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(upbeat music) (bell rings) - Hello and welcome to The City Club of Cleveland where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

I'm Dan Moulthrop I'm Chief Executive here, also a proud member.

Today is January 22nd we're once again live from the studios of our public media partner in 90.3 WCPN ideastream.

We are very grateful for their support as we make our way through the pandemic.

Today we're talking about "Presidential Transitions."

It's a feat unlike really any other in the public sector or even really the private sector every four years or eight years leadership at the highest level of government in the United States has less than three months to entirely transition between administrations.

We're talking about hundreds and hundreds of jobs and people it's this transition of power possible only because of the dedication and cooperation of politicians and civil servants alike.

That is a hallmark of American democracy.

Only this time it was really a little bit different than it usually is the transition between the Trump-Pence and Biden-Harris administrations was marred as you know by claims of election fraud, misinformation and disinformation, conspiracy theories, all of which resulted in a violent attack on the Capitol on January 6th, the day that Congress meant to certify Joe Biden's win in the Electoral College.

Days later president Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for a historic second time for his role in inciting the attack.

Despite all of this, as Joe Biden said when he was inaugurated, democracy did prevail but the tumultuous transition and the events of the last two weeks do hang heavy over our country.

Today, we'll discuss the behind the scenes picture of presidential transitions and the impact recent events are having on the Biden-Harris administration.

We're joined today by two public servants with deep experience in presidential transitions.

Lisa Brown served as Co-Director of agency review for the 2008 Obama-Biden transition working to review the more than 100 departments agencies and commissions comprising the executive branch.

She continued to serve in the Obama administration first as the Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary in the White House.

And then as acting Chief Performance Officer at the Office of Management and Budget.

Previously she helped oversee an orderly transition out of the White House after Vice President Gore conceded the 2000 election to George W. Bush.

Currently she is Vice President and General Counsel at Georgetown University.

Also with us, Chris Lu, he served as Executive Director of the Obama-Biden transition in 2008.

He too continue to work for the Obama administration first his White House Cabinet Secretary and assistant to the president and later as Deputy Secretary of Labor.

He is only the second Asian-American in history to become a deputy secretary of any cabinet department.

Currently he's assisting with the Biden-Harris transition and is also the Teresa A. Sullivan Practitioner Senior Fellow in the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.

If you have questions for either of our speakers please text them to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

If you're on Twitter, tweet your question @thecityclub and we will work it into the program.

Lisa Brown and Chris Lu welcome to The City Club of Cleveland.

- [Lisa] Thanks for having us.

- [Chris] Thanks you.

- It's wonderful to have you both with us and Chris Lu how long ago did the work on the Biden-Harris transition begin?

- [Chris] Well, I started getting involved in the early fall but it really goes back much further than that.

Just to give you an example in 2008, when I ran President Obama's transition the first conversation I had with him was on April.

So more than six months before election day and candidly I know that seems like a surprise to people but it's necessary because as you mentioned Dan, you're talking about the turnover of thousands of positions within the federal government the handover of responsibilities in the US federal government which is the largest most powerful entity in the world.

So you wanna start it as soon as you can and an absolutely needs to start before election day.

- Lisa Brown, tell us what the work entails.

- [Lisa] So if you think about it as Chris talks about how important it is to start early no business would choose to have its entire leadership leave on one day.

So you are coming in taking over a massive business.

If you think about the bureaucracy of the federal government.

And I think about it really having three pieces, policy, personnel and agency review.

So you're going to need to staff up.

But there are 4,000 political, about 4,000 political positions about 1200 of those are Senate confirmed positions.

You're gonna have to fill all of those.

You then want to as quickly as possible start implementing the policy promises of the new president.

And then you are, have a management job which is managing the executive branch agencies.

And so the third part of this agency review you send teams of people into agencies, or when we're operating virtually like now over Zoom to learn as much as you possibly can about what is happening in those agencies.

The whole goal of this is that when you start governing on an inauguration day, you can hit the ground running, you know what you're going to be facing, and you can quickly start implementing the new president's priorities.

- When you were running agency review Lisa Brown for the Obama-Biden transition.

Did that mean that you were ensuring and tracking that everybody who that you were creating the sort of land quote landing teams too, for every one of those more than a 100 different agencies and offices?

- [Lisa] Yes, it was over 500 people that we had on agency review and with teams, it's a sort of a pyramid structure with a committee at the top.

And then, but ultimately, yes, we had a landing team for every agency and as they go in and they do a certain amount of work pre-election actually, they learn what they can from publicly available information.

And then post-election, they actually are able to start talking to individuals who work in those agencies.

- Chris Lu, give us a sense, like from the inside what those conversations look, it sound and feel like when in a functioning transition?

- [Chris] Well, look at a functioning transition.

You're engaging very early on with the outgoing administration.

That's certainly what happened in 2008.

And I should say that following the 2008 transition President Obama was publicly effusively about the level of cooperation and collaboration he had received from the outgoing Bush administration that begins before election day.

And then obviously after election day, as Lisa said you're doing these deep dives into agencies and you are doing, briefings on personnel and budgets and programs.

And, you're digging really deep into all of these federal agencies, but you're also engaging with outside stakeholders, from the perspective of, the Department of Labor that could be unions, it could be business groups it could be, worker advocacy groups.

And then you're examining every piece of publicly available information you can because what you wanna do is ensure that you have the best understanding of what's happening inside of a department and to prepare their incoming team.

So that at noon on January 20th, they walk in and they're ready to accept the reigns of power and know exactly what they're supposed to be doing.

- [Lisa] And Dan, if I could just jump in, I think if you think about a big picture, transitions are times of huge vulnerability and you can have balls dropped.

You can have something missed, worst comes to worse.

You could have a national security issue where a foreign country tries to take advantage during this change in power.

And so that is why what Chris is describing is so important.

And the collaboration that we got from president Bush and his administration was tremendously important because you want essentially a seamless handoff and to have that you need to have a lot of information sharing.

- So Chris Lu, your transition, this time around you faced enormous obstacles that we haven't seen in our nation's history and over a century.

- [Chris] Yeah, look I mean let's put this in a little bit of historical context.

We've had presidential transitions in this country for 200 years.

We've done it through war and depression.

We've done it after bitterly fought presidential campaigns.

And, think about Lisa worked for Al Gore.

There was none that was closer than that 2000 presidential election, but in every previous transition, when an election is called the outgoing administration cooperates and that simply wasn't the case here.

You had a three-week delay after election day when the general services administration refuse to ascertain who the winner was that ensured, that made it difficult for the process to begin.

There was no funding for the transition, even after that happened.

There continued to be not I wouldn't say across the board problems.

I mean, the role I saw at the Department of Labor we had absolute cooperation, but again, from press accounts there were some issues that the Defense Department and as Lisa said, transitions are a vulnerable time from a national security perspective especially at the Defense Department, Homeland Security places like that.

You wanna make sure that there's full sharing of information.

- Well, on top of what you've just described, there's the pandemic.

- [Chris] Well, right unlike what Lisa and I did in 2008 where we sent these 500 people into these federal agencies to meet with people across a conference room to review documents, I never stepped foot in this Biden transition into the Department of Labor I had to, I didn't even meet with any of my 30 team members in person.

We did it all virtually and we had to do our meetings with whether it was stakeholders or people within the agency, all virtually.

- We're talking with Chris Lu and Lisa Brown.

Chris, both of them have had a vast experience in both in various transitions.

Chris is working on the current transition with Biden-Harris team and both worked on the 2008 transition to the Obama-Biden White House.

If you have questions for either of them please text them to 330-541-5794, 330-541-5794.

To text your question, if you're on Twitter please tweet your question @thecityclub you with the City Club Friday forum, I'm Dan Moulthrop and it's great to have you with us.

So, Chris Lu, I was recently reading a book called "The Fifth Risk" that many of our listeners will have read or heard about or read a review of or listened to Author Michael Lewis interviewed about the describe the transition in 2016 to the Trump administration as sort of the defining characteristic was that nobody showed up there at least that's how Michael Lewis portrays it.

At the end of the Obama administration was that the experience that you had?

- [Chris] Yeah, I unfortunately, yes.

I was the Deputy Secretary of Labor in 2016 on election day.

And so I was in charge of overseeing the outgoing transition as outgoing administrations do.

We had prepared binders and binders of information.

We had come up with lists of briefings and election day you don't happen.

A winner was declared and we waited and nobody rang us up.

And finally, about a week later, somebody did ring us up.

They showed up one person showed up, they did a couple of meetings.

And then a couple of weeks later another person two showed up.

To give you the perspective of what happened this year.

As I said, ascertainment, this concept that none of us knew about came three weeks late but when it eventually happened, within an hour, I emailed, the career lead for transition at Department of Labor.

And I gave him a list of 30 briefings I wanted and we started those briefings a day later.

And I think in the end did upwards of 60 different meetings with the agencies we reviewed, thousands of pages of the documents.

And again, as Lisa and I said you wanna do this because you're talking about, the turnover to the handover of power of the most important entity in the world.

- [Chris] When you.

- [Lisa] And Dan, this is a non-party what's interesting is it's really a nonpartisan issue.

When I went into the White House as Staff Secretary I actually spoke before I started the job.

I had a long lunch with then Judge Kavanaugh, who had held the job in the Bush administration.

I talked to the incumbent Staff Secretary, President Bush Staff Secretary in addition to, John Podesta who had was staff secretary for Clinton.

There's a long, long tradition of this of respect for government and handing over the reins in a nonpartisan way.

- Chris Lu, I wanted to ask a quick follow-up to what you just said 30 different briefings just for the Department of Labor.

Can you give us a sense of the kind of specificity of that?

- [Chris] Well, the Department of Labor, by government standards is not even a particularly large department.

There are only about 15,000 employees compared to, Veterans Affairs or Homeland Security that has upwards of two to 300,000.

And yet there's all kinds of programs that deal with, training workers for jobs.

We have OSHA, which protects workplace safety.

We have the wage and hour division.

We have, the Bureau of Labor Statistics that tells you how many people are unemployed.

And so, you wanna go into each of these, sub-agencies have a conversation about what is happening in each different area.

And then you have these broad cross cutting briefings on the departmental budget, departmental human resources.

We talked about the IT system, especially in light of the issue with this Russian hack.

I wanna know exactly whether any systems have been compromised within the department.

So these were really detailed briefings that we asked for.

- Some policy a new policy has come out of those briefings and in particular OSHA's instructions through the recent executive order there's been I don't know, at least two dozen executive orders over the last two and a half days from President Biden, but OSHA's new instructions to be in more involved in COVID safety, worker safety for regarding COVID, and then also policy to create to propose a $15 an hour federal minimum wage.

Chris Lu, can you talk a little bit about the processes that went into that, that went into both of those?

- [Chris] Well, it all comes back to, what did President Biden say on the campaign trail?

And he talked about the importance of increasing wages through the minimum wage about the importance of paid sick leave, paid family leave as well as trying to do better to protect workers in a very unsafe time right now, sadly under the previous administration workplace enforcement had really gone to nothing.

They had put out some guidances about safe practices in offices and workplaces but they really hadn't been enforced.

And so the task given to us is what can OSHA under a new administration do?

And so you saw yesterday, President Biden put out an executive order that said, OSHA will have stronger safety standards that will be aligned with what the CDC has required.

And in a couple of months they're gonna put out even stronger standards and they're also gonna beef up their enforcement efforts.

So, a lot of what we were tasked to do was taking what the president elect had said on the campaign trail and making that into policy that could be implemented.

- Lisa Brown, can you talk a little bit about that process beyond the department of labor but through the other departments and what you saw happen in 2008, the event, I mean, that was, again, it's hard to there's been so much this time around in here in 2020 that we forget that in 2008 there was a really significant economic crisis that was rocking the entire globe.

- [Lisa] Absolutely and we, during the transition, spent a great deal of time putting together the recovery act.

And at the same time, you wanna make sure that while you have some enormous initiative like that, that you are also paying attention to what is happening in each of the individual agencies.

And so what Chris described is absolutely right.

What we did was we literally mapped out the candidate Obama's campaign promises across the agencies.

So each of the agency review teams, when they went in they knew what promises had been made with regard to that agency.

And so your job then is to figure out as Chris indicates how do I go about implementing this?

And what you're doing is putting together what's actually happening in the agency then because if you think about it, when you look at all the COVID initiatives that president Biden rolled out.

He needed to understand what was already happening in order to have those be really effective.

So what he did was put together the knowledge that they learned during the transition and then superimposed their own policy initiatives on top of it.

So to be able to do that much that fast required both the collaboration with the agencies and a tremendous amount of work by the transition teams.

- If you're just joining us, we're speaking with Lisa Brown and Chris Lu public servants both of them, veterans of the the 2008 transition to the Obama-Biden administration.

Chris Lu has been working on the transition for Biden for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

And Chris Lu is also the former Deputy Secretary of Labor.

If you have questions for either of them here at our City Club Friday forum please text those questions to 330-541-5794 or you can tweet them @thecityclub and we will work them into the program.

Chris Lu with all of these difficulties, that and other challenges that have been layered on top of an already enormous challenge of hiring 4,000 new people, et cetera, and so forth.

How far behind is the administration today compared to where you were in 2008?

- [Chris] Oh, I think they're absolutely head right now.

I mean, Dan, you just talked about the 2000 executive orders that President Biden has signed.

I think that is probably a record.

And I think what's important is that these aren't just, pieces of paper.

These are significant things, whether it's reentering the Paris climate accord, whether it is providing protections to DACA recipients, whether it's rescinding the Muslim ban, what you've just talked about in terms of workplace safety, President Biden today signing a whole another series of executive orders.

Today one deals with expanding food stamp in school lunch benefits, another one expands eligibility for unemployment insurance.

And so executive orders are important but they're our first step.

And the problem often is that you need agencies to implement regulations, to actually make these executive orders, have any meeting.

And ultimately on a lot of these issues that we're talking about, you can really only solve them with legislation which is why the Biden administration is pushing forward on a big stimulus package right now.

So not withstanding the obstacles they faced over the last couple of months.

I think they're well ahead of where any previous administration has been.

- But with hiring I would assume that it's and I know that at this point in 2009, there were far more cabinet officials confirmed for instance, Lisa Brown.

- [Lisa] So I would say that the Biden administration is ahead in terms of the number of political appointees, sub-cabinet level who are in agencies.

So if you saw on inauguration day, the president Biden swore in, I think it was around a 1,000 political appointees to go into each of the agencies.

Typically personnel is a huge bottleneck getting people into the agencies and they were real they'd been really organized and did a lot of vetting during the transition to be able to move that quickly.

You're correct that although he has named he's identified who he wants to nominate for the first cabinet positions only two of them have now been confirmed.

So the head of DNI Avril Haines and the new Defense Secretary have both been confirmed.

Unfortunately the one thing he doesn't have control over is Congress.

And so he has to work with the Senate.

And often that is where things get slowed down is that it can become.

Sometimes there can be a lot of politics involved, but it's also just, it's a lot of P it's still 1200 people that you have to get through the various congressional committees and that takes time.

- Chris Lu, with the impeachment pending and the impeachment trial rather pending.

How far will that set back the cause of getting the advice and consent from the Senate for these nominees.

- [Chris] It could be a problem.

I spent four years working in the Senate.

The most valuable thing you have in the US Senate is floor time.

And because the US Senate works by unanimous consent any Senator can object to anything.

It is unclear at this point when an impeachment trial will be held or how long it will be, but it will take up some time and any time that's taken up means personnel aren't getting confirmed.

It means that legislation isn't getting passed.

- Is that, I mean, in some respects there's nothing you can really do about it, other than the kind of behind the scenes arm twisting and hoping that better angels prevail, I guess but how do you continue the really important strategic work in that context?

- [Chris] Exactly right.

And I think a lot of the nominations that are gonna go through will be relatively non-controversial.

I think you saw a General Austin get confirmed today with like a 93 to two a vote, which is pretty remarkable.

The Director of National Intelligence got confirmed like 84, 10 yesterday.

So that's basically what you'll see that being said.

It just takes time that you have confirmation hearings there's all kinds of, financial and an ethics paperwork that needed to be filled out.

Senators will want to ask, follow up questions in writing that all needs to get done.

So the process, even when it's functioning smoothly isn't fast and then layer on top of that, are 50, 50 Senate dealing with an impeachment trial a heightened level of partisanship, even from what we saw in 2009.

And it's gonna take awhile.

- As I said earlier, but if you're just joining us you're with the City Club Friday forum, we're speaking with Chris Lu, who is a former Deputy Secretary of Labor in the Obama-Biden administration is working on the transition to the Biden-Harris administration which is no longer to the Biden-Harris administration.

But really now it is the Biden-Harris administration.

Lisa Brown, also a public service veteran of many transitions is with us as well.

She currently serves as General Counsel and Vice President at Georgetown University.

Where your questions are coming up momentarily.

If you have a question, text it to 330-541-5794, that number again is 330-541-5794.

If you're on Twitter you're invited to tweet those questions @thecityclub and we will work them into the program.

I'd like to ask you both about how people join an administration.

You've got to hire 4,000 of ideally the best and brightest in America that really represent America as well.

Lisa, how did you manage that job in 2008?

I know you were ahead of agency review, but you had a colleague who was head of personnel development, I'm sure.

And you have some, you can shed some light on that.

- [Lisa] There's a person in charge and there's a team.

It isn't an enormous amount of work.

And you get during the transition, you the different agency review teams can play.

Will play a role in part in identifying the type of person that you need for various jobs.

Some number of people on the agency review teams do end up going into the administration.

So I think it was about 50% of them in the Obama transition ended up going into the agency that they had been reviewing.

It's sort of like a it's a puzzle that you're putting together because you also when the president elect or president identifies their cabinet secretary the cabinet secretary is going to have views about who they wanna bring in with them as well.

You care about diversity.

So you have to keep looking at those different pieces and thinking about the best people for the roles.

There's a lot of due diligence done here to looking out at, who in particular areas who are the leaders in those areas that are out in the private sector that you might wanna bring in.

So there's no one route.

And then Dan, as you noted earlier if you get on the steering that transition, if you got on the Biden-Harris website, you could apply for a job.

And so there's also a huge database that they can draw on as they're looking to hire.

So, it's a multifaceted process.

- Yeah there's a button right there on the front of the website that just says, apply for a job which is really, for the right people can really spark some inspiration and it was certainly not that easy prior to the internet to apply for a job in the administration.

Chris Lu, how close are you to the hiring that's happening right now?

- [Chris] I'm not directly involved, but I've certainly been, had a say in some of the decisions, but as Lisa said I mean, it's a puzzle.

And, we, Lisa and I worked in an administration that with the most diverse in history the Biden administration was already lightyears ahead in terms of their commitment to diversity.

But it's also important to understand it's not just racial gender diversity that you're looking at.

You really want people who bring a variety of experiences to the job.

Not just people who have served in government, but before but people have private sector experience, state local experience non-profit experience.

And so it's just time consuming to build these teams.

And as Lisa said, you have secretaries who, wanna have a say in the people around them.

And so a lot of people provide a lot of ideas and you get names from outside stakeholders as well who have a vested interest.

And so I do encourage people, if you are interested, go on the website and apply, and it is hard.

I mean, I don't know what the statistics are this year back in 2008 during the transition we got a 100,000 resumes for about 4,000 jobs.

And so it's kind of like applying to a really, really selective college, a really really selective college.

And I suspect when all said and done this year those numbers will well exceed 100,000.

- It's funny that you say a really, really selective college because the pay is probably less than the tuition at that really, really selective college.

(laughing) As I said, we're talking with Chris Lu and Lisa Brown.

It's your City Club Friday forum today focused on this unique transition which I've taken pains today to actually not call it a peaceful transition of power, because it actually wasn't a peaceful transition of power, but nevertheless democracy prevailed and power did transition.

If you do have a question for our panelists today please give us a call or I'm sorry, don't give us a call.

Please text your phone number to 330-541-5794.

That number is actually only set up to receive text messages, so please don't call it.

And you can also tweet your question @thecityclub and we will work it into the program.

Let me bring in some listener questions and audience questions right now.

When the outgoing administration holds very different priorities from the previous administration, how does the transition team vet the information to assure it is accurate, factual and factor in the different points of view, Chris Lu?

- [Chris] Yeah look, it's not surprising that different administrations have different priorities.

If the question is geared towards what is being provided by the agencies?

What is remarkable is that the process of transitions should be and largely is run by career officials.

So they really are trying to play it straight as to, here's the programs that we are legally empowered to do.

Here's how we're spending the money.

Here's, what's going well.

Here's not what what's not going well.

And I think the fact that we're able to pull off these transitions every four or eight years is a testament to the commitment of civil servants in the country.

And, civil servants, without being partisan have had kind of a tough four years they've been called the deep state.

And, but these are people who, as you say don't earn a of money, but are committed to, whether it's our national security, whether it's providing ensuring health or education or whatever it is.

And they want to ensure that government runs effectively.

And so it's in their interest to be forthcoming with the incoming leadership about what works and what doesn't work.

- Lisa Brown, the agency review.

I mean, that's really a function of the agency review.

This question speaks to that kind of, that very thing the Obama administration came in with a very different point of view especially around fiscal matters than the George W. Bush administration.

How did you handle that?

- [Lisa] So Chris is absolutely right.

And it's now actually been codified in by statute that there is a career employee who is the lead for the transition in each agency.

And so we've found that by and large people were very straight and they told it, like, it was told us what was going on.

There many of these individuals have been there for years.

They're used to these sorts of transitions.

And so you then take the, it's really almost factual information that you're collecting.

And then yes, you have a different policy priority.

And sort of, what's interesting if you think about the White House.

Where Chris and I worked in, there was no notebook.

I was not given a notebook because it's all political.

And so unlike in the agencies where you get reams because everything there is really about those policy priorities.

And so but, in the agencies, it's exactly what Chris describes and you're taking that essentially factual information and you're super imposing your policy priorities.

- When you are doing well.

Let me, I'll save my question for later though.

Let's go back to another audience question do and this is back to the, to Joe to hiring.

Do you look closely at unsolicited resumes or do the jobs go to people that are known by the candidate and the campaign or in which there's some kind of connection?

- [Lisa] So, Chris, go ahead.

- [Chris] I will say, look, I mean, obviously people who have worked on the campaign, people who have held similar jobs, who have been part of the transition or been part of the broader kind of policy, political ecosystem, again, a lot of people come from Capitol Hill.

Those people obviously are known quantities.

It's easier to hire the people, but it's not to say that somebody who has a kind of a unique skill set and trust me among these 4,000 political appointees are really the jobs that require really really specialized information.

And, sometimes it is like finding a needle in the haystack.

You're like, gosh, we need somebody who knows nuclear proliferation issues.

And there's not a huge number of people in the country that know these issues well.

I do remember, at the Department of Labor, we did have to, one of the jobs we had to hire for was a CFO, Chief Financial Officer.

And that's not a job, that is necessarily a partisan job, but you wanted somebody who had done that for a large organization that could be for a city or state agency you could be somebody who did in the private sector.

So we were open to anyone who came in, who had the right skill set and who was committed to the larger agenda that we were pursuing.

- How often are you going beyond the pool?

That appears before you to recruit people outside, who you think would be really, really good for this role, if you could just convince them to take the pay cut.

- [Chris] Oh, that's, I mean, there's plenty of times for you're going out and seeking people as well, because as I said, some of these jobs are so specialized and you realize when you look around the country, there's only a couple of dozen people that could do that.

So you're out there looking for these people.

- And how do you know with 100,000 resumes that's like as difficult as the college application process where they're, sorting through a 100,000 college applications with essays to find a class of a 1,000 kids, a 1,000 young people how do you logistically handle, the whitehousesmonster.com or indeed.com.

- [Lisa] Technology is very helpful here.

I truly cannot imagine doing it before computers because you can now search.

And I think if you looked at the questions that were asked on the Biden-Harris website they ask you to identify, which agencies you're interested in, particular expertise you've had management expertise, so they can do searches.

And I think that is part of what they're gonna do when if they're looking for a particular expertise or and whatever that is I think facilitated it.

And then there's a team in the White House Presidential Personnel.

And you've got individuals who are focused on particular agencies and they become experts in the people that are knowledgeable on the subject matter of that agency.

- Is there is another really interesting philosophical question, is there a better way to do this?

Is this the best we can come up with?

Or, I mean, what improvements would you make?

Would you both make to this process, Lisa Brown you first.

- [Lisa] One improved so I guess two, I actually chaired a commission on reducing the streamlining the paperwork for presidential appointees, because it's a massive amount.

There's an FBI background check.

There's a White House questionnaire.

The Senate committees each have their own questionnaires.

It's like a gotcha game because the same question can be asked in a slightly different way and you answer it a little differently and they think you're trying to hide something.

So I think there's a lot if there could be greater collaboration between the White House and the Senate on the paper side I think that would help to just simplify it.

I think there also are certain positions that are still Senate confirmed that as Chris indicates the CFO's, the COO's often are Senate confirmed.

They, I don't think they need to be they're not necessarily there aren't partisan positions.

And so I think one effort and there has been progress made on this in fact is to reduce the number of Senate confirmed position.

- I understand it used to be something like 1,600 Senate confirmed positions reduced by 400 to 1200, which is a step in that direction.

I suppose, Chris Lu should that go further?

- [Chris] I think it should but obviously the US Senate has its own reasons for wanting to have a say in these people.

And, a lot of senators want to have a nominee before them and have that nominee, have a chance to ask the nominee about whatever pet program matters to the Senator or if nothing else just to get a commitment from the nominee that, if I were to, after you get confirmed if I'm to call you up and ask you a question or ask you to appear before me, will you agree to do that?

And every smart nominee says, yes absolutely I will do that.

I do think in terms of a better way to do this I am concerned about the diversity of the pipeline of people that apply for these jobs.

If you consider, people that come off of presidential campaigns, and again, not necessarily a high paying job.

So that's a luxury that some people simply can't afford.

People that work on presidential transitions.

Again, it's a solely volunteer by and large solely volunteer function.

I did this for free for the last three or four months or people that come from Capitol Hill, which has again has some diversity issues as well.

And so those are the natural feeders for jobs like this.

You do wonder how diverse supple you're getting.

And so I think that's something that should be examined as well.

- There are other programs.

I know that there are programs that are exists purely to train people for public service.

But again, I would imagine it's a kind of another function of who can afford to take the time to do those programs.

- [Chris] Yeah, there is a more broadly there's a Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program that applies whether you're a political appointee or a career civil servant that really ought to be expanded because, you want these opportunities available to everybody.

And obviously just given the issue right now with student loan debts, a lot of people just can't afford to take on these opportunities.

And so, yeah, we ought to consider all different ways to make it easier to serve.

- Lisa Brown our two political parties have significantly different philosophies about national politics and national policies.

What impact will the change of administrations and political parties have on national stability when it looks now like a whiplash effect?

- [Lisa] So I think as you heard from President Biden he is going to do everything that he can to try to govern for everybody to bring the country together.

I agree who this country is deeply divided right now.

And part of that is we live in two different realities, unfortunately two different media worlds.

And we have to figure out some way of bridging that and finding a common set of facts, a comment a sense of truth that everybody agrees on.

And I think part of this really was aggravated by our former president because he was quite comfortable lying and people believed what he was saying.

I think the divisions were there, but they were augmented.

So I'm hopeful, I think it's gonna be a challenge but I'm hopeful that the government really does exist to try to work for people.

And hopefully with some of these programs that the President Biden and Vice President Harris are quickly initiating that people will see that some of these are gonna benefit them and we can start to move forward together.

- Chris Lu stability is raised in that question and the Trump administration was sort of characterized by a whole lot of personnel churn.

And I wonder if commitment to being in the job for four years, three years has been an important part of the hiring practice that you've been engaged in.

- [Chris] Yeah, look, by the time the end of the Trump administration President Trump was on his sixth Homeland Security Secretary.

It's six and four years which is pretty incredible for one of the most important departments in the federal government.

When Lisa and I both served in the white house the Obama White House for the first four years we virtually had no churn in the President's cabinet.

And that's a good thing, because first of all, these are really, really hard jobs and it doesn't matter if you've been a Senator or Governor they're not necessarily intuitive to you.

So it takes a certain amount there's a steep learning curve.

It takes you a while to figure out how these jobs function and how you can be successful.

So you want people to do that if you wanna move for your policy agenda.

But it's also important for again National Security and Homeland Security.

We had in the first four years the same Homeland Security Secretary Ann Janet Napolitano, and the same Homeland Security advisor in the White House and John Brennan, the same FEMA administrator.

And that's important because, every year there are hurricanes, there are tornadoes, there are fires or there's, cyber attacks.

You want the same group of people who actually have been through this before and know how to do this.

And I think about the first couple of years the Obama administration, we had to deal with the deep water horizon, the Gulf coast oil spill.

We had hurricane Sandy that came up.

I mean, it felt like every month there was another natural disaster that would happen.

And you didn't want these things to happen, obviously but the more you actually engaged in dealing with this the better you got to doing this.

And so anytime you have a new team of people it creates that instability that I think has brought her consequences.

- [Lisa] And Dan, you were asking earlier about the Trump transition into office.

And because they didn't really engage around the transition they actually tried to quickly launch certain initiatives and they didn't do them as well as they could have.

They were challenged in court and they lost in court because they hadn't actually gone through the steps that if they'd consulted with the career employees that they would have known, this is what you need to do.

There's the justifications you have to have here's the right process.

And so, again, as Chris is indicating, that's where the experience comes in.

And if you keep throwing new people in, and then those people aren't even consulting with the career employees who know what they're doing it's a recipe for not being very successful.

- [Chris] Dan, if I give you-- - [Dan] Yes please.

- [Chris] So January 13th, 2017.

So one week before inauguration day in 2017, I was part of the outgoing Obama team that did a tabletop exercise with the incoming Trump team.

This was very similar to one that the outgoing Bush Administration had done with us in 2009.

And we did a role-play of three scenarios that the incoming administration would be most likely to face.

One was a hurricane.

One was a cyber attack.

And the third was a global pandemic.

- [Dan] Oh God, I was hoping you wouldn't say that.

- [Chris] And we brief them on the likelihood of a pandemic of a scenario in which it started in Asia, it's made its way to Europe.

There weren't enough personal protective equipment.

There wasn't a vaccine.

We then handed them a playbook that was 69 pages long about how you deal with that global pandemic.

That was January of 2017.

And if you look at the people and there's a photo of that exercise, of the 30 or so incoming people that we briefed.

By the time the actual pandemic hit there were maybe 10 of them left at that point.

So I don't know whether they internalize what we're telling them, but the fact that there had been so much turnover by the time they actually had to deal with the issue was troubling.

- That playbook, I assume, still exists.

And I assume it's been very much read by the whole transition team at this point, this transition team.

- [Chris] Yes, and we've again this is part of why, again, regardless of politics, you want continuity in government, you want collaboration between parties, because this is about broader issues, this is about the functioning of government.

And again, whether you like government or don't like government, in times like a pandemic or times like a hurricane, you wanna make sure government works well and that you understand and you put all of the resources into helping the American people.

- Related to that Chris Lu, was it, how important has it been for you and your colleagues to find people who have government experience, who have it who were a part of the Obama-Biden administration to so that it was sort of given the magnitude of the challenges that the Biden administration is facing.

You're sort of better situated better able to hit the ground running.

- [Chris] Again Dan I think you wanna mix, I think you want people who understand, but you don't want people who have been just boxed into like, here's how we do X, Y, and Z. I want people who have never been in government who are willing to think outside the box and ask the questions that sometimes those of us who have just spent our lives in government don't ask anymore.

And we aren't necessarily willing to challenge the conventional wisdom or really kind of think creatively.

So I think you wanna mix.

- When the political pendulum is different between administration and federal rules are state, filings made in court suddenly changed, and orders rescinded.

How can local governments and organizations trust federal decisions made in these final weeks, knowing that they may likely change Lisa Brown?

- [Lisa] So it's not just local governments.

I was on a call with my team this morning saying the, so the Department of Education put out a whole bunch of guidance Friday before inauguration.

And the conversation we were having is how much do how hard do we have to work to implement this?

When we know that the administration is their priorities were very different and that many of these things are likely to be changed by the new administration.

So it is a real challenge.

And I think some of it is just is inevitable with when you have a change in administration with a change in party.

But I think it's unfortunate that this administration did try to do an awful lot at the very end.

And so there is the ability the Congressional Review Act enables you anything that is not, was passed within 60 legislative days.

So I think it's back to August 21st or something.

They can actually consider and revoke, but that's a process it's hard.

And so it's ideally you would not have this race at the particularly at the very end.

And I think some administrations, I know when Chris when we were transitioning in President Bush, actually particularly, I think it was in the national security and economic realms said, worked with the transition, worked with the incoming administration, so that there wasn't gonna be an awful lot of that.

And said, we're not gonna make that decision, We're gonna leave that decision for you.

So it's a very real challenge that you're identifying.

- Chris Lu in 2016, there was a lot of news coverage of high profile, firings of Ambassadors and US Attorney's and so forth.

Yet, typically a lot of the political appointees are asked to submit their resignations.

At that time or at some point early in the new administration.

Can you walk us through how that happens and what kind of considerations are made?

- [Chris] Yeah, then I went back and actually found my resignation letter from 2016.

So we were asking the Obama administration a week before election day, November, 2016.

We were asked a week in advance.

We got a memo from the White House Chief of Staff asking us to submit a resignation letters.

And that was before election day, because even if Hillary Clinton had won we wanted to give her maximum flexibility to staff her administration as she saw fit.

So, we all submit our resignations December 14th they were all accepted.

I think there were a couple of instances where the Trump people asked some folks to stay on.

But the idea that US Attorneys are not fired but are dismissed or leave or ambassadors should not surprise anybody because we're all political appointees we serve at the pleasure of the president.

And likewise with this current administration, I think all of the resignations of the Trump administration officials have been accepted with a couple, again with a couple of exceptions but by and large they've all been accepted.

And that's just is the way it always happens every four or eight years.

It goes back then Dan to the concept of like the fact that we're able to kind of keep this system of government going.

And keep all these programs running during this time of change is really a testament to the Career Civil Servants that keep the trains running on time, while you're switching over all these political appointees.

- The deep state, you mean.

(laughs) - [Chris] And that is sadly the way they've been termed over the last four years.

But as somebody who spent my career in federal services, the son of a Career Civil Servant, that just defends me because these are hard working people who frankly could be earning far more in the private sector but are devoting their lives to helping the common good.

- [Lisa] And Dan, as you asked earlier about getting jobs people should think about career jobs.

When I first went into the government into the Department of Justice, I went in in a career position, not a political position.

There are a lot of excellent government jobs at all the different agencies that are not political appointments.

- And if somebody is interested in that Lisa Brown how do they do it?

- [Lisa] Look, I would start by looking at their website and there's a going to be a way to apply.

And there, as Chris indicated earlier there really has been a hollowing out of these agencies.

A lot of capable people left over the last four years.

So they're gonna need, not only do they have to fill the political spots they're gonna need to they need to be hiring career people as well.

- Chris Lu, another question related to that the hollowing out that Lisa Brown refers to.

Was that did that complicate the transition because there weren't the people around who could brief you and your colleagues on what was going on?

- [Chris] There wasn't a problem in getting briefed but I do think it's gonna cause a problem in the implementation of these programs.

And so if you look at the ones the agencies where there's the hollowing out has been more publicized.

It's places like the state department with foreign service officers resigning or it's in EPA or interior where lot of the climate change work has happened in a lot of scientists have been pushed out.

And so it's critical if you're gonna put forward big proposals in these areas you're going to need good smart people to replenish, to implement that.

But I do think it speaks to what Lisa just said, which is, this is also the flip side.

Probably the only good side of hollowing out of federal government is this is now a time for a new generation of people to come into government.

And so there are a lot of opportunities for people that want to serve.

- Will there be any steps taken to shore up the transition process in case we encounter another election where the outcome is disputed as it has been?

And another way to ask that as kind of what have we learned from this experience and it will any of that learning be applied to the future?

Chris Lu.

- [Chris] Well, lemme flip to Lisa 'cause I think Lisa has been asked this question in a congressional hearing before.

- [Dan] Oh, okay.

- [Lisa] So the government over the committee, of House Oversight Committee, and there's a sub committee on government relations.

Did a hearing on just this question.

Like what, how do we improve this process?

And I think there are a couple of ideas.

One Chris has referred to ascertainment a couple of times and the fact that the GSA didn't ascertain the winner of the election for several weeks.

You could try to define that more clearly.

Ascertainment is about when you start sharing information from the government.

It's not about who actually wins the election.

The other thing is, I think you could decide that there's information that's going to be shared even if it is still a contested election.

So during, when there was a contested election with Gore in for National Security Information in particular was as I understand, it was shared with both of the candidates.

Because whoever won you wanted to have them be as ready as possible on some critical areas.

So I think there are ways to improve the information sharing that is done during any period of a contested election.

- Chris Lu, anything to add to that?

- [Chris] No, I will simply say this is over the last couple of months during the transition.

I do a lot of TV commentary but I've done a lot of foreign TV commentary and people in other countries kinda scratch their heads as to our transition process.

Because if you're in Canada, if you're in the UK you don't have the entire top level of their governments strength of leaving their jobs.

And it does, again I don't know what the magic number of political appointees should be are Senate confirmed people.

But you do wonder as Lisa started by saying you would never run any company this way.

Like, is this really the most rational way to run the federal government.

Maybe just in general, fewer people should be turning over.

- How did we get to this point?

Where so many people turn over.

I mean, because I'm fairly certain that George Washington did not have to politically appoint name like 1200 or 1800 appointees.

- [Lisa] The government has in people the government has grown and grown.

And so one of the things that I did for President Obama was work on government reorganization which is a Sisyphean task because you're, it much easier to add than it is to subtract.

And I think that's part of why you've also seen the growth in the White House because now the White House ends up having to manage any of these initiatives that are cross agency.

You need somebody to be managing those.

And that's why you have more and more Czar in the White House, because if it whether it's energy or the environment you need somebody who can coordinate all that agency work.

- It's really kind of intense though, when you think about it.

Because really this is the first time.

I mean, I think a lot about democracy.

I think a lot about how to make democracy work better and have a lot of conversations on these sorts of things.

But this very, like this gets down to very like nuts and bolts.

This isn't about kind of how we do voting or the Electoral College or these sort of big architectural things.

This is about kind of what, how you actually, like who should get hired and how?

- [Lisa] And it's also a piece of it's embedded in our separation of powers, because part of the reason that it's so hard to govern the organization is so hard.

Is that there's a Congressional Committee that has oversight responsibilities for each of the agencies sub-agencies and they don't wanna cede authority.

So it's that even if the president decides I'm willing to shrink government it takes a agreement with Congress to do the same.

- [Chris] Then I would also add, I think the issues that have come up with the transition process thing highlight broader issues that we've seen over the last four years which is so much of the way that our government works or what we expect of our leaders.

Isn't actually written down.

It's just norms, it's traditions.

And there's always been a Norman tradition in this country of outgoing administrations cooperating with the incoming one until it doesn't happen.

And so it, again, whether we're talking about ethics or the rule of law or conflicts of interest so everything else that's happened over the last four years.

I think there is going to be a move over the next couple of years to try to codify some of these things.

- Well, Chris Lu and Lisa Brown, thank you so much.

You've helped illuminate an often opaque and deeply important process.

So thank you both for your time today and thank you for your service.

- [Chris] Thank you.

- [Lisa] Thank you.

- And thank you for joining us for our Friday forum.

Our forum today is the Tecovas Foundation Endowed Forum, Tecovas Foundation Funds Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, as well as emerging issues in the philanthropic sector.

Thanks to our members, sponsors and donors and others who support our mission to create conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

You can find out more at cityclub.org and special thanks to City Club member, Steve Hinkle for his help on today's program.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, thank you so much for being a part of this.

If you get a chance to get the vaccine, please make sure you do that.

Stay strong and stay healthy.

Our farm is now adjourned.

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