[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ENHANCING COMMITTEE PRODUCTIVITY
THROUGH CONSENSUS BUILDING
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS
OF THE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 20, 2021
__________
Serial No. 117-09
__________
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on the Modernization of
Congress
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via http://govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
48-599 WASHINGTON : 2022
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS
DEREK KILMER, Washington, Chair
ZOE LOFGREN, California WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina,
EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri Vice Chair
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado BOB LATTA, Ohio
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois
NIKEMA WILLIAMS, Georgia DAVE JOYCE, Ohio
GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas
COMMITTEE STAFF
Yuri Beckelman, Staff Director
Derek Harley, Republican Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Chairman Derek Kilmer
Oral Statement............................................... 1
Vice Chairman William Timmons
Oral Statement............................................... 3
WITNESSES
Hon. Fred Upton, Representative, Sixth District of Michigan
Oral Statement............................................... 6
Hon. Diana DeGette, Representative, First District of Colorado
Oral Statement............................................... 4
Discussion....................................................... 8
Ms. Jenness Simler, Vice President, Boeing Global Services and
Federal Acquisition Policy
Oral Statement............................................... 19
Written Statement............................................ 24
Mr. Warren Payne, Senior Advisor, Mayer Brown
Oral Statement............................................... 28
Written Statement............................................ 31
Dr. Scott Adler, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School,
University of Colorado Boulder Phoebe
Oral Statement............................................... 34
Written Statement............................................ 37
Discussion....................................................... 47
ENHANCING COMMITTEE PRODUCTIVITY THROUGH CONSENSUS BUILDING
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 20, 2021
House of Representatives,
Select Committee on the
Modernization of Congress,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 1:31 p.m., in Room
2360, House Office Building, Hon. Derek Kilmer [chairman of the
committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Kilmer, Cleaver, Perlmutter,
Phillips, Williams, Timmons, Davis, Latta, Van Duyne, and
Joyce.
The Chairman. The committee will come to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any time.
I now recognize myself for 5 minutes for an opening
statement.
We are here today to talk about strengthening committees
and empowering Members in their policymaking roles. But before
we discuss how to do that, I am going to take a cue from our
most recent hearings and attempt to first define the problem
statement.
The experts that we heard from last month pointed out that
Congress spends a lot of time arguing over solutions and not
nearly enough time defining problems. If we like a particular
solution, we believe a problem exists. But if we don't like or
feel threatened by a particular solution, we are more likely to
deny that there is even a problem. This denial leads to a
solution aversion. Members get stuck in a cycle of fighting
over solutions to problems they haven't even taken the time to
define.
So I am going to talk about the problems with committees
and policy work as I see it, and I hope my colleagues will do
the same. Taking the time to do this up front will hopefully
help us have a more productive discussion to find solutions
that can actually address agreed-upon problems.
So when I think about policymaking in Congress today, I
think entirely too much time is spent making political noise.
Congress also spends a lot of time on suspension bills and not
enough time on big substantive bills. I am not suggesting that
suspension bills aren't important. They are. Congress does
important work using this process, but the amount of work that
Congress does by suspension has steadily increased over the
past couple of decades, and fewer suspensions are reported out
by committees today than in the past.
Twenty years ago or so, less than half of the House's work
was done by suspension. But during the 116th Congress, 66
percent of measures considered on the House floor were
suspension bills. In the 115th, 64 percent of what the House
did was by suspension. So, Congress spends a lot of time making
political noise in taking up suspension bills. Less time is
spent on the big policy measures that used to be the bread and
butter of committee work. As a result, much of what gets done
gets done in leadership offices or by omnibus.
In 13 of the last 14 appropriations cycles, Congress has
completed its appropriations work with an omnibus bill. And in
most cases, the omnibus contained all 12 regular appropriations
bills.
Members also spend a lot of time running between committee
hearings instead of spending time in committee hearings. Last
year, the Bipartisan Policy Center found that one morning, 131
Members, 30 percent of the entire House, had a conflict between
two or more committee meetings, and in some hearings, up to 97
percent of committee members had a conflict. As a result, some
Members hop from one hearing to another to give 5 minutes of
remarks aimed at social media, rather than in finding policy
solutions.
So I think all this is a problem, and it is a problem
because when Members are not active participants in the
policymaking process, when they are not engaged in the work
they came to Congress to do, a few things happen. One,
frustration builds, and that frustration can take Members in a
lot of different and not always healthy directions. Some
redirect their focus to communications where feedback is often
instantaneous. Some seek out procedural tools to halt processes
in which they were denied participation. And some become
disillusioned with the process altogether and they feel they
have no ability to effect change.
It is also important to acknowledge that committees have
lost a tremendous amount of capacity over the past few decades.
By 2015, the total number of House committee staff was half of
what it had been in 1991. As a result, committees today lack
the deep policy expertise that they need to do the substantive
policy work that they are meant to do, and this brain drain
from the Hill leaves Members more dependent on lobbyists for
help.
There are more problems, and I hope my colleagues will
share their thoughts, but hopefully this lets us begin the
process of finding solutions that best fit the challenges
committees and members face in the policymaking process.
As with our two most recent hearings, the Select Committee
will once again make use of our committees' rules that we
adopted earlier this year that give us some flexibility to
experiment with how we structure our hearings. Our goal is to
encourage thoughtful discussion and the civil exchange of ideas
and opinions.
So, now a really formal part. In accordance with clause 2
(j) of House rule XI, we will allow up to 30 minutes of
extended questioning per witness and, without objection, time
will not be strictly segregated between the witnesses, which
will allow for extended back-and-forth exchanges between
members and witnesses.
Vice Chair Timmons and I will manage the time to ensure
that every member has equal opportunity to participate. Any
member who wishes to speak should just signal their request to
me or Vice Chair Timmons. Additionally, members who wish to
claim their individual 5 minutes to question each witness
pursuant to clause 2(j)(2) of rule XI will be permitted to do
so following the period of extended questioning.
Okay. That was really formal.
I would like to now invite Vice Chair Timmons to share our
opening remarks, and then we will get to our terrific
witnesses.
Mr. Timmons. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to thank both of our witnesses for taking the
time to come. We know how busy you all are. So we really
appreciate it.
I just want to point out that we have 6 of the 12 members
here and, as you can imagine, they all want to be here but they
are in another committee or a subcommittee and that is how this
place works. I was--I am on the Financial Services Committee. I
spoke earlier, and I looked around as I was using my 5 minutes,
and there must be 60 people on the committee, something like
that, and I think there were four in the room when I was
speaking. I had a great back-and-forth with Secretary Fudge
but, you know, that is just not productive.
And so I am very excited to hear how you all were able to
accomplish such a great feat in a bipartisan and collaborative
manner and get it across the finish line. A lot of people are
working on a lot of different, important bills and you all have
a framework that you are about to share with us on how to
accomplish the task of legislating. We don't do a lot of that.
Generally speaking, the loudest voices in the room are the ones
that are heard, and I can promise you that the people on the
edges of this Congress are not going to solve our problems, and
I can promise you Twitter is not going to solve our problems.
So I am just really excited about hearing the story of your
success, and appreciate you all taking the time. I do hope that
I can learn from your success, because I don't want to spend 20
or 30 years in Congress until I am able to succeed in the
manner that you all did. So, again, I just really appreciate
it.
And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you.
We are thrilled to have two of our colleagues joining us
today, Representative DeGette and Representative Upton. Thank
you for taking time out of your schedule to talk with our
committee regarding the 21st Century Cures Act.
I will say, Congressman Upton, I would have said a bunch of
nice things about you even if your family weren't here, but we
are glad you are all here.
Mr. Upton. I will just note that I like the color blue, but
Mr. Joyce, being from Ohio, he probably has scarlet and gray
and there is scarlet and gray. That is----
The Chairman. They definitely----
Mr. Upton. They had a banner of Keith Lloyd in the old
days. It is--but anyway.
The Chairman. Well, listen. The consensus-based approach
that you took in drafting the Cures Act, along with your shared
commitment to a bipartisan process, I think is a great model
for how committees and members can work to successfully produce
important policy, not just suspension bills, but something that
really is substantive and that matters to a lot of Americans. I
think Congress can learn from your experience, and that is why
we are looking forward to hearing more about it.
So in the spirit of collaboration, I invite you to take 15
minutes together to present your testimony and respond to one
another if someone says something that you want to respond to.
And so we will take it away.
Ms. DeGette. I would defer to Fred to start for the reason
to talk about how we developed our partnership. Fred was the
chairman of Energy and Commerce at the time this all started.
So I think it would be instructive to talk about how he decided
to do this, then we can sort of talk about how we proceeded
from there.
The Chairman. Great.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. FRED UPTON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN
Mr. Upton. Well, let me just say a couple of things. I am
not going to use the prepared text or anything like that, but I
just--you know, this was something that we both really wanted
to do, and we knew everybody wanted to do it. I mean, what
family doesn't have cancer or Parkinson's or something like
that? What can we do to solve the problem? And we also knew
that the legislative process, this is not something [inaudible]
suspension. It is not something we can do, you know [inaudible]
it was going to take a 3-year effort because, if we wanted a
smaller bill, we could have done it but it wouldn't have
achieved the results that we all wanted.
So we knew--and we were a team from the get-go, but we knew
it was going to take 3 years. And so Henry Waxman was my
counterpart, as much as Henry wanted to be part of it, we named
it the Upton-Waxman bill [inaudible] going to be there. And I
reached out to a really good partner, Diana DeGette, and she
and I worked on this. We went to each other's districts. We
enlisted every member of our committee, Republican and
Democrat. We passed H.R. 6, which was the bill that we
introduced 53 to nothing in committee.
But I will tell you, the--oh, I am sorry. I didn't have it
on. Could you not here me, Mr. Joyce? I am sorry. All right.
Start over again. Start the clock.
But we passed the bill 53 to nothing. And, you know, one
point I actually--this was stunning to the staff, but we
actually adjourned for a couple of days because that we had a
glitch, and there was one faction that we didn't want off the
reservation. And we also knew that we had a time crunch, that
the work that we were doing, we reached out to the Senate. They
wouldn't have time to do this. They have got different rules
than we did. No way were we going to get through the cloture
and everything else. So we knew that we had to have a very big
vote in the House so that they would be on board, and we
reached out to Mitch McConnell and Lamar Alexander and others
in the Senate, and they had confidence in what we were doing.
We knew what they wanted. So we had some provisions that were
there.
But I got to tell you, then-Vice President Biden was
terrific. This is where we did the Cancer Moonshot. And we met
with him for, I don't know, and hour or two, with Lamar
Alexander, Diana and I, down at the White House, and he knew
what he wanted and he wanted $1 billion. Then $1 billion was a
lot much money, unlike the infrastructure package. A billion
was a lot of money, and we said it is done. It is in there.
But the bottom line was this: We worked with every member.
We listened. We were able to reach out to the interest groups,
the disease groups, the universities, pharma. We had a lot of
roundtables. We--you know, I--when I became chairman of the
committee, I ended op---we had opening statements for every
member of the committee for every hearing. Oh, my. And when I
ended that, oh, there were some members that were so angry.
What do you mean I can't speak? I said, well, you know, I have
the chairman of GM come in and, you know, 2 hours later, she
finally gets to give her opening statement because you have got
50-some members, you know, on an important--so I said we are
ending that. We are going to have just brief opening statements
by the chair and ranker and that is it.
We are going to change the procedure in committee--this was
an important one--and it has been held by my predecessors
Walden and Pallone, that amendments that are bipartisan, when
you get to a markup, subcommittee or full committee, go ahead
of the queue so you don't have to wait for the section reading.
You don't have to worry about getting foreclosed out. So that
encourages people on both sides then to work together, because
if you have got an amendment that is offered by Dingell and
McKinley, bingo, it is going to happen. It is going to happen.
So let's have those individual members meet and be able to
finesse things together, because they will have, you know, as
we--this job is networking, and there is a lot of respect for
every member of our committee, and you can put two people
together, it is going to happen as part of that markup.
So that is--I don't know if other committees do that. That
was my idea, and it has--again, it has held true. But, you
know, as you look at what we did, we needed every day. I mean,
we were--Diana and I were working as we were doing our
Thanksgiving walks in Michigan and Colorado, you know, with
just----
Ms. DeGette. He was walking. I was actually cooking, yeah.
Mr. Upton[continuing]. With just--well, you know, I make a
pretty mean whiskey sour till we do those as well, but that
probably--anyway, but we needed every day. We had probably six
or seven legislative days after Thanksgiving to really get the
thing done, but, you know, we passed it 392 to 26. And we got
through it a Senate filibuster. And, you know, it is all part
of the record, but both Bernie and Elizabeth, you know, led the
fight on a filibuster. And Biden was in the chair and, you
know, as president of the Senate and, you know, we walked it
through. We got 75 votes, I think, on cloture, and Schumer was
against us on that. That is pretty hard to do. But because we
built the record, we were able to get it done, and it was
literally the highlight of that Congress, the last bill that
Obama signed into law, and we made a difference.
And, you know, looking back, and Diana now is chair of the
Oversight Subcommittee, I can't tell you how many hearings we
have had in the last year or two. We wouldn't--we wouldn't have
had a vaccine for COVID, might have been 8, 10, maybe even a
year afterwards, but because of the work that we did, allowed
for Operation Warp Speed, allowed for the money, the research
to go forward, allowed for the pharmaceutical companies to
literally produce the vaccine before it was approved.
So Pfizer is my district. They actually do it in my
district, as it happens. They did an incredible job getting
ready, but they knew it was going to get approved and they
could begin the manufacture process and get ready and hit. When
the FDA approval came on that Friday, they could send the
trucks out on Sunday afternoon to get it done. And the same
thing happened with J&J and Moderna too.
So bottom line is this: I had a great partner, and that is
what you have got to do on a bill like this. And we are looking
to do Cures 2.0 now. We have spent a lot of time the last year.
COVID slowed us down, but we are looking to introduce that bill
soon to update what we did on Cures. But we are going go to do
it the same way. We are going to get the input. We are getting
groups to contact all of you to be co-sponsors of the bill to
move it forward, and hopefully we can build on what we did back
in 2016.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. DIANA DEGETTE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO
Ms. DeGette. Okay. So you can tell Fred and I have done
this before, and I will just add a few things.
Fred--as I said, Fred was the chairman of the committee. I
wasn't--you know, I was just a--I wasn't a junior member, but I
was----
Mr. Upton. You were pretty senior.
Ms. DeGette. I was pretty senior.
Mr. Upton. You were the deputy whip. You were----
Ms. DeGette. Okay. Yeah, but--but I had--I had worked on
biomedical research issues in the past, and I think that is one
reason why Fred contacted me. And also, I really try to do all
of my legislation on a bipartisan basis, if I can.
And so when Fred called me, of course, I was quite honored.
And, as he said, what we did was immediately form this
partnership, and we had an agreement that--that since it was
around biomedical research, which impacts every family in
America, Democrat, Republican, unaffiliated, doesn't matter,
and so we agreed that we would--that we would try--that we
would do a broad, sweeping bill.
You know, so often in Congress people do bills like call--
like 21st Century Cures, and then it puts--like, it says, we
are going have a study to study what to do, and then we pass it
maybe on suspension, and then--and then the sponsors of the
bill say, great news. We have cured all diseases by passing
this bill.
We did not want to do that. We didn't want to have just a
fig-leaf bill that did nothing. We really actually wanted to
restructure the way we do biomedical research at the NIH, drug
and device approval at the FDA, and then get it--and then get
it forward.
And also, as Fred mentioned, the money that we had for the
Cancer Moonshot, but also we had money for research on brain
diseases and on other diseases, it totaled about $6 billion
more for the NIH.
And so we agreed early on that--and so what we did, we met
with Francis Collins, the head of the NIH; we met with the head
of the FDA, all of the agencies, and we said to them, what is
that it that you need to have to make this happen? And then, as
Fred said, we met with all of the different stakeholders. We
met with the research universities. We met with angel
investors. We met with patient advocacy groups, everybody we
could think of. We had more roundtables than we could count.
Mr. Upton. MD Anderson.
Ms. DeGette. Right.
Mr. Upton. Penn State.
Ms. DeGette. Traveling all around the country. And this did
take us 3 years to put it together.
We had an agreement that we wouldn't move a bill forward
that had provisions that we couldn't agree on. And there were
provisions that we didn't agree on which we had to take out or
not put in, but that was--that was our deal.
And as Fred said, we did have--and we also--this is really
important. We engaged our colleagues on the Energy and Commerce
Committee and in the House leadership in every step of the way.
Remember, back then, 2015, 2016, the Republicans controlled the
House and the Senate, but the Democrats controlled the White
House. And that is one reason why we felt like it was important
to do this on a bipartisan, bicameral basis, because we knew,
if it was a Republican bill that passed Congress, then it would
get vetoed by the President. And so we thought it was so
important that we had to have that collaboration.
I.will posit to this committee that you are going to see this going
forward. Because of the nature of American politics, no longer are you
going to have a situation where you are going to be able to pass very
large pieces of policy legislation in a way that only one party agrees
with it. And we are--and we can talk about what is going on right now
with some of the budget reconciliation and so on, but if you are
talking about a piece of policy and you can--we can think about all of
the pieces of policy that even have passed the House that are stuck in
the Senate, but if we can actually try to put together bipartisan
collaboration on policy, that makes it much easier for us to then pass
it and get it signed into law.
And I will just say one last thing, and then Fred and I are
delighted to answer questions. A lot of people talk--like to
talk about process. How did you do this? I think that is the
wrong question, because if you just say we are going to have
bipartisanship, what does that mean? And to me, that means that
you are going immediately start disagreeing in a partisan way
about what--a lot of people say bipartisanship means I think
something and you should go along with it, and that is not
bipartisanship.
And so the way I look at bipartisanship is find a tough
issue like the issue of how do we do biomedical research and
drug and device approval in this country, put together a team
of people, and then talk and--and both recognizing the same
issue, but then work collaboratively on how to fix it.
And I could mention any number of the 40 issues that face
us right now in this country, from immigration reform to
climate change and all of the other issues. We all recognize as
Democrats and Republicans that these are issues we need to
resolve. So rather than retreating to our respective corners
and having the Republican plan and the Democratic plan, put
together that collaboration and then work with our leaders to
try to make it happen. Nobody will get 100 percent of what they
want, but at least we will work to fix the thorny problem.
So that is what I would--that would be my initial remarks.
The Chairman. Do you want to respond to anything she said?
Mr. Upton. No. Our 15 minutes has expired, sir.
The Chairman. All right. All right. Well, let's--let's open
it up for questioning.
I would love to just get a sense out of the gate, though.
If we all acknowledge this is something that should happen more
in this place, one, why do you think it doesn't happen more in
this place? And are there things that the institution could do
to incent it happening more?
Mr. Upton. You know, as Diana was talking--and so this is
just an idea. You know, I worked for President Reagan before I
ran for office, and so he was a great President with a
Democratic Congress and he got a lot of things done. And at the
end of the day when he ran for reelection, he won 49 States,
only losing Minnesota. But that is because of Mondale; a good
man, by the way, Dean.
When I came, I said--you know, again, I was part of that
team. I said, I am here. Want to make a difference. There is
not a bill that I am going to work on that isn't bipartisan. So
every bill that I have ever introduced has always had a
Democratic sponsor. Kweisi Mfume, wonderful guy, he represented
my mother-in-law when she was alive in Baltimore. And I had a
bill early on, on creating a tax credit for small businesses
that had to make structural changes to comply with the
Americans with Disabilities Act. Believe me, I got it down in
that one sentence to describe what it was, and Kweisi was my
co-sponsor. It was Upton and Mfume. I was probably the only
Republican who could actually spell his name, let alone say it.
And I am glad that he is back. He really is a good friend.
And I can remember Kweisi coming up to me on the well of
the House and he grabbed my lapel like I do to him and he sort
of shook me and he goes: Upton, what have you done to my
reputation? That bill is now law, and now the chamber of
commerce supports me. It was hailed as the best bill for small
business, and you have now ruined my reputation.
But it was--you know, whether it is that bill or oil spills
or certainly what Diana and I did, I mean, there is not a bill
that I haven't worked on. And so when I was chairman of Energy
and Commerce, we had--Obama was President. Over 200 bills he
signed into law that came out of our committee, every one was
bipartisan. We had another 200 that, you know, didn't get out
of the Senate, but they--even though they were bipartisan.
So somehow you have to instill to reach across the aisle,
whether it is bill introductions or--I mean, you have to have
some incentive, I think, to--you know, we are going to have a
divided government for some time, you know, House or Senate,
whatever. It is close. You got to really push for that to get
people's attention and get away from some of the backstabbing
that otherwise you might see.
I guess this wasn't on.
Ms. DeGette. Just to add, you really do have to incentivize
bipartisanship, and maybe that is at the leadership level with
the Speaker and the minority leader to--to--if people come and
they want to work on a bill together, from a leadership level,
to support that. When Fred was chairman, as he said, he would
prioritize bipartisan amendments, which is a tradition that has
continued under Frank Pallone's leadership of Energy and
Commerce.
But I think--I think at the leadership level--and I--again,
I don't know how you bake this into any kind of rules, but if
it was--if it was supported--now, 21st Century Cures, it was
supported at the leadership level by--on both sides of the
aisle and both sides of the Capitol. But so often what happens
is, even if Members try to work together on a tough issue, then
the political ramifications at the top levels become so great
that these Members get sort of beaten back.
The Chairman. Mr. Timmons.
And if anyone has questions for our witnesses----
Mr. Timmons. If anybody has to----
The Chairman[continuing]. Just----
Mr. Timmons[continuing]. Leave----
The Chairman[continuing]. Gesture.
Mr. Timmons. Okay.
The Chairman. Go ahead. And then I got you.
Mr. Timmons. Perfect.
Three years, that is a pretty long time. I imagine things
changed over the course of that time. So you all had an
agreement in principle at the outset. How different was it when
it actually was signed into law?
Mr. Upton. Well, we needed that time to, frankly, put it
together. I mean--I mean, we had probably, I don't know, 30 or
40 roundtables, and all over the country, I mean, and we--you
know, we asked. You know, I can remember Diana, in my hideaway,
telling Francis Collins, you know, if it only does this and
this, then we are going consider this to be a failure. We--you
know, he was complaining about not having--not able to have his
researchers actually go to events around the country because
there was a prohibition on funds for travel, and I said, well,
if that is all we do, that is--you know, what a waste of time
that will be.
So, you know, we learned from the venture capitalists that
50 percent of the money that they were investing in drugs and
devices was going overseas from where it had been a few years
before because our approval process took so long. And we wanted
to make sure that the standards were still going to be safe,
you know, and as we saw with the Pfizer trial and Moderna,
there are still 30,000 people that were in those. We wanted to
make sure that that wasn't diminished at all. But it just, as
you explored this--and, you know, it was a pretty darn
comprehensive bill. I mean, it was hundreds of pages long.
Ms. DeGette. 350.
Mr. Upton. 350, Diana reminds me.
You know, and we took all these good ideas. You know,
people, you know, these researchers and others, you know, we
met with, you know, Nobel Prize winners, some of the
frustrations they had. And, well, what is it that we need to
do? And they would tell us, and then we would sit down. We had
a really talented staff and they helped us get this thing
through, but, I mean, it took that long.
Ms. DeGette. Well, we didn't have the bill written when we
started, as you can tell. We just started with the idea that we
needed to have more--we needed to restructure the NIH to the
way biomedical research had changed, but the institution
hadn't. And we needed to change drug and device approval at the
FDA, as Fred says, to make sure we still had efficacy and
safety but to make sure that it just didn't take decades and
decades to approve new--new drugs and devices.
So we didn't have an idea particularly of the way to do
that. So--so that is why it took 3 years to consult with all of
the experts, and things did change. And what is interesting,
Fred says now we are working. So it is 4 years--5 years later.
We are now working on Cures 2.0, because even more things have
changed--technology, the way you can do data aggregation, and,
of course, now the Biden administration has proposed this ARPA-
H, a mean--lean, mean problem-solution machine that would be
based on DARPA but for healthcare. So we are putting that in it
too.
So, you know, a lot of these things change all the time.
That is true with all of the policy that Congress does.
Mr. Upton. And the other thing was, you know, Paul Ryan, to
his credit, he said, you know, we added $45 billion over 10
years for health research, something that I have always
supported. Actually, that was one of my first bills I worked on
back in the nineties, to double the money for the NIH, and we
were successful but then sort of stopped.
So Paul Ryan said you got to pay for it. You know, Mike
Enzi, chairman of the Budget Committee over there in the
Senate, said you got to pay for it, and we came up with the
pay-for-its that were real. Maybe that is why Portman is
calling me.
Ms. DeGette. That might have been the hardest----
Mr. Upton. That was hard.
Ms. DeGette. That might have been the hardest part of it--
--
Mr. Upton. And then Schumer stole them. Schumer found out
what they were and then he stole them for a good cause, 9/11,
and then we had to come up with them again. And that time, you
know, we kept them secret. So----
Mr. Timmons. One--one follow-up question. So we spent a lot
of time last Congress on this committee talking about time,
calendar, and the schedule. Do you think that--well, let's
just--2019, we had 65 full working days and 66 travel days. So
do you think that being here more would be more productive and
would help facilitate? I would say that we pinball around when
we are here. You are just going all over the place and you are
never actually able to do any----
Mr. Upton. Of course, now we have Zoom that we didn't have
before, but it is frustrating. You know, again, we are both on
Energy and Commerce. It is hard on a Zoom hearing or a markup.
You know, you got different time zones. You know, you don't get
a long notice about them. You know, this last week, we had a
Health Subcommittee markup that took, I don't know, 5 hours,
something like that, and we, Republicans, had about a 4-day
notice that it was coming and speeches lined up. You know, I am
traveling in the district and, you know, I have got to take my
iPad and put it in my passenger's seat of my car, and my staff
reminds me to turn off the camera because they will see that
you are on the phone, talking to someone else while you are
driving. I mean, it is just--it is a lot more difficult to do
it that way.
And you also, you miss the chance. You know, if Diana or
Debbie Dingell have an amendment and they want to talk to me
about it, it is a lot easier for me to go from my seat on the
dais to theirs and, you know, talk about PFAS or whatever it
might be. So you miss that. So I think it is important that we
are here, but we ought to also take advantage of the technology
stuff.
Ms. DeGette. And I will say I completely agree. Some of the
problems we have had the last 18 months have been because
everything was remote. But as somebody who has been in
Congress, I am in my 13th term, I have seen it--I know. Well,
you have been here longer than I have. So--so--so I have seen
it every which way, and it is a tough balance. If we were here
5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, probably many more of us would
be divorced by now, but more than that, the activities would
expand to fill the time.
So I don't think--I do think--I agree with Fred. It is
important to be here and that is how you get a lot done, but I
think you have to balance that against people's need to be with
their families in their districts.
I.don't know about everybody here, but in the last 18
months, what Fred's describing, all of us, it is--a problem
that existed before has only gotten worse, because now you can
be on two hearings or three hearings at one time and it is----
Mr. Perlmutter. You are supposed to be under the rule.
Ms. DeGette. Okay. But, sorry. But in any event, it does
diminish the time you can actually work on substantive
legislation.
Mr. Timmons. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
The Chairman. Go ahead, Mr. Perlmutter.
And if others want to weigh in on this, just gesture to me
and I will add you to the list.
Mr. Perlmutter. Yes. So, you know, I think you two had a
history bef---you didn't just do recompete out of whole cloth.
I mean, you had a history, both of you having served on the
same committee and having worked in a bipartisan fashion on
prior things. One of the very first things when I came in,
there was a narrower piece of legislation that the two of you
were working on, but it was on scientific research with respect
to stem cells. And the opportunity, what I remember, was a real
effort by both of you to engage other Members in a bipartisan
way. I mean, that was like my first experience here, which was
of--like, I thought, okay, this is going to work great. Look at
how they are doing this. You know, and you had a lot of
hurdles. You had vetoes. You had all sorts of stuff, but you
kept grinding away.
So, you know, part of what I think your success is here is
an openness to doing things in a bipartisan way, with a lot of
give and take, and both of you having trusted one another in
prior kinds of matters where you could--you knew each other was
going to work, you were generally on the same page. And that
does require time, you know. So I would say--I mean, I don't
know how you react to that, but the fact is you had a history
before you did the recompete bill.
Mr. Upton. Yeah, it was really a trust. We had a trust in
each other. And, you know, there is a story--I am not going to
tell the whole thing--but it is, you know, there is--you slam
doors, but they worked, not between the two of us, but, you
know----
Ms. DeGette. No, just by me.
Mr. Upton. [continuing]. Good cop and bad cop.
Ms. DeGette. The doors were slammed by me usually.
Mr. Upton. Yeah. I wasn't gonna----
Ms. DeGette. But it worked. But--but--but--but, Ed, you are
exactly right about that is--is having that personal
relationship. And one thing that I think that we could--
actually, the chairman and I talked about this, is trying to
find ways to encourage Members to get to know each other on a
personal basis. A lot of people, and I am one of them, feel
that traveling someplace on a bipartisan basis really helps
Members get to know each other and each other's family. But
even just on the committee, having social events or working
together, getting to know somebody personally that you can
trust them, then helps you be--and, you know, over time, on the
committees you get to know who you can trust and who you can't.
Mr. Perlmutter. My last question is, did have you fun doing
this?
Mr. Upton. Yeah. Yeah, we did.
Ms. DeGette. We can't talk about all those times but, no,
we--we--not only did we have fun doing it, but we got to know
each other's spouses and families. And we--I think both of us
would say that, at this point, we are personal friends and our
spouses are personal friends too, having gone through this
whole process. And there is nothing more satisfying than,
believe you me, than standing next to the President while he
signs your bill that is going to help fix biomedical research
that will help millions of patients. Right? And so it is that
satisfaction in your job that really makes it work.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you.
The Chairman. Mr. Joyce.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you.
And I appreciate the work that you both have done.
I just wanted to get back to something that you brought up
starting out in building a bipartisan consensus and those type
of things. Did you start with, say, you know, Alzheimer's, and
this is an issue, and then start writing down the things you
agreed upon, and then, you know, in that discussion, there
would be some parts that maybe you disagree about a funding
mechanism or these types of things, and then put that off but
sort of built a list of things you work on and then worked on
the things you disagreed upon? Or how was that initial
evolution, if you will, of how you got to a consensus?
Mr. Upton. Well, it was an open process the whole way. So
we really, I would say, we included all of the disease groups,
cystic fibrosis. I remember we brought in a young 16-year-old
and he told us how he lived. They were all there--diabetes,
Alzheimer's. I mean, we got to know them all. We would have a
roundtable and they would all share their frustration. They
would all talk. You know, we had, you know, how much money--I
remember the meeting that we had with Diana and Frank, and it
was more than just Diana and I, we included other people. Bob
Latta was a good part of that as well. But we--you know, how
much money more do we need for NIH research? And we swatted
around a couple of figures, and I said, well, I will take this
to the Speaker and he is going to tell me I got to find the
money for it, and we did. But, you know, we were----
Ms. DeGette. Here is what we did. We asked everybody that
we met with to submit their ideas. And then what we did with
our intrepid staffs, one sitting right back there, is--is--is
all of our staff went through all of the suggestions and then
they saw what they could agree on and that would seem like a
good idea. They threw out the ones they both disagreed on, bad
idea. And then they took the ones where there--that seemed like
there was a kernel of a problem that needed to be addressed but
maybe we didn't agree on that. And so then that is when we
talked and that is when we tried to work it out.
And then there were some very, very difficult issues that
probably did need resolution, but we couldn't--and there wasn't
very many like this, but there were some we just couldn't come
to an agreement about what the right approach was, and these
were things that were really partisan issues. And so we just
agreed not to put those in this bill.
But--but because of the topic, most of the issues we had in
there, we could agree on and we thought they were important.
There were also a lot of things that we thought were important
but we couldn't afford to address them with the budget
parameters that we had, because we did--we paid for the whole
thing, as Fred said. So----
Mr. Upton. So now we are--that we working on the Cures 2.0,
we have done a couple of four or five different discussion
drafts over the last 6 or 7 months. They are all public. We
have asked for comments. We have gotten hundreds of comments.
Our last deadline was Friday. Right, Mark? I think it was
Friday. So we are going through there, those now, and I am
hoping that in the next, you know, week or so, probably 2
weeks, we will be able to actually go to legislative counsel
and we will put together what I hope will be H.R. 6 again.
Ms. DeGette. We want to try to pass this bill this year----
Mr. Upton. Yeah.
Ms. DeGette [continuing]. Because then you get into silly
season.
Mr. Upton. Yeah. Not only that, but also, the President, to
his credit, is doing this plug for ARPA-H and I think it is
going to be in the approps bill. So we want to make sure that
it is defined the right way so that it works. So there is
pressure on us to get it done so that we authorize that $6
billion or $7 billion dollars the right way so that we can even
expedite further the case for diseases and devices.
Mr. Joyce. So I just want to follow up a little further
than--I got the initiation of it processed. Did you put time
limits on it then? I mean, did you say we are going to work on
this for the next 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months or----
Ms. DeGette. Well--well, yes, we did Fred.
Mr. Upton. Well----
Ms. DeGette. Because--because we had to--we said--I mean,
for the first few years, you know, we wanted to get as much
input as we could. We got all that input. But then we did have
time limits on submission of when people could submit comments
and when they had to be in, and then--then the drafting. And
then--and then some of the--some of the--unfortunately, some of
the time limits slipped a little bit, particularly after it
went over to the other body. And in the end--and in the end, we
were in this dicey situation that Fred just described where it
was after the election and we were--the 2016 election, and we
were home for the Thanksgiving recess and they were going to
have a special session, and we had to get it passed through the
Senate in the special session.
So--so up until then, we did set deadlines all along for
drafting, for comments, all of that. And you really have to do
that; otherwise--and that is what we are doing with Cures 2.0.
If you don't do it, then it will just drift along indefinitely.
Mr. Upton. And we, in essence, had to preconference it with
Lamar Alexander, because they had to--we knew that they didn't
have time to do the hearings. So we had to see what insistence
they wanted on certain provisions, and we had to deliver for it
to happen.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. All right. Mr. Phillips.
Mr. Phillips. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I.say this--I make a point of saying this in every meeting because I
think it is so true, but you can't work with people you don't trust and
you can't trust people you do not know. And right now, our institution
relies on the hope that people, as wonderful as the two of you, get to
know each other and set aside partisanship in a shared mission to get
good work done.
How can we better bake that into this culture here,
onboarding, orientation, throughout the course of the year?
You know, lacking leadership that makes that a priority, a
shared priority, you know, we can't do it ourselves without
sometime of a system--some type a systematic, I think, effort.
Do you have any thoughts on how we can do better?
Ms. DeGette. Well, I do, which is, I think during the
orientation, there should be many more--I don't--I don't know
if some of--maybe some of the newer Members could say, but when
I went through orientation in 1997, many of the orientation
events were bipartisan events. They had--and some of the think
tanks had bipartisan orientations too, the Kennedy School and
others. I don't know if they are still doing those, but over
the years, I have heard many of them are, yeah.
The Chairman. Sure. Go on. What--there we go.
Ms. Williams. There we go.
So no shade to Mr. Davis, who helped us in our new Member
orientation, but because of COVID, we--I am lobbying for a new
Member orientation do-over for some of the things, because I
feel like there are--there should have been opportunities----
Ms. DeGette. Right.
Ms. Williams [continuing]. More so for us to get to know
each other. I know we are working right now on a bipartisan
institute with the Library of Congress to be able to get both a
bipartisan group together of freshmen Members, but we missed
out on a lot.
Ms. DeGette. Uh-huh.
Ms. Williams. So I am--I will be lobbying you for some more
do-overs of time for us to get together and get to know each
other, because it makes a huge difference in our ability to
work together.
Ms. DeGette. And I also--and that is what I had heard too,
about your orientation, but I also think that--that--that doing
more--I mean, really from a bipartisan perspective, all we have
are events at the White House, right? And we didn't have those
last year, but the summer picnic----
Mr. Upton. You weren't invited.
Ms. DeGette. Really? They--they----
Mr. Upton. I am kidding. I am kidding.
Ms. DeGette. Well, maybe they did do it last year, but I
was--I was following the appropriate CDC protocols last year,
so--anyway, anyway, I am just saying, rather than rely on that,
maybe we should do more all-Member events. These Library of
Congress lectures that they started having, of course, they
didn't have during COVID, that really has helped a lot, and
they didn't have those when I first came.
Mr. Phillips. Let me ask about committees. Have either of
you served on a committee in which the chair or ranking member
prioritized, you know, some type of an effort to get their
members to know each other, in any committee on which you have
served over your respective careers, at the committee level?
Mr. Upton. Yeah. Probably--I don't know that there is a
overt effort. I mean, I try to do it. You know, Energy and
Commerce, we want you on the committee, Dean. You know, we are
going to work----
Mr. Phillips. I would be happy to.
Mr. Upton. Yeah. But, I mean, you know, we have a history
of having really good, thoughtful Members on both sides of the
aisle. And, you know, I think there has always been some
collegiality that has been positive that we have had, but I
think it just sort of goes with, you know, once you are there,
of course, you are not looking to move again.
Mr. Phillips. Sure.
Ms. DeGette. I do think Members do socialize, but it is not
on a formal basis. And that--that----
Mr. Phillips. Maybe it is an opportunity.
Ms. DeGette. I think it is an opportunity. That is a good
suggestion.
Mr. Phillips. Kicking off a new Congress and--okay.
Ms. DeGette. Yeah.
Mr. Phillips. With that, I yield back.
The Chairman. Go ahead, Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis. Thank you.
Great to see both of you.
Fred, you are kind of like a unicorn around here, a former
chair that decided to stick around.
And I think, you know, both of you can continue to send a
message of what worked when Congress worked. And I think there
is some bipartisan scorn to go around as to why this process
seems so broken.
Now, I am glad to be the House Administration rep on this
committee, because a lot of suggestions we get, not just from
the witnesses but my fellow members, we can act on, and we take
this back and do what we can do try and foster more
bipartisanship.
But I told my colleague, Ms. Williams, in her class at
freshman orientation, you will never have another orientation
like this again, I hope. I don't want to see another pandemic.
But it was the most awkward orientation process that we could
have ever experienced, and more awkward, Ed, than just hanging
out with me. I mean, you know----
Ms. Williams. Wow.
Mr. Davis. But we want to fix that, but we also have to fix
the institution itself. What you all did with the 21st Century
Cures Act, I mean, that is the epitome of bipartisanship. I was
a 16-year staffer. I remember passing transportation bills,
highway bills. These types of issues were always done on a
bipartisan basis. But the entire political lectern seems to be
moving toward the polar ends of the political spectrum. You
know, outrage is what raises profiles and it is what raises
money. And it is unfortunate, because I think the majority of
us here want to figure out a way to get back to some sense of
governing, some sense of normalcy.
And I think Nikema is right. It starts with your first
introduction to your fellow colleagues at orientation. We need
to do a better job of making it bipartisan. And if I am ever
given the chance to run that, we will make that happen. We will
let you guys go through some remediation classes too because we
need that. We really do.
But my question to both of you--and I wasn't here for your
testimony, and Fred knows I didn't read it beforehand either.
Ms. DeGette. Well, we didn't submit it.
Mr. Davis. Well, that is good. I admit it----
Ms. DeGette. You are fine.
Mr. Davis. I admit it, I wouldn't have read it either.
However----
The Chairman. For our next panel, we have read all of your
testimony. We have you covered.
Mr. Davis. That--depends on the definition of ``we.''
But what is the one thing that you guys may not have said
in your opening statements, you know, based upon the questions
and comments of everyone here--what is the one thing you both
are doing to try and change this place now, and what kind of
results are you getting?
Mr. Upton. Well, I am--I don't think that there is
something new that I am doing. I am keeping with the same
formula that I had when I came, and that is to work with all of
my colleagues on you name the issue. And I would like to think
I have that reputation based on people that are looking to me
to be a co-sponsor or a sponsor on different bills, work
together.
You know, and, I mean--you know, I will say one thing. It
goes back to the orientation. You know, one of the things that
our class did, there were 50 in our class, is we decided that
we would meet, at least on the Republican side, every
Wednesday. And we did that for 28 years----
Ms. DeGette. Wow.
Mr. Upton [continuing]. For an hour every week. And if you
were a former Member because you left to go do something else
or maybe you lost, you still were entitled to come. And it was
a really good experience of building relationships, finding out
what other people were doing on other committees. It was no
staff, was all off the record, but it was really a terrific
hour every Wednesday from 4 to 5. And that, I think, helped
build the--you know, where we were and issues that we cared
about and really got things done.
Ms. DeGette. Okay. So I am now, as Fred said, and as Mr.
Joyce knows, because he was just with me, I am now the chair of
the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of Energy and----
Mr. Upton. Powerful.
Ms. DeGette [continuing]. The powerful, all-powerful
Oversight Committee of Energy and Commerce. And as you can
imagine with doing investigations in those areas, this could be
a very partisan subcommittee. But I am--I am working very
closely with my ranking member, Morgan Griffith, and we have
decided that we are going to try to work together as much as we
can for bipartisanship on our subcommittee hearings. What that
means is we communicate with each other, not just during the
hearings, but before the hearings.
We had a situation come up recently, not--not in today's
hearing, but in a recent hearing where an issue came up in the
middle of the hearing that could have really sparked a huge
partisan fight in our committee. This--we were actually doing
the hearing remotely, and we were texting each other about how
to smooth this over and resolve it, and we were able to do it.
Some people still raised their partisan disagreements, but we
were able to do that.
And I carry that same real effort towards bipartisanship
and fairness when I preside on the floor. I really try hard to
make sure that I am being respectful to Members on both sides
of the aisle and that I am--even though I may personally
vehemently disagree with what they are saying, that I give them
the opportunity to be heard and to be fair. So that is what I
am doing myself.
Mr. Davis. Well, I appreciate the fact that both of you are
willing to be here and step up and help us learn from the
successes you have had in the past. It is a very difficult
time. I mean, we don't know what triggers Members. I am being
triggered right now by a Broncos phone, being a Raiders fan; it
is very----
Ms. DeGette. Go Broncos.
Mr. Davis continuing]. It is very difficult. Probably being
triggered by a Cub hat too. But you know what? I am going to
get beyond this.
Mr. Upton. My family.
The Chairman. Yeah.
Mr. Davis. I am going--I am going to make sure that we do
what we can here to take your advice. And thank you both for
your time.
And I yield back.
The Chairman. I need to apologize to Mr. Latta, because we
have got to go on to the next.
Mr. Latta. Can I just make one comment?
The Chairman. Yeah, go ahead.
Mr. Latta. Real quick. I didn't push it there. Yeah,
thanks.
Well, first of all, I have been on E&C for over 11 years
and was there with Cures. And just to tell you real briefly. I
will never forget. You might remember Fred Barton--I am sorry.
Fred, you might remember what Joe Barton said at the end, our
former chair emeritus, that he had not served on that committee
in all those years--and that was a long time that he had been
on the committee--that a bill of this magnitude and could have
been so divisive, went out with a unanimous vote.
So, you know, when I think back to E&C through the years,
you know, about 93 percent of our bills have come out through
the years bipartisan out of committee. It shows the work that
is done in committee. That is the point I always think we need
to be thinking about as we go forward here, is that legislative
work starts in committee, and I am a firm believer of that.
This is the way it gets done. Because if it starts the other
direction, it is going to be a tough--a tough road to hoe.
So, you know, again, from all that your, both of your work
on the committee through the years, it is that bipartisanship,
but it is also showing that you work in committee. So thank you
very much.
Ms. DeGette. Mr. Chairman, can I just say one thing?
The Chairman. Sure.
Ms. DeGette. Because I want to bust a myth on the record. I
feel really strongly about this. I frequent--nobody has said
this today, but I frequently hear people say, oh, we need to go
back to having Members here 5 days a week so they can be here
over the weekend and so the families can get to know each other
and the spouses can get to know each other.
And, you know, I have now been in Congress 25 years. My
kids were 2 and 6 when I came here, and now they are 27 and 31.
And what I will say is that is a charming vision that has long
passed in this society. We now have 25 percent of the Congress,
soon I hope it will be at least 50 percent, are women. Most of
the men in Congress have working spouses. And in those--in
those bygone days, all those social events were planned by
stay-at-home wives, and we don't have that anymore in Congress,
either for the male members or the female members.
And so to say that we are going to have people here all the
time so they can socialize, when I came to Congress, I had a
wonderful colleague, Jim Davis. Some of you might remember Jim.
He was from Florida. His kids were exactly the same age as
mine. We lived very close to each other in Bethesda in those
days, and we never saw each other socially, because Jim's wife
Peggy and my wife, Lino, both had jobs.
Mr. Upton. Her husband.
Ms. DeGette. And so--my wife--my husband--thank you, Fred--
my husband Lino.
And so I think when we think about ways for Members to get
to know each other, we can't--we can't go back to that trope.
We have to find new ways for us to all get to know each other
on a personal basis.
Thank you.
The Chairman. I am going to make that the last word for
this panel, with gratitude to you both. Thank you for sharing
your perspectives with us.
And, with that, let me invite up our second panel. We are
joined by three experts who are going to share their
experiences and ideas for making committees work better, making
them more productive and collaborative.
Witnesses are reminded that your written statements will be
made part of the record.
Our first witness is Jenness Simler. Ms. Simler served as
professional staff on the House Armed Services Committee from
2005 to 2017. Most recently, she served as staff director of
the committee, as well as deputy staff director, for 4 years.
In these roles, Ms. Simler was the senior advisor to the
committee chairman, responsible for strategic planning and
operations for the committee, leading the staff, and delivering
the annual defense policy bill.
Previously, she served as the policy director for the
committee, conducted oversight of Navy and Marine Corps
procurement and R&D programs, managed defense acquisition
policy and industrial base portfolio, and had responsibility
for defense science and technology programs.
Prior to her work in Congress, Ms. Simler served as the
deputy to the chairman, Combating Terrorism Technology Task
Force within the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Welcome. You are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MS. JENNESS SIMLER, VICE PRESIDENT, BOEING GLOBAL
SERVICES AND FEDERAL ACQUISITION POLICY
Ms. Simler. Good afternoon, Chairman Kilmer, Vice Chair
Timmons, members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to
speak with you today regarding committee best practices,
promoting bipartisanship, and strengthening policymaking. I am
truly grateful for the opportunity.
As the chair said, my name is Jenness Simler. I am
currently employed by the Boeing Company, but I am testifying
before you today as the former staff director and deputy staff
director of the House Armed Services Committee, and the views
expressed here today are my own.
By way of brief background, I joined the HASC as a member
of the professional staff in 2005. I served in both the
majority and the minority. And after more than a dozen years on
the committee and working tirelessly with members to craft the
National Defense Authorization Act, which--I have to just brag
on them--has been enacted, as you know, annually for over 60
years, I hope my experience may offer some unique perspectives
regarding committee work and cooperation.
First, let me ask you to consider the following. What do
these individuals have in common--a former Army explosive
ordnance disposal officer, a prosecutor of 9/11 co-
conspirators, the second ever female fighter pilot, a nurse, an
author, a former CEO? These are just a sampling of the careers
that HASC staff had prior to working for Congress.
What they also have in common is that they were never asked
their party affiliation. They are patriots, hired for their
policy expertise and commitment to service.
This is just one aspect of how the HASC gets a bill enacted
every year with large bipartisan majorities. I firmly believe
bipartisanship is at the heart of consensus building, which
leads to transparency, sound policymaking, and productive
legislating.
Bipartisanship does not mean, as we have heard here just in
the first panel, that the Members agree on all issues. Far from
it. However, with deliberate intent, bipartisanship can be
built in order to allow policy differences to be debated
constructively and to create resiliency in the face of
electoral change.
Bipartisanship at the HASC starts with its membership. My
written testimony further addresses how staffing practices also
enable bipartisanship, but focusing on the Members for now, I
will start by observing that Members who request seats on the
Armed Services Committee tend to represent districts with a
strong military footprint. This is a key difference compared to
other committees where members may have fewer shared district
equities. Nevertheless, there is an opportunity for other
committees to consider ways to help members feel more aligned
by building upon common constituent priorities.
For example, committees have authority to use task forces
and panels to create small member teams to conduct oversight on
specific issues and build camaraderie. Alternatively, much like
Chairman Upton's example, field hearings and codels can be very
effective in bonding members and hearing from like-minded
constituents from across the country.
Second, bipartisanship at the HASC also stems from issues
within the committee's jurisdiction. Not only do members have a
profound sense of the importance of national security, but they
also take pride in fulfilling specifically enumerated
constitutional responsibility. Moreover, many of the issues the
committee considers do not lend themselves to partisanship. For
example, a member doesn't feel one way about the importance of
naval power just because they are a Democrat or a Republican.
They may care where the next ship is built, but all members
support domestic shipbuilding.
However, the military is a microcosm of issues facing
America. There are plenty of issues, particularly social issues
or foreign policy, where members may divide along party lines.
That is where deliberate cultivation of bipartisanship and
transparency makes a difference.
The chairman and the ranking member do a great deal to set
the tone and expectations for members in this regard. Likewise,
policy offsites early in a new Congress or at the start of a
legislative cycle also serve as useful education and sobering
reminders of the natures of the threats we face.
Committees without national security responsibility could
still replicate this practice by regularly level-setting
members regarding the shared problems that need to be solved
and the responsibilities of the committee to offer solutions,
much as Representative DeGette suggested.
Third, on the HASC, trust is strengthened through
technology and practices used to conduct hearings and to build
the NDAA. While the majority is responsible for the calendar
and for operations, hearings are designed collaboratively.
There is a single joint hearing memo. Many events are scheduled
as roundtables or briefings to turn off the camera and to
facilitate a free exchange of information.
As you know, the NDAA is voluminous, to say the least. Some
of the bill is template, but most of the bill and report comes
from ideas submitted by members and staff.
The committees use a web-based portal to collect members'
legislative requests, and all requests can be viewed by both
majority and minority staff. They have a shared goal to include
as much as practicable from the members' top priorities.
The committee also uses a separate database to draft both
the bill and report language from start to finish. The database
is open to the entire staff. There is no surprising the
minority, and minority staff have the opportunity to make edits
in real time.
For markup, members submit amendments electronically in
advance of the actual markup. All submitted amendments are
reviewed by the entire staff together in one room, in one
lengthy meeting. The goal of the amendment review is to
identify where consensus is possible, where drafting flaws may
inadvertently limit consideration, and where the debates will
be.
Following this review, members have the option to revise
amendments, in order to build bipartisan support or to correct
parliamentary deficiencies prior to markup. This practice
minimizes disruptions and disappointments the day of markup.
Still, every member of the committee can offer as many
amendments as he or she would like, and they will all be
considered. There are multiple opportunities to legislate as
the subcommittees each have legislative jurisdiction, as well
as the full committee.
Every year, well over 350 amendments are considered before
the NDAA ever leaves committee. Technology aids in this process
as amendments are now distributed electronically and can easily
be found in the committee repository for member review.
During floor consideration of the NDAA, where hundreds more
amendments are filed, a similar bipartisan process is used to
review the amendments with similar goals--where can consensus
be found and where are the important debates that need to
occur.
A comparable theme extends to conference negotiations with
the Senate. Both the majority and minority staff member are
assigned to each provision and participate in all negotiations.
When I was new to the staff, I was actually really
surprised to learn that the biggest conference disagreements
are between the House and the Senate, not between Republicans
and Democrats.
The key takeaway from these practices is that while no
member will support every provision in the bill, they are
incentivized to support it because they have had such a direct
hand in shaping the content, every member was included in the
process, and the confidence that conference negotiations are a
consensus process that reflects the will of both the majority
and the minority.
I hope these observations form a useful starting point for
this committee's work. I look forward to your questions. And
once again, thanks to the committee for your time today, your
valuable work, and your efforts to modernize an institution I
care so deeply for. Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Simler follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you.
Our next witness is Warren Payne. Mr. Payne worked for the
committee on Ways and Means, where he held a number of staff
leadership roles from 2007 to 2015, including serving as policy
director. He also serves as a fellow for the Bipartisan Policy
Center, and as part of the BPC Advisory Group, made up of
former senior staff to members' committees in leadership.
As policy director at Ways and Means, Mr. Payne was
responsible for developing policy in all areas within the
committee's jurisdiction. Major legislation that he worked to
enact includes the Tax Increase Prevention Act, the ABLE Act,
the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, two highway
and infrastructure funding bills, and free trade agreements
with Colombia, Peru, Panama, and South Korea.
Mr. Payne also served as a senior staffer to both the
National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and the Joint
Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.
Mr. Payne, you are now recognized.
STATEMENT OF MR. WARREN PAYNE, SENIOR ADVISOR, MAYER BROWN
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Vice
Chairman, and members of the committee. Thank you for the
opportunity to be here today.
Again, for the record, my name is Warren Payne. I am
currently a senior adviser at the firm of Mayer Brown. The
views I will express today are my own.
As the chairman said, I spent a number of years at the Ways
and Means Committee, including as the committee's policy
director. In addition to supervising policy development for the
committee, I was also the lead staff liaison to the Senate and
the administration.
While I was on the committee, for the vast bulk of the time
I was on committee, the Senate had a Democratic majority and
the administration was governed by the Obama-Biden
administration. So from my perspective, the development of
bipartisan consensus was a necessity. It was required.
I found in my role that I would spend as much time talking
and engaging with my Democratic counterparts in the Senate and
the administration as I did with my own staff and committee
members. I found that this engagement across the aisle was
vital to my ability to do my job successfully.
We are Democrats and Republicans for a reason. We have
different views, we have different perspectives, and we have
different backgrounds. Sometimes it means we don't really
understand what drives our individual views and perspectives.
That lack of understanding, I found, often led to incorrect
assumptions about why a position was being held or what a
member's or staff's motivation could be. And that incorrect
assumption led to miscommunication, and that made bipartisan
consensus much more difficult to reach.
It was only through frequent and informal communication
with my Democratic counterparts that I was able to learn and
understand their background and motivations.
As the chairman said, 2 years ago, I participated in a
project of the Bipartisan Policy Center to help draft
recommendations to improve and modernize Congress. I brought my
experiences from the committee to that effort.
I have submitted for the record two detailed memos from
BPC. I am going to highlight just a few things in my oral
testimony, in particular, a couple observations on improving
staff development and creating more opportunities for private
and informal engagement among members and staff.
With regard to staffing, I would argue Congress does need
to invest more in its staff. Certainly, this investment can
take the form of higher salaries, but I think just as important
are increased opportunities for professional development,
particularly for committee staff, which are expected to have
very high knowledge and expertise in the areas of the
committee's jurisdiction.
I would like to emphasize opportunities for what I call
real-world professional development and education. As an
example, the Senate has a convention called the staffdel, where
staff will travel on a bipartisan basis. I would recommend the
House adopt and broaden this convention to include domestic
travel and activities as well.
In particular, this will provide not only an opportunity
for more professional development and experience for the
committee staff, it also will provide a very important
mechanism to improve engagement and interaction between the
members and potentially staff.
As an example of the benefits of this type of activity, I
look to my time in the executive branch. Before I came to Ways
and Means, I served as a senior adviser to one of the
chairpersons at the U.S. International Trade Commission. It is
an agency that has three Republican and three Democrat
Commissioners.
During that time, I have traveled frequently with my
Democrat counterparts, staff of Democrat Commissioners. This
was important, not only that I got to see how the policymaking
the Commission would do, would impact the stakeholders where
they work and live, but also gave me tremendous opportunity to
learn and be with and engage with my Democratic counterparts
and learn to understand their background and motivations.
The regular committee structure, I don't think, lends
itself to these types of engagements. Hearings and markups are
good and necessary, but I would emphasize the need for more
private, informal settings for engagement at the committee
level.
In particular, the committee should ensure numerous opportunities for
closed-door, private, member-level discussions. Transparency is
important. It is necessary for Congress to operate, but in order for
members to have the kind of frank and free exchange of ideas that I
think is critical, it is an activity that does not lend itself to
television and C-SPAN. So more closed-door, member-level discussions.
Secondly, I would emphasize having those kinds of
engagements at something below the full committee level. Ways
and Means is one of the smallest committees in Congress, and we
found even doing full committee, closed-door activities with
the relatively few members we had to be challenging. Other
committees like T&I or Financial Services, where the committee
membership is much larger, would face an even harder time
logistically pursuing a significant closed-door member
activity.
So whether at the subcommittee level or in ad hoc format,
those create potentially even more opportunities for bipartisan
member and staff engagement.
I would share with the committee one example of this
activity from my time at Ways and Means. We formed 11 working
groups, each led by one Republican and one Democratic member.
Each working group was assigned one area of tax policy. Members
self-selected into which working group they wanted to
participate in. The committee, the roundtables, the working
groups had almost complete flexibility to how they operated.
The benefit of this approach was, because members self-
selected into a working group they were interested in, there
was a commonality of interest for the members participating. No
matter how diverse their own individual backgrounds, they were
there because they had an interest in this issue, and so there
was a nexus of commonality off of which they could have good
productive conversations.
I think these working groups produce tangible benefit of
bipartisan success, because the education working group, which
was co-led by former Congresswoman Diane Black and Congressman
Danny Davis, produced legislation with respect to education tax
credits that the committee subsequently marked up and moved out
of committee and to the floor.
So I would leave you with those examples. And the most
important message is, the more opportunities members and staff
can have for informal, closed-door opportunity to engage and
exchange of views, the more successful I think committees will
become.
Thank you very much. I look forward to answering any of
your questions.
[The statement of Mr. Payne follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Payne.
And our final witness is Scott Adler. Dr. Adler is vice
provost and dean of the graduate school and professor of
political science at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Voice. Go Buffs.
The Chairman. He is also a former founding director of the
American Politics Research Lab. Dr. Adler has spent most of his
25-year career at CU Boulder, studying the organization and
performance of the U.S. Congress, and his current research
examines congressional agenda setting and committee power.
Among his many publications, he is the author of ``Why
Congressional Reforms Fail: Reelection and the House Committee
System,'' and co-author of ``Congress and the Politics of
Problem Solving.''
This committee has been great for Amazon.com book sales for
political science books.
Dr. Adler received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, and
was a member of the American Political Science Association's
Presidential Task Force on Congressional Reforms.
Dr. Adler, we just got notice that they may be moving up
votes, so I may ask you to maybe abridge your comments a little
bit, if possible, just to make sure we have plenty of time for
Q&A.
STATEMENT OF DR. SCOTT ADLER, VICE PROVOST AND DEAN OF THE
GRADUATE SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER
Mr. Adler. Sure.
Chair Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, members of the Select
Committee, thank you for inviting me today. As Chair Kilmer
said, I am a professor of political science, and spent most of
my career studying the structure reform and performance of
congressional committees, and the views expressed here are my
own.
The points I would like to emphasize today are, first, the
central role that legislative committees play in Congress'
governing responsibilities. Second, how that role has
significantly diminished in recent years. Third, that
strengthening the position of committees will improve Congress'
legislative capacity and lawmakers' engagement in policymaking.
And finally, I will offer some suggestions on how the House can
bolster the committee system.
Now, the example given of the 21st Century Cures Act and
the dynamic that developed between Representatives DeGette and
Upton in many ways highlights exactly what is important about
the place of legislative committees as a venue for lawmakers to
develop expertise, build personal relationships within their
caucus and across the aisle, incorporate the input of
stakeholders, and retain skilled and knowledgeable staff.
Historically, these aspects of committees both promote
lawmaking activities by members and place committees at the
forefront of policy innovation. But lawmaking perhaps should be
thought of as a muscle that committees must continually
exercise for it to remain strong. For many years and for a
variety of reasons, that muscle had atrophied. The data are
clear. Committees are reporting a smaller proportion of the
bills enacted into law. Federal agencies increasingly exist
under expired authorizations, and the House and Senate
authorizing committees are far less utilized in negotiating
inter-Chamber differences.
Many congressional observers, including many lawmakers,
recognize that some committees and the committee system as a
whole does not retain the position that it once held as the
center of policymaking and oversight. When committee power
diminishes, the body becomes more reliant on centralized
leadership and outside stakeholders, which reinforces that
atrophy.
Certainly, there is plenty about the old days of the
congressional committee dominance that was undesirable, but if
we seek a structure that engages and incentivizes Members of
Congress to collaboratively invest in policymaking, it almost
by necessity involves a reinvigorated committee system.
Now, at the macro level, a vigorous committee system does a
number of things. It incentivizes specialization so that
Congress has the technical knowledge to skillfully debate and
resolve differences. It makes it easier for Congress to
reliably address policy problems, and ultimately improves and
rebalances the position of Congress with respect to the
executive branch.
For lawmakers, strong legislative committees provide all
members the opportunity to continually engage in productive and
collaborative policymaking, facilitate regular interaction with
stakeholders, and offer productive ways to demonstrate to
constituents their legislative abilities. However, without a
clear and predictable process for members to regularly
legislate, they will turn their energies elsewhere.
So how should we reinvigorate the committee system? This
panel itself has already considered and made a number of
meaningful recommendations, and we have heard other very good
suggestions from the witnesses here today. Let me offer a few
additional thoughts.
Lawmakers need to see that the pay-off of their investment
in knowledge, skill, time, and resources will happen.
First, a return to routine reauthorizations provides a much
needed rhythm to oversight and governance of the executive
branch. Our work shows that it offers a better structure and
schedule to the operations of committees and can lower the
legislative stakes through regular opportunities to revisit
existing policies.
Additionally, we also know that lawmakers respond to
actions taken by the Chamber and the leadership that assure
committees will have fair consideration--the committee work
will have fair consideration by the entire body, even better if
the Chamber can provide a degree of protection so that their
efforts won't easily unravel once reported out of committee.
To be sure, I don't believe that the entire committee
system is broken. In fact, over the next several months, we
will see bills from several committees that still retain that
ongoing policy leadership role. In particular, the annual work
of Armed Services and Appropriations are good examples of
committees who regularly exercise their policymaking and
oversight responsibilities.
A more regular reauthorization process, even annual
reauthorizations, like the NDAA, may help other committees
achieve this rhythm.
Ultimately, of course, there are many alternatives for
strengthening the committee system and lawmaker engagement. And
I appreciate this panel's thoughtful consideration on this
important topic.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The statement of Mr. Adler follows:]
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The Chairman. Great. We have got a bit of time for
questions before they call votes.
It seems like there is three themes that kind of came out
in your testimony. One is, some of this is around sort of the
norms of the committee, right? So, in Armed Services, it
functions in a bipartisan way because it has always functioned
in a bipartisan way, and there are some sort of norms in that
regard.
One theme is around committee capacity, and, you know, you
have seen some diminishment of committee capacity over time,
the budgets for committees and those sorts of things.
And then three is, you know, some of your tips that you
provided around how to empower individual rank-and-file
members, particularly in an environment where, more often than
not, particularly on the big stuff, you have seen more and more
centralization of power.
So if time permits, I hope we get a chance to pull on all
three of those threads.
Let me ask, you know, because, Ms. Simler, you mentioned
how in Armed Services some of the staffing is not necessarily--
the committee is not necessarily staffed where you ask what
party are you affiliated with.
I came out of a State legislature that we had nonpartisan
committee staff, that, you know, their job was to help identify
big problems and write the legislation. And then we had
partisan committee staff that would also give their input but
more from the angle of politics.
We have this on Armed Services kind of, and this committee
has it, but that is a choice. I don't know if you have thoughts
about how to incent that, whether that is a good idea, whether
committees should have some funding that could be solely used
for nonpartisan staff.
I.would be curious, maybe to Ms. Simler or Dr. Adler, or
both briefly. I want to make sure we can get to as many people
as time, so if you can keep remarks short.
Ms. Simler. I don't think it has to be a binary choice, and
I don't want to leave the impression that the committee staff
on the Armed Services Committee are on some sort of ivory tower
of only pure policy thought. This is a political institution,
and to be successful as a member of the staff, particularly in
terms of committee staff, you need to have that substantive
subject matter expertise but also the political antenna, if you
will, in order to make sure that you are advising members of,
first, what the right policy outcome is, but what does the
political landscape look like, and can that landscape be shaped
to achieve that policy objective, or does the policy objective
perhaps need to be fine-tuned so you can at least make
incremental progress.
So I would say I don't think it has to be binary. Although,
I do believe that the approach that is--to committee staff that
is taken in terms of looking at subject matter expertise first,
is an appropriate one, because there has also a role for
personal staff and then, of course, leadership staff to build
that political advice for members.
The Chairman. Go ahead.
Mr. Adler. I would very much agree that there is a utility
in having nonpartisan staff. As you mentioned, right here on
this committee, you have a mix of partisan staff and
nonpartisan staff. And I think, in a lot of ways, having staff
that isn't necessarily attached to the majority or attached to
the chair specifically but continues the institutional
knowledge over time as well, have a mission of not necessarily
carrying out the agenda of one party or the other but of
fulfilling the responsibilities, the legislative
responsibilities of the committee is very important.
And I think it also helps to build those bridges across the
aisle where there may be difficult questions, that those staff
that are nonpartisan are meant to adjudicate where the best
place for policy is and work out some of those differences.
The Chairman. Go ahead.
Mr. Timmons. Just do one quick question. I think in order
to facilitate these policy conversations, we need to both
incentivize collaboration, because at the end of the day, we
are going to need 60, 70 percent of the middle to come to terms
with whatever we are pushing.
And then the other thing is disincentivizing conflict
entrepreneurs. So if we are going to incentivize collaboration
for the purpose of policymaking and also disincentivize
conflict entrepreneurs, what are your thoughts on just one or
two ideas in each of those areas?
Mr. Payne. So off the top of my head, because I haven't
really contemplated that, I think one thing you heard,
particularly from former Chairman Upton, is committee
leadership makes a difference. Right? I was fortunate to work
for two Republicans who had a view that felt like we should be
trying to do as much as possible on a bipartisan basis.
And mind you, it is not like Ways and Means is known--Ways
and Means doesn't have the reputation HASC does for, like,
being all bipartisan, right? There is lots of shirts-and-skins
stuff that happens at Ways and Means.
But a few of you have been around long enough to remember,
perhaps, Republican Ways and Means chairmen who didn't have
that view and who were extremely partisan. And so you just
couldn't do this type of thing without having that leadership
at the committee level. So that is one.
But, two, that same leadership can help frame a landscape
or structure of engagement to minimize the benefits of that
kind of entrepreneurialism, Mr. Timmons, you talk about, if
those members aren't given the opportunity to participate in
the roundtable or the subcommittee or the working group.
So a lot of this, I think, really does stem from what
structure the chairman is going to impose, and then, you know,
to the extent that the chairman and ranking member can reach
agreement on some of those structures so they have the same
incentives on both sides of the dais, that is a big task to
ask, particularly when you are in the minority, right? You have
a certain mind-set when you are in the majority about what it
is you are supposed to do on committee.
So it is probably more incumbent on the chairman and the
ranking member from that perspective, but it really makes a
difference as to who is leading the committee, in my
experience, as to how viable any of those things are.
The Chairman. I think what is tricky about all of this--and
now I have got Mr. Latta and Mr. Cleaver--committees can do a
lot of the things that you have raised now. Right? They can
have informal dialogues. They can have--as Chairman Upton said,
you know, if an amendment was bipartisan, we took that up
first. They can do committee travel.
The question is, is there something that our committee
could recommend to incent some of that good behavior. Right? I
don't know if you have thoughts on that, but I would value your
two bits if you do.
Mr. Adler. Well, one of the things that I was going to say,
which I think touches on both of these questions--and I am
getting back to one of the bigger points in my written
testimony--there is no magic bullet to lower the heat.
We saw that when committees were doing regular legislative
activities, like a reauthorization--and I will talk about
Appropriations or Armed Services, the ones that are doing it on
an annual basis--I know that that is a hard thing for a lot of
committees to do, and it is hard for us to imagine certain
committees ever being able to do reauthorizations on an annual
basis.
And I am talking about folding together a lot of what they
normally do stretching over many years but renewing it every
year, similar to how the Armed Services Committee does the
NDAA. It can lower the heat. Knowing that issues can come back
up for consideration each year, it can lower the stakes over
what is being decided at any given moment.
Now, of course, it does scare a lot of folks who think
that, well, what if we don't get this done, do all these
programs go away? And then, of course, there are other members
who would love to see programs go away.
But getting the committees in the rhythm of thinking that
every year they are going to revisit this large
reauthorization, I think, will build up those relationships,
those important relationships that have to exist in order for
them to legislate but also give them some confidence that what
decisions are made today, if they truly don't work out, if the
policies require some updating and some revisiting, that will
be--that opportunity is there again next year and the year
after.
So I think it is worth considering the possibility that
some of the committees might work better, might work in a more
collaborative fashion--the members get to know each other
better--by having that kind of rhythm to their schedule.
The Chairman. Mr. Latta, and then I got you, Mr. Cleaver.
Mr. Latta. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And
thanks to the panel today.
First, let me just say this: I think that, you know, I
pointed out in the past that when we look at our committee's
again, they are so important. That is where we get our work
done.
And I think two things. I think that, number one, our
committees are too large, there are too many members. I am just
kind of--just out of consensus, do you all--because, you know,
when I look back at this chart right here--this is Energy and
Commerce--in 1947, Energy and Commerce 27 members. This year we
have 58, and it has just gone up. So that is one of the issues.
The other issue I have is that we have--Members serve on
too many committees. And I think to your point, you said, you
know, you get to know your constituencies and the Members are
very similar. Well, you don't have that when you serve on too
many different committees.
So to tie that together, when you talk about, like, block
scheduling, I think that one of the things that has come out,
and maybe, Mr. Payne, you would like to talk about this--we
have a real problem around here just trying to get our
committees to operate, and because we don't have the time set
up where it is, like, you are on a certain time, this is when
you have to be in committee where we get things done. Could you
just comment maybe on block scheduling?
Mr. Payne. Yes, sir. Having dedicated time where the
committees know they can meet and you are not going to be
interrupted by votes, it is vital to having the--you know,
Chairman Upton talked about taking 3 years, right, to do Cures.
That means they probably did that in 2-, 3-, 4-hour chunks at a
time. Right? And so you need that kind of time in order to be
able to have a really robust discussion and debate.
And so having time blocked off for the committees to
operate--and the committees can choose how to use them. Maybe
that is when you have all your full committee hearings. Maybe
that is when you have all your subcommittee hearings. Maybe
that is when you do your roundtables, your markups.
But having dedicated time the committees know will not be
interrupted, that is an incredibly important resource, from
just thinking of it from a staff's perspective, in being able
to plan and know that we are going to have members there when
we need them there.
I mean, Ways and Means is a pretty small committee, so we
didn't have some of the challenges that you are talking about,
but that was just a function of the fact that we were a
relatively small committee.
Mr. Latta. Thank you.
The Chairman. Mr. Cleaver.
Mr. Cleaver. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Latta, for those
questions. I am right with you on that. I think it is
ridiculous.
I would suggest--and I think I may have said something to
the chairman about this previously. I would suggest that we do
need to restructure how we operate in terms of committees and
all that. I think that is important. But I think far more
important, at least as I see it, is the annual, almost now
traditional, moments where we surrender greater and greater
authority to the executive branch of the government. I don't
think we are going to be able to have a full appreciation for
what we do when we depreciate ourselves in favor of a coequal
branch of the government.
You know, there are a lot of examples. One of them, I mean,
December 8, 1942, it is the last--just think about this--the
last time the Congress of the United States declared war. So we
shouldn't have had any fights after that. I mean, because that
is the last time we declare--well, actually, we declared in
1941, and in 1942, we amended it, amended to include Bulgaria,
Romania, and Hungary, the allies of the Axis.
But yesterday--2 days ago I heard on the news, they were
interviewing a woman, an attorney here in D.C., who said, the
President needs to go over to the Senate, call Pelosi over to
the Senate, and tell them, you cannot go home in August unless
you finish this agenda.
You know, I don't know what people take--what courses
people take in law school, Attorney Perlmutter, but, you know,
we got a civics problem in the country. But we are victims
ourselves, because we just surrender all of the authority of
the House of Representatives to the President. I don't care who
is in power. I don't care who is in power. You got it, Mr.
President, tell us what to do.
And it bothers me, particularly when I realize that, you
know, we are surrendering, and then we don't get a chance to
run our operation in a way in which--you know, we don't
surrender to the chairs, the leadership, you know. We are going
to vote on stuff, and I will bet you less than 80 percent of
the people had anything to do with it.
I am through.
The Chairman. Anyone want to respond to that?
Mr. Adler. So I might respond to both comments. First, I
agree with you that Congress needs to be in a position to be a
coequal partner in governing. I would say the places in which
Congress has retained that--I will go back to the NDAA, Armed
Services--it really has retained that because of the strength
of those two committees on the House and Senate side.
Mr. Cleaver. Yeah.
Mr. Adler. They are very involved. And I think that--
personally, I believe that committees are the key to that, that
expertise, building that expertise, and that specialization
both on staff and with Members, the longevity that they serve
and reexamining the policy in that area.
So I think committees are critical for doing that, and, of
course, critical for engaging lawmakers in this process.
And back to Representative Latta's point about too many
committees. Before you arrived, I think Vice Chair Timmons
mentioned that there were overlapping committee hearings or
meetings, and, of course, the reason for that is because you
all serve on several committees at once.
Now, the motivations for that are multilevel. Members want
to be able to be involved in policymaking in several different
areas, as well the leadership would like to be able to give you
good committee positions. So by reducing those assignments, of
course, you are taking that away both from the leadership and
individual lawmakers.
The only other--you can't invent more hours in a day. So
the only other choice is to spread the meetings out which, of
course, has other sorts of political costs.
Ultimately, I agree with you, though. I think we probably
should have Members specializing a little bit more, doing--
spreading themselves less thin across the entirety of Federal
policy and focusing in on their work in a couple of areas
rather than across four or five.
The Chairman. Do you have any questions? Go ahead.
Mr. Perlmutter. Yeah, a couple questions and just a
comment.
Mr. Payne, I think you were spot on when you were talking
about the bipartisanship sort of comes from the leadership of
that particular committee. And, you know, I think just in my
current situation, I have got two very bipartisan-type chairs,
and I have got two--the committee itself is a partisan
committee, the Rules Committee. But another committee is pretty
partisan, and it makes a big difference in how the rest of us
manage our affairs.
And so, you know, HASC has generally had a pretty
bipartisan-type leadership. Everybody is engaged, and so I
think that is important, and we are in a much more centralized
setting, where we have ceded not just authority to the
executive branch but to leadership.
And I personally--you know, that is why I asked the
question of DeGette and Upton, you know, in their putting that
bill together, did they have fun. Because at the end of the
day, you know, we want to be proud of our craft and what we do
for the people. And I don't know if any of you want to comment
about that.
And the other thing I was going to talk about were the
staffdels. We have taken advantage of the German Marshall Fund
and had our staff participate in that, and I know it has been
great for everybody. So just a couple comments and, you know,
the development of trust is sort of key to all of this. And I
will shut up.
Mr. Payne. The one thing I might respond to, sir, is the
importance of getting this into the DNA of the committee,
because if you want to create a setting where you are more
likely to have future leaders of the committee who endorse the
bipartisan aspect--no chairman becomes chairman, and no member
becomes ranking member airdropping into a committee. They have
been on the committee for a number of years before that
happens.
So if it starts whenever you can start it, and it becomes
part of the committee's DNA, it becomes self-reinforcing that
future leaders will continue to endorse that type of approach.
Ms. Simler. Just comment kind of addressing Mr. Cleaver and
Mr. Perlmutter and the chairman's comments. I do think--I
agree, I am concerned about the acquiescence, if you will, of
power to the executive branch. I do think part of the solution
to that does go back to committee work and building--just
building that muscle of legislating makes it less, I think,
worrisome for both leadership and individual members about
having to take tough votes and to reclaim that constitutional
authority. So I do think that there is something to that.
And, Chairman Kilmer, to your question about incentives to
the committees to do all these things that we have been talking
about, because they do have a lot of the authorities they need,
I will steal one of Dr. Adler's recommendations a little.
I do think there is something to be considered regarding
some kind of expedited floor consideration for legislation that
meets certain criteria. And that could be something this
committee works on in terms of what those criteria look like,
but that might be an additional incentive, as well as
disabusing Members of this notion that somehow bipartisanship
and transparency and consensus-building means that you lose
political leverage. That is not the case.
Actually, transparency and bipartisanship and cooperation,
if done correctly, allows each party to build a communications
plan that lets them advocate for their positions and to build
that case for the public and still get the political wins that
they need. So that is my recommendation.
The Chairman. That bell you heard was votes, so I may have
us go into quick speed round. Go ahead, Vice Chair Timmons. I
know you had one more issue.
Mr. Timmons. We should leave the committee jurisdictions
alone, and it doesn't really matter if we try to because they
are not changing. But, you know, the other question is,
cybersecurity is such a pressing issue. Any legislation which
is comprehensive, which is long overdue, would have to go
through like a dozen House committees and at least half a dozen
Senate committees. It is just really hard, so I mean, what do
we do about that?
Mr. Adler. Yeah. So since 9/11 and the creation of Homeland
Security jurisdictions--well, Homeland Security itself, its
jurisdiction is spread out among, it must be a dozen other
committees--it is a very large number--and then, of course,
cybersecurity similarly so.
And, unfortunately, there are those overlaps, which are--
over the years, we have seen efforts to shave, on the margin,
the jurisdictions of certain committees. And that is easiest
done at the beginning of the term--particularly if you have
turnover in the majority, the new majority can do that.
But I would say, as a whole, my recommendation as a whole,
trying to reorganize all of the committee jurisdictions is a
fool's errand. You will end up killing every other good
recommendation you have because that will just be way too
difficult to do, so I would recommend you stay away from it.
Shaving on the margins might be one thing, but a wholesale
restructuring is something that really just will be the end of
all the other good recommendations you are going to have.
Mr. Cleaver. Our lives. Our lives.
The Chairman. Yeah, exactly. As someone who wants to not be
murdered, it is--so--and I may have this end with this: You
wrote the book on failed reform efforts. Having said that,
there has been some past efforts at reform that have been
successful. There was intent behind pulling power away from
chairs.
Now, I think the unintended consequence is that power has
been vested in--has been centralized, so that rank-and-file
members may not feel the sense of efficacy that, you know, that
many, I think, Members want, and many committees may not have
that sense of efficacy, particularly on the big stuff, where
often it will happen through omnibus or something like that.
And I don't know if you have thoughts about if there are
recommendations that this committee could make. So I am on
Appropriations, and last week we were sitting--members were
having lunch together, and a senior appropriator, a Republican,
said, you know, this place really vested more and more power in
leadership.
And so I asked him, I said, how do you change that? And he
goes, well, it is just a choice by Members and it is a choice
by committees. And I was, like, but is it?
So I guess my question to you is--and maybe we can take it
offline if you have more than 60 seconds' worth of thought
about this, but--so are there recommendations this committee
could make--and I say this without any disrespect to leadership
on either side of the aisle, but with a view that members want
to have a sense of efficacy, that committees, to meet Mr.
Latta's point, if committees are going to be the place where
policymaking happens, something needs to change. Any thoughts
on that?
Mr. Adler. Well, as you said, it is more than a 60-second
conversation, but I think that, ultimately, the caucus can make
these decisions about how they want to structure themselves.
Now, that is not easy, as you said, and, of course, what we
are talking about is shifting--we will call it shifting--some
of that authority away from the centralized leadership, the
party leadership, to committee chairs. And I will say that
historically we went the other direction, but that is what was
seen as necessary at the time.
Now, there needs to be another reinvestment. And I think
one of the ways to characterize this is that is what--that it
is also what can be good for individual Members as well. It can
help them to present themselves as effective and engaged
lawmakers.
I think right now the emphasis on grandstanding and
position-taking has overtaken what used to be seen as, this is
how you make your name as being an effective lawmaker. And I
think that a lot of Members could--they want to be reelected,
and they do a good job representing their constituencies, but
representation needs to happen at the legislative level more so
than at just simply position-taking.
The Chairman. We are going to have to leave it there. And I
apologize in advance, because I think all of us would like to
come and talk with you a little bit more as we wrap up, but we
have to run and vote. So let me thank all of our witnesses for
their testimony.
Let me thank our committee members for their participation
and our staff for putting together yet another terrific hearing
with wonderful experts. So thank you and thank you for being
here.
Without objection, all members will have 5 legislative days
within which to submit additional written questions for the
witnesses to the chair to be forwarded to the witnesses for
their response. I ask our witnesses to please respond as
promptly as you are able.
Without objection, all members will have 5 legislative days
within which to submit extraneous materials to the chair for
inclusion in the record.
And, with that, this hearing is adjourned. Thanks so much.
[Whereupon, at 3:17 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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