The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (41 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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pointees really do see their government service as part of an overall ''career path" and intend only to stay as long as it takes to make them marketable to someone who is willing to pay them a higher salary" (Joyce 1990a, 141).
Regarding earning power after government service, not even 17 percent of the NAPA respondents indicated that their service in government had significantly increased their subsequent earning power; 46 percent said that government service had no effect on it. One fifth of the appointees said that they left government to seek better-paying employment in the private sector, but very few appointees in any administration achieve "celebrity status;" far more often, appointees who leave for financial reasons do so in relative obscurity (Brauer 1987, 179-92).
Countering the cynicism of some, such as TRB and Thoryn (discussed below), Brauer observes, "although presidential appointments add value to people's careers and to their earning power, the cynical caricature of people who come to Washington to do good and end up doing well is neither fair nor accurate." He continues, "In fact, very few presidential appointees even stay on in Washington if they have not lived there prior to assuming their appointments. Of those surveyed, 49.5% reported living in Washington immediately prior to their appointments, while only slightly more, 52.7%, remained in Washington after them" (ibid., 186).
The 1984-85 Commission on Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Salaries, chaired by Nicholas F. Brady, noted the troubled history of linking congressional salaries with judicial and senior executive salaries. Congress had hoped by the linkage to achieve broad political acceptance of salary increases for itself; it did not work out that way. The Congress beat a hasty retreat in the face of the firestorm of protest over congressional salary increases; no group got a raise. The historical parallels are instructive. "In 1857 Supreme Court Justice Benjamin R. Curtis resigned because of financial pressures . . . 122 years later, undersecretary of health, education, and welfare, Hale Champion, quit office to return to academic life, declaring, 'I'm broke, I can't afford it anymore"' (Bonafede 1987b, 134). Similar complaints about salary were heard throughout the judiciary, such that Chief Justice Warren E. Burger in 1985 stated, "The consequences of continuing on the present course could undermine the federal judiciary for a generation" (ibid., 135).
The Brady Commission report showed that there was a near-40 percent decline in real wages for top-level federal officials in the sixteen years between 1969 and 1985. It is no coincidence that the average tenure of presidential appointees declined over the same period. Although declining real wages alone is not the only reason why average tenure has been get-
 
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ting shorter, it is an important one. It also explains in part why so few presidential appointees return to take another appointment after leaving one.
A salary study of the years 1977-1981 demonstrated that, in the words of Charles Bowsher, comptroller general of the GAO, "the executive pay ceiling has been increased by only 5.5%. During that same period,
retired
federal executives received annuity cost-of-living adjustments totaling 55%; federal white-collar pay rates have increased by 38% and private sector executive pay has gone up about 40%" (Grace Commission 1983, 112).
When combined with the high level of stress under which PASs operate, low salary is a potent disincentive to enter or continue public service. "A political executive would have to have an exceptionally strong commitment to public service or a particular president in order to choose remaining in a $50,000 job working 70 hours a week over a $100,000 private sector job working 40 (or even 50) hours per week" (Joyce 1990b, 19). What the Brady Commission called "the quiet crisis," the erosion in public service, is largely responsible for "the long, vexatious, and troublesome history of the attempt to set the salaries and compensation of top level federal officials, including members of Congress, judges, cabinet officers and agency executives" (Bonafede 1987b, 134).
Other factors that drive people out of public service-inadequate fringe benefits, lack of reimbursement for job-related expenses, disclosure and divestment requirements-also keep veteran appointees from returning to it and newcomers from entering it (Brauer 1987, 192-93). As the Brady Commission report observes, "We are drifting toward a government led by the wealthy and by those with no current family obligation. If candidates for high public office are to be drawn from such a narrow base, the quality of our government leadership will be seriously impaired" (Bonafede 1987b, 134).
It is clear, then, that salary has long been a bone of contention among PAS executives and a principal reason for many to turn down federal appointments. In many cases, states and local governments were paying higher salaries than the federal government, and people simply would not move to Washington, take on an unstable, high-stress political job,
and
take a pay cut. As noted, executive salaries were linked with those of the Congress and any attempt to increase them was met with outrage from the public-at-large, mostly directed at the Congress itself. That was the situation until 1991.
After years of fruitless discussion, Congress, in 1989, held a pro-
 
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tracted debate about federal executive salaries and finally voted to increase them all significantly. The by-now familiar popular uproar and anger at Congress for increasing its own salaries forced a recision of that vote, however. That meant that again the promised pay raise for PAS and SES members was likewise rescinded. According to a Bush transition team member, this action prompted at least fifty-four individuals to turn down PAS positions with the new Bush administration and the second and third choices for many of the positions often followed suit.
In the 1990 congressional debate executive salaries were finally uncoupled from congressional salaries and a very large increase was ultimately passed for PAS and SES executives. While the General Schedule employees got their usual single-digit increase (4.1 percent in 1991), PAS and SES employees saw increases of 22.2 percent to 29.5 percent, worth $16,000 to $31,600 annually for that one catch-up year. In 1992 their raises returned to the more familiar 3.5 percent range; 1993 saw raises of 3.2 percent. The 1996 Executive Level salaries ranged from $108,200 to $148,400; SES salaries ranged from $94,800 to $115,700.
The one-time salary increase given government executives in 1991 was credited by many with single-handedly lengthening tenure among PAS employees, and it certainly served to increase the satisfaction level of SES members. As noted in the GAO study of the SES, the percent of those satisfied with their salary jumped from 11 percent to 77 percent in the first year of the increase (GAO 1992, 4). A sideline factor is that Social Security pensions are based on a combination of total years of service and the three highest annual salaries in the last five years of employment. The salary increase gave older employees an incentive to stay in office, thus lengthening average tenure for the Bush appointees. One Bush administration official in the Presidential Personnel Office indicated that PAS tenure was indeed increasing. As she said, "No one's leaving. They're all waiting for their high three."
Washington's Revolving Door
Some have questioned the motives of those seeking public service. Ambition and desire for power join money as incentives for some to seek a political appointment. Thoryn (1983), for example, categorizes the majority of political appointees as those nearing retirement, joined by those in their thirties and forties who see government service as a valuable experience or as a stepping-stone for work in industry.
TRB, the anonymous columnist for the
New Republic,
writing in
 
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1985, picks up the stepping-stone metaphor to further the inquiry into political appointees' motives. He demonstrates little sympathy for complaints that people take a major financial loss to work for government:
First, it may be that most of these people can make more money
now
in private life than they make in government, but many were making less before they got their high government posts. . . . Second, having held a high government job is often the only reason these people can expect to make huge incomes when they leave it. Their government connections, reputations, and experience is what makes them valuable . . . Third, when these people talk of returning to "the private sector," they do not mean they are moving to Des Moines to manufacture widgets. They are remaining in Washington to leech, in some way, off the government, usually by peddling influence. (TRB 1985, 4)
"Cashing in is simply the last act in the standard four-act Washington epic tragedy," according to TRB. Act One is idealism, in which the person gets involved in politics on the basis of belief. Act Two is pragmatism, wherein one learns the value of compromise and working within the system. Act Three is ambition, wherein success for its own sake becomes the goal. Act Four is corruption, in which politics has become an instrument for personal enrichment rather than for ideological agenda (ibid.).
TRB feels political appointees are getting to Act Four faster than ever, for which he blames the Reagan administration: "Power is out; money is in: the exchange window is open." He further blames "the professionalization of political campaigns, which allows political skills to be marketed retail instead of wholesale," and the increased activism of corporate interests, which furthers the marketing of those skills. He also believes that the stigma attached to blatant influence peddling has disappeared, noting former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker's $800,000 salary as an "influence broker" in the Washington office of a Texas law firm (ibid.). Baker's firm earned $1.6 million in 1990 representing Japanese industries. Jordan and Iraq are among his many other international clients, the latter having retained him at a rate of $500,000 a year, plus expenses.
More recently, the revolving door has sent PASs into numerous lobbying positions, often for foreign governments' trade or political interests. William E. Brock, the former senator from Tennessee and labor secretary in Reagan's first administration, left to work for Taiwan, Mexico, Panama, and the Bahamas. Karna Small was deputy assistant to Reagan for na-
 
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tional security until she left in 1986 to lobby for Turkey. Steven Grossman, former deputy assistant secretary at Health and Human Services in the Bush administration, became a lobbyist for Hong Kong. Kristin Paulson, formerly deputy assistant secretary of commerce, left in 1989 to lobby for Japan. Steven Piper, on the U.S. trade representative's staff, left in 1987 and began working for Japan in 1988. Customs Commissioner William von Raab left that post in 1989. In 1991 he started working for a Swiss firm. Others stayed closer to home to lobby, such as Bush Transportation Secretary Andrew Card, who became head of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association.
Sometimes the revolving door ushers individuals into government service from a background in lobbying. Carla A. Hills, for example, the U.S. trade representative, was a registered lobbyist for Korea and Japan before assuming her position in the Bush administration in 1988.
The General Accounting Office conducted a study of 5,650 former senior-level officials who left government service between 1986 and 1991. It found that "82 of the officials had registered as foreign agents, including two senators, one member of the House, seven White House officials, 33 senior congressional staff members and 39 executive agency officials" (GAO 1992).
Critics of the revolving door argue that it serves the interests of foreign competitors at the expense of the United States. "The revolving door puts the United States at an economic disadvantage because those who flow in and out of government are analogous to insider traders who are privy to classified information, which then is used to benefit foreign interests. "
5
The revolving door, whether it ushers former officials into foreign or domestic enterprises, can have a corrupting influence on administration officials in place. They know they have limited tenure, even in the best of circumstances, and so may conduct the work of their office with one eye toward the future and their job prospects in it. This may or may not serve the interests of the administration, and it certainly could work against the best interests of the nation.
Because activities of the legislative branch are beyond the scope of this book, it only will be noted that the revolving door is as well-oiled for members of Congress and their staffs as it is for those in the executive branch. It has been estimated that nearly 40 percent of those who leave the Congress go into lobbying. While they cannot lobby Congress directly for a year after their departure, they can plan legislative strategy and lobby the executive agencies while they wait for the year to pass.

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