Promoted from diaries. Want to keep interjecting, Senator Durbin? - Moe Lane
Instead we have a 2000-page bill from Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
On the Senate floor, Sen. Lamar Alexander, Sen. Judd Gregg, and Sen. John McCain discussed Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s massive health care reform bill. Sen. Dick Durbin had to drop in and hilarity ensued:
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) knows more than a little about sound fiscal policy. He was elected in 2005 to chair the Senate Budget Committee, and he has been a proponent of spending restraint and lower taxes. No small wonder that he chose not to accept the cabinet post of Commerce Secretary recently offered to him by President Obama, whose thinking on fiscal matters is the antithesis of Gregg’s.
Appearing Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” program with John King, Gregg said that the Obama Administration’s massive budget proposal will bankrupt the country:
Updated with a graphic supplied by Josh_Painter
In the statement he released upon withdrawing from consideration for the position of Secretary of Commerce in President Obama’s administration (covered as the news broke by Erick), Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) cited the $800 billion “stimulus” bill currently being shoved down America’s throat without review, transparency, or oversight, as well as the administration’s politicization of the census, as “irreconcilable differences” that would have made it impossible for him to support the president as a member of the Cabinet should.
Gregg, who has not officially resigned his seat in the Senate, made the right decision in ultimately rejecting the President’s offer to be a token Republican in a cabinet position that was being stripped of its highest-profile responsibility. After New Mexico governor Bill Richardson resigned under a cloud of corruption (something which, if tax nonpayment is included, has touched far too many of President Obama’s nominees to date), Gregg’s departure means President Obama is left hoping that the third time is the charm when it comes to filling the position of Secretary of Commerce.
Senator Judd Gregg has withdrawn his name as Barack Obama’s Commerce Secretary nominee.
It was pretty obvious the Obama administration intended to marginalize Gregg as Commerce Secretary. Maybe now he’ll be pissed off enough to start punching the Democrats.
Gregg’s statement mentions his disagreements with the administration on Porkulus and on Obama’s politicization of the census.
From his actual statement:
“I want to thank the President for nominating me to serve in his Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce. This was a great honor, and I had felt that I could bring some views and ideas that would assist him in governing during this difficult time. I especially admire his willingness to reach across the aisle.
“However, i”t has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census there are irresolvable conflicts for me. Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.”
Traditionally, it is the function of the Department of Commerce to oversee the nationwide census that is mandated by the Constitution to occur every ten years. But even as the President seeks to convince us that he is trying to reach out and be bipartisan in his approach to Washington by nominating a Republican Senator, Judd Gregg, to serve as Secretary of Commerce, the President is seeking to emasculate one of Commerce’s key functions by giving the White House power to conduct the census.
The excuse given is that the White House has to appease minority groups that complain that as a Senator, Gregg has not given sufficient support to census efforts and that in his Senate votes, Gregg has sought to eliminate the Commerce Department. Of course, if the Obama Administration were concerned about Gregg’s commitment to the work of the Commerce Secretary, they should not have appointed him and if these minority groups are concerned about the appointment, they should be targeting the White House, not Senator Gregg.
Call me cynical, but it seems to me that the reason for this effort to shut Gregg out of census-related issues has to do with the fact that the census will determine redistricting, which in turn will determine the balance of power in Congress. The Obama Administration, therefore, wants the census to be run out of the West Wing so that it can take a direct hand in helping determine the balance of power and making sure that it favors the Democrats.
If so, a Constitutional responsibility is being subsumed by a naked power grab. And let’s remember that taking the census operation and consolidating it in the White House lessens Congress’s oversight capabilities, because Congress will not be able to call up the relevant Cabinet officials to get answers out of them concerning census issues. Rather, Congress will have to fight to get White House officials like Rahm Emanuel, the Chief of Staff, to come up to the Hill to testify and as we all know, getting White House officials to testify comes with a series of headaches and obstacles to be overcome.
But I suppose that the White House considers all of this preferable to having a Republican Commerce Secretary run the census as Commerce Secretaries are wont to do. I suppose as well that all of this is preferable to allowing Congressional hearings to take place more easily, and allowing Republicans to ask questions in those hearings as well.
President Obama reveals that his sly attempt to appear bipartisan by nominating Republican Senator Judd Gregg to be Commerce Secretary is nothing more than pure partisan politics.
In an effort to mollify ruffled feathers of “black and Hispanic leaders” about Gregg’s commitment to funding the 2010 census, Obama has already decided to clip the wings of his Secretary of Commerce-designate:
The director of the Census Bureau will report directly to the White House and not the secretary of Commerce, according to a senior White House official.
“Funding the 2010 census” is Democrat code for cooking the census books.
I remember that when John Bolton was nominated to be the Ambassador to the United Nations, Democrats complained that we could not send a nominee to Turtle Bay who had so openly and so frequently expressed opposition to the role that the UN plays and criticism for a whole host of UN actions.
If the “you can’t do a job you disdained in the past” rule still applies, does that mean Judd Gregg’s nomination to be Commerce Secretary will be voted down?
President Obama’s new candidate to run the Commerce Department voted in favor of abolishing the agency as a member of the Budget Committee and on the Senate floor in 1995.
Sen. Judd Gregg , R-N.H., whose nomination was expected to be announced Tuesday, also worked in the Senate to trim the department’s budget as head of the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee.
Gregg’s 1995 votes were cast for the fiscal 1996 budget resolution, a nonbinding blueprint that outlined the GOP’s fiscal priorities after Republicans won full control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.
The Senate version of the controversial measure envisioned spending cuts of more than $960 billion, almost half of it from Medicare and Medicaid. Democratic efforts to amend it were uniformly rebuked by a united GOP majority on the Budget Committee.
Have the vetters in the Obama Administration decided to take a 6-month vacation, mayhap?
