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Nia and Aughie explore some of the various military and civilian honors and awards that may be granted by the President or Congress.
This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Announcer: Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie?
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm fine. Thank you. Because in particular, I can't wait to have a conversation with you because listeners, once again, Nia has informed me that she woke up this morning.
N. Rodgers: Feeling Presidential.
J. Aughenbaugh: Feeling very presidential.
N. Rodgers: And what they cannot see is my fingers doing that thing where you rub them against each other because you're planning something. I think of it as the Machiavellian finger exercises.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, it's like the bad guy in the Austin Powers movie.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Who is a mock of the bad guy in the Bond movies.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.
J. Aughenbaugh: Ernst Blofeld.
N. Rodgers: That's right, Ernst Blofeld. He had the marvelous fake star and the whole thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: He even had that.
N. Rodgers: And the cat.
J. Aughenbaugh: And the cat, yes.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, He was great. He's a great villain. I think that movies.
J. Aughenbaugh: You know who that actor was?
N. Rodgers: I don't.
J. Aughenbaugh: Donald Pleasence.
N. Rodgers: Oh, okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: He was also in John Carpenter's Escape From New York.
N. Rodgers: That's the original version that then Kurt Russell was in a version later.
J. Aughenbaugh: Kurt Russell was in both. Kurt Russell was in Escape From New York, but he was also in Escape from Los Angeles.
N. Rodgers: Okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: That was the sequel. The sequels, in my estimation, hardly ever listeners match the original. We could probably do an entire podcast episode.
N. Rodgers: If we were a popular culture podcast.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: On the wrongness of sequels. We should do that. We should do that in terms of court cases or something like that where the sequel.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or like elected officials who should have stopped their career at a certain point.
N. Rodgers: But they kept.
J. Aughenbaugh: But they come back.
N. Rodgers: That would be good, sequel, The Bad Thing. Well, but sometimes like the second Indiana Jones movie is terrible, but the third one is not bad.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: And the fourth one is okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: The fourth one's got Sean Connery, right?
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. That one I thought actually met.
N. Rodgers: The first one, which was just so good in part because we had not seen anything like that. It's my view of Star Wars, the original Star Wars, where the original Star Wars was magic, not because when you look back at it now it's particularly magical because in its time it was magical. You're sitting in the theater and the surround sound and the whole thing and it was awesome, but what I want to know from you my dear is, what awards can I give my cronies?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, it's interesting you point this out because listeners, there are a whole bunch of awards that both the office of President but also Congress can give out. Let's focus first Nia on you as President. President Nia Rodgers.
N. Rodgers: I would Probably use my full name.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, Stephanie.
N. Rodgers: I would probably use Stephanie because it sounds more formal.
J. Aughenbaugh: I've been asked by students, Professor Aughenbaugh, if you ever became president, would you insist that everybody call you Aughe?
N. Rodgers: President Aughe? I think that you would not have a choice because I think people would call you President Aughenbaugh.
J. Aughenbaugh: I said I'm pretty sure that I would have a difficult time actually responding because people have been referring to me as Aughe since I've been like four or five years old.
N. Rodgers: Well, but even if they called you President Aughenbaugh could sign things Aughe.
J. Aughenbaugh: Just Aughe.
N. Rodgers: And then it would work because it's the President and you can sign your name. You could sign your name Boba Fett if you wanted to, and as long as you're president and you're not certifiable, they can. Actually, I don't know if that's true. There are probably legal concerns with the contracts and all that other stuff, but that's neither here nor there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Here nor there, presidential awards, the big one Nia.
N. Rodgers: President Rogers giving out the biggest Presidential Award.
J. Aughenbaugh: Probably the big one, at least for civilians, is the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is considered the highest civilian award given by the United States government. The first one was given out by President Truman. He actually focused on war connected acts or services. It was Kennedy who changed the focus to civilians. He expanded it beyond military and national defense to world peace, cultural, and other significant public-private endeavors. Yes. That's the big one.
N. Rodgers: That's the one that they have the big wide ribbon and it lays on your chest. It's a big.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a huge.
N. Rodgers: It's a big honk and metal. It's not a thing like you know how you see in third-world dictatorships. You see the guys wearing the jackets and they've got the little metals across their chest, I'm not trying to be rude, those medals probably mean a lot to them in their.
J. Aughenbaugh: Careers.
N. Rodgers: Whatever they have done, but they're all relatively small.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Seeing like the ones that the queen wears sometimes she'll wear a medal on her lapel. Like when she's visiting certain troops, she'll wear a medal that represents the troops, and they're all relatively small. We're talking about probably the size of $0.5. Isn't the medal of freedom the one that's like six inches wide, it's huge?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. It's circumference is huge.
N. Rodgers: It's a small salad plate.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, you pretty much have to do neck exercises before the ceremony just so you can go ahead and be ready to handle the weight of this big honk and thing that's coded. Nia, I can't wait to read the transcript of this particular episode because both you and I have used the word honking.
N. Rodgers: Sorry, transcribers, but they're not all huge like that, but they're all meaningful. There are other but that's the biggie in terms of when you see ceremonies at the White House. There's two ceremonies that take place at the White House. One of them is Congressional as well, which I think you're going to get to later.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's a separate thing from the Medal of Freedom, because that's the Medal of Honor?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But we're talking about the Medal of freedom right now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Freedom, yes. Not to be undone, President Nixon of course, he was not going to be undone by President Kennedy.
N. Rodgers: Oh please, that was just.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nixon could not stand John F. Kennedy and let's face it.
N. Rodgers: For good reasons.
J. Aughenbaugh: For good reasons.
N. Rodgers: I mean, those reasons were not just Nixon being bonkers.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, beyond his usual paranoia. Remember listeners Richard Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election to JFK and if two states had gone differently, Illinois and California, it would've been Richard Nixon as president in 1961 and not JFK.
N. Rodgers: Well, in part of what must have been frustrating for Nixon is that California was his state. It's always hard when you lose your own state. But there also were some questions about underhanded behavior and the amount of money that was poured into things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Kennedy represented everything that Nixon despised because Kennedy was a North East liberal elite.
N. Rodgers: Educated at the IVs and.
J. Aughenbaugh: Went to Harvard, went to Harvard Law.
N. Rodgers: Born into money.
J. Aughenbaugh: He actually won one of the awards we're going to talk about in just a few minutes. The Congressional Medal of Honor, he won a CMH? Nixon grew up in a lower middle class family, won a scholarship to Duke University Law School, which by the way was really good law school but he was a scholarship student.
N. Rodgers: Kennedy was handsome and he had a beautiful wife and a young family. Nixon not so much. Nixon not particularly handsome. His wife was lovely. Pat Nixon was lovely, but she at that point already was struggling with substance. No, sorry, wrong person. Wrong person I'm thinking of Betty Ford.
J. Aughenbaugh: That was Betty Ford.
N. Rodgers: I'm thinking Betty Ford.
J. Aughenbaugh: But, I mean, Pat Nixon in many ways, was your standard 1940s 50s politician's wife. She was.
N. Rodgers: Friendly, pleasant.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, she was occasionally seen, never heard whereas.
N. Rodgers: Jackie had that baby voice that she talked in. I just love the president so much. I mean, there was a lot of reasons for their mutual dislike, let's put it that way.
J. Aughenbaugh: Their animosity.
N. Rodgers: He makes his own award, but he does this in '69.
J. Aughenbaugh: 'Sixty-nine, yes.
N. Rodgers: Well before Watergate and the crazy years and all that stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. This is called the Presidential Citizens Medal, designed to recognize US citizens who had performed "Exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens". It is considered the second highest civilian award.
N. Rodgers: If you saved a bunch of people from a fire?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You're a police officer who goes ahead and saves a baby from being a gunshot victim in a gang war.
N. Rodgers: You may very well end up with the Presidential Citizen?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You're a school teacher that goes ahead and saves a bunch of kids from a school shooting. You're a bus driver who put your life at risk to make sure that all the kids on your bus, when the bus rolled over didn't die. It's that award.
N. Rodgers: Instead of being a world peace, world culture, it's much more internal to the United States?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: It makes sense from somebody who was more isolationist in some ways, although he opened the door to China, he did that for political reasons and for improving the United States reasons.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure.
N. Rodgers: That's cool to think about that.
J. Aughenbaugh: The good way to distinguish, listeners, the difference between the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Presidential Citizens Medal is, and I saw this when I was doing my research, Nia. The Citizens Medal is for the everyday person. The school crossing guard who gets up every morning at 6:30, and for 8-10 years nothing really happens at the traffic stop sign.
N. Rodgers: But one day they save 10 kids from being run over by a runaway vehicle.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. It's for the everyday person.
N. Rodgers: Probably their life then goes back to normal.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Then we have a third. You're probably interested in this because of your background in Homeland Security. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush 43 established two military medals concerning the global war on terrorism.
N. Rodgers: I am embarrassed. I did not know these existed.
J. Aughenbaugh: I knew of the one, I didn't know of the other. I was aware of the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, which focuses on military operations to combat terrorism. I was not aware of the other one, the Expeditionary Medal.
N. Rodgers: The Expeditionary Medal?
J. Aughenbaugh: Medal, yes. Say that fast, five times.
N. Rodgers: Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal.
J. Aughenbaugh: Expeditionary Medal, which focuses on service men and women who participated on or after the 9/11 attacks.
N. Rodgers: But both of those are limited to certain theaters of operation?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. That's right.
N. Rodgers: Operation Noble Eagle and Operation Enduring Freedom.
J. Aughenbaugh: Freedom. That's right.
N. Rodgers: Which are very specific theaters of war.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They're not sprawling awards. They're rather tight awards.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Relatively speaking.
J. Aughenbaugh: It begs the question, are we going to get rid of those awards since we are "We're no longer fighting the global war on terrorism."
N. Rodgers: That's interesting. Can they be awarded posthumously? Do we know?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. They can be.
N. Rodgers: It could be that they could continue to award them if people pass away who served in those theaters, but there will be no new ones because there's no new operations.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. By the way, listeners, these first three medals that we just referenced, the Medal of Freedom, the Citizens Medal, and then the Global War on Terrorism medals were all created by executive orders. As you may recall based on our episode about executive orders with our colleague Bill Newman, guess what future presidents could do to the existence of these medals.
N. Rodgers: They could wipe them out or they could expand the parameters of them. If somebody wanted to keep the Global War on Terrorism medals and they just wanted to change the theaters in which those are happening, then an executive order could say, and now it includes blah, blah, blah as well?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Or they could say, "Yeah, we don't want to give citizens anymore awards. That's it. We're done."
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Because remember, Nia, the Medal of Freedom was initiated by Truman.
N. Rodgers: Then Kennedy's executive order changed it, shifted it.
J. Aughenbaugh: He broaden the focus.
N. Rodgers: Because Truman made it a war medal.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Kennedy made it also a peace medal.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Are there other medals I could give?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, Nia. There are other medals you could give out. There is the Enrico Fermi Award for contributions in the field of nuclear energy. The Department of Energy makes recommendations to the White House, and the White House has the final say on if anybody gets the Enrico Fermi Award.
N. Rodgers: I hope the guys from Three Mile Island got that for preventing a nuclear meltdown.
N. Rodgers: Meltdown, yeah. The next one, for those of you with a little bit of business background, you might like, in fact, the next two. We have the E Star and E Awards for contributions to export expansion. These are nominated by the Department of Commerce. Then we have the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, they recognize the organizations for their achievements in quality, in business performance.
N. Rodgers: From the National Institute of Standards and Technology?
J. Aughenbaugh: Technology, yes.
N. Rodgers: Let's say that you take some model for doing a thing and you improve it such that it makes your workers safer or you make some improvement, your business could theoretically be awarded that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Or to give you a real-time example. What if you're a person who figures out a way to minimize the supply shortages that have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. You could probably win the Malcolm Baldrige Award.
N. Rodgers: You might win the E Award.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Depending on whether you did it through exports or not.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: We could just pile awards on a person.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, we could. Now for you STEM folks, the next one might be of interest. There is the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. These are nominated by the National Science Foundation.
N. Rodgers: My algebra teacher in college was so patient with me, they should get that award.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm thinking any of the teachers who taught me math in my life.
N. Rodgers: Should get that award.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I agree.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who had to endure me as a math student.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. I'm with you. Everyone I should go back and nominate for.
J. Aughenbaugh: Mr. Davis, my high school trigonometry teacher should get this award, right?
N. Rodgers: Yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: I can't even remember the name of the professor of my college calculus class, but the one who endured seeing me Monday, Wednesday, Friday afternoon from 2:00-3:00, and God bless him, he passed me, he should win this award because I was so incompetent in the field of math.
N. Rodgers: I'm with you on that. We should just go down a list of the math professors over in the math department and just put them all in for it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Just because we know they've got students like us.
J. Aughenbaugh: The next one, and this is really long-winded. We've got the Presidential Rank Award in the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service. Basically, this is an award to honor civil servants.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say, is this for just people like us who just work in bureaucrats?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The nameless, faceless bureaucrat who year in and year out comes to work, does their job. Yes, this is an award for them.
N. Rodgers: Okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then the last one, the President's Environmental Youth Award, which actually was first recommended by somebody, Bill Newman and I talked about with you Nia, in a previous podcast episode, a government exemplar, William Ruckelshaus. Ruckelshaus was the one who went ahead and said, we should have an award to encourage American youth to focus on the environment.
N. Rodgers: That would've been under Nixon?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Okay. Because that's the EPA. That comes out of EPA. That's, I think, a really cool thing, the idea of awarding young people and letting them be an example to other people. I'm not trying to say that they are lesser, I'm just saying that there are a whole bunch of other things like honors and prizes and the presidential prize for best poem, that thing. Sorry, I shouldn't even say that because there's a poet laureate. There's a great big table of awards, isn't there? Where there's just hundreds of awards that the president can give out?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. For instance, there is the National Medal of Science, which is recommended by the National Science Foundation. We have the Medal of Technology, which comes from the National Medal of Technology, Technology Administration Office. We have the National Security Medal, which not surprisingly is nominated by the National Security Council, which reports to the president and the executive office of the president. For those of you in law enforcement, we have the Presidential Medal of Valor for Public Safety Officers, and this is nominated through the Department of Justice. There are a whole bunch of medals.
N. Rodgers: I think it's one of the more pleasurable things you would get today.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Because a lot of times you're saying no, or maybe, you're doing a whole lot of sites stepping of things and trying to work.
J. Aughenbaugh: The country is going to have to sacrifice because we're dealing with X. Nobody wants to go ahead.
N. Rodgers: Sacrifice. Nobody.
J. Aughenbaugh: Of course, yeah.
N. Rodgers: That's not a thing that people yay ever but they do yay awards.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, it's me and Nia's podcast episodes about pardoning the turkey or the White House Christmas Tree Lighting. Those are fun events where you bring people together, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: These awards, you're recognizing people who probably in most situations, then think about getting an award for doing their job. If you're the person who gets the Enrico Fermi Award, you probably worked in the department of energy for years, tracking the number of nukes that various nation-states around the world have, including some that are considered rogue nations.
N. Rodgers: Trying to get a hold of the ones that have gone missing.
J. Aughenbaugh: All of a sudden your boss shows up someday, and says, "Hey, by the way, you've been doing this."
N. Rodgers: Dress, nice for work Thursday because we're going over to the White House because you're getting an award.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, buddy, and you're like, "What? "
N. Rodgers: What's cool is the president gets to meet you and he gets to have lunch with you or do whatever. Probably sometimes they invite people for brunch or lunch or tea or whatever, and maybe sometimes they don't. It probably depends how busy the president is in a day. But it would be nice to be able to just sit down with that person and say, "Hey, so tell me more about what you do, and tell me about your family. Tell me about who you are as a person," which would be really cool. I'm sure that those people are all vetted, I doubt that anybody gets an award who has not been vetted so that when they hit the newspapers, somebody doesn't say. "That guy, he's a serial killer. He killed 16 people." The president does not want to be of the embarrassed.
J. Aughenbaugh: In his spare time, he has been using his basement as a storage facility.
N. Rodgers: For bodies. Exactly. Or he did all this nuclear stuff, but he's also been stealing uranium the whole time, and building his own nuclear weapon. Let's not have that be the case.
J. Aughenbaugh: He has sold it on the black market to former democratic regimes that are now authoritarian. He's a real overachiever.
N. Rodgers: I would imagine that some presidents don't give out awards because the vetting process stops them. Can I mention one thing that before we get to the congressional awards about the president?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I think there's a misconception that the Kennedy Center Awards are somehow presidentially arranged. They are not.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: The Kennedy Center is its own separate thing. It's a cultural entity of its own. They decide those awards and they invite the president to watch the performances and to fit the people who are getting the awards. You sit in a box with the president and first lady. Generally I don't know if Donald Trump attended the Kennedy Center, I don't believe he did. Not all presidents attend them, but they're all invited, I'm sure. Then they sit in the box with you and they celebrate your life achievements and all that other cool stuff with you, but they don't come out of the White House.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. They are decided by the Kennedy Center Board. As you pointed out, they invite the president and the first spouse to attend, and it's entirely up to the president, whether or not they do.
N. Rodgers: How can I put this nicely so the Kennedy Center doesn't ever think about not giving me an award? What's the likelihood of that? But I'm sure that they're also long in their productions because whenever you make something like that, you have to film it from more than one angle and may you only have to go back and redo parts of it. But patient's levels wise, that could be hard on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, Nia, you and I talked about this. Of all of our presidents, Donald Trump probably had, if not the least amount of patients as an elected official, pretty darn close. Because again, he comes from a different culture or a different environment.
N. Rodgers: He would struggle with not being the center of attention.
J. Aughenbaugh: The center of attention.
N. Rodgers: For better or worse, has made his career from being self involved.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's no longer a president.
N. Rodgers: I should say self promoting.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's no longer president and he's still occupying a lot of air and space within the American political sphere.
N. Rodgers: Because he struggles to not be the center of attention. The awards are specifically not about the president, they're about the individuals who are receiving the award.
J. Aughenbaugh: The awardees.
N. Rodgers: You have to subsume your ego a little bit, I think, as president. Basically honestly, really what it comes down to is president [inaudible] their fans of the people who were being awarded. They're excited to hear the music, they're excited to see the clips, they're excited to read the books, they're excited to know these people because they are excited by these.
J. Aughenbaugh: These awardees.
N. Rodgers: But congressional rewards. Now, can you explain to me, please? I guess we're not doing that one first. Can we skip to the Congressional Medal of Honor?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I didn't realize that it was not called the Congressional Medal of Honor until I read your notes. I thought it was always called the Congressional Medal, but that's not the name of it. The name of it is just the Medal of Honor.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We say congressional because it's actually done in the name of Congress, but it's given by the President.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I take it what happens is that Congress votes on that. We want to give the Medal of Honor to John Aughenbaugh, and then they send a note over to the White House saying, "Hey, when you've got a minute, we'd like you to award this."
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Is that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You basically laid out the process.
N. Rodgers: I'm sure it's more involved than that. I'm sure that there's subcommittees.
J. Aughenbaugh: Basically, the way this goes down is first, the CMH, and that's how it's referred to by those who serve in the military. It is probably the highest military honor.
N. Rodgers: You say military honor. You can only receive the Medal of Honor if you have been in active service.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and it's designed to recognize Gallantry in Action.
N. Rodgers: What a great phrase.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was created during the Civil War. It goes back to the civil war.
N. Rodgers: It's quite old.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But the way the process basically works is, let's say, Nia, you are a service person in the army and you do something really great on the battlefield.
N. Rodgers: A whole bunch of people are shot and I'm a medic and I run in and I pick them up and I run out with them. Great danger, I take a wound and I keep going because these are my guys and I got to save them.
J. Aughenbaugh: You save a whole bunch of lives. Your commanding officer would then make a recommendation to the now Department of Defense who will conduct an investigation.
N. Rodgers: I like how you say now because it used to be the Department of War.
J. Aughenbaugh: Men of war.
N. Rodgers: But either way, so it goes to the big wigs.
J. Aughenbaugh: They conduct an investigation, then they make a recommendation.
N. Rodgers: Do they make sure that the incident happened the way?
J. Aughenbaugh: That it was reported by the commanding officer, that there are witnesses who were willing to testify under oath that you did the heroic act or acts that have been reported through the chain of command.
N. Rodgers: It doesn't mistakenly given to somebody who wasn't the person who did something.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. You're not some self-promoting.
N. Rodgers: Jerk face who said, "I saved 20 people." What is it, valor thieves?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. There is a phrase, valor thieves. We don't want to reward valor thieves. After the DOD reviews the recommendations and signs off on them, then it goes to Congress, committees within both the House and the Senate. What we're talking about are the committees on, typically, Veterans Affairs. Once they sign off on it, typically, floor votes because they are typically non-controversial.
N. Rodgers: Well, because by the time it gets to the floor, this person has been vetted within an inch of their existence, they did the thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: They did the thing. Then in a resolution, it goes to the president. It's the president who then awards in a ceremony the Medal of Honor.
N. Rodgers: It's not just the medal, you get other stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I'm not trying to be a jerk, but it's a big deal. There's a reason that this is not a hugely common thing that happens.
J. Aughenbaugh: You get $1,000 bump to your monthly pension.
N. Rodgers: That's a lot of money, relatively.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is a lot of money.
N. Rodgers: Over the course of your lifetime.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. You also get access to military bases with privilege. It could be officer clubs, golf courses. What a lot of Americans don't understand is that a lot of our military bases have a full array of gyms, golf courses, etc.
N. Rodgers: They're at different levels?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: There is an officers one of those things and there's a non-officers one of those things. Even if you were not an officer and you were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, you would then have access to those privileged spots?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: That's a pretty heavy duty serious award.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is the big one. Nia, you and I have talked about this. We have friends, we have family members who served in the military. I saw this with my uncles. When they met CMH winners.
N. Rodgers: Saluted. They saluted, regardless of that person's rank, even if they were at the lower rank.
J. Aughenbaugh: They were just in awe.
N. Rodgers: Same with my family. If they met a Congressional Medal of Honor holder who was theoretically lower ranked, they would still come to attention because that person has done something extraordinary and you recognize that. It's a really cool and very emotional thing to watch when they're awarded. Then there's the Congressional Gold Medal, which is not to be mistaken for the Olympic Gold Medal, which is slightly different, I think.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Congressional Gold Medal is, according to Congress, and listeners, if you're picking up a little bit of a competition between the Congress and the Office, that's it.
N. Rodgers: You're not wrong about that.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're not wrong. According to Congress, this is, "The nation's highest civilian award and the most distinguished award given by the United States Congress." It's supposed to recognize lifetime contribution or a singular achievement.
N. Rodgers: What I love about your notes is that no statutory provisions govern this award. I love that. They can give it to anybody for any reason at any point. It doesn't have to be for your lifetime of service, it doesn't have to be for one extraordinary act, it could be for either one of those things. I love that it so-
J. Aughenbaugh: Opaque.
N. Rodgers: Yes. What are you giving this for? Because we feel like it.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, according to my research and also according to the Congressional Research Service, the CRS, this is probably our oldest governmental medal or award. The first one was authorized in 1776. Nia, you want to guess who received that?
N. Rodgers: In 1776, it's either going to be George Washington or Ben Franklin.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was GW, George Washington. You got the first one.
N. Rodgers: I'm not surprised because they wanted George Washington to be president for life. They basically were like, "Wouldn't you like to be king?" He's like, "No, you've missed the point." You've missed the point of our war, we don't want a king. That's a bad idea. But he was beloved.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But over time it has been its purpose, like the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Congressional Gold Medal's purpose is expanded. It goes well beyond military exploits. It's been given to figures in space exploration. I believe, for instance, Neil Armstrong and John Glenn both got Congressional Gold Medal. Medicine, arts, entertainment, humanitarian public service. It's been given to individuals, groups. A number of foreign citizens. I couldn't verify this though a number of articles I read indicated, for instance, Churchill got a Congressional Gold Medal because of his work in Great Britain during the Blitz. When the Germans were pretty much trying to bomb Great Britain back to the Stone Ages. But it's been given to one organization and I thought this was very interesting. The American Red Cross is the one organization that has received the Congressional Gold Medal.
N. Rodgers: The American Red Cross. Well, that makes sense.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The American Red Cross makes sense in terms of when most people think of disaster relief, that's actually the first organization that they think of. It is hugely by American standards, the one most people donate to, it's the one trust. Even with past difficulties that they may have had, people still have enormous trust in the American Red Cross.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, in fact, many scholars who researched American giving to non-profits, they point to how consistently Americans give to the American Red Cross as a sign although our government may be comparatively, shall we say less generous in regards to welfare benefits. Americans as private citizens tend to be some of the most giving around the world. Now, there is also a Congressional Award and this was established in 1979 and it's given out to young people ages 14-23.
N. Rodgers: Okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: Four program areas, one voluntary service, two personal development, three physical fitness. Again, you've got to love Congress, they go ahead and create these broad categories because it's Congress and the more specific you get, the more difficult it is to get agreement. Expedition and exploration. I tried to find a definition, Nia, for that last category.
N. Rodgers: You know what that would fall under something like that? Is improvements to the Internet or technology improvements. Because that would be, "exploration", expedition. I don't know how many 14-year-olds are discovering new continents, but maybe that's also happening. I don't know, I do think it's interesting that there's a physical fitness category. That I assume is the thing you would give to Olympic athletes who've represented the United States at the peak of their career is that you would give them the Congressional Award.
J. Aughenbaugh: You get a lot of nominees for members of Congress for star high school athletes.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say or sports teams like the winner of a state competition.
J. Aughenbaugh: What's interesting about the Congressional Award, and by the way of all the award names, this is the one that I would probably like to see improved or changed. Because I'm just like, "Could you not come up with a really nice title for this?"
N. Rodgers: If nothing else the Congressional Youth Award would at least give you an idea of what the heck it's about.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's about.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the Congressional Award has three achievement levels: gold, silver, and bronze.
N. Rodgers: So it really is like the Olympic awards. That's terrible.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Why would you do that? See Congress you take a nice thing and you muck it up, I'm just saying.
J. Aughenbaugh: There are two other Congressional Awards, listeners, that I want to make note and these are at the discretion of individual members.
N. Rodgers: Because they're not voted on by the full Congress.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. The US Senate Productivity Award. Again, could you not come up with a better title? It recognizes the achievements of organizations in productivity, customer service, or other areas depending upon the criteria adopted by the Senator.
N. Rodgers: Because I said so.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, pretty much.
N. Rodgers: Okay. Senate Productivity Award.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then the last one is the Medal of Merit given by individual members of Congress to recognize the achievements of their constituents. These last two awards are funded privately. Interestingly enough, they've been used by just a few members of Congress.
N. Rodgers: Well, I'm not trying to be ugly, but if there's no criteria for an award I'm not sure how valuable it is. It's like a participation trophy. At that point just showing up gets you the thing then I'm not sure how prestigious it would be.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then you add, Nia, the fact that they are funded privately, that begs all ethical questions.
N. Rodgers: Hey, if I throw some money your way, how about you give us these awards so we can put the plaque in the front office. I could see where that could easily slide into quid pro quo, without intending to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hey, we will give you a bunch of money so you can give out a bunch of awards, and by the way, after you get re-elected, when are you bringing home some pork that's going to benefit us. Again, the phrase you mentioned, quid pro quo that stains Congress but nevertheless.
N. Rodgers: You just said, pork as in pork-barrel projects?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I've been thinking a lot about something I want to run by you here on the podcast, so it's on the record.
J. Aughenbaugh: All right.
N. Rodgers: What do you think about super progressive projects being called tofu barrel products?
J. Aughenbaugh: Projects. We can distinguish.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We can distinguish between the more conservative ones and the more progressive ones.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, which ones get labeled tofu barrel legislation versus pork barrel. Now, I don't know enough about tofu.
N. Rodgers: We may have to phase out pork because it's offensive to some people, but I like pork barrel because it's been around for hundreds of years. We've talked about that since before we were a country but I think we need a new aspect of it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Also where I was going with this Nia is pork used to be stored in barrels.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: What's tofu stored in?
N. Rodgers: Plastic clamshells. How is the tofu clamshell project.
J. Aughenbaugh: You see where I was going with this?
N. Rodgers: Yeah. No, I like it. Yeah, you're right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because you need to have the appropriate storage.
N. Rodgers: Yes, pork barrel and tofu clamshell?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. How about that?
N. Rodgers: We've just come up with a whole new thing. We own this idea people. So if you hear it and you publish it, you need to attribute it to us.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I'm thinking that our colleague, Hillary, would probably suggest we need to copyright this.
N. Rodgers: Heck yeah. We need to get T-shirts made that say, Tofu clamshell podcast.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, we need to add to our merchandising and swag line. Because remember listeners, our faithful listeners, you know that Nia has made two suggestions. One, we need to have arbitrary and capricious T-shirts. Then the second one, which she usually makes fun of me saying all the time, well, it's based on the commerce clause.
N. Rodgers: That's our t-shirt line. We now need to add a third that says, tofu clamshell podcast. Oh, my gosh, we're in. That's it. We're going to make millions except we won't, because nobody would buy those ones but it's just funny.
J. Aughenbaugh: On a more sober note, we will have for the research guide, once again find documents put together by the Congressional Research Service.
N. Rodgers: Who he love because they work for the Library of Congress.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, they do.
N. Rodgers: Briefly what happens is a member of Congress says, "Hey, we ought to have a report on a thing," and they send an email to the Congressional Research Service and somebody gets assigned that thing and they go research the snot out of it and then they write a report that is generally neutral and then they return it to the Member of Congress.
J. Aughenbaugh: Here's the other great thing listeners, CRS reports are hardly ever long or long-winded. They are usually 6, 10, 12 pages.
N. Rodgers: To the point, get you in there, get you out.
J. Aughenbaugh: To the point and they will have citations. If you want to look up other stuff you can. I'm not being ugly, but it is designed to be read by Members of Congress or their staffs.
N. Rodgers: Who don't have time to read a 200 page on this.
J. Aughenbaugh: Page report.
N. Rodgers: It'll be exciting to see what they do with COVID.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: But anyway, we will list that on the podcast website but keep an eye out for our merch.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Thanks, Aughe.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thanks, Nia.
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