Jamie Raskin Questions OMB Official About Dangers Of Replace Civil Servants With Political Loyalists

4 months ago

At a House Oversight Committee hearing last week, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) spoke about the Office of Management and Budget.

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Transcript

00:00Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Government distributes $1.2 trillion a year in grants

00:13and loans through thousands of different programs that go out to the States and localities and

00:19tribal governments. All of us have constituents who benefit from Federal grant money going

00:27to fire safety, health care, domestic violence programs, afterschool programs, and so on.

00:35Traditionally, it has been very difficult to apply to get this money. The application

00:45process has been opaque, elusive, inscrutable, incomprehensible, poorly written, lots of

00:53unnecessary administrative burdens, and so on. But earlier this month, you announced

00:58significant updates to the OMB's uniform grants guidance process, and we have been getting

01:06rave reviews from different parts of the country about this. Tell us, what are the changes

01:11that you have made to the uniform grants process to make it more transparent and accessible

01:18to the mayors and the county commissioners and the people who end up applying for a

01:23lot of this money?

01:26Ranking Member Raskin, thank you for the question, and we were appreciative of having a Montgomery

01:31County resident speak at our event. OMB doesn't typically hold events when we announce new

01:37government-wide policy. We had about 10,000 people join on this event, and we had a packed

01:43room, over 150 people in the room, given the broad excitement across every single state.

01:48The first thing we did was completely overwrite the grants guidance in plain language. Why

01:53does that matter? Agencies were interpreting specific components of it in different ways,

01:58so that meant a recipient who had grants from two different places was getting two sets

02:03of requirements from two different agencies on the same words, or agencies were layering

02:08on compliance requirements that was discouraging people from ever even applying for federal

02:15funds.

02:16The second thing is we're using this overhaul to also change our approach to notices of

02:23funding opportunities, NOFOs. We're trying to dramatically simplify them. We should give

02:28out dollars to the organizations that can best deliver on outcomes, not the organizations

02:33that can afford experts who can best fill out the paperwork to apply for those grants.

02:39Is this going to help communities that have been traditionally underserved?

02:43Absolutely.

02:44Why?

02:45We expect it will. We think the simplification of the process will open the door to more

02:51organizations. We like to say we want the dollars to focus on outcomes, not overhead.

02:57That will bring in more organizations who have traditionally thought that government

03:01funding was not an available resource for them. We have tried to make clear requirements

03:07from agencies to simplify. And by the way, we did this with the oversight community.

03:12So this was done in a way to also strengthen the safeguards we have in place while broadening

03:16the pool of potential applicants.

03:25The Schedule F proposal would permit the President to replace career government workers

03:34and experts with political loyalists. Can you discuss what the return of Schedule F

03:40could do to the civil service and how it would affect the services to our people?

03:48Ranking Member Raskin, thank you. This is an important topic, again, for wellperforming

03:52organizations, whether in the private sector or the public sector. The most important thing

03:56is its workforce. We have, for 140 years, had an approach focused on experience and

04:03expertise, a merit-based system. Schedule F would have undermined that very system.

04:10We want to make sure that the people within our agencies bring experience and expertise

04:15irrespective of their personal political views or who sits in the White House so that we

04:21can deliver. We have leaders in positions that are the decision makers. The workforce

04:25is accountable to their managers and to the leaders. The approach that we have taken,

04:32the first week the President reversed that through executive order, would strengthen.

04:37The return of Schedule F would have a significant chilling effect on our ability to retain and

04:44to recruit talent in a broad range of spaces, including critical skill areas the federal

04:49government badly needs.

04:50Finally, I am looking at some data from the Congressional Budget Office, which shows that

04:57the percentage of employees who typically work from home is actually higher in the private

05:06sector than in the federal government, although they are comparable to each other, something

05:10around it looks like around 20 or 25 percent, but both have been declining since COVID.

05:16Is that right?

05:18I am not familiar with the specifics. Again, about half of the federal government doesn't

05:23even have the opportunity to telework based upon their job requirements. There are some

05:30workers who are telework eligible that do not because it is not in the best interest

05:34of their teams and their organizations.

05:36Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Jamie Raskin Questions OMB Official About Dangers Of Replace Civil Servants With Political Loyalists

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