by JEANNETTE LEE, CongressDaily
Sens. Thomas Carper, D-Del. and John McCain, R-Ariz., and others on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Federal Financial Management Subcommittee are urging the president to nominate a Census Bureau director, pronto.
With just a year until the decennial count, the bureau has yet to thoroughly test new technologies, is thin on staff and is far from solving the long-standing problem of undercounting ethnic minorities, a GAO official told the panel at a hearing Thursday.
Given the tight deadlines, the leadership vacuum at the Census Bureau badly needs filling, said Carper, the subcommittee chairman.
"Uncertainties surround the bureau's readiness for 2010," testified Robert Goldenkoff, director of strategic issues at GAO. "They are under the gun."
Goldenkoff and five other witnesses said a good troubleshooter at the helm would be key to pulling off what is slated to be the country's most expensive national headcount to date. Former Census Bureau Director Barbara Bryant urged the subcommittee to "do everything in your power and use your influence on the administration" to get a new director.
Carper asked each witness to recommend two prospects by the close of business today "who you think are well-equipped to do this job." Carper said he would forward the names to Commerce Secretary-designate Gary Locke, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and "probably" to Vice President Joe Biden, Carper's former fellow senator from Delaware.
"Maybe the administration has its own candidates," Carper said, but "we'll submit a talent pool in case they need help in that regard." Carper told CongressDaily he didn't have any nominees in mind, but "we know there are good people out there."
NextGov has more on the challenges facing the bureau as 2010 approaches.
President Obama has selected Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske to be the nation's next drug czar, an administration official told the Associated Press Thursday.
Kerlikowske will lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a position that has in past administrations been a Cabinet-level post, but the Obama administration has not decided its status, according to an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no official announcement has been made.
Kerlikowske joined Seattle's police force in 2000 after overseeing community policing grants at the Justice Department and has worked as a police officer in Florida and New York.
In the latest edition of National Journal Magazine, reporter Will Englund offers insight into the increasing role of czars in the Obama administration.
Englund reports that the surprisingly lengthy history of White House czars has, overall, not been particularly brilliant. Every recent administration has featured a drug czar -- toothless because he lacks real budgetary authority, hopeless because he is assigned to coordinate the policies of intractably jealous and secretive police agencies, and feckless because his job is to take care of something the president doesn't want to be bothered with.
The senator who began pushing in 1982 for the creation of the drug czar post is now vice president of the United States, and it will be interesting to see how much attention Joe Biden pays to the newest czar.
William Bennett was the first drug czar, under George H.W. Bush, and he acknowledged being frustrated by a lack of authority. Gen. Barry McCaffrey was drug czar under Bill Clinton, and although by law he had some role in budget-setting, in practice the Office of Management and Budget didn't give him a seat at the table, according to Winograd. "If it doesn't include the budget, it doesn't mean anything in Washington," says Morley Winograd, who was head of Vice President Gore's commission for reinventing government. And although others say that's not always true, it was nevertheless the case that McCaffrey had no clout. The agencies he was supposed to be coordinating resisted him at every turn.
- Read the complete analysis of policy czars and their prospects for success (subscription).
Conversation on this Sunday's political talk shows centered mainly on the proposed stimulus legislation and President Obama's executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year.
Vice President-elect Joe Biden added to his team today two experienced Hill hands, plucking one from the House and bringing the other with him from the Senate.
Alan Hoffman had been Biden's chief of staff in the Senate and will become his deputy chief of staff. Sudafi Henry, a top adviser to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., will serve as director of legislative affairs. Biden said in a statement that Henry will "lead our efforts to build strong working relationships with members of both parties, and in both the House and the Senate."
The full press release is after the jump.
Continue reading Biden Says He'll Spend His Weekends In Delaware.
