The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (80 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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islative-executive work, there was, nonetheless, some discontent with the size and demands of congressional staff. "Senators have big staffs that make a lot of requests," said one PAS, who felt his agency expended too many resources on congressional requests. "We waste money, time, and effort responding endlessly to congressional oversight rather than pursuing our mission."
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One survey respondent wrote about "intrusive staff who apparently desire to micromanage executive agency policies and, at times, even personnel. I believe there are far too many congressional committee staff members who do little except create extra paperwork and stress on senior agency personnel in most instances. They wield far too much authority and have little or no accountability for the extensive mischief they can create."
A PAS at Health and Human Services agreed with the assessment that Congress had "way overdone document requests" by demanding too much documentation. He also felt that his agency in particular got more budget grief from Congress even than from OMB: "HHS has taken a cut in terms of real dollars and yet the work has grown every year." Long-simmering congressional anger at HHS often erupted inappropriately in micromanagement, he said. For example, "shortsighted and petty vindictiveness from Congress resulted in a near freeze of the travel budget for this year,'' because some members were angry at the number of political appointees from the Public Health Service who went to the international AIDS conference. In retaliation, they imposed a freeze on the agency travel budget. However, this tactic backfired: "It kept [career] health fraud investigators nailed to their desks but didn't affect the political appointees who had a separate budget for travel."
Anger at Congress came not just from its attempts to micromanage the work of the agencies but also because its GAO did not address what was all too often the root problem in governmentinsufficient funds. This frequently expressed sentiment is particularly noteworthy in light of the conventional Republican bias for less government and the "read my lips, no new taxes" motto of their boss, George Bush. Said Veterans Affairs' Anthony McCann, "GAO goes to the authorizing committees with reports of problems it finds in the agencies but the agencies already know about the problems but often don't have the funds to fix them. DVA gets beaten up pretty badly by Congress. But GAO doesn't go to the appropriations committees (which is where the programs live and die) to get better funding so the problems could be addressed."
Then GAO would compound the problem of cumbersome and slow bureaucracy by demanding additional internal red tape. "GAO reports al-
 
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ways say more review is needed by the secretary. GAO has no concept of the Office of the Secretary. It demands that the secretary review even little things that should be decided further down the line (like the location of telephones at the VA hospitals)."
The EPA's Linda Fisher echoed this perspective on Congress and the budget. "The great untold story is that the Hill has been cutting EPA's budget, coming in at $50-$100,000,000 less than the president's request. The Hill is more of a problem than OMB. The environmentalists are not as aware of EPA's budget as they have been of legislation. They need to be more aware of the budget." However, others observed that Congress was sometimes their friend in a budget or ideological fight with the White House, as in the case of the ICC staff cuts discussed previously.
Nevertheless, budget was often the area where PASs had the most difficulty with Congress, particularly in regard to hearings. Said one, "they often display a willful ignorance of economicshearings are grandstanding without knowing or bothering to learn the details." Said another, "Congress likes to hold hearings to yell about things. Congressmen are petty tyrants running a circushearings are shows to get headlines, publicity."
Agreed another:
Congress, without a question, is the hardest to deal with. They lack clear direction. They scream like stuck pigs when you want to do something, like close an office. The Hill is trouble for budget requests. The whole budgetary process is desperately in need of a revamping. Why? "Special interests"that says it all. I lay the problem squarely at the feet of the chairs of appropriations committees in both Houses.
On the other hand, Science and Technology Policy's Allan Bromley saw advantages to having day-to-day contact between his "apolitical science and technology staff" at the White House and the congressional staff. Good working relations helped smooth the way for upcoming legislation, in his experience. He had invested a lot of time in developing and rebuilding the bridges with Congress: "It's extremely important to have cooperation with Congress if you're going to get anything done." This view was echoed by others, as well.
Another PAS made this assessment of the Congress: "The Congress puts too much pressure on the system for the benefit of their constituents. This is a fact of life in a presidential (rather than parliamentary) system. Each person in Congress has to be elected as an individual. If they do a bad job of protecting their constituents, they lose their job. Congress
 
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is very reasonable to deal with on issues, but less so on legislation."
Or, as another PAS put it, "Inefficient government is the nature of Congressit's endemic to Congress, it's the nature of the beast."
Confirmation: "Nineteen Other Reasons for Holdups"
The confirmation process is an issue about which few PASs have no opinion. For the several who described their confirmation hearing as "cordial, positive, matter-of-fact, very fast" (three weeks in that particular case) or "nondescript and noncontroversial," there were many more who had "horror stories" to tell of being "badly bruised'' by senators, of rude behavior by them, such as those who smoked "fat, smelly cigars," chatted with one another or with their staff who popped in and out, did other work during the hearing, or simply did not show up at all. Other indignities included long delays, invasive and time-consuming FBI investigations, and confirmations being held hostage to a variety of political games and issues unrelated to the nominee. The process itself could be daunting enough to discourage any but the most tenacious.
A few cases, perhaps, are illustrative. Democrat William Albrecht was approached and interviewed by the Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) for a seat on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) late in Ronald Reagan's second term in a recess appointment. Then he heard nothing for many months. He found out about his appointment when a newspaper called him in Iowa to check out the story. When he called the PPO he was told they were "in the leak phase." Due to ambivalence in the White House regarding recess appointments,
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it took a while for the president to make the formal appointment, which required an FBI investigation. When Albrecht finally came on board, he did not plan at that point to stay more than a year.
For the regular appointment by Bush that followed, another FBI check was required. It was late summer 1989 before Bush nominated him; by then, Albrecht knew the people on the Agriculture Committee and found no problems there, but still the chair and others did not move on his confirmation. His hearing was held up because of hostility toward the Republican CFTC nominee who was up for confirmation at the same time. The committee felt they could not hold a hearing on Albrecht without holding one on the Republican as well. The Senate refused to move on it, saying "the White House wouldn't like it."
Finally, Albright himself started home-state pressure on Senator Tom Harkin. Former Senator Richard Clarke (for whom Albrecht had worked at one time) pushed the committee chair to schedule the hearing; then the
 
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process moved smoothly. He was nominated in August 1989 and confirmed in November of that year. (The Senate committee never did hold the hearing for the Republican nominee.)
Albrecht observed that, had he known better, he would not have moved to Washington and rented out his home in Iowa until he had the confirmation in hand. Sometimes the delay is the fault of the White House, sometimes the Senate, but as he suggested to any potential candidates, "Be prepared for an extended, uncertain process. And don't burn any bridges until it's done."
The NLRB's Dennis Devaney, another Democrat, also discussed the essentially political nature of the confirmation process, which focuses more on larger partisan issues than on the qualifications of the nominee herself or himself, particularly in the more controversial agencies, such as his. Three Bush nominees to the NLRB had been blocked in the Senate, "some by the left (labor), some by the right (business)," he noted. This, his third confirmation, was "tough, the other two were easy." As had other interviewees, he declared that the White House had imposed no litmus test on him, but as he was already well known as a conservative, a Reagan Democrat, that hardly seemed surprising. He agreed with many others about the FBI investigation. "The FBI stuff was a painwe've gotten off track with how much we muck around in people's lives."
Much like Albrecht's, other PASs' confirmations were held hostage to a larger dispute between their agency and the Congress, some for many months. Linda Fisher's confirmation for EPA, which she described as "uneventful," was held up over the Alar apple pesticide controversy that was unrelated to her candidacy. She echoed the comment of a PAS quoted earlier that if one had formerly worked on the Hill, one was likely to have made some enemies; previous as well as current staff conflict could also contribute to the delay. As she noted, "There are always nineteen other reasons for holdups on confirmation besides the nominee."
OMB's Frank Hodsoll had a similar tale of an unrelated issue delaying his confirmationit was inadvertently linked with a rule-making dispute.
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His solution was to hold up his own confirmation until the rulemaking dispute quieted down. Eventually Senator Glenn put his confirmation forward as a separate issue.
One PAS observed that he was "not treated well" in the confirmation process. He was nominated in the first week of May but not confirmed until the last week of November. The chair of his agency's oversight committee was from his home state and had bottled his nomination in reaction to criticism that the candidate had been named to please him. Fi-
 
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nally, the secretary pushed it, demanding a vote up or down. He was confirmed unanimously.
Added to the uncertainty of the process, the intrusive nature of the FBI investigation rankled many. One PAS called it "burdensome; it serves neither the Congress nor the administration." As noted previously, in addition to the four to five hours of FBI interviews (and thirty-five interviews of one's friends, family, employers, employees, acquaintances, and neighbors), the paperwork load is intensive. The nominee may have to pay considerable costs for an accountant to provide the required financial information. One interviewee reported that he needed his financial advisor and secretary to help him handle all the forms; he estimated the paperwork alone consumed a total of one hundred hours.
William Studeman, deputy director of the CIA, described his confirmation process as "like running the gauntleta hell of a paperwork drill," requiring several different forms for the same information. "There were forms, then pages and pages of specific questions. . . . [And then,] confidential answers provide fodder for the later public hearing." He remarked on the "huge studying required in preparation." He felt he was treated well by the Senate, where he was known from his previous stint as director of the National Security Administration; but even on a fast track, his confirmation took three to four months.
Veterans Affairs' Ed Timperlake remarked on the "chilling effect" of the FBI investigation and the financial disclosure requirements. "They're the scary part of the process. Things get written down on a sheet of paper and can stand alone. Allegations, even if unsubstantiated and disproved on the next sheet of paper, can be used against you. The country has turned to government bashing, it's more puritanical. The burden of proof is now on the person, not the process. You're guilty until proven innocent."
OPM's Connie Newman felt the confirmation process was longer and tougher now as a direct result of Watergate. Her appointment to head OPM was her fourth presidential appointment and "each time the confirmation process was longer and deeper than the one before." However, as she observed, "the limitations are such that even the most thorough investigation may not correlate to later corruption. For example, Sam Pierce [HUD secretary] had nothing in his background that would give even the slightest hint of his later corruption, so there was nothing there for even the toughest investigation to ferret out."
The PPO handles all the appointment details up to the submission of the nomination to the Senate oversight committee responsible for a par-

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