Sharing. Thetor ron johnson chairs committee. This is one hour 45 minutes. Sen. Johnson morning to this roundtable. We will come to order. I want to welcome our participants. We have the honorable elaine , the honorabledy george scott, and the honorable john kelly from the dhs. Discussndtable is to the attempt to reauthorize dhs. The house has passed their bill. They had a memorandum of understanding to consolidate that process under the department, the community of the Homeland Security in the house. It is more messy here in the senate which is not unusual. The committee has taken up in past authorization of the psa and coast guard. There are a number of components , my staff keeps telling me 50 of dhs under the authorization. That is what we are here to talk about today. Think it is accurate to say the house authorization and this is what we do in these authorizations. We take with the they do and codify it. Testimony it is pleasing to see how many recommendations the department has made to improve their operation. This has not been an easy department to establish and operate. Together. S called missions trying to develop that unity of mission. We helped a little in the last congress in that effort. We are trying to codify these things. There are a couple of key changes, or new departments that want to codify the weapons of mass destruction office. I think we want to figure out to focus the mission, do the renaming. We talked about doing that on a must pass piece of legislation. There is a great desire to do it. It is a matter of how do we get is efforts signed into law. Need to be items worked out. Authorization for fema grants. What we do with federal protective service. We continue to have those discussions. Maybe that is something we can have a conclusion. My last point, i want to talk about the one glaring omission by the house authorization. Maybe it is too controversial. It is something i think the Department Needs, a very serious thatat the jurisdictions you are responsible to. In my briefing, we got this chart from the committees. How many committees and subcommittees you actually do have the responsibility to report to. Some of your information is pretty interesting. The number of hearings the dhs is 300 andpate in 304. Witnesses are in the 400 levels. As the oversight committee, we strongly believe in Agency Responsibility in terms of reporting to us, and transparency. It needs to be more streamlined. , im not sureing of any other way of doing this. We are open to ideas. We need to reduce that burden. From my standpoint, i want to make sure the department is focusing on its mission to keep america safe and secure. That my Opening Statement be entered into record. Thank you mr. Chairman. Confused why this is a roundtable instead of a hearing. I hope someone can speak to that. This is an administration that prides itself on getting rid of regulations, and im told the reason we are doing this is because he did not have time to get testimony from omb. Is that right . Is that why it is not a hearing . Sen. Johnson this is a conversation between staff and dhs. To actually pass this authorization. To me it is not a big difference. Sen. Mccaskill i think it is important, the reauthorization of dhs. It rises to the level of a hearing. I was under the impression it was something the department did not have ample opportunity to prepare for the hearing. If it was just a choice of the chairman, and you and i have a difference of opinion on whether or not this rises to the level of a hearing. Ive got a number of things i would like to talk about today. I wont have time to talk about all of them. I continue to be concerned about acquisition and how well the department handles acquisitions. About the most egregious examples. Press about the most egregious examples. We entered into a contract to deliver meals, and clearly they did not deliver on that contract. They do not perform under that contract. Debarmentdrill down and suspension, and why that is such a hard thing to do in the federal government. I can assure you my colleagues, the chairman, if it was his company, a private business, any that somebody that was a supplier, and they screwed up time after time, do you know what that business would do . They would quit doing business with them. The federal government never seems to quit doing business with anybody who screws up. I dont get it. I would like to get to the bottom of that. I obviously have questions that i will spend time on. I am concerned about the privileged dispute in the i. T. Report. This is groundbreaking. It is unprecedented. It is very bad. I want to get to the bottom of it. I will put my written statement in the record since we have great attendance this morning. Everybody has questions. Lets move to questions i will ask my written statement be put in into the record. Sen. Johnson it is my understanding you have an Opening Statement. Lets begin with the honorable elaine duke. From the department of Homeland Security. Thank you. I will give one Opening Statement for the department. Thank you for having both of us here today. Clare grady as the undersecretary of management is our chief management officer. m the deputy secretary there is a strong linkage to that. Hopefully with the two of us, we can cover all the areas today. You have been great partners. We are looking forward to having some open and honest dialogue. , the threatsear against our country, we welcome an authorization that will give us updated authority and support , and updated accountability for the country, which we support. Torecognize that we have ensure that we carry out the mission on behalf of the country, and that we are serving our 45,000 employees. We think passage of the authorization act would be helpful in executing our authority and responsibilities. Over the past year at dhs, i have been working on a unity effort at the dhs. Looking at how we as the headquarters operate and support. Community, subject i think yours, proposal mr. Chairman, consolidating some of the committees would be a great parallel to what we are trying to do at headquarters. Weve made great progress. We have to do more in this area. What we are looking for in an authorization bill overall is something that does what you say and codifies some of the efforts. But does not go so far as to thatte and legislate areas would be difficult to change or take away essential flexibility for the secretary. So, finding that right balance. We feel like areas in an authorization bill that will help us with personnel, things such as hiring retention, and fax ability, and management of our employees would be helpful. We can discuss this on a level of detail now or in discussions with you in the Ranking Member later. Also, the depend department in cyber. We have the senior official performing the duty of the undersecretary. An accounting of weapons of mass destruction. We are looking forward to coming up with some agreements that can provide you information that will help you form your authorization bill. Sen. Johnson mr. George scott is the managing director for the accountability office. Thank you chairman johnson, raking member mccaskill. And members of the committee. Tom pleased to be here discuss opportunities to further strengthen the department of Homeland Security. Over the past 15 years, dhs has a range of operations while making significant progress in addressing the highest area of transforming the department and strengthening its management functions. We consider dhs to be a model for how other agencies should work to address their high risk issues. There are a number of key areas our Department Needs to improve. We authorization provides the opportunity to reflect on the progress the department has made, and help to align the dhs commissions, roles, and responsibilities to counter new and emerging threats to the homeland. I would like to discuss specific examples where we think legislation to reauthorize the department will help. In terms of departmental organization, codifying the roles and responsibilities of National Protection row grahams directorate would help on cybern dhss focus security. Also, renaming the office to better reflect those responsibilities would be a positive step. The area of great protecting Critical Infrastructure, congress could help required dhs to provide stakeholders providing Cyber Security protections, particularly sectors that work with the department on a voluntary basis. It is important for dhs to better understand to what extent those efforts are yielding positive results. While the department has made progress addressing Financial Management issues, including opinion onn Financial Statements for five consecutive years, significant challenges remain. In particular, the department continues to struggle with his Financial System modernization efforts and oversight is warranted. Workforceto develop a with the skills necessary to ,phold a control environment and congress could require that are meant to develop a comprehensive strategy for doing so. Finally, no discussion of the department will be complete without touching on the area of Acquisition Management. The department has taken a number of important steps in response to recommendations to improve oversight of these acquisitions. To reestablish the joint ensuring the department continues to follow sound acquisition processes will help increase accountability. Concludes my statement, and i look forward to answering questions that you have. Sen. Johnson thank you. Our final participant is john kelly. Good morning chairman johnson. And raking member mccaskill. And members of the committee. You for inviting me to discuss dhs reauthorization act. And to position dhs to address emerging threats. To fulfill its vital mission, and successfully protect and secure our nation, dhs must continue to overcome challenges that hinders its efforts. Over the last two years, my office has issued reports that address the challenges that face dhs. Many of those challenges congress addressed, the dhs reauthorization act. Implementation of our recommendations, dhs can continue to improve its operations and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse. If the doorman ignores these challenges, it will be difficult for dhs to effectively address new and emerging threats to the homeland. Isour last two reports, dhs management and challenges, we highlighted two of the longstanding challenges. First, dhs is leadership must commit itself to ensure that dhs operates more as a single entity than rather a confederation of components. The Department Leadership must establish and enforce a strong control environment. Internal troll environment is weak. It affects all aspects of its missions. Including immigration enforcement, protection against terrorist acts, natural disasters, and Cyber Security. Fortunately, the dhs authorization act reinforces the for unity by streamlining oversight, accountability, and illuminating redundancy. Another important is Acquisition Management. In fiscal year 2017, dhs spent more than 33 billion on contractual services, supplies, and assets. Dhs Acquisition Management system is critical in filling its mission. Acquisitioning Management System is inherently complex. Dhs annually spends tens of billions of dollars on a broad range of assets and services, inkling ships, aircraft, surveillance towers, nuclear systems, equipment, and information. To its credit, dhs has approved acquisition processes however challenges remain. Provisions of the dhs authorization act, implement efficiencies across components, and better ensured accountability, the safeguarding billions of taxpayer dollars. Strengthenso aviation security. Is the threat of terrorism more evident than aviation. Terrorist needling to get through wants. Terrorists need only to get through once. Our work is identified in tsa screenings and operations. We have conducted nine audits on passenger back its baggage. I cannot talk about the results in a classified setting. Its failures were caused by a combination of technology and human error. Leadership understands the gravity of our findings in this moving to address those. We recently audited all air marshals, service contributions, tsas security. The detailed results are classified. I can state that the funding could be discontinued and reallocated to higher priorities. Focus isour primary the integrity of 240,000 departmental employees. Of dhshe vast majority employees and contractors are honest and hardworking public servants, much of our investigative case load concerns allegations of corruption on part of dhs Law Enforcement personnel and government contractors. Grants authorization act the right to first refusal, we suggest the act explicitly grant that write to us. The Inspector Generals play a Critical Role in ensuring transparent, honest, effective, and Accountable Government area did the public must have a fundamental trust to hold accountability. Chairman, this concludes my comments. I welcome your questions. Sen. Johnson one of the reasons i like this roundtable approach, it allows a free flow of questioning, and we can stay on one topic. We have a time limit of five minutes. The yellow light goes off when there is one minute left. If you have a followon question pertinent to what another member is asking, we can cover the topic then and there as opposed to 15 minutes, a halfhour later, ring up the topic again and rehash it. Just raise your hand. That will add to the discussion. I will defer my questioning and turn it over to senator mccaskill. Im a littlel confused about the process. But we will forge ahead. Sen. Johnson it will be good. An. Mccaskill if this is round table, i hope you will not cut people off from asking questions. Lets start with the thing that concerns me because of my work as a former auditor. The Inspector General conducted an extensive review of the departments implementation of the president s travel ban. Hit a roadblock was the Inspector General expected to release his findings. Not only did it take months for the department to respond to the Inspector General, the department decided to assert rutledge that had never been used before. Privilege that had never been used before. The irony is you are evoking a process privilege and implementation of a travel ban. If there was anything that was not deliberate, it was that. It occurred without adequate notice to the department. Anybody with common sense could look at it and see that. The irony is you are using a deliberative process, privilege to block information to the public. Are we allowed to see this information, ms. Duke . Concern over the deliberate process was, it has to be protected. We have to be evil to have discussions with the president and the administration. It is under litigation. That is the issue here. Protectportant that we this. We provide the report. To the congress, the important thing to know is that with the reduction, it does state what the process was. We believe that with the deliberate of process, it gives adequate information what happened with the travel ban. Sen. Mccaskill i think it is outrageous. I dont understand it. The government is sued all the time. We cannot use litigation as an excuse to stop permission from the Inspector General. We cannot do that because then every department will say we are under litigation. Is this an executive privilege . This the white house exerting this privilege or your department . There was report that came under different privileges. The ig got all that information. It wasnt issue of whether it could be made public through a public report. So, the ig does have the information. Sen. Mccaskill but ig cannot share that with me. Correct. Sen. Mccaskill or the chairman of the committee. We will be happy to have a discussion with that you. I will come in and talk to you. Sen. Mccaskill im going to need more explanation about this. This could be a trend. All of a sudden we could have igs all over the government saying this is a delivered of process. We cannot talk about this. Then our oversight is done. We find it unusual for an ig report to be focused on discussions within the executive branch. A lot of the report was focused thoseil notifications, type of things. Normally, and i g report would be focused on how dhs implemented the travel restriction. Sen. Mccaskill somebody who has asd as many ig reports anybody in this room, emails are always a part of those reports. Emails i think the deliberative process, we are in the early ges to how we sen. Mccaskill i want to know what is hidden with the public. The recruiting contract. We have asked for information on the recruiting contract. Itasked january, was competitively bid . It was. Sen. Mccaskill the best we could get is paying 40,000 for every job . We looked at it from the perspective of competitive selection representing what was needed at a fair price. It in its entirety. The necessary staff for Border Patrol agents, and even despite the effort of using a range of options including retention incentives and Different Things we had done for recruiting perspectives, we have an average net loss of 400 position every year. This year we are down another hundred. We need to do something above and beyond what we were able to do, with the intent to hire an additional 5000 Border Patrol agents. We look at it carefully and said this is a surge need. To push on all the flexible he from a hr perspective. We have to meet that surge. We ordered the contractor who has a proven check record for the ability to a conns that. Sen. Mccaskill 40,000 per employee is outrageously high. Paying 40,000 to hire somebody we are going to pay 40,000. , forolks where i live people who think the government has lost its mind, that is exhibit a. I understand the concern. We structured it so we pay for actual formal job offers. We are not paying for effort. We are paying for delivering results.