[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 135 (Thursday, July 30, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4604-S4605]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Nomination of Derek Kan

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the nomination of 
Derek Kan to serve as second in command at the Office of Management and 
Budget.
  It is not every day that I stand here and endorse a nomination--a 
nominee--of a current President. So I don't want anybody to have a 
heart attack, but I do want to stand up and say that this is a good 
nomination. I wish we had more like him. I am pleased that at least we 
have this one today to consider.
  Derek Kan served previously as Under Secretary for Transportation 
Policy at the Department of Transportation, where he served as a 
principal adviser to the Secretary and provided leadership in the 
development of policies at the Department.
  I have a couple of quotes here from two of my Democratic colleagues 
that referenced his time at the Department of Transportation. One of 
our Democratic colleagues from here in the Senate said these words: 
``Mr. Kan, from your time at the Department of Transportation, I know 
you to be a talented and thoughtful leader who can work collaboratively 
with Congress and others to find common ground.''
  Think about those words: ``who can work collaboratively with Congress 
and others to find common ground.''
  Another of our Democratic colleagues said of Derek Kan: ``Derek Kan 
is a serious, smart person and a vast improvement over the previously 
mentioned names.''
  That is a quote. I will say it again: ``Derek Kan is a serious, smart 
person and a vast improvement over the previously mentioned names.''
  Now, that is not damning with faint praise. That is, I think, praise. 
I think it is well earned, and I just wanted to share that with you.
  He has been nominated to serve by this administration in a number of 
positions, and he has gotten the support of Democrats and Republicans--
not unanimous support. I wouldn't get unanimous support if I were 
nominated for something that came through here either--but he has 
gotten strong support, for the most part.
  I was pleased to be able to vote in favor of his confirmation to this 
particular position. He was confirmed--at that time it was as the 
Department of Transportation Under Secretary, and I think he was 
confirmed in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 7.
  Prior to this appointment, Mr. Kan served on the Amtrak board of 
directors, and he was unanimously confirmed to that position by this 
same body. He doesn't know this, but he and I have something in common. 
We were both confirmed--I was sitting Governor of Delaware, but I was 
confirmed to serve as the lone Governor at the time on Amtrak's board 
of directors. And I was confirmed unanimously. Somehow that slipped 
through. But that is something that he and I share in common, and he 
understands well the importance of the capacity of rail service in this 
country--in this century.
  Mr. Kan is also experienced as a policy adviser to our current 
majority leader and chief economist for the Senate Republican Policy 
Committee. To put it bluntly, I think he possesses the necessary 
qualifications and experience for this position.

[[Page S4605]]

  I have the privilege of serving as the senior Democrat on the 
Homeland Security Committee with the Presiding Officer, and this 
committee has the responsibility for vetting individuals who have been 
nominated to serve at the Office of Management and Budget.
  During the confirmation process, I had the pleasure of speaking with 
Mr. Kan and getting to know him a little better and understanding 
better his goals for this important position. Mr. Kan clearly showed 
that he is intimately familiar with the issues that he would be tasked 
with managing at OMB, and he showed that he is willing to learn and 
work with others to ensure that he is doing everything he can to work 
productively on behalf of the American people
  In fact, Mr. Kan committed to work collaboratively with Congress to 
help us fulfill our oversight role. This is a shared responsibility: 
oversight. We all need to be interested in oversight. You don't have to 
serve on a committee that is focused on oversight--the Homeland 
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. You don't have to serve on 
a permanent Senate subcommittee as Senator Rob Portman and I do--the 
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations--in order to be interested in 
oversight. You don't have to be elected to the U.S. Senate or to the 
House to be interested in oversight. This is something that we all 
should be interested in and all of us ought to be focused on, and we 
need to do it in a way that is collaborative so that we sort of marry 
our fortunes together and end up with the synergistic effect where the 
sum is greater than the parts thereof.
  I was pleased with the words and the commitment he made to work 
collaboratively with all of us: Democrats and Republicans and our 
staffs. He also committed to working with the Government Accountability 
Office, GAO, to help them fulfill their critical oversight 
responsibilities.
  I might add, GAO, which is our watchdog, does great work, as the 
Presiding Officer knows. They have been faced with an enormous 
undertaking, enormous challenges, with respect to the COVID-19 
legislation we have passed and the need for resources to be able to do 
a good job in being the watchdog that we need.
  I would just call on all of my colleagues to keep that in mind when 
we fashion the next COVID legislation and figure out how much money we 
need to provide for GAO to do the enormous job that is in front of 
them.
  It is not often we get a nominee in this administration who is open 
to working with both sides here in the Congress and is understanding of 
the needs for the executive branch to be responsive to congressional 
oversight from this administration. In fact, Mr. Kan committed to 
responding to all oversight requests from the Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Committee, including requests from Democratic 
Senators. He also committed to ensure that OMB responds to all requests 
from GAO.
  I know these commitments ought to be standard operating procedure in 
our democracy, which is built on a system of checks and balances, but 
they certainly have not always been the case in this administration, 
especially for folks nominated to positions like the one he has been 
nominated for.
  Mr. Kan's willingness to work with Congress and his clear 
qualifications to serve in this role are a welcome change in a Trump 
administration nominee that deserves to be recognized. For those 
reasons, I intend to support Derek Kan, who has been nominated for this 
important position at OMB. I urge my colleagues--Democrat, Republican, 
and an Independent or two--to do the same.
  I have the privilege of serving as the senior Democrat on the 
Environment and Public Works Committee. In our oversight role there 
over the Environmental Protection Agency, we ask a lot of questions. We 
ask a lot of questions of that agency, the leaders of that agency.
  We don't always get the responses that we need. In some cases we get 
the back of a hand--no response for days, weeks, months. In previous 
administrations, Democratic administrations where Republican Senators 
were maybe in the minority, they haven't always gotten the kind of 
response that they deserved either, but I think they have gotten better 
than we are getting in many cases right now when we try to get 
information out of EPA.
  I think the sort of spirit that I sense and have observed in Derek 
Kan, we could use that spirit from some other folks who are serving in 
this administration and maybe keep him in mind when someday we have a 
Democratic President and a Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate.
  So this is a vote I think we are going to take in a very short while, 
and I hope, when people come here to vote, they will keep in mind some 
of the words I have said and some of the words I quoted from other 
Democratic Senators and find a way to vote yes in this case.
  We will hold him up to high standards. I think if he gets confirmed--
and I think he will--that it is important that he continues to 
demonstrate the sort of values that I have found favorable in him 
today.
  I just want to acknowledge that it is not every day a Democrat gets 
to hold the gavel at a committee hearing, and yesterday Senator 
Grassley had some other business; he had to come over and vote on the 
floor and take care of some other business. There was no other 
Republican to take the gavel and conduct the hearing, and he called on 
a Senator from Delaware to assume the gavel--take the gavel and pound 
us all the way to the finish line in yesterday's hearing.
  My wife said to me last night: What was the highlight of the day? And 
I said that there were many highlights of the day yesterday, but that 
was probably No. 1
  With that, I yield the floor to my friend from Iowa, Senator Chuck 
Grassley.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.