Chairman Horn, I would like to start by thanking you and the other members of the House subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology for holding this hearing on the proposal to allow presidential transition funds to be spent on training and orientation for newly appointed officials. I strongly support the proposal on its merits. Newly appointed officials deserve the best training we can provide. But I also support this effort as an important first step in addressing a larger concern in our political culture, the need to foster an ethos of public service and to concentrate the minds of public servants and the citizenry at large on how we can best govern our nation.

I am pleased that you are holding the hearing now, before the presidential campaign reaches the formal stage of selecting nominees. Now is an especially appropriate time to focus on the transition ahead, and how we can improve the process of governing. I hope this hearing, on the relatively narrow but very important topic of orientation for appointees, will be followed by others that expand the focus to the transition to governing, including a look at ways we can broaden the pool of prospective nominees for significant federal office, remove unnecessary obstacles to their selection, nomination and confirmation, and encourage a climate more conducive to productive policy-making and implementation.

As for this bill, I support it for six reasons:

• The proposal clarifies the purposes for which transition funds can be spent.
• Presidential appointees are accomplished individuals, but most have little prior service in the executive branch.
• Appointees see the need for training and orientation.
• There are orientation sessions for Congress, Judges, and some executive branch personnel, and the response of participants has been good.
• This proposal will remedy one aspect of a larger problem with presidential transitions and the appointments process.
• The proposal sends a signal to the American people that effective governing is important.

1. Clarifying the purposes for which transition funds can be spent.

The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 authorizes that presidential transition funds shall be provided to the President-elect and Vice-President-Elect for "necessary services and facilities" "for use in connection with his preparations for the assumption of official duties as President or Vice President." Surely, the orientation of political appointees falls within this broad mandate. But making explicit the propriety of spending funds for appointee orientation is important for two reasons. First, the proposed language will reassure the transition team members that such spending is legal. Given the hectic transition period and the scrutiny of a new administration, transition team members may shy away from activities not specifically enumerated in the Presidential Transition Act. Second, the inclusion of such language will encourage transition teams to explore orientations for appointees. Indeed, I would favor strong language to underscore absolutely how desirable and important it is for any president-elect to provide such orientation.

2. Presidential appointees are accomplished individuals, but most have little prior service in the executive branch.

Presidential appointees hold important jobs and come to their positions with distinguished resumes. Heading an agency or a department is the public sector equivalent of being the CEO of a large corporation or the president of a university. While some appointees come from the public sector, most come from outside government, notably the private sector, non-profit world, and academia.

One of the strengths of our system of government is that it brings in talented people from outside of government to positions of public service. And political appointees often have impressive accomplishments, including managerial skills and experience. Nonetheless, appointees without executive branch experience may not appreciate features peculiar to government service such as Inspectors General, Congressional Oversight Committees, and Civil Service regulations. If we want to continue to entice the most accomplished people into public service, we should do everything possible to allow them to succeed. Months of bumpy on-the-job training is not the best way to do so.

3. Appointees see the need for training and orientation.

Sadly, appointees, when asked to look back at their service, express skepticism about whether they would serve again. While there are a variety of reasons that appointees cite as to why they would not serve in government again, it is important to also consider appointees’ recommendations on how to improve their time of service. One frequently mentioned recommendation is for better training.

It is not only the appointees who make this recommendation, but also those involved in their selection and appointment. Arnie Miller of the Clinton transition noted that he would "like to see much more cross-fertilization, using the interlude between nomination and confirmation for an orientation program."

4. There are orientation sessions for Congress, Judges, and some executive branch personnel, and the response of participants has been good.

For the past two decades or so, I have participated actively in orientation programs for new members of Congress, including the AEI/Brookings/Congressional Research Service program and the Kennedy School of Government orientation. These programs, along with others, such as the Heritage Foundation’s and the parties’ own orientations, have now served several generations of your colleagues, and have been widely lauded by them. Even though many new members of Congress have some elective experience, including legislative experience, nearly all recognize that Congress is different, with a number of unique characteristics, and that Congress considers a range of issues that will be new to nearly all new members. Whatever their ideology or party, lawmakers accept as a given that extensive orientation is a necessary experience for new members of Congress. They are not alone. New federal judges attend an orientation program put on by the Federal Judicial Conference. And since 1997, new executive appointees have participated in orientation sessions co-sponsored by the White House and the Council for Excellence in Government. The appointees who took part in the program have spoken highly of the program.

5. This proposal will remedy one aspect of a larger problem with presidential transitions and the appointments process.

This proposal is welcome because its aim is to help attract good people to government, give them the tools to succeed, and allow them to hit the ground running. But this proposal should be the beginning of a more comprehensive look at reforming the appointments process. I encourage you to support this proposal, but also to look at other measures that will expedite and smooth the selection, nomination and confirmation of political appointees. Subjects that your subcommittee might address are: the number and layers of political appointees; the appropriate level and detail of financial disclosure for appointees; the desirability of reducing and standardizing the confusing and overlapping forms that appointees must fill out; and rethinking the number and nature of nominees requiring full FBI background checks.

Along these lines, I would like to make you aware of a project I direct with Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. The Transition to Governing Project is an American Enterprise Institute Project in conjunction with the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Its aim is to assist all the branches of government in making a smooth transition to governing after the 2000 elections. We will be making recommendations as to how candidates can address issues of governance during the campaign, drawing lessons from past successful transitions, and seeking to remove obstacles that keep an administration from governing such as excessive paperwork for appointees and long delays for nomination and confirmation. Our project will work closely with Paul Light’s Presidential Service Initiative Project to ensure that all of the phases of the process, the campaign, the transition, and the first days in office are directed at the goal of effective governance. Along these lines, we strongly support the notion that presidential candidates should engage in pre-election transition planning to begin the selection of potential appointees as early as possible. We believe that early identification of appointees, ample assistance to help them negotiate the nomination and confirmation process, and orientation will allow appointees to hit the ground running. One of the products of our project that new appointees might find especially useful is a computer software package to assist appointees in filling out the vast collection of forms required for nomination and confirmation. The software is being developed under a subgrant agreement with the University of Maryland Foundation and the work is being carried out by Martha Kumar of Towson State University and Terry Sullivan and Stephanie Haas of University of North Carolina.

6. The proposal sends a signal to the American people that effective governing is important.

Finally, I support this proposal because of the larger message it sends: governing is both important and possible. While our American system of government is still sound and the envy of the world, over the past thirty years one of our greatest strengths--our commitment to effective governance and public service--has begun to fade. The pre-eminent presidential scholar, Richard Neustadt, recounts how in 1960, the campaign staff of president-elect Kennedy was relieved that the successful campaign for office was over and that governing could begin. Winning an election was not merely a trophy to be savored, but an opportunity to govern in the public interest.

That sounds almost quaint now. Sadly, developments in our political culture have blurred the distinction between campaigning and governing, and now the end of effective governance is in danger of being forgotten. Pollsters and political consultants, who were once employed primarily during election season, have now become permanent advisers to government officials. Almost every policy initiative is subjected to intensive polling and focus group research. Television advertisements from the political parties and interest groups fill the airwaves to support or oppose pending legislation. Private groups orchestrate legal challenges to laws they oppose, sue government and their adversaries, and use the discovery process to troll for politically embarrassing revelations about their opponents. The need for ever larger campaign war chests forces many elected officials to spend their time fundraising when they would prefer to focus on the problems facing our nation. Reporters cover campaigns as horse races, not in terms of competing visions or game plans for governing, and increasingly cover policy battles in Congress and the White House as campaigns, with the focus on who is winning and losing and not on the stakes for governance and public policy. In short, to use a term coined by another, we have moved into the era of the permanent campaign. All of these developments have contributed to an increasing cynicism about governing and public service.

It is of no use to wring one’s hands about new developments in our political culture. They will not simply disappear from the political landscape. But if we cannot reverse the culture, we can find tangible ways of reshaping it. This proposal is one such way. It sends the non-partisan message that governing is important; that excellent people who leave important jobs in the private sector can come into government and make a contribution to the public good; and that the American people will support and encourage ways to make them more effective in their public service jobs.

There are many other worthy reforms that could be considered which would also contribute towards this larger end. The appointments process is too long, with positions often remaining vacant for many months or even years. There are too many layers of appointed and career officials. The heavier burdens of the nomination and confirmation obstacle course, combined with the culture of scandal that assumes everyone in public life is guilty until proven innocent, cause many to shy away altogether from public service. All of these problems will take time to solve or ameliorate. But we should not be so discouraged by the enormity of the problem that we fail to recognize the virtues of a small sensible reform such as the one before us today. Small but significant measures that support better governing are the way to begin to change attitudes that shape the larger culture.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI.