Introduction The U.S. Coast Guard is the agency charged by law with overseeing the safety of vessels and maritime operations. For at least four decades, Congress has been concerned about the Coast Guard's ability to maintain an adequate staff of experienced marine safety personnel with technical knowledge of vessel construction and accident investigation. Recent incidents, particularly the 2015 sinking of the U.S.-flag cargo ship El Faro with the loss of 33 lives during a hurricane near the Bahamas, have revived questions about the Coast Guard's persistent difficulty with hiring and training a marine safety workforce. The safety inspections of the vessel were found to have been inadequate. In the Hamm Alert Maritime Safety Act of 2018 ( P.L. 115-265 , Â§210), Congress directed the Coast Guard to brief congressional committees of jurisdiction on its efforts to enhance its marine inspections staff, the staff responsible for ensuring that vessels are meeting safety standards. In the Frank LoBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018 ( P.L. 115-282 , Â§501) Congress requested a report from the Coast Guard detailing the courses and other training a marine inspector must complete to be considered qualified, including any courses that have been dropped from the training curriculum in recent years. This report examines the staffing challenges the Coast Guard faces in assuring marine safety at a time when its responsibilities in this area are increasing significantly. It also considers proposals to realign marine safety functions within the federal government. The Marine Safety Mission The Coast Guard engages in two distinct activities with respect to marine safety: Vessel inspection . The Coast Guard has a staff of 671 marine inspectorsâ533 military and 138 civilianâwho are responsible for inspecting U.S.-registered passenger and cargo vessels, foreign-flag vessels calling at U.S. ports, mobile offshore drilling units, and towing vessels and barges carrying hazardous cargoes. Foreign-flag vessels are those registered in jurisdictions other than the United States. Accident investigation. The Coast Guard employs 158 accident investigatorsâ120 military and 38 civilianâwho conduct casualty investigations of U.S.- and foreign-flag vessels to detect and correct safety hazards, prepare investigation reports, analyze trends, and recommend enforcement action. These two assignments fall under the Coast Guard's prevention policy workforce headed by the Assistant Commandant for Prevention Policy, a rear admiral. Reporting to the Assistant Commandant is the Director of Inspections and Compliance, a captain, who oversees the Office of Commercial Vessel Compliance and the Office of Investigations and Casualty Analysis, among other safety-related offices. The prevention policy workforce is especially critical for the commercial U.S.-flag fleet because a majority of this fleet is much older than the 15 to 20 years of age at which ships in the worldwide oceangoing fleet are typically scrapped. About 60% of the 217 ships in the dry-cargo U.S.-flag commercial fleet and 53% of U.S.-flag offshore supply vessels (which service oil rigs) are older than 20 years; the El Faro had been in service for 40 years. Some 72% of the 1,497 vessels in the U.S.-flag passenger and ferry fleet are over 20 years old. In general, older vessels require more frequent inspection; the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) raised questions about the quality of the Coast Guard's inspections in its investigation of the El Faro sinking, after which the Coast Guard revoked the safety certificate for another vessel of the same design and similar age, forcing its removal from service. Generally, inspections of vessels carrying passengers or hazardous cargo, and inspections of older vessels, are more frequent than inspections of general-cargo vessels and newer vessels. Vessels transporting cargo or passengers domestically (from one U.S. point to another U.S. point) must be U.S.-built, as required by the Jones Act. The cost of U.S.-built vessels, particularly deep-draft ships, can be multiples of world prices, which may retard vessel replacement. U.S.-flag vessels on international voyages need not be U.S.-built, and this fleet is younger than the Jones Act fleet. Congress's request for information about the Coast Guard's inspection staff comes at a time when the number of vessels requiring inspection is increasing by about 50% because towing vessels have been added to the list. Congress has been increasing the agency's role in fishing vessel safety as well, putting additional demands on the safety workforce. Adding to the Coast Guard's safety responsibilities is the construction of several liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, whose siting, operations, and security are partly or entirely under Coast Guard jurisdiction, as well as the increasing use of LNG as ship fuel. Workforce Qualifications, Training, and Pay Scales According to the Coast Guard, the marine inspector workforce consists of commissioned officers, chief warrant officers (CWOs), and civilians. Officer marine inspectors enter the workforce through a variety of accession sources, including Officer Candidate School, the Direct Commission Officer program for U.S. Maritime Academy graduates, and the Coast Guard Academy. CWOs are divided into two specialties: Marine Safety Specialty Deck and Marine Safety Specialty Engineer. Those who meet the eligibility requirements to compete for CWO are selected through an accession panel. An emphasis is placed on past maritime and inspection experience when hiring civilian marine inspectors. Additionally, the Coast Guard hires and trains civilians who are inexperienced in inspections to become marine inspectors through its civilian marine inspector apprenticeship program. The normal entry is a marine inspector apprenticeship tour at a larger port (referred to as a feeder port). A feeder port is located near a unit that is better prepared and equipped to train inspectors. The civilian inspectors generally remain at a single location for their entire careers to provide continuity. Most officers complete one to three tours as a field-level marine inspector or marine investigator and do not rotate between tours ashore and afloat. Officers rotate approximately every three years and may be promoted to leadership positions in the marine safety organization. CWOs remain marine inspectors or marine investigators until retirement. On average, a CWO serving as a marine inspector works in this capacity for approximately 8.7 years. Inspector pay scales range from CWO2 to CWO4 (approximately $90,000 to $124,000); officers (O-1 to O-5, approximately $64,000 to $152,000). Civilian marine inspectors are typically classified at GS-12 ($64,000 to $84,000). The investigator workforce also comprises commissioned officers, CWOs, and civilians. It has the same path for entry as marine inspection. Many marine investigators have prior experience as inspectors, giving them familiarity with commercial shipping operations and regulations. However, this is not true in all cases, and some marine investigators become familiar with marine inspections through on-the-job training. The typical pay scale for investigators is CWO3 to CWO4 (approximately $106,000 to $124,000) and O-2 to O-4 (approximately $83,000 to $130,000). The Coast Guard has recognized the training of the inspection staff as an important concern. As Rear Admiral John Nadeau, then the Coast Guard's Assistant Commandant for Prevention Policy, testified at a January 2018 hearing about the El Faro casualty: [T]his is not strictly a capacity problem. There are elements to training. If you just gave me another 1,000 marine inspectors, it wouldn't solve this problem. This problem involves training. This problem involves getting the right information. This problem involves getting the right policy and procedures in place.... Entry-level marine inspections is not what I am talking about. I need to have a small corpsâit is not a lotâa small corps of people that can get out and are highly trained and proficient and stay focused on this area until we get it right. In a March 2019 hearing, Rear Admiral Nadeau testified that the agency was improving the quality of its safety inspection workforce: [T]he Coast Guard has prioritized marine inspector training, established new staff dedicated to performing third party oversight, increased opportunities for maritime graduates to join the Coast Guard, and prioritized the hiring of civilian marine inspectors.... The Coast Guard is actively developing a comprehensive training architecture for our marine inspectors. This architecture will provide cohesive strategy, policy, and performance support to ensure that Coast Guard marine inspectors are trained consistently from the basic to the advanced level in a manner that keeps pace with industry, technology, and related regulatory changes. Managing Marine Safety The Coast Guard repeatedly has made statements in recent decades laying out its plans to improve the quality of its inspection workforce. Often, these pronouncements have been in response to heightened congressional scrutiny of the agency's marine inspection program in the aftermath of a major marine casualty in which investigators found that subpar vessel inspections played a contributing role. This cycle was described by a retired Coast Guard senior official in 2015: [T]he Marine Safety program is a low profile mission within the Coast Guard's multi-mission portfolio. That is true until a confluence of factors markedly raises its visibility and causes great introspection. The program's purpose is to keep bad things from happening. Non-events are virtually impossible to measure. Marine Safety is normally not a major budget item of interest to the Service. The Coast Guard, especially in what has generally been a declining resource environment, will always have many pressing and competing budget needs. And if a major incident occurs, Congress is willing to throw the Service a lifesaver in the form of significant dollars. As employees of a military organization, Coast Guard personnel typically change mission assignments and/or locations every two or three years, so they do not develop the knowledge and experience required of a proficient marine inspector or investigator. As noted, the scope of the vessel types the Coast Guard inspects ranges from small passenger boats to oceangoing ships to mobile offshore drilling rigs. Geographic reassignments can change the category of vessels an individual inspector must evaluate. Vessel technology can be complex and is constantly changing, and the safety regulations are voluminous and technical. An internal Coast Guard study in 2012 revealed that "41% of marine inspectors were not confident interacting with maritime industry personnel concerning marine inspection issues." Even if personnel rotate back into marine inspection after a different assignment, they need time to regain proficiency. The Coast Guard recognizes the difficulty of building marine inspection and investigation proficiency among uniformed officers who rotate assignments frequently. Consequently, each Commandant's initiative or plan to revamp marine inspections has stated a goal of boosting the civilian inspector and investigator workforce and creating more attractive long-term career paths by extending promotion potential. However, a perception inside the agency that marine safety is an area that retards promotion could be thwarting efforts to boost the inspection workforce. This is asserted in a study by a career Coast Guard official who spent his last several years working in human resources for the agency: [T]he Coast Guard's internal manpower management processes are considered to be at odds with the need to build and maintain a competent marine safety officer corps â¦ The perception for decades is that it is difficult for marine safety officers to succeed in the Coast Guard's military officer promotion system. The Service endeavors to manage individual officer specialties, such as marine safety, while at the same time operate an "up or out" promotion system that is mandated by law.... officers who follow a marine safety career path consider themselves disadvantaged as they become more senior and face stiffer competition for promotion.... Currently, the perception of disadvantage continues. World War II Gives Coast Guard New Role The Coast Guard's challenges with marine inspection and investigation date to a government reorganization in preparation for World War II. A 1942 executive order transferred the civilian Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation (BMIN) from the Department of Commerce to the Coast Guard for the duration of the war and for six months after hostilities ended. After the war ended, President Truman proposed keeping the marine inspection function under the Coast Guard rather than transferring it back to the Department of Commerce. Proponents of this approach contended that the Coast Guard had performed the mission adequately during the U.S. involvement in the war and that synergies existed with other Coast Guard missions such as maritime search and rescue. Furthermore, they asserted, there was no need to create additional overhead and administrative expenses by establishing a separate bureau. The maritime industry argued against keeping marine inspections under the Coast Guard. A witness representing the American Petroleum Institute testified in 1947 that under the BMIN, almost all of the inspectors had been former merchant marine officers with 10 to 20 years of experience aboard ships who had practical knowledge of vessel safety vulnerabilities. The permanent assignment of marine inspections to the Coast Guard was part of a much larger government reorganization plan advanced by the Truman Administration that was to go into effect unless both houses passed a concurrent resolution of disapproval within a specified period. The House adopted such a resolution, but the Senate did not. Consequently, President Truman's plan became effective in 1946. In subsequent years, the Coast Guard's role remained a point of contention. In 1947, a representative of a ship captains' union testified that under the old regime, the men in the Bureau of Marine Inspection were the wearers of the purple cloth. Before men could become assistant local inspector and go up to the grade of local inspector and supervising inspector, and so forth, they had to be either a master mariner [ship captain], or a chief engineer â¦ with the result that the most mature, and most sensible and most experienced and most intelligent of our profession got into the service. It was very seldom that you found a local inspector under 35 years of age.... They were of mature judgement and they were one of the most respected organizations in the entire marine industry. The concern that the Coast Guard would be unable to replace the experience of the ex-BMIN inspectors as they retired persisted over the decades. In 1979, the General Accounting Office (GAO, known since 2004 as the Government Accountability Office) conducted an audit of the Coast Guard's marine inspection program after a series of tanker accidents in or near U.S. waters during the winter of 1976-1977 resulted in losses of life and property and environmental damage. Under the heading "Trained and Experienced Personnel Needed," the GAO report raised questions about the training of marine inspectors: Most of the inspectors in the three districts included in our review have had at least one tour of sea duty on Coast Guard cutters. Considering this sea experience, along with the on-the-job and formal training, it would seem that most inspectors would be highly qualified. However, we found that relatively few field unit inspectors could be considered as qualified hull or boiler inspectors. This has occurred because the Coast Guard has not established uniform criteria or procedures to determine whether inspectors are actually qualified and has not scheduled needed vessel inspection training in a timely manner. In addition, the rotation policy caused by the lack of a specialized job classification or career ladder contributes to the difficulty in achieving and maintaining expertise in marine inspection. The report note d that the Coast Guard Merchant Marine Safety Manual in effect at the time stated as a customarily accepted fact that it takes three years of experience to become a qualified marine inspector , adding that "every 2 to 3 years the Coast Guard rotates its staff among various duty stations such as search and rescue, buoy tenders, and high- and medium-endurance cutters , " and that " about the time personnel become proficient in one area, such as vessel inspection, they are transferred and assigned to another job." The GAO found that "few field inspectors had previous inspection duty or consecutive assignments at marine inspection offices" and the Coast Guard had been "unable to keep experienced and trained staff in the vessel inspection area." Some of the Coast Guard field officers interviewed by the GAO commented that inspectors needed to have additional expertise to gain the respect of the maritime industry, and that most inspectors were not knowledgeable enough to provide industry with a precise interpretation of marine rules and regulations. In response to the 1979 GAO report, the Coast Guard stated that while it would consider establishing an inspection specialty career classification for both officers and enlisted personnel and extend its inspection assignment tour, its existing job classification system was better suited to the multimission nature of the agency. The 1980s In October 1980, the U.S.-flag ship Poet , carrying a load of corn to Egypt, disappeared with no trace somewhere in the Atlantic. Its disappearance was believed to have coincided with a period of heavy weather; the structural integrity of the 36-year-old ship was suspected as a possible cause. The Coast Guard's Marine Board of Investigation found that the Coast Guard inspector conducting most of the ship's inspections during the year prior to the voyage had no previous experience inspecting commercial vessels, which heightened the Marine Board's concern that structural defects may have gone undetected. In February 1983, the Marine Electric , a 40-year-old Jones Act ship carrying coal from Norfolk, VA, to Massachusetts, sank in heavy weather, killing 31 crew members. Investigators concluded that the probable cause of the sinking was the poor condition of the cargo hatches and deck plating, which allowed waves to flood the hull. The Coast Guard's Marine Board of Investigation stated that the ship's Coast Guard inspectors lacked the experience to conduct safety examinations of a vessel the size, service, and configuration of the Marine Electric . The incompleteness of these inspections as to the dictates of regulations and policy was attributed to the lack of training and experience on the part of the Coast Guard inspectors.... the inexperience of the inspectors who went aboard the Marine Electric , and their failure to recognize the safety hazard imposed by the deteriorated, weakened and non-tight hatch covers, raises doubts about the capabilities of the Coast Guard inspectors to enforce the laws and regulations in a satisfactory manner. At a 1983 congressional hearing examining the marine casualty, a representative of a ship engineers' union noted that "Coast Guard officers with 12 weeks experience behind a desk are dealing with officers of the merchant marine who have spent 20 years at sea," and that "an inspector can't condemn a dangerous ship if he doesn't know what a dangerous ship is." This representative further stated that "while multi-mission flexibility and frequent rotation may be an optimal way to fulfill the Coast Guard's military readiness mission, it is a serious and even fatal distraction from the regulation of commercial industry." The witness urged Congress to transfer ship inspection responsibilities to an agency of civilian career professionals, similar to the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation that existed before World War II. Some committee Members appeared receptive to this idea. The witness also raised the issue of whether the more fundamental problem was the age of the U.S. fleet: The problem of course is old ships. This means dangerous ships â¦ The Poet and the Marine Electric are trying to tell us something: If a ship isn't retired when it gets old, it will retire itself ... Although 40% of the U.S. fleet is at least 20 years old, 75% of the dozen worst U.S. marine tragedies in the past two decades struck these ships aged 20 or older. Twenty is the rounded number when industry experts say a ship should be junked. In conclusion, any analysis of the plight of maritime safety is misleading if it does not identify old ships as the core of the problem. The only way to uproot this evil is to mandate an aggressive attack by a dedicated and seasoned staff of professional inspectorsâa team that the Coast Guard could never field unless it ended its fundamental multi-missioned military structure. In 1985, following up on its 1979 audit, the GAO reported that the Coast Guard had recently completed a two-year project to develop a new marine safety training and qualification program. One change was establishment of uniform standardized on-the-job training and on-the-job qualification requirements. Another change was selection of three "training ports" where new inspectors would go for 18 months of intensive training before their initial assignment. The GAO stated that it was too early to assess whether these changes had addressed the qualification problems identified in its 1979 report. On March 24, 1989, the U.S.-flag tanker Exxon Valdez grounded on Bligh Reef after departing Valdez, AK, spilling about 11 million gallons of oil. The actions of the ship captain, who was found to be impaired by alcohol, and who had turned over operation of the vessel to a third mate before reaching open waters, was the focus of the marine casualty investigation. In response to the Exxon Valdez incident, among other things, Congress increased funding for Coast Guard safety personnel. According to one Coast Guard senior official, the "War on Drugs" in the mid-1980s had shifted resources from the agency's safety mission to its drug interdiction mission. The 1990s In the 1990s, the quality of Coast Guard inspections came under scrutiny again as the result of two fatal passenger vessel incidents. On December 5, 1993, the wooden vessel El Toro II , a fishing charter party vessel built in 1961 and carrying 23 people, began sinking in the Chesapeake Bay when water seeped through the hull's planks. There were three fatalities. The Coast Guard's Marine Board of Investigation found that the Coast Guard inspector's knowledge of wooden boat structure was lacking, and that inspection staff were not cognizant of previous inspection reports that would have prompted concern about the vessel's seaworthiness, given the owner's poor track record in making needed repairs to the 32-year-old vessel. The second incident occurred on a lake near Hot Springs, AR, in May 1999. The Miss Majestic , an amphibious "duckboat" built during World War II to transport troops and supplies, which had since been converted into a tour boat, began taking on water and sank in less than 30 seconds, drowning 13 of its 20 passengers. The Coast Guard's Marine Board of Investigation found that the Coast Guard inspector had not noticed that a critical part was missing from the rear shaft that was the main source of the leak. It determined that the inspector lacked awareness of the importance of this vessel's design components. The board also found that the local Coast Guard office was not keeping adequate inspection records, which would have shown that the vessel's owner had not installed safety equipment that previous inspectors had called for. The NTSB concluded that the Coast Guard's inspections of the vessel were "inadequate and cursory" and that the "lack of Coast Guard guidance and training for the inspection of [this vessel design] contributed to the inadequate inspections of the Miss Majestic ." Moreover, the NTSB found that Coast Guard inspectors over the preceding five years had missed deficiencies with the vessel that might have been obvious even to an untrained observer, such as pinholes in the hull of the vessel caused by corrosion and an improper repair using a rubber patch to conceal a large, wasted area of the hull. These marine casualties in the 1990s prompted the Coast Guard and Congress to examine the marine safety mission of the agency once again. In December 1995, the Coast Guard conducted an internal study of its accident investigation activity. One of the recommendations of the internal report was "To improve the overall quality of the information derived from investigations, an investigations career path should be developed. This would enable the Coast Guard to raise the overall level of expertise in investigations." In 1996, the GAO reviewed whether the Coast Guard had fully utilized additional funding Congress provided the agency in the early 1990s to add 875 positions to its Marine Safety Program. At a 1997 congressional hearing, a representative of the passenger vessel industry noted that vessel inspection "responsibilities fill hundreds of pages of regulations and thousands of pages of referenced consensus standards and rules." The industry representative was "concerned that the problems in the commercial vessel safety program will grow because of a resulting lack of training and experience on the part of many Coast Guard inspectors." The 2000s Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress greatly increased the Coast Guard's resources directed toward maritime security matters. The maritime industry's reaction to the Coast Guard's new security responsibilities came to light at a 2007 congressional hearing. Some industry witnesses at the hearing contended that since the Coast Guard had been transferred from the Department of Transportation to the newly created Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002, the agency was more focused on security matters than on safety. One industry witness asserted that the industry's relationship with Coast Guard inspectors had changed from being partners with a mutual interest in safety to being viewed as a security risk. The purpose of the 2007 hearing was to examine a proposal by the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to transfer the Coast Guard's marine safety inspection function to a civilian agencyâin other words, to undo the World War II-era reorganization. The chairman argued that "What we need is what we have in the [Federal Aviation Administration], skilled personnel who have years of seasoning, who aren't shifted year after year from one post to another with only three years on staff." At the hearing, a witness representing ship captains described how marine inspection was performed in other countries: In foreign countries outside the United States, you go to the Netherlands or Germany or Norway, that is a civilian force that comes on. They are all retired masters or chief engineers, and they become the inspection service for that country. When they go aboard a ship, they are interfacing with chief engineers and masters that have a shared experience. There is a great deal of respect for the inspectors, and the inspectors have a great deal of respect for the officers on the ship. It is an effective system. You have expertise. You have competence, and you have motivation. They obviously love the maritime industry because that is their choice. It is not something they have been assigned to as part of their tour of duty and attaining a generalized background in the Coast Guard. I think that is the way to go. When a fellow retires after a career at sea and he is 45, 50 years old, he might not be looking for a future career advancement as Coast Guard officer. You make him a civilian inspector, and he would fill the same role that they fill in Germany and most maritime countries. Most maritime countries do not have a uniform Coast Guard acting as the maritime inspection service. They use maritime professionals from the industry to fill that role. When they send a petty officer down to represent the United States' interest in enforcing international conventions on foreign flag ships as a port state control officer, the foreign masters, the Germans and the British, take offense that the Coast Guard hasn't sent an officer down or a civilian personnel with a maritime background. At the hearing, the Commandant of the Coast Guard explained the dilemma facing the agency regarding its inspection staff: Here is the quandary we are faced with. Sooner or later, as you get promoted in the Coast Guard, you become a commanding officer. If you get selected for flag, you become a district commander and maybe even a Commandant. When you get to there, you become a general. You are representing the entire organization. We have an issue of needing specialists, subject matter experts, but at some point we need to generalize these folks and give them other experiences if they are going to be promotable and move up to become executives in the organization. In corporate America, for example, if you are a vice president, everybody needs to understand corporate finance. What we have developed inside the Coast Guard is the notion of what we call a broadened specialist. What we need to look at is maintaining the subject matter expertise that is critical to mission execution and then how we can broaden these people at a later date and still make them promotable. They want to be able to move up in the organization as well. At the 2007 hearing, the Commandant urged the ex-chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to defer his proposal until the Coast Guard had a chance to rectify the problem, which the chairman agreed to do. The Commandant outlined the actions he was taking to improve the inspection workforce: In the last year, I have directed significant changes and improvements in the training and qualifications of our inspectors to keep pace with the technological advancements and growth in maritime industry. We have made changes to our warrant officer selection system to bring more talented and experienced enlisted personnel into the maritime safety specialty. We have learned valuable lessons from joint military and civilian staffing of our sector command centers and our vessel traffic services. These are areas where we used to have Coast Guard personnel only staffing. We now have brought civilian personnel in to provide continuity, corporate memory and way to bridge during the transfer season, so we get the best of training for our people in uniform by maintaining continuity of services. I am committed to the establishment of more civilian positions in the marine inspection field. We need people with critical job skills. We need to maintain continuity while providing our military members access to this type of experience. We must leverage and expand this dual staffing model. Getting the inspection program right in terms of training, qualifications and staffing is my highest maritime safety priority. The Commandant also argued that marine safety and security were two sides of the same coin; they were not mutually exclusive missions but synergistic to the Coast Guard's other maritime missions. The Commandant's first step was an internal study of the issue by a retired Commandant. This internal study acknowledged that the agency's practice of regularly rotating staff geographically or by activity, as military organizations typically do, hindered its ability to develop a cadre of staff with sufficient technical expertise in marine safety. The report noted the following: "If the inspector is constantly referring to the regulations when conducting an inspection, the customer doesn't have much confidence in the quality of the Coast Guard inspection. I understand that the Coast Guard has sent unqualified personnel or marginally qualified personnel to conduct inspections and investigations." The report also stated that "the DHS has no responsibility for transportation safety so getting them to embrace the Marine Safety program could be a heavy lift." In response to this problem, the agency revamped its safety program and Congress appropriated additional funds specifically for safety personnel. The FY2009 Coast Guard budget request noted that "the Coast Guard is encountering serious stakeholder concern about our capacity to conduct marine inspections, investigations, and rulemaking." Under the revamped safety program, the Coast Guard created additional civilian safety positions, converted military positions into civilian ones, and developed a long-term career path for civilian safety inspectors and investigators. A 2008 audit by the DHS Inspector General (IG) confirmed that Coast Guard stated that the problems identified with respect to its safety program workforce also existed among vessel accident investigators. The IG found that accident investigations were hindered by unqualified personnel and recommended hiring more civilians for this activity. The IG also found that the Coast Guard had lowered the qualification standard for accident investigators in August 2007 by removing the requirement that an investigator have experience as a hull or machinery and small passenger vessel inspector. Since vessel casualties commonly involve structural deficiencies in the hull or loss of propulsion, this experience is considered important for an accident investigator. The IG noted that in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, accident investigators are required to be former ship captains or chief engineers with several years of experience. The IG report noted issues with rotating assignments and promotion potential in the marine safety area: A tour in the Prevention Directorate could mean yearly rotations across specialty areas, such as waterways management and drug and alcohol testing. Given the lack of a career path and the unpredictable nature of investigation assignments, potential Coast Guard candidates also may not want to become investigators. Hull and Machinery Inspectors told us that promotion to the position of marine casualty investigator would not advance their careers. Additionally, according to Coast Guard personnel, tour of duty rotations hinder investigators in acquiring the experience needed for career development. The agency's uniformed investigators generally are not in their positions for more than a single, three-year tour of duty in the same location. The forced rotations preclude the investigators from acquiring the extensive knowledge of local waterways and industries that experienced casualty investigators have told us is needed to be an effective investigator. In contrast, civilian marine casualty investigators are not subject to the three year tour of duty rotation standard. Over time, they can gain a greater knowledge of specialties such as local waterways and industries or experience in enforcing maritime regulations to enhance their qualifications. Of the 22 marine casualty investigators that we reviewed, one was a civilian. A 2009 study by the Homeland Security Institute, a federally funded research center established by Congress in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (Â§312) to assist DHS in addressing policy issues, reiterated the same theme regarding frequent rotations of uniformed staff hindering proficiency in marine inspection and investigation. The study's recommendations were to increase tour lengths as well as require back-to-back tours in these areas and to rely more on civilians for these functions. The study found that the Coast Guard's workforce database was not able to indicate years of service or level of expertise for marine safety personnel. The study found that the Coast Guard had no central office responsible for overall management of the marine safety workforce and therefore there were no agency-wide specific standards for determining qualifications in this area. Lacking documentation, the study's authors relied heavily on interviews with hundreds of Coast Guard personnel and private industry to gather data on the marine safety workforce. Recent Developments On April 20, 2010, the mobile offshore drilling unit Deepwater Horizon , 45 miles off the coast of Louisiana, experienced a catastrophic blowout, causing a major explosion and fire, and resulting in its sinking. There were 11 deaths and an oil spill estimated at approximately 206 million gallons, the largest in U.S. history. The Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service had responsibility for inspection of the drilling apparatus that was the cause of the explosion, but the Coast Guard was responsible for the safety inspection of the rig above water that has commonality with vessels in general (firefighting and lifesaving equipment, evacuation procedures, electrical systems). The ensuing investigation revealed that Coast Guard regulations of offshore structures dated to 1978 and had not been updated as rigs moved farther and farther offshore. For instance, in places where they are not attached to the seabed because of the tremendous depth, these rigs use dynamic positioning systems (propeller systems) to remain in place, but at the time of the accident the Coast Guard had not developed regulations for checking the safety aspects of these critical systems. In response to the Deepwater Horizon marine casualty, Congress required the Coast Guard to take several initiatives to improve the quality of its marine inspection workforce in the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010 ( P.L. 111-281 ). Under the subtitle "Workforce Expertise" (Â§Â§521-526), these initiatives included improving career path management, adding apprenticeships to the program, measuring workforce quality and quantity, adding a marine industry training program and a marine safety curriculum at the Coast Guard Academy, and preparing a report on recruiting and retaining civilian marine inspectors and investigators. A June 2011 audit by the DHS IG of vessel inspections in the offshore oil and gas industry (involving rigs and vessels that support operation of the rigs) found a positive result for the marine inspection program in this sector. The IG found that 99% of those inspections had been performed by Coast Guard inspectors who had been fully qualified. However, the IG found that the Coast Guard's guidance on how to inspect these vessels and how to record the results of these inspections was deficient. A May 2013 audit by the DHS Inspector General found that the agency's efforts had not improved its marine accident reporting system, due to familiar issues surrounding the qualifications and rotation of the personnel: The USCG [United States Coast Guard] does not have adequate processes to investigate, take corrective actions, and enforce Federal regulations related to the reporting of marine accidents. These conditions exist because the USCG has not developed and retained sufficient personnel, established a complete process with dedicated resources to address corrective actions, and provided adequate training to personnel on enforcement of marine accident reporting. As a result, the USCG may be delayed in identifying the causes of accidents; initiating corrective actions; and providing the findings and lessons learned to mariners, the public, and other government entities. These conditions may also delay the development of new standards, which could prevent future accidents. [T]he Director of Prevention Policy [the marine safety program] provides personnel with career management guidance that suggests they should leave this specialty to improve their promotion potential, because of the USCG's emphasis on personnel attaining a wide variety of experience. Personnel indicated that both investigations and inspections suffer from investing time and money into training people only to have them leave the specialty. The IG found that at the 11 sites it visited, two-thirds of accident inspectors and investigators did not meet the Coast Guard's own qualification standards. The IG stated that the shortage of qualified personnel would be further compounded by the new towing vessel safety regime, which would expand the inspection workload by about 50% (or an additional 5,700 vessels to inspect). In January 2015, the new Commandant, Paul Zukunft, indicated that human resource competencies would be one of his key focus areas. He referred to the need to grow "subject matter experts" for the marine safety workforce and overhaul the generalist-driven military personnel system in favor of a specialist workforce. Commandant Zukunft called for increasing proficiency through more specialization in both the officer and enlisted corps and to extend the time between job rotations. He noted the complexity of systems aboard vessels and new developments in using LNG as fuel, stating that the Coast Guard needed to know these technologies in order to lead the industry on safety rather than having to learn them from industry. In February 2015, Commandant Zukunft stated his priorities regarding the marine safety mission: I have directed the Vice Commandant to undertake a service-wide effort to revitalize our marine safety enterprise with particular focus on marine inspection and our regulatory framework.... We will increase the proficiency of our marine safety workforce, and we will continue to train new marine inspectorsâadding to the more than 500 that have entered our workforce since 2008.... We will review our civilian career management process to eliminate barriers and improve upward mobility. As noted above, the October 2015 sinking of the El Faro has renewed focus on the Coast Guard's marine inspection workforce, but, as in the past, the age of ships in the U.S.-flag fleet has been raised as a corollary safety issue. Regarding the El Faro , the Coast Guard testified in 2018: We looked a little further beyond this particular incident, caused us to look at other vessels in the fleet and did cause us concern about their condition.â¦ And the findings indicate that it is not unique to the El Faro . We have other ships out there that are in substandard condition.â¦ You know, some of our fleetâour fleet is almost three times older than the average fleet sailing around the world today. Just like your old car, those are the ones likely to breakdown. Those are the (inaudible) oneâthe ones that are more difficult to maintain and may not start when I go out, turn the key. Considerations in Realigning Marine Safety Functions As the above history indicates, the measure most often proposed to increase the competence of marine safety personnel is to shift this mission to a civilian workforce in a civilian subagency, either under the Coast Guard or somewhere else in the executive branch with complementary maritime functions. While such a shift could have the advantages stated, one cannot necessarily expect it, in and of itself, to solve the issue completely. Civilian agencies with inspection workforces covering technically demanding industries also have had difficulty retaining experienced staff. For instance, the Federal Aviation Administration has been criticized for increasing its reliance on private-sector inspectors paid by industry rather than enhancing its in-house inspection workforce. The rationale for this reliance on private-industry inspectors is that the pace of technological development in aviation has overwhelmed the capability of government inspectors. Similarly, the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which regulates pipeline safety, has found that experienced inspectors are often hired away as safety compliance officers by pipeline companies. The Department of the Interior has voiced much the same concern with respect to the offshore oil rig inspection workforce of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. Even under a civilian agency, vessel inspectors would be subject to recruitment by private industry, as experienced inspectors are sought by ship owners, banks that finance ships, and insurers, all of which want to ensure ships are built to, and are being maintained to, safety standards. Inspectors are employed by private ship classification societies for this purpose. Another consideration with respect to realigning the government's marine safety function is the benefit of housing maritime-related missions in a single agency. As commandants have argued, there are synergies among these missions. For example, the knowledge of and familiarity with vessels and crews that safety inspectors gain via their interactions with them provide risk intelligence relevant to the agency's security mission. Personnel involved in the often perilous mission of search and rescue directly benefit from a competent and effective safety inspection workforce that can reduce the number of such missions. The vessel safety inspection function has synergies with vessel environmental inspections related to oil pollution, ballast water, and emissions. The marine safety function is also complimentary to the Coast Guard's responsibility for deploying and maintaining channel marker buoys and lights and breaking ice in winter. Fisheries enforcement has synergies with fishing safety and security missions. All of these missions require special knowledge for operating on the water, and most require a fleet to do so. Thus, there are both human resource and capital equipment synergies among these missions. Notwithstanding these factors, one can also rationalize dismantling parts of the Coast Guard and reorganizing them under other agencies. The Coast Guard has a close relationship with the Navy, even in peacetime. In 1982, Members of Congress sponsored bills to transfer the agency to the Navy or the Department of Defense ( H.R. 4996 , H.R. 5567 ). These proposals were partly in response to the Reagan Administration's proposal to drastically reduce the size of the Coast Guard, replace the commandant with a civilian administrator, and transfer the Coast Guard's aids to navigation mission to the Army Corps of Engineers. During the partial government shutdown in January 2019, when Coast Guard personnel were the only military personnel not paid, calls for shifting the Coast Guard to the Navy or Department of Defense were renewed. While some supporters hope that transferring the Coast Guard to the military might boost the agency's budget, others have argued that the Coast Guard's nondefense-related missions would suffer, as these missions are not a priority for the military. It would appear that such a transfer might not assist the Coast Guard in addressing the issue of rotating staff in the marine safety program. In addition to realigning marine safety functions, Congress has discussed rearranging navigation-related functions in the federal government more broadly. Some Members of Congress, dissatisfied with the Army Corps of Engineers' performance in the provision of navigation channel infrastructure, have proposed transferring that function to the Department of Transportation. The Trump Administration also has proposed this transfer as part of a larger reorganization plan involving multiple agencies. Congress has requested a National Academy of Sciences study related to this idea. If such a transfer were to occur, navigation infrastructure functions could be combined with a marine safety inspection and accident investigation within the Department of Transportation. This combination of safety and infrastructure provision parallels the primary missions of the department with respect to other transportation modes. However, Congress has shown reluctance to eliminate any of the Coast Guard's missions. Both in 1967, when the Department of Transportation was created and the Coast Guard was transferred there from the Department of the Treasury, and in 2003 after the Department of Homeland Security was created, and the agency was transferred there from the Department of Transportation, the Coast Guard was transferred as a distinct entity.


Introduction The U.S. Constitution establishes a two-step process for the House and Senate to remove federal officialsâincluding the President, Vice President, judges, and other civil officersâfor "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Under the Constitution, the House alone has the power to formally chargeâthat is, impeachâa federal official. A House majority can accomplish this by adopting articles of impeachment, which are effectively written accusations (similar to an indictment in ordinary criminal proceedings). The Senate alone has the power to try an impeachment and render a verdict regarding whether the individual should be removed from office and possibly barred from holding future office. Two-thirds of Senators voting must agree to convict and remove an official from office. The Senate could also separately decide to disqualify an officer from holding future federal office. Disqualification requires only a majority vote. The procedures the House has developed for accomplishing this constitutional responsibility are described below. The House has used this process mostly to impeach federal judges, although the House has also impeached two Presidents and one Cabinet official. The Senate has voted to remove eight of these officials, and all of them were federal judges. The summary of the rules and procedures the House might use to impeach a federal official presented here is drawn from published sources of congressional rules and precedents, as well as the public record of past impeachment proceedings. It relies as well upon in-depth research conducted by Betsy Palmer and Susan Navarro Smelcer, formerly of CRS, on the practice in both chambers with respect to the impeachment of federal judges. This report provides an overview of the procedures and should not be treated or cited as an authority on congressional proceedings. Consultation with the Parliamentarian of the House is always advised regarding the possible application of rules and precedents. For more information on impeachment, including a discussion of which federal officers are subject to impeachment and possible grounds for impeachment, see CRS Report R44260, Impeachment and Removal , by Jared P. Cole and Todd Garvey. Overview The impeachment process may be initiated as the result of various actions and events, including the receipt and referral of information from an outside source, investigations by congressional committees under their general authority, or the introduction of articles of impeachment in the form of a House resolution. Regardless of what might instigate an inquiry into whether impeachment is warranted, there are normally three formal stages of congressional action. First, an impeachment inquiry is authorized, and this is most often accomplished through the adoption of a simple resolution (H.Res.___) directing the Judiciary Committee to investigate an official. Second, the committee conducts its investigation, prepares articles of impeachment, and reports them to the House. Third, the full House considers the articles of impeachment and, if they are adopted, appoints managers from the committee to present the articles in the Senate. As discussed in detail below, the House relies upon many of its usual procedures to consider the resolution explicitly initiating an investigation, conduct the investigation, and consider the articles of impeachment. Initiation of the Process Introduction of a Simple Resolution A Member can initiate an impeachment process by drafting a simple resolution and placing it in the House hopper, the way all simple resolutions are submitted to the House. If the resolution directly calls for an impeachment, it will be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. If it instead calls for an investigation of an official by a standing committee or proposes the creation of a special committee for that purpose, the resolution will be referred to the Committee on Rules, which has jurisdiction over the authorization of committee investigations. No special procedures restrict when such a resolution can be submitted, although historically they have been submitted relatively infrequently. Raising a Question of the Privileges of the House A resolution calling for an impeachment can also be offered on the floor by any Member as a question of the privileges of the House instead of being submitted through the hopper. To do so, a Member gives notice of his or her intent to call up such a resolution. The Speaker must then schedule a time to consider the resolution within two legislative days. (The majority and the minority leader do not need to give notice; if either leader raises a qualifying question of privileges of the House on the floor, it is considered immediately.) The full House could dispose of an impeachment resolution raised in this fashion in any number of ways, including by referring it to the Judiciary Committee instead of by voting on the resolution directly. The House could also agree to a motion to table the resolution and thereby dispose of it permanently and adversely. Impeachment has been attempted using this method in recent years, but none of the attempts has resulted in approval of articles of impeachment. In cases in which an official has been impeached, the House has always chosen to conduct an investigation first. A resolution offered from the floor that proposed a committee investigation, instead of directly impeaching an officer, would not give rise to a proper question of the privileges of the House. Outside and Preliminary Investigations Material related to the conduct of a federal official might reach the House and be referred to committee prior to the adoption of a resolution directing a committee to conduct an investigation. Historically, this has included petitions and materials from citizens. In addition, standing committees, under their general investigatory authority, can seek information and research charges against officers prior to the approval of a resolution to authorize an impeachment investigation. With respect to federal judges, the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980 established a process within the judicial branch for responding to complaints about judges. Findings from those investigations could result in the Judicial Conference of the United States informing the House that the impeachment of a judge may be warranted. A letter reporting that the Judicial Conference had reached such a determination would be referred to the Judiciary Committee. Recent impeachments of federal judges were initiated by resolutions submitted after (or near the time of) the receipt of such a determination from the Judicial Conference. In the last presidential impeachment, a communication from the independent counsel appointed to investigate President Bill Clinton was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary pursuant to an original resolution reported by the Rules Committee. The resolution also directed the Judiciary Committee to review the information from the independent counsel "to determine whether sufficient grounds exist to recommend to the House that an impeachment inquiry be commenced." The House, in this case, later adopted a resolution reported by the Judiciary Committee to authorize an investigation by the committee. Authorization of Committee Investigation If a resolution authorizing an impeachment investigation was introduced through the hopper and referred to the Rules Committee, that committee would then choose whether to report the resolution to the full House for consideration. If reported, the resolution would be privileged, which means a Member could call it up on the floor, though only at the direction of the Rules Committee. The resolution would then be considered under the hour rule, a method of considering legislation in the House that permits Members to speak for up to an hourâbut also allows a numerical majority to vote to end debate and limit the opportunity for amendment. Specifically, the Member who called up the resolution would be recognized for one hour. Debate on the resolution would likely last for that hour or even less, because a majority in the House could agree to order the previous question on the resolution. When the House votes to order the previous question, it ends debate and any opportunity for amendment. A motion to recommit the resolution with or without instructions could be offered after the previous question was ordered, but it would not be debatable. The House could also, however, choose to consider the resolution under any of its other regular processes, including suspension of the rules (requiring a two-thirds vote for passage), a rule from the Rules Committee (requiring only a majority vote), or unanimous consent. The two most recent resolutions adopted by the House to authorize an impeachment investigation were taken up by unanimous consent at the request of the Rules Committee chair. Rather than convene a committee meeting to order the resolutions reported with a quorum present, the chair asked unanimous consent that the House discharge the Rules Committee and agree to the resolution. Both of these resolutions concerned federal judges, and they were agreed to without debate. In the three previous instances of judicial impeachments, however, the House did not approve a resolution explicitly authorizing an impeachment inquiry. The Rules of the House since 1975 have granted committees the power to subpoena witnesses and materials, administer oaths, and meet at any time within the United Statesâpowers that were previously granted through resolutions providing blanket investigatory authorities that were agreed to at the start of a Congress or through authorizing resolutions for each impeachment investigation. In two of the three recent cases, the House agreed to separate resolutions to allow committee counsel to take affidavits and depositions. If the House does approve an authorizing resolution, then in addition to the Rules Committee, the Judiciary Committee can report an original resolution authorizing an impeachment investigation if impeachment resolutions have been referred to the committee. In the case of the most recent authorization of a presidential impeachment inquiry, the Judiciary Committee reported such a resolution, and the full House debated it. As mentioned above, pursuant to a resolution agreed to by the House, the Judiciary Committee reviewed material submitted by an independent counsel appointed to investigate President Bill Clinton. The Judiciary Committee then reported a resolution ( H.Res. 581 , 105 th Congress) authorizing an investigation into whether sufficient grounds existed for the impeachment of the President. The resolution was privileged for immediate consideration. The chair of the Judiciary Committee called up the resolution and asked unanimous consent that instead of being recognized for the normal one hour, his time be extended to two hours, half of which he would yield to the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee for purposes of debate only. After debate under the terms of this unanimous consent agreement, the House ordered the previous question on the resolution by voice vote, ending further debate of the resolution. A minority-party Representative offered a motion to recommit, and, pursuant to a unanimous consent agreement, the motion was debated for 10 minutes before being defeated on a roll call vote. As noted, absent this unanimous consent agreement, the motion to recommit would not have been debatable. The resolution was then agreed to by a record vote, 258-176. In the 93 rd Congress (1973-1974), multiple resolutions to impeach President Richard M. Nixon were introduced and referred to the Judiciary Committee. The committee began an examination of the charges against the President under its general investigatory authority. The House also approved a resolution, reported by the House Rules Committee, providing additional investigation authority that did not specifically mention impeachment. In late 1973, the House agreed to another resolution that provided for additional expenses of the committee, and floor debate and the report from the Committee on House Administration indicate that the funds were intended in part for the impeachment inquiry. On February 1, 1974, the Judiciary Committee reported an original resolution ( H.Res. 803 ; H.Rept. 93-774) mandating an investigation to determine whether the House should impeach President Nixon and continuing the availability of funds. On February 6, 1974, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee called up the resolution as a question of privilege. It was debated under the hour rule, with the chairman yielding time to other Members for purposes of debate only. The Judiciary Committee chair moved the previous question before any other Member was recognized to control time under the hour rule, and the House ordered the previous question 342-70. The resolution authorizing the investigation was then agreed to, 410-4. Committee Action The standing rules of the House that affect committee investigations apply as well to impeachment investigations by the Judiciary Committee. A resolution authorizing an impeachment investigation might place additional limitations, or grant additional authorities, to the committee. In addition, the committee itself might adopt rules specific to an impeachment inquiry. It has not been unusual for the Judiciary Committee to authorize subcommittees or to create task forces to conduct impeachment investigations, and in that case the full committee would establish the authority of the subcommittee or task force. Investigation and Hearings Under House Rule XI, committees have the authority to subpoena persons or written records, conduct hearings, and incur expenses (including travel expenses) in connection with investigations. Rule XI, clause 2(h)(2), requires two committee members to take testimony or receive evidence. In past impeachment proceedings, the House has agreed to resolutions authorizing committee staff to take depositions without Members present, and the Judiciary Committee has agreed to internal guidelines for the mode and conduct of depositions. In the 116 th Congress, pursuant to H.Res. 6 , the chairs of all standing committees (except the Rules Committee) as well as the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence may order the taking of depositions by committee counsel. In modern practice, the federal official under investigation is generally allowed certain rights, including the right to be represented by counsel. If a committee were to conduct hearings, these proceedings would generally be governed by House and committee rules (and any specific rules agreed to in the authorizing resolution). Under House Rule XI, notice of hearings must be provided one week in advance, and members of the committee are guaranteed the right to question witnesses under the five-minute rule. Hearings are generally public, but they could be closed pursuant to regular House rules that allow the committee to agree, by holding a vote in public session with a majority of the committee present, to close a hearing for three specific reasons: the evidence or testimony would endanger national security, compromise sensitive law enforcement information, or would tend to "defame, degrade, or incriminate the witness." Again, the resolution authorizing an impeachment investigation could alter these procedures. The Judiciary Committee conducted multiple public hearings in connection with the impeachment of federal judges in 2009. The committee had created a task force to investigate whether two federal judges should be impeached. The task force conducted hearings during which they heard from a variety of witnesses, including law professors with expertise on impeachable offenses, individuals with information about the crimes the judges were accused of committing, and task force attorneys who reported on the status of the investigation. In 1998, the Judiciary Committee held four hearings in connection with the impeachment of President Clinton. The committee received testimony from 19 experts on the history of impeachment at one hearing and from the independent counsel at another. Various witnessed testified at a third hearing on the consequences of perjury and related crimes. Over two days of hearing in early December 1998, at the request of the Administration, the committee also heard testimony from White House counsel. In recent decades, it has been more common than not that a congressional committee used information provided from another outside investigation. In four of the five judicial impeachment investigations undertaken by the Judiciary Committee since 1980, "the accused judge had either been subject to a federal criminal trial or pled guilty to a federal criminal charge prior to the initiation of impeachment proceedings in the House." In the case of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, as mentioned above, the results of an independent counsel investigation alleging impeachable offenses were submitted to the House and referred to the Judiciary Committee. Markup of Articles of Impeachment A committee charged with investigating impeachable offences might, after conducting its investigation and reviewing any evidence submitted from other investigations, meet to consider articles of impeachment, and such a meeting is referred to as a markup. The articles of impeachment are in the form of a simple resolution (H.Res.___). The procedures for considering and reporting out an impeachment resolution are the same as those used for other legislation. Notice must generally be given of the proposed meeting, and the text of the articles of impeachment must generally be available 24 hours in advance of the meeting, although House Rule XI, clause 2 (g)(3)(B), provides some exceptions to these requirements. Members of the committee could expect an opportunity to offer amendments to the articles of impeachment, which would be debated under the five-minute rule. Importantly, a majority of the committee must be physically present at the time of the vote to report. Alternatively, after an investigation, the committee might also choose to report a recommendation that impeachment was not warranted. In the case of the two most recent presidential impeachments, the Judiciary Committee held a public, televised markup of the impeachment articles for several days. A motion to recommend a resolution to impeach President Nixon was considered by the Judiciary Committee for six days at the end of July 1974. The committee agreed to special procedures for the markup, such as a 10-hour period for "general debate," and each article of impeachment was considered separately for amendment. The resolution included two articles of impeachment, which were both agreed to, as amended. A third article of impeachment was proposed as an amendment and agreed to, and two additional articles offered as amendments were rejected. The President resigned before the committee reported an impeachment resolution to the full House. In 1998, the Judiciary Committee considered articles impeaching President Clinton for three days in December under procedures modelled after those used in 1974. A unanimous consent agreement provided that the four articles of impeachment included in the chairman's draft resolution would be debated, amended, and voted on separately. Each member of the committee was allotted 10 minutes for an opening statement. The committee considered and agreed to an amendment to Article I and an amendment to Article IV. All four articles were agreed to, and a resolution ( H.Res. 611 , 105 th Congress) was reported to the House. A written report was prepared and several Members submitted additional, minority, and dissenting views, a right protected under House Rule XI, clause 2(l), if notice of intent is given at the time a committee approves a matter. Member Access to Information Prior to Full House Consideration Under House Rule XI, clause 2(e), committee records are the property of the House, and all Members can have access to them. The committee may, however, place reasonable restrictions on where, when, and how Members might access the records. In addition, access to committee investigatory material might be limited, at least for a time, while the committee determines if it qualifies as a committee record under House Rule XI, and, if so, if release is prohibited pursuant to other House rules. A committee might also take actions to protect the confidentiality of investigative materials. The primary mechanism by which an investigating committee can and has chosen to limit access to inquiry information is through the use of executiveâor closedâsession. Under House Rule XI, clause 2(g)(1), a committee can operate in executive session by majority vote, a quorum being present, to restrict attendance at a business session to only committee members or others authorized by the committee. Similarly, a committee can receive evidence or testimony as if in executive session, which, under Rule XI, clause 2(k)(7), may only be released through authorization by the committee. Even when access to information received in executive session is granted to Members, the material may be subject by the committee to further conditions under which it may be viewed. In addition, the copying, releasing, or taking notes on materials received in executive session is strictly prohibited without permission of the committee. Executive sessions were periodically used during the inquiries into Presidents Nixon and Clinton. Further restrictions on access to information can be adopted by the House or the investigating committee. As previously mentioned, the Judiciary Committee adopted special procedures by unanimous consent in 1974 that, among other provisions, limited access to information to select individuals within the committee and laid out rules for staff. As a precursor to the formal impeachment inquiry of President Clinton, the House agreed to H.Res. 525 during the 105 th Congress directing the Judiciary Committee to review the independent counsel's report to Congress to determine if impeachment proceedings were warranted. Section 4 of the resolution limited access to executive session material to the Judiciary Committee and employees designated by the chairman and ranking memberâa more strict requirement than called for under House Rule XI. Notably, the resolution also made 445 pages of the independent counsel's report immediately available to the public and set a deadline by which the rest of the report would be released from its executive session status based on recommendations by the committee. Prior to the adoption of H.Res. 525 , House leadership reportedly discussed at length the issue of access to the independent counsel report by the public, the President, and Members of the House. Consideration of Articles of Impeachment on the House Floor Although floor consideration of an impeachment resolution largely resembles floor consideration of legislation, there is one difference regarding disorderly language: Under regular House procedures, it is not in order to use language that is personally offensive toward the President, which would include accusations that the President committed a crime or allusions to unethical behavior. During consideration of an impeachment resolution, however, remarks in debate can refer to the alleged misconduct of the President that is under consideration by the House. Members should still abstain from other language "personally offensive" to the President. Reported by the Judiciary Committee Articles of impeachment reported by the Judiciary Committee are privileged for immediate consideration on the House floor. The chair of the committee (or a designee) could call up the resolution containing the articles at any time other business is not pending, and the resolution would be considered immediately under the hour rule. Under this procedure, a majority of the House controls the length of debate and can prevent amendment. After some debate, the majority could vote to order the previous question, which, as mentioned above, brings the House to an immediate vote on the main question: whether to agree to the impeachment resolution, in this case. Passage is by simple majority vote. A motion to recommit the impeachment resolution, with or without instructions, would be in order after the previous question was ordered but before the vote on the resolution. This motion, however, would not be subject to debate. As is always the case, any instructions in the motion to recommit must be germane to the resolution. In the two most recent instances in which the House considered an impeachment resolution of a federal judge, the resolution was called up as privileged and debated for an hour, and no Member offered a motion to recommit. In both cases, a Member demanded a division of the resolution, which allowed the House to vote separately on each article of impeachment. When the House considered a resolution ( H.Res. 611 , 105 th Congress) to impeach President Clinton, the reported resolution was called up as a question of privilege. A unanimous consent request propounded by the majority floor manager that provided for four hours of debate on the resolution, equally divided, and 10 minutes of debate on a motion to recommit was objected to. The House then considered the resolution for several hours, as no Member moved the previous question, until another unanimous consent agreement was propounded and agreed to. This agreement allowed debate to continue until 10 p.m. that night and provided for an additional hour of debate the next day, a Saturday. It further provided that if a motion to recommit with instructions was offered, it would be debatable for 10 minutes. On the second day of consideration, after the previous question was ordered, a Member moved to recommit the impeachment resolution with instructions. The instructions proposed an amendment to censure the President. The Speaker, however, ruled that the amendment in the instructions was not germane. The House sustained the ruling of the Speaker by voting to table an appeal. A Member demanded a division of the resolution, and the House agreed to two of the four articles of impeachment under consideration. In the case of the Nixon impeachment proceedings, the full House never acted on a resolution of impeachment. As noted, President Nixon resigned before the Judiciary Committee reported its recommendation that the President be impeached. The House approved a resolution using the suspension of the rules procedure acknowledging that the Judiciary Committee had approved articles of impeachment, commending the members of the Judiciary Committee for their work, and providing for the printing of its report. Rather than considering an impeachment resolution under the hour rule, the House could also choose to consider an impeachment resolution under the terms of a resolution reported by the Rules Committee (a special rule). This process would operate in the same two-step way it does for major legislation in the House. The House would first debate the Rules Committee-reported resolution setting the terms for consideration of the impeachment resolution. The rule from the Rules Committee could provide for a particular length of debate, structure any amendment process, and potentially structure voting to allow each article to be voted on separately. It could preclude motions that would otherwise be in order under the hour rule, such as a motion to table the resolution. After the House agreed to the rule, it would then consider the impeachment resolution under the terms established by that rule. Finally, consideration and debate of an impeachment resolution could be governed by a unanimous consent agreement. The House might take up the resolution by unanimous consent or call it up as a question of privilege and change the terms of its consideration by unanimous consent, such as was described above in the case of the Clinton impeachment resolution. A unanimous consent agreement can structure consideration just like a special rule, but it is agreed to without a vote and usually with little or no floor debate. The major difference is that, procedurally, it is necessary for all Representatives to support a unanimous consent agreement, while only a simple majority is necessary to agree to a special rule. The fact that the same terms for consideration could be established through a rule can influence unanimous consent agreements. Offered on the Floor as a Question of the Privileges of the House As described in an earlier section of this report, any Member of the House could also offer on the floor a resolution containing articles of impeachment as a "question of the privileges of the House." Taking this action will not necessarily result in a direct vote on the articles of impeachment or even debate of the articles, because the House could choose instead to take a different action on the resolution, such as to refer it to the Judiciary Committee. To raise a question of the privileges of the House, a Member would take the following steps: Draft a resolution containing articles of impeachment. Consult with the Office of the House Parliamentarian to ensure that the resolution qualifies as a question of the privileges of the House. On the House floor, rise to give notice of intent to offer a question of the privileges of the House. The Member giving notice reads the draft resolution in full on the floor. (The majority and minority leader do not need to give notice; a question of the privileges of the House raised by either leader would be considered immediately.) The Speaker is required to schedule consideration of the question of the privileges of the House within two legislative days. At a time scheduled by the Speaker, rise to offer the resolution as a question of the privileges of the House. The Speaker will rule as to whether the resolution constitutes a proper question of the privileges of the House. If it does, the resolution will be assigned a number and will be pending before the House for consideration. A question of the privileges of the House is considered under the hour rule. Often, the House votes to dispose of such resolutions by referring them to committee or by tabling them. The House could also order the previous question to end debate on the resolution and then vote directly on it. However, the House has never impeached an officer without a committee investigation. Appointment and Role of House Managers in the Senate Trial After the House has agreed to articles of impeachment, it then appoints Members to serve as managers in the Senate trial. In recent practice, the House has appointed managers by agreeing to a House resolution. The House also, by resolution, informs the Senate that it has adopted articles of impeachment and authorizes the managers to conduct the trial in the Senate. The House could agree to separate resolutions or, as has been the case with recent impeachments, to a single resolution accomplishing each of these purposes. Such resolutions are privileged, and sometimes they have been taken up and agreed to by unanimous consent. After the Senate receives the resolution(s) from the House, the Senate informs the House when the managers can present the articles of impeachment to the Senate. At the appointed time, the House managers read the resolution authorizing their appointment and the resolution containing the articles of impeachment on the Senate floor and then leave until the Senate invites them back for the trial. At the trial, the House managers, who might be assisted by outside counsel, present evidence against the accused and could be expected to respond to the defense presented by the accused (or his or her counsel) or to questions submitted in writing by Senators. A full description of Senate procedures in an impeachment trial is beyond the scope of this report. The Senate has a special set of rulesâagreed to in the 19 th centuryâthat provide some guidance for impeachment trial proceedings. However, in modern practice the Senate has agreed to alternative or supplemental procedures both for judicial impeachment trials and the impeachment trial of President Clinton. The 19 th -century impeachment trial rules seemingly require a series of actions by the Senate upon the receipt of articles of impeachment from the House. The Senate, however, just like the House, can set aside its rules by, for example, agreeing to a simple resolution. Under the regular rules of the Senate that govern consideration of legislation, such a resolution would not be subject to any debate restrictions. As a result, in that circumstance, a cloture process, requiring the support of three-fifths of the Senate, would be necessary to reach a vote on the resolution. Once the Senate has convened as a Court of Impeachment, however, the impeachment trial rules, not the regular rules of the Senate, will apply. The Senate impeachment trial rules and related precedents restrict debate on many resolutions and motions. The debate restrictions could allow a simple majority to determine some procedures for responding to articles of impeachment sent from the House.