Government service should be viewed not as a lifetime career but as something you can do with a portion of your life. We need to find a way to bring people in, allow them to serve, and allow them to continue with their lives. We should stop trying to find parity with the private sector. Private sector employers generally contribute between 3 and 5 percent of salary for retirement. The federal government’s contribution is between 15 and 18 percent of salary.
Restructure Benefits to Stop Prioritizing Longevity
The federal workforce is very old. In large part that’s because the benefits are so lucrative and they are structured to encourage people to stay at least twenty years. Where else can you get a pension, a 401(k), and post-retirement health-care benefits? People don’t leave. They can’t find anything in the private sector that matches what they get from U.S. taxpayers. There are virtually no companies left where you get the equivalent of a 401(k) and a retirement package on top of it.
As a side note, I would exclude the military from these changes, as I believe their heroism has earned them a different degree of compensation. What they do is more than a job.
Slow the Revolving Door
If you come in and work for the government, you can’t just have a revolving door and go to work contracting with the government, exploiting your government network in order to negotiate bad deals for taxpayers. We need at least a two-year prohibition on this practice.
What happens all too often when people finally leave the federal workforce is they use their government contacts to get contracts or to work for the very vendors from whom they used to purchase. Turning contacts into contracts is a lucrative business for the employee—but not so beneficial for the taxpayer. This is not always in the best interests of the American people as decisions get made based on relationships rather than cost or quality.
Unfortunately, this is probably most prevalent at the Department of Defense. There is an unwritten rule that senior leadership within the military will be hired by defense contractors after they depart as long as they’re friendly. Look at the major defense contractors and you will see person after person with military history. On one hand this makes sense, as they’re in a specialized industry, but it does make you scratch your head and wonder if there isn’t a prevalent “go along to get along” attitude.
Particularly with purchasing agents, I think this is problematic. I don’t want to disparage an entire group of professionals, but it is an issue.
While we all can provide oversight of every transaction, the immediate need should be on the no-bid contracts. In these instances, where there is no competition, you really have to wonder how that came to be. If we want to focus on the most prevalent problem, this would be it.
Reduce Union Influence
If we really want to move the ball forward on government employee accountability, we have no choice but to reduce the influence of government employee unions—a process that has already made substantial progress.
In reality, these groups work against the interests of taxpayers and actually fight hard to prevent any kind of accountability. I have never yet encountered a union willing to work with me on getting rid of bad apples. These organizations care little about the public good. There is a place for them to function as professional associations. But we need to take our cues from the states, who have made great progress in reducing this perverse incentive to work against the public. Union dues should not be mandatory. This is an issue the U.S. Supreme Court got right in its 2018 Janus decision. We should limit what can be negotiated through collective bargaining. We absolutely must end the practice of “official time”—in which we allow federal employees to conduct union business on the clock. President Trump’s executive order is a good start, but we must codify restrictions through legislation.
Union Influence in the VA Bill
The history of the VA bill is instructive. What happened in Phoenix was inexcusable. At least thirty-five veterans died waiting for care in what one VA whistleblower called “the worst example of VA health care in the United States—period.” There was bipartisan outrage and both sides wanted to do something. Ultimately, the House and Senate each passed a bill. The bill represented exactly the types of reforms needed across the federal workforce.
It empowered the VA secretary to fire, suspend, or demote an employee with only fifteen days’ notice. The bill still allowed employees to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), but in an expedited time frame. MSPB would then have 180 days to issue a decision, a much longer period than the forty-five-day timeline set up in the House bill. Employees still maintained the right to appeal those decisions to federal court. But unions were livid. Heaven forbid these reasonable ideas should potentially spread beyond the VA.
Even with bipartisan support, the bill was opposed by the relevant unions and by some Democrats who feared it would eat away at civil service protections and due process. So afraid are unions of accountability that they will oppose legislation to address the unnecessary deaths of veterans at the hands of their union members!
Union Impact in the Workplace
Countless times I met with federal managers who begged me to give them the tools to fire people. It was the same story all over the federal government. I remember one particular manager’s story. He had a toxic employee who he felt was incompetent and had no business working in his agency. But the employee had passed the short probationary time and was now virtually impossible to fire. The manager tried disciplining the employee. This made the employee even more angry and caused him to continually attempt to poison the entire office—embroiling everyone in constant drama. The manager tried to fire the employee. But the Merit Systems Protection Board came through and forced him to reinstate the employee and provide back pay for a long absence. Now the employee was more toxic than ever. And the manager had no recourse. Meanwhile, the employee’s interests were being looked after by another very highly-paid employee who was on leave from his job so he could work for his union—another case of official time. This employee was receiving his professional-level salary to spend his day protecting a toxic employee on behalf of the union.
Ultimately the manager could no longer discipline the toxic employee. He had no power to do so. Productivity suffered. The work culture became toxic. And the good people transferred elsewhere. This happens across the federal workforce.
Please, Work with Me
I was invited to come speak to the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) some years ago.
Representative Elijah Cummings was a hero to them. They loved the Maryland Democrat. They invited me to come speak, too. Rarely has a Republican taken them up on it. Going into my first year as chairman, I accepted their invitation. I came to a D.C. hotel. The room was packed full of NTEU members from around the country. They are one of the largest unions, representing 150,000 employees across thirty agencies. There were hundreds of people in that room, from all over the nation.
They were surprised I was there. I got a nice lukewarm welcome. I tried to share with them areas where we might have common ground. Then I pleaded with them, please, work with me. “Among you are some bad apples. And that small percentage of people spoil it for everyone else. We have to be able to get rid of them. If you’ll work with me on that, I’ll help you on other issues.”
I got a nice, polite applause. Like every other government employee union I encountered during my time in Congress, they had no desire to do anything to allow government to ever fire any employee for almost any reason. Even if people were arrested, most unions didn’t think that was sufficient cause to fire someone. Pornography, sexual harassment, none of these is enough to them. How much more clear could it be that they are working against the interests of the American taxpayer?
They will not work with us. They will fight tooth and nail. Our only option is to limit the power they wield. We need to stop subsidizing union activities. That’s why it is so important to stop paying for “official time” where a $150,000-a-yea
r air traffic controller gets paid his full salary to work full-time for his union without ever spending a minute helping to guide an airplane. Taxpayers should not be subsidizing the organizations whose goal is to essentially fleece taxpayers.
Empowering Inspectors General
One powerful tool that is underutilized is the Office of Inspector General (OIG). We have seen the role of the OIG play out over the summer with the June release of the damning report of the Clinton email investigation. That is the work of one office of the inspector general—the one assigned to the Justice Department. Each agency has an independent OIG charged with investigating wrongdoing within the agency. That office has access to information that journalists and congressional investigators sometimes have difficulty obtaining.
IGs are appointed by the president but confirmed by the Senate. Think of them as the internal forensic auditors, with powers to seize documents and review information no matter how sensitive. They are independent operators void of political drama. They should be viewed as the honest brokers who will take an in-depth look at what’s happening or not happening within a department or agency. But some of their powers are limited. Furthermore, the executive branch has acted to limit them further. Their role must expand, not contract.
For instance, if an employee leaves government, the IG is no longer empowered to continue to be able to investigate that person. Many federal employees accused of serious wrongdoing simply retire rather than face discipline. We’ve seen this again and again as claims of sexual harassment proliferate. The perpetrator simply retires and begins collecting his fat government pension.
I personally remember incidents in which an IG was getting close to finishing an investigation only to have that employee scribble a note saying, “I hereby resign.” The IG had to walk away.
The IG should also enjoy broad and unfettered subpoena authority. In August 2014, forty-seven IGs sent a letter to the House Oversight Committee expressing the urgent concern that their access to documents and other important materials during investigations was being curtailed.
In July 2015, the OLC issued an opinion limiting the IGs’ authority to access certain information, including grand jury materials. I want the IG to be able to see whatever they need to see to get to the bottom of their investigations. As we will discuss in a moment, the level of grand jury secrecy is something we need to reconsider, particularly in the case of OIG investigations.
Finally, when the IG does make a criminal referral to the DOJ, Justice needs to act on it.
The DOJ often believes the ultimate remedy for internal wrongdoing is for someone to lose his or her job rather than be prosecuted. They would leave it to the agency to mete out discipline rather than spending resources to prosecute a federal employee. The consequence is nobody ever gets prosecuted. That’s not even something a federal employee has to worry about. The Deep State knows this. They can pretty much operate with impunity. Perhaps this is one reason we saw the FBI acting with such brazen contempt for the law as they worked to ensure a Clinton victory in 2016. Even in the most provable cases, it is rare that the DOJ will ever prosecute a federal employee. There are a few examples, but they are incredibly rare and particularly egregious.
The issue of OIG authority has come to the forefront this year. In the debate over whether the Trump administration should appoint a second special prosecutor to investigate political bias at the DOJ, oversight chairman Trey Gowdy has pointed out that these limits preclude the OIG from doing a comprehensive investigation. Instead, many called for a special prosecutor. This costly and extreme measure is the right call, but only because of the limits placed on the OIG. If we can find a way to address those limits, we can save the time and drama of a special prosecutor in the future.
There are seventy-three IGs that together employ roughly 13,500 people. This is in addition to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which employs some three thousand people to perform audits on agency spending. We have the resources to hold federal employees accountable. We just need to give IGs the authority they need to go the distance.
Starve the Beast
Limited government needs to be a priority. Government has a tendency to want to grow and self-perpetuate. It isn’t efficient. We spend more than $900 billion a year on social programs in this country, but the bulk of that pays for salaries and infrastructure. Little of that water ever gets to the end of the row. To the extent there are better and more efficient ways to get things done, we should seek those options. Government should be a last resort for only those things that can be accomplished in no other way.
Deep State Kryptonite: Sunlight
The last step in solving our Deep State problem is embracing transparency. Secrecy is a stock in trade of the Deep State. They maintain their power by virtue of their ability to cover their tracks in the many cases in which the public would surely disapprove. Consequently, the Deep State has a serious weakness.
Sunlight, in the form of transparency and accountability, is a powerful cleansing agent for both exposing and disincentivizing corruption.
In Federalist 51, James Madison listed “a dependence on the people” as the primary control of government. As Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. For the Deep State, sunlight is kryptonite.
In the absence of market forces to constrain government, the threat of public exposure creates its own restraints. For this reason, the ultimate check and balance must be transparency. Exposure and oversight is a powerful antidote for corruption. Unfortunately, the cure depends on the ability to prove a case. That requires access to documentation—something the Deep State currently controls almost with impunity. The ability to cover up the truth is a powerful tool in their arsenal, one they’ve proven loath to relinquish.
Unearthing the Document Trail
How different would our history look if we really knew the truth? The Deep State does not want you to find out, which is why they have become adept at burying the paper trail they are legally required to keep. The 1966 landmark Freedom of Information Act requires mandatory disclosure of government documents but carves out nine exemptions under which documents can be withheld.
A 2015 investigation by the House Oversight Committee revealed a pattern of stonewalling and abuse by government agencies that worsened under the Obama administration. Agencies were routinely denying or ignoring legitimate requests for information. The backlog of outstanding requests doubled under President Obama. As of June 2015, seven and a half years into the Obama administration’s tenure, 330,000 Freedom of Information Act requests had been denied. Records showed requests were being fulfilled just 30 percent of the time.
On this front, there is actually a small win to report. FOIA reforms passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in 2016 take aim at the Deep State weapons of time, information, and secrecy.
The bill strengthened the law requiring government disclosure of documents by codifying a presumption in favor of disclosure outwardly championed by Obama. The bill also purported to close certain loopholes used by government agencies to inappropriately withhold documents. In theory, the bill would reduce the backlog of delayed requests.
Unfortunately, this legislation was a watered-down version of a bill federal agencies and Obama administration officials covertly killed in 2014. Obama’s previous public statements notwithstanding, a long-delayed response to a FOIA request from Vice News reporter Jason Leopold eventually revealed the president’s behind-the-scenes efforts to kill the legislation.
A 2015 investigation by the House Oversight Committee during my tenure revealed a pattern of stonewalling. An exhaustive two-day hearing on the matter unearthed a parade of eleven witnesses, including journalists and other frequent FOIA requesters, that demonstrated just how broken the FOIA process was. In many cases, documents were only produced after the drastic and unnecessary step of filing and pursuing a lawsuit. Yet the very next day, FOIA administrators painted a picture of a well-oiled machine, rating themse
lves 5 out of 5 on presumption of openness and effectiveness of response systems. As my jaw dropped listening to this testimony, I finally had enough and told one government witness, “You live in la-la land. That’s the problem.”
In a January 2016 report, we released the following key findings:
The executive branch culture encouraged an unlawful presumption in favor of secrecy when responding to FOIA requests.
The Obama administration was unaware that FOIA was systemically broken.
Agencies created and followed FOIA policies that appeared to be designed to deter requesters from pursuing requests and created barriers to accessing records.
FOIA requesters had good reason to mistrust even fair and earnest attempts by agencies to fulfill requests. In the words of one requester, “something is desperately wrong with the process.”
The Department of State had numerous open requests that were nearly a decade old, making them arguably the worst agency with respect to FOIA compliance.
Despite the reforms, FOIA laws remain woefully inadequate. Further FOIA reforms are the low-hanging fruit of the transparency issue. Last-minute amendments to the 2016 bill exempted intelligence agencies, arguably giving them even more discretion to withhold incriminating information. If 2017 taught us anything, it is that intelligence agencies are just as vulnerable to being politicized as any other agency, if not more so.
The Deep State Page 19
