[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 129 (Monday, September 14, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9304-S9308]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           PUSH OUT THE CZARS

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, according to news accounts, there are 
approximately 32 or 34 so-called czars in the Obama White House and 
government. Respected voices in the Senate--Senator Byrd, a senior 
Democrat and Senator Hutchison, a senior Republican--have pointed out 
that these czars are an affront to the Constitution. They are anti-
democratic. They are a poor example of a new era of transparency, which 
is what was promised to this country. I would add that they are a poor 
way to manage the government, and they seem to me to be the principal 
symptom of this administration's 8-month record of too many Washington 
takeovers. We have an AIDS czar, an auto recovery czar, a border czar, 
and a California water czar. We have a car czar, a central region czar, 
and a domestic violence czar. There is an economic czar, an energy and 
environment czar, a faith-based czar and a Great Lakes czar. The list 
goes on, up to 32 or 34. One of these, for example, is the pay czar, 
Mr. Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department's Special Master for 
Compensation. He will approve pay packages at seven firms receiving 
TARP funds, thus deciding how much pay is too much. This will affect 
the top earners at some of the major corporations in America.
  According to Mr. Feinberg, in answer to some questions, he said:

       The statute provides guideposts but the statute ultimately 
     says I have discretion to decide what it is that these people 
     should make and that my determination will be final. Anything 
     is possible under the law.

  That is the pay czar. Then we have a manufacturing czar. The 
manufacturing czar's name is Mr. Ron Bloom. He is also the car czar. We 
have had manufacturing czars before in other administrations, but as 
Rollcall pointed out on September 8, Mr. Bloom's background and new 
position differs from the two czars who served under former President 
George W. Bush:

       Bloom is a former union official, remaining close to 
     leaders in organized labor. Bush's manufacturing czars were 
     placed in the Commerce Department. Bloom, on the other hand, 
     was entrusted with a high profile Presidential task force on 
     autos, and will operate within an office that has broad 
     authority over domestic policy. He will head the auto task 
     force which is in the Treasury Department.
       According to the policy director for the AFL-CIO, Mr. Bloom 
     is expected to have a major role in the development of 
     climate change legislation. So-called buy American provisions 
     that favor home-grown products, and tax credits for domestic 
     industry need to be included, said the policy director for 
     the AFL/CIO, in the climate change provision. If it's not 
     done right, the President could lose votes, said the AFL/CIO 
     Policy Director.

  In other words, Mr. Bloom may end up being the protectionist czar as 
well.
  Then there is the health czar, a very distinguished Tennessean, 
Nancy-Ann DeParle, a very able woman I know well. But who is in charge 
of health care policy? Is it the Secretary of Health and Human 
Services, confirmed by the Senate, accountable to the Congress, 
accountable, therefore, to the people of the country? Or is it someone 
in the White House who, an administration official says will ``wake up 
every morning focused on health care reform, and she is going to be 
focused on that the entire day through?''
  There have been czars in the White House, at least since President 
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Of the 32 or 34 we have today--and I am using 
those two numbers because there are different reports and 2 or 3 czar 
positions are vacant--only 8 are confirmed by the Senate. We have had 
czars before, but there has never been anything quite like this.
  Let me take my concerns one by one. Article I of the Constitution of 
the United States gives to the Congress the appropriations power and 
sets up, in articles II and III, the executive and judicial branches, a 
system of checks and balances to make sure no one branch of the Federal 
Government runs away with the government. Senator Robert Byrd, the 
President pro tempore of the Senate, wrote a letter to President Obama 
on February 23. Senator Byrd, who is often called the Constitutional 
conscience of the Senate, expressed his concern over the increasing 
appointments of White House czars and the relationship between these 
new positions and their executive branch counterparts, noting:

       Too often, I have seen these lines of authority and 
     responsibility become tangled and blurred, sometimes 
     purposely, to shield information and to obscure the decision-
     making process.

  That is Senator Byrd speaking. He goes on to say:

       The rapid and easy accumulation of power by White House 
     staff can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and 
     balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken 
     direction and control of programmatic areas that are the 
     statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.

  Continuing:

       As presidential assistants and advisers, these White House 
     staffers are not accountable for their actions to the 
     Congress, to Cabinet officials, and to virtually anyone but 
     the president. They rarely testify before congressional 
     committees, and often shield the information and decision-
     making process behind the assertion of executive privilege. 
     In too many instances, White House staff have been allowed to 
     inhibit openness and transparency, and reduce accountability.

  More recently, one of the senior Republicans, Senator Kay Bailey 
Hutchison of Texas, who is the senior Republican on the Senate 
Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said in an op-ed in 
the Washington Post:

       I oversee legislation and agencies that cover policy areas 
     as vast and varied as trade, technology, transit, consumer 
     protection and commercial regulation. As many as 10 of the 32 
     czars functionally fall under my committee's jurisdiction. 
     Yet neither I nor the committee chairmen have clear authority 
     to compel these czars to appear before our panel and report 
     what they are doing. The Obama administration presented only 
     two of these officials for our consideration before they 
     assumed their duties. We have had no opportunity to probe the 
     others' credentials.

  That is Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. I ask unanimous 
consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks the comments 
of Senator Robert Byrd and the op-ed of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See exhibit 1).
  Mr. ALEXANDER. As the Senator said, many of these czars have no 
vetting by the Senators, no appropriation requests to be considered by 
us, no testimony given, and answer no hard

[[Page S9305]]

questions. Who is making the policy, then, on health care, on climate 
change, on energy?
  I have been reading President James K. Polk's diaries. I may be the 
only one in the United States reading them these days. They are 
actually very interesting. He wrote down every night what he did that 
day, back in the 1840s. Among the things he did, he had a Cabinet 
meeting every Tuesday and Saturday and every major issue that came 
before him, whether it was the war with Mexico, annexation of Texas, 
the argument with Great Britain about what to do in Oregon--he 
submitted all those questions to his Cabinet, and then the Cabinet, of 
course, had to go before the Congress and testify. He didn't always 
agree with the Cabinet.
  Secretary of State Buchanan disagreed with President Polk quite a 
bit, but Secretary Buchanan then had to go before the Congress and come 
back and tell the President what he heard. That was a long time ago, 
but what the Framers had in mind was checks and balances where the 
President leads the country, the Cabinet manages the government, and 
the Cabinet, as the managers of the government, are accountable to the 
people through their elected Representatives.
  The 32 or 34 czars are not representative of the way the American 
system of government is supposed to work. This is not an era of 
transparency. It creates so much centralization of power that it is the 
antithesis of freedom, which is the principal characteristic, the 
principal aspect of the American character.
  The second aspect of this large number of czars that is troublesome 
is the issue of managing the government. Forty years ago, I worked in 
the White House for President Nixon under a wise man named Bryce 
Harlow.
  I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business until I am 
finished with my remarks.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. Harlow had worked for President Eisenhower. He was 
a wise counselor to President Johnson. He knew a lot about how the 
American Government is supposed to work. He said to me, then a very 
young staff member--he said:

       Lamar, our job here in the White House is to push the 
     merely important issues out of the White House so that we can 
     reserve to the President only that handful of truly 
     Presidential issues.
       George Reedy, who was Lyndon Johnson's Press Secretary, 
     wrote:
       The job of the President is three things--to see an urgent 
     need, to develop a strategy to meet the need, and persuade 
     half the people he's right.

  Mr. Reedy didn't say anything about managing the Government of the 
United States out of the White House. He talked about leading the 
country.
  Our current President is very skilled at persuading half the people 
he is right. He has demonstrated that in an election. He continues to 
demonstrate that with his speeches. That is not the issue. The issue is 
whether he ought to bring into the White House, or closer to him into 
the government, a large group of men and women who are accountable to 
him but not accountable to anybody else. It is not good for the 
President of the United States, I would submit, to have close to him 
people he listens to who do not have to listen to anybody else, or at 
least who do not have to listen to the elected Representatives of 
government.
  Everyone knows the first thing that happens when a new President is 
elected is people pick offices, and which office do they pick? They 
want the office closest to the President because it is an unwritten 
rule in Washington DC, that influence in Washington is measured in 
direct proportion to the number of inches one is physically from the 
President of the United States. So the First Lady usually ends up with 
the most influence. After that, go right down the hall in the West Wing 
over to the Executive Office Building. After a while you get out around 
the Cabinet offices.
  I used to be in one of the Cabinet offices in the first President 
Bush's administration. It is true, the persons with the most influence 
with the President are almost always the men and women who are closest 
to him.
  The other aspect of management that this seems to contravene in the 
White House is the ``one thing at a time'' idea. One thing at a time is 
best exemplified, I suggest, by President Eisenhower when he said ``I 
shall go to Korea.'' He said that more than a half century ago when the 
big issue before the country--there were many, but the biggest issue 
was the Korean war. President Eisenhower said, in October of the 
election year, ``I shall go to Korea,'' and in December he went. And he 
said to the American people, ``I will focus my attention on the war in 
Korea. It will have my full attention until the matter is concluded.''
  Because he was President and because he had capacity for leadership, 
people believed he would probably get that one thing done. In fact he 
did because, in our system of government, people know if the President 
selects a single issue--say it is health care, say it is climate 
change, say it is resolving the debt, or fixing Social Security--if he 
picks one thing and throws himself into that for as long as he is 
there, the odds are he is going to wear everybody else out. He might 
have to compromise a little bit along the way.
  I used to think this as Governor--and the Presiding Officer was once 
Governor in Virginia. Often our best proposals would get changed in the 
legislature. I learned a long time ago you could either condemn that or 
say: Well, they improved my proposal. Give the other side some credit, 
and go on to the next issue.
  But a Governor and certainly a President who picks one thing can get 
a lot done. We have a lot of very talented people in and around the 
President. The President himself is highly intelligent and well liked 
by the American people, as well as he is by those of us in the Senate. 
But sometimes I am afraid the Obama White House resembles the Harvard 
Law Review meeting where everybody has a bright idea, everybody is very 
smart, but everyone forgets that someone has to be the operator. 
Someone has to make it run. Someone has to pick one thing and lean into 
it for as long as it goes.
  My point is, having a large number of bright advisers or czars for 
every issue under the Sun, clustered around the President, coming up 
with bright ideas, and who are unaccountable to the Congress for most 
of what they have to say, is not the best way for a President to pick a 
single, major issue--let's say health care--and lead the country.
  Finally, the number of czars we now have today, who have accumulated 
over the last several administrations and today have reached a record 
level is anti-democratic. Czars are usually Russians; they are not 
Americans. Czars are usually imperialists, not Democrats.
  The dictionary says a czar is an autocratic ruler or leader or an 
emperor or king. A czar is not associated with a democracy, not 
associated with an era of transparency.
  Czars are alien to our way of thinking and our way of government. I 
am afraid czars are becoming a symbol of this administration and the 
number of Washington takeovers. Let me not just use my own words, a New 
York Times article today said:

       But one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off 
     a series of federal interventions, the government is the 
     nation's biggest lender, insurer, automaker and guarantor 
     against risk for investors large and small.
       Between financial rescue missions and the economic stimulus 
     program, Government spending accounts for a bigger share of 
     the nation's economy--26 percent--than at any time since 
     World War II. The Government is financing 9 out of 10 new 
     mortgages in the United States. If you buy a car from General 
     Motors, you are buying from a company that is 60 percent 
     owned by the Government.
  If you take out a car loan or run up your credit card, the chances 
are good that the Government is financing both your debt and that of 
your bank. And if you buy life insurance from the American 
International Group, you will be buying from a company that is almost 
80 percent Federally owned.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this article 
from September 14 following my remarks.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See exhibit 2).
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Czars are becoming a symbol of a runaway government in 
Washington with too many Washington takeovers. Dr. Samuel Johnson, the 
British moralist a few centuries ago, was once introduced to a talking 
dog in a London pub. The proud owner

[[Page S9306]]

of the dog asked Dr. Johnson what did he think of how well his dog 
talked.
  Dr. Johnson is reported to have said, he was not so impressed with 
how well the dog talked, but that the dog talked at all.
  That is about the way I feel about the nearly three dozen White House 
czars and government czars. I am not so worried about who they are, I 
am worried that the czars are there at all. I believe that the American 
people in addition to respected Senators, such as Senator Byrd on the 
other side of the aisle, and Senator Hutchison on this side of the 
aisle, sense this is a problem.
  My respectful suggestion to the President is along the same lines as 
Senator Byrd and Senator Hutchison have made. I believe it is time to 
push these czars out of the White House, and leave the management of 
government to the managers of government in the Cabinet and the 
positions in the departments of government who are accountable to the 
Congress. The positions who are accountable for their confirmation, 
accountable to answer the questions of Members of Congress, accountable 
for appropriations that have to be approved by Congress before they can 
spend the people's money. That is the American way.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the list of 
czars published in the newspaper Politico on September 4.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See exhibit 3).

                               Exhibit 1

  Byrd Questions Obama Administration on Role of White House ``Czar'' 
                               Positions

       Washington, DC--Senator Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., the 
     Constitutional conscience of the Senate, has written to 
     President Barack Obama expressing his concerns over the 
     increasing appointments of White House ``czars,'' and the 
     relationship between these new White House positions and 
     their executive branch counterparts, noting that ``too often, 
     I have seen these lines of authority and responsibility 
     become tangled and blurred, sometimes purposely, to shield 
     information and to obscure the decision-making process.''
       Byrd, in his February 23 letter, specifically referenced 
     the creation of new White House Offices of Health Reform, 
     Urban Affairs Policy, and Energy and Climate Change Policy, 
     noting that ``the rapid and easy accumulation of power by 
     White House staff can threaten the Constitutional system of 
     checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have 
     taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are 
     the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.''
       ``As presidential assistants and advisers, these White 
     House staffers are not accountable for their actions to the 
     Congress, to cabinet officials, and to virtually anyone but 
     the president. They rarely testify before congressional 
     committees, and often shield the information and decision-
     making process behind the assertion of executive privilege. 
     In too many instances, White House staff have been allowed to 
     inhibit openness and transparency, and reduce 
     accountability,'' Byrd's letter continued.
       Byrd cited President Obama's recent memorandum to the 
     executive departments and agencies in which Obama noted that, 
     ``A democracy requires accountability, and accountability 
     requires transparency.''
       ``As you develop your White House organization, I hope you 
     will favorably consider the following: that assertions of 
     executive privilege will be made only by the President, or 
     with the President's specific approval; that senior White 
     House personnel will be limited from exercising authority 
     over any person, any program, and any funding within the 
     statutory responsibility of a Senate-confirmed department or 
     agency head; that the President will be responsible for 
     resolving any disagreement between a Senate-confirmed agency 
     or department head and White House staff; and that the lines 
     of authority and responsibility in the Administration will be 
     transparent and open to the American public,'' the letter 
     requested and concluded.

                               Exhibit 2

               [From the New York Times, Sept. 14, 2009]

          U.S. Is Finding Its Role in Business Hard to Unwind

               (By Edmund L. Andrews and David E. Sanger)

       Washington.--When President Obama travels to Wall Street on 
     Monday to speak from Federal Hall, where the founders once 
     argued bitterly over how much the government should control 
     the national economy, he is likely to cast himself as a 
     ``reluctant shareholder'' in America's biggest industries and 
     financial institutions.
       But one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off 
     a series of federal interventions, the government is the 
     nation's biggest lender, insurer, automaker and guarantor 
     against risk for investors large and small.
       Between financial rescue missions and the economic stimulus 
     program, government spending accounts for a bigger share of 
     the nation's economy--26 percent--than at any time since 
     World War II. The government is financing 9 out of 10 new 
     mortgages in the United States. If you buy a car from General 
     Motors, you are buying from a company that is 60 percent 
     owned by the government.
       If you take out a car loan or run up your credit card, the 
     chances are good that the government is financing both your 
     debt and that of your bank.
       And if you buy life insurance from the American 
     International Group, you will be buying from a company that 
     is almost 80 percent federally owned.
       Mr. Obama plans to argue, his aides say, that these 
     government intrusions will be temporary. At the same time, 
     however, he will push hard for an increased government role 
     in overseeing the financial system to prevent a repeat of the 
     excesses that caused the crisis.
       ``These were extraordinary provisions of support, not part 
     of a permanent program,'' said Lawrence H. Summers, director 
     of the National Economic Council at the White House. ``You're 
     seeing a process of exit every day. It's a process that's 
     going to take quite some time, but the prospects are much 
     brighter today than they were nine months ago.''
       That process unfolds every day in a bland bureaucrat's 
     haven, an annex connected by an underground tunnel to the 
     Treasury's main building on Pennsylvania Avenue. There, about 
     200 civil servants--accountants, lawyers, former investment 
     bankers--oversee the $700 billion program that pumps taxpayer 
     money into banks, insurance companies and two of Detroit's 
     Big Three auto companies.
       In the main Treasury building, senior officials hold veto 
     power over executive pay packages for the biggest recipients 
     of government loans, like Citigroup and Bank of America. A 
     separate group, working closely with the Federal Reserve Bank 
     of New York, oversees the multibillion-dollar bailout of 
     American International Group. Ten blocks away, at the Federal 
     Reserve, officials are still providing the emergency 
     liquidity that keeps a battered economy moving.
       To Mr. Obama's critics, thousands of whom took to the 
     streets of Washington this weekend to protest a new era of 
     big government, all these efforts are part of a plan to 
     dismantle free-market capitalism. On the ground it looks 
     quite different, as a new president and his team try to 
     define the proper role, both as owners and regulators.


                       A Light Hand on the Reins

       Far from eagerly micromanaging the companies the government 
     owns, Mr. Obama and his economic team have often labored 
     mightily to avoid exercising control even when government 
     money was the only thing keeping some companies afloat.
       A few weeks ago, there were anguished grimaces inside the 
     Treasury Department as the new chief executive of A.I.G., 
     Robert H. Benmosche, whose roughly $9 million pay package is 
     22 times greater than Mr. Obama's, ridiculed officials in 
     Washington--his majority shareholders--as ``crazies.''
       Causing even more unease to policymakers, Mr. Benmosche 
     insisted that A.I.G.--one of the worst offenders in the risk-
     taking that sent the nation over the edge last year--would 
     not rush to sell its businesses at fire-sale prices, despite 
     pressure from Fed and Treasury officials, who are desperate 
     to have the insurer repay its $180 billion government 
     bailout.
       But in the end, according to one senior official, ``no one 
     called him and told him to shut up,'' and no one has pulled 
     rank and told him to sell assets as soon as possible to repay 
     the loans.
       A similar hands-off decision was made about the auto 
     companies. Shortly after General Motors and Chrysler emerged 
     from bankruptcy, some members of the administration's auto 
     task force argued that the group should not go out of 
     business until it was confident that a new management team in 
     Detroit had a handle on what needed to be done.
       But Mr. Summers strongly rejected that approach, and the 
     Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, agreed.
       ``The argument was that if the president said he wasn't 
     elected to run G.M., then we couldn't hire a new board and 
     then try to run any aspect of it,'' one participant in the 
     discussions said. The auto task force took off for summer 
     vacation in July, and it never returned.
       But it will probably be several years before the government 
     can begin to sell its stake in G.M. back to the public, and 
     even then, according a report issued last week by the 
     independent monitor of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, 
     some of the $20 billion or so funneled to G.M. and Chrysler 
     is probably gone forever.


                         Winding Down Programs

       By contrast, Mr. Obama's team and the Federal Reserve have 
     been more successful than generally recognized at winding 
     down many of the support programs for banks. Nearly three 
     dozen financial institutions have repaid $70 billion in loans 
     to the Treasury, and officials predict that $50 billion more 
     will be repaid over the next 18 months. Indeed, the 
     government has earned tidy profit on the first round of 
     repayments.
       One of the biggest backstops has been the Temporary 
     Liquidity Guarantee Program of the Federal Deposit Insurance 
     Corporation, which now guarantees about $300 billion worth of 
     bonds issued by banks.

[[Page S9307]]

       The volume of new guarantees has declined to less than $5 
     billion a month in August from more than $90 billion a month 
     earlier this year. The F.D.I.C. announced last week that it 
     would either end the program entirely on Oct. 31 or reduce it 
     further by substantially increasing the fees that banks have 
     to pay.
       Similarly, one of the Fed's biggest emergency loan 
     programs, the Term Auction Facility, has shrunk by more than 
     half in the last 12 months. A second big program, which 
     finances short-term i.o.u.'s for businesses, has shrunk to 
     $124 billion, from $332 billion a year ago.
       Obama administration officials bristle at even the hint 
     that their rescue measures have ushered in a new era of ``big 
     government.''
       But supporters and critics alike worry that it will be 
     difficult to shrink the government to anything like its 
     former role. For one thing, Mr. Obama is determined to expand 
     government regulation of business and to beef up federal 
     protections for consumers.


                         Seeking More Oversight

       Mr. Obama's proposals to overhaul the system of financial 
     regulation would give the Fed new powers to supervise giant 
     financial institutions whose failure could threaten the 
     entire financial system.
       To limit the dangers posed by insolvent institutions that 
     are ``too big to fail,'' the F.D.I.C. would receive new 
     authority to close them in an orderly way.
       The administration would impose much tougher regulation 
     over the vast market for financial derivatives like credit-
     default swaps and other exotic instruments for hedging risk.
       It would also create an entirely new Consumer Financial 
     Protection Agency, which would have broad power to regulate 
     most forms of consumer lending.
       In his speech on Monday, White House officials say, Mr. 
     Obama will step up pressure on Wall Street to accept tougher 
     oversight. Even though his proposals have made little headway 
     in Congress, largely because of the battle over health care, 
     Democratic lawmakers said they were determined to pass 
     comprehensive legislation by next year.
       ``Big government now is the consequence of too little 
     government before,'' said Representative Barney Frank, 
     chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. ``What 
     you have right now, with the government owning companies, is 
     the result of insufficient regulation before.''
       On a practical level, experts say it will take years for 
     the government to unwind some of its rescue programs.
       Thanks to the mortgage crisis and the collapse in housing 
     prices, private investors have fled the mortgage market, and 
     the federal government now finances about 9 out of 10 new 
     home loans in the United States.
       The Treasury took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the 
     government-sponsored finance companies that own or have 
     guaranteed more than $5 trillion in mortgages, in the first 
     week of September 2008. Fannie and Freddie now buy or 
     guarantee almost two-thirds of all new mortgages. The Federal 
     Housing Administration guarantees another 25 percent.
       The cost of keeping the two giant companies afloat has been 
     huge. The Treasury has provided Fannie and Freddie with $95 
     billion to cover losses tied to soaring default rates and 
     losses in value on their own mortgage portfolios. Analysts 
     predict that the companies will need considerably more in the 
     year ahead. At the same time, the Fed is buying almost all 
     the new mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae, 
     Freddie Mac and the F.H.A. Buying up those securities drives 
     up their price and pushes down their effective interest 
     rates, and ultimately lowers borrowing costs to homebuyers.


                           An Enormous Scale

       The scale of the Fed's intervention has been staggering. 
     The central bank has acquired more than $700 billion in 
     mortgage-backed securities so far, and officials have said 
     they will buy up to $1.25 trillion--a goal that should take 
     the Fed until early next year. To help Fannie and Freddie 
     raise the money they need to buy mortgages from lenders, the 
     Fed is also buying $200 billion of their bonds.
       All told, the government is propping up almost the entire 
     mortgage market and, by extension, the housing industry.
       As the government backs away from its rescue operations, 
     economists and others worry about unknown consequences. Some 
     analysts are already predicting that mortgage rates will bump 
     higher when the Fed stops buying mortgage securities, 
     potentially delaying a recovery in housing.
       But the much bigger puzzle is how the government will 
     untangle Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with their combustible 
     mix of taxpayer support, public policy goals and for-profit 
     structures.
       ``It will be very difficult to unwind, having stepped in as 
     big as they did,'' said Howard Glaser, a senior housing 
     official during the Clinton administration and now an 
     industry consultant in Washington. ``There is no structure, 
     no mechanism, for private investors to come back into the 
     market.''
       Other experts and policy makers have begun to raise broader 
     concerns. Even if the Obama administration and the Fed do 
     manage to shrink the government's role to precrisis levels, 
     has the government's immense rescue simply set the stage for 
     more frequent interventions in the future?
       ``This crisis, whether it's because of the Fed or the 
     Treasury or Congress, has created a lot of new moral 
     hazards,'' said Charles I. Plosser, president of the Federal 
     Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. ``Once you have done this once, 
     even though it was in a severe crisis, the temptation will be 
     for people to figure that in the next crisis you'll do it 
     again. You've got to figure out a way to say no.''
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 13, 2009]

                           Czarist Washington

                       (By Kay Bailey Hutchinson)

       The Framers of the Constitution knew that the document 
     founding our democracy must be the anchor of liberty and the 
     blueprint for its preservation. Wisely, they provided a 
     balance of powers to ensure that no individual and no single 
     arm of government could ever wield unchecked authority 
     against the American people.
       Nearly 250 years later, these critical lines of separation 
     are being obscured by a new class of federal officials. A few 
     of them have formal titles, but most are simply known as 
     ``czars.'' They hold unknown levels of power over broad 
     swaths of policy. Under the Obama administration, we have an 
     unprecedented 32 czar posts (a few of which it has yet to 
     fill), including a ``car czar,'' a ``pay czar'' and an 
     ``information czar.'' There are also czars assigned to some 
     of the broadest and most consequential topics in policy, 
     including health care, terrorism, economics and key 
     geographic regions.
       So what do these czars do? Do they advise the president? Or 
     do they impose the administration's agenda on the heads of 
     federal agencies and offices who have been vetted and 
     confirmed by the Senate? Unfortunately--and in direct 
     contravention of the Framers' intentions--virtually no one 
     can say with certainty what these individuals do or what 
     limits are placed on their authority. We don't know if they 
     are influencing or implementing policy. We don't know if they 
     possess philosophical views or political affiliations that 
     are inappropriate or overreaching in the context of their 
     work.
       This is precisely the kind of ambiguity the Framers sought 
     to prevent. Article One tasks the legislative branch with 
     establishing federal agencies, defining what they do, 
     determining who leads them and overseeing their operations. 
     Article Two requires the president to seek the advice and 
     consent of the Senate when appointing certain officials to 
     posts of consequence. Thus, authority is shared between 
     government branches, guaranteeing the American people 
     transparency and accountability.
       As the senior Republican on the Senate Committee on 
     Commerce, Science and Transportation, I oversee legislation 
     and agencies that cover policy areas as vast and varied as 
     trade, technology, transit, consumer protection and 
     commercial regulation. As many as 10 of the 32 czars 
     functionally fall under my committee's jurisdiction. Yet 
     neither I nor the committee chairman have clear authority to 
     compel these czars to appear before our panel and report what 
     they are doing. The Obama administration presented only two 
     of these officials for our consideration before they assumed 
     their duties. We have had no opportunity to probe the others' 
     credentials.
       Recently we saw the kinds of dangerous details that can 
     slip by when a powerful federal official isn't put through 
     the Senate confirmation process. Before assuming the post of 
     ``green jobs czar,'' Van Jones had engaged in such 
     troublesome activities as endorsement of fringe theories 
     about the Sept. 11 attacks. He has ties to a socialist group. 
     The Senate confirmation process would typically provide an 
     appropriate forum for identifying and discussing these types 
     of issues and for allowing for public input. Jones's case 
     highlighted the lack of accountability that is becoming 
     commonplace under the Obama administration.
       While Jones rightly resigned, there are dozens of other 
     administration czars about whom we still know very little. It 
     is Congress's duty to know who is serving at the highest 
     levels of government, what they are doing, and what 
     qualifications or complications these people bring to the 
     job. It is also our responsibility to make this information 
     known to the people who have elected us to serve and protect 
     them. This is how we ensure accountability.
       The deployment of this many czars sets a dangerous 
     precedent that undermines the Constitution's guarantee of 
     separated powers. It must be stopped. President Obama should 
     submit each of his many policy czars to the Senate so that we 
     can review their qualifications, roles and the limits on 
     their authority. To deliver anything less is to deny the 
     American public the accountability and transparency the 
     Constitution guarantees.
                                  ____


                               Exhibit 3

                     [From Politico, Sept. 4, 2009]

                      President Obama's ``Czars''

       Politico has compiled a wide-ranging list of President 
     Barack Obama's various ``czars.'' The bolded names were 
     confirmed by Congress, and the italicized names are 
     statutorily created positions created by Congress in 
     legislation.
       Afghanistan Czar--Richard Holbrooke.
       AIDS Czar--Jeffrey Crowley.
       Auto Recovery Czar--Ed Montgomery.
       Border Czar--Alan Bersin.
       Car Czar--Ron Bloom.
       Central Region Czar--Dennis Ross.
       Domestic Violence Czar--Lynn Rosenthal.

[[Page S9308]]

       Drug Czar--Gil Kerlikowske.
       Economic Czar--Paul Volcker.
       Energy and Environment Czar--Carol Browner.
       Faith-Based Czar--Joshua DuBois.
       Great Lakes Czar--Cameron Davis.
       Green Jobs Czar--Van Jones (resigned on Sept. 6).
       Guantanamo Closure Czar--Daniel Fried.
       Health Czar--Nancy-Ann DeParle.
       Information Czar--Vivek Kundra.
       International Climate Czar--Todd Stern.
       Mideast Peace Czar--George Mitchell.
       Pay Czar--Kenneth Feinberg.
       Regulatory Czar--Cass Sunstein.*
       Science Czar--John Holdren.
       Stimulus Accountability Czar--Earl Devaney--statutory 
     position.
       Sudan Czar--J. Scott Gration.
       TARP Czar--Herb Allison.
       Terrorism Czar--John Brennan.
       Technology Czar--Aneesh Chopra.
       Urban Affairs Czar--Adolfo Carrion Jr.
       Weapons Czar--Ashton Carter.
       WMD Policy Czar--Gary Samore.

       *Nomination was sent to Senate on April 20, no action yet 
     taken.

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

                          ____________________