§333 Training Courses on Workings of Congress

Summary

Create and run a course that teaches how Congress works and offer it at least once each year. People who must take the course yearly are flag officers, career reserved senior executives in the Coast Guard, and political appointees in the Coast Guard or at DHS who have Coast Guard responsibilities (including the Senior Advisor to the Secretary for the Coast Guard). The course will cover Congress’s history and structure, the papers Congress makes (like bills and reports), how the House and Senate make laws and handle the budget, authorization and appropriation steps, the Senate’s advice-and-consent process for nominees and treaties, notification and reporting duties to Congress, the roles of members and staff, congressional oversight and independent watchdogs (for example Inspectors General and the GAO), legal and ethical duties to cooperate with oversight, a short note on the Privacy Act, the right of Coast Guard people to contact Congress, and, for Coast Guard recipients, the laws and policies they need to know to improve compliance, ethics, professionalism, and timely responses to oversight. Make a separate in-person course for congressional affairs personnel and others who deal directly with Congress (for example fellows, liaisons, counsels, district governmental affairs officers, staff who send Coast Guard correspondence to Congress, certain program offices, and general law staff). That course includes the same topics plus the specific roles of those Coast Guard offices and public affairs. If a congressional office asks in writing, the course can include a multi-day detail inside the Coast Guard Office of Coordination, Programs, and Accountability; the detail can be nonconsecutive. People assigned to these jobs must finish the training before they start. At least 60 percent of the lecturers and panelists must be experts on Congress who are not executive-branch employees, and the Commandant may accept pro bono instruction.