Nancy Mace Asks OMB Official If Political Appointees Should Be Able To Register Voters

4 months ago

At a House Oversight Committee hearing last week, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) spoke about the Office of Management and Budget.

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Transcript

00:00 I yield back. And our last questioner before we take a recess for votes will be Ms. Mace

00:04 from South Carolina.

00:05 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I got a little sidetracked by your answers, or actually non-answers,

00:12 by Representative Perry this morning on EEO 14019 about Federal agencies, political appointees

00:19 specifically at Federal agencies and the electioneering that would be allowed under that executive

00:25 order. Why do you choose not to answer his questions this morning?

00:28 Again, Congresswoman, I'm happy to take back specifics. This issue is not under my purview.

00:35 Do you believe that political appointees at Federal agencies should be able to register

00:44 voters and distribute mail-in ballots? Is that kind of electioneering constitutional

00:49 in your opinion?

00:50 I've been a political appointee now under two administrations.

00:54 Do you believe you should be registering voters, like Federal agencies, political appointees

00:58 at Federal agencies should be allowed to register voters?

01:00 I've been a political appointee under two administrations, and we have very strict,

01:05 clear restrictions on what we are allowed to do under the Hatch Act.

01:08 Right. And is it constitutionally the power of elections and their oversight resides with

01:13 the states, is that correct?

01:16 Again, I have restrictions.

01:19 The answer is yes there. Okay. So I have a few questions in the last three and a half

01:25 minutes that I have this morning. I know that there is an effort afoot, as you mentioned

01:30 today, talking about Federal jobs and requirements and the kinds of folks we need to hire in

01:37 our Federal workforce. There are thousands of vacant Federal IT jobs, and the Federal

01:42 workforce has four times as many IT workers over the age of 60 than under the age of 30.

01:49 Huge problem. One part of the solution, I believe, is more creative hiring, thinking

01:54 outside of the box. So this particular committee has voted out multiple bills of mine, and

01:58 almost unanimously, I think both times, totally unanimously, bipartisan way. And the bills

02:05 that I have voted out of here, the Mace Act, H.R. 4502, which overwhelmingly passed actually

02:11 out of the House last fall, also would waive and limit degree requirements for cybersecurity

02:16 positions in Federal Government. And then just a couple of weeks ago we passed out of

02:20 this committee H.R. 7887, the Access Act, which would do the same thing for Federal

02:26 contractors, Federal contracts and their workers. So do you agree that these measures would

02:30 be important to meeting our hiring goals for Federal agencies in cyber?

02:34 We first I agree with you that we have a significant issue on IT. An approach that is more oriented

02:39 towards skills-based hiring is absolutely the right approach that we should be taking.

02:43 I agree. We are doing it in the private sector. There is no reason why we can't do it in

02:47 Federal Government. Would you support both the Mace Act and the Access Act in their passage

02:51 in being signed into law? I'm not familiar with all of the specifics,

02:56 but I am very we are very supportive of making sure that we have a more skills-based hiring

03:01 approach and would welcome working with you on that.

03:03 Okay. We need to protect the critical data in Federal computers, such as personally identifiable

03:08 information of tens of millions of Americans. But a series of reports show that too many

03:13 Federal employees are lax in their password protection. In fact, one in five there was

03:18 a study done to look at passwords in one in five agency email accounts, 18,000 in total.

03:24 Most commonly used password was password1234, some with a hyphen, some without a hyphen.

03:32 And hundreds of accounts were using these passwords. Is there any way to hold Federal

03:37 employees accountable for not using appropriate cyber hygiene and putting America's data at

03:42 risk when their accounts get hacked? We absolutely need to strengthen cyber hygiene.

03:46 And one of the ways that OMB is focused on doing that is driving multi-factor authentication

03:52 across all of the Federal workforce. Is that a requirement?

03:55 We are driving agencies to have multi-factor authentication across Federal personnel.

03:59 Do you know what percentage of Federal employees are doing multi-factor?

04:03 I don't have a specific number, but happy to follow up.

04:06 When did you guys start doing that push? In 2021, the President issued an EO on cyber

04:12 security with a broad range of measures. Our responsibility was over Federal systems. We

04:19 issued guidance, what we call our zero trust strategy, that has been focused on a range

04:24 of actions for agencies to take on endpoint detection, on monitoring, on multi-factor

04:28 authentication. We have also built those strategies into our budget process. So we make sure that

04:34 agencies have

04:35 And then I have 30 seconds. Are there any consequences for Federal employees that don't

04:39 follow guidance when it comes to password protection, cyber security issues, et cetera?

04:46 All Federal employees are accountable to their managers on a broad range of

04:49 How are they held accountable then? How is that done?

04:53 I can't speak to the specifics of any individual action, but Federal employees are responsible

04:58 for following the guidance of their agencies and their managers.

05:01 But then when they don't, what happens?

05:03 I don't want to speak to a hypothetical about a specific situation, but our expectation

05:08 is that agencies are moving forward on improving their cyber hygiene and on multi-factor authentication.

05:13 But do you get reports back on how many Federal employees are following guidance on cyber

05:18 hygiene, like the numbers?

05:19 I don't want to give you an imprecise answer, but I would be happy to follow up.

05:23 But are you getting reports at least?

05:25 Our OMB office monitors performance across agencies on things like multi-factor authentication,

05:32 yes.

05:33 Okay. Thank you, and I yield back.

Nancy Mace Asks OMB Official If Political Appointees Should Be Able To Register Voters

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