Washington, DC - Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman
Fred Thompson (R-TN) today announced that the Senate last night
unanimously approved his legislation, the Presidential Transition
Act, to improve the Presidential transition process and help new
administrations hit the ground running. The bill now goes to the
President for his signature.
"The Presidential Transition Act will
improve the ability of the President-elect to switch effectively
from campaigning to governing," Senator Thompson said.
"The President-elect must have the ability to immediately put
a new team in place and that team must have access to the critical
information it needs to be ready to hit the ground running on
inauguration day."
The Presidential Transitions Act:
1) Provides for briefings and orientations of
those individuals the President-elect intends to nominate to
senior executive branch positions.
2) Requires the compilation of a
"transitions directory" to provide senior White House
staff and prospective appointees with key agency and
administrative information, and;
3) Requires the Office of Government Ethics to
prepare a report identifying unnecessary reporting and disclosure
requirements placed on Executive Branch nominees.
The Treasury/Postal appropriations bill for
Fiscal Year 2001 includes $1 million for the implementation of
this legislation.
The Presidential Transitions Act, passed as
H.R. 4931, is identical to S. 2705, legislation introduced by
Thompson and Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and approved by the
Governmental Affairs Committee on June 8, 2000. That measure built
on legislation introduced by Rep. Steve Horn (R-CA-38).
The need for an effective presidential
transition and the recognized problems with past transitions have
led a number of private sector organizations to focus on the
transition process. Several programs, including the Presidential
Appointee Initiative of the Brookings Institution, Transition to
Governing Project of the American Enterprise Institute and
Brookings, and the Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership
2000, have contributed to consideration of this problem. These
groups and others are independently preparing a body of
information that will assist new administrations to get an
effective, timely start.
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