Friday, May 29, 2009
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Q&A: BRUCE REED
How To Fill Administration Jobs Faster
DLC President Bruce Reed Talks About His Group's New Report Calling For Sweeping Changes In The Confirmation Process
"We shouldn't ... subject sub-Cabinet appointees with relatively narrow purviews to the same level of public CAT scan."
-- Bruce Reed
Earlier this week, the Democratic Leadership Council released a report arguing for a significant reduction in the number of executive branch jobs that require Senate confirmation as a way to help new administrations staff up quicker. DLC President Bruce Reed, who served eight years in Bill Clinton's White House as a chief domestic policy adviser, talked to National Journal's James A. Barnes about the merits of the report, how President Obama has done assembling his team and how the Senate can use "torture" on presidential appointees. Edited excerpts follow. Visit the archives page for more Insider Interviews.
NJ: Your report calls for reducing the number of jobs requiring confirmation. What do you think the chances are that the Senate would give up that authority?
Reed: It's not clear how much the Senate particularly enjoys this task either. The members put a lot of time and effort, as they should, into getting to know Cabinet appointees and important appointments like [those to] the Supreme Court. The sub-Cabinet appointments are more often just an excuse to raise unrelated matters. And the Senate doesn't really need that excuse. If a member wants to put a hold on legislation to insist on some kind of action from the administration, they can do that on anything else. It's not as though they need this as a pretext.
NJ: I grant your point, but do you think senators are going to give up that leverage? You were in the Clinton administration. Isn't that pretty effective leverage for senators to get something they really want?
Reed: Its biggest effect is in training some Cabinet appointees to be responsive; but again, Congress has plenty of oversight opportunities to do that, and I've never known senators to have trouble getting their phone calls answered or their salvos noticed, especially by sub-Cabinet appointees.
I think it would be more satisfying for all concerned if senators used the time that they now put into pro-forma confirmations to do oversight of the same people once they're in their jobs. That's a more satisfying outcome for everybody.... The Senate would not be sacrificing any real leverage because they have ample opportunities to torture appointees once they're in office.
NJ: Another recommendation you made is that "the administration should concentrate on vetting top officials, not mid-level and upper-middle ones," and that deputy secretaries on down should just go to the FBI for the primary background check. Do you think an administration would be willing to cede that kind of authority to the FBI? If somebody were to blow up after the FBI check, couldn't that embarrass an administration?
Reed: The Obama transition did an exacting job of screening and vetting even low-level appointees not subject to confirmation -- which is fine, that's a good practice for an employer to know what you're getting, and we're not suggesting future administrations stop doing that.
To the extent that an administration and Congress have to make choices about how many layers of an individual's history they have to sift through before they're satisfied, most digging should go on for the most important jobs and we shouldn't have to subject sub-Cabinet appointees with relatively narrow purviews to the same level of public CAT scan.... It'd be different if the Senate were genuinely curious about each individual's views and qualifications and wanted to have a full and thorough discussion and debate, but that's not usually what goes on.
NJ: Your report notes that outside officials, or temporary employees, proliferate at these departments filling in for undersecretaries and assistant secretaries who are taking longer to confirm. In a lot of instances, aren't those the same people and they just get detailed to a department before they get confirmed?
Reed: It varies from department to department, and on the appointees themselves. I can remember nominees for sub-Cabinet jobs who didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize their confirmation by actually starting to work until they had the Senate's blessing. And so in 1993, for example, we couldn't even name a welfare reform working group -- which was itself a decision-delaying mechanism -- until June because we didn't have any appointees in place to put on it....
Appointees often wait until it's official. And in any case, there are limits on what they can do until they actually have the job. It can be very confusing. At Cabinet agencies, the whole reason to have a deputy is to have someone who can be a body double and speak with the authority of the boss, and that's not an easy job to do until you have it. Certainly the public role is seriously constrained. Appointees who have not been confirmed don't often speak in public, and that's a big part of the jobs that they're supposed to do, explain what their department is doing.
NJ: Many observers say that the early days of the Obama administration have been the most productive since FDR's, even though there has been a proliferation of administration jobs subject to Senate confirmation. Doesn't that suggest that the confirmation problem may not be as dire as you state?
Reed: I think they've done an extraordinary job, but everyone at the Treasury Department would be happier if they had more company and hadn't been kept in limbo so long. The Obama team has worked around it, but there are enough hurdles to success in government without putting in extra ones just for show.
NJ: Are you aware of any Obama White House criticism of the confirmation process?
Reed: No, they've played the hand they were dealt. They're not in a position to force Congress to change it. They just had to push as hard as they could. I don't feel that the Senate has abused the process or subjected the Obama team to an unusual level of scrutiny. Every cycle there are particular issues that come up, and when it goes wrong for one appointee, then everyone else gets an extra look; in this case it was taxes.
NJ: Besides your welfare working group that was delayed, do you recall other cases in the confirmation process that adversely affected the Clinton administration's policy output or governance?
Reed: I'm sure it complicated matters for health care, but I don't remember. That was more White House-centered. It complicated things in general. And the Obama team did an excellent job, did everything imaginable, ran the best transition ever designed to avoid all these problems, and avoided a lot of them -- and still had to spend more of its waking hours on sweating these details than it would have liked. In that sense, it's an example that even a perfectly planned transition could only speed up the clock so much.