Transcripts For CSPAN2 Representative Jason Chaffetz On Government Accountability 20160107

To do in the operational needs of the i. T. This is one where the requirements are in b. Has just a couple moments left in this program. We will go live now to hear from congressman Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight committee in this morning to accept the legislative agenda for 2016. The utah republican is at the Brookings Institution this morning. Later you should know this morning they will also share a hearing on oversight of the executive ranch life today on our companion network cease injury starting not 10 00 eastern. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to brookings until you met for joining us today. Im honored youre to have congressman Jason Chaffetz from the state of utah with us today to discuss government oversight. Hes the chairman of the house accountability Oversight Committee and he will talk today about various things in the committee discusses, covers, analyzes and tries to keep government accountable to the tax payer in citizen doing its job as well as possible. And Michael Ohanlon with the Foreign Policy i brookings. One thing will undoubtedly talk about given my interest is certainly Homeland Security and tsa which is one of the many parts of the government that the congressman specializes in studying. We look forward very much after 20 or 25 minutes of conversation to your questions because clearly we can range very wisely given his expertise and background. He is also chief of Staff Governor huntsman of utah prior to this job and i like to think hes also the guy that tv on the Brigham Young quarterback always wanted to be. People thought the guy was going to run for public office. This is the byu football fun who did run for public office. Congressmen, welcome to brookings. Glad to have you here. Iowas wanted to be steve young. I wasnt really a football player. They throw a flag, says steve young was the real deal. I think a lot of it are very grateful for what you are doing and its a remarkable portfolio. You are covering almost all of government in many ways. I wonder if just to begin you could explain for the general view on cspan but the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee does, what you see is your priority since becoming chairman a year ago. Again, thank you for having this wonderful institution. Its an honor to be here. Oversight of every farmer sounded roughly in 1816. The idea was every expenditure by the executive branch would have some degree of oversight and then expanded over the course of 17 different committees contracted back and forth. Interesting sidenote when Abraham Lincoln came to the United States congress he served on this committee. Theres a great story about how he was challenging the administration and challenging their account of how the mexicanamerican war started. Its very inspirational. Nevertheless its had various different names. But in that sense, we can investigate anything at any time. Certain parts of intelligence, human intelligence that is certainly the exclusive purview of the intel community. Anything else we can get our hands on them every day we have to figure out how to narrow the scope. Before we get into specifics, how do you think about narrowing the scope . One of the things youve obviously done a lot with this tsa. Maybe god will because the Homeland Security activity thats traditionally been a little bit mixed up and a few spirit is that the sort of base where you look and see if you can play the greatest role for you sort of keep an eye as to where theres a big issue that other committees are looking at. How do you choose the topic . We have some degree of authorization that we authorized washington d. C. Issues, for instance. These are the types of things we have. We have jurisdiction on. 90 of what we do our investigations. It is i believe the secondlargest committee in the house of representatives in terms of staff and budget to the investigation. Its a rather large operation but the government is so large. We are broken into six different subcommittees. What is new this year as we have an i. T. Subcommittee. That is the information technology. The federal government will spend roughly 80 billion a year on i. T. And it doesnt work. Since barack obama took office, at the same time i was selected the federal government has spent in excess of 525 billion on i. T. And i can tell you i can go through almost every department and me. It doesnt work. It creates great passive vulnerability. Specific to the tsa, at the visible part of what the public comes in contact with the federal government. I have deep concerns about Homeland Security overall because it was supposed to post9 11 come together, bring various agencies together and have better coordination. What we have seen is this rapid decrease in morale. Look at what is happening in the secret service had one of the more notable things we did in the last year is a very deep investigation into the secret service. They hadnt had any oversight and i think they suffered because of it. As it relates to the tsa, weve had a lot of security theater out there at the airport. The whole body imaging machines, and the ait as they call them. The single best way to improvise an explosive device is a dog. But dogs dont have lobbyists. And so, we have purchased literally hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment. It doesnt work. That scares me. We are providing oversight and i still think they are failing to do what they should do. One last note. The department of defense, when they were having all these improvised explosive devices to blow people up in afghanistan and around the world, what did they do . They put up the joint improvised devices of organizations. They sent billions of dollars to figure out how to defeat these in a single best conclusion they came to is the dog. The dow does this better than anything else. You see dogs in every airport . No, you dont. Thats a shame because it 10 years of wasted assets and hundreds of millions of dollars going into machines that dont work and just provide theaters. They dont actually provide security. We could just stay with it for a minute. It sounds like, forgive me for using this term. You are that of a radical and tsa. Most of the debate is to reuse these fullbody scanners or not . Do we increase training or not . Do we have this or that kind of machine. The whole logic of a Technology Oriented tsa is incorrect and we want to think more about, as you say though Technology Solution and maybe even are maybe even very same discard them of the machines or complement them with a canine approach . I want to do what works. If you go overseas, you will see a lot more. When you talk to the people in france, they have a deal with this in a serious way. We are still playing catchup. Behavioral profiling is some thing that has to happen. Canines have the ability for when you enter the parking lot all the way to when you are actually on the plane to be mobile. Look at what amtrak is doing. Amtrak invested in dog here you dont go through an ait machine when you go to the white house. It doesnt work. We now see them on capitol hill. I asked the head of the capitol hill police, why dont you use these machines . It doesnt work here when i went to afghanistan and pakistan in places around the middle east, do they deploy them there . Does the military investigate . They dont work. Behavioral profiling, i want them to go through a metal detector. You want to see an entertainment answered by my count, go to the tsa. Its one of the best and federal government. It is unbelievable what they pick. The week of christmas it was Something Like 50 guns were confiscated at the airport. More than 40 of them uploaded. I think it was 18 had a bullet in the chamber. That was one week. I get compliments on that. Thats the metal chair, looking at the xray of the bag. But this idea of pat down, the idea of taking this doesnt work. There is a news report, some classified intelligence i cant talk about. Look at the news reports on an Inspector General came in and looked at this. I think it felt almost 100 of the time. So stay with this subject. One more question because it so important and americans obviously dont care about it. Thank you for your diligent oversight. What is the next step . With your committee, you are not authorized in appropriating funds for a new approach so much as shining a spotlight on how things are today. Does that mean it a coalition with the chair meant who authorizes an appropriate funds to the next step for from this Vantage Point that simply the attention to the subject can spur them on. The best disinfectant is primarily about portable to do. I call a triangulation. In order to achieve the government reform part of our title. Oversight and government reform. In this case you have 450 airport, roughly 200 million air travelers go into the system each day. Youve got tens of thousands of tsa agents, most of which are good hardworking future people. But weve got to work with the authorizing committees and also that the appropriation committee. An institute to reform. So much of what theyre able to accomplish is highlighting it, working with the Inspector General community. They represent 13,000 people. Go go look at an issue for a year and then we are able to have a hearing and highlight that in bringing witnesses and bring in it and the station, asked the question and try to explain what it is theyre going to do to get out of trouble. How well does the Committee Work in terms of the bipartisan cooperation. It is always the sad thing having worked on capitol hill myself, the country sees Congress Largely polarized. I wonder if this is an issue where its more of a legislative versus executive branch they and how you would describe the ability to collaborate. There is a national tendency to protect whoever is on the white house. I think it is a fundamental mistake to not hold them accountable. I was fairly critical during the Bush Administration, republicans didnt hold the Administration Accountable as much as they should. They should have had more hard hitting investigations. Nevertheless, i think it comes down to much personality. And her fortune and i get to interact with Elisha Cummings so i get along with and a wonderful way. We have done more than 200 joint letters and usually when you get a letter from the Oversight Committee, it is not an added boy. It is a little bit more aggressive than that. Weve done 200 joint letter so far. We are going to disagree a tough, but we have a mutual understanding. We will be passionate about what we believe in, but we will not be disagreeable with each other. We get along fabulously. I went to baltimore and he took me around and gave me a tour. Elisha came out to utah i took them out to my lab and parts of the road he had never seen before. And despair fortunate to work with Elisha Cummings. He is a good, decent man and we are working together. One last question because you mention the balance with morale. You are also very kind and gracious to say that most of the tsa employees are hardworking and dedicated, but they do have this crisis of morale and also the of jokes because we asked them to do things that are maybe impossible and put it on them when it doesnt work. In the shortterm while they have big debates about the technologies and you try to shine a spotlight on what is not working, what can we do about this morale issue . Is there anything we can do to make sure tsa doesnt erode further in terms of the quality of people able to attract everything. One of the things we look at is the rise in morale, for instance, at a place like the fbi and the decrease of morale at Homeland Security. This is really a question for secretary Johnson Andre johnson. The survey and i want to get the number right, but i believe theres 320 different agencies they survey. Secret service was 319. At 320 was another Homeland Security agency. They have a deepseated cultural problem at Homeland Security as best i can tell is worse than any other. Its not just more paid because of the regencies arent necessarily getting more pay, the job satisfaction, management , treating people equally. One of the things we found in secret service and i think they are parallel to the tsa. We dove into this even more at the secret service. Management was not held at the same answered. And that is very demoralizing to people. Epa is another area we are looking at that is one of the worst that there is. A lot of misconduct at the epa. People who are viewing sites by the thousands and im not making this up, are still allowed to stay at work here that is very demoralizing. People have to work with them. I dont have an easy solution, but management has to come up with a way to make those jobs more satisfying. It is difficult. Grumpy people dont like to be patted down. They dont want to take off their coats and shoes. Its a tough job. Maybe a quick question on the secret service and then i want to ask you about an information act issued youve got coming up and turn things over to the audience. On the secret service obviously beleaguered and has a lot of the same issues. Where do you think we are in the repair of that agency . It scares me. I dont think they are there yet. We issued a 450 page report, bipartisan report. We offer two dozen recommendations along the way. They got to turn the ship around. Training is a huge part of it. Do you know what the average training time for a secret service take the agency officers, average it all out. What is the average amount of time a secret service spent in training over the course of a year . 25 minutes. You go to a major metropolitan police department, they will spend 10 of their Time Training and yet you find a secret Service Agents officers, and im very supportive. How do you protect the white house . They said we stopped them at the door. We flew right past that person, got in, turn left and finally got tackled out there by the east room. They were candid about it. Then we found out there are officers who had never, ever been in the white house. You work for the secret service if youve never been in that those stores . I can go win in turin you guys havent done that . People out there who didnt have radios that day. Whether the person jumps the fence and say what you hear in the earpiece . We didnt have enough. They werent working. How do you train on the white house . When the president was out of town, do you training . Take off some ballfield and spray paint on the grass with the white house kind of looks like. The audiences smiling, laughing. Thats a weve been doing. How come they come to congress and say i have to have one of these things. This is going to be an elite force. That is where i grew up in secret service, fbi, this was right at the top. So the biggest thing i think we secret service is their Staffing Levels have gone down. The independent panel had recommended they go well. Going the president ial year 2016 i really do worry about this. Working on legislation that would authorize the secret service to pull from other Department Agencies to stop the period everybody said that was the way to do it. The other way they executed him that if they got people from the fbi and the tsa and they need to have temporary the next year assignment travel increases. They are worse than the way its portrayed in the house of cards. Vb youve got something coming up monday with the freedom of information issue in a new report if you could share a little bit of that if youre able. The committee has been looking very deeply. Freedom of information act is where the public can go in and access information. Its also the way the media will often go when introduced a freedom of information act requests. Its not working. It is absolutely failing. We did two days of hearings. When you heard from the administration, not trying to pick up the apartment and its duration, the Bush Administration wouldve been exactly the same. There is a tendency to want to protect. There is a Natural Inclination you can see that. That is going to be embarrassing. That is not the way our Government Works. The United States of america are different than everybody else. We do open up our books. It is the peoples business. People are paying for it not to have access to the information. Certain things you shouldnt be, certain personnel files. I get that. Darrell issa and Elijah Cummings will come to the fore sooner rather than later that narrow some of the successions. And then we have a report that will find a lot of sunshine on how broken the system is. The state department in my view is probably the worst status. Weve got to figure out a way to actually make this thing work. Some agencies pretty good, but most of them are really bad. 40 of the requests are Homeland Security and their backlog is just i mean, just unbelievable. It needs fixing and we will issue a report on monday. Let me ask my last question at least at this point, one must think picture question which is now that youve been in congress for seven years, the Committee Chairmanship for a year, obviously you are looking for problems. Like you said, people are not usually getting christmas cards. When you are taking stock of the whole big picture, the way in which our country works, how well it got burned, how will the federal government delivers on the leaving aside the big policy debate that are always going to be therein should be, what is your impression as to how well Government Works for the American People . I think we have a lot of good patriotic people who work for the government. I worry about the size and scope of the government. Im a very conservative person. Some agencies if you look at what is happening with Veterans Affairs and other places we need to spend money in. The military is behind the infrastructure. So much about the federal federal government assuming they shouldnt even be doing. This gets back to my conservative roots. A lot of this should be given to the states to do a lot of that the government shouldnt even be doing in the first place. And so, new laws Company Regulations are added, but very rarely do we have anything eliminated. That is what i would like to see us do. Youve got to trim the, get in the underbrush, clear it out and remember the core function of our federal government allows that to happen. But right now weve got too many people doing too many things. The runup to the number of employees. I dont believe government is the solution to everything. People can make decisions themselves and the states can do a lot of this not as unfunded mandate, but a lot of responsibilities to just be state responsibilities. About a lot of other things to ask and maybe i will combat later. The jenin in the back, if you could wait for a microphone, identify yourself and obviously a question would be appreciated. Back row. Microphone is working. Thanks very much. Good morning, mr. Ohanlon and representatives chaffetz paid my name is todd wickens that meet bbc. Com. I had two related questions. I want to first of all ask you to go that to the subject of airport security. Obviously its relevant to everyone here. In 2009, there was a situation referred to as the underwear bomber. How is that averted . If you could talk about the process and whether it worked in that particular case. You talked about technology and essentially said it didnt work. Who is benefiting who is buying technology in making decisions and who are the providers benefiting from selling this technology and how should we look at best practices around the world where things are working more efficiently with respect to security at airports. Secondly, i wanted to ask you if you had an opportunity to speak with either the secretary of the navy was the chief of Naval Operations because there is a lot going on in the pacific. I am sure you have said and i don not especially when you talk about east china and the south china sea. As it relates to overseas operations, tsa probably the biggest threat quite frankly or the International Flight and how we help secure those airport and work with people and for instance, paris where we have so many flight. You can rank these airports pretty quickly. Fortunately the thing i feel good about is the underbelly is very impressive operation. I spent seven hours at jfk looking at they walked me through how they do the security under the plaintiff and that is exceptionally well done. Both internationally and mystically. There have been some other threats in things avoided that fortunately were rooted out. Some every once in a while goodbye. The underwear bomber has learned a lot about the process and how to do that. We had the threat with the shoes. There are things they have learned that we cant necessarily talk about on cspan and what not. I think theyve made great progress they are an International Partners are exceptionally good. Its a no fail mission when they have to be on their toes that every single moment. If you go overseas and you go to come over and didnt come to tel aviv or whatnot, you will get an interview. You will see if youre sweating and how nervous you are and they will also have you walking by a dog. That is the right way to go. As it relates to the south china sea, i just got back not too long ago from my second trip to dive into that. I spent more time a little while ago that even the Pacific Command out of honolulu obviously. I spent time in vietnam and indonesia and others, understanding the majority, majority of naval force is there actually out there in that region and there is a reason why. We hear a lot about what is happening in the middle east in the volatility. We have to be able to fight on two fronts. As i look at the overall can turn about the depletion of naval forces, reduction in physical infrastructure we have at the airport, my concern is our ability to be able to fight on two fronts at one time. You hear about the problems we have in the arena. At the same time we have been going on in iran. But we have limited carrier groups, ships and intelligence that are strained and personnel that are getting enough flight time in our air force, then youve got a recipe that could be disastrous. I believe in peace through strength in the United States of america has got to be working particularly with the south china sea, friends in the philippines and vietnam in that area, but the chinese making these pretend facilities, new islands, new land and Building Military capability. That is just not acceptable. The country needs to pay attention. Congress needs to pay much more attention to that, certainly as much if not more attention to those types of things long term is what is happening in the middle east. Thank you for coming, mr. Chairman and thank you for all you are doing. I want to come back to the question of managing the federal government. I am talking about the things the federal government has to do, not things they might do less for duval to this day. Suppose a new president said to you, i have got to manage these things better. What would you and come help me do that. What would your priority is to improve the management of the federal government . Thank you. I want to give them more flexibility. Right now, for than half of all federal workers get a vote. That doesnt make sense to the American People. Should some people get a bonus for an exceptionally good job . When people get things done, i want to reward them. You shouldnt just sit there in perpetuity forever with the safety and comfort blanket this as they are never going to get rid of me and ill give my automatic pay raise. That create the malaise that is unacceptable. We have to understand the core missions. The military and veterans have to be taken care of first and foremost. They protect us. They are out there on the frontlines and we are not doing nearly enough good work for them. A lot of these departments and agencies i would challenge them to a argued telling me we are just there is a reason why we cant cut 5 of what they are doing. You do that in business. I think its a very reasonable goal to figure out how to start trimming the. Other areas i get concerned about, for instance, i. T. Is my biggest concern. We are spending a ridiculous amount of money. If you went to best buy to get a better result. We are spending 70 of the 80 billion roughly on legacy systems. Weve had places ive heard and agencies that got windows 97. They dont even service that microsoft anymore. You have people looking at green screens, the dos operating system. We have to train people to go back and actually learn cobol introduced in the 60s. It is demoralizing. It takes more resources. Technology is supposed to make lives easier, faster, swifter and it ends up being more cumbersome and meeting more people. As a management i want to give those flexibilities to root out the bad apples, get rid of those people do an awful, terrible things. We have heard from the epa to the dea to Homeland Security that they cant fire anybody. Theyve got to be able to fire the the bad apples and take care of those that do great work. Hi, good morning. Thank you so much for coming. My name is sarah thompson. Im a contractor at the state Department Former consultant at the world bank. I have a question. There is a Government Agency that has a congressionally mandated Oversight Committee regarding Sexual Assault issues. The Government Agency also has been investigated three times by the gao in the last two decades. All of these reports reveal several recommendations yet to be realized. Finally, oig has investigated the agency and this agency had actually said you cant have access to our records. You cant get into our information. And though, oig actually entered and amodeo at the agency to get access. This is a federally well, this is a federal government agent he unfortunately it is the peace corps and unfortunately it is that punching a puppy when youre critical of very Good International organizations to a certain extent. So how can this happen . How can we be more critical of agencies that are blatantly obtained illegally by ignoring oig requests for information and how can you flag this so they can be officially investigated . A little bit of background. We did do a hearing that included the peace corps. I met with the director of the peace corps. They have a wonderful mission. They will actually have more people out serving around the world. We get more bang for a buck out of the peace corps than maybe any other foreign aid that goes out there and i could go on and explain not. In this particular case, and my concern is very critical of the Obama Administration, there was an olt opinion that lingered for a long time at the department of justice, but basically they came up with a new theory that had never been implemented before that has that there are certain teams at the Inspector General act would not allow them to get access to. Michael horvitz, who is the Inspector General sheriff at the department of justice is very critical of this. And he happens to lead that group of inspectors general. There may be a new piece of legislation, that basically the stiff arm from the Obama Administration saying we dont want you to look at this stuff. Thats a dangerous precedent. We rely on Inspector General to go in and be the impartial body. No politics, be the impartial ones that dive deep into the issue. And the case of the peace corps, where you had Sexual Assault happening and what appeared to be frequent rate overseas or month are needed to be a look at operation and how this all works. But they said we dont want you to look at it. The primary reason they didnt want to look at it as it was embarrassing. It was a national security. It wasnt security clearance. It was embarrassing. Thats not a good enough excuse. Im highly critical of the administration not allowing the information. When you get to a freedom of information act request, that is not going anywhere. So that is a dangerous thing. This is how we operate. We are open. We are transparent. We are selfcritical. We look at these things in the effort to improve. The peace corps situation, that is believe me, the very first hearing we had was about the igs ability to access information. I dont care what administration it is. They have to have unfettered access to records of to records a person person that will help change the law. So Somebody Just retires, that doesnt excuse them. Right now on thought it does. Thats got to change. Can you please provide an update to the irs targeting scandal and your effort to remove commissioner coston in. Yes. The question about the irs. We did something that we havent done very often and that his file papers to impeach irs commissioners. You have commissioner cost have commissioner costin and who had a fiduciary responsibility to apply with a duly issued subpoena. We issued the subpoena looking for the lowest alert emails. The short of it is they have these emails in their possession. They destroyed them. Somebodys got to be held accountable for that. What would happen to you at the irs came to you and said sir, you need to provide these documents and he said yes, we have them. We promise we have them. And then you came back and said we had them but we shredded them. They are now destroyed. What do you think the irs would do . The irs will take you to court and no go to jail. The department of justice has said they are not going to prosecute. They are going to go after people. Theres a few Things Congress has the power of first and the power to impeach. Last time we impeached a civil officer within the 1800s. I recognize that hasnt been done often that the United States Congress Stands up for itself. And not be afraid or bashful. Not everything is at the level of nixon, but congress in this particular case, i think mr. Costin was brought in to clean this place up. But that is not what happened. And they knew they had these documents sitting there in the possession. The Inspector General went in and made the termination letters to subpoenas in place. What an august the 2013 and another february 2014th at these documents were destroyed in march of 2014. Somebody will be held accountable for that. He had a responsibility for it and he should be impeached. By the way, the House Judiciary Committee myself and six other members are also on the judiciary committee. It is moving forward. You would be surprised how much its gone. He better lawyer at because its going to get ugly. I was wondering what you think us concerning problems with atf in mind of the president s recent action will you increase scrutiny . Yeah, the president , i disagree with his approach. The latest announcement that he made. You need to work with congress. The president is getting to the finish line and recognizing it didnt make any progress and i believe the sincerity. The way to get this done as root said he didnt do that. Sorry nothing now but i never heard that would suggest that they are doing. They want change they have the laws. That may be something we need to look at. Through executive order that is not the. Atf, a lot of good men and women there. We have initially focus on the dea. They have very severe problems. We had a hearing that she pretty much immediately step down after hearing with the bea. Atf has its own set of problems and challenges that is not in tier one top of the spectrum are asked to investigate. We been much more about secret service and tsa and dea. Epa is right up there. They dont seem to go away to solve the problems. I cant tell you we are doing that. They have some of the same challenges within ats at the department of justice as others. Ill give you one other quick example. Sexual assault, Sexual Harassment in the work place is defined differently throughout government and that is one of the things we are taking a deep look at is how you get a uniform definition of misconduct, Sexual Harassment in the work place. Even within the department of justice is pretty embarrassing. One of the last thing attorney general holders sent out to all the employees with the memo saying engaging in prostitution is not a good thing. You cant do it. Even if its legal, you can engage. That is embarrassing. And so, that is throughout the department of justice, different answers, and penalties and something very concerning. Going back to the audience i want to follow up on the issue of atf and gun regulation because it is like it could be potentially your committees jurisdiction ball rather than have a new regulations we should force a third in the books, which then get to the question of oversight and government process and donald trump as well as many others have been making the argument recently. I realize you may not want to lay out your full agenda. If you have one in your head on gun safety broadly defined. On that specific element of how well we should be enforcing laws on the books, what is your overall take and is this the most logical dimension for those concerned about firearms in the wrong hand in his is the right way to tackle the problem . Ive got a multitude of thoughts. The intersection dealing with Mental Health is something addressed in a bipartisan way. Tim murphy, republican of pennsylvania has a bill that is trying to do. Remember, what was the president , one of the first things they did on the gun front was what we call fast and furious. They knowingly, willingly gave 1000 weapons, mostly ak47s to the drug cartels to see if they would pop up. We are still in alaska but the administration trying to get back to. They claim executive privilege. They dont want the public to see what the operation was all about. The Obama Administration the first year was doing. Lets be honest and candid about that. We are still pursuing the need to know how to get spirited out. A longtime prosecutor has made a very good points and i think a wellintentioned point and that is the laws on the books are not being enforced. We have been quietly doing an investigation on tsa. When you go to the airport and you do have a loaded gun, do you get prosecuted . The overwhelming majority of the time it is no. These are irresponsible gun owners. That seems like something right for prosecution. A lot of the prosecution happens at the local level. Specifically to yaphet relates to fast and furious. I hope theyve tried to learn this, but its already illegal. The president puts out the statement about guns and whatnot. Go enforce that. We are trying to get the department of justice to tell us how many times theyve actually prosecuted. It is not a crime. Theres not a prosecutor that wants to make the case to a judge. The very small penalty. But they dont do it. Instead they want others were onerous types of things put on the books. They force the laws currently. If you are here illegally, and if you are here legally on a visa, you are not supposed to be able to purchase the gun. Have they populated the database with all this information . We have drivers licenses and people here illegally. Do they have those people on the do not buy list . I dont think so. They are not doing enough with the laws currently on the books. I think theres a lot more that they can do to make sure that guns dont get into peoples hands. But theyve also got to prosecute people when they are broken. I dont than they do. Jungle in here in third row. One other thing i want to bring up while she gets the microphone. This one really gets under my skin and this goes back to Homeland Security. We have a Large Population of people here illegally. Not everybody here is to just utter their family and provide for their kids. This administration, the Obama Administration had 66,000 people that were here illegally, committed a crime that convicted, convicted of a crime and they released it to the public. They did not support them. You want to look at public safety, gun violence . That is the population. How do you relieve 66,000 criminals here illegally back into the community and at the same time make it more difficult for a lawabiding citizen to purchase. That is not the way youre going to solve it. The criminals dont give a darn about having a new regulation out there. Would you have known criminal this is criminals. I dont understand how the secretary of Homeland Security said the best interest of the United States of america to put these people on the street. Thats just not acceptable. Antiparity with the private company. I want to ask a followup question related to work i do. Question i want to follow up cannot paraphrase say whether we need to consider Management Changes in government, we look at ethics and compliance programs due to root out, wrongdoing, ethics violations to create anonymous reporting and auditing so folks can no whether the situation has been taken seriously. Almost no agencies, almost no programs have goals, object as a milestone for what they accomplish and then to evaluate whether folks are achieving them. I achieved the gao are doing a great job but there is a groundhog day aspect of gao reports. Use the example of cybersecurity. When you look at the 10 years that preceded it and the great work happening headed by the white house and omb coming out of it, it reflects that there have been longstanding problems in the approach possible administration said would be done to take cybersecurity seriously never happen. Theres theres no accountability and no consequences. That is right. Go me go back to how was that half of employees give bonus. We had, for instance, people then engaged in the misconduct and yet, where they punished . Was there a consequence . No got promotions and bonuses. What does that say to the workforce . There needs to be consequences from the secretary on down so they feel that good people get rewarded and bad apples are weeded out and pushed out the door. It relates to the up and data breach, one of the largest data breaches weve ever had whose information is out there and has been on. The Inspector General seven running had come up. At one point they actually said unplug it. It is so vulnerable and we have the same thing happening right now at the department of education. The story that hasnt been written about whats happening at the department of education because if you apply for a student loan, you are sending the information not only about yourself, but about moms and dads of all the account numbers, the access that you have, they have how many of these records . Almost half of americas records are sitting at the department of education. They administer more than a trillion dollars in assets. They are bigger than citibank and they have 140 different databases out there, most of which are contracted. I actually asked of the cio from the department of education, do you need our money . He gave me a good answer. He said no, i need to. Ive got all these contractors out there and its not safe and secure. I think ultimately that is going to be the largest data breach with ever seen in the history of our nation and it is vital information, critical information. The ig is on top of it. We are on talk of the period but the strangeness is late and it scares me. Wait for your microphone if you dont mind. Hi, im with the league of women voters. Hi, im with the league of women voters. Youve been talking security, good legislation, efficiency and such. Ive spoken with quite a few Government Employees who work in i. T. And they are very frustrated. They are also they feel that the work done because they feel they dont have authorization from congress about Homeland Security. So they feel they are kind of stuck and though they hear you are not doing a good job. You cant do this. You cant do that and yet they feel they are prevented from doing it. You mentioned going to the secret service in speaking with them and working with them. Have you done not going to dhs, going to the Education Department and talk to the i. T. People there . How many congressional hearing into speaking to the ig or whomever is not going to work in this case. You need to go to the people in the trenches, find out what is going on and figure out what can be done to be more efficient, what works, what doesnt. If any federal employee in any aspect of the government has a question or concern or comment, we would love to hear it. We get about 60 to 70 a day that come in and say we think weve got a problem here and we have professional staff that kind of weave through that. In those specific cases, Homeland Security and the department of education, we have worked with cio and not everything is a congressional hearing. Sometimes the requests for documentation. Sometimes in an interview. Sometimes our staff will go visit with them. Lets be realistic. 2. 2 million employees in just over 60 employees. Democrats have over 30 employees. With god on their bodies so we cant necessarily going to the great doubts that i would like to go. But we do rely on the Inspector General. But becomes a flashing red light to me. Weve got her 10,000 Inspector General. The department of justice has 500 people, most of which are attorneys diving deep into these issues. When we have a hearing and bring up the Inspector General as we did with the department of education, for example and say ive been looking up this thing and weve been looking at this for years. We did make recommendations. But really becomes a flashing red light to me is when theyve done not work, sometimes a year or two at a time and then the Administration Says no were not going to do that. Then you got a conflict that we will mediate and they say we dont care what you say. And seven years running date highlighted the major problem. The management issue here, the hard part is making the transition that when you spend 70 of your time on the legacy system, as lizzie down. Its really hard to make that transition. Nobody wants to shut down. Nobody wants to turn off the machines, but boy i have no easy solution for that. They have to figure that out department by department, agency by agency. The safety, security, vulnerability, how demoralizing it is to look at a green screen all day and try to work on a dos operating system, that has got to be hard. Especially when you know you can get apple computer, Windows Service or Something Like that and be much more efficient. But fire away. Over here on the side of the room for one more. About five minutes ago. Thank you for all the questions and answers. We are getting through a lot. Thank you. Nextparagraph here in many things he talked about have been going on for decades with no impact. Do you see any way you can generate a nonpartisan outrage on part of the voters to force the government to really begin to take action on some of these things . I think you are right. We have amended those of the final vote on what is called the scrub back. Discover act is intended to look at jason smith introduces out of missouri a great piece of the solution. The Bipartisan Group allows them to go look into these regulations and physically take out the underbrush of these old regulations were. They make things so cumbersome. Regulations of several agencies have been told and required that you fax in certain materials. That is forcing them to spend money, time and resources on technology that is really not used anymore. But that is the regulations so it has to be faxed. Those types of things. Theres a regulation i highlighted last night about the wit of green beans that the fda had put out in the early 20th century. It is still on the books. You get people concerned aside make make a been a little bit bigger, is that really going to cause a problem or if i make much thinner . You spend time in the economy and private sector. That is what its intended to do. Democrats think its terrible. They dont want to get rid of any regulation. I think it is fair and bipartisan way to go out and look at this and cut out the underbrush and do so as a commission that gets away from the political nature of what would happen or not happen in congress. We dont have the bandwidth to micromanage this every single step of the way. The new challenge we have is the i. T. Side of the equation. Thats a whole new dynamic. It was a really here to the degree it was 10 years ago. A question here along the aisle. Hi. My name is meredith and i must and i am with mr. Montgomery, a law firm. He made a comment at the beginning talking about how dogs dont have lobbyists when you are talking about security system. Did i make a mistake . Security systems dont work. Some scholars have suggested that it is not the corporations fault. It is more the politicians fault in terms of bribing and why a certain system will get implemented and it doesnt work then that is the taxpayer cost. What are your thoughts on some of, i guess, it is that theres extortion goes on behind the scenes that we dont create . I dont know that theres outright extortion. I would love to expose it. Say that with a smile on my face, but we are serious about this. I dont see it. Ive been fighting the tsa on this since day one when i got into congress and i continue to beat the drum and educate people and highlight this. Youve got to really love why is this just the tsa and airport uses these machines. There was such Great Technology and it works so well, why is it used everywhere else . Because it doesnt work. Yet somebody went in there and sold them. After critical of mr. Sharecropper who after he left, one of the salesmen there is an ms. Daschle who joined in and the bipartisan way and sold the american role a bunch of transport