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 th