Kevin Johnson

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Staffing levels at the U.S. Secret Service have reached potentially "dangerous'' levels, as some agents assigned to protective details have been pressed to work 80- to 90-hour weeks after having exhausted overtime and salary allowances during the long campaign season, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said Tuesday.

"It is dangerous to the president, the vice president and their families,'' Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz said during a hearing examining the agency's operations. "That has to change.''

The hearing comes less than a month after USA TODAY reported that at least 1,000 agents, about a third of the agent workforce, had maxed out annual overtime and salary limits to deal with the unprecedented demands of the contentious political season and the agency's primary mission to secure the White House and its current occupants.

Some of the service's most veteran agents, according to agency records, reached their combined compensation limits — a maximum of $160,300 — as early as June and have not been eligible for overtime during the national political conventions and the frenetic, just-completed general election campaign.

At any one time, Chaffetz said Tuesday, the agency has been operating at personnel deficit of between 500 and 1,000 people.

Chaffetz and Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the panel's ranking Democrat, said Tuesday they would support proposed legislation that seeks to lift 2016 compensation limits in an attempt to pay agents for hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid overtime.

The service is now in the midst of the most ambitious hiring campaign in more than a decade, with the goal of pushing the size of the service from its current 6,507 agents, analysts and support staffers to up to more than 8,000 in the next several years.

The House hearing, part of a continuing congressional examination of the agency following a series of security breaches and incidents of agent misconduct, came as the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general concluded Tuesday that the service has made "good progress'' addressing problems that have roiled the ranks in recent years.

"In each area, the Secret Service has taken action to address the concerns and challenges identified by our office and this committee,'' the inspector general's report found. "Although we have seen encouraging progress, many of the implemented changes require long-term commitment and planning.''

Among the continuing concerns expressed by lawmakers Tuesday were the incremental gains and slow pace of the ongoing hiring effort.

Even as demands on the agency have mounted in the past two years, personnel levels have dropped substantially, from 7,024 in 2011, to 6,507 this year.

"A lack of dedicated human resources staff lengthens the Secret Services' hiring process,'' the inspector general found. For agents, the average time to hire has declined in recent years, from 482 days in fiscal year 2013 to 298 days in 2015, while the time period for the uniform officers has ticked up recently, from 272 days in 2014 to 359 in 2015.

Attrition, also has been cutting into recent gains. In fiscal 2016, new agent hires numbered 281. After accounting for retirements and resignations, the net increase amounted to just 84.

"Gentlemen,'' Cummings told agency staffers Tuesday, "we need to find out why we are losing so many so quickly.''

Hundreds of Secret Service agents maxed out on overtime