Making America Safer: Reforming Congress for the post-9/11 Era

February 15, 2005

Unedited transcript prepared from a tape recording

Proceedings:
MR. ORNSTEIN:  Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen.  I'm Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.  Welcome to this panel on Congress and homeland security.  We have quite a remarkable group of people with us today, starting with Lee Hamilton, over at the other end of this panel, a long-time member of Congress, and, of course, co-chair of the 9/11 Commission and now running the Woodrow Center for Scholars.

Ed Meese, a counselor in the White House, Attorney General, and now distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation.  And next to me Thom Mann, a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution, long-time scholar of Congress and the political process.

We're going to talk today about the role that Congress plays, has played, and should play in protecting the country in the homeland security area.  I'm hoping that we will cover some broader topics as well as some of the more specific ones, including the role that oversight by Congress can and should play in executive agencies, and the role that it has played in this particular area.  The jurisdiction of the committees and how important it is if you're going to do effective oversight to have substantive jurisdiction over a policy area, whether you can grab the attention of a department and actually delve into specific areas.  If you do not have the substantive jurisdiction, whether it's feasible to share jurisdiction in some of these areas, and, of course, whether the reorganization that took place at the beginning of this Congress that turned the temporary Committee on Homeland Security in the House of Representatives into a permanent committee and presumably gave it some more substantive jurisdiction, and that turned the Governmental Affairs Committee in the Senate into a Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs have done an effective job to provide now the opportunities for oversight while also exploring what kind of oversight we have seen.

During the first couple of years of the existence of the Department of Homeland Security, which, of course, reflected what in my judgment is the most sweeping reorganization in history, more sweeping and significant than the creation of the Defense Department in the 1940s, because that brought together--even though it involved more people and larger budgets--like minded organizations that had similar functions.

This reorganization that brought together more than 20 separate departments, bureaus, agencies, and other entities, ranging from the Animal and Plant Inspection Service to the Coast Guard, was not a mesh of like-minded agencies, but rather an extraordinary blend of disparate agencies, all with different cultures, and how well that reorganization has gone and how important it is for oversight to make sure that it can function effectively.

Just quickly let me go through the jurisdictions of the two committees that have been on the one hand made permanent, on the other hand created in some sense.  And then we will turn to first Ed Meese, then Thom Mann, and then Lee Hamilton to make some comments.

In the House of Representatives, while making the committee permanent, the Committee was given jurisdiction, including over all homeland security policy, authority over the Department of Homeland Security's internal administration, and jurisdiction over functions related to six specific areas:  border and port security, except immigration and non-border enforcement; customs, except customs revenue; integration, analysis, and dissemination of homeland security information; domestic preparedness for and collective response to terrorism; research and development; and transportation security.  And they've excluded some areas of jurisdiction more specifically.

And in the Senate, the existing Committee on Governmental Affairs, while having its named changed, was also given jurisdiction to the Department of Homeland Security, except matters relating to the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the Secret Service, the Citizenship and Immigration Service, or the immigration functions of various agencies, and any revenue measure related to the Bureau of Customs or other entities.

So very fuzzy jurisdiction in the first case; incomplete jurisdiction in the second.  And we will explore I hope whether this is enough or is moving in the right direction, as well as these larger questions.  Ed Meese.

MR. MEESE:  Thank you, Norm.  I find myself seated in an interesting fashion here from Heritage, with Lee Hamilton on my right and Thom Mann on my left.  I will present the middle ground position this morning.

Following 9/11, as we know, there was considerable reorganization of the executive branch, as Norm has outlined here in terms of taking 22 agencies from about eight different departments and merging 177,000 people into this new agency.  And I certainly agree with him that this was the most difficult perhaps, the most extensive reorganization the federal government has ever had because of the fact that so many agencies not only came from different missions and different cultures and different backgrounds and histories, but also virtually all of them came with only half or some portion of their responsibilities dealing with homeland security.  And many of them still had other functions totally unrelated to homeland security which they were expected to continue to handle.

This is not just kind of an artifact of government reorganization, but I think also has a major impact on how Congress organizes itself, because many of the jurisdictions and many of the functions that these committees have not related to homeland security are matters that the different committees deal with on a regular basis.

The other reorganization, of course, that has taken place--and by the way, in the Department of Homeland Security, the jurisdictions of various congressional committees played a major part in how that reorganization was specified by Congress.  You have, for example, such anomalies as the Coast Guard, which normally would have been put into Border Security and Customs as a stand alone agency, reporting directly to the Secretary.  These were some of the kinds of things that happened, not for organizational reason in the executive branch, but because of the particular province and prerequisites of Congress.

The second major reorganization has been intelligence and the creation of the National Directory of Intelligence, and that also is something that Congress took great pains.  This was prompted to a great extent by the 9/11 Commission, Lee's Commission, and I'm sure he may be commenting on that.

The congressional situation, as we heard, has been much less extensive in its reorganization, and there has not been kind of a mirror image or a parallel reorganization of the same magnitude on the part of Congress.  Much of the jurisdictions have been left much as they were, with some changes as Norm pointed out.  And I'll comment on those in a moment.

But what has been the case now over about three years--little more than two years of actual experience; nearly three years--over three years since 9/11--is that the burden of testimony on the Department of Homeland Security has been massive.  Tom Ridge estimated that there some 80 different committees and subcommittees that had some form of jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security.  He also estimated that about 40 percent of his time was spent testifying before committees of Congress or in congressional relations.

Now, I contrast this with the experience I had, admittedly some 15 to 20 years ago, but I only had normally four appearances on the Hill each year; once each to the authorizing committee and the appropriations committee of each of the two Houses.  And that was considerably less of a burden than Secretary Ridge faced.

A second thing has to do with the fact that appropriations are even more scattered than the authorizing jurisdiction, as the appropriations committees have roughly kept the jurisdictions as they had before the reorganization.

The third area is something that the Commission brought out, which bears on the topic that Norm suggested today, and that is what is the oversight function of Congress and how should it relate to a department.  And there the Committee found that the oversight function of Congress has diminished over time.  They said the traditional review of the administration of programs, looking at whether the money is being well spent, for example, and the implementation of laws, whether laws need changing, in other words, kind of the big picture actions of Congress have been replaced by what the 9/11 Commission described as a focus on personal investigations, possible scandals, and issues designed to generate media attention.

Well, I think that no one has ever been in doubt as to the relationship between congressional activity and the media, but whether this is productive in terms of the real functions of Congress--number one, to pass laws, to legislate; and number two, to appropriate funds--and whether that program evaluation related to those two functions has been successful.  For example, areas like aviation security, information technology, military responses to terrorism, and intelligence reform, which are big topics, may have well been shortened--not given adequate attention compared to some of the other things that would be more important from a media standpoint.

In terms of intelligence, one of the things with term limits that was commented on by the Commission was the fact that expertise has been diminished on the Intelligence Committee, particularly the kind of technical information and technical expertise to deal with a world in which computers and information technology, and information and intelligence analysis has become much more important than ever, because of the term limits requirements internally within the houses of Congress.  And also that there has been a tendency in funding that the funding has been appropriated and has been allocated more on a per capita basis, making sure that all congressional districts received some form of funding rather than a threat analysis generated funding based upon where the money would do the most good or would be most necessary.

As Norm pointed out, there has been some reorganization in Congress.  One of the interesting things is in the House, as he pointed out, the jurisdiction is somewhat fuzzy, which means that there will still be an awful lot of committees holding hearings, but also one of the interesting things about the appointment to the House Permanent Committee, Chris Cox's committee, while he has a little more power than he had before when it was a separate--when it was the kind of fledgling committee, nevertheless, on the committee are what has been described as some of the old bulls--chairmen of other committees within the House--to make sure that they don't get too much jurisdiction in that particular Committee, which kind of sows the seeds for potential problems and controversies there.

In the Senate, of course, the list of exclusions that Norm read indicates that the same problem still persists despite the appearance of having government affairs combined with homeland security.

It's important that Congress really become--let me just say that it's interesting to note that in the past, Congress has faced up in prior years to the kinds of problems that we have in Homeland Security today.  One was the situation after World War II, just as there were plans at that point, to reorganize the Defense Department, which culminated in the reorganization acts of 1947 and then in 1949.  There was a congressional reorganization act of 1946, where the Armed Services Committees were created in each of the Houses, which, in fact, have become, as we know, very powerful committees.

At the same time, in that period, was created a Joint House-Senate Atomic Energy Committee, because it was felt that two things:  number one, the importance of the subject; but secondly, the secrecy that necessarily had to surround the deliberations of the committee, and, as a result, having a joint committee to handle that particular subject was deemed an appropriate way to handle those particular problems.

The important thing I think as we discuss our topic this morning is that Congress should be a full partner with the executive branch in dealing with the problems of homeland security.  We need cooperation on a bipartisan basis, as I think the 9/11 Commission gave us an example.  We need cross branch cooperation between the two branches, and we need both Houses of Congress to be cooperating with each other to minimize the inefficiencies and the impediments to effective action both by Congress and the executive branch.

I think it's important that Congress have the ability to review the situation and programs, as I mentioned; that they see that the money is properly spent; and that we have appropriate legislation and appropriate policies for the Department of Homeland Security and the several other departments within the government to carry out.

One of the things that has to be recognized in Congress's organization is that it's not just the Department of Homeland Security.  It's the subject of homeland security in which there needs to be concentration, focus, and combination and coordination, because there are several other departments of government that still have very important functions in regard to homeland security, not the least of which is the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services in terms of biological warfare, and, of course, the Department of Defense, which through both the National Guard and the Active Army, have a backup capability and responsibility for homeland security.

Finally, I would suggest that the recommendations that were given us by the 9/11 Commission should be the basis for at least an initial look at what Congress should do.  They have created the Permanent Standing Committee in the House, as mentioned.  They have created the committee in the Senate.  I think that it is important now that they strengthen and realign those committees so that they have real power and have a real coordinated function so that we can have, to the extent possible, a one-stop testimony within the Congress.  I think that Congress should also consider the idea of joint hearings between the committees in the two Houses, which would certainly simplify and I think improve the quality of information and the timeliness of information going to the Congress.

It's also important that the intelligence committees have sole jurisdiction over the national intelligence program.  Right now, the intelligence committees are fairly weak committees in that their jurisdiction is divided between them and primarily the Armed Services Committees.  Congress I think needs to sort that out.

I would suggest that, as the Commission recommended, they eliminate term limits for Intelligence Committee members.  Term limits may have its value, as I personally think it does, although there's some controversy on this for members of Congress holding their seat.  But I think within the Congress term limits have much less value in terms of the ability of members of Congress in both Houses, frankly, to gain expertise in their particular fields of jurisdiction.

And finally, I would suggest, as the Committee has recommended, that there be two appropriations subcommittees that clearly track the same jurisdiction in both the areas of intelligence and homeland security, because obviously appropriations in terms of homeland security is probably the priority thing that Congress does which has an impact on how the executive branch as a whole handles that particular matter.  I would suggest that these are relatively critical recommendations and which, with goodwill on the part of both Houses of Congress could be accomplished.  But I think that the more in which Congress realigns itself to deal with the problems of homeland security, not only will it do a better job for the people of the United States, but also will enable the executive branch to do a better job.

MR. ORNSTEIN:  Thanks so much, Ed.  Thom.

MR. MANN:  Thank you.  Norm, Lee, Ed, delighted to be here with you.  No one knows better than Lee Hamilton the daunting obstacles in getting Congress to rearrange the way in which it organizes itself and conducts its activities.  Lee was the co-chair of the Joint Committee on Organization of Congress a decade ago, and experienced those battles firsthand.  As I look back on his work and that of his colleagues on the 9/11 Commission, I'm struck by the degree of success they had in executive reorganization, and the lack of success they have had thus far in getting Congress to reorganize itself.

Of course, the Commission knowingly took on the most difficult of tasks in formulating its recommendations.  One, they proposed changing congressional committee jurisdictions.  And the history of Congress is littered with failed attempts to do just that.  We have the Bolling Committee and the Patterson Committee and others as well.  It's exceedingly difficult to accomplish, and coming out of that is a lesson that sometimes the best way of achieving the ultimate objective is indirect.  And it may well be that that strategy is the one that is best pursued now.

Secondly, they took on another near impossible, certainly most difficult, of tasks, which was trying to bring together authorizing and appropriating functions in a single body.  In this case, the intelligence committees they proposed be given budgetary authority.  That, of course, went nowhere.  Members of Congress saw themselves--saw that an incremental consolidation of authorizing and appropriating powers would set the stage for perhaps the ultimate comprehensive consolidation, and, thereby, eliminate the Appropriations Committee.  So there was little interest in that.  But the one effort made by the Senate to bring some focus to the intelligence appropriations by creating a separate subcommittee was passed, but now has--is being reconsidered because the final version of the bill did not accept the Commission's recommendation and make public the intelligence budget and Senator Specter has openly ruminated on the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of having an intelligence subcommittee on appropriations and retaining the classification of the budget.  It's a matter of addition and subtraction.  So it may well be that that aspect of the recommendations is completely dead in the water as well.

Those were two exceedingly ambitious recommendations.  I applaud the Commission for venturing into this very difficult territory, in spite of the obstacles working against them, but we ought to acknowledge what they faced.  They really took on a third very difficult assignment, one that hasn't gotten as much attention, but operating now with unified party government, with Republicans in charge of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, with near partisan parity continuing to operate, in spite of incremental gains by the Republicans in the last elections in the House and the Senate, having parties that are so ideological polarized, achieving focused, aggressive effective congressional oversight of the executive is very, very difficult to do.

The political environment, the partisan political environment, works very much against it.  We have had in the House, beginning under the Democrats and picking up a great deal of speed and momentum under the Republicans in the House an amazing centralization of power and a weakening of committees.  Now with committees weakened already by the centralization of power in the House, individual members on those committees fight even more aggressively to protect their diminishing power and authority, and that's another obstacle facing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

Now the tasks, the broad tasks, as the Commission sketched it and that others have discussed is that we have this executive branch world.  We have this congressional world.  In the executive branch, we now have the Department of Homeland Security.  Within this behemoth, with 200,000 employees, we have many activities that deal with protecting our homeland security, but many activities that have nothing to do with homeland security.  And outside the Department, we have many activities that deal with homeland security.

In the Congress, we now have finally a permanent Committee on Homeland Security, but it has very limited original Rule 10 jurisdiction that deals with some pieces of the Department of Homeland Security, but with virtually none of the activities on homeland security that are outside the Department, and then we have a series of other committees with primary jurisdiction over functions, both within the Department and those outside the Department.  You could make an argument that, in fact, it's the intelligence homeland security related activities outside the Department of Homeland Security that are more crucial to bring into a focused congressional examination and oversight than are some of the activities within the Department of Homeland Security.  But it sort of reveals to you the layers and complexity of the problem and the fact that there is no easy solution, either easy substantive solution or obvious political solution to this problem.

Norman and I testified before the Select House Committee on Homeland Security, and in 2003, we reviewed the failed efforts at jurisdictional reform, but came out strongly, nonetheless, for a permanent committee.  We argued that in realistic terms this was probably going to begin small, and then the trick is to develop the basis for a gradual expansion and consolidation of jurisdiction.  We thought that was probably the best that could be done in the House of Representatives, and indeed that apparently was the most that could be done at the beginning of this Congress.  We did not get a big bang of congressional reorganization.  We got precisely what was perhaps anticipated as the best that could be accomplished in the short term.

Ed has pointed out the new Permanent Committee has now received its appointments.  There is one old bull, Don Young, Chairman of the Transportation Infrastructure Committee and old bulls to be in line; that is the heir apparent on Judiciary, possibly on Ways and Means; maybe even Energy and Commerce.  So while it doesn't look like the Committee looked as a select committee when you had six chairs of committees, you can see the challenge there as members look perhaps to preserve their authority.  On the other hand, it has a very talented chairman, Christopher Cox, who has been struggling with the Speaker to get the authority and jurisdiction he needs to begin a process of focusing congressional attention.

There's some worrisome legislative history that was attached to the resolution establishing the Committee.  There will be battles underway for some period of time, but I think the reality is that this is the world in which we're going to have to live, on both the authorizing and appropriating side.  Things are going to move now incrementally.  We've got to figure out a way to take advantage of developments that have been set in motion.  It is going to require a commitment on the part of the Speaker if anything is to come of this.  In supporting Cox and the parliamentarian as decisions are made about exclusive and sequential joint referral of important matters, the Speaker is going to have to support Cox and his continuing efforts to prioritize the testimony of officials from the executive branch, and eventually to work toward the committee having the authority, the most if not exclusive authority to put together a major--the major annual authorizing on homeland security.

There will also be important steps in the appropriating front.  It's a little sad now that the primary motivation for reorganizing appropriation subcommittees is to protect the favored government agency of one prominent member of the majority leadership.  Its acronym has four letters, and it has two A's and it begins with N.  I don't know if you can think what that might be, but, Lee, maybe one of the possibilities over time since we do have homeland security subcommittees on appropriations is begin to move some of the intelligence jurisdictions into that and begin some consolidation over time.

It's tough--the obstacles are formidable.  We're clearly beginning in a very incremental way.  It's disappointing, but it's not surprising.  I still think we wouldn't have come this far if the Commission hadn't taken as bold a set of recommendations as they did.  Thank you.

MR. ORNSTEIN:  Thanks, Thom.  I should note that the work of the 9/11 Commission, with Lee and his co-chair Tom Keane, continues under the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, which is also a co-sponsor of this particular event.

So the Commission is alive and kicking.  Lee.

MR. HAMILTON:  Okay.  Thank you, Norm.  I want to thank the American Enterprise Institute for having this session today because I think it's a very valuable one.

It's a pleasure to with Norm and Thom.  There may be two scholars in the country that know more about the Congress than they, but I don't know who they are.  And when I was in the Congress, they knew so much about the Congress it used to make me nervous.  So it's good to be with them.

Ed Meese, of course, is one of the really very distinguished public servants of our generation, and, Ed, it's a pleasure to be with you.

In the back of the room, is Peter Hoekstra, who is the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.  I don't know if he approves my recognizing him or not, but I do want to say to him and to you that he played a very, very important role and a very constructive role throughout all of this.  Immediately after he had taken over that difficult assignment, Chairman of the Intelligence Committee because Porter Goss had been sent by the President to the CIA, and Peter earned our thanks on the Commission for his good work.

Ed and Thom have laid this out very, very well.  We in the 9/11 Commission made major recommendations.  With regard to the executive branch, we made many, of course.  Probably the two principal ones are to one, establish the Office of Director of National Intelligence, and two, to create a national counter terrorism center.  Both of these entities we believe should be very powerful entities.

And it's important to note here that both the President and the Congress supported these recommendations and acted very promptly on them.  We on the Commission are very grateful for that, because it really has brought about significant change in the executive branch on how the United States government deals with counter terrorism.

Now the Commission also made a linkage, and the linkage was that the reforms that we have suggested in the executive branch will not work very well unless you have effective oversight in the United States Congress.

We believe that some steps have been taken--I'm not going to go into detail here, because I think Thom and Ed and Norm have identified many of the steps.  Some steps have been taken.  I don't suggest they're easy to take.  But we do not think that the work of the Congress really is finished at this point with regard to oversight and that the steps that have been taken can probably be characterized as fairly modest.

I want to address just for a moment the question of why oversight is so important here on intelligence matters.

Oversight is always important.  It's one of the two major functions of the United States Congress, but in this case I think especially important.  Keep in mind that we have created, as I said a moment ago, very powerful offices and institutions.

If you look at the powers given to the Director of National Intelligence, they're quite impressive.  And if it's effectively implemented, that position will be among the most powerful in the United States government.

Likewise, the Center for Counter Terrorism is a powerful institution, which will be the area where counter terrorism policy is developed in this country.  It has to be approved obviously by the President, but it's here that it will be generated.

And counter terrorism is probably the number one national security interest to the United States far as far into the future as any of us can see.

Now when you make powerful institutions in the executive branch, it is very important that you check and balance that power.  That's a pretty fundamental concept obviously in our view of government.  And now I think more than ever, as these power institutions have been created in the executive branch, we need in the Congress an effective counter balance, if you will.

The Congress needs to be looking at every nook and cranny of what happens in the intelligence communities, and this is hard to do.  The Congress here has the role of being a partner.  Ed used that word several times.  But it also has the role of being a critic to provide a check and a balance.

And hitting the right balance between being a partner on the one hand and a critic on the other is not the easiest thing in the world to do.  It cannot be done effectively if your oversight committees are weak.  So I think Congress needs to be an effective partner, and it needs to be an effective critic of the administration of the intelligence community.

And in order to be an effective partner and critic, the Congress has to have the capability to carry out robust oversight.  And if you have that, then I think better policies will emerge.  Our liberties will be better protected.  Sometimes arrogant bureaucracies will be checked, and when the executive branch overstretches or overreaches, that will be checked as well.

I'll not go into the detail on the reforms of congressional oversight--I think they've already been mentioned--except to express my general conclusion, and that is that I think the steps taken in both the House and the Senate--and they've taken a lot of energy and lot of effort to take those steps.  I appreciate that--are still fairly modest, and in our view--that is the view of the Commission--I think a lot more needs to be done.

Now what needs to be done?  Well, in a word what needs to be done is to have what Ed Meese spelled out here.  Ed, when you said a moment ago that as Attorney General, you reported to four committees, I almost got up and cheered because I think that that's exactly what we would like to see in this area.  And it's a lot more difficult I guess in many respects perhaps than the Attorney General confronts.  I don't know that to be the case.  It may be the case.

But what we want to see is permanent standing committees in the House and the Senate for both intelligence and homeland security.  We want to see committees that are powerful; that are sufficient; that are capably staffed; that have strong investigative powers and exclusive jurisdiction.  And if you have all of those things, I think you're going to have a very robust oversight.

Keep in mind here that oversight of the intelligence community is especially important in the intelligence area, because you do not have operating in this area because of national security, secrecy, and covert actions, and all of the rest the kinds of checks and balances that you have if you're talking about education policy or health care policy, where there are lot of interest groups around this town and around the country that watch every move that the policy makers make.  It's very difficult for outside groups to give any oversight of the intelligence community, because so much of it is secret.  And that means that the only independent oversight, independent of the executive branch, that you get effectively is the United States Congress.  And because the intelligence community is enormously powerful, we all understand that information is power in this town, and the person or the institution that has the information is going to have a lot of power.  We see that in any national security issue.  As you can control that information, or dominate that information, it gives you a leg up, a very big leg up in the debate on national security.

In other words, there aren't any outside experts here.  There are no watchdog groups.  There are no interest groups.  Maybe a little overstated.  The media has a big handicap.  Talk to the media, and they'll all complain about the difficulty of keeping track of the intelligence community, and I want to say that in this context you have in the Congress today, in my view, a lot of very good people.  Members who are conscientious.  They're working very hard at this.  And staff, which are highly skilled professional people.  And they work very hard, but in my view at least, and I think it's fair to say the view of the other Commissioners, they simply don't have the structures and the authorities that they need to really be effective on oversight.

And today, they're often second guessed in the intelligence community--in the intelligence committees.  They're second guessed by the Armed Services Committee, because of sequential referral.  They're second guessed by the Defense Appropriations Subcommittees.

Understand that the intelligence community is pretty smart.  They know how the Congress operates, and they know where the power lies.  And the power lies where the money is.  And the money is handled by the Appropriations Committee.  So what they understand is that real power lies not with the authorizing committee, but with the appropriation committee.

Then think for a moment on how the appropriation committees have been handling intelligence.  This may change in future as we've mentioned.  But in the past, intelligence has been handled by the defense subcommittees of the appropriation committee.

Now keep in mind, there, you have a subcommittee in the House and the Senate that are dealing with $400, $500 billion dollars budgets, with all of the debate that surrounds the defense budget.  And they're debates.  They're genuine debates.  They're important debates.  But the amount of money spent on intelligence is a very small part of that $400 or $500 billion budget--roughly a tenth of it I guess.

While the Commission was in progress, I went to the Senate one day, and I was talking to members of the Senate and said how much time did you in the Defense Subcommittee on Appropriations spend on the intelligence budget last year?  That was my question.  The answer came back ten minutes.  I was so impressed by that, that when I met with another group of Senators the next day, I quoted it.  And another Senator popped up, and said, Hamilton, you've got that all wrong.  We spent five minutes on it.

Now I don't know if those figures are exactly right or not.  It doesn't really matter.  But the point is that the defense subcommittee has such an enormous job that giving the time and attention necessary to the intelligence budget is very hard for them to do, not matter how conscientious they may be.

And so we used a pretty strong word in the Commission report.  That word did not originate with us.  I think I interviewed almost every member of both committees--Senate and House.  I may have missed a couple.  And the word was used again and again for Republicans and Democrats.  They said, Hamilton, the oversight committees of the Senate or the House are dysfunctional.  And we used that word in the report.  That's a very, very strong word.

And, yet, it was the conclusion that we came to.

Okay.  What do you do about all of this?  I'll not go into a lot of detail on it.  The key I think is you want intelligence committees in the House and the Senate that have sole jurisdiction over the national intelligence program, not the military intelligence.  Put that aside.  That's the Defense Department.  No quarrel about that at all.  I'm talking about the national intelligence program.  There are two kinds of intelligence probably.  One is strategic.  The other is tactical.  Tactical is military, and we're really not talking about that.  You need sole jurisdiction over the national intelligence program that should not be subject, in our view, to sequential referral.

Likewise, in the homeland security committees, they should have in or view sole jurisdiction over all the counter terrorism elements of the Department of Homeland Security, not the entire department, but over the counter terrorism parts of it.  And we heard often about the number of committees that these Department of Homeland Security officials have to report to.

That's at the authorizing level.

At the appropriating level, you want to have subcommittees dealing exclusively with intelligence; and, therefore, you'd end up with what Ed talked about--four basic committees that would be involved in homeland security four--and intelligence two authorizing committees--Senate and House.  Two appropriating committees--Senate and House.

We think that's the next best solution.  We understand that he Congress is not going to buy what we recommended in the report.  We did, as I think Thom Mann said, make some fairly racial suggestions in there.  The old model of the Joint Atomic Energy, which a few of us in this town are old enough to remember.  Most of you it's only a vague and distant memory.  But it worked very effectively.  And then the idea of combining authorizing and appropriating authorities we knew to be radical. We knew it was probably a bridge too far, but we thought that it moved it in the right direction.

So the next best solution is to have the four committees that I've identified.  I do not think that we--to conclude--that we should put our confidence in congressional oversight structures for national security that were designed at the beginning of the Cold War.  In terrorism and counter terrorism, your policy--you are confronting a very, very different kind of national threat.  And the nation needs to reform all of its national security institutions, not just the executive branch.

Having said all of that, I know, from personal experience, now very difficult institutional reform is in the Congress, and I suspect Thom Mann is right when he said that from this point on, it's going to be incremental.  I would hope for more than that.  It's possible to have more than that.  It's only possible if the leadership of the Congress and I think both leaderships--Republican and Democrat--want to make it so.

But in the absence of that, and they've got an awful lot of things on their plate, it's likely that you'll have to move in the way of incremental reform.  But let me be clear as I conclude.

On the Commission, we believe that these reforms are necessary; and that the Congress should respond to them.  We didn't make that call willy nilly.  We feel that the nation has a serious national security threat; and that--

[TAPE FLIP.]

MR. HAMILTON:  Well enough, efficiently enough, effectively enough to deal with it.  And we're not dealing here with just moving boxes around in a complicated structure in the Congress or a complicated structure in the executive branch.  We are dealing here with the safety and the security of the American people, and how best to protect them.

So we think there is an urgency here; that the urgency remains.  It has not been eliminated or even diminished, and that the matter of congressional reform, which is esoteric, inside the Beltway complicated, and all of the rest is nonetheless a matter of the national security of the United States.

MR. ORNSTEIN:  Thank you, Lee, for those eloquent comments.  I think we can settle the dispute between the two Senators over how much time they spent.  No Senator has ever spent only five minutes on anything.  So.

MR. HAMILTON:  And those were the opening remarks.

MR. ORNSTEIN:  I'd say yes.  Clearing the throat alone.  I'd like to take a few minutes to have a little interchange with the panel, offering them an opportunity to respond to anything that the others said, but I also want to throw just a few questions out, which any of you can respond to if you like.

The first:  the Department itself.  My study of reorganizations, inside or outside government, suggests that when you do a major reorganization, it takes many, many years to change the cultures, to integrate the different entities, to create some sense of a whole, and that in this case, given the sweeping nature of the reorganization, and given the difficulties getting it going in the first place--the turnover at the top levels, the inability to find a deputy to actually run things for a long time--that there's been more turmoil than one might usually imagine.  How much turmoil is there inside the Department trying to pull these entities together?  Have they made headway even creating a sense of border security with these four disparate entities?  And has Congress done anything to help in that regard?  That's one question.

The second question:  Given the--it was 88 panels that Tom Ridge and Jim Loy, his deputy, often complained about calling on them over time, is there any way to actually effectively contain the time commitments that these officials who should be spending their time on homeland security, at least most of it, while having effective oversight, that you can reduce it to four or at least a limited number that would be more workable than what we have now.

Third, Lee, Thom and I in particular I know have complained in the past about the unwillingness of the current Congress and its predecessor to do much of any oversight, since that oversight of the executive branch that they're members of the same team would be perceived as criticism of the White House, the Administration, and so on.  Is that true and is there any sign of that changing as Congress now perhaps after the reelection of President Bush might be willing to assert its own prerogatives?

Four, many of the 9/11 Commission recommendations focused on trying to make this process of oversight and congressional involvement more bipartisan.  That included recommendations for creation of a bipartisan staff.  What we've seen is a continuation of partisan staffs and the ability of individual members to hire their own staff people.  I want to ask if you think that there is less partisanship.  We saw some sharpening of that in the House Intelligence Committee, in the middle, towards the end of the last Congress, partly because of the political campaign perhaps.  And are there signs that that might be dampened down; that we might move more towards more bipartisanship now in this area, even though it doesn't seem to be in other areas?

And finally, the last point that you made, Lee Hamilton.  Do you see any willingness on the part of the leaders in either House to take this more seriously, to make it a top priority, to knock heads together to bring about some of these changes?

So any or all of those questions that you want to address for a few minutes before we turn to the audience as a whole?

MR. MEESE:  Well, in regard to the Department, major steps have been made I think to integrate the cultures.  One of the things that was inherent in the initial legislation in setting up the Department was the recognition that it would take a long time, and also that the initial organization prescribed by Congress was not necessarily the best one.  And that's why reorganization was mandated by Congress after they had had a chance to have some now--a couple of years of experience.  And actually, the Department is in that process now of looking at what reorganization might be necessary, which will again involve Congress necessarily.  And so some cooperation and efficiencies on the part of Congress will facilitate that process itself.

In terms of integrating the cultures and the various departments, I think that has been done to a certain extent.  Probably the most integration has taken place in the border and customs area, but at the same time that they--and that was a function of organization--they separated the border inspection operations from the internal investigations of the same subject.  So you have one outfit guarding the border for smuggling and for illegal aliens coming in.  You have a separate organization for investigating once they get in the mainland.  And those are things that are now trying to be worked out because that hasn't worked.  But that's one of the important areas, and Congress will have a great opportunity to help once they've decided what to do in terms of that.

I would say that the Department has suffered from the turmoil in this sense:  there has been a lot of change over the time, particularly in the position of deputy.  I think there have been two or three different deputies during this period of time.  I think they are now getting in the--Judge Chertoff takes over, which could be as early as tomorrow or the next day--I think there is a much greater opportunity and a greater chance that you will have some stability once he gets his people in place for a period of perhaps four years or three and a half years.  So I think that that is coming.

But again, Congress will have a role there in confirming the people that the President nominates for the key positions.  It's likely that there will probably be a turnover of maybe at least three or four out of the top 10 positions in the Department over the course of the next month or so.

In addition to that, there's a major change necessary in the Department--and Congress can be very helpful in this regard--and that is all of the energy, time, or--the majority of the energy, time, and effort in the Department over its initial years has been doing what you talked about--trying to organize, trying to assimilate, trying to get things going.  Very little attention has been paid to the relationship with the Department other than in a certain amount of funding to local governments.  And the real challenge for the Department now is to be able to establish a relationship with the first responders, the true first responders, which are the police and fire departments, emergency medical services, and particularly the political leadership of local government, and that I think is the biggest challenge that the Department has in the years ahead, because it's that relationship.

In the area of biological warfare, we have done almost nothing to create an infrastructure to deal with that problem.  It's in the Department of Health and Human Services primarily.  My own view is the Surgeon General and the Public Health Service ought to be put in charge of that and given a mandate to do that, and to develop a public health infrastructure, almost a reserve organization, with the health officials of county, cities, and states.

But that whole area begs for some activity over the next few years.  So I would say there's as much work to be done in the next four to 10 years in terms of giving us an adequate structure for homeland security as there has been in the initial setting up of this Department.

MR. HAMILTON:  Norm, you've raised lot of very difficult questions.  Can you change the culture at the DHS and all the rest of it.  It's important to say here that a lot of good people in a lot of areas of government have done many good things to try to improve the safety of the American people.  And I don't have any doubt about the intent or the desire to bring about change.

If you talk to any part of the Department of Homeland Security or any of the other agencies dealing with counter terrorism policy, they will give you a list of 25 to 50 things that they have done.  And I think they have.

But the question always lingering in the minds of us on the Commission is what they're doing effective?  And are they really doing what they say they're doing?  The FBI told us on several occasions that we're getting our computer system fixed so that we can share the data.  Look.  I don't have any doubt about Bob Muller's intention here.  He's a very good man, and yet, I pick up the newspaper, and I find, after they've told me that, that they've spent $170 million and got nothing to show for it.

So you have to ask yourself the question when you see these lists of things that they tell you they have done, have they really done them.  And in a crunch, would what they have done work?  And we don't always know that.

Having said that, it is undoubtedly true in my mind that we are safer today than we were 9/11.  Look we've gone over three years without an attack here at home--well, what, three and half years I guess now.  And that is no small accomplishment.

Was that because we're so smart or lucky?  I don't know.  Maybe both.  But it's something, and it's a significant achievement.

So we've made some progress here.  But an awful lot still needs to be done, and all this does to me is emphasize the need for tough congressional oversight.  Day after day after day, you've got to call these people in.  What have you done?  Tell me again.  Just don't give me a list of things you've done.  Show me.  You've got the members of Congress have to go out and look at these facilities.  And it's hard work.

Now the second question is can we reduce the number of oversight committees?  The answer is not no unless you have changes in the rules of the House and the Senate.  And that's going to be very tough to do.

Another question you raised is then unwillingness of members to do oversight.  That's undoubtedly true.  If you look back--this is not just the problem of a Republican Congress; it's true when the Democrats were in charge, too--if you look back over a period of decades, there has been a decline in the oversight function of in the United States Congress, and it's a serious matter.  Really serious.  It goes far beyond intelligence matters.

Why is it?  Well, there are a lot of answers to it.  The media is not much interested in oversight.  It's very tedious work.  You got to have very good staff for it.  I was in the Congress for 34 years.  I cannot remember a single question directed to me by a constituent during that period.  Hamilton, what kind of job you doing on oversight?  Nobody is interested in it.  So members have to be kind of self-starting here in order to do it.

Now let me--I think most members today are becoming more conscious of this.  And what has to happen?  Whether you've got a Republican or a Democratic Congress and a Republican or Democratic President, a member of Congress obviously pays attention to his party leadership.  And if the President is of your party, you pay a lot of attention to what the President's policies are.  And we probably should under our system.

But it is also true that a member of Congress takes an oath of office and that oath of office is to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the United States provides that the Congress is a separate and equal branch of government.  So a member of Congress, of course, pays allegiance to his party leadership; of course, pays attention to the polls and to his constituents, as he or she should.  But they also have a responsibility to the Constitution of the United States.  And what that means is that they have a responsibility to the institution of the Congress as a separate and co-equal branch of government.

See the Founding Fathers believed that better public policy would emerge if you had an executive branch and a congressional branch and a judicial branch, too, that were to some degree in tension with one another--a creative tension we hope.  But from that tension, from that balance and separation of powers, there would emerge better public policy.  So I'm hopeful that--I think you're beginning to see this in lots of different ways.  Members of Congress in the majority party are now stepping up and beginning to think about, if you would, pretty seriously, their institutional role.

I'm not altogether pessimistic about your next question and that is bipartisan oversight.  I think that's possible.  There's a kind of a rhythm to Congress and to members.  Members are very good politicians.  They know what their constituents want or they wouldn't be in the Congress.  And if their constituents say to them, you folks up there are just too partisan.  I don't like it.  And they keep hearing that over and over again.  They'll respond to it.  I believe.  I hope.  I think.

And so if they hear this enough, from enough people, they'll begin to change.

Your final question is there any willingness to take all this oversight more seriously.  I think so.  I think it's beginning to--I know the Speaker has had a special interest in it.  The minority leader has spoken to it several times, and I believe members are getting a little more conscious if you would of their responsibilities on oversight.  I hope so.

MR. MANN:  Let me just add one broad point to the very rich responses that Ed and Lee have given to Norm's question.

The sad fact is that today's political environment is not conducive to the kind of behavior we would like to see in Congress in terms of reorganizing itself, in terms of responsible aggressive focused, but substantive oversight of the executive, in terms of bipartisanship on the intelligence committees and homeland security committees.  The reality is that institutional reform has been the stuff of partisan battles.  It was used intensely in the 2002 elections, and, therefore, members of Congress have come away from it feeling as if this is the stuff of partisan war, not the stuff of governance.

I think the fact that, as I said before, our parties operate at such a level of parity that the majorities are so narrow that elections are so close and that the parties have become so ideologically polarized that the stakes are seen as high.  In fact, the partisan political stakes in the day-to-day activities of Congress are simply too high to foster the kind of serious assumption of institutional responsibility, Lee, that members of Congress should assume.  But the institution has been trumped by party.

We've seen a demise of regular order, again beginning under Democrats but, as Don Wolfensberger has chronicled, an acceleration under the Republican majority.  That makes it very difficult to foster the kind of activities that we want to see.

Now maybe President Bush's reelection will make a difference.  That is the stakes were seen as so high of anything that Congress did that seemed critical of the President might be used against him in the election and so Republicans had an incentive to stick together.  The President won't be on the ballot again.  It may be now that there will be some loosening of this.

If Republicans loosen the reins a bit, then Democrats may respond in kind, because they've been just as partisan in their responses to all of this.  On the other hand, I look at the Senate and see Bill Frist seemingly painting himself into the corner to use the nuclear option on denying filibusters on judicial appointments, and that leads me to think if he does, that institution will blow up and become even more partisan than the House of Representatives.

So the broader political environment is working very much against the efforts here.  It's going to take the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the Speaker of the House and individual leaders in the Senate to simply try to stop this dynamic, to slow it down, to remind themselves and their colleagues what Lee Hamilton said so eloquently about Congress, the first branch of government, and its particular institutional responsibilities and maybe we can begin to move gradually in the directions that Ed and Lee have outlined.

MR. ORNSTEIN:  Thanks to all of you.  I want to open up.  Let me start by asking Peter Hoekstra, who, by all accounts, played an extraordinarily constructive role in the reforms that were done pursuant to the 9/11 Commission at the beginning of the Congress if he has a question or a comment or both?

MR. HOEKSTRA:  I'll pass.  I'm just enjoying listening.  Thank you very much.

MR. ORNSTEIN:  Okay.  Thanks very much for being here, by the way.

To the audience, wait for the microphone, please and please identify yourself and your institutional affiliation before you ask a question.  We'll start with Don, here at the front.

MR. WOLFENSBERGER:  Thank you.  Don Wolfensberger with the Woodrow Wilson Center.  One thing that hasn't been mentioned by any of the panelists directly and that is the fact that at the beginning of the last Congress I think to its credit, both Houses created separate subcommittees of appropriations on homeland security.  I'm wondering how the panelists assess how that is working.

And then secondly, I'm wondering in reflecting on the fact that the House is resisting any publication of the intelligence figures, whether it's really that important to have a separate subcommittee of appropriations on intelligence.  And, if so, how it could possibly function given the, you know, the difficulties that it might encounter, and whether it might even detract from the ability of the intelligence committee to strength its own-the authorizing committees to strengthen their own oversight functions.

MR. ORNSTEIN:  My sense of the--I think it was very constructive that they created the appropriations subcommittees.  Appropriations in the past has probably done more oversight through most areas than authorizing committees have; and in years past has taken the oversight responsibilities more seriously.  So having these separate subcommittees my sense is that was about the only oversight we saw of the Department and its operations.  But it wasn't great to begin with.

And I think we're going to see now as the House pursues its reorganization of the subcommittees on appropriations and the Senate resists doing so, that the relations between the two bodies are going to become more, to use that term, dysfunctional.  They're going to have real difficulty figuring out how to make all of that work.  And while that doesn't affect directly those two subcommittees on homeland security, which continue to be in place, I think it's going to make oversight there less significant.

It will be interesting as well to see the degree to which the Committee on Homeland Security in the House, now permanent and with at least some jurisdiction, and in the Senate relate to those appropriations subcommittees.  The House Committee did not relate at all the it so far as I can tell or certainly not well in the first term.

The question of whether you need a separate intelligence appropriation subcommittee, especially given that most of the recommendations dealing with intelligence of the 9/11 Commission were not accepted or taken to heart by Congress, with I think really one significant exception, and that is making the Senate membership a permanent one; taking away the term limits there.

But whether under those circumstances if you cant' get anything else, getting at least an appropriations subcommittee on intelligence would make sense.  I think if you did have an intelligence subcommittee that there would be more willingness to release figures as the Commission has recommended.  But I would love to hear what Lee has to say about the functionality or importance or worth of having separate subcommittees in the appropriations committee on intelligence.

MR. HAMILTON:  And it says it's very important to have a subcommittee that focuses on this $40 billion budget.  And that a defense committee or subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee has so much on their plate, such a huge budget, so many controversial items with regard to defense spending that you really need a group of people who become expert in the intelligence budget.

Now if you go to the authorizing committees on the day that they consider the intelligence budget, they will walk into the room and members of the Senate and House committees will have on their desk a notebook or two or three--this thick--with all of the detail that the intelligence community has given you on those budgets.  And you really have to have a lot of background to be able to absorb that pretty quickly.  It takes you two years to learn the acronyms in that business.  It's such a complicated business.  And I don't know of any member of the authorizing committee, the intelligence authorizing committees that have felt comfortable even after a year or two on it.  You really need more time.

Now what has happened here is in the Senate the appropriations, they did create a homeland security appropriations subcommittee.  That's good.  I applaud that.  When Senators McConnell and Reid were working under the direction of Frist and Daschle at the end of last year, they recommended a separate intelligence appropriations subcommittee.  And that apparently has now fallen by the wayside because of this question of declassifying the top line.  And I think they've now concluded--I'm not positive on this--but I think they've now concluded that you cannot create a separate subcommittee on intelligence in the Senate.

In the House, they too have a homeland security appropriations subcommittee, but they have no intelligence subcommittee.  And they're going to handle it in the defense committee.

So I think the Senate tried to do the right thing on it, but they've bogged down here on an important detail.  But I do think it's important to have a subcommittee, if it's at all possible, to really focus on this defense budget--I mean the intelligence budget.  It's very big.  It's very complicated.  And it needs a lot of attention.

MR. MEESE:  I think there are some good reasons why the intelligence budget should be relatively secret or at least most of the portions of it.  Perhaps in the aggregate, you can release some figures.  But the fact that there is that secrecy it seems to me makes a single committee even more important, because you need a committee who can give the attention to it and to provide the oversight that would otherwise be provided by the public scrutiny generally.  So to have a committee made up of members who have the commitment, who will give--who will attain the expertise and devote the attention to it seems to me to be even more important with the secret intelligence budget.

MR. MANN:  Just as couple points.  Don, you may be right; that is if you can't get because of this argument about transparency and the separate intelligence subcommittees, it may make more sense to try to strengthen the intelligence committees--beef up their power vis as vis the armed services if you can't do it.

But, as Ed said, it's--in some ways, it's kind of laughable.  Everyone knows what the overall budget is for intelligence, and that's all you're going to be revealing in this process.  I repeat one of my suggestions, as sort of incremental step, which is to over time try to absorb the intelligence budget on the homeland security appropriation subcommittee.  You have a basis there, and there's something to be said for that consolidation.

The broader point is we've seen a decline in the importance of the appropriations committees over time.  This is partly because they can't pass bills, and because appropriations now get written in a room with a small number of people in omnibus appropriations bills.  It's basically done by the leadership and the Administration, and it--

MR. HAMILTON:  And key staff.

MR. MANN:  And key staff.  And it really so weakens that comparative advantage of Congress, the power of the purse.  So that unless we deal with the broader problem, we may create a box that doesn't get the job done.

MR. HAMILTON:  Norm, may I say I think the omnibus bill is an abomination.  I just think it undercuts transparency, accountability and everything, and it puts power into the hands of a very, very few people.  If you to up to Capitol Hill on the final days of the Congress, when they're working on the omnibus bill--is the only remaining piece of legislation--most members of Congress are sitting around with nothing to do.  They don't have anything to do.  There are a few people over here in some room in the Capitol that are putting that budget together.  And then they report it out at 2:30 a.m. or three o'clock in the morning.  It'--you don't judge these bills by pages, you judge them by weight.  And there will be pounds and pounds, and you get them at three or four in the morning, and you have to vote up or down at 10:00 a.m. or 11:00 a.m. in the morning.  And it's an absolute absurdity in the Democratic process, and a serious one.

It's happened because it's tough to pass these bills.  It really is.  The leadership has a formidable task.

I want to say one other thing about this oversight function that Don raises very well.  What's happened in the intelligence community over the last few years is that the intelligence community gets its budget through a supplemental, and there is even less oversight of a supplemental bill, because it's another big package, and let me tell you there are a lot of people in the executive branch who favor that, because there is less oversight of it.  But the supplementals have become huge in recent years--$80 billion supplemental yesterday I guess--and terribly important.

But in those supplementals you often now find the intelligence budget--sometimes the entire budget; sometimes major portions of it.  And a supplemental is a run around the normal legislative process.  The authorizing committees are completely shut out of that.  And it again concentrates power in a few.

MR. ORNSTEIN:  One suggestion that one might make here I have in the past that could get you halfway towards the goal at least of pulling these things together is to make the Chair and Ranking Member of the Intelligence Committee ex officio members of the appropriate appropriations subcommittee, and do the same thing with the Chair and Ranking Member of the homeland security committees.

In the House, there has always been this sense of wanting to keep a complete separation between authorization and appropriations.  They've never had that sense of religion in the Senate.  And I think it's probably a stupid thing to do now to keep them as separate as they are.  That would be one way of bringing about some leverage.  Other questions?  Yes.

MR. WOOLERY:  Hi.  My name is Chuck Woolery [ph].  I'm somewhat affiliated with the United Nations Association Council of Organizations, and bin-Laden's kind of perspective, you know, his goal was to try to either divide the United States or to break us economically.  And when you look at the post-9/11 world, we've become more partisan, and we've gone deeper into budget deficit.  It looks like if we are successful, I mean, even if you could come together in a partisan way to--in a bipartisan way to solve our domestic policy problems that it would actually break the budget; that if we really tried to defend ourselves against all the possible threats, and I'm glad that Ed Meese mentioned bioterrorism and I would also say infectious disease is a threat, given that we're looking at this from a domestic perspective in terms of our security, but we really need to look at it from an international perspective and address the root causes of these global threats rather than trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I just wanted to see if you have any response to that?

MR. HAMILTON:  One response I would make is it's pretty obvious to all of us that counter terrorism policy is hugely expensive.  And likewise, it expands the intrusiveness of government in many parts of our lives.  I guess the most obvious one there is the pat down you get when you go through the airport monitors.

The toughest problem in government is always the setting of priorities.  And the reason its' so tough is because there's so many challenges out there, and politicians don't like to set priorities, because it's very hard to do and they can be wrong.  But in the area of homeland security, you have to begin to set priorities.  You got tens of thousands of targets.  You've got many different kinds of tactics that can be used against you.  And you can't do it all.  You can't protect everything.  And you can't protect against every tactic.

So we're going to be forced at some--and the resources, of course, are limited.  You cannot get away from the question of setting priorities, and I think that's what we're going to have to do more and more.

If you ask me what's the toughest job the new Secretary of DHS is going to have, he's going to have to be a virtuoso manager obviously--but he's also going to have to force decisions with regard to priorities.

And keep in mind that a lot of these things you want to protect, most of them, are not in the public sector.  They're private sector facilities, and that raises a lot difficult questions as well.

So that's one reaction, Chuck.  I have to--what you're saying.  There's some other aspects to it.  But that's an important one.

MR. LEUBSDORF:  Carl Leubsdorf for the Dallas Morning News.  I wish I could share Congressman Hamilton's optimism given my great respect for him, but when we see in the House of Representatives the leadership purging members of the Ethics Committee, removing an Appropriations Chairman because he had the nerve to try to get more money for veterans, is this an incentive to oversight?  And doesn't this indicate that the House will continue to be run, barring some kind of a cataclysm, very much in control of, as the Congressman mentioned, a few people.  They like it that way it looks like.

MR. MEESE:  Well, I think what Lee is suggesting, and I think what all of us believe in is that right now an important thing, and I think the 9/11 Commission went a long way toward this is to demonstrate to Congress that business as usual is a recipe for disaster.  And it's a matter of getting that interpretation over so that that exceeds the partisanship that unfortunately has developed.

Nine-eleven changed a lot of things in this country.  Three and a half years later, I would say that most people have forgotten 9/11 in terms of any urgency and immediacy to doing something important, and I would hope that at least the 9/11 Commission I think has brought it back to the public cognizance.  And I think we need--that's the only way I think, Carl, that anything is going to be done if the priorities of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and the needs to change the climate and the ability to function up there has to overwhelm the current environment in which policy is not being made.

MR. MANN:  Carl, your question, of course, underscored the broader point I was trying to make that so much of what is going on and so much of why it's difficult to change in the way we've been discussing is the broader political environment in which we're living.  Partisan parity, unity, and ideological polarization has produced smash mouth politics on Capitol Hill, and how we break out of this--if one party became a little more confident because they had a larger majority and that party became more heterogeneous, then you'd begin to see incentives for cross party discussions once again.

If there proves to be a cost to running the House so tightly, then there might be some backing away from that and some more focus on institutional responsibility.  If the Senate majority leader overplays his hand with the nuclear option, there could be a reaction and some change after that.  If the President sets a different tone, that might have some impact.  But right now, without some external change or intervention.  It's hard to make much progress.

MR. HAMILTON:  Carl, I think it's always possible to draw quite a long list of things that are happening that discourage you.  And any of us can do that.  And I think sometimes it's very hard to maintain your sense of optimism about the system.  I often found myself in public meetings defending the Congress.  And I guess fundamentally, I have a greater confidence in the Congress and generally in the American government than many people do have.  And I don't--I hope I'm not Pollyannaish.  I hope I'm not overly optimistic about it.  But we have such a remarkable history in this country of overcoming our problems and not only surviving but prevailing, and it's important to keep that in mind.

I was reading the other day the biographies of a number of 19th century politicians, all of whom, of course, were men, and the thought occurred to me that in their life times as politicians, they only dealt with four or five issues.  And today it's probably self-serving to say so, but a politician today deals with four or five issues before lunch.

And so the question is whether this nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.  And it is not written in granite that it will.  It means that in each generation, as we often say, we have to take our responsibilities and make this system of ours work.

At the end of the day, the tough job in the Congress and in the executive branch is to make the country work.  And we have been pretty successful at that over a period of time, even though there are a lot of things to discourage us along the way.  And so I take that basic view on these questions, even when my list may exceed yours in terms of my complaints.

MR. ORNSTEIN:  I promised our panelists that we would end on time, so I'm afraid we're going to have to stop it.  I just might end by noting that leadership is the effective word here, and as Lee Hamilton and Tom Keane showed on the 9/11 Commission, along with all of their colleagues, even in this larger corrosive political environment, it's possible with a larger goal to transcend it and come together with unanimity.  And there are signs at least in the interactions between Peter Hoekstra and Jane Harmon in the intelligence process in the House, with Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, among others, in the Senate that individuals can somehow step above some of the pettier concerns even though expressed by their leaders.  So let's end it on that modestly hopeful note.  Thank you, all.

[Applause.]