[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15125-15131]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             A LOT OF CZARS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. CARTER. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to thank you for 
recognizing me today. I have some stuff I think is kind of interesting 
to talk about.
  Let's start with recently, while listening to the radio, I heard an 
announcement that President Obama was appointing a gentleman to be 
named the compensation czar, and that kind of threw me. Being an old 
criminal law trial judge, I remember the drug czars of the past. I 
remember I think a couple of Homeland Security czars. But I never had 
heard of a compensation czar.
  So I started to look into it, and I always thought it was kind of 
peculiar for a democratic country to even use the term ``czar.'' But 
others adopted it ahead of time, so I have no criticism of using the 
term ``czar,'' though I think if you look up ``czar'' in the 
dictionary, you will find out the most popular version is a form of the 
Russian totally autocratic emperors of the old Imperial Russia. To me, 
I think it sounds a little funny for us to be comparing ourselves with 
that failed system. But, you know, I can't criticize it too much, 
because we have had multiple folks that have had the name ``czar.''
  Exactly what are these czars that we create in this country? Well, 
the best I have been able to determine, these are people who are hired 
members of the executive branch of the government, but they are not 
like Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare or Secretary of Labor. 
But they are given sort of absolute authority in their field to give 
direction to the government and to advise the President as his personal 
kind of alter-Cabinet, if you will.
  Now, the first thing that comes to mind when you wonder about that 
is, you say now, wait a minute, all these secretaries that become 
members of the Cabinet, they have to be confirmed by the Senate. 
Constitutionally, it is required that they be confirmed by the Senate.
  We have these confirmation battles in every administration, and 
actually some issues have come up this time which caused people to 
withdraw their names before the issue of whether or not they be 
confirmed, for reasons like they didn't pay their taxes or some other 
reason that they felt they didn't want to go through that kind of an 
onerous process of getting to be the Secretary of Homeland Security or 
the Secretary of State, Secretary of Commerce or whatever Secretary it 
may be, which for a long time has been the historical heads of 
departments of the executive branch of the Federal Government. But now 
we have these new guys that are going to be czars.
  Now, it wasn't so hard to figure out when you said, well, you have 
got an Attorney General who is one of the Cabinet members, and he is 
confirmed by the Senate, just like the Constitution requires, and to 
have somebody who is totally focusing on the drug fight that we have. 
Maybe that might not be such a bad idea. So that is kind of the first 
concept of czar that I can recall, and I think probably at some time 
Ronald Reagan may have used that term. So, you can understand that.
  But when you hear ``czar,'' you think Russian. When you think of 
Russian czars, you think of the Romanov dynasty, which is the dynasty 
that was ultimately overthrown by the communist revolution. From its 
inception and for 300 years, the Romanov rule had 18 czars, and two or 
three of them didn't last very long, and in 146 days the Obama 
administration has 22 czars.
  Now, these folks have lots of titles, these 22 czars, but if ``czar'' 
means what czar has sort of historically meant, it is designed to give 
them sort of an absolute in-charge position on a certain subject 
matter. And, remember, these folks are not ones who would have to be 
confirmed, the way I understand it, in order to hold a position. These 
are just hired folks that the President, through his presumed 
authority, gives them this power to do this. So, the Russians took 300 
years and we took 146 days to create this ``czardom,'' if you will.
  Now, let's see who these folks are. The best I can tell, this is a 
pretty accurate list of our czars that have been created by the Obama 
administration.
  We start off with the border czar, Alan Bersin, and then the energy 
czar, Carol Browner. I believe she was part of the EPA last time, maybe 
under Carter or Clinton, I'm not sure. Probably Clinton. I don't know 
all about all these people.
  The urban czar is Adolfo Carrion. The infotech czar is Vivek Kundra. 
The faith-based czar is Joshua DuBois, at least it has been reported he 
is an atheist, but that is his faith, I suppose. Health reform czar, 
Nancy-Ann DeParle, I guess it is. TARP czar, we have all heard about 
the TARP, Herb Allison is the TARP czar. The stimulus accountability 
czar is Earl Devaney. The nonproliferation czar, Gary Samore. I may be 
mispronouncing these folks' names. Let me say right off, if I 
mispronounce anybody's name, it is because I am from Texas, and I just 
apologize for that.
  The terrorist czar is John Brennan. The regulatory czar, there is an 
interesting one, Cass Sunstein. The drug czar, we have seen that one 
before. The drug czar is Gil Kerlikowske, it looks like. The Guantanamo 
closure czar, which is on the front page of all the papers, is Daniel 
Fried. The AF-PAK czar is Richard Holbrooke. The Mideast peace czar, 
George Mitchell. We are very familiar with him, former Senator 
Mitchell.

[[Page 15126]]

  The Persian Gulf-Southwest Asia czar, Dennis Ross. The Sudan czar, J. 
Scott Gration. The climate czar, Todd Stern. The car czar, Steve 
Rattner. He has been all over the place. The economic czar, Paul 
Volcker, who is very famous. The executive pay czar, that is one of my 
favorites right there. The executive pay czar is Kenneth Feinberg. And 
then the cybersecurity czar, position to be announced, but they are 
going to have one.
  Now, right off I wondered about the cybersecurity czar, because we 
have got an infotech czar up here, which is sort of both first cousins 
anyway, and I don't know whether they will be working together or what, 
but they are going to have absolute power in their field, whatever that 
means. I think this is something we ought to be curious about. That is 
so many czars.
  You know what is interesting? The Russians gave nicknames to some of 
their czars based on their behavior. I wonder who is going to adopt 
some of the nicknames for some of the czars? I don't think anyone would 
like to be called Alan the Terrible. We had an Ivan the Terrible in the 
Russian Romanov dynasty. I am sure they would all like to be Peter the 
Great or Catherine the Great, have ``the Great'' after their name.

                              {time}  2045

  But I guess we can make up names for them. But the question is, why? 
I think it's a question that the administration ought to have to 
answer.
  You know, I'm not the only one asking these questions. A statement 
from Senator Robert Byrd said: ``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 has taken 
direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory 
responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.''
  And he's raising the same issue that I was raising just a few minutes 
ago, and that is, these people don't go through the confirmation 
process. There's no Senators looking and seeing what kind of reputation 
these people have, what they've done in the past, where their area of 
expertise is, whether or not this is the most qualified person, whether 
this is the person who would meet the constitutional requirements of 
serving our Nation. I know these are hired by the President. It's like 
there's this alternate universe that we're creating. We've got the 
Cabinet. I guess you leave the Cabinet and you go over to the czardoms 
and you meet with them, or maybe they all get in one room and battle it 
out. I don't know how it works. We'll see.
  But this is sizably more czars than we've ever had. In fact, taking a 
look at President Ronald Reagan, he had one czar. President George 
Herbert Walker Bush had one czar. President Bill Clinton had three 
czars. President George W. Bush had four czars. So we've gone 1, 1, 3, 
4, 22.
  If these czars are set up to target historically needed help for 
people in this country, I think it's done with a good heart. But I 
really think we should be, we as the American people, should start 
asking why. Why should you hire somebody, for instance, to be the 
border czar? Now, Allan may be a really nice guy and he may be smart as 
a whip.
  We also have Ms. Napolitano, who is the head of Homeland Security, 
and it is her statutory responsibility to be in charge of defending the 
borders of this country. And, in fact, it's the constitutional 
responsibility of every Member of this House to defend our borders. But 
it's certainly her statutory responsibility to defend our Nation.
  We have an Energy Department; and the Secretary of Energy, I think, 
the best I can figure out, is supposed to be responsible for the Energy 
Department. Now, I wonder why we have to have this energy czar.
  Urban czar. Well, we've got a Department of Urban Development that's, 
you know, Housing and Urban Development, HUD. That's been around for an 
awful long time. That is a Cabinet post. So why all of a sudden do we 
need an urban czar? We never had one before.
  Infotech czar. I don't know where that would fall in the purview of 
the established secretariats by the Constitution or by statute, but 
somewhere.
  Faith-based czar, I can--we've dealt with the head of a faith-based 
initiative in the Bush White House that came under a lot of criticism 
from the now-majority; but they've created one, and at least it is 
reported, put an atheist in charge of that, which, seems to me seems 
rather strange.
  The health reform czar should be active right now, because, as I 
understand it, the President spent his day today trying to convince 
people in various places that we needed this massive health reform that 
he's seeking to put up. And he wants to actually create, put the 
government in competition with private industry on health care, I would 
say, leading to the kind of health care, ultimately, maybe through the 
back door, but ultimately, I think there's no doubt, and most experts 
would say, the recommendations that they're making, that they're 
pushing forward between now and probably the 4th of July, are to set in 
motion the possibility of a single-pay health care system in the United 
States run by the government. And when we have that, we will see the 
quality of our health care plummet, and we will see people like me, 
people in Washington, making decisions as to what certain people are 
supposed to do for health care, and rationing that health care.
  Now, if you ask our good friends and neighbors to the north in 
Canada, you say, we hear you've got the greatest health care system in 
the world. They said, it is good; it's real good as long as you're 
well. But if you get sick, you've got to get on a waiting list to get 
treated.
  And, in fact, we have a greater cure rate for breast cancer in this 
country by about 30 points, percentage points, than they do in Canada 
because they wait too long to take action on the breast cancer issue. 
Same thing goes for prostate cancer for men. These are things we ought 
to be thinking about. We have somewhere in the 90 percentile success 
rate if we catch breast cancer early and aggressively pursue it. 
They're in the early 60s, like, 61, 63 percent. This is something that 
we ought to be concerned about.
  If you get an orthopedic problem in Canada, say, a bad knee that you 
need to get fixed, you could wait 5 years before you get in to see the 
orthopedic surgeon, where, in the United States, you could probably see 
him day after tomorrow, and you could probably get surgery done next 
Monday. So we have to think about those things.
  But we've got a health reform czar, and I'm sure she's going to tell 
us how it's going to work.
  TARP czar, now that's particular and peculiar to what we're doing 
right now, and that's the TARP stuff. And there may be some 
understanding as to where that is. But, you know, we were told by two 
Secretaries of the Treasury that they were going to oversee this and 
they were going to make sure nothing bad happened. Okay. Now that's 
what they told us. We heard one under George Bush, and we now hear one 
under Barack Obama. And both these guys have told us that they're going 
to be looking out for our money over here. But we've got Mr. TARP czar 
is doing that.
  And the stimulus accountability czar. Accountable to who? And what 
does that mean? But I'll tell you, there's no doubt about it now. This 
is true. The American people are sure worried about how this money's 
being spent and where it's going, and is there any waste, fraud and 
abuse involved in it as it comes out, because when you start throwing 
around billions and billions and billions of dollars until you reach 
trillions of dollars, it doesn't take a rocket scientist back home to 
figure out that much money is just a target for somebody to abuse the 
system. So maybe that's a good thing.
  Nonproliferation czar. I assume that's nuclear proliferation. That's 
what you always hear connected to the proliferation word. But the 
question is, that's sort of new.
  Terrorism czar. You know, when 9/11 happened, and this was before I 
came to Congress, when 9/11 happened, the Members of Congress here, in 
their

[[Page 15127]]

combined wisdom, in a very, very, bipartisan effort, which everybody 
wondered about bipartisanism, in a very bipartisan effort, created the 
Department of Homeland Security. And it wasn't just for borders. It was 
for all issues to protect the homeland of America. And they became the 
entity where we gathered experts on terrorism.
  Of course, all of our military services intelligence divisions have 
always had information about terrorism, because that's part of their 
job. They know who has to clean up the mess after the mess is created. 
And so our military certainly has that information too.
  But we created, I would argue, one of the largest, outside of the 
Defense Department, Departments in the entire United States, and it was 
created because of terrorism, but now we've got a terrorism czar.
  The drug czar we've had, I'm pretty sure, in every administration for 
the last four administrations. And I know how that works, and I 
understand how that works. Now, whether or not we--drug czars have had 
the absolutism that the word ``czar'' seems to indicate, I don't know, 
and whether these folks are going to have that kind of absolute 
authority is anybody's guess.
  Guantanamo closure czar. At least we know this guy is going to be out 
of work by the end of next year, that is, if the administration keeps 
their pledge. Now we've been told, absolutely, that by this time next 
year, Guantanamo will be closed. And so this guy's got a short--he's on 
a short leash.
  The AFPAC czar, I don't even know what that does.
  Middle East peace czar, well, you could just also call him an 
ambassador, a credentialed ambassador or whatever they call those 
people that go out and negotiate peace. And George Mitchell's done more 
than his share in his lifetime, and he's very competent. I'm not going 
into the competence of any of these people.
  As far as I know, all these czars could be, ultimately, Allan the 
Great, Carol the Great, Adolfo the Great, Gary the Great, Jay Scott the 
Great. I mean, just like Peter the Great. We don't know how great these 
guys are going to be; but they could be one of those. And let's hope 
none of them end up being Ivan the Terrible, because that would be 
terrible.
  Persian Gulf czar. Sudan czar. Now, we have an ambassador to Sudan, I 
think, and we have diplomats that work with Sudan. We have a Secretary 
of State who has an office that Sudan falls under, and I'm sure she has 
got some of the best experts on Sudan anywhere in the country, just 
like she does on the Persian Gulf, just like she does on the Middle 
East. The Secretary of State has the best people we can hire, and some 
of these people have been working in this field forever.
  And now we've got a Sudan czar. This means this is the absolute 
monarch of Sudan experts? And what does it mean? Or is it just an 
associate of the administration that needs a job? I don't know. I don't 
know what it does.
  Climate czar. It's not climate change czar. It's not global warming 
czar because we've had to change those terms. We started with climate, 
started with global warming and it started getting colder, so that's 
kind of dropped, and now we're at climate change czar. This guy doesn't 
even get the word change. He's got to be the climate czar.
  You know, we always blame the weatherman for the weather. But, hey, 
we've got a czar we can blame now. This guy could very quickly become, 
that could be Steve the Terrible. Very quickly. How would you like to 
be responsible for the climate of the United States? I mean, that's 
tough. That's a tough job.
  The Car czar. Well, if this guy doesn't do his job, he's going to 
have a whole lot less to be czar over, because the Federal Government 
now runs the car business and at least two of the largest three firms 
in our country, so he sort of could be the government auto czar because 
the government's now in the automobile industry. Heaven help us.
  The Economic czar, and I know we've got a half a dozen people that 
serve in Cabinet or sub-Cabinet positions that we refer to as economic 
specialists, including, we've got the Federal Reserve that gives us 
advice on economics, and we've got the Secretary of the Treasury that 
gives us advice on economics, we have a board that gives us advice on 
economics, and there's an economist behind every bush. Probably the 
only thing more in Washington that we've got than economists is 
lawyers. Heaven help us.
  But we've got an economic czar, and he's one we've heard of, Paul 
Volcker. And I guess Paul's going to tell us how it works.
  Now, this one is the one that got me wondering about this czarship, 
executive pay czar.

                              {time}  2100

  There are an awful lot of people asking: What does that mean? We know 
at a minimum what it means is that we're going to decide what some of 
the big firms that took bailout money are going to pay their top 
executives. It has been all over the papers and on all of the TV shows 
about the various, huge, gigantic amounts of money that some CEOs and 
CFOs and others get paid with bonuses in some of these large 
corporations. It's really beyond most of our ability to conceive of how 
much money these folks get. So this guy is going to limit that.
  Then the question becomes: If he is going to be the czar--the 
absolute monarch--over executive pay and that executive pay is going to 
be from anybody who took government money, then does that mean anybody 
who got a tax break from the government could be kind of grandfathered 
into this deal? Does that mean for anybody who got a grant from the 
government and a big one--not the bailout money, not the TARP money or 
the other one, the stimulus money--that he's going to get to tell them 
what their pay is going to be? In fact, maybe the company that you work 
for has gotten some of this money. Is he going to be able to tell your 
company what you're going to get paid? Where does it stop?
  So is this really a wage-fixing czar? Is that a better term for this 
than executive pay czar? I don't know.
  Finally--and we haven't gotten the person's name yet--there's the 
cybersecurity czar. Then we've run out of space on the page. I guess 
the next thing we'll find out is that, instead of 22 czars, we may have 
42 czars.
  I tried to find out what these folks get paid, but I haven't been 
able to figure it out yet. Stay tuned. I'll try to come back to you and 
talk to you about what all of these czars are going to get paid. You 
know, if they're following in the Russian pattern, it's going to be 
pretty good because those czars lived in some pretty nice houses, and 
they did pretty well. So, in 300 years, the Romanovs had 18 czars. In 
146 days, the Americans now have 22 czars.
  I am very pleased to see that I'm not by myself today. I have a good 
friend. My good friend, colleague and classmate is here, Steve King 
from Iowa. Steve is always ready to have some fun.
  Steve, what do you think about all of this? I'll yield to you as much 
time as you wish to consume.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, Judge Carter, I so much appreciate your 
bringing this issue to the floor of the House of Representatives. I 
appreciate the chance to address Madam Speaker in this subject matter.
  I have not seen this list of czars. Actually, I went home for the 
weekend, I think, with 19 czars and arrived back in Washington with 22 
czars. There might have been 3 that materialized over the weekend. I 
look down through this list, and the first thing that hits me is, well, 
let's see: border czar. I'm the ranking member of the immigration 
subcommittee. I've never heard of him. I'll go right down the list. A 
few of them I've heard of but not very many, so I don't think they have 
a very high profile--but czar, czar, czar 22 times.
  There were only 18 czars in all the history of the Romanovs. Did I 
get that right?
  Mr. CARTER. That's correct.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. It occurs to me, if you think about the flow and 
the continuum of history, all of the czars were precursors to the 
Marxist era of Russia. So I don't know if this is any kind

[[Page 15128]]

of thing we ought to be thinking about, but the implications that come 
with the nomenclature here of these people who are supposed to be 
managing these jobs for which we already have people to do causes me to 
think:
  Is this a precursor for what's happening in a nation that has seen 
our major industries nationalized? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--
nationalized. Large investment banks--nationalized. The largest 
insurance company--nationalized. I didn't see any czar here for de-
nationalization, for one thing. I'm looking for that. I'd like to 
appoint that czar of de-nationalization. I could find just about 
anybody on the Republican side of the aisle who would make a good de-
nationalization czar because, you know, I'll present this list that's 
in my head but that's not very well refined, and maybe we'll get it a 
little better.
  It just occurs to me that there are, oh, 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10 different 
things that President Obama has engaged in without an exit strategy. 
That would be the nationalization of a list of our major investment 
banks. I don't know how many that is--four or five perhaps. It would be 
the nationalization of the largest insurance company, AIG. It would be 
the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So I may be up to 
about eight. We ought to research this list a little bit before we 
publish it as the final total because I could surely forget some. Now 
I'm to 8, 9 and 10. Let's put down Chrysler Motors and General Motors 
while we're at it. When you end up with a 60 percent share in General 
Motors that the taxpayers are holding--that's the American taxpayers--
and another 12.5 percent held by the Canadian taxpayers, that would be 
72.5 percent of General Motors that is owned by government. It would be 
17.5 percent owned by the unions, and it would be, I think, around 12.5 
percent owned by the bondholders, the part they were able to hold 
together of their secured interest.
  Yes, we need a czar to figure out an exit strategy for all of these 
things that President Obama has engaged in without an exit strategy. It 
occurs to me that he was elected as President of the United States, in 
part, because of his relentless criticism of President Bush for going 
into Iraq without an exit strategy. Now I've just named 10 things that 
he has entered into without an exit strategy. By the way, for all of 
them, he said, I don't want the government to own them, and I don't 
want to have to manage them, and it's not my business to do so.
  Turn around the next week and nationalize something else. Do a photo 
op with Hugo Chavez. That great nationalizer in Venezuela appears to me 
to be a piker compared to the one we have in the White House.
  As for these 22 czars that we have, the ones that stand out and get 
my attention are, for example, the executive pay czar--the payroll 
czar--the guy who sits there and figures out Joe's making too much 
money and Shannon's making enough, and we need to have some more people 
out here who are sacrificing for the good of the whole. I look at that. 
Then as I understood this, too, it went beyond those who had taken 
Federal money, but they were going to at least look at executive pay in 
all of the large corporations--at the CEOs--and make sure that that 
wasn't out of proportion.
  Do you remember that number? About $500,000 is plenty enough for 
anybody to make in a year or so. I think, theoretically, you could put 
a cap on all of that. It's harder to do so if there isn't Federal money 
involved, but it's not impossible to do so if you look at some of the 
impossible things that have already been accomplished by this 
administration.
  Mr. CARTER. If the gentleman would yield, I would reclaim my time for 
just a moment.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. CARTER. If the issue would be a Federal nexus, it would be hard 
to find an industry, really, that wouldn't have some connection with 
the Federal Government if they've gotten a grant, if they've gotten a 
fellowship, if they've gotten a guaranteed loan, if they've gotten a 
tax break that's designated for their industry that other industries 
didn't get. All of these categories could be quickly expanded to add to 
that stimulus czar, if you will.
  So I'll yield back.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the judge from Texas for pointing that out, 
because there is a Federal nexus in almost all business in America, and 
they can find a way to control it.
  My father always told me there's a difference between ``reasons'' and 
``excuses.'' He knew the difference. I didn't always know the 
difference, but today, I think I do. These are excuses. Think of this: 
The executive pay czar--the payroll czar--looking in at CEOs. He fires 
the CEO of General Motors. He hires his guy. He appoints all but two 
members of General Motors' board of directors. He says, I don't want to 
run this company, but you're going to have to build a car that looks 
and runs like this, and you're going to have to stop building these 
cars, and we're going to make this all environmentally friendly in this 
fashion, and we're going to decide who gets paid and how much--who gets 
paid, because he fired the CEO, and how much.
  By the way, we had the CEO of AIG, who was working for a dollar, who 
came to this Congress and who, I think, was treated disrespectfully by 
the members on the panel. He should have--and did--thrown the thing up. 
He was trying to do the right thing for America for $1 a year, and that 
wasn't enough to satisfy them.
  So I'm thinking: What Fortune 500 company would be exempt from the 
scrutiny of the executive pay czar--the payroll czar? I can't think of 
one, because they view these corporations as being evil capitalist 
corporations.
  They still haven't looked over into Hollywood, for example, and 
decided that some of the actors, directors and producers are probably 
making too much money by their own standards here. They wrote a lot of 
checks to these people who are in the White House today, so you haven't 
seen that scrutiny that would come; but if you're going to be an 
executive pay czar, you should look at everybody's executive pay.
  Then I suppose we get into the professional sports athletes, who do 
make a lot of money. Maybe, you know, you're playing, so that must be 
fun. It probably doesn't demand more than $500,000 a year no matter how 
good you are. Pretty soon, America is no longer a meritocracy; it's a 
rate-regulated government entity that decides who gets paid and how 
much.
  The payroll czar, outrageous. It is really outrageous. The climate 
czar. You know, I remember we did a dedication to a park we built in my 
hometown of Odebolt. We did it on the last Friday of October, which is 
a very risky thing to do outside in Iowa. I gave the opening speech 
before we cut the ribbon. Then Pastor Johnson stepped up. It was a 
beautiful day. It was 75 degrees on the last Friday in October. You 
just don't see that in Iowa. In my opening speech, I said, Well, I take 
credit for the weather. I planned this. After I took credit for the 
weather, Pastor Johnson stepped up to give the opening prayer, and he 
said, Now I'm going to give credit for the weather where it's due. I 
deserved it. He did it with the right tone, and I appreciate that exact 
correction.
  The climate czar. I'd like to talk to the climate czar about the 
science involved in this. I'm not finding people who understand, who 
can explain and who can defend the science in this alleged global 
warming. By the way, this isn't even the climate change czar. He could 
have been the global warming czar a year and a half ago. Six months 
ago, he should have been the climate change czar, but now, since the 
climate is changing in the wrong direction, he's just the climate czar. 
So there is a sense of desperation that as this Earth seems to be 
flattening out or cooling marginally that their argument is 
disappearing, and they have to pass this cap-and-tax legislation before 
we get a longer track record of an Earth that's not warming.
  I'll say this into the Record: These folks who are pushing--Waxman 
and Markey--are wrong on the science. They can't defend the science. 
They can't argue it against people who are of equal scientific 
training. They can't

[[Page 15129]]

even argue it against me. I'm happy to do that, by the way, and I'm 
happy to have that debate with Al Gore and with the rest of them who 
come along. Even if they were right on the science--and they're not--
they're really, really wrong on the economics. This has almost become a 
religion. It has got political inertia.
  We saw and heard from a Ph.D. from Spain. Spain embraced the green 
country. They wanted to be the leader in green energy for the world, in 
the industrialized world, so they set about doing that. They built a 
bunch of wind chargers, and they raised the cost of their electricity. 
They became the leader in renewable energy of the industrialized world. 
They also became the leader in unemployment at 17.5 percent. They 
became the leader in the increase of utility bills--20 percent to 
residents but a 100 percent increase for industry for electrical bills. 
This was over a 3-year period of time.
  Even then, they couldn't keep up with the additional costs of 
electricity, so they had to bond them out on the international 
financial market. They didn't have the money to pay the bills, so they 
pledged the full faith and credit of the Spanish Government to later on 
pay off these bonds, which truly means that the cost of green energy in 
Spain was being passed down to the grandchildren. They couldn't even 
pay their electrical bills in this time.
  So they lead the world in unemployment at 17.5 percent. They created 
a lot of green-collar jobs at the cost of $770,000 a job and at the 
cost of 2.2 private-sector jobs that they lost.
  So I'm hopeful that the climate czar, Mr. Todd Stern, will take a 
look at Spain. I would refresh the memory of the Speaker and of 
yourself, Judge. Take a look at Spain because President Obama has said 
we should learn from Spain and that we should emulate Spain. They have 
led this green revolution. I'm convinced that the climate czar had to 
have taken the oath to be supportive of such an idea or he wouldn't be 
the climate czar.
  As I listened to our Secretary of Agriculture testify before the Ag 
Committee last Thursday, of all the logical questions we asked from 
both sides of the aisle, it looked to me like he had to take the oath 
to support the President's agenda on this Markey cap-and-tax 
legislation no matter how bad it is for agriculture and no matter how 
bad it is for our economy.
  I wonder if all of these people believe that you can grow the economy 
by increasing the expenses of business in America, because that's what 
cap-and-tax does. So put the climate czar together with the economic 
czar together with the executive pay czar. I wouldn't worry about 
cybersecurity. I'd like to penetrate that and know what all they have 
to say and how they're really thinking about this convoluted approach.

                              {time}  2115

  But the payroll czar is the one that gets me the most, the one who 
can decide what everyone ought to be paid. And I'm wondering, before I 
yield back, that if they're going to control the pay of the 
neurosurgeons and what would a neurosurgeon be worth. Would he be 
capped at $500,000 a year, too? Or could we just get a cheap lobotomy 
for some of the people who thought this up.
  Mr. CARTER. This bottom of the page, you're right. The one thing I 
find good about the climate czar is the poor old weatherman is going to 
get a break, because when the weatherman on Sunday night says it's 
going to be a beautiful day all day long and it rains, who do they 
blame? The poor old weatherman. Now they can blame the climate czar.
  You know, these folks here, here on the majority side, they would 
like all the center of the universe to be Washington, D.C., and there 
you go. Now, everybody in the country will be blaming the climate czar 
for bad weather. At least we've got centralized blame.
  I'm sure that there are some people sitting at home saying--and in 
this body saying, Why are you talking about this? I think there is 
something really critical that we need to interject into this, and I 
said it briefly, but it really takes us out of the realm of humor and 
into the realm of seriousness.
  When you realize the Founding Fathers that created this country, they 
assigned the government with checks and balances, and this circumvents 
that system. This puts absolute authority in these people's hands at 
this category. And they have not gone through any Senate confirmation, 
which the executive branch, those people are supposed--all of our 
Secretaries and Under Secretaries have to be confirmed by the Senate. 
We've got a good friend in this body that's going to be--that has been 
nominated for Secretary of the Army, and I certainly hope he gets 
confirmed by the Senate, and I'm sure he will, but he has to go through 
that.
  These people don't go through that. There is nobody overseeing this 
but the executive department, but the President of the United States. 
So there's no congressional oversight. There's no judicial oversight, 
both of which were created by our Founding Fathers. No. The only real 
person they answer to is the President of the United States. And they 
work for the President of the United States. He hired them. He chose 
them. He put them in this position. I'm sure he's paying them good 
money. But they don't do what our Founding Fathers envisioned our 
country to be doing. So what does it create? It creates an executive 
department that is garnering power in every area.
  I'm joined by my very good friend from Texas, Louie Gohmert. I yield 
to you however much time you wish to consume.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my friend, also former judge, for yielding. 
And your last comments were exactly what I would like to discuss as 
well, and that is these people are unelected. We were promised before 
the November elections that they would have unparalleled transparency, 
that you would know everything about the government, everything that 
was going on. We were going to be transparent. We were told if only we 
would elect the Obama administration, elect him President, and that 
would happen.
  And we've heard people say in this body that there was a mandate, you 
know, that we got a mandate to do. No, he didn't. You barely got a 
majority that elected you to have transparency.
  We were promised there would be change because this administration 
would stop the insane deficit spending. And some of us, including those 
of us here, were not happy with our own President Bush and his 
administration spending too much money. And they got enough of our 
colleagues to help them spend too much money on our side of the aisle, 
some from the other side of the aisle, but it was too much money. And 
the people voted him in to stop the insanity. So this is what we're 
getting.
  And a czar, I would submit, is probably the proper term because 
they're not accountable. You know, the Senate tried to get Rattner to 
come over and testify. We don't know how much they're making. They have 
these closed-door meetings and they're making these incredible 
decisions about the future of the automobile.
  Now, some people don't understand, but if you study enough history, 
you know that when you can no longer produce the essential things you 
need to conduct warfare to defend yourselves when you're attacked, then 
you're going to stop being a country. When you can no longer stomach 
doing what it takes to win to protect your country from nut cases 
around the world, then you lose the country. And here, we've got these 
people who are just ignoring the law.
  And you look at what this czar did with cars. Now, he said, Well, we 
didn't tell them which dealerships to close. But this closed-door 
secret society appointed by President Obama meets behind closed doors, 
exerts pressure. We've already seen the pressure this administration 
brings to bear: Well, you do this or else we're going to go out and 
we're going to blacken your name among the media. And we've seen that 
happen.
  We've seen the beating that secure creditors took when they simply 
said, You really ought to follow the law here. Well, they were being 
un-American. Those people, Madam Speaker,

[[Page 15130]]

those people were not being un-American. They were trying to follow 
Chapter 11 law. The law is clear. It has been for years. There's going 
to be a Chapter 11, there is going to be a plan. There's got to be 
disclosures about the plans. There's got to be hearings about the 
plans. There can be alternatives to the plan. You can have objections. 
You can have motions for relief from the State. You could have all of 
these kinds of hearings. Well, they just bypassed all that law, just 
bypassed it and said, We're going to turn the law upside down because 
we're secret-meeting czars who are not going to let people have their 
rights under the law. We're going to obliterate the law, which they 
did.
  And then they found a bankruptcy judge who they believe would 
probably sign off on this plan because, let's face it, if you're a 
bankruptcy judge--of course, they come up for reappointment every 14 
years. I don't know when this judge comes up again, but apparently he 
wants to be a judge for a while longer. But anyway, they found a judge 
who was interested in not having all the hearings the law requires to 
give the dealerships a fair hearing, to give the secured creditors a 
fair hearing, to give the unsecured creditors a fair hearing, to give 
all of those who had contractual relationships with those who were 
being addressed by this secretive czar meeting behind closed doors--
there should have been hearings. There should have been transparency. 
That's what the voters voted for, and they didn't get any of that. Just 
turned the law upside down.
  So I hope that my friends will be pleased to hear that since we're 
taking up the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriation bill this 
week, I've got an amendment in there. It's very simple. It says no 
money appropriated can be spent to pay the auto task force, including 
the car czar. If they're not going to tell us what they're doing behind 
closed doors to turn the laws upside down and to ignore the 
constitutional takings, which is occurring, and to ignore all of the 
contract law, the bankruptcy law, if they're just going to ignore the 
law, then we need to ignore paying them. And I hope that the Rules 
Committee, I feel like we'll have a lot of bipartisan support on this 
because I know people on both sides of the aisle want to know what's 
going on. We were promised transparency, and by golly, we gotta have 
it.
  I appreciate the gentleman yielding, especially on this topic of 
czars, but we know what happened to the czars. People got sick of it 
and they threw them out. Now, I would never advocate what happened to 
the last czar and his family, totally inappropriate. But here in 
America we have another way of throwing out czars. We have elections, 
and the people have a choice. They were promised transparency, and this 
kind of baloney is not it. And I hope the American people respond 
appropriately.
  Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, I thank my colleague for his passion.
  I was on the floor of this House about 6 weeks ago talking about 
exactly the same thing. We like to tout the rule of law. We like to 
say--and, in fact, it's true--that what really makes America work is 
having the rule of law. That means when you make a contract, we honor 
that contract. When we have laws on the books, we follow those. We can 
depend--as an investor or a purchaser or an employee, we can depend 
upon those laws which have been written in the bankruptcy arena, for 
instance. And I agree wholeheartedly with my colleague that the way 
this has been handled, we have thrown the rule of law in bankruptcy law 
right out the window.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. CARTER. I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. GOHMERT. One further comment about that. By getting a bankruptcy 
judge to sign off on this, now this unelected, unaccountable, 
nontransparent body has gotten under the guise of one lazy bankruptcy 
judge's signature, they now have cover or color of the law.
  Now, I thought when Justice Ginsburg stayed the sale to Fiat that we 
might finally get some rule of law, but it looks like so far the 
bankruptcy court on up to the Supreme Court has said, You know what? 
We're scared of these people, so let's just let these unelected czar 
people, let them run things. And judiciary, we're not going to hold 
them accountable.
  And if this body, this Congress does not hold them accountable, then 
we have become a country run by czars because the Congress has not made 
them accountable, judiciary's not made them accountable. So they're 
just running things. And everybody has allowed them to usurp the things 
that the Founders fought and died and pledged their lives, their 
fortunes, and their sacred honor. We cannot let that happen.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman.
  I believe my friend from Iowa (Mr. King) would like some time. I'll 
yield 5 minutes to Mr. King.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the judge from Texas for yielding, and as I 
look at this list, a couple of things do come to mind. I'd go back and 
refresh two places there: the TARP czar, Herb Allison, and the stimulus 
accountability czar, Earl Devaney. Those two places there, add that up. 
We're at about, oh, let's see, $1.5 trillion, in that neighborhood. Now 
very close to that.
  And it might be good to ask them, Where's the money and where did it 
go? Now we've got a centralized place to at least ask the question on a 
level of accountability. Now, these people are not accountable to the 
Senate for confirmation. They're not accountable for elections, and 
they are accountable only to the President, as far as we know. But the 
least we could do is put some pressure on them and ask for a full 
accounting of where's the TARP money and are we going to let all of the 
people who want to pay that back pay it back. And does the money come 
back to the Treasury, or are you going to roll that over into some 
other venture capital kind of government endeavor.
  And the stimulus accountability czar, Mr. Earl Devaney, I would be 
really interested, Madam Speaker, if we could get an answer back from 
the stimulus accountability czar on where is all that money. How much 
of it has been spent and where? How much of that went into 
infrastructure? How much of it actually converted into jobs? How much 
of that infrastructure is going to be usable and useful and stimulate 
the economy? I would like to see the list.
  And I understand that the number of those dollars that have actually 
gone into infrastructure is something like 3 to 4 percent of the 
overall $787 billion that were appropriated in the stimulus plan, which 
was the same as the TARP funding. Hurry up and put the money out now 
because we're in an economic tailspin. We had a Chicken Little drill 
going on here in this Capitol a couple times in the last year, and that 
yielded $1.5 trillion from the taxpayers that my grandkids are going to 
have to pay. And we still don't know where the money went, and we still 
don't know how it is that all of this money that's appropriated didn't 
get implemented right away.
  And now we have this long-term debt for America, this long-term debt 
that once you take on that kind of debt, whatever your economic crisis 
is that you're in, taking on a lot of debt delays it, delays the 
recovery. That is the equation that takes place. And I think we should 
be able to have real-time accounting. There should be a Web site there. 
Here's your $700 billion in TARP money, and here's where it all went. 
Here's a spreadsheet. Click on here and we'll give you a changing scene 
real-time.

                              {time}  2130

  I think there ought to be a Web site, also, for the stimulus 
accountability czar so that he could have that Web site up. We wouldn't 
have to be pressing for answers; America could just go to the Web site. 
They would contact us, and let us know what they think about how this 
money is being spent or not being spent.
  But one thing we know is it has not been--and doesn't look like it's 
going to be--spent according to plan. And whether or not it's spent 
according to plan, the results don't look like what

[[Page 15131]]

they were designed to come out of either the TARP funding or the 
stimulus funding that came. And by the way, I'm proud of all my 
colleagues for voting ``no'' on that plan. Remember, it was one leg of 
a multi-legged stool that we had to construct in order to get us out of 
this economic crisis; that's what the President told us that day. It 
looks like a multi-legged stool has got to be a four-or-more-legged 
stool. If it was a three-legged stool, you would say so. I've never 
seen a two-legged stool and I've never talked to anybody that had ever 
seen a two-legged stool. That would defy logic, but so does this 
stimulus plan defy logic. So maybe it is a two-legged stool, but I 
think it's more like a four or more, at the cost of about $2 trillion a 
leg, Madam Speaker.
  So what do we get back for that? And these margins that were to come, 
we weren't going to see unemployment go up over 8 percent and now it's 
9.4 percent. And I didn't see how the stock market closed today, but 
the last I looked at it, it was down 204 points; and I don't imagine 
how it had a good day. The level of confidence there, it seems it's 
less volatile than it was, it's more stable than it was, but we have a 
whole lot more debt than we had. When this all started, the Chinese 
were happy to buy our debt. I was never happy to sell it to them, but 
they were happy to buy it. Today, they're not happy to buy it, and I'm 
not happy to sell it to them.
  We've got to find a way to tighten this belt. We've got to tighten 
this belt down, and we've got to slow down this spending, and we've got 
to get back to balancing our budget. I believe that every one of us 
here on this floor voted for a balanced budget this year. And in the 
face of all this economic crisis--those of us on the Republican side of 
the aisle, many of us supported a balanced budget--it's hard to put one 
together in this tailspin that we're in. We did that. We voted for it. 
And that sends the right message. And every year hereafter we've got to 
put a balanced budget out there and build the votes until we can 
actually get it balanced.
  I yield back and thank the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend for joining me.
  As we sum this up here, Mr. King mentioned something that I think is 
important. He mentioned we needed a denationalization czar or an exit 
strategy czar, or maybe both. In this world of proliferation of czars, 
maybe we need both. But the reality is, in seriousness, when the 
President of the United States came into office, he told us there is a 
drop-dead deadline we're going to get out of Iraq. This is it. There is 
a drop-dead deadline we're going to close Guantanamo Bay, and this is 
it. So this time next year, we won't even need the Guantanamo closure 
czar because it will be closed. And very clearly, we are going to draw 
down our soldiers in the war in Iraq.
  The President has shown leadership. Whether you agree or disagree 
with him is for other times. But he certainly has become one who says 
there should be a drop-dead date, an exit strategy. I think it is 
important that this Congress, when we look at this massive increase in 
the executive department and we say to ourselves, They are not 
answerable to us except through the appropriations process, we can cut 
off the money, but other than that, they're answerable to the 
President.
  We had nothing to say about who got hired. We had nothing to say 
about what the duties were. This was a creation of the executive 
department, and that would be the President of the United States and 
his staff. They owe this Nation and some of these areas a time to get 
out.
  They say they don't want us to run the automobile industry. Well, we 
need to be planning on getting out of the automobile industry. We can't 
stay in there. The country doesn't want a government-made car. Just ask 
them; they don't want one. So we can get rid of the car czar, the 
executive pay czar, a lot of these other czars, if we would just say, 
this is their mission, here's when we expect that mission to be 
accomplished, as we did to our soldiers, and this is when we expect it 
to be accomplished, and by that date you either accomplish it or you're 
getting out.
  You know, I personally think the way we look at this massive $1.5 
trillion worth of authorized spending, authorized by this House--mainly 
that side of the aisle--the way we look at that right now is we should 
be saying stimulus means rapid infusion into the economy. Anything that 
hasn't been rapidly infused this year we should halt. So if they 
haven't spent the $787 billion--or whatever that number is--like right 
now, at least some papers report only $25 billion of that money, or 
we'll say $40 billion of that money has been used so far. And if you 
study some of those projects, many of those projects are for getting 
money to people for things that will not have an effect on our economy 
for years--3, 5, 7 years down the road. That's not stimulus. If they 
haven't gotten the thing done this year, we ought to say, de-authorize 
it at that point in time. It hasn't worked; try something that works. 
That's where we ought to be. That's the way this Congress needs to 
start thinking because we are creating a power structure that is 
outside the normal power structure of the executive branch of the 
government. These are things for us to think about.
  Madam Speaker, I thank you for your courtesy tonight.

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