OPENING
STATEMENT OF SENATOR FRED THOMPSON
Ranking
Member, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee
Business
Meeting To Consider Establishing a Department of Homeland
Security
Wednesday,
July 24, 2002
Thank you Mr. Chairman for your leadership on this
issue. You were very forceful early on with regard to this
issue and you have been consistent with your efforts and work
and persuasiveness that this needs to be done, and I want to
thank you and your staff. I’d also like to thank our staff
for all of the hard work that they have put into this we
certainly have a lot of work ahead of us to do.
I don’t think its
inappropriate to point out the basis for why we’re here
today - and that is that we’re at war, and this legislation
can be, if not the, one of the center pieces in our effort to
win that war and to protect ourselves. It’s going to be a
long term effort and what we do here today and what the Senate
and Congress ultimately does, I believe, will have a long term
effect on this country. It will certainly outlive us and I
think probably will be with us for generations to come,
unfortunately because the threat of marrying high technology
with extremism and radicalism will still be there.
The difference between now
and times past when we’ve had similar challenges is that the
war has been brought home to us. Thus the need for homeland
security. I think everyone pretty well agrees now that a
department is needed. Some of us were more enthusiastic than
others in the beginning, some of us thought the timing was
wrong, some of us thought the scope should be different, but I
think we’ve all come together now on the idea that a new
department is needed. But, I think it is very important to
emphasize how large and difficult this undertaking is. It’s
mammoth. It will take a long time to get done and it is going
to be very difficult for us. It is going to be
difficult because in many respects we have a government
which is dysfunctional from a management standpoint and now
we’re trying to do a major merger within a dysfunctional
government. We
need to face up to that.
This committee over the
years, under the leadership of Senator Stevens, Senator
Lieberman, myself and others, have seen parades of witnesses
and GAO reports pointing that out to us - that we must do
better. We’re a government that can’t pass an audit. We
spend billions a year on improper payments and other wasteful
and improper expenditures. We lose millions of dollars of
equipment in goods, and we have spent billions of dollars on
trying to establish information technology systems and getting
our computers to talk to one another, and the IRS and other
agencies, for many years unsuccessfully. We have a human
capital crisis, as has been mentioned, and Senator Voinovich
will remind us again today, I’m sure, that Senators Hart and
Rudman pointed out. Yes,
we want to protect civil service rights, but we need to
recognize this, Paul Light who used to work for Senator Glenn
on this committee and now at the Brookings Institution points
out to us, we have a civil service system that has problems.
We have substantial
overlap and duplication. The GAO comes to us with a high risk
list every year pointing out that we have agencies and
departments year after year who are making no improvement with
regard to issues concerning waste and fraud and mismanagement.
Now that is the background that we’re operating in
here today. That’s
not to cast dispersion on anyone or all the many good people
who for so long have tried to do something about this, but
that is the background. Now we’re coming to merge 22 of
these agencies and 170,000 or 200,000 people, within the midst
of this. In other words we think we’re going to take all of
these problems and come right into the middle of it, with the
most important part of it, and somehow have a smooth-running,
efficient, secure, well-managed operation. I’m not saying
it’s impossible, I’m saying it’s extremely difficult.
When I read about CEO’s
who have seen through mergers that are much, much less
complicated than the one that we’re going about now, and
they give us about a 20% chance of success, it causes me to
wonder what it is we need to do to make sure those chances are
greater. We can’t afford not to be successful. Especially
the transition period that we’re going to go through in
putting all this together is going to be difficult. If
you’ll pardon the reference, Mr. Chairman, I think we’re
somewhat like an elephant on roller skates attempting to learn
to juggle.
Now there will be many
amendments here today and some of them will have to do with
what this new department will look like, but many of them will
have to do with how this new department is going to be run.
We clearly need innovation and flexibility and we need
to look at things somewhat differently.
Our bottom line criteria should be not personal and
parochial interests, vested interests, and pressure groups,
but will this provision make our country safer. Surely after
we all agree how important it is to have a new department with
new expanded powers to face a new threat that it must be run
in the same old way. In
a way, that I emphasize again, is just not working with regard
to so many of our departments in government.
So, Mr. Chairman, thank
you again for your leadership on this issue. I promise to work
with you toward a product we can all be proud of. Clearly this
transcends all of our other interests. There will be other
Democratic presidents, there will be other Republican
controlled Senates and we’re doing something that is going
to transcend all of that. I’m sure we’ll all keep that in
mind as we try to establish something that will stand the test
of time through ups and downs and various other
administrations, and I look forward to working with you toward
that end. Thank
you. |