Senate is set to limit funding for White House czars

The Senate Tuesday continued working through amendments to the $32.1 billion, fiscal 2010 Interior-Environment Appropriations bill and was poised to adopt a proposal to prohibit funding for White House czars unless the president allows them to appear before congressional panels and submit biannual reports to committees with jurisdiction over their policy issues.

The amendment was offered by Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine. She along with five other Republican Senators sent a Sept. 14 letter to President Obama asking him, among other things, to refrain from naming any more czars -- also known as policy coordinators -- and seeking the responsibilities of 18 czars they believe are undermining the constitutional oversight responsibilities of Congress or the express statutory assignments of responsibility to other executive branch officials.

"I am deeply troubled because these czars fail to provide the accountability, transparency and oversight necessary for our constitutional democracy," Collins said.

Collins added that "I don't think these conditions are unreasonable; I don't think they would be difficult for the president to meet, but they would make a real difference."

Debate on the Collins' amendment came as Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., filed cloture on the bill Tuesday evening. Reid hopes to finish the bill as soon as possible so the Senate can take up the $636 billion fiscal 2010 Defense Appropriations bill.

The Senate also defeated, 61-36, a motion to recommit by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., that would have sent the bill back to the Appropriations Committee and instructed it to include in the bill an amendment that would have blocked the Interior secretary from spending money in the bill to restrict, reduce or reallocate water supplies from the Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project under biological opinions issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA fisheries.

DeMint sought to offer the amendment directly to the bill, but Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., objected.

"This issue shines a spotlight in the utter stupidity of what this body does so often," DeMint argued in favor of his proposal. "Lawsuits cut off water to one of the most fertile farming communities in our country that supply 13 percent of our food."

Feinstein opposed the amendment and said it would "handcuff the Secretary of Interior" and disrupt the transfer of water between state and federal water projects "to facilitate additional water to go to a very needy farm belt in the great Central Valley of California."

The Senate also defeated, 70-27, an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would have stripped out $200,000 from the bill for the Des Moines Art Center.

Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee was still finalizing a stop-gap funding legislation Tuesday evening to keep dollars flowing to federal programs beyond the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., acknowledged Tuesday night that the writing of the continuing resolution had been slowed by "some anomalies," which he did not explain.

But Hoyer assured, "We're going to pass the CR this week."

Billy House contributed to this report.