the Department of Homeland Security. Then
the department would know where to go, just as the Department
of Defense now knows where to go: It can go to Armed Services.
This is much more complicated than was the Energy
Department or the Defense Department, in that you have so many
committees up here. I fervently hope that you could create that
new standing committee so that there is one central place that
the new department can go.
There can be referrals, no doubt. There will continue to be
referrals on specific aspects of the non-homeland security
functions that have been brought into the new department.
Obviously, the Coast Guard now must focus more on homeland
security and less on?I shouldn't say less?proportionately less
on such things as water safety, rescue operations and the like.
The Customs agency must focus more on spotting those who
would bring harmful matter into the country, rather than
maximizing the take from the revenues due to the Untied States
government.
So there must be a change in culture, and that would be
helped if you could bring these functions together at one
central point in the House.
Let me throw in one other observation. We must recognize
that there will over time be problems that develop with this
new department; inevitably, all departments have problems. And
with so many committees and so many staff members, you create
an opportunity for people chiding the department unnecessarily,
for there to be those little sound-bit on news programs saying,
The Department of Homeland Security has failed, and another 30
second burst.
Shrink that down, don't allow all these perches for
criticism. I recognize the oversight responsibility must be
fully carried out, but don't allow there to be too much
captious criticism which results from everybody in the House
having a piece of the action.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, Dr. Schlesinger, so much.
Again, I found your testimony to be extremely interesting, as
well as useful. And I think your talent and experience are real
assets for the United States.
Ms. Slaughter?
Ms. Slaughter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Schlesinger, I really enjoyed that very much, too.
There are couple of questions that come to my mind quickly.
One is that I know that when you set up the Department of
Energy that FERC was not a part of it, nor was the Regulatory
Commission. Why was that?
Mr. Schlesinger. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission?
Ms. Slaughter. Yes. Did they balk at going in?
Mr. Schlesinger. Well, no, as a matter of fact, they did
not balk at going in. The FERC was brought into the department,
However, at the insistence of the Senate, and particularly
then-Chairman Ribicoff.
There was a decision that we would preserve within the
Department of Energy the commission structure of the old
Federal Power Commission. The Federal Power Commission was
placed within the Department of Energy, renamed.
But what we originally proposed in the legislation was that
the secretary would have rulemaking authority, that this would
be published in the Federal Register, that there would be
public comment. And then, as with other departments, a rule
would go into force.
That was too much, at least for the Senate. The House
agreed to that arrangement, if I recall correctly. And so we
have within the department the FERC, and the FERC is obliged to
take into account the advice of the Secretary of Energy.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a different matter.
President Carter said to me bring the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission into the department. I said, Mr. President, this
department will have enough problems without having to wrestle
the problems of nuclear regulation. We will leave it outside.
In retrospect, I think that was a wise decision,
particularly after the Three Mile Island accident and all of
the problems that that created for nuclear regulation.
But as of 2003, we might well do to the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission what we did with the Federal Power Commission and
bring it within the Department of Energy.
Ms. Slaughter. Would you recommend that?
Mr. Schlesinger. Yes, as a matter of fact, I would. I have
not thought much about it in 25 years, but?
Ms. Slaughter. It seemed interesting to me because, as you
know, the FBI and the CIA and other intelligence agencies are
not going to be within the Department of Homeland Security. And
it struck me there was a parallel there. And I think many of us
are somewhat perplexed as to whether or not they should not be
a part of Homeland Security. Can you give me a comment on that?
Mr. Schlesinger. I would comment as follows. The resistance
of the CIA and the FBI is more formidable than was the
resistance of the Federal Power Commission.
Ms. Slaughter. I sure bet that is true.
Mr. Schlesinger. And you are going to be, as part of your
responsibilities, it is necessary to see to it that the new
department has the necessary resources, particularly the
analytical resources, to deal with the information that comes
in, both from law enforcement and from intelligence.
That has been slow to develop. This committee can help with
that necessary ingredient. Intelligence is a peculiar function
in that somewhere back there around 1980 there was a proposal
that we create a Department of Intelligence, and take
everything out of the Defense Department, out of the State
Department, out of Energy Department, consolidate it.
Secretaries don't like that.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Slaughter. They don't like it up here when we do the
others.
Mr. Schlesinger. They dislike it for the right reasons.
They need to have some intelligence capability under their own
command and control.
Ms. Slaughter. Why is that? It seems to me the most
efficient and best intelligence agency that you could have,
regardless of where--you fragment it when you give several
secretaries the opportunity to have their own intelligence,
which they may, because they are zealous people, hold unto
themselves.
Mr. Schlesinger. As a practical matter, if you look at any
field commander, any what we used to call CINCs, but we now
call combatant commanders, they will want to have their own
internal intelligence committee. In fact, we have these
national assets, the overhead reconnaissance that commanders
previously ignored because those were national assets. They
weren't under their direct control. We have changed that to
some extent.
But in order to feel confident, a combatant commander must
feel confident of the intelligence that he is getting. If it
comes in from some outside agency, he is not going to feel
comfortable with it.
The Secretary of State draws on the Central Intelligence
Agency. But he has within the department his own intelligence
in INR. So that he has some degree of confidence that people
who are responsive to him, rather than to somebody else, are
giving him what he, as the head of the agency, can regard as
reliable information. And that is going to go on.
The basic point that I said when this proposal came up
before the Congress in 1980 or 1981 commanders or secretaries
they will squirrel away resources. They will call those assets
something else other than an intelligence unit. But they will
be functioning as an intelligence unit. You must recognize that
these units will exist whether or not they are labeled as
intelligence units, because the individual secretaries must
have a feel that they get a clear picture of what the outside
world is like, and they have people who can deal with the
Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence components.
The critical thing, I think, at this stage is for you to
see to it that within the Department of Homeland Security there
is the equivalent of INR in the Department of State, so that
the Secretary's own subordinates can ask questions about
information that is coming in from the outside. And at the
moment, that has not been done sufficiently well.
Ms. Slaughter. So sort of a competition model, basically.
Mr. Schlesinger. Yes, going back to your original question,
Congresswoman Slaughter?
Ms. Slaughter. Yes.
Mr. Schlesinger. To bring the CIA and the FBI within the
Department of Homeland Security is biting off more than you can
effectively swallow. If it would be unwise to bring the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission in because of the psychological and
political problems that nuclear energy endured, this would be
even harder. Right now, you can afford to wait.
Ms. Slaughter. They are much stronger than the U.S.
Congress.
Mr. Schlesinger. Oh, you are unduly modest.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Slaughter. Excuse me even to think that they might not
be.
Mr. Schlesinger. I remember one of Mr. Nixon's senior
advisers back around 1969 or 1970 observing, Well, these people
on the Hill, they are kind of stupid, you can ignore them. And
Bryce Harlow, who was then his adviser for congressional
relations, reared back and said to this particular individual,
You can say whatever you want to about the people on the Hill,
but remember that the people on the Hill have the power. And
that if you ignore them, they will strike back and they can
bring down an administration.
And I want to say that that was one of the great unheralded
predictions in history or commentary.
Ms. Slaughter. Thank you, Mr. Schlesinger, it has been
fascinating. Thank you very much.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. It has been fascinating.
Ms. Dunn?
Ms. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am pleased to listen to your testimony and hear you say
that you think one committee would be more efficient and it
would certainly cut down on the time that folks have to--
advisers like you and folks like Secretary Ridge have to spend
testifying on the Hill so that they could spend more time on
organizing the department and getting done what needs to be
done.
I might add to that, though, I think one standing committee
could be very important from another point of view, and that is
the point of view of focus on the problem. So that is probably
more operational. And I think what we have been doing in the
months since we have organized our select committee has been to
bring focus to the problem. Not just in the trips that we have
taken to investigate areas like ports, but also in analyzing
the credibility and the effectiveness of people who have been
selected to head the Department of Homeland Security at
different levels. And I think we have been successful in
ferreting out some weakness, and therefore assisting Secretary
Ridge with what he has to do.
In the testimony, one of the people who is going to be
speaking to us today, the comment was made something like so
often reform is just the codifying of the status quo. And I
guess my question to you, because you have answered most of my
questions already, do you think we have time to put this whole
thing together?
I mean, it is not as if this were a long time in coming, as
the energy crisis was. I mean, this happened starting on 9/11
and we had to respond. And we have 1 1/2 years before we move
from a select committee to a standing committee.
You mentioned the whole issue of growing pains. And we have
already witnessed jurisdictional problems, which are to be
expected. But you say that the other reforms were relatively
easy. Do you think in the time we have left we can pull it
together? And if so, do you have any thoughts for this
subcommittee to make those growing pains a little bit easier?
Mr. Schlesinger. Well, Congress can, of course, make those
growing pains much easier if it eases the burden of dealing
with oversight on the Hill. Not proper oversight, but
duplicative oversight.
And I think we have discussed sufficiently the desirability
of consolidation on the Hill. We talk about the cultural
problems of bringing together agencies that have had a
disparate past and integrating them into a new department.
There are the cultural problems up here on the Hill of these
different standing committees that have their traditions and
their powers. And unless we effectively deal with that, the
components of the department will not be able to focus on the
newer problems of homeland security, those components will
continue to respond to the older standing committees and their
interests.
So you used the proper expression when you said "focus."
Do we have time? Well, we must strive to make the
transition as quickly as we possibly can, and that is the
responsibility of all of us. We are not going to instantly
transform these agencies into an integrated whole.
But we must move quickly, because any gaps that we have are
going to be exploited by a world of terrorists that is going to
be around for a long time.
We are going to take some blows ourselves here in the
continental United States. We want to move as quickly as we can
to minimize that, and to be able to respond when such events
take place.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you.
Mr. Thompson?
Mr. Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Mr. Secretary. And I might add, your testimony has
been very good. Some of us agree with you that there is a need
for this committee to be more than select, but we are
challenged by the issue of jurisdiction and whether or not some
of the will to release jurisdiction will be forthcoming. I look
forward to our chairman's leadership in making some of those
things happen.
Just for the record, can you more or less repeat the danger
of this committee not becoming permanent for the sake of
homeland security and this country?
Mr. Schlesinger. It is quite simple: It means that you will
not be helping this new department to become more unified on
the mission of homeland security, that the agencies that go
into that department will continue more than is necessary to
focus on their historic function, and it will tend to preserve
the existing cultures of those agencies.
And on the other hand, all of us have a responsibility for
homeland security. Any failure on the part of the United States
to bring these agencies into an effective whole are going to be
noticed and exploited by those who wish the country harm.
Mr. Thompson. Well said.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Mr. Linder?
Mr. Linder. Dr. Schlesinger, welcome.
Mr. Schlesinger. Thank you.
Mr. Linder. You said earlier on that putting the
intelligence agencies under one roof would be biting off more
than you could chew.
Mr. Schlesinger. The intelligence agencies.
Mr. Linder. Yes. Has the department bit off more than it
can chew?
Mr. Schlesinger. I beg your pardon?
Mr. Linder. Has the Homeland Department bit off more than
it can chew?
Mr. Schlesinger. Only time will tell. Obviously, it is a
time-consuming process to put together these elements. And
there will be differences of opinion whether all of the
elements that went into this new department were essential for
the department.
Going back to what Ms. Slaughter said earlier about the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in logic that might belong in
the Department of Energy, but the costs, the internal costs, of
bringing it in were deemed, at least at that time, to be too
great to make that attempt.
There may have been elements that have been included in the
department that in retrospect it would have been wise not to
include.
But in the overall, we have made the decision to bring
these elements together. We need to bring these elements to
focus on the problem of homeland security. And since the
decision is behind us, let us all work together to achieve that
outcome.
Mr. Linder. Don't we always at the Federal level tend to
overreact?
Mr. Schlesinger. Well--
Mr. Linder. For example, does the Homeland Security
Department need to be in charge of agricultural imports?
Mr. Schlesinger. I am sorry?
Mr. Linder. Does the Homeland Security Department need to
be in charge of agricultural imports?
Mr. Schlesinger. I am not sufficiently familiar with those
issues. Of course, you have the various agricultural
infections. It has long been ruminated that one might use
biological weapons in order to destroy the crops of country X
or country Y. Here the country that one might worry about,
whether it is boll weevil or some biological agent that would
go after our wheat crops or go after the importation of meat.
I don't know. That may be one of the marginal elements, Mr.
Linder. But once again, we have made that decision, and let's
make it work.
Mr. Linder. It seems to me that this department could be
organized on a continuum from one end to be nothing but an
intelligence organization to inform local governments to the
other end have a national police force. We are trying to find a
middle ground here somewhere. If you were going to pick out a
mission with the primary focus of the Department of the
Homeland Security, how would you define that?
Mr. Schlesinger. Well, I think that the department has, in
the President's message, indicated that what we must do is to
anticipate through intelligence possible attacks on the United
States, to respond to such attacks as quickly as we can and to
mitigate the consequences of those attacks. And that is why we
have responded. It is at the one pole that you mentioned at the
outset, which was, you know, to inform local governments.
Those local governments will need help, and only the United
States, the Federal Government, can provide that help.
If we have a nuclear detonation in some place in the United
States, the local authorities will be overwhelmed, and we must
have an entity that has thought through that problem and will
bring to bear the resources of the Federal Government to help
those local governments. It is not just warning.
Mr. Linder. Such as FEMA has been doing for years?
Mr. Schlesinger. It is not only FEMA. The Department of
Defense has worried this problem continuously, because FEMA
doesn't have the resources to deal with a major attack on the
United States; only the Department of Defense has those
resources. And thus the Defense Threat Reduction Agency has
worried these problems and has war-gamed these problems. If you
war-game, you will never know what you are going to encounter,
but you will be somewhat better prepared to deal with those
events if you have had such war games.
What we have here is a problem for the Department of
Defense being handed this responsibility, because of the posse
comitatus statute and the desire of the department to avoid as
far as possible seeming to interfere with local police forces
and the like.
The new department will organize not only the warnings to
those local elements, but have a structure in place that can
quickly respond and to ameliorate the consequences of an
attack, and I don't think that FEMA could have done it.
As you may know, I was on the so-called Hart-Rudman
Commission, which recommended that we create a Department of
Homeland Security based upon FEMA.
What we have now legislatively is much larger than what was
recommended by the Hart-Rudman Commission. So your question
goes to the heart of the issue--no pun--goes to the heart of
the issue of whether or not all of these elements needed to be
brought in or needed to be brought in initially. And I cannot
answer that. I think that it is now our responsibility to make
it work.
And it is the responsibility of the department to convince
you and other members of the Congress, as well as the broad
public, that indeed the creation of this department was a major
asset for the United States government. And only time will
tell.
Mr. Linder. Have you ever seen the schematic of the
management and leadership of the Department of Homeland
Security?
Mr. Schlesinger. Yes. I think I have seen that. It rivals
that of the Department of Defense.
Mr. Linder. Thank you very much.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, Mr. Linder.
Recognizing Mr. Meek.
We are not using the 5-minute clock. But I would ask the
members to try to voluntarily keep themselves as though we
would be using it.
Mr. Meek.
Mr. Meek. Any reason why you decided to say that when I
came into the room?
[Laughter.]
I am not long-winded, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. No, no, no. It had nothing to do with you.
Mr. Meek. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I am glad you are here.
You have a great deal of experiencing in dealing with this
government. And I am not going to say that we are at crisis
point right now in the Congress. I think we are just trying to
figure out how we are going to function from this point on.
I think the American people are expecting some level of
focus by the Congress. I say that because I know that you were
around during the energy field crisis. The President had to
respond to that in the Congress. I know that two
administrations prior to his administration saw that this was
important and it needed direction and focus not only by the
Congress, but by the executive branch.
As we start to wrestle amongst ourselves in our own locker
room on whose in charge or whose not in charge, the last time
this rules subcommittee met, we had another panel. And I shared
with them that everyone that sits on the Homeland Security
Committee is going to be held directly responsible for any
attacks on the homeland. And the American people want to make
sure that there are members of the Congress that have not only
been briefed, but educated on the issues of protecting the
homeland.
Now we can get into all kinds of metaphors and
personalities. Many say a war against terrorism. I say an
effort against terrorism because in every war, folks feel that
on both sides they need to do things to keep up the status quo
of the war.
Share we me the importance of protecting the homeland,
above it all. Let's leave the Congress for a minute. But why it
is important--I know you have said it 10 times over that it
would be good for it to happen--why it is important for the
protection and sovereignty even of our country to be able to
have this standing committee. Because if we don't have a
standing committee for the largest agency in the Federal
Government, I just don't see a bright future focusing here. And
I don't see a future of a direction to that department from a
committee that should be providing that direction.
Mr. Schlesinger. If we have major terrorist acts continued,
possibly frequent terrorist attacks on the United States, it
will begin to change the nature of our system. It will change
the nature of the body politic. We want to preserve the body
politic as it now exists, for the most part.
In World War II, General Marshall would come up here to
Capitol Hill. And anyone who wanted to hear how the war was
going, he would meet with people in closed sessions in just an
informal discussion of what was going on in the world, so that
members of Congress could feel that they were well informed
with regard to the strategies and hopes of the government.
It is also true that in that period that power was much
more centralized, particularly here in the House. When Sam
Rayburn was speaker of the House of Representatives, he had a
great deal of authority and could push through things.
In the wake of the Watergate crisis, or to some extent the
disenchantments of the Vietnam War, there was a democratization
of the Congress. There are advantages in that, but one of the
costs of that is that we have seen a dispersion of power.
We now face a different kind of crisis. It is not a
question of responding to Pearl Harbor, and 4 years later
accepting the surrender of Japan in Tokyo Bay.
Terrorism is the tool of the weak and the terrorists are
likely always to be with us. We must lower their capacity to
inflict damage. If we fail to lower that capacity to inflict
damage, this society will begin to change. It is a democracy,
but if you begin to contemplate the psychological reaction of
the public seeing a biological attack in Cincinnati, followed
by a nuclear attack in Houston, what have you, you are going to
see this society change.
If we value what has been the wellspring of this
constitutional democracy, which continues to be a dispersion of
power, then we must as effectively as we can lower the capacity
of those hostile to the United States to commit terrorist acts.
And that is what the Department of Homeland Security is about.
That is the legislation that you passed, and now you are called
upon to make it effective.
Mr. Meek. Mr. Chairman, just one more second.
Mr. Secretary, right now our structure, we have
chairpersons that are serving on this committee. We have
ranking members that are serving on this committees of
jurisdictions historically. When you think of a set up a
standing committee, is that the formula to use to give the kind
of input by other committees who serve on this committee,
substantial members, ranking members, chairpersons, to serve on
such a makeup of a standing Homeland Security Committee?
Mr. Schlesinger. I have not thought through the way of
implementing this on Capitol Hill. It may be that in the
jurisdictional turf matter that the creation of a standing
committee that would exist, as with other legislation with a
sun-set law, might be the way to proceed. You have to entice, I
think, sufficient support from powerful members of the House to
allow the creation of this new standing committee.
Part of that enticement would be their participating on
this standing committee that might have a sun-set provision 5
years out or 6 years out, during which we hope to essentially
tear Al Qaida apart. We are doing a fair job of that now, but
there will be more elements out there later on.
And, yes, I think you have got to, if I were to speculate,
if the leaders on the Democratic and the Republican side,
speaker and the Democratic leader, were to estimate that they
have the support of enough individuals in the House so that
they can push through a standing committee, then the time has
come to have a conversation with the chairmen of those standing
committees and say, We are going to put this through. We have
the votes.
Now, would you like to be a participant? Or would you like
to be an obstructionist? Because we have the votes, we have
decided that this is in the national interest and the national
interest is foremost, and jurisdictional questions must take a
back seat to that. We need your help, but we will succeed
without your help.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Dr. Schlesinger, I know you said you had
to leave at 11:45. I was wondering if you had enough time for
just a question from the chairman and the ranking member of the
full committee. Mr. Sessions has been kind enough to waive his
question.
Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Cox. Well, I note that it is after 11:45, and I don't
want to keep you from your next appointment. I do want to thank
you for your very pointed testimony. And I just wanted to draw
attention to one part of your prepared testimony, which you
also alluded to in your oral presentation. Contrasted the
support that the creation of the Department of Energy had from
the speaker of the House who created a select committee, who
moved along the work of the standing committees in the House,
did it on a strict time schedule and so on, with not only the
disorganized process in the Senate that ultimately slowed
things down, but also some intra-executive branch sniping,
including the head of one department who derided the national
security functions of the Department of Energy.
And you pointed out that that ultimately contributed to,
later, what you termed accurately, I am sure, unnecessary
disorder.
Now, fast forward to where we are today. You have stated
that the purpose of consolidating oversight and legislative
authority in the House of Representatives and the Senate is to
ensure that we succeed and that the department succeeds in its
mission and "any weaknesses in the department likely will
prolong the activities of potential terrorists."
So I take it that I am correctly inferring from your
testimony that you are saying that there is a direct connection
between what we are doing here and whether we win the war on
terrorism.
Mr. Schlesinger. It may be that there is a direct
connection between that and whether we win the war on
terrorism. But we will be more effective and quicker in winning
such a war if we are united in our response to potential acts
of terrorism.
Mr. Cox. So I should have stated not whether, because our
ultimate victory we are confident of, it is just a question of
whether we do it sooner than later.
Mr. Schlesinger. I hope that--as a response to that prior
question, one must recognize that the capacity of the populace
to accept repeated acts of terrorism could bring about a change
in the composition of this society, a change in governance. And
if we want to preserve the kind of democracy that we have, we
must strive to be as effective as possible and to give as
limited space to those who are hostile to us to successfully
perform those acts of terrorism.
Mr. Cox. Very well said.
And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you.
Mr. Turner?
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thanks, Dr. Schlesinger, appreciate your insights
today.
You know, when I evaluate where we are, and I know when we
are trying to work through these jurisdictional turf battles,
it seems to me that though there may be some who would prefer
that we not have a committee, because it takes from the
jurisdiction of others, it seems that the practical politics of
this is just, as we created the Department of Homeland
Security--and I concur with you, irrespective of our past views
on what that department should look like--we all have a
responsibility now to the American people to make it work.
And nobody would ever dare suggest that we now undo it. I
think in the same vein, it would be very surprising to think
those in charge in the Congress, having created a Select
Committee on Homeland Security, would declare that we are going
to abolish it. And I would be interested in your thoughts on
the politics of that.
So if we make the assumption that we are going to have some
kind of committee, it seems that the only outcome that could be
worse than the abolishment of the committee would be to have
created one without sufficient power to do the job.
And there are two issues that I think I would like to ask
you to give us your insight on. First of all, it seems to me
that it is important for any committee of the Congress to have
identical and overlapping oversight jurisdiction and
legislative jurisdiction, which this committee currently does
not have. Because, in exercising your oversight responsibility,
if you discover something that needs to be changed and you do
not have the legislative authority to change it, it seems to be
a certainly a useless undertaking to delve into it in the first
place.
The second thing that comes to my mind that I would be
interested in your comments on is, that if a department is
accountable to everyone, it seems that it is likely to be
accountable to no one. And as we have begun our task on this
committee, I have seen examples of how our new department, in
many ways, appears to be searching for who it really is
supposed to be listening to.
And so it seems to be fundamental to the appropriate and
effective exercise of oversight to be sure that a department
head, and his or her underlings, understand clearly who they
are accountable to.
Mr. Schlesinger. I cannot improve on that statement. I
would modify it. It is not useless if oversight and legislative
power or separated. But it is most useful if they are joined
together. Having oversight responsibility, you can point to
certain things. You can arouse a concern in the general public
and press--that may force legislative changes. But obviously,
if you have the power within a committee dedicated to the
Department of Homeland Security, that is better than separation
of those two components.
second, you talked about what essentially was
fragmentation. If the if the 88 committees of some jurisdiction
in the Congress are dealing with the Department of Homeland
Security, they cannot successfully achieve that common mission
of protecting the homeland.
Thus, it will wind up that some committees, some committee
members, some staffs will say to that Department of Homeland
Security, Unless you do X, unless you give us this response, we
are going to take it out on the department.
And you will have a fragmentation that will be pulling the
department apart. It will be responding to the fragmentation
that would continue to exist on Capitol Hill.
And as a consequence, I think that if you are going to
achieve the results that everybody wants, they may disagree in
retrospect about what should have been put in the department,
but the result that everybody wants, that this department be
successful because it is the umbrella that protects the
society, then we must have a greater degree of unity on the
Hill, as well as in the executive branch.
The executive branch will continue to fragment if the Hill
remains fragmented.
You asked about politics, Mr. Turner? If something happens
and that is seen to be a response to the continued
fragmentation of authority on Capitol Hill, the politics will
not be good for those who have blocked an appropriate response.
And I think that you can spell that out much more
eloquently than I can.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, Dr. Schlesinger. I think your
testimony of frankness and clarity could not have been more
interesting or useful, and we are very grateful to you for
having been here this morning.
Mr. Schlesinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you all for
your kind attention.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you. Our second panel today consists
of three noted scholars and congressional practitioners who
will share their insight and observations about House committee
jurisdiction and homeland security, and more generally the
relationship between committee and executive branch
organization.
We have with us this morning Dr. James Therber, who directs
the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at the
American University. Dr. Therber is not only a well-known
congressional scholar, he was a former aide on Capitol Hill, he
is the author of numerous books on Congress and American
politics.
Don Wolfensberger also joins us today. Don is a 30-year
veteran of the House of Representatives who rose to become the
staff director of the Committee on Rules, and served the
committee very ably, under the chairmanship of our dear late
colleague Gerald Solomon of New York. Today, Mr. Wolfensberger
is the director of the Congress Project at the Woodrow Wilson
Center.
Professor David King is at the Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard, is the author of an award-winning book entitled
Turf Wars: How Congressional Committees Claim Jurisdiction. And
to be sure, that is a topic that, obviously, interests us very
much.
So I welcome our distinguished panelists, and would ask
them to proceed in the order they wish at this time.
STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES THURBER, PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR, CENTER
FOR CONGRESSIONAL AND PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC
AFFAIRS, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
Dr. Thurber. Shall I start, Mr. Chair?
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Yes, sir.
Dr. Thurber. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee for
this honor to testify before you on this important issue.
I especially am pleased to work here with Representative
Slaughter. I have worked with her before.
And a co-author, Mr. Dreier. In one of my books, he has
written a chapter on Internet in Congress. He did a fine job in
that book.
I am here to not talk about the need of this committee.
That is in my testimony, and I ask that my written testimony be
put in the record. I think all of you have stated the need very
clearly.
I am here to talk about the details. I think there should
be a permanent committee on homeland security. And I would like
to talk specifically about jurisdictional changes that I
recommend.
second, some secondary oversight responsibilities of this
committee and primary responsibility in other committees.
And third, methods for achieving the creation of a
permanent committee on homeland security.
I do this, by the way, in the context of almost 30 years
experience. But in particular, I worked for the Senate--it was
called committee on committees--that reorganize the Energy and
Environment Committees--in 1976. And I was the staff person to
do that. So I will have some comments with respect to Mr.
Schlesinger's comments on the difficulty of reorganizing
Energy.
I think the Senate was fairly successful. The House was
not. And I will give you some reasons why that was the case
later.
I also would like to say that I have used this as an
assignment for the last 5 years with my graduate seminar in the
sense that I have asked them to map policy systems, including
counterterrorism systems. And so I have heard all kinds of
cases for reorganization of the House and the Senate from my
students.
Two of those students are in the audience right now, and
they did a fine job of helping me with this.
But let us begin.
As you know, the reorganization of the House committee
system has already begun. And it started with the creation of
your select committee: but, more importantly, there has been
restructuring of the Committee on Appropriations, the Armed
Services Committee, the International Relations Committee, the
Judiciary Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence with respect to homeland security.
I know from my outside observation and discussing with
former students who are staff members up here, that the
appropriators would like you not to reorganize in the sense
that it would be just fine to have the focus primarily in
appropriations over this particular issue. That is somewhat of
a joke. I don't think they would tell you that. But if you
didn't organize, the power would certainly go for a central
focus to the appropriators.
I think the next step for the Congress, though, is to
consolidate jurisdictions and to clearly designate it in Rule
10, and I will get into that later, rather than through
precedent. There should be some codification in Rule 10 for the
jurisdiction, immediately, to get this select committee the
power of oversight, as well as authorization.
I know that many influential members and their staffs
chiefs of staff-are reported to be against creating the
permanent Committee on Homeland Security. It was in the press
last week. Because it would create this very large
jurisdictional battle, and these jurisdictional battles have
created unnecessary conflict, they think, in the past, from
1946 to the present. Now, there are examples of failure of
doing this.
However, this is no time for the committee to shy away from
the job of creating a permanent panel. It will reduce the risk
of terrorism. I think the American people want this.
As just an aside, I think the first responders want it. My
son-in-law is a detective in Seattle. And I was there last
week. And he could not believe that the Congress had not
reorganized itself yet. And I told him that there were 88
panels involved here.
And he, of course, is not a congressional scholar, and he
is only one person, but I think the first responders would like
to see Congress organized in a way so that there is a central
focus over this issue.
I recommend that the permanent committee have the
jurisdiction directly related to the agencies of DHS and
generally to the mission of reducing the threat of homeland
security. The jurisdictions of committees related to the major
agencies in DHS should be transferred.
And it is in my written testimony, but let me remind you
that you should have in this permanent committee jurisdiction
from the Committee on Agriculture, the Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service, Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
I would also move jurisdiction from the Committee on Armed
Services, the National Bioweapons Defense Analysis Center, the
National Communication System Jurisdiction and the Committee on
Energy and Commerce, the Strategic National Stockpile and the
National Disaster Medical System.
From the Committee on Judiciary, the Secret Service,
Immigration and Naturalization Service and also the Federal Law
Enforcement Training Center, the Office of Domestic
Preparedness, domestic emergency response teams, the National
Infrastructure Center. And from the Committee on Science, the
CBRN countermeasures programs, the Environmental Measures
Laboratory, the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office,
Federal Computer Incident Response Center, the energy security
and assurance program.
And from the Committee on Transportation, the
infrastructure, Secret Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, the
Federal Protectorate Service, the Transportation Security
Administration and FEMA.
And from the Committee on Ways and Means, the Customs
Service.
But this will not happen, in my opinion, unless you
approach it the way Secretary Schlesinger had indicated in the
answer to Mr. Turner, and I have it in my testimony. I think
you need experienced members from the seven primary committees
losing jurisdiction on this committee, where they have lost
jurisdiction on this committee. In the Senate, that is what we
did.
As I like to tell my students, we aggrandized the barons.
What does that mean? We didn't take away from powerful people;
we gave powerful people more power. And in this case, I would
grandfather people for the new committee so you could keep your
previous committee assignments and be on this new committee.
What does that do? It brings in knowledge, expertise,
institutional history from those committees. And it
automatically helps to coordinate with those committees.
The Budget Committee had, when it was created in 1974, a
similar thing where they brought in people from Ways and Means
and Appropriations and someone from leadership on the Budget
Committee. And it was a way--some people said it was a way to
weaken the committee. I felt it was a way to coordinate with
the key committees that were related to the budget process. And
this would be a similar thing.
Transition rules should be made to allow, then, members
from these committees, in my opinion, to be on this new
committee.
The jurisdiction of the new committee should also, though,
take into account that most agencies dealing with homeland
security are outside the DHS. These agencies include the
Northern Command. And I am not recommending that they be in
your committee, but I just want to point out that there should
be some relationship with these things. The Northern Command,
the National Guard, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the
Central Intelligence Agency, the NSA, the National Imagery and
Mapping Agency, the Centers for Disease Control.
We talked about NRC before. I have done a lot of work with
NRC. And there is a division there that deals with security.
There should be some relationship to that. And the elements of
the Drug Enforcement Agency that deal with borders, and many
parts of the Department of Energy.
There should be some kind of oversight and coordination
relationship with those activities, in my opinion.
The new committee will need to strengthen coordination with
other committees, such as Armed Services, Judiciary and the
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in order to
develop, in my opinion, a comprehensive policy making approach
to homeland security.
There is also the issue that was brought up by Mr. Linder,
earlier as well, why in the world should we have certain
aspects of the Coast Guard or the Agriculture Department in the
jurisdiction, or even in DHS in the jurisdiction of this
committee?
I would say that for the following jurisdictions, the
committee of primary jurisdiction before DHS was created, I
think, should have that jurisdiction, and you should have, you
meaning the Permanent Select Committee, permanent committees
should have an oversight relationship on these things.
For example, the safety, transportation, and maritime
responsibilities of the Coast Guard, I think, they overlap with
the Committee on Transportation Infrastructure; I think that
they should stay there.
In terms of primary jurisdiction, the food safety
responsibilities of the Animal and Plant Inspection Service,
you could share jurisdiction there.
The promotion of trade, which was brought up before, could
be shared with the Ways and Means Committee. This shared
jurisdiction with primary and secondary responsibilities for
the functions of the entities in DHS needs to be carefully
defined and done in a prudent way.
Now, how do you do it? Well, I have given you one
indication of that, and that is that you have, you bring
people, as you have with the Select Committee, from other
committees and beyond the committee.
Another way to do it, and I don't recommend it, but it is
an alternative, is to create an ad hoc committee, continuing,
though with oversight, as well as authorizing jurisdiction.
I think the way you do it is you transfer powerful people
onto the committees from the committees of jurisdiction, and
you change the rules in Rule 10.
I think that the American people, do not care where this is
going to be handled, they just want it to be handled with
efficiency, efficiently and in one place.
I think that you, with all due respect, must get beyond the
laugh factor when Americans think that there are 88 committees
and subcommittees up here dealing with homeland security.
That worries them. They are worried about homeland security
and terrorism, and I think it should move prudently but rapidly
to create a permanent select, a permanent Committee on Homeland
Security.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES A. THURBER
The views expressed in this statement are those of the author and
should not be ascribed to the trustees, officers, or staff members of
American University.
Thank you for inviting me to testify before your subcommittee on
the issue of whether the House committee organization, procedures and
structure are organized adequately to address policy and oversight
issues associated with homeland security. In the aftermath of September
11th , the continuing dangerous security threats to the nation, and the
historic reorganization of twenty-two agencies employing over 175,000
workers into the new Department of Homeland Security to deal with those
threats, your evaluation of the effectiveness of the House committee
system to meet the challenge of homeland security is a crucial
priority. Periodic consolidation and modernization of the standing
committee system is necessary and this is certainly one of those times.
That task is critical and directly related to the security of America
and is called for in the legislation creating the new Department of
Homeland Security (DHS): ``It is the sense of Congress that each House
of Congress should review its committee structure in light of the
reorganization of responsibilities within the executive branch by the
establishment of the Department,'' (Title XV, Subtitle A, Section
1503).
I hope my thirty years of academic and practical knowledge of the
operations of the Congress and the jurisdictional battles in the
committee system can provide useful background information and lessons
from past congressional reorganization efforts. I am pleased to be
asked to comment on how the House can be organized to more effectively
handle issues of homeland security and the work with the new Department
of Homeland Security.
Create a Permanent Committee on Homeland Security
As you know, the reorganization of the House committee system has
already started with the creation of your Select Committee and the
restructuring of the Committees on Appropriations, Armed Services,
International Relations, Judiciary and the Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence to deal with jurisdictional matters related to homeland
security. The next step in the process of improving the way Congress
addresses issues of homeland security is to create a permanent standing
committee in the House with its areas of jurisdiction over homeland
security clearly designated in Rule X. I know that many influential
House members and their chiefs of staff are reported to be against
creating a permanent Committee on Homeland Security because it would
create major jurisdictional battles. This is not the time for your
committee to shy away from the job of creating a permanent committee
that will help reduce the risk of terrorism.
Knowing full well the difficulty of committee jurisdictional change
and taking into account the homeland security related reforms that have
already occurred in the House, the focus of my testimony is on the need
to create a permanent Committee on Homeland Security and the methods
the House might consider in creating the new committee. I strongly
recommend a permanent committee with clear primary jurisdiction over
the Department of Homeland Security and the broader mission of keeping
America safe from terrorism. This committee must take a vigorous
lawmaking and oversight role in homeland security policy in order to be
taken seriously by the executive branch, other House committees, and
the American public. Americans need the assurance that Congress is
protecting the nation from future terrorist attacks. Creating a single
permanent committee is consistent with other congressional responses to
horrible events in history.
I recommend the creation of a permanent Committee on Homeland
Security with jurisdiction directly related to the agencies in DHS and
generally to the mission of reducing the threat to homeland security.
Jurisdiction of committees related to the major agencies in DHS should
be transferred to the permanent committee, which include: Committee on
Agriculture (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Plum Island
Animal Disease Center), Committee on Armed Services (National Bio-
Weapons Defense Analysis Center, National Communications System),
Committee on Energy and Commerce (Strategic National Stockpile and the
National Disaster Medical System), Committee on the Judiciary (Secret
Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service), Federal Law
Enforcement Training Center, Office of Domestic Preparedness, Domestic
Emergency Response Teams, National Infrastructure Center), Committee on
Science (CBRN Countermeasures Programs, Environmental Measurements
laboratory, Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, Federal Computer
Incident Response Center, Energy Security and Assurance Program),
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure (Secret Service, U.S.
Coast Guard, Federal Protective Service, Transportation Security
Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency), and Committee on
Ways and Means (Customs Service).
Experienced members (not necessarily the chairs) from the seven
primary committees losing jurisdiction and other committees with
related jurisdiction should form the basis of the membership of the
Committee on Homeland Security. If the membership of the new committee
were to come from these committees, it would possess the informed power
to act quickly and decisively when needed. ``Grandfather'' or
transition rules should be made to allow the members of the new
committee to hold the new assignment as well as their existing ones.
This allows for better coordination among committees and an efficient
transfer of institutional memory and expertise of homeland security
issues from other committees.
The jurisdiction of the new committee should also take into account
that most agencies dealing with homeland security are outside the DHS.
These agencies include the new Northern Command, the National Guard,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency,
the National Security Agency, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency,
the Centers for Disease Control, and key elements of the Drug
Enforcement Agency and the Department of Energy. Therefore, therefore
the new committee will need to strengthen its coordination with other
committees, such as Armed Services, Judiciary, and the Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, in order to develop a comprehensive policy-
making approach to homeland security and counter terrorism.
The committee should also carefully designate some overlapping
jurisdiction with programs in DHS with other committees; for example,
the safety and transportation maritime responsibilities of the Coast
Guard could overlap with the Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure; the food safety responsibilities of Animal and Plant
Inspection Service could share jurisdiction with the Committee on
Agriculture; and the Customs Service's function of promotion of trade
with the Committee on Ways and Means. Shared jurisdiction with primary
and secondary responsibilities for the functions of the entities in DHS
is necessary and prudent to make sure that the old and new missions of
these programs work smoothly.
Reasons to Create a New Committee on Homeland Security
The ability of the House to write legislation, develop
comprehensive policy in advance and in response to crisis, oversee the
administration of laws, as well as represent the American people,
organized groups, and state and local governments (including first
responders to attacks), depends largely on the organization and
management of the committee system. The House currently relies on a
total of 13 standing committees (including Appropriations and the
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) plus your committee and at
least 38 subcommittees (see appendix for chart of committees) with
jurisdiction over homeland security. Homeland Security Secretary Tom
Ridge said of the turf question on the Hill: ``I believe they'll work
their way through that maze of committees and subcommittees, and end up
providing the kind of leadership we need at the congressional level.''
This complex, competing and cumbersome jurisdictional juggernaut over
homeland security generates dramatically different workloads, excessive
competition among committees, scheduling conflicts, duplication of
staff, and dissipation of technical expertise. The House committee
system related to DHS and the mission of homeland security has too many
standing authorizing committees with major jurisdiction over programs
that have been transferred to DHS.
On opening day of the 108th Congress, Speaker-elect Hastert
implicitly offered the most important reason for a new Committee on
Homeland Security: ``Members of this select committee (Select Committee
on Homeland Security) will oversee the creation of the Department of
Homeland Security to make certain that the executive branch is carrying
out the will of the Congress. This select committee will be our eyes
and ears as this critical department is organized. ...This House needs
to adapt to the largest reorganization of our executive branch in 50
years, and this select committee will help us make this transition.''
The House created a select committee with no primary legislative or
oversight jurisdiction relying on the will of the House leadership and
the skill of its chair, Chris Cox, as well as the members of the
committee to highlight the problems with DHS and homeland security, to
get the department to implement its reforms and focus on new threats,
and to educate the American public. The select committee does not have
the formal power to bring a focus to all of the jurisdictional parts of
the DHS, let alone the other aspects of homeland security in other
departments. A permanent Committee on Homeland Security is the only way
to effectively see whether DHS, and other homeland security programs,
are doing their jobs of addressing the problems of terrorist threats.
Other important reasons for the creation of a permanent Committee
on Homeland Security are that it would help Congress carry out the will
of the American people to improve the protection of our homeland and it
would protect the constitutional powers of Congress and our system of
checks and balances with the executive branch. If the Congress wants to
influence and direct homeland security policy and act as a co-equal
partner with the executive branch, it needs to create a permanent
committee on homeland security. This committee would also maintain
coordination within the House and create a central point of contact in
the House for the executive branch. The committee could increase
efficiency of dealing with homeland security crises and issues that
will arise. It could help equalize the workloads of committees. It will
ensure effective oversight of a crucial national priority and be the
primary eyes and ears of the House over DHS as it struggles with a new
culture and organization. The new committee could direct homeland
security in a comprehensive and coordinated way, reducing uncertainty
in committee jurisdictions and decision-making related to the mission
of homeland security.
Methods of Establishing a Committee on Homeland Security
One way to create the legislative and oversight jurisdiction over
homeland security is through different patterns of bill referral. The
House rules stipulate that the Speaker must refer each bill,
resolution, or other measure to a committee in accordance with the
subject matter of the act and the jurisdictions of chamber panels
(House Rule XII, Section 2). The Speaker's referral authority, both as
stated in the standing rules and specifically in section 4 of H.Res.5,
the Speaker has discretion to refer matters either initially or
sequentially to the select committee and then to other committees. The
Speaker has all the authority he needs to refer bills to the Select
Committee on Homeland Security, thus establishing it as the primary
committee of jurisdiction. However, the select committee is not
permanent and does not currently have the authority to consolidate
jurisdictions and legislate through its own actions.
Task forces, and ad hoc panels have been good temporary devices for
dealing with major issues with multiple jurisdictions, illustrated by
Speaker Tip O'Neill's creation of an ad hoc committee to help pass the
Carter energy plan through the house on an expedited basis. The
creation of a temporary committee for the expedited passage of
legislation to create the Department of Homeland Security is another
example. However, these mechanisms are not a good permanent solution to
handle high-priority issues such as homeland security. If another
terrorist attack occurs, Americans will want a single congressional
committee tackling the problem. Congress did not have a series of
temporary panels after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the American
people do not expect it to react to this crisis in an ad hoc fashion
either.
The best way to create a permanent Committee on Homeland Security
is to formally shift jurisdiction from existing standing committees
along the lines elaborated above through changes in House Rule X.
Concluding Comments on Committee Reform
In describing how difficult it is to reorganize jurisdictions in
the House committee system in the 104th Congress, Representative Dreier
said, ``You would have thought I was threatening their wives...people
would prefer to give me their first-born rather than give up a portion
of their committee jurisdiction.'' Members are profoundly conscious of
the electoral effects when the House rules and procedures are changed.
Members invest heavily in their assigned committees. Congressional
committee organization has a perceived impact on the likelihood of
reelection. However, voters do not care about the jurisdictional powers
of congressional committees; they care if their representative can
solve the problems of homeland security or not. Members are astute
political actors who understand the ramifications of changing the turf
or jurisdiction of their committees and their ability to help
constituents and get reelected, but the House must move beyond these
worries. This committee is bound to meet with considerable resistance
to any change in committee jurisdiction over homeland security--the
greater the reform, the bigger the battle. Recommendations of major
jurisdictional committee reforms will result in broadening the
coalition of opponents, as we have seen with all House reorganization
efforts since 1946. However, this committee should not be intimidated
by the upcoming battle. It must move the House beyond policy deadlock,
partisan bickering and turf protection on this important policy. Do not
make homeland security a partisan issue in the 2004 elections. This is
time for a bipartisan response to a real fear felt by every American.
Create a permanent Committee on Homeland Security to deal with the
terrorist threat to America.
Thank you, and good luck!
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, thank you very much, Dr.
Thurber. Mr. Wolfensberger?
STATEMENT OF MR. DONALD WOLFENSBERGER, DIRECTOR, CONGRESS
PROJECT, WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS
Mr. Wolfensberger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of
the subcommittee. It is good to be back here in the House,
which I still consider home, and to see so many familiar faces
again.
I appreciate this opportunity to testify today on
organizing the House for homeland security in the wake of the
September 11 terrorist attacks. I will summarize my statement,
and ask the full statement be put in the record.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Without objection, it will be.
Mr. Wolfensberger. I especially want to commend, the
bipartisan leadership, both in the last Congress and this
Congress, for its flexibility, innovation, and commitment to
addressing this issue early on.
Speaker Hastert and Mr. Gephardt in the last Congress
actually put together, or were the creators of a task force on
the Intelligence Committee on counter-terrorism and homeland
security several months before September 11th in 2001. That was
the Chambliss-Harman Task Force, and that was done in response
to the Hart-Rudman Commission recommendation.
But then in the last Congress you had the small leadership
Select Committee that was charged with coordinating the
crafting of the legislation that put together the Homeland
Security Department; and, in this Congress a quite different
Select Committee, with a different mission, your 50-member
Select Committee on Homeland Security, charged with really
overseeing the early organization and operation of the new
Department.
So there have been different ways of addressing this as you
have moved along over the last 3 years. The central issue that
confronts you now is where do you go structurally in the House,
or, should there be a more permanent type of entity that should
be put in place.
And there are two key questions that you have to ask
yourselves. First, is the issue of homeland security important
enough to warrant a separate committee focused exclusively on
the policies, programs and problems of homeland security?
And secondly, if so, what is the best way to restructure
the House committee system to ensure that this is done in the
most effective manner?
Now, obviously there is a third question, which I do
mention in my written testimony, and in your minds it may be an
overriding question, and that might be one that to you obscures
or negates the importance of the other two questions, and that
is whether it is politically feasible to do this, given the
turf sensitivities of various committee chairmen and members.
I would caution, however, against allowing this third
question to get in the way of proceeding to go full bore on the
first two questions, so let me just briefly address each of the
three questions in the order in which I have posed them.
First, is a separate committee needed? In my opinion, the
answer is an unequivocal yes. I think the threat of terrorism
is going to be with us for a long time to come, and it is not
just a passing phenomenon.
Second, I think the threat is so serious as to warrant a
concentrated effort by both the executive and Congress to
combat it. And that, in turn, requires having intensive and
extensive coordination between and within the two branches, as
well as with state and local units of government.
This level of coordination is not something that you can
relegate to a subcommittee of an existing committee, let alone
to dozens of existing committees and subcommittees having bits
and pieces of jurisdiction.
Finally, this is something that will require a change in
the bureaucratic culture and norms in the new executive branch
components of the department, as well as a change in the
political culture and norms here in the Congress.
Both branches are still wedded to traditional, pre-9/11
arrangements and relationships internally, and with their
counterparts in the other branch, what some have referred to in
the past as the iron triangle of subcommittees, agencies and
their private and public sector clienteles.
You need a separate committee that is willing to set a new
course and way of doing things: exercise tough oversight,
employ innovative thinking and exert constant pressure on the
new department to set the right priorities and pursue them
rigorously.
Moving to the second question, as to how such a committee
should be constituted, I think the answer is self-evident if
you agree with the basic premises of my answer to the first
question. This must be a permanent, standing committee, not a
select committee. It should be a major committee for assignment
purposes, if not an exclusive committee.
It must have primary legislative as well as oversight
authority over the Homeland Security Department, its agencies,
programs and activities. And it should also have secondary
legislative and oversight jurisdiction over homeland security
responsibilities lodged elsewhere in the government.
It should be tied closely to the leadership in coordinating
its oversight activities with that of other committees, meaning
that the oversight agendas adopted by the committees at the
beginning of a Congress should be superintended by the
bipartisan leadership of the House, as the rule now intends,
but also on an ongoing basis as new areas for oversight arise
during the course of the Congress.
Finally, to my third question. Is the creation of a new
standing committee in homeland security politically feasible?
My answer is that winning approval of such a committee will
be a very difficult, contentious, and perhaps even bloody,
challenge, but that it is politically feasible because it is
both good for the House and for the country.
Most worthwhile endeavors are not easy, but that does not
mean that you turn your backs on them at the possibility of
defeat or rejection.
Much has been made of past failed attempts in the House
over jurisdictional reform, particularly the efforts by select
committees in 1974 and 1980. The central reason for both
failures then, we are told, was Turf with a capital T, and that
stands for trouble.
Turf is still a major obstacle today in any proposed
jurisdictional reorganization. But I think the times have
changed since the 1970's, and the Energy and Homeland Security
analogy is an imperfect analogy at best. First and foremost,
terrorism is a more real and tangible threat to the American
people than the threat of energy insecurity or dependence on
foreign oil.
During the twin energy shocks of the 1970's, there was not
strong public sentiment that they were presented with a life-
and-death situation, let alone that a new energy department or
energy committee would ameliorate the problem.
The terrorism attacks, on the other hand, literally hit
home and changed our country and its people dramatically
overnight. This is a very real and ongoing threat that could
extinguish our lives and livelihoods in an instant.
Second, the House has changed institutionally since the
1970's. In that decade, the House went through a dramatic
transformation of power relationships among the majority party
caucus, committee chairmen and party leaders. Following that
democratic upheaval, there was little interest in any of these
camps to fight another round for power, this time over
committee jurisdictions.
So, junior and senior members alike banned together to
defeat the bipartisan select committee reforms, not once, but
twice. And the two speakers at the time, who were much weaker
then than they are today, stayed away from above the fray,
rather than lead.
Third, an array of special interests was organized and
mobilized against the Bolling Plan in 1974. And the longer that
the plan was delayed in the caucus, the more that these
interests had time to pick it to pieces and grow the opposition
within the caucus.
Fourth, there was little media attention, if any, to the
plan back in 1974. It was not sexy, like campaign reform. And
it did not have legs beyond the beltway, notwithstanding some
urgency over the energy issue.
Fifth, the plan had more losers than winners. It was not
officially tweaked to ensure that members at least gained
something for their losses. To most, it was a lose-lose
proposition.
Sixth, the bipartisan membership of the select committee
did not work closely together in building bipartisan support
beyond its ranks. Instead, the ranking minority member ended up
offering his own substitute, which was different from that
reported by the select committee. They divided and were
conquered.
Mr. Chairman, you and your colleagues on the select
committee have a chance to make this succeed, and thereby
demonstrate that history does not necessarily repeat itself.
You have the benefit of knowing why past efforts failed. You
have the time in the next few months to lay the ground work for
the concept and the necessity of a permanent committee by
educating your House colleagues and building bipartisan support
among party leaders and members alike.
I wish you well in this endeavor, should you decide to
pursue it.
And I will be happy any questions once our third witness is
finished.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MR. DONALD R. WOLFENSBERGER
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee:
I appreciate this opportunity to testify today on possible future
House organizational changes to deal with the structural and policy
issues surrounding homeland security. I especially want to commend
Speaker Hastert, former Democratic Leader Gephardt, and current
Democratic Leader Pelosi on working together to devise creative ways to
handle both the creation of the new Homeland Security Department hi the
last Congress and to oversee its early organizational and operational
efforts in this Congress, The creation of two different select
committees, of different compositions and missions, is a tribute to the
flexibility and commitment of the bipartisan leadership to make sure
this job is done right at every step of the way, and that Congress
plays an ongoing and integral role in the further development of
measures to protect this country against future terrorist attacks. This
is too important a task to leave solely to the Executive Branch.
The central question confronting this subcommittee, and ultimately
the full committee and House, is what new structural mechanism if any,
is needed in the House to perform the policy and oversight functions
involved with this vast new undertaking. I agree with the
Parliamentarian, Charley Johnson, that the Congress need not, as a
matter of course, create a committee system that mirrors, in every
respect, the Executive Branch cabinet departments. At the same time, we
should recognize that this is precisely how the Appropriations
Committee's subcommittee structure is organized (including the new
House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Homeland Security),
and, to a lesser extent, how many of our authorizing committees are
focused. The Armed Services Committee is responsible for the annual
defense authorization bill, the International Relations Committees for
the State Department authorization, Intelligence for the annual
intelligence community authorization, Judiciary for the Justice
Department authorization, Veterans' for the VA and its programs,
Education for the Education Department, Small Business for SBA, and so
on.
It seems to me that there arc two key questions you have to ask
yourselves. First, is the issue of homeland security important enough
to warrant a separate committee focused exclusively on the policies,
programs, problems of homeland security? And, secondly, if so, what is
the best way to restructure the House committee system to ensure this
is done in the most effective manner?
I fully appreciate that there is a third question hanging over
this, and, in your minds, it may seem an overriding question that
obscures or negates the importance of the other two questions, and that
is: Is it politically feasible to create such a committee given the
turf sensitivities of existing committee chairmen arid members? But I
would caution against letting this third question get in the way of
proceeding full bore with answering the first two.
Let me give my perspective on all three questions in the order in
which I have posed them. First, is a separate committee needed? In my
opinion, the answer is an unequivocal ``yes.'' I think the threat of
terrorism is going to be with us for a long time to come and is not
just some passing phenomenon. Second, I think the threat is so serious
as to warrant a concentrated effort by both the Executive and Congress
to combat it. And that in turn requires having intensive coordination
of Executive branch efforts internally and with state and local levels
of government, and close oversight and policy innovation by the
Congress This is not something you can relegate to a subcommittee of an
existing committee, let alone to the existing structure in which dozens
of House and Senate committees and subcommittees have apiece of the
jurisdiction.
Finally, this is something that will require a change in the
bureaucratic culture and norms in the new Executive Branch components
of the department as well as a change in the political culture and
norms here in Congress. Both branches are still wedded to traditional,
pre-9/1 1 arrangements and relationships internally and with their
counterparts in the other branch--what some have re to in the past as
the ``iron triangle'' of subcommittees, agencies and their private
sector clienteles. You need a separate committee that is willing to set
a new course and way of doing things--exercise tough oversight, employ
innovative thinking, and exert constant pressure on the new department
to set the right priorities and pursue them vigorously. There is no
time nor room for clinging to the old, cozy relationships and standard
operating procedures that everyone is comfortable with. This is not a
cozy, comfortable age in which live. As Lincoln put it in his second
annual message to CongressThe dogmas of the quiet past arc inadequate
to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and
we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think
anew arid act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall
save our Country.
Moving to the second question as to how such a committee should be
constituted, I think the answer is self-evident if you agree with the
underlying premises of my answer to the first question. This must be a
permanent, standing committee, not a select committee, It should be a
major committee for assignment purposes, if not an exclusive committee.
It must have primary legislative as well as oversight authority over
the Homeland Security Department, its agencies, programs and
activities. It should also have secondary legislative and oversight
jurisdiction over homeland security responsibilities lodged elsewhere
in the government. It should be tied closely to the leadership in
coordinating its oversight activities with that of other committees--
meaning the oversight agendas adopted by committees at the beginning of
a Congress should be superintended by the leadership, as the House rule
intends, but also on an ongoing basis as new areas for oversight arise
during the course of a Congress.
Much is made of the need to avoid taking all the time of the
Secretary of Homeland Security or his key principals in appearing
before a host of congressional committees and subcommittees, and that
is one important argument for a central or primary committee coupled
with leadership coordination of the others. But the convenience of
Executive Branch officials is not, nor should it be, the principal
driving force behind creating such a committee. The principal rationale
for such a committee is to better ensure the protection of the American
people against ten threats, and if the committee is dedicated solely to
that it will both assist and prod the Department to do the best job it
can. But it cannot be justified simply on grounds of being a one-stop
hearing shop or convenience store for the Executive Branch officials. I
suspect if the committee is doing its job well, the Department will
often not find it a very ``convenient'' venue to testify, but that it
will find the committee a very vital and helpful ally in our war
against terrorism.
Finally, to the third question, which is whether creating a new
standing House Committee on Homeland Security with primary legislative
jurisdiction over the Department and its activities is politically
feasible. My answer is that winning approval for such a committee will
be a very difficult, contentious, and perhaps even bloody challenge,
but that it is politically feasible because it is good for both the
House arid for the country. Most worthwhile endeavors are not easy, but
that does not mean that you turn your backs on them at the prospect of
defeat or rejection.
Much has been made by me and others about the lessons of past
attempts to make jurisdictional changes in our committee system, and
why and bow most of these have gone down in flames--particularly the
two efforts to create a House energy committees in 1974 and 1979. As
one of my colleagues on this panel has cautioned me, analogies are
imperfect, at best, and I agree. The times change, the players change,
the institution changes, the relative powers of party leaders and
committee chairs change. But one thing that does not seem to change, in
my opinion--the one thing that seems to have an almost universal aura
about it--and that is ``turf;'' with a capital ``T,'' and, as the Music
Man might put it, ``that stands for trouble.'' The title of David
King's book, ``Turf Wars,'' sums up nicely what happens when
committees? jurisdictions are threatened by other committees.
So, why should creating a standing committee on homeland security
turn out any differently than past efforts to create a standing
committee on energy? I think there are several reasons why this one
seems more politically doable than the failed energy committee efforts.
First and foremost, terrorism is a more real and tangible threat to the
American people than the threat of energy insecurity or dependence on
foreign oil. Notwithstanding the Arab oil embargo, the gas lines, the
rising prices, and the distant prospect that our way of life might be
altered, there was not strong public sentiment that these perceived
threats were all that serious, let alone that a new energy department
or energy committee would help stave off those threats.
The terrorism attacks, on the other hand, literally hit home and
changed our country and its people dramatically overnight. I am not
suggesting that the people are clamoring for bureaucratic fixes or
congressional reforms to save them from terrorists. But they are, in a
general way, depending heavily on their government, all branches and at
all levels, to do their utmost to prevent another 9111 from occurring.
Whether or not they appreciate the need for a separate committee in
Congress to deal exclusively with the threat is not so important as the
perception that Congress continues to care and work closely with the
Executive Branch to address the problem. As a young Congressman Don
Rumsfeld (R-Ill.) once said, ``Congressional reform has no
constituency.'' Nevertheless, as I see it, the results of those reforms
can help effect major policy changes that benefit millions of
constituents.
Second, the times have changed institutionally in the House from
the 1970s. In the early 1970s, notwithstanding some of the House and
Democratic Caucus reforms to weaken the power of committee chairmen,
the jurisdictional changes recommended by the Boiling select committee
ran into a buzz saw of opposition in the Caucus that was led in part by
affected committee chairmen who Il turn rallied their members to oppose
the plan Even though many of the ``Old Bulls'' still enjoyed many of
the prerogatives of power, the democratizing reforms of the Democratic
Caucus had empowered more rank-and-file members bath through semi-
autonomous subcommittees arid as individual policy entrepreneurs. These
members were not about to alter a system they had just successfully
changed and were learning to game.
Moreover, when the leadership, namely Speaker Carl Albert, saw all
the opposition forming against the Boiling plan, he stepped into the
shadows and let his members slug it out in the Democratic Caucus.
Because the Boiling committee was completely bipartisan, it was suspect
among Democrats and thus an easy target for those arguing for retaining
the powers and prerogatives of the majority. Arid, without strong
support from the party leadership, the plan was doomed to failure.
Third, an array of special interests was organized and mobilized
against the Boiling plan, arid the longer the plan was delayed in the
Caucus, the more these interests had time to pick it to pieces and grow
the opposition to it within the Caucus.
Fourth, there was little if any media support for the plan. It was
not sexy, like campaign finance reform, and thus had no legs beyond the
beltway, notwithstanding some urgency over the energy issue.
Fifth, the plan had more losers than winners, and was riot
sufficiently tweaked to ensure that members at least gained something
for their losses. To most it was a lose-lose proposition.
Sixth, the bipartisan membership of the Select Committee did not
work closely together in building bipartisan support beyond its ranks.
Instead, the ranking minority member ended up offering his own
substitute which was different from what the Select Committee had
reported. They divided and were conquered.
These are some of the lessons past of experience. The Select
Committee on Committees in 1979, chaired by Rep. Jerry Patterson (D.-
Calif.) had no more success than Boiling, even though the Select
Committee had carefully chosen to go the incremental route and confine
itself to recommending the creation only of a new energy committee.
Again, the lack of leadership backing and the opposition of the bulls
and their outside allies thwarted any chance for success.
Mr. Chairman, you and your colleagues on this Select Committee have
a chance to make this succeed and thereby demonstrate that history does
not necessarily repeat itself. You have the benefit of knowing why past
efforts failed. You have the time in the next few months to lay the
groundwork for the concept and necessity of a permanent committee by
educating your House colleagues and building strong, bipartisan support
among party leaders and members alike. Prior to reporting your final
recommendation next year, you have the time to make your case in the
media and with the American people. But, if you wait until September of
next year to get behind a unified plan and work for it, then I suspect
it will fail, whether you vote on it in September, October, or the
following January.
Your case is good for a standing committee because it is the right
thing to do and the necessary thing to do. It is right from the
standpoint of ensuring that Congress holds its own as a coequal branch
of government And, more importantly, if you want the best possible
partnership between the branches to fight and win the war against
terrorism. Do not back down from making the effort because some turf
might be tom-up and transplanted. And do not settle for a fallback,
permanent select committee with mere oversight responsibilities.
Oversight will not matter if it is not directly tied to the ability to
change policy, The last thing the House needs is more layers of
bureaucracy and processes on top of existing layers. That will only
defeat the need to concentrate House resources and efforts for maximum
results and success
Thank you, and good luck!
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, Don.
Dr. King.
STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID KING, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC
POLICY, THE KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Dr. King. Thank you very much.
It is an honor to speak with you today. And you know my
name is David King. I am an associate professor at Harvard
University. And I am Director of Political Studies for
Harvard's Institute of Politics.
In my 1997 book--it was called Turf Wars: How Congressional
Committees Claim Jurisdiction--there I tracked jurisdictional
change from the 1790's through the 1990's. And as for
jurisdictional reforms, I am really, actually, quite serious
when I say that you could do almost no better than to lock
Charley Johnson, Walter Olozek and Billy Pitts in a room, and
precommit that you will adopt whatever they recommend.
They don't want to be in a room together because they don't
want to make enemies with any of you. But you have terrific
experts here.
Since you have decided to hear from the three of us, it is
surprising, actually, that we are all going to say about the
same thing.
I will speak briefly about what has happened to
jurisdictions, and then what I would like to see happen to
homeland security.
We should remember that there are several sources of
jurisdictional legitimacy, and an obvious summary is written in
Rule 10. These are statutory jurisdictions in the sense that
the rules are passed by a majority at the beginning of each
Congress. But almost all turf is originally conferred on
committees through bill referrals over jurisdictionally
ambiguous issues. Referrals set binding precedents, and these
are common-law jurisdictions.
Since about 1911, the House parliamentarian has been the
arbiter of jurisdictional disputes, although with the advent of
multiple referrals in 1974 and really in 1975, and subsequent
time limit referrals, the speaker has enhanced his ability to
control turf.
Importantly, when there are brief bursts of reform that
change Rule 10, as in 1946, 1974, 1980, 1995, what overwhelming
happens is that common law jurisdictions are written into the
rules becoming statutory.
Your focus, then, should be on the day-to-day rules that
govern bill referrals, which will lead you inevitably to the
parliamentarian and his staff.
The parliamentarian has a host of decision rules
determining which committee should receive a jurisdictionally
ambiguous bill, but the outcome of these decisions tend to
reward committees with the most relevant expertise.
I want you to think of the parliamentarian as an
institutional guardian who looks to the long-term interests of
the committee system. Each one of you may lust for someone
else's turf, but the integrity of the committee system is at
stake whenever boundaries change.
As I said, successful revisions of Rule 10 tend to codify
what had been going on behind the scenes for years. It is
virtually impossible to get a majority of members to agree to a
significant change in their own committee powers. Reforms often
embrace and then codify the status quo. So the trick then is to
stealthily become the status quo.
Furthermore, the political dynamics that bring about a
reformist majority are very rare, as when a lame duck Congress
passed the 1946 act, and in 1995 when the Gingrich-Dreier
reforms passed after Republicans had wandered in the wilderness
for 40 years.
Given that caveat, here is what I would like to see happen.
First, the Select Committee on Homeland Security should be made
a permanent select committee, along the lines of the Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence. I encourage you to read
through Rule 10 on the permanent select committee.
Second, membership on the new committee should draw from
current standing committees with jurisdiction over homeland
security, including the Committees on Judiciary, Transportation
and Infrastructure, Ways And Means, Energy and Commerce, Armed
Services and perhaps Committee on Appropriation.
Third, Homeland Security Committee seniority should be
based on time served on the committees contributing their
members, not on within committee seniority.
Fourth, the new committee should be given primary
responsibility, primary jurisdiction, over A, homeland security
generally, and B, the Department of Homeland Security.
Fifth, I think Rule 10 should be modified specifically to
reflect and effectively transfer the jurisdiction from several
other committees for primary referrals from Judiciary, the INS,
the National Domestic Preparedness Office, the National
Infrastructure Protection Center.
From Transportation Infrastructure, I would take the
Transportation Security Administration. From Ways and Means,
the U.S. Customs Service. And then there are multiple other
areas where I would think that the new select committee would
get secondary referrals.
Sixth, and here I know I am spoiling for a fight, but I
wish that the House would move the Coast Guard to the Armed
Services Committee. I don't expect it.
Seventh, and most important, I encourage Speaker Hastert to
empower the House parliamentarian's office to draft the
memorandum of understanding that would govern the use of
multiple referrals for homeland security issues. To minimize
jurisdictional fragmentation, I recommend that the speaker give
a new permanent select committee primary jurisdiction over
homeland security, give secondary time-limited referrals to
Judiciary, Transportation, Ways and Means, Commerce,
Agriculture and so on.
Even today without a memorandum of understanding, the
speaker has the authority to send initial referrals to this
current select committee. And I hope that the speaker will be
aggressive with multiple referrals, so as to set the stage for
later modifications of Rule 10.
Finally, let me say what I am tempted to do if a reform of
Rule 10 looks unlikely. I would aggressively amend the Homeland
Security Act to transfer programmatic jurisdiction to your
committee. As Congressman Dreier explained, your current select
committee has "legislative jurisdiction over matters that
relate to the Homeland Security Act. As the act is the organic
statute creating the new Department of Homeland Security, it is
anticipated that the select committee would be the committee of
jurisdiction over bills dealing with the new department."
Properly made, these amendments could predate formal
changes to Rule 10 and would give the select committee a
stronger position when arguing on behalf of initial referral.
I think it is going to take a few years. I don't know if
you are going to be able to amend Rule 10, change Rule 10, in
this current Congress. Certainly, I would hope you can
beginning in the 109th, if you can't do so now.
I want to underscore one thing one thing that Dr. Thurber
mentioned. Appropriations is going to be a hostile environment
for you, and especially with the tendency to waive Rule 21,
which now is in epidemic proportions on Capitol Hill, I think
that you are going to have to be very careful dealing with the
Appropriations Committee.
And I encourage you not only on homeland security issues,
but on other issues to stop voting for waivers on Rule 21, keep
the authorizing committees doing the real work of Congress.
I am looking forward to your questions, and I hope I can be
helpful as the House moves forward.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID KING
It is an honor to speak with you today. My name is David King. I am
an Associate Professor at Harvard University and Director of Political
Studies for Harvard's Institute of Politics. My 1997 book, Turf Wars:
How Congressional Committees Claim Jurisdiction, tracked the dynamics
of jurisdictional change from the 1790's through the 1990's.
As for jurisdictional reforms, the House could do no better than to
lock Charlie Johnson, Walter Oleszek and Billy Pitts in a room, and to
promise to adopt whatever they recommend. But since you have decided to
hear from us, I will speak briefly about what has happened to
jurisdictions, and what I'd like to see happen with Homeland Security.
We should remember that there are several sources of
jurisdictional legitimacy. An obvious summary is written in House Rule
X. These are ``statutory jurisdictions,'' in the sense that the Rules
are passed by majority vote at the beginning of each Congress. But
almost all turf is originally conferred on committees through bill
referrals over jurisdictionally ambiguous issues. Referrals set binding
precedents. These are ``common law jurisdictions.''
Since about 1911, the House Parliamentarian has been the arbiter
of jurisdictional disputes, although with the advent of multiple
referrals in 1975 and subsequent time-limit referrals, the Speaker has
enhanced his ability to control turf. Importantly, when there are brief
bursts of reform that change Rule X, as in 1946, '74, `80 and `95, what
overwhelmingly happens is that ``common law jurisdictions'' are written
into the Rules, becoming ``statutory jurisdictions.'' Your focus, then,
should be on the day-to-day rules that govern bill referrals, which
will lead you inevitably to the Parliamentarian and his staff.
The Parliamentarian has a host of decision rules determining which
committee should receive a jurisdictionally ambiguous bill, but the
outcome of these decisions tends to reward committees with the most
relevant expertise. I want you to think of the Parliamentarian as an
institutional guardian who looks to the long-term interests of the
committee system. Each one of you may lust for someone else's turf, but
the integrity of the committee system is at stake when boundaries
change.
As I said, successful revisions of Rule X tend to codify publicly
what had been going on behind the scenes for years. It is virtually
impossible to get a majority of members to agree to a significant
change in their own committee powers. Reforms often embrace and then
codify the status quo. The trick, then, is to stealthily become the
status quo. Furthermore, the political dynamics that bring about a
reformist majority are rare, as when a lame duck congress passed the
1946 act and in 1995 when the Gingrich/Dreier reforms passed after
Republicans wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.
Given that caveat, here is what I would like to see happen.
First, the Select Committee on Homeland Security should be made a
permanent select committee, along the lines of the Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence.
Second, membership on the new committee should draw from current
standing committees with jurisdiction over homeland security, including
the committees on Judiciary, the Transportation and Infrastructure,
Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, Armed Services, and the Committee
on Appropriations.
Third, Homeland Security Committee seniority should be based on
time served on the committees contributing members.
Fourth, the new committee should be given primary responsibility
for (a) Homeland Security Generally and (b) The Department of Homeland
Security.
Fifth, Rule X should be modified to reflect the effective transfer
of jurisdiction from other committees.
From Judiciary: Immigration and Naturalization Service;
the National Domestic Preparedness Office, and the National
Infrastructure Protection Center.
From Transportation and Infrastructure: The Transportation
Security Administration.
From Ways and Means: The U.S. Customs Service.
Sixth, and here I am spoiling for a fight, I wish the House would
move the Coast Guard to the Armed Services Committee. But I do not
expect it.
Seventh, and most important, I encourage Speaker Hastert to empower
the House Parliamentarian's Office to draft a memorandum of
understanding that would govern the use of multiple referrals for
Homeland Security issues. To minimize jurisdictional fragmentation, I
recommend that the Speaker give a new Permanent Select committee
primary jurisdiction over Homeland Security--and give secondary time-
limited referrals to Judiciary, Transportation, Ways and Means,
Commerce, Agriculture, and so on.
Even today, without a memorandum of understanding, the Speaker has
the authority to send initial referrals to the current select
committee, and I hope that the Speaker will be aggressive with multiple
referrals so as to set the stage for later modifications to Rule X.
Finally, let me say what I'd be tempted to do if a reform of Rule X
looked unlikely. I would aggressively amend the Homeland Security Act
to transfer programmatic oversight to your committee. As Congressman
Dreier explained, your current select committee has ``legislative
jurisdiction over matters that relate to the Homeland Security Act of
2002 PL 107-296. As the Act is the organic statute creating the new
Department of Homeland Security, it is anticipated that the select
committee would be the committee of jurisdiction over bills dealing
with the new Department.'' Properly made, these amendments could pre-
date formal changes to Rule X and would give the select committee a
stronger position when arguing on behalf of initial referrals.
I am looking forward to your questions, and I hope I can be helpful
to the House as this process moves forward.
Table 4.1 Overview of the History of Bill Referrals
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arbiter of Jurisdictional Effect on the Committee
Committee System Typified by Disputes System
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1789-1815 Ad hoc Speaker and floor Floor paralysis as workload
increases
1816-1889 Rapid growth in number of Floor majority routinely Floor paralysis over
standing and select overturns referral decisions referrals. Jurisdictional
committees by Speaker fragmentation even over
``settled'' issues
41890-1910 Stable number of committees. Speaker makes final call on Jurisdictional fragmentation
Speaker dominance jurisdictionally ambiguous over ``new'' issues.
bills and rewards allies Committee reports attacked
as biased
1911-1974 Strong committee fiefdoms. Speakers relies on ``Weight of Bill'' decision
Chairs by seniority parliamentarian's advice as rule enhancees informational
an institutional guardian efficiency. More
fragmentation
1975--present Subcommittee power. Increased Parliamentarian. Speaker Intercommittee coordination
attention to jurisdictions strengthened by time limits increases. Fragmentation
on sequential referrals continues
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, thank you very much. I
appreciate all three of you. And I think your testimony, all
three, was very useful.
Mr. Wolfensberger, Dr. Thurber was very, very specific with
regard to his recommendations on jurisdiction as it relates to
the creation of a permanent committee.
Now, you did indicate your strong support for the creation
of a permanent committee. Do you have further, or perhaps more
specific, recommendations with regard to the issue of
jurisdiction in order to make that happen?
Mr. Wolfensberger. Well, I didn't want to presume to put
the more specific recommendations in my testimony, but now that
you ask I do have some ideas that you might want to consider.
But they might raise a stir in certain corners of this
building.
I would suggest that you follow the lead that was done with
the Appropriations Committee when they took the Transportation
Subcommittee, made that Homeland Security, and took the non-
homeland security-related transportation matters and put them
elsewhere.
I would suggest you consider as the basis for this new
standing committee splitting the Transportation Committee into
two committees. It is now obscenely large, 75 members, the
largest committee in the House.
I would suggest that you take 30 of those members, however
the leadership wants to do it, bus another 10 members or so
from other committees with jurisdiction on a new Homeland
Security Committee, and then have the other 45 members of the
Transportation Committee on a separate transportation
committee.
I think you would be taking care of two birds with one
stone, and having a more manageable Transportation Committee,
as well as recognizing the fact that committee now has a 60
percent, I believe--let me just check on what I had here--34
percent of the personnel in the Homeland Security Department,
60 percent of the budget.
So I think that should be the basis for a new committee.
But that is one possibility I think you should consider.
The other thing that I would recommend is that you do this
in September of next year rather than try and put this through
in a rules package at the beginning of the next Congress. I
would have a separate vote on this issue, a separate debate. I
know you are not scheduled I think to report until, what, the
end of September, is it? I would do this, though, in September,
because members are going to be getting out of here first part
of October for the elections.
But bring this up in terms of the new Standing Committee on
Homeland Security, and put it together with just one other
piece.
I would recommend that you take the current term limit on
committee and subcommittee chairmen and change that from three
successive terms to four successive terms.
And I would make it clear to all committee chairmen and
subcommittee chairmen this is the only shot you are going to
have to do this. We are not going to put this in the next
Congress's rules package on the opening day. I think if you put
these together you have a certain incentive in there for a lot
of people to consider voting for this who might otherwise not
do so.
And I am not suggesting this facetiously. I think that
three terms is far too short once a committee or subcommittee
chairman has taken over to really get the feel for the subject
matter, and so on.
I still like the idea of term limits, but I would change it
from three successive to four successive terms, and put this
together with a single vote on a new Homeland Security
Department in September of next year.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Very interesting.
Dr. Thurber, you talked about, in I thought a very useful
way, the laugh test of the American people. Couldn't it be said
that the problem of extreme fragmentation is, in practicality,
in reality, somewhat solved by what has been done by the
Appropriations Committee in the homeland security area?
Dr. Thurber. Yes, when it comes to money matters, and while
working on various committee reforms on the Hill, I looked at
the issue of merging Authorization and Appropriations
Committees, and of course, it didn't go anywhere.
I think we do need authorizers and we do need
appropriators, and on the money side, yes, but they don't have
enough time, in my opinion, to do what a permanent committee on
homeland security would be doing in terms of authorizing new
legislation, changing the direction of the department, maybe
bringing new agencies into it, taking others out, as well as
rigorous oversight.
They do oversight, but they don't have a lot of time. They
have broad responsibilities in other areas of where that
committee, in my opinion. I think you need a authorizing
committee, and I think that it should not all be on the back of
the appropriators.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Dr. King, I really didn't, perhaps my
colleagues did, but I didn't really get the rationale for your
recommendation of a permanent select committee.
Could you help me a little bit more on your reasons for
that proposal? Are they more practical? Perhaps you would like
to expand on it a little bit.
Dr. King. Well, you could actually write it either way.
You could make it a permanent, you know, full committee, but I
think you need to be very careful about the membership.
I wouldn't leave the membership entirely up to the
Democratic-Republican Caucus. I would specify, as one does the
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, that there is a
distribution of memberships coming from specific committee.
And that is really to draw on the intelligence and
expertise of those members.
And then the second part of that is to base the committee
seniority of the new Homeland Security Committee on seniority
from those relevant committees of jurisdiction. I think that
way you would be drawing the most expert members from these few
very important committees.
So you can call it what you will, but the general model of
the permanent select committee is I think the right way to go.
I would also be quite careful, as you all did when you
created the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, to
limit the size of the committee. Transportation is simply
unworkable. And the committee sizes tend to ratchet up quite
frequently, although it has been must less pressure on the
Intelligence Committee, because it is specified so cleanly on
the rules.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Don?
Mr. Wolfensberger. Yes, one other thing that probably
should be mentioned in connection with that, and I am not
endorsing the permanent select committee idea, but one of the
advantages it has is that the leadership names the members to a
select committee. So this does not go through the process of
being voted on by the caucus or by the floor. And so this would
give it the status of a leadership committee, which the
Intelligence Committee has now.
And they did that for a very understandable reason, because
of the sensitivity that they have to have on that committee for
security matters.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Very interesting.
Dr. Thurber?
Dr. Thurber. I would respectfully lean towards a permanent
security on homeland security, rather than a select committee
and to have a full debate over the rule change. And to make it
and to make the case that Mr. Schlesinger said before, either,
you know, this is a major problem, either you are with us or
you are not, on taking the issue of homeland security seriously
in the jurisdiction of the House.
Yes, the leadership can appoint people. But the leadership
changes, and I would like to have it codified in the rules of
the House to create a full permanent committee, not a select
committee.
Dr. King. As I say, you can certainly do that within Rule
10, create a permanent committee.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. But I think what you had talked about was
a permanent select, would be codified.
Dr. King. That is right.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. It is an interesting idea. It is very
interesting.
Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And let me thank all three of the gentleman for bringing
their positions forward on what, obviously, we all agree that
there is some permanent status for this committee should be.
The question that we will be confronted with is by the
naysayers on the other side is why should we do it? Why not
just leave jurisdiction where they are?
And I would just like a little further elaboration from the
three of you on what happens if we leave jurisdiction within
the other committees? Where do you see us going from the
standpoint of homeland security? Will Appropriations then
assert itself even more, or what?
Dr. Thurber. If I might start, Mr. Chair?
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Yes, sir.
Dr. Thurber. First of all, yes, the appropriators would
gain power. They have, in my opinion, gained substantial power
over the last 30 years in the House and Senate anyway as a
result of so-called back-door authorizing, waiving Rule 21.
But secondly, there is a real reason to have expertise in
one committee, not only expertise of members, but the expertise
of staff. If you dissipate the expertise among many committees,
it is not as effective as an oversight panel, but not as
effective also as an authorizing panel.
Secondly, it creates one central place for the executive
branch to go for homeland security, rather than to--as I count
them, it is greater than the national journal article and
others. It is 38 subcommittees and 13 full committees in the
House, by the way.
If you have people from the department going to multiple
committee hearings, because everyone is concerned about
homeland security, because their constituents are, they are,
then it is sort of a waste of time, in my opinion, for the
executive, but also for the Hill.
And also, there is the problem of setting up hearings. Many
of the members here have gone off to other committee hearings.
If you had multiple hearings on homeland security happening at
the same time, I don't think it is as effective as if you have
one committee doing that.
So it is expertise. It is workload. It is timing. It is
relationship with the executive branch. You have the
constitutional responsibility to oversee this new department,
and you are more effective having it in one committee
primarily, in my opinion.
Those are the main reasons, in my opinion, if I am
answering your question.
Mr. Wolfensberger. And I would just add to that something
that I emphasized at the beginning of my oral statement, and
that is that Congress, now more than ever, needs to be a
coequal branch. You are not going to have that kind of
coequality if you allow things to remain scattered among 88
committees and subcommittees of the House and Senate.
I think there has got to be a central focus here, that
Congress has to be in on the take-off of this new department.
And that means closely paying attention to what is going on
operationally, policy-wise, priorities and so on.
And that you closely tie policy and oversight together on
an ongoing basis. And I think this can only be done through a
single committee.
Dr. King. I was going to say something that may shock and
surprise many people. I didn't support the creation of the
Department of Homeland Security in the first place. But now it
is a fact that we have it, and it is a fact that there is now a
tremendous imbalance between the executive branch and the
legislative branch. And the Congress must catch up.
I am afraid that some of the people who will oppose the
single standing committee of jurisdiction here are still in
their minds back in the days before there was a Department of
Homeland Security, trying to keep those clientalistic
relationships that existed before.
The fragmentation is tremendously debilitating. And
Congress, as an institution, must step up to the plate,
effectively tonight.
By the way, the baseball game, hope it goes well.
But it has to step up to the plate. And far too many
members of Congress, and certainly people in the executive
branch, forget that Article I is about Congress, the most
important branch as far as I am concerned, in the government.
And it needs to be on equal footing with the Department of
Homeland Security through a single permanent committee.
Dr. Thurber. May I add something related to the attack on
the United States on 9/11 related to this? After Pearl Harbor,
we did not have a series of temporary panels. We did not have
disbursement of jurisdiction. We came together, in the
executive branch, but also on the Hill, with the central focus
on events. And the analogy is here probably even worse now than
it was then in terms of disbursement of jurisdiction.
I think that the American people want to have a coordinated
effort on the Hill, from the House and the Senate, on this
important issue after the fact.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you, and I appreciate your comments. If
the committee were challenged to look at it from the standpoint
of a select committee or a permanent committee, can you just
tell me which of the two would be your individual preference?
Dr. Thurber. My preference is a permanent committee on
homeland security, as I said before. Yes, a select committee
can have the authorizing and oversight authority. But I think
that if you are going to vote on changes of jurisdiction
anyway, let's make this a permanent committee, a standing
committee rather than a select committee.
Although I don't feel strongly about it, I do lean towards
that.
Mr. Wolfensberger. I would definitely favor a permanent
committee, as I indicated earlier. A select committee does
allow the leadership to make the appointments directly.
I don't think that is needed or warranted in this case,
because I think members of each caucus would like to be able to
vote on the members to this permanent committee.
You have talked about the problems of emergency responders
in your local districts and so on. You want these people to
feel accountable to you as members of your caucus, and not just
to the leadership. So I would favor a permanent committee.
Dr. King. And I would stick with the testimony that I have
already given. I think the permanent select committee is the
way to go, and gives certain stature to the committee. And it
allows the leadership to be very careful to divvy up power from
the committees with which it shares jurisdiction.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, Mr. Thompson.
Ms. McCarthy?
Ms. McCarthy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I apologize to
our witnesses for not being here for your oral explanations. I
appreciate your written statements.
I wondered as we--I happen to agree, and thank you for the
support of making this a permanent select committee. I am just
curious about how members are best chosen. I wonder if we could
explore that a little bit. A couple of you have touched upon it
in your papers, but the idea of how to select who should serve
and for how long they may serve. That would be worthy of
extended thought on your part, and I would welcome any comments
that you have to share.
Dr. Thurber. If I might begin on that. I touched on it in
my written testimony in greater detail.
I think that the members on this committee should come from
seven committees that have primary jurisdiction over the
agencies or entities in the Department of Homeland Security.
But also, beyond that, there should be members from other
committees associated with the broader mission of homeland
security. And I have some details on that also.
How that is done is up to you, but one could do it similar
to this committee by selecting people with expertise, but also
with tenure, years of dealing with this and maybe formal
leadership positions.
It could become a committee made up of people who are
leaders on these other committees with the jurisdiction.
I think they are going to have problems changing
jurisdiction no matter what, but if you do bring in people who
have the expertise and the power to deal with things within the
jurisdiction of the committee, you are likely to build more
support for it than if you leave a more open system.
Now, in terms of should there be term limits on members on
this committee, as there are on the Budget Committee, I am
against that. I think that people should come to this committee
and build a career here, as long as they are here in
Washington. I think that the Budget Committee has term limits
because the appropriators in Ways and Means and leadership did
not want that to be a very strong committee in the first place,
and so they had rotations.
The Senate Budget Committee, in my opinion, is in a much
more powerful more effective and more effective vis-a-vis the
other committees, as a result of having people on there
permanently, and so I would recommend that for this committee.
Ms. McCarthy. Dr. King, do you have any thoughts? Because I
know you speak to it.
Dr. King. Well, I will just underscore that I think that
there need to be membership from the committees that Dr.
Thurber has mentioned. I would probably also put somebody on
there from Appropriations.
And then how members beyond that are selected, you could
have a mixed membership, some chosen by the leadership and some
chosen by the caucus. You know, the rules are there to be
changed, the rules are temporary, and you all have it within
your power to change the rules.
So even though you tend not to have these kinds of mixed
membership committees, I do want to underscore again that I
think it is useful to have committee seniority on the new
permanent select committee based on service on other relevant
committees.
And that helps to create an incentive for the most ranking,
the highest seniority members, of a committee to come on.
And I also certainly would not term limit membership on
this committee.
Ms. McCarthy. Thank you very much, Dr. King.
Mr. Wolfensberger. I agree with what my colleagues have
said, with one caveat, which, and I don't think they would
disagree with this, if you decide to take this Select
Committee, for instance, and turn it into a Permanent
Committee, I would urge against doing it where you have
committee chairmen of other full committees on it. I don't
think they have the time to devote to this committee and its
mission.
So I like the idea more of having other members from those
committees, rather than the chairmen, on the new Homeland
Security Committee.
I just think you cannot carry on the type of work you are
going to have to do if you are a full-time permanent committee
chairmen from other committees on this committee. They will not
be able to come and devote the time to your activities.
Ms. McCarthy. Would you think, then, letting the chairman
of that committee select the member from?
Mr. Wolfensberger. They can make recommendations to the
committee on committees, but I think that is a decision the
leadership ultimately has to make.
I mean, but certainly, they do now make recommendations as
to who they would like to have represent their committee on the
Budget Committee, for instance, or on the Intelligence.
Ms. McCarthy. Right, thank you. Thank you very much, and
thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you, thank you, Ms. McCarthy, and
thank you, the three of you. I have enjoyed your testimony
thoroughly. I am very pleased with this hearing.
Dr. King, I have to admit that I agree with your view of
Congress. I think that Congress embodies the sovereignty of the
American people, and not only because it is in Article I, but
because of that fact, I think, I agree with your assessment.
And I thank the three of you. I think it has been an
extraordinarily fruitful hearing.
And the hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]