US Senate News:
Source: United States Senator for Rhode Island Jack Reed
WATCH: Sen. Reed warns Lutnick’s micromanagement and short-staffing of NOAA could leave states vulnerable to future disasters
WASHINGTON, DC – In his partisan zeal to root out so-called waste, redundancy, and abuse, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is generating unprecedented bureaucratic waste and delays that are hampering the U.S. Department of Commerce’s mission, particularly at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Whistleblowers within the agency have come forward in the press to sound the alarm that Secretary Lutnick is causing bureaucratic gridlock and hindering the agency’s ability to assist local communities with preparations for extreme weather events.
“Staff shortages and new layers of bureaucracy are suffocating NOAA and threatening its ability to accurately predict extreme weather events, ensure U.S. ports stay open and safeguard the nation’s commercial and recreational fisheries, say current and former agency officials,” according to E&E News by Politico.
Things have gotten so bad at Commerce that even President Trump’s staunch ally U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has sounded the alarm. Noting that NOAA has 5,700 contracts set to expire this year, Senator Cruz reported at a Congressional hearing last month that Secretary Lutnick typically reviews about two dozen contracts a week — at that pace, only 1,248 contracts would be reviewed in a year, and many of them require immediate attention and action.
E&E News by Politico reported: “These contracts include everything from post-hurricane flood assessment to janitorial services,” Cruz said. He added that a data center at Texas A&M University was shut down for days, “depriving Texas emergency and water managers of critical drought forecasts that help them manage reservoirs and track storm surge data and hurricane forecasts in real time.”
The report notes: “The coil around NOAA squeezes in two ways, they say. The first is personnel. More than 1,000 NOAA employees have left the agency since the start of the Trump administration, and the empty desks have led to staffing issues in key weather service offices — just as hurricane season approaches… The second issue is the slow pace of approval for outside contracts and grants… But fewer than 20 percent of outstanding grants have been approved, and more than 1,000 are in the queue with more added every day, according to a current NOAA official who was granted anonymity to speak without fear of reprisal.”
Today, at a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing, U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) grilled Secretary Lutnick about the growing backlog of contracts that are still awaiting his sign off and how his inefficient and insufficient micromanagement tactics have slowed down the vital work of NOAA just as hurricane season is getting underway.
“We’ve all been talking about bottlenecks, in fact, in the Department and elsewhere throughout the government. In fact, last month, Senator Cruz warned about the growing backlog of contracts awaiting approval at the Department of Commerce. He warned that NOAA alone has 5,700 contracts set to expire this year. And it’s been reported in the press that you are insisting on personally reviewing every commerce contract over $100,000,” Reed asked.
Secretary Lutnick admitted: “That is true.”
Reed responded: “Well, that seems to be something that is not particularly efficient. And that results in the 5,700 contracts just in NOAA. So again, if you can’t find reliable support to do those reviews, I think you’re wasting your time, frankly.”
To achieve costs savings and efficiently achieve its diverse missions, NOAA operations rely on a significant number of contractors. While every Administration carefully reviews each contract to ensure it is an effective use of taxpayer dollars, what sets the Trump Administration apart is its own inefficiency and bureaucratic bottleneck that slows the reviews down to the point where the work in the contract either can’t be done or is approved at the last second and could raise costs in the long run.
This is not a red state or blue state issue. In addition to Senators Cruz and Reed, several other Senators – including Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dan Sullivan (R-AK) — have raised concerns in recent months about missing or delayed funding, according to Politico.
During the hearing, Reed pressed Lutnick about when the backlog of contract reviews would be completed and Lutnick, surprisingly, claimed there are no more NOAA contracts he needs to review:
SEN. REED: Well, let’s go ahead and get those 5,700 contracts done. This weekend?
SEC. LUTNICK: There are not, under any circumstances, any contracts in there. There are none.
SEN. REED: How about this weekend?
SEC. LUTNICK: None.
SEN. REED: Can you get it done this weekend? Work overtime with the gang and get it done?
SEC. LUTNICK: There are no contracts waiting for me, and if there were, I’ll be there all night tonight, making sure they get turned out with my team, teaching my team how to do it.
Noting that the Trump Administration has proposed drastic cuts to NOAA, slashing the agency’s annual budget from the current level of $6.1 billion down to $4.5 billion next year, and eliminating NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, Reed quoted longtime NOAA researcher Craig McLean, who served as NOAA’s top scientist during the first Trump Administration, and warned that the drastic cuts Secretary Lutnick is backing would “take us back to the 1950s in terms of our scientific footing and the American people” if enacted.
Lutnick’s claim that the National Weather Service budget would remain unimpacted is undermined by steep cuts to other areas of NOAA, such as technology, research, and satellites that would grossly undercut the agency’s climate, weather, and ocean capabilities.