Jack Kingston

It seems that every day the Obama Administration appoints a new czar to cover a major issue.  To date, he’s appointed as many as 33 (there’s so much mystery surrounding who is and is not a czar that it’s hard to tell).  That means, he’s appointed more czars than ever ruled Russia.

This evening, Jack offered an amendment (text here) during a mark up in the Appropriations Committee which would have withheld funding from any czar who has not been confirmed by the Senate.  While that amendment was defeated, we’re going to keep on fighting until we get the accountability and transparency President Obama promised when he entered the White House.

Why should the American people trust these folks be given so much power to affect important policy areas without having to go through the same review we require of hundreds of Administration officials with much less power?

The Republican Conference tonight adopted a proposal originally drafted by Jack along with Reps. Wolf and Wamp to establish a Joint Select Committee on Earmark Reform.  The bill, H Con Res 263, would establish a committee comprised of 16 members equally appointed by the majority and minority parties in both houses of Congress to study earmarks in all their forms - appropriations, authorizing, tax and tariff, as well as those contained in the administration’s budget request.  To read the release that accompanied the bill’s introduction, click here.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Open for your thoughts and a discussion: transparency.

Take a minute and read this New York Times editorial and then weigh in with your thoughts.

For all the worthy proposals for ethics reform being hashed out by the incoming Congress, a heavy dose of Internet transparency should not be overlooked in the effort to repair lawmakers’ tattered credibility. The technology is already there, along with the public’s appetite for more disclosure about the byways of power in Congress.

The Web is increasingly wielded by both campaign donors and bloggers clicking and tapping as wannabe muckrakers. Politicians would be wise to catch up. Local citizens were enlisted to track pork-barrel abuses in the last campaign by a new watchdog organization, the Sunlight Foundation, which enlisted Ms. Gillibrand’s disclosure pledge. It aims to have voters use the Internet as an engine of political information.