Thread: Julie Myers' Homeland nomination held up

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Myers' Homeland nomination held up
WASHINGTON | September 24, 2005 9:12:31 PM IST

The Bush administration Homeland Security nomination of Julie Myers is reported being held up while another look is taken at her qualifications.

The chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Susan Collins of Maine, says she wants to inquire further into the nominee's past, the New York Times reported Saturday.

Myers is a lawyer with little background in immigration or customs but was chosen to head the law enforcement agency in charge of those issues.

Myers, 36, currently on her honeymoon, has strong Republican connections and is the niece of Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Before she joined the Bush administration, she was a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.

The administration has taken flak lately with accusations of stocking the government with unqualified cronies, highlighted by the flap over the apparent lack of qualifications of Michael D. Brown, until recently director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

(UPI)

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... minee.html

Pederson challenges immigration nominee

Senate hopeful: Myers inexperienced

Billy House
Republic Washington Bureau
Sept. 24, 2005 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's nominee to head the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has too little experience and should not be confirmed for a job so important to Arizona and the nation, says Jim Pederson, a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate.

Joining a list of critics of attorney Julie Myers, Pederson said the man he is challenging in next year's Senate race, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., should publicly oppose her confirmation.

"This is a man who has a lot of chits (to call in) with the administration because he walks in lockstep with the administration," Pederson said in an interview. "He has to step up for Arizona and make sure we have the right people running this vital agency."

Kyl said through a spokesman that he has "no prejudgment" of Myers, whose nomination is before the Senate's Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.

He said he plans to meet with Myers next week and, beyond that, will rely on normal procedures for Senate confirmation to be followed.

Meanwhile, Arizona's other Republican senator, John McCain, said that he has "not had a chance to look at her qualifications" and that right now, he's "neutral."

White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said Friday that the administration stands by the nominee. "She's a proven leader with critical law enforcement experience, just what ICE needs," he said.

Pederson's focus on Myers, 36, comes as part of a growing scrutiny of her qualifications to head the federal government's second-largest investigative force, with 20,000 employees and a $4 billion budget.

It also comes amid debate over political appointees in the wake of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, which led to the resignation of Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown.

There also have been nagging criticisms that the government is not doing enough to secure the nation's borders. As part of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE plays a key role in those efforts. It investigates immigrant smuggling, detains and removes unauthorized immigrants from the country, and battles money laundering, arms exports and potential terrorism.

An editorial this week in the conservative magazine National Review calls on the administration to withdraw Myers' nomination, saying it is too soon at this stage in her career to name her to such a job.

Meanwhile, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., has threatened to use delay tactics to block Myers' approval, according to a Levin spokeswoman.

Questions about whether Myers' management experience qualifies her for the post were raised during a hearing on Sept. 15 of the Homeland Security Committee by the chairwoman, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and ranking Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

Myers has worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn on money-laundering and export-control issues at the Departments of Treasury and Commerce. She also was briefly chief of staff for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, when he was chief of the criminal division of the Department of Justice. More recently, she has been working as a special assistant in the White House handling personnel issues.

But critics say she has no experience managing a large agency, the closest being her management of 170 employees and a $25 million budget at the Commerce Department.

Others have claimed she was nominated for political reasons.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors stricter immigration controls, notes that Myers was married this month to Chertoff's current chief of staff, John Wood and that she is the niece of the departing Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers.

"It smacks of cronyism," Krikorian said.

"She is not qualified for the job," he added Friday. "She might be some day. But she has not managed a large-enough organization and does not have the background to be put in charge of such a sprawling and dysfunctional bureaucracy."

During the Sept. 15 Homeland Security Committee hearing, Myers said, "I realize that I am not 80 years old. I have a few gray hairs, more coming. But I will seek to work with those who are knowledgeable in this area, who know more than I."

Myers also pointed to her work as chief of staff to Chertoff in the Justice Department's Criminal Division as one example of her background that shows she has management experience.

But when Levin pressed her about her knowledge of memos, video-teleconferencing and other communications during 2002-03 from FBI agents seeking guidance in a dispute with the Defense Department over questioning terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Myers said she had no direct knowledge of them.

Levin spokeswoman Elise Bean said if Myers really had no knowledge of those communications, as she claims, then "what kind of hands-on management is that?"

She said Levin is prepared to put a hold on Myers' nomination if more information is not provided.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/polit ... point.html

September 24, 2005
Amid Many Fights Over Qualifications, a Bush Nomination Stalls in the Senate
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM and STEPHEN LABATON
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 - Faced with accusations that the Bush administration is stocking the government with unqualified cronies, the Republican chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is holding up the nomination of a lawyer with little background in immigration or customs to head the law enforcement agency in charge of those issues.

Democrats have seized on the political fury that developed over the apparent lack of qualifications of Michael D. Brown, the director, and others in the Federal Emergency Management Agency who were called on to deal with the calamity caused by Hurricane Katrina. Day after day, Democratic lawmakers have begun aggressively challenging the credentials of people President Bush wants to place in midlevel government positions.

The homeland security chairwoman, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, says she now wants to inquire further into the qualifications of Julie L. Myers to be assistant secretary of homeland security for immigration and customs enforcement.

The senior Democrat on the Senate committee, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, said Friday that he was not persuaded by a confirmation hearing last week that Ms. Myers, who has worked the last four years at the White House and in several agencies, satisfied the legal requirement that the official in charge of the immigration agency have at least five years' experience in law enforcement and management.

Ms. Myers, 36, is on her honeymoon and cannot be immediately called to testify again. She has strong Republican connections and is the niece of Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Before she joined the Bush administration, she was a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.

The White House continued to express support for her Friday.

"Julie Myers is well known and respected throughout the law enforcement community, and she has a proven track record as a strong and effective manager," said Erin Healy, a presidential spokeswoman.

In addition to the questions about Ms. Myers, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan has objected to the nomination of Stewart Baker to be assistant secretary of homeland security for policy. Mr. Baker, who won committee approval despite Mr. Levin's opposition, is an accomplished technology lawyer, but he has little experience in disaster management.

At the same time, the Center for American Progress, a research institute for out-of-office Democratic policy experts, has questioned whether Andrew B. Maner is qualified for his position as chief financial officer of the Homeland Security Department, which has a budget of about $35 billion and more than 180,000 employees. Mr. Maner's main government experience before joining this administration was a job in the White House press office under the first President Bush.

The questions of credentials are not limited to homeland security. For example, the main experience of Brian D. Montgomery, who in June became assistant secretary for housing and federal housing commissioner, was performing advance work in the Bush presidential campaign of 2000 and in the current administration's first term.

Mr. Montgomery's responsibilities now include overseeing the $500 billion Federal Housing Administration insurance portfolio. His background in housing is limited to a few years as communications director of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs.

People who have studied the workings of the federal government for years say this administration is no worse than President Bill Clinton's or any other recent ones in the qualifications of political appointees.

"The vast majority of appointees are good, qualified and committed, but in every administration you have people who are not up to the job," said Patricia McGinnis, president of the Council for Excellence in Government, a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization devoted to improving government performance through better management and leadership.

Paul C. Light, a political scientist at New York University, said, "In every administration, there are certain people you have to find places for: people who worked on your campaign or were contributors or are well connected with other politicians."

Clay Johnson III, who was head of the White House personnel office for the first three years of the current Bush administration and is now deputy budget director, said Mr. Bush's appointees had been "superbly qualified," in large part because the president emphasized selecting candidates who were committed to carrying out his policy objectives.

Across the government, there are more than 3,000 executive positions the president can fill without regard to Civil Service rules. They range from those of cabinet officers to personal secretaries. About 500 are subject to Senate confirmation.

The trick for any president, Mr. Light said, is to fill the top jobs and those that require particular expertise with especially qualified people and then find other positions for job seekers with political or personal connections.

Certain departments and agencies tend to become dumping grounds for those with connections. "In a Republican administration," said G. Calvin Mackenzie, a government professor at Colby College, "HUD is like a witness protection program."

Democrats are more likely to put their political cronies in the Commerce Department or the Small Business Administration.

David E. Lewis, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton, recently published a study of 614 federal programs managed by 245 agencies. He looked at how each program was assessed under the scale the Bush administration's Office of Management and Budget uses to determine how well a program functions. Mr. Lewis found that programs run by political appointees "get systematically lower management grades than bureau chiefs drawn from the Civil Service."

One explanation for Mr. Lewis's finding may be rapid turnover. Political appointees stay on the job an average of only two years or so, then take private-sector jobs where they use the experience and contacts they have gained in the government.

In an essay she wrote shortly after leaving the White House, Constance Horner, who was director of presidential personnel for the first President Bush, said:

"The job seekers continue to come in order, as they say in many variations, 'to give something back to the country' that's been good to them. They want only to serve 'this president' and no other. Alternatively (or perhaps more explicitly) they've 'paid their dues' and feel, however genteelly they put it, that they are 'owed something.' "