Take Two Bailouts and Call Me in the Morning

By Al Kamen
Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Senate staffers working on confirmations are looking hard into the backgrounds of President-elect Barack Obama's nominees, poring over their past writings and speeches searching for controversial statements and positions.

Folks on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee might want to take a close look at former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle's new book, "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis."

Daschle -- nominated to be secretary of health and human services, but with an office in the White House that makes him the nation's health czar -- has written an analysis of what he sees as a broken health-care system. His solution relies heavily on the creation of a Federal Health Board, patterned on the Federal Reserve Board.

The board would oversee the system but would also have some of the "regulatory functions" of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Like the SEC, it would ensure that the public has accurate information on providers and health plans," Daschle writes. "Broadly speaking, the board would oversee the health-care industry in the same way that the SEC oversees securities exchanges, brokers and dealers. It would protect against fraud," maybe even regulating the marketing of drugs, he continues.

Recent events might point to some flaws in Daschle's proposal, although he probably wasn't thinking of moving SEC chief Christopher Cox over to run the health board.

Maybe someone like William O. Douglas? He was, after all, a predecessor of Cox's.

He Doesn't Just Play One on TV

Speaking of health matters, there's been some chatter that CNN medical guru Sanjay Gupta is a serious contender to be the nation's next surgeon general. It doesn't look as though it's actually going to happen, but hey, he's a neurosurgeon, knows lots of stuff, was a Clinton White House fellow -- working for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Besides, the first pick, Hugh Laurie, also known as Dr. Gregory House, turned the job down.

The New Pentagon Deputy?

Credible buzz is that William J. Lynn, a top Pentagon official in the Clinton administration and more recently senior vice president of government operations and strategy at Raytheon, is the pick to be deputy secretary of defense.

Lynn was undersecretary of defense (comptroller) for four years, and before that he was director of program analysis and evaluation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he oversaw strategic planning.

Before his Pentagon jobs, Lynn was Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's liaison to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Send This Guy Your Application

Attention, administration job seekers! Meet the most popular guy in Washington. No, not Barack Obama. It's Don Gips, the new director of presidential personnel. Gips, a transition team adviser who helped Obama assemble his Senate staff, will oversee White House staffing. Gips, who was chief domestic policy adviser to Al Gore when Gore was vice president, is on leave from a communications firm, where he is chief strategy officer and leads merger and acquisition efforts.

Bradley J. Kiley was named director of the office of management and administration, where he will oversee White House operations, including travel. Kiley, a deputy in that office in the Clinton administration, is operations director for the transition team. Meanwhile, Susan Sher, a vice president and general counsel at the University of Chicago Medical Center, will serve as associate counsel to the president, a position in which she will provide legal advice to first lady Michelle Obama.

Other appointments announced yesterday include Pete Souza, a veteran photographer who was formerly the Washington-based national photographer for the Chicago Tribune, as chief White House photographer, and Brian McKeon, a longtime aide to Vice President-elect Joseph Biden, as deputy national security adviser to the vice president.

All Donors Big and Small

Obama raised more than $3.8 million from private donors in the six weeks after the November election to help pay for his transition activities, according to figures released today.

As of Dec. 15, about 53,853 donors have contributed to the Obama-Biden Transition Project, which is well on its way to meeting its fundraising goal by the Jan. 20 inauguration. The transition team set a budget of $12 million to cover salaries, office rent and other expenses until Obama moves to the White House. Nearly half of that budget, $5.2 million, is covered by the government, while the remainder must be covered by private donors, who are allowed to contribute up to $5,000.

About 219 people donated the maximum amount, many of them leading business executives, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman.

But the average donation was $70.62, according to the transition team, and several thousand people gave just $10.

The transition team is refusing contributions from registered lobbyists, corporations, labor unions and other interest groups, and it has been releasing the names of donors monthly. Contributions to the transition team are separate from donations to pay for inauguration festivities.

Aisle? What Aisle?

Ah, bipartisanship, the mother's milk of the nation's progress. And so it was heartening to read in yesterday's Washington Post an op-ed by Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad and Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, the top members of their chamber's budget panel. The piece outlined their common views on the need for action now on an economic recovery package and, more important, on long-term fixes.

Also yesterday, in the Wall Street Journal, there was an op-ed by Gregg, who began one sentence: "Although I hold out little hope that my Democratic colleagues in the House will take heed of my thoughts . . ."

Well, Conrad will.

With Philip Rucker