Weapons Complex Monitor
December 19, 2012
Tauscher Favors More Autonomous NNSA
Former Congresswoman and Under Secretary of State Ellen Tauscher weighed in on NNSA governance during a speech at the American Security Project yesterday, suggesting that she supported much of the reform language in the House and ultimately said she’d favor making NNSA an autonomous agency that reports to the Energy Secretary without the baggage of DOE bureaucracy. As a California Congresswoman [her district included LLNL], Tauscher was instrumental in creating the NNSA in 1999, and she said NNSA could be structured like NASA or the Securities Exchange Commission, with a link to the Energy Secretary and “understanding that this is so important that the President has to be involved at times, and maybe with a director that is somebody with a real pedigree that gets appointed, like the FBI director, for 10 years so that there’s not a question of in and out and up and down.”
December 19, 2012
Tauscher Favors More Autonomous NNSA
Former Congresswoman and Under Secretary of State Ellen Tauscher weighed in on NNSA governance during a speech at the American Security Project yesterday, suggesting that she supported much of the reform language in the House and ultimately said she’d favor making NNSA an autonomous agency that reports to the Energy Secretary without the baggage of DOE bureaucracy. As a California Congresswoman [her district included LLNL], Tauscher was instrumental in creating the NNSA in 1999, and she said NNSA could be structured like NASA or the Securities Exchange Commission, with a link to the Energy Secretary and “understanding that this is so important that the President has to be involved at times, and maybe with a director that is somebody with a real pedigree that gets appointed, like the FBI director, for 10 years so that there’s not a question of in and out and up and down.”
Comments
In a sense, it makes NNSA seem to be an entity onto itself - one does not usually think of NASA's chain of command, simply that NASA is its own boss. In a sense, it raises the NNSA from the red headed step child to something more distinguished. Maybe it should be done, but take a stiff broom and sweep out the people staffing this travesty of a department. No sense in making them think that they are getting a promotion.