Good morning. Welcome to the Heritage Foundation and r Lewis Lehrman auditorium. Of course what those are joining us on our heritage. Org website on all of these occasions. For those inhouse we ask the courtesy to check our various mobile devices have been silenced or turned off as we prepare to begin and, of course, for those watching online you are welcome to send questions or comments at any time simply emailing speaker heritage. Org. Leading our discussion this morning is david muhlhausen. Dr. Muhlhausen is Research Fellow in empirical policy analysis at Heritage Center for data analysis. He testifies frequently before congress on the efficiency and effectiveness of federal programs. His commentary and analyses have also been featured in numerous major publications and he frequently appears on National Television as well. His book review scientifically rigorous National Studies that almost unanimously fine that federal programs fai failed to e the social problems they were designed to address. Dr. Muhlhausen serves as an adjunct professor at George Mason University where he teaches Program Evaluation and statistical methods to graduate students. Please join me in welcoming david muhlhausen, david. [applause] thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Heritage Foundation lehrman auditorium. For those of you online, welcome to todays event, reorganizing the federal government what needs to be done and how to do it. Combined today our panelists with indepth and extensive experience with the workings of the federal government. Leading our discussion today is rachel greszler. Rachel is a Research Fellow in economics budget entitlements in the thomas a Roe Institute for economic policy. Shes leading the Heritage Foundations blueprint for reorganization project that is s the subject of todays event. Before joining heritage rachel is a senior economist on the staff of the joint Economic Committee for congress. Next is Donald Devine. Donald is senior scholar at the fund for american studies in washington, d. C. He served as presiden president d reagan Civil Service director during the president first term in office. During that time the Washington Post labeled him reagans terrible swift sword in the Civil Service were cutting bureaucratic excesses and reducing buildings in spending. His new book is a guide to reforming which was recently published. It can be purchased online. This is my personal copy and i look forward to reading it. Last is robert shea, a principal in the Public Sector with over 220 years of federal government experience. He leads the Public Sector strategy in Communication Team and is a member of the performance transformation team. He was recently appointed to the statutory create a commission on evidencebased policymaking, a subject near and dear to my heart. Previously, robert was associate director for administration and government reform at the office of management and budget. Robert led president bushs Performance Improvement initiative and administer the Program Assessment rating tool. Before joining omb, robert served as counsel to the Senate Committee on governmental affairs. Rachel, i will now turn this event over to you. Thank you, david vitter is my pleasure to be here today. Ive had the opportunity at heritage to work on the production of all of our blueprint for reform, for reorganization. They begin with the blueprint for balance and then the blueprint for reform, a blueprint for new administration and now this one. I will just put in it like at the beginning, blueprint for balance was her first when and what we did and that is we spelled out over 100 different recommendations that lead to 10 trillion less in federal spending, 91dollar reduction in the deficit and balancing the budget within seven years. What we have done here is a lot of those recommendations are included in a blueprint for balance and other blueprints are also part of the blueprint for reorganization. We specified the pathways that you can achieve these reforms and no to whether not the president has the authority on what we need to be done, whether its congress or a change in authority three that we need to take place in order to implement the recommendations that we have presented here. Now with 4 trillion in annual spending, 19 trillion in public debt, and 22 different cabinet level agencies of federal government, americans are need of a government wide reorganization. Our government currently knows few bounds, both fiscally and just administratively. We need the government to focus on its core constitutional responsibilities. We also need a government that is looking out for the interest of everybody instead of select groups. And we need one that is able to provide Efficient Services with accountability metrics attached to those. Now, in this blueprint for reorganization, the first one that focused on an analysis of federal departments and agencies, we have over 100 different recommendations pick in a moment and what you you some examples of those. But first i wanted to clarify that everything that is in your something that the executive department has the authority to take on and go do immediately. A lot of the things probably most of them will require buyin from congress. Our second edition of the blueprint, which is pathways reform and crosscutting issues, specifies what the executive can you already, what changes could be made to clear the path which reform, and what things will need congressional b buying. We also look at some crosscutting issues. The first document look specifically at the agencies and in the second when we have reform such as modernizing federal government, changes to personal policy that would span across all the agencies. Among our roughly 110 recommendations that we include, i will start with some of those that are for eliminating old departments of function such as a federal Housing Administration and the Financing Agency as well as the Consumer Financial protection bureau. When we eliminate, proposed limiting whole departments or functions that are often some Core Functions that we would hold and we would just transfer them to a more appropriate department or agency. There are also some functions that we consider nonfederal and that should instead be transferred to state and local governments such as Fire Protection and low Income Housing assistance. State and local governments have better knowledge of our local communities, and they are more appropriately designed to service these needs. Also offices and departments that we recommend eliminating. For example, the va has 42 different offices, 42, including 14 specifically related to health. These things just create a bureaucratic nightmare for the veterans were seeking integrated services. One shop to go for all the needs as opposed to 42 different offices, then he will be responsible for having to take documentations from one to another and coordinate the services. Without shutting down entire agencies we also recommend closing some certain physical offices such as the department of educations 24 different regional and field offices. When these were first established there was a need for them. We didnt have the internet at the technology we do today, but the board of education and other departments have these services, these offices throughout the country that are just no longer necessary today. We also recommend streamlining some functions within agencies. So for example, the department of justice has four separate Criminal Divisions, and these are located across these but they also have their criminal section. You could group all those criminal once into the Criminal Division itself and not have been scattered across. In certain cases programs like efficiency because they are housed in the wrong agency. Thats why we recommend things like moving the food and Nutrition Services which is a Welfare Program from the department of agriculture and into the health and Human Services department with the other Welfare Programs, or the student aid programs taking about of the department of education and putting them in treasury as treasury has the information they need to determine who is eligible and did the ones or distributing the funds. What we dont recommend cuts overall to defense spending, there still room to optimize and put the highest priority functions first within the defense department. So for example, we suggest eliminating excess infrastructure thats costly to maintain on an annual basis and we also dont think the department of defense should be spending money on nondefense programs like ovarian Prostate Cancer research or on obama era initiatives for the energy environment. Too many of the federal Government Programs benefit a select few instead of looking at across all americans. So thats why we recommend eliminating these programs, such as the corporation for national and community services, corporation for public broadcasting, the National Foundation for the arts and humanities, the exportimport bank, the Minority Business Development agency, and the department of energies loan programs. But efficiency isnt just about rightsizing the government and reducing, eliminating or moving programs read. Run. Its making sure the government is doing its job through oversight and accountability. Thats why we recommend making regulations subject to meaningful review and not getting certain exemptions such as the irs exemption for tax related regulations, making them all subject to the same reviews. We recommend evidencebased policymaking within the office of management and budget. And then we do have places where there are plenty of accountability programs such as the va. We identified 31 different accountability and Program Management programs there, and yet they are scattered again. So if you put all those accountability programs into one place within the va you would better serve veterans as well as taxpayers. Finally because personnel for such a tremendous impact on the efficiency and accountability of the federal government, we recommend a broad package of reforms to improve accountability, reward productivity and essentially let federal managers do their jobs. We also want to bring federal Employee Compensation in line with the private sector so that the government is in a better and more Competitive Position to attract and retain the best and the brightest federal workforce. Without im going to head over to Donald Devine. All right. My name is Donald Devine. Its kind of a serious part of the program. I am the comic side. First thing i want to say is i very much recommend both of these books, the costcutting one is just super, one of the best things ive ever looked at about government management. Im an academic by background, but in some crazy we as of 1980 election, president Ronald Reagan called me up and said don, ive got a job for you. What is it . I said he said head of the office of personal management. I said thats kind of a funny job for a libertarian conservative like me, running the bureaucracy . He said, ive got a good sense of humor. I said what you want me to do . He said i want you to cut back 100,000 nondefense employees. I want you to reduce their bloated benefits and i want you to make them work hard. I said thanks a lot. I can make a lot of friends in this job. Just remember what harry truman said about doing a top job in washington, if you need a friend in washington when youre doing a tough job, by a dog. So i bought two of them to be on the safe side. And the crazy thing is we did do it. Nobody thought this was possible to go out and cut and reform government. We did reduce 100,000 nondefense employees. Its on the record. They tried to hide and almost no conservative wants to know that, but we did. We cut bloated benefits, even omb, my perpetual enemy, admitted i saved 6 billion dollars which in todays money is 60 billion. And we did make them work hard. We went with performance appraisal system, merit pay. It was a miracle. But it happen. You heard in the introduction by david that the post called me reagans terrible swift sword of the Civil Service. Thats one of the nicest things they said about me. They called me the rasputin of the reduction in force, which is what we called getting rid of people, and we were too clever i must admit because we did the first ones at christmas, not a good time to do this in terms of Public Relations. The New York Times did a big story on me, calling me rasputin no, that was the post. But anyway, the grinch in the pinstripe suit, trying to celebrate christmas. But anyway, we did that and, and nobody, you know, introduce myself. Im a professor that nobody cares about, all they do is knows, care about is i knew Ronald Reagan and what a guy he is, or was. All right. Now, what did i learn in this . The book was mentioned. Really nothing has changed very much. Thats a book i wrote almost 40 years ago, and i got in this room right now went to my publisher and, this is still pretty much all true, why dont you republish it . Thank him for that. And things havent changed. All the reforms we did our god, most of them were gone the next administration, which is a Republican Administration i might say. And government today simply doesnt work and dont take it from a libertarian conservative like me. Lets take it from paul light, professor Public Relations on many, many serious reviews, some of them with congressional background. The government doesnt work anymore. It cant faithfully execute its laws. Thats a basic fact, it cant. He says the average i think, hes a little high on this but he says that there are 60 levels between the secretary who sets the policy and doing something on the street. Its impossible to run such an organization unless you have some measurement. The great social scientist and another book i will recommend called bureaucracy said they dont have one in government. Thats the problem. Within the private sector you can have 60 levels, although the private sector has learned you cant do that. Theres almost no private company that does that anymore. They did it back in the 30s. We still run our government like in the 1930s. But you can go down even 60 levels and you look and say, is that division making a profit or not . If it is, you keep it. If its not you get rid of it. In the government you go down the 60 levels, and if they are failing, that means you spend more money on it. The whole thing in the Public Sector is different than the private sector. How did we get this thing . The biggest revolutionary in American History as a guy named Woodrow Wilson who said that what we have to do is bring all power together in the center and we can run everything with the experts in the whole country. He wrote a phd, i still had to read it through what i went to graduate school, saying how to make Public Administrations scientific. He went over to brush and he says hey, russia works. Why does pressure work . All power is centered in the government, and when the chancellor says we do it, we do it. And he came back and wrote the book saying the problem with American Government is it divides power rather than bringing power together to do good. Look at prussia. Its got a retirement system. Its got an educational system. Its got a welfare state. We have noted that in america, especially at the National Level doing it right. He comes back. He convinces all the intellectuals in america that thats the problem, the problem is dividing it. The solution is bringing it together. He starts the American Society for Public Administration, the American Political Science Association is influential and stuff picky changes intellectual opinion in america for saying that divided power is good, bringing it together or dividing is bad, bring it together is good. And, unfortunately, every president since event except my boss Ronald Reagan bought into that theory. And thats why we cant run this government. Thats why paul light is correct that we cant run it. I think ultimately only thing we can do is to decentralize it back the way the founders created it as Ronald Reagan said, the secret to the success of america is federalism. They called federalism americas co