Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________________
Embargoed for Release Until
8:00 a.m. EST, Sat., February 10, 1996
Press Briefing
By
NSC Senior Director for Defense Policy And Arms
Control, Robert Bell,
Deputy Director For Management of the OMB, John Koskinen,
OMB Administrator for the Office of Procurement, Steve Kelman,
and OMB Administrator for the Office of Information and
Regulatory Affairs, Sally Katzen
The Briefing Room
2:37 P.M. EST
Mr. Johnson: Okay, this briefing is on the record but
embargoed until the President signs the bill tomorrow, which is
scheduled for 8:00 a.m., as Mike said earlier.
This briefing concerns the DoD Authorization Bill and in
the aspects that we have uncovered already during the earlier
briefing which took place before Mike's daily briefing. The briefers
today are going to be Robert G. Bell, who you all know from
yesterday, the Senior Director for Defense Policy and Arms Control
from the National Security Council; and also John Koskinen, the
Deputy Director for Management of the Office of Management and
Budget. Bob Bell is going to speak to most of the provisions of the
bill. John is here to address the provisions relating to procurement
reform for information technology.
Also available, should you have additional questions,
are Steve Kelman, the Administrator for the Office of Federal
Procurement Policy at OMB; and Sally Katzen, the Administrator of the
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at OMB.
Again, this is on the record, but it's embargoed until
this bill is signed tomorrow morning.
Mr. Bell: Thank you, David. In the wake of the
President's December 28th veto, the conferees on the Fiscal Year 1996
defense authorization bill completed their renegotiation of the bill
on January 19th, and over the course of the next week, passed that
bill in the House and the Senate.
In our view, the revised bill satisfactorily corrected
the three principal issues that had led to the original veto. First,
the section in the original bill that would have mandated the
deployment by the year 2003 of a 50-state missile defense that, in
our view, most likely would have put us on a collision course with
the ABM Treaty, that provision was deleted in its entirety.
Second, the section of the original bill that would have required the
President to certify or waive the law to assign U.S. Armed Forces to
UN tactical or operational command was also deleted in its
entirety.
And third, and last, the section in the original bill
that would have mandated a requirement for supplemental budget
request to fund overseas military contingency operations was changed
from a binding provision to a nonbinding sense of the Congress
section.
Now, in a case where Congress has overreached on
fundamental matters concerning the President's prerogatives and
responsibilities as Commander in Chief under the Constitution and the
President has said, no, and that no has been sustained by the
Congress in votes on the veto, and then Congress relents and corrects
the bill, there is merit in confirming that outcome by signing the
revised bill into law.
That said, there were a number of other issues which the
administration had identified, which Secretary Perry had pushed hard
on the Hill, which the White House and the National Security
Council had made clear on the Hill were objectionable provisions,
including: the provision requiring the mandatory separation of HIV
service personnel, the provision in the bill on abortion, changes in
the "buy American" list, directed procurement in a noncompetitive way
of ships at certain shipyards, cuts in the technology readiness
program, and the Nunn-Lugar program.
Consideration for vetoing the bill on the basis of these
objectionable provisions also had to be weighed, however, against
other aspects of the bill which provided for very important advances
in national security and our need to have a defense authorization
bill that would fund certain military programs for the coming year.
For these reasons, on balance, then, the President
decided to sign the revised bill. What I would like to do is briefly
review these other provisions in the bill which we had earnestly
sought and which in combination with the corrected objectionable
provisions led the President, on balance, to decide to accept the
bill.
First, the bill contains a $1 billion military housing
privatization initiative established by Secretary Perry which
provides new authority to acquire and improve family and
unaccompanied military housing and supporting facilities in areas
where base housing is very short and often inadequate. This
initiative uses private expertise and capital to meet our military
needs. And in our view, and in the view of the Department of
Defense, this is an extremely important initiative in terms of
maintaining the quality of life in our military and therefore
maintaining high retention levels in our all-volunteer force.
Second, the bill contains necessary authorization for
the full increase in pay and allowances. Now, after the veto of the
original bill, the President had used his executive authority to
grant a two percent pay increase for the military which fell short of
the 2.4 percent request in our original budget. With the enactment
of this bill, the military will now receive the full 2.4 percent
increase for pay, a 2.4 increase in the basic allowance that's
provided for food and subsistence, and a 5.2 percent increase in the
allowance that the military receives for quarters. So this is
important in terms of the morale and well-being of our military.
Third, it's because of this authorization bill, and only
because of the authorization bill, that we will extend certain
bonuses that are paid to military servicemen and servicewomen in
critical areas that are instrumental in maintaining the retention of
those individuals.
Just to mention a few: Without this bill, the authority
for special bonuses would lapse in the area of aviation, which means
that pilots who might otherwise go to the airlines; nuclear submarine
and nuclear surface ship operations, which means otherwise those
skilled personnel might go to the domestic nuclear power industry;
nurses, reservists and hazardous duty pay for jobs that aren't that
attractive in the military in every case.
So the bill provides very important bonuses and it's
only because of this bill that they can be extended. During the
Reagan administration, these bonuses were not sunsetted, but after
President Reagan's veto of an authorization bill in the 1980s,
Congress changed the bonuses so they would lapse, and they did that
to try to build some protection into the process against vetoes of
the authorization bill.
Next, the bill provides an authorization for necessary
military construction in terms of new starts and, most importantly,
in terms of the NATO infrastructure program of special importance to
our current operation in Bosnia. Without this bill, the United
States cannot contribute its share of necessary infrastructure
construction going on with Ifor in Bosnia today. That's a $161
million share that goes to building headquarters, air fields,
railroads and other parts of the transportation network.
And last, I would just mention on the issue of Bosnia,
this bill also includes an administration proposal to change law to
allow the United States to extradite indicted war criminals and
provide evidence directly to the International War Crimes Tribunal in
Yugoslavia, therefore encouraging others to fully cooperate with this
process. There are two other parts of this that are very, very
important to us that I'm going to turn to John now to outline in
the areas of acquisition reform and information technology reform.
Mr. Koskinen: Thank you, Bob. It's actually a pleasure
to be here taking about something other than the government shutdown.
I'm pleased to talk with you today about a continuation of this
administration's three year effort, led by the Vice President and the
National Performance Review, to provide a government that works
better and costs less.
The NPR began by looking at how the government works,
and focused on cutting red tape, empowering employees to achieve
better results and putting customers first. The restructuring of the
government that has taken place includes reducing federal employment
by 200,000 people. We now have the smallest government in 30 yrs,
all accomplished without significant RIFs or furloughs. Sixteen
thousand pages of regulations are being eliminated. The $200 billion
procurement operation of the government has been streamlined to save
the taxpayers money. We have provided better tools to government
employees to allow them to provide better service.
It's now easier for the government to buy goods off the
shelf. Procurement executives can use streamlined procedures for
purchases under $100,000, an increase from the previous $25,000
limit. We've made it easier for employees to make purchases under
$2500 with government credit cards. We're pleased to discuss
significant steps forward in the campaign to improve government
performance across the entire government. These provisions apply not
only to the Defense Department, but to all government agencies, even
though they're provided as part of the DoD Authorization Bill the
President will sign tomorrow.
The legislation is the product of a substantial
bipartisan effort. The administration worked closely with Senators
William Cohen and John Glenn in the Senate, after they introduced
legislation in the mid-1995 era focused on information technology.
We also worked with Senators Nunn, Levin, and Thurmond on procurement
as the bill moved through the Defense authorization conference. In
the House we worked with Congressman William Clinger, chairman of the
Government Reform and Oversight Committee, and Congressman Cardiss
Collins and Carolyn Maloney. It just shows you can work together on
some things.
This bill focuses on the government purchase and
management of information technology. We spend $25 billion a year in
this area, which is a lot of money even by Washington standards. A
major achievement of the new legislation is to make the agencies
individually responsible for the effectiveness of the information
technology they purchase.
The Brooks Act, under which GSA oversaw all It
procurement, has been repealed by the passage of this Act. GSA will
now work with OMB to provide guidance and expertise to the agencies,
but the agencies will be held responsible. The legislation provides
criteria for evaluating information technology systems. We adopted
these guidelines from the best practices of major companies in the
private sectors. A significant lesson learned from commercial
companies was the importance of restructuring the way work is done
before you consider automating it. Agencies are also given more
flexibility on how they purchase information technology. They can
now buy systems in smaller, incremental phases rather than having to
buy major systems in one multi-year contract.
Repeal of the Brooks Act also ends the jurisdiction of
the General Services Board of Contract Appeals in the information
technology area. This has been a source and a cause of lengthy
delays and significantly increased costs in agency purchases.
Appeals will now go to GAO, which has a much better track record of
efficient oversight of procurement policies. The bill also elevates
the visibility and importance of information technology in the
agencies by creating the position of chief information officer in
each agency. This position is now a common one in the private
sector.
We also will be able to build on the good work GSA has
done under the leadership of Roger Johnson in developing inter-agency
task forces to tap the experience and expertise of government
executives across all of the agency lines. There is also separate,
very significant continuations in the procurement reform that has
been the focus of the reinvention efforts of this administration in
the past. The Act allows the Office of Federal Procurement Policy to
waive any special government contract clauses when the government
buys commercial, off-the-shelf products.
The bill also allows the government to reduce the number
of suppliers with whom it has further negotiations after receiving
initial proposals in order to conduct more efficient procurements.
And the government is also allowed under this bill to develop
special, simplified procedures for buying commercial items with a
value of up to $5 million, rather than the present $100,000 cut-off.
As Bob noted, Sally Katzen, the Administrator of the
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and Steve Kelman, the
Administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, are here
with me today, and I think there are press packets that have the
highlights of these two sections of the bill. And so Sally and Steve
or I would be happy to answer questions you may have about this area
of the bill, and Bob, I'm sure, will answer any questions you have
about the more normal provisions in the Authorization Bill.
Yes.
Q When it comes to the oversight scheme now, OMB's
going to have more authority rather than GSA. Is there any concern
that OMB have enough staff experience in evaluating technology and
technology spending to handle that oversight duty?
Mr. Koskinen: We actually right now review all the
information technology acquisitions in the budget process. Sally and
her staff have a very experienced staff that, in fact, have just
completed putting together a guidebook not only for OMB but for the
agencies in the Acquisition and Management of Information Technology,
and they oversee the major government circular in this area.
So what really happens is that instead of having a
bifurcated or duplicitous -- duplicative -- maybe duplicitous too
--(laughter) -- but duplicative review process that caused agencies
to have to go both to GSA and then continue to be reviewed in the
budget process, this will, in effect, put the responsibility on the
agencies. And there will be a single level of review which continues
from the present process of working through the budget reviews.
Q When do the different pieces of the law take
effect? When does the Gspca jurisdiction go away? When does the
Firmr go away? And what is the -- do you have a schedule yet for the
implementing regulations?
Mr. Koskinen: The bulk of the Act is implemented in 180
days after the President signs it.
Q Has this new process eliminated all of the
criticism of the $600, $800 coffee pots and so forth? And how about
the rivalry in the services of each doing their own different buying
and so forth? Is there more of a leveling out of -- that's the wrong
word, but --
Mr. Koskinen: The whole -- the process over the whole
three years, and as I say there's been a significant amount of focus
on procurement reform and, in fact, we've had major cooperation with
the Defense Department because everybody is concerned about this, and
we think that the government is moving, as you can tell by the
emphasis on purchasing commercial items off the shelf, is moving to
become not only a better buyer, but a much more competitive buyer in
the private sector area.
So we think that the legislation already passed, and
this legislation, will give us the building blocks and the tools we
need to make a significant different. I mean, there are areas in
which the government functions very effectively. When we, as private
citizens, send a Federal Express package, for instance, it costs,
depending on the weight, as much as $25. The government sends
Federal Express packages for under $3. We just re-bid the FTS2000
telecommunication costs for the government under a rebidding process
that we're supporting in other areas in the government, and the real
savings will be $200 million a year. So there are a number of areas
in which the government already is a very effective purchaser.
Q What did you save on not having Star Wars, or a
missile defense in every state?
Mr. Koskinen: I would turn to my defense colleague.
Q How much would that have been in the way of an
outlay?
Mr. Bell: Well, Helen, if by Star Wars you mean the
original recommendation that President Reagan made for an astrodome
that would have provided an impenetrable shield over all of America
against even a massive Soviet missile attack --
Q I guess I meant the 50 states missile --
Mr. Bell: In this Act -- and our estimate is that an
effective, operationally effective defense of all 50 states would
require a multiple site, land-based ABM defense that cost would be
in the $20 to $30 billion range.
Other questions?
Q Under the old way agencies used to have to file the
federal Irm regulations. Since the Brooks Act has been repealed, do
those regulations go away, too, or do they have to be modified? Will
they be used as guidance? What the status of Firmr might --
Mr. Kelman: The Federal Opposition Regulatory council
will decide what, if anything, from the traditional, special
procurement rules for information technology will be preserved in the
government-wide regulation, and those decisions will be made over the
next few months. But the likelihood is that most of the specific
provisions for information technology will disappear.
Q Thank you.
Mr. Kelman: Thank you all.
Q How fat is this bill? Ten thousand pages?
Mr. Kelman: My deputy here, Captain Sosnik, has got a
copy of it, Helen. I can show it to you. It's about 1300 pages.
And I'd give it to you and suggest a quiz in the morning, but --
(laughter.)
Mr. Koskinen: Our section is very efficiently a small
part of that.
Mr. Kelman: It's 982 pages.
Mr. Koskinen: Thank you all.
The Press: Thank you.
End 2:50 P.M. EST