TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 2010


KLMNO THE FED PAGE


IN SESSION Perry Bacon Jr.


To trim deficit, GOP wants freeze on federal pay levels


ooking to demonstrate their commitment to balancing the budget, Republicans are increasingly targeting the federal workforce. In the past month,


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congressional Republicans have tried to attach to several bills language that would limit pay increases for federal workers. This week, as part of a GOP amendment to a Democratic bill that would spend billions on unemployment benefits and help states fund their Medicaid programs, Senate Republicans are including a proposal that would freeze pay levels for the 2million people who work for the government.


Similar proposals have failed in the House and Senate, and Democrats probably will vote this one down as well. But Republicans say they are determined to keep pushing the issue, arguing that federal employees should not receive pay increases while many private-sector workers face cuts in pay, hours and benefits, as well as layoffs. “We’re paying too many people too much money,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah), who has pursued the matter as the top Republican on a congressional subcommittee that oversees the federal workforce. “I’d actually like to see [federal salaries] cut.” President Obama has proposed increasing federal workers’ pay by 1.4 percent this year, less than recent increases. He has also called for freezing spending at most agencies for the next three years.


At the same time, Democrats argue that the GOP proposal for federal pay is largely symbolic. The national budget deficit last year was more than $1 trillion; the pay freezes would save less than $3 billion. “We need to reject this cynical ploy to make federal employees a scapegoat for spending after congressional Republicans added trillions to the debt when they were in the majority,” Rep.


Steny H. Hoyer (Md.) said before the House voted down one of the pay measures. Randy Ervin, legislative


director for the National Federation of Federal Employees, said that if such legislation passed, it would “greatly undermine the ability of federal agencies to recruit and retain a qualified workforce.” Republicans have long raised concerns about public-sector pay. President Ronald Reagan fired 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981 rather than increase their pay. Looking to reduce deficits, a group of governors, mainly Republicans such as newly elected Chris Christie in New Jersey, are backing for limits on state employee salaries. Republicans at the state and


federal levels say that high retention rates in government agencies show that these workers would not command similar wages in the private sector. But supporters of federal pay increases, such as Ervin’s group, say that when comparing individual jobs, federal employees often make less than their counterparts in private businesses.


Oil hearings


Congress will take a leading role this week in the reaction to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, summoning not only BP chief executive Tony Hayward but also the chiefs of Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips. The executives will appear Tuesday before a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. On Thursday, Hayward will make his first appearance on Capitol Hill since the spill. It won’t be the lawmakers’


first action on the issue; the Democratic-led Congress has held numerous hearings on the disaster.


baconp@washpost.com


WALTER PINCUS Fine Print


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ant a clear-eyed view of the internal turf battles generated by the 2005


establishment of the Director of National Intelligence and his office? There’s none better than the


example provided by an “Information Paper” sent to Congress as the work of Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., who is also President Obama’s choice to be the next DNI. It’s an interesting moment for


Clapper: He is in the position of being asked to guide the very office that Congress was building up and that he was challenging in that April memo. Designed to critique provisions of the fiscal 2010 Intelligence Authorization Bill, which gave new authority to the director, the April 28 document outlined more than a dozen sections that it said “would expand DNI authorities over leadership and management of Defense Department’s intelligence components,” with potentially negative results. Those sections had the potential to “significantly impact the Secretary of Defense’s statutory responsibility to exercise authority, direction and control” over those elements and how they “provide support to the warfighter,” the document said. For the Pentagon and members of the House Armed Services Committee, those words were a bugle call to arms for a bureaucratic fight. The first item picked out in


Clapper’s memo was one that would “grant the DNI authority to direct” — “direct” is underlined in the document — “one of DOD’s combat support agencies, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), in the conduct of a new mission.” That new mission would have the NGA, which analyzes satellite and airborne imagery, also analyze ground-based camera and video materials, including clandestine photographs taken by or for the CIA and other U.S.-directed spies. Clapper’s memo says use of the


NSA NSA: Do not fear us


A video by the agency tries to put potential job applicants’ anxiety over polygraph tests to rest, Spytalk columnist Jeff Stein writes. B3


Leave policies expanded Opposite-sex partners, stepparents and grandparents are among groups included in new orders on illness and funeral benefits. B3


word “direct” with regard to “any portion of the NGA mission to the DNI” undermines the defense secretary’s management of NGA and “creates confusion and potential conflict in implementation of this new mission.” The paper goes on to say the legislative language is not needed because the director already has authority “to task (not direct) NGA” under another section of the law. Words count in turf battles, and this is a prime example. When one “directs” something to be done, it is more important than when one “tasks” it to be done. Recently, the White House told members of the Senate intelligence committee that the paper does not represent Clapper’s personal view. Other


Aviator may be next Marines leader


Gates wants someone who’ll help Corps chart course beyond two wars


by Greg Jaffe In a major break with tradition,


Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is planning to recommend that the president select a career aviator as the next commandant of the Marine Corps, a military of- ficial said Monday night. If nominated and confirmed,


Gen. James F. Amos would be the first Marine commandant with a background as a jet pilot — at a time when the Corps is fighting a ground-dominated war in Af- ghanistan — and his selection re- asserts Gates’s willingness to shake up established service bu- reaucracies.


Amos, who is the service’s assis- tant commandant, would also be- come the first Marine general pro- moted from that position to the Corps’ top job. He served in Iraq in the early days of that conflict, and he has not led troops in Af- ghanistan. He has relatively less experience in waging counter- insurgency warfare than other candidates considered for the job.


Gen. Amos


Gates has said that in se- lecting the commandant, he wanted someone who would help the Marine Corps chart a course beyond the current


wars. In both Iraq and Afghani- stan, the Marine Corps has taken on the role of a second land Army and moved away from its amphib- ious roots. Gates has expressed particular concern about how the Marines would continue to attack from the sea as increasingly lethal cruise missiles push Navy ships farther from the coastline. “What differentiates [the Ma- rine Corps] from the Army?” Gates asked in a speech this year. “We will always have a Marine Corps. But the question is, how do you define the mission post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan? And that’s the intellectual effort that I think the next commandant has to under- take.”


Amos has developed a reputa- tion among Marines as an in- novative thinker about future combat, said military officials. As the Corps’ assistant commandant,


he has also been a passionate ad- vocate for finding additional re- sources to treat Marines diag- nosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain in- jury. In choosing Amos for comman- dant, Gates passed over Gen. James N. Mattis, who is widely considered one of the military’s best minds when it comes to wag- ing war on insurgents. Amos would replace Gen.


James F. Conway, whose four-year term as commandant ends this fall. Gates is expected to recom- mend Lt. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who is an infantry officer, to serve as the assistant comman- dant. Gates is expected to formally submit Amos’s name to President Obama in the coming days. The military official who confirmed Gates’s intent Monday night spoke on the condition of ano- nymity because the decision is not official. The selection of Amos to lead


the Marine Corps wouldn’t mark the first time that Gates has bro- ken with tradition in choosing a service chief. In 2008, he selected a cargo pilot to lead the Air Force. Previously, all Air Force chiefs had been fighter or bomber pilots. jaffeg@washpost.com


EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS Before being nominated to be DNI, James R. Clapper Jr. had articulated concerns about the position.


complaints of his focus on several tasks given the director that “create a potential to conflict,” or “overlap” or “interfere” with the defense secretary’s authorities. For example, one section of the


legislation “directs the DNI, if he determines it necessary, to conduct an accountability review of an IC [intelligence community] element” on his own, or “if requested by an intelligence committee.” Based on that review, the director would be authorized to “recommend corrective or punitive action.” There is a “potential for conflict,” Clapper’s memo states, because the director’s recommendation may challenge the defense secretary’s authority over his own intelligence components. Even the requirement that the


director report to Congress on intelligence-community contractors and whether they are performing essential government functions presents a “potential for conflict,” the memo asserts. It also balks at authority given the director to prohibit expenditure


of more than $3 million on a “business system modernizations” without its certification, pointing out that by law the Defense Business Enterprise Architecture has its own authorities for approval of such spending. The memo then takes issue with the DNI’s inspector general being given authority to report on all intelligence agency “electric waste destruction practices” — otherwise known as wiping out computer files — asserting that could lead to another potential conflict with defense secretary management. It was widely understood when Congress passed the legislation in 2004 that the director would be another bureaucratic layer atop existing agencies that, because of their calling, have a unique place in government. Rather than creating clear lines of authority, Congress, in the words of Obama, “burdened” the DNI with “an ambiguous statutory mandate.” The role was made even more complex by “changing priorities of individual directors,” Obama


wrote in a letter sent to Capitol Hill last month. “This has fueled ‘turf wars’


that waste valuable time, expertise, and energy, which should be directed toward meeting critical national security challenges,” the president concluded. At the June 5 Rose Garden announcement of Clapper’s nomination, Obama said, “Our intelligence community needs to work as one, integrated team.” The president called that the DNI’s “core mission” and noted it would be a “tough task.” What present and retired senior intelligence officials are waiting to see is which Jim Clapper was standing beside Obama. Was it the author of the April 28 memo, fretting about authority given the DNI, or the 2004 retired lieutenant general and director of the National Geo-Spatial Agency, who told Congress that the proposed DNI should be given more power over his Pentagon agency, thereby angering his boss, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld? pincusw@washpost.com


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