Mid Year Report to the IEEE-USA
Congressional Fellowship Committee

By Clarence P. Cain,
IEEE-USA 1999 Congressonal Fellow

July 14, 1999

I started my Fellowship on January 13th working for Congressman Pete Sessions from Texas. During the initial first few weeks, I had to become familiar with the rules of the house and where to get information that I needed to get up to speed in the minimum possible time. I worked directly for the Legislative Director in helping to define the agenda and in maximizing the productivity of the Congressman. Even though the Rules Committee forbids any member from serving on any other committee, Congressman Sessions was able to retain the Chairmanship of the Results Caucus, a coalition of reform-minded members of Congress who share the common goal of realizing a smaller, smarter, common-sense government.

The Results Caucus was an idea formulated by Majority Leader Dick Armey to address major management problems within the federal government. This bipartisan committee has chosen specific issues, listed in the General Accounting Office's (GAO) High Risk Series to tackle first. These are the ones that put the most taxpayer dollars at risk from waste, fraud, and error.

Most of the month of February was spent working with the Results Caucus in familiarizing myself with the goals and strategies in obtaining results and learning the procedures for obtaining information from the intranet on www.house.gov and the library of congress (LOC). Our weekly meetings of the Results Caucus grew into a Results Coalition to include a number of organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, Business Executives for National Security (BENS), the US Chamber of Commerce, American Council of Independent Laboratories and several other organizations. I started developing an agenda and taking minutes of the meetings for sending out to each member by Email on a weekly basis

March was a very busy month for everyone with the Congressman being here in DC most of the time. During this month, I attended meetings with Congressman Sessions with five members of Congress to entice new members to join and with former members to reaffirm their commitment. After each meeting I had to write letters of thank you to each congressman for Congressman Sessions and letters to their staff inviting them to our weekly meetings. Again I was kept busy setting up the agenda and taking minutes of each meeting. In addition to the other matters, I helped in writing and editing news releases concerning the Results Caucus to be released by our Congressman or other committee chairmen. Several news releases and letters were sent out such as the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) overpayments and the results of the GAO 2nd annual audit released on 31 March. Two other projects were also completed during the month including a report on the Technology Transfer researched by Congressional Research Services (CRS).  This report was used in developing a speech for the Congressman delivered in April. Another report developed was on the real per capita disposable income of the citizens in District 5 of Texas, Congressman Sessions's district. We had to go through the LOC and other national libraries to obtain the information and then I put this information into Excel worksheet to display the results.

During the month of April, I worked with the Legislative Director on the Congressman's Agenda for the Results Caucus and other items. Using the information gathered by the Congress Research Service (CRS) on technology transfer, I wrote a background paper on the history of Technology Transfer as developed by the government which was incorporated into the speech given by Congressman Sessions at The Technology Commercialization Forum held on April 25-27, 1999 in Tysons Corner, Virginia. Also during the month of April, I chaired some Results Caucus meetings on Friday afternoons and took notes on each meeting. I attended meeting with Congressman Sessions with other Congressmen to solicit their commitment to working with the Results Caucus and accepting a project of their choice. In addition, I wrote letters to the Congressmen thanking them for their participation. I obtained information on visa accountability for one of the projects from the Chief Counsel of the subcommittee on Immigration and Claims. Also I attended the Grading Sessions for most of the Agencies in the Executive Branch's 92 FY2000 Performance Plans required by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) and recorded attendance and grading scores. I tabulated the scores by topics and plotted the results of all 24 plans in several different formats. The data was ordered by score and plotted versus agency and other graphical displays. This data was then submitted to the Majority Leaders Office.

Since the Congressman's Legislative Director resigned in April, I was given the responsibility of carrying on the Results Caucus' agenda and signing up new congressmen and furthering the work of the Results Caucus Coalition during their Friday meetings. Since we have had 7 projects accepted, I was requested by the Congressman to write letters to the Agency Heads for the different projects and have the letters signed by the Chairman of the Results Caucus, the Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House. I wrote a form letter that could be personalized for each project and the Congressman and Majority Leader's Office both approved it. I then wrote individual letters outlining the reasons that the agencies were on the GAO's High Risk list for waste fraud and abuse and assigning a Congressman to oversee that project and work with the Agency. During the month I wrote letters to the Agencies of NASA, Depart. Of Commerce, Social Security Administration and the Head of the Health and Human Services and all letters were signed by the three Members of Congress listed above. So far we have received response from all of the letters sent to the agencies.

During the month of June, I developed a briefing paper on Defense Inventory Management (DIM) for the Congressman since this is the project that he has taken on for the second year. Inventory management problems have plagued DOD for decades. The GAO did a study of the DOD secondary inventory management and designated it as a high-risk area in 1990 because levels of unneeded inventory were too high and systems for determining inventory requirements were inadequate. In September 1995, the GAO reported that about $34 billion, or about half of DOD's $69.6 billion secondary inventory was not needed to support war reserve or current operating requirements.  Congressman Sessions has taken on the DIM as his project and will be prodding the DOD to change their management operating systems to transition into the 21st Century.

In addition to the Results Caucus Coalition tasks, I started gathering information on the electric utility restructuring legislation that has been introduced in this congress. This report will focus on the legislation that has been introduced in the 106th Congress and may be voted on during this session. The report will compare the various proposal introduced within the Senate and House and how they compare with proposed restructuring or deregulation objectives as developed by organizations such as the Heritage Foundation and the CATO Foundation. Reports from the CRS, the GAO and the Edison Electric Institute were obtained and compared.

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Last Updated:  July 14, 1999

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - United States of America