Former California lawmaker Ellen Tauscher, who helped create the National Nuclear Security Administration during her time in Congress and will serve on a 12-member NNSA governance study panel, said yesterday that she favored making changes to the agency within its current status as a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy. However, she said she was open to other ideas from the 12-member panel, which is tasked with making recommendations on revising the governance structure of the agency. “I don’t have any fixed ideas because I’m trying to keep an open mind,” Tauscher said at the Arms Control Association’s annual meeting. “What is clear is we need an NNSA that is an advocate for the complex and one that is able to get the attention and the acquiescence of the Congress and the Administration and it does that because it’s credible. I don’t think anyone believes that the NNSA right now has a lot of credibility.” Tauscher, who has referred to herself as the “mother of NNSA” along with its two “fathers,” Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), acknowledged that Congress hadn’t quite gotten it right when it created the agency in 1999. “Like any child that has two fathers and one mother it’s an ugly baby, a very ugly baby,” she said, “and while I think there are a lot of good smart, well-intentioned people in the NNSA, we never got the mission description right and we have a lot of criticism of the NNSA from everybody.”
On the sidelines of the meeting, she told NW&M Monitor that she had a hard time moving the agency to the Department of Defense or creating it as a completely independent agency. “I find it hard to consider moving it out of DOE because it’s such a big piece of DOE and you want it to be in relative proximity of all and the science and technology,” she said. “I think it’s very important that we consider that having it part of that.” She emphasized that she also felt that Congressional oversight of the agency should be revamped at the same time as governance of the agency is examined, a reference to challenges that exist funding the agency through the Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittees. She said one possible solution could be a select committee that oversees the agency. “I will advocate that if there are any reforms in NNSA, that we have comparable reforms in the Congress,” Tauscher said. “So we find ourselves with a balance between responsibilities and oversight so that we come out on the other end not having to do this again.”
Jobs