Democratic Candidates Lay Out Government Reform Proposals at Town Hall

The Democratic presidential candidates gathered for a collective town hall event hosted by CNN on Monday, the last time all three candidates will appear on the same stage before the first votes are cast in the Iowa caucus next week.

The candidates did not address each other directly, as in a standard debate, but each described their ideas for reforming government and laid out proposals to tweak agency operations. Here are some of the suggestions from each of candidates.

Bernie Sanders:

• The senator from Vermont explained his personal designation as a Democratic Socialist with a common refrain from his campaign, saying he supports “creating a government that works for all of us, not just those at the top.”
• Sanders was asked if he’s bringing back the “era of big government,” but he declined to take the bait. Instead, he said, he was creating an era of protecting the middle class and working families.
• A town hall participant asked Sanders what parts of the federal government he would cut to make room for his new programs, but the insurgent candidate did not identify a single area to trim.
• The senator touted his role in authoring and passing the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act. In that law, Sanders fought for increased funding for the Veterans Affairs Department so it could build more facilities and hire more doctors and nurses. He also sought to guarantee at least some due process rights for senior executives at the department, but still went along with measures to ease the firing of top managers.
• Sanders called for an expansion of immediate background checks for individuals seeking to purchase guns, a program currently conducted by the Justice Department. President Obama recently announced through executive actions an expansion of that program, including the hiring of hundreds of new employees at the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. A further expansion would likely require another hiring surge.

Martin O’Malley:

• The former Maryland governor talked up his effort to “ban the box” for civil servants applying for a job in his state’s government, meaning the hiring agency no longer asks about the applicant’s criminal history until later in the process. President Obama in November directed the Office of Personnel Management to “take action where it can” to instruct agencies to delay asking about applicants’ criminal histories. A bill to require that change has made some progress in Congress, but has yet to receive a full vote in either chamber. O’Malley did not indicate whether he would expand his initiative to would-be federal employees.  
• O’Malley spoke of the importance of public service and his commitment to provide “universal access to national service.” His plan includes federal agencies investing in national service programs to help fulfill their missions. He has also called on returning Peace Corps volunteers to receive noncompetitive status when applying to federal jobs.
• The candidate in a distant third place for the Democratic nomination called for better cross-agency coordination between the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, saying there is currently “absolutely no hand off” between the two. Previously, O’Malley called for a robust VA reform program that “goes beyond reforming an unwieldy bureaucracy.”
• O’Malley said, “We should be making it easier to join labor unions instead of harder.” Federal employee groups have long warned of efforts to stymie access to and enrollment in unions.

Hillary Clinton

• The former secretary of State gave a glimpse into her strategy of governance -- which will focus on pragmatism -- quoting former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, “You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose.”
• Clinton said she spent her time leading the State Department listening to Republicans, “enlisting their support, getting their advice.” She spoke more in depth about her role leading a federal agency, saying after the Benghazi attacks in 2011 she immediately set up a review board and accepted all of its recommendations. Clinton touted her transparency credentials, noting she made the results of that report public.
• In another nod to her open government credentials, Clinton gave herself a pat on the back for releasing all of her emails while she led the State Department. As she has many times, the former Cabinet secretary said she only used a private email address on a private server for convenience.