The letter (PDF) , signed by Texas A&M professor Douglass Shaw, urges the president to invest in the nation’s public lands infrastructure and establish new wilderness, parks and monuments that can create jobs and jump-start the businesses around them.

“The rivers, lakes, canyons, and mountains found on public lands serve as a unique and compelling backdrop that has helped to transform the western economy from a dependence on resource extractive industries to growth from in-migration, tourism, and modern economy sectors such as finance, engineering, software development, insurance, and health care,” the letter says. “Increasingly, entrepreneurs are basing their business location decisions on the quality of life in an area. Businesses are recruiting talented employees by promoting access to beautiful, nearby public lands.”

The economists’ message was also delivered to leaders in Congress, who are largely locked in partisan gridlock over issues dealing with the environment with few exceptions, such as the expansion of a wilderness area in San Diego County that shares bipartisan support led by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and the recent passage of the U.S. Ski Area Recreational Opportunity Enhancement Act, which Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) championed for many years.

The Obama administration appears to have gotten the economists’ memo before it was even written, given that U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued a report three weeks earlier calling for the declaration of 18 new wilderness and conservation area in nine Western states. Salazar’s report says they all have “significant local support” and, in Colorado, they include expanded land protections in the McKenna Peak Wilderness Study Area of the San Juan Mountains, the Castle Peak Wilderness Study Area, the Browns Canyon Wilderness Study Area and the Bull Gulch Wilderness Study Area.

To get conservative members of Congress, such as U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.), on board will take some convincing. Tipton so far hasn’t tipped his hand on whether he supports the San Juan Mountains Wilderness Act or drilling in Thompson Divide, but he has been enthusiastic in rolling back wilderness protections for other public lands, and previously blasted Salazar’s controversial Wild Lands policy.

The same can be said of Colorado’s other conservative congressmen — Doug Lamborn, Cory Gardner and Mike Coffman — who, like Tipton, have been rebuked for their environmental records.

Three Nobel Laureates and 10 residents of Colorado are among the scores of economists and academics who signed the public lands letter with the hope of getting U.S. policy-makers’ attention.

“Here in Colorado, our public lands fuel local economies,” said Zeke Hersh, owner of Blue River Anglers in Frisco. “It is only common sense that our elected officials in Congress and the White House protect these places with adequate investment and protections for the clean air, water, wildlife habitat, and open space that lures tourists and small business entrepreneurs to communities like Frisco.”

“Public lands are the identity for our community and thus our businesses,” added Roger Marolt, owner of Marolt LLP, in Aspen. “ They help define who we are and are what attracts vibrant employees, exciting new companies, visitors and consumers to the West. The preservation of federal lands is vital to our economic growth and ensuring existing businesses like mine thrive.”

A recent study commissioned by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (pdf) reports that outdoor recreation supports $289 billion in annual retail sales and services and more than 6.5 million jobs.

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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (Photo: Flickr/US Mission Geneva)

This week Congress will hold yet another hearing addressing a grievance from Catholic bishops, this time about a recent loss of federal funds.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing on Thursday titled, “HHS and the Catholic Church: Examining the Politicization of Grants,” the committee’s schedule shows.

The hearing will discuss a decision made several weeks ago by a federal health agency to deny millions in federal funds for a charity run by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The funds were for the bishops’ relief program for victims of human trafficking. The group lost the money because it refused to refer victims for contraceptives or abortion services. Three other groups that provide a wider range of services to victims were awarded the grants instead.

The bishops have exercised their immense political power to garner congressional hearings on topics they take particular issue before. Earlier this month, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health met to discuss the federal government’s decision to require health insurers to cover birth control services without co-payments.

The debate that day centered on a provision that allows religious employers to opt out of the mandate, derided mostly by Catholic groups because they claim it is not broad enough. The bishops have led the charge in denouncing the decision.

The Washington Post reported that letters were sent to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius by “more than 30 Republican lawmakers,” arguing that the decision to defund the Catholic human trafficking relief program “was unfair to the Catholic group and might violate federal laws banning discrimination based on religion”:

Two of the letters are seeking internal HHS documents relating to the decision and one, sent Monday by Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), said his investigative committee may issue subpoenas if HHS doesn’t comply.

…

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the bishops conference, said Friday that she welcomed the letters from Congress. “The more we look at this, the more concerned we are about it,” she said. “It appears the grant process was manipulated.”

One letter to Sebelius, by Republican Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Roy Blunt (Mo.) and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) and signed by 24 other senators, made a similar point. “The integrity and lawful administration of our federal grant process — particularly with respect to equal treatment of religious institutions — must not be compromised,” it said.

The Post previously reported that Health and Human Services officials have denied any anti-Catholic bias in their decision-making.

The bishops have become well known for using their political power to roll back important protections and legal rights, mostly in the realm of reproductive rights. The Huffington Post recently described the bishops as a “group of men with no real background in law or medicine, but blessed with a strong personal interest in women’s bodies, [that] have quietly influenced all of the major anti-abortion legislation over the past several years. “

The USPS pegs projected losses over the next ten years at a colossal $238 billion, based on ongoing precipitous declines in first-class mail use. Both industry insiders and government officials, however, say that number is ludicrously inflated.

Ruth Goldway, chair of the Postal Regulatory Commission, an oversight agency that acts as a middleman between the Postal Service and the federal government at large, called it an “unsubstantiated figure with no basis in reality.”

Phil Dine, a spokesman for the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), which represents more than 90 percent of all letter carriers, tells The American Independent, “Nobody takes that seriously.” Both called the number a scare tactic that USPS management is using to jolt Congress to rush into reforms.

The numbers from the last several years seem to back up what Goldway and Dine say. Getting to $238 billion in losses by the start of the next decade would require the absolute worst annual loss the Postal Service has suffered in recent years to more than triple, then stay that high for the entire decade. Yet overall mail volume is actually increasing (though first-class mail is still far below pre-Internet-Revolution levels) as the country gradually claws its way out the recession, making such a scenario beyond unlikely.

Still, even if it’s not to the tune of $238 billion, there’s no denying that the Postal Service is in trouble. It ended 2010 with a net operating loss of $8.5 billion, marking the fourth straight year — and the worst of them yet — that the USPS has ended up in the red. But industry insiders say these grim numbers — the source of anti-labor grousing from the likes of Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) — leave out a crucial part of the complete picture, a piece that completely flips the narrative on the dire straits the Postal Service allegedly faces.

A retirement deal struck

The roots of the issue go back 40 years. In 1971, the federal government authorized a complete overhaul of the postal system. It replaced the nearly 200-year-old Post Office Department with the U.S. Postal Service, which has delivered the mail ever since. The main difference between the two, though the changeover may have been little noticed by the public, is that the Post Office Department was a Cabinet-level department of the federal government and, as such, was funded with federal money. The Postal Service is a federal agency in a much looser sense and operates entirely on revenue generated by consumer purchases.

At the time of the changeover, the new Postal Service struck a deal with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal agency that oversees all federal civil service programs (such as the old Post Office Department). For those postal workers who began their careers before 1971, the OPM would use federal funds to contribute to pension plans at a rate based on 1971-level earnings, without adjustments for inflation or post-‘71 pay raises. The USPS agreed to keep using the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), the pension system for all federal employees, for simplicity’s sake.

Over the next several decades, inflation rose and postal worker salaries grew, from an average of under $10,000 annually at the time of reorganization to over $50,000 today (PDF). As a result, the USPS has contributed an increasingly disproportionate part of pension costs to the CSRS each year since 1971.

‘Pre-funding the grandkids of people who haven’t been born yet’

By 2003, the Postal Service began lobbying Congress to do something to reform the system and reduce its pension obligation. Instead, in 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which, among other things, required the Postal Service to fund 75 years’ worth of retiree health benefits over ten years. Of this singular requirement, the NALC’s Phil Dine says, “It’s pre-funding the grandkids of people who haven’t been born yet. No other organization, public or private, has to do anything like that.”

And that, to bring it all full circle, is where the budget shortfalls come in, according to postal worker union representatives, as well as the Postal Service itself. Each year, September 30 (the end of the fiscal year) hits, and the Postal Service has to dump $5.5 billion into its Retiree Health Benefit Fund. Without that requirement, the Postal Service’s annual profits could have reached as high as $3.3 billion in recent years. Of course, the $8.5 billion loss last year still leaves $3 billion in red ink even after discounting the retiree fund money, but Jim Sauber, head economist and chief of staff for the NALC, contends that even that shortfall is simply the result of a “non-cash” adjustment to the USPS workers’ compensation fund, following tumbling interest rates.

The short end of the stick

Indeed, though the recession and the rise of online communication have put an undeniable damper on mail in general, Dine reports that the latest figures have the USPS making $226 million in net profit in the first quarter of this year — a trend that should continue, at least until September 30 comes around. Even when offset by the hit the Postal Service takes from that non-cash workers’ comp adjustment based on slashed interest rates, Dine says that the USPS would have made $837 million since 2007, were it not for the pre-funding requirement.

Still, despite the singularity of the requirement, the NALC argues that the Postal Service does have the money to remain afloat, if it were simply allowed to use it. Those disproportionate pension contributions? According to external audits performed by consultants from the Segal Company and the Hay Group, the Postal Service has put anywhere between $50 and $75 billion extra into the CSRS since 1971.

The USPS would like to use that money to cover its retirement obligations, but the Office of Personnel Management controls the funds, and recognizing the overage would mean making up the difference itself. “We’re happy to pay our fair share,” says the NALC Chief of Staff Sauber. “We just don’t want to get the short end of the stick, which is what we’ve gotten from OPM.”

Even the OPM concedes that it’s not unreasonable for the Postal Service to seek a re-evaluation of how pension contributions are tabulated. “[In 2003], the Postal Service proposed that the obligations for pre-1971 service be calculated on the basis of a simple years-of-service approach,” OPM planning director John O’Brien told the House Oversight Committee at a hearing last year. “Other than one technical flaw [a quibble over annuity growth], this is not an inconceivable approach. While it may be worthy of future consideration by the Congress, OPM believes that it is not possible based upon current legislation.”

Postal Service: Soon to be extinct?

That last detail is the sticking point in all this. Any change would require an act of Congress, a fact emphasized by unions, the Postal Service and the OPM alike. Unfortunately for the Postal Service, Congress is unlikely to act on this any time soon.

With a 2012 budget fight looming, any solution that would increase the federal deficit by shifting money from a federal pension system into a financially independent organization’s retirement accounts is not going to be popular.

As if to confirm this very notion, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) introduced a bill last month that would resolve this exact issue by transferring all surplus contributions into the USPS Retiree Health Benefit Fund. The American Postal Workers Union Thursday came out in support of the bill, and higher-ups at NALC tell The American Independent that they’re happy with it as well, but it may not have the necessary support where it counts. The bill has just 35 co-sponsors in the House. It’s currently in the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee, which has instead turned its attention to a new Postal Service labor contract that House Democrats, postal unions and USPS management have all called fair, but that committee Republicans have alleged is too labor-friendly and only underscores the value of private courier services like UPS and FedEx.

In a hearing last month, amid Republican claims that the contract is inflexible and promotes high labor costs, Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said, “The Postal Service has become a dinosaur that will soon be extinct […] and that’s why I use FedEx and UPS.” In fact, one of the Postal Service’s fast-growing sectors is what it calls “last-mile service,” in which it delivers packages door-to-door on behalf of UPS and FedEx, which don’t provide universal service.

Of the push to devalue postal unions and avoid releasing the pension funds, Sauber asks, “Should we really be crushing the Postal Service right now, at a time of 9 percent unemployment?” Congress has five months to decide its answer to that question. If the answer falls to Oversight Committee Republicans, America’s Postal Service may become all but unrecognizable in the near future.

Postal Service officials have blamed the recession for the agency’s financial woes, but the economy is simply exacerbating lost postal revenue from the greater trend of paperless communication. According to internal estimates, lost revenue will skyrocket over the next decade, putting the Post Office a staggering quarter-trillion dollars ($238 billion to be exact) in the red by 2021 if current trends continue.

For several years, the Postal Service has been considering cutting Saturday delivery in order to slow down some of its losses. Polls have shown that the public is in support of cutting Saturday service, and the Postmaster General has strongly advocated doing so. However, last month, the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), an independent government body, released a report (PDF) concluding that the Postal Service has vastly overestimated the savings that a five-day delivery schedule would provide and that any savings would be undercut by the diminished quality of service stemming from such a reduced schedule.

The PRC says that dropping Saturday service would result in annual overall savings of $1.7 billion, compared to the Postal Service estimate of $3.1 billion — no small number, but a drop in the bucket compared to what the Postal Service stands to lose.

The USPS has stood by its own estimates. The Postal Service and the PRC have dueling requests to Congress to take their side of the issue, but given the USPS is almost 100 percent privately-funded, an overhaul is unlikely to be a top priority for lawmakers during the current budget crunch.

The Postal Service’s own budget crisis means that it will run out of money to remain fully operational by September 30. “We will pay employees and deliver mail,” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe told a House subcommittee last month. “The thing we will not do is be able to pay the federal government.”

The greatest impact of defaulting on its obligations would be an inability to continue funding retiree health benefits. To fix the situation, the USPS and the American Postal Workers Union are renegotiating their labor contract to up employee contributions to pensions and increase “noncareer” flexible jobs, but the estimated $3.8 billion saved over four years is still not enough to make up for the Postal Service’s losses, both immediate and long-term.

Some Republicans in Congress have seized the opportunity to continue their party’s national push against unions. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and no friend of labor, has pledged to review the new labor contract.

“The real issue facing the Postal Service right now is labor costs, which make up 80 cents of every dollar they spend,” committee member Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) said in a statement.

Still, with many deriding internal and Democrat-offered solutions to the Postal Service’s seemingly intractable revenue problem for being unrealistically optimistic, the USPS will have to find a solution somewhere, somehow that’s acceptable to its 670,000 employees (down from a high of more than 900,000 in 1999) without putting itself in danger of total collapse. The future of the mail depends on it.

Following a line of questioning from Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Walker said that the provision requiring unions to hold annual votes in order to keep union representation saves no money for Wisconsin. Walker went on to say that the voting provision and the one preventing unions from imposing mandatory membership fees were worker protection efforts and meant to provide workers with “the right to choose,” rather than an attempt to fix Wisconsin’s budget, despite being elements of what Walker termed his “budget repair bill.”

ThinkProgress has a partial transcript of the exchange (emphasis theirs):

KUCINICH: Let me ask you about some of the specific provisions in your proposals to strip collective bargaining rights. First, your proposal would require unions to hold annual votes to continue representing their own members. Can you please explain to me and members of this committee how much money this provision saves for your state budget?

WALKER: That and a number of other provisions we put in because if you’re going to ask, if you’re going to put in place a change like that, we wanted to make sure we protected the workers of our state, so they got value out of that. [...]

KUCINICH: Would you answer the question? How much money does it save, Governor?

WALKER: It doesn’t save any.

After this heated back-and-forth, Kucinich requested that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the committee chairman, allow a Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau report (PDF) to be included in the official congressional record. The Fiscal Bureau is a nonpartisan financial oversight agency comparable to the federal Congressional Budget Office; its report states that nothing in Walker’s collective bargaining provisions has any fiscal impact on the state of Wisconsin. This is contrary to Walker’s earlier claims that the bill is a budgetary matter and would, for example, lessen the burden on taxpayers to fund public pension plans.

Issa denied Kucinich the right to insert the document in the record without further committee review, arguing that it’s standard protocol to do so when committee members haven’t yet seen a given document. Kucinich was outraged, but the document ultimately made it into the record.

“As I’m sure you have seen, there have been recent news reports regarding the hiring practices of Governor Walker and his administration,” Braley wrote in a letter to U.S. Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD), committee leaders. “Many of these reports raised concerns regarding a particular promotion of an appointee within the administration, after that appointee’s father donated a significant amount of money to Governor Walker’s campaign. These news reports bring into question the possibility that the Governor used his taxpayer-funded office to benefit campaign contributors.”

Walker, who had been called to testify before the committee by Issa, testified that recent efforts in Wisconsin to diminish public-sector unions were “progressive.” While pointing to specific aspects of his plan, like shared contributions for health insurance coverage and retirement accounts, Walker neglected to note that union leadership were willing to make such concessions as a part of the bargaining process and that tempers flared when his administration and Wisconsin Republicans refused to back away from limiting collective bargaining rights. Such rights are codified for private-sector unions as a part of the Wagner (National Labor Relations) Act, but public-sector unions have no such protections.

Gov. Pet Shumlin of Vermont, a Democrat, was also invited to testify by Cummings, and offered his bipartisan state cuts as a direct contrast to the situation that erupted in Wisconsin.

“What is puzzling to me about the current debate about state budgets is that the focus has been not on bringing people together to solve current problems, like we have done in Vermont, but on division and blame,” Shumlin told the committee. “I do not believe that those to blame for our current financial troubles are our law enforcement officers, firefighters and other state employees whose services we take for granted.”

Cummings agreed, noting his “strong objection” in his opening statement to “efforts by politicians who try to use the current economic downturn to strip American workers of their rights — the right to negotiate working conditions that are safe, the right to negotiate due process protections against being fired arbitrarily, and the right to negotiate fair pay for an honest day’s work.”

The video below shows Braley’s questioning of Walker, including an interruption by Issa to instruct Walker that he only need “respond to questions [he] came here prepared to respond to:”

In a press release, Issa called his project “an opportunity for private industry to put forward detailed and specific examples so that both the American people and policymakers can determine for themselves what actions can be taken to create jobs.” #

In total, 220 companies wrote (.pdf) to Issa, explaining regulatory impediments to financial success. Some, like Florida fishing captain Steve Papen, run small operations, while others, like the Agricultural Retailers Association, are heavy-hitters. #

In an interview with Roll Call, Papen said he was critical of the state’s strict fishing regulations, which have recently included banning certain species of grouper and snapper from area nets. In his comment to Issa, Papen called the regulations “outdated” and “out of control,” and said that he felt he was being “exploited on every level.” #

Also at the top of the list? One of the most oft-criticized regulatory agencies in the country: the EPA. #

Associated Industries of Florida, the Agricultural Retailers Association and the Florida Farm Bureau all complained about the EPA’s numeric nutrient criteria, which would place strict restrictions on effluent dumped in Florida waterways. In their complaints, Associated Industries and the Florida Farm Bureau said that the criteria were sure to “stymie job growth in Florida.” #

All three groups have blasted the criteria in the past, arguing that they are too costly and not based on sound science. In a January letter criticizing the rules, Associated Industries estimated costs of implementing the standards to be upwards of $3 billion. Their source? A study funded by several polluting agencies. #

Industry representatives aren’t the only ones lashing out at the standards. During a Thursday meeting of the state House Select Committee on Water Policy, several Florida representatives expressed their concerns with the standards. #

State Rep. Charles Van Zant, R-Palatka, said federal standards were an impediment to cleaner Florida waterways, and directed comments to the environmental groups responsible for the lawsuit that forced the EPA to implement standards. #

In comments directed at Sierra Club lobbyist David Cullen, Van Zant said, “If things have gotten worse it is because your lawsuit has blocked us from implementing our standards.” #

In an article in the Florida Tribune, state Rep. Trudi Williams, R-Fort Myers, who chairs the committee, was quoted as saying that the standards would be next to impossible to implement. “There are some criteria that you just can’t meet,” she said. “Even in the Everglades that are beautiful and pristine, the criteria that they want is less than what is naturally occurring there.” #

Under federal law, any person can request information on the operation of the federal government. The law is called the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. The feds say the various departments process 600,000 FOIA requests a year, but Issa wants to make sure that the responses to those requests are done in a timely manner. Under his request, departments will have to turn over any communications with requesters whose requests have taken more than 45 days to process.

Here’s how a spokesperson for Issa classified the request:

“Our interest is not in the private citizens who make the requests,” said Kurt Bardella, a spokesman for Mr. Issa. “We are looking at government responses to these Freedom of Information requests and the only way to measure that is to tally all that information.”

But others worry about the broad request and the potential political impacts:

It “just seems sort of creepy that one person in the government could track who is looking into what and what kinds of questions they are asking,” said David Cuillier, a University of Arizona journalism professor and chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee at the Society of Professional Journalists. “It is an easy way to target people who he might think are up to no good.”

Issa’s spokesperson and Committee staff say there should be no concerns about the identities of persons being used improperly. They promise not to allow that to happen. But don’t plan on getting anything but a promise from the Committee on that issue. Congress is not covered by FOIA, so you will have to trust Issa et al, that they will be transparent on the use of the names.

Such is the case with newly-named chair of the House Subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning, and Competitiveness, North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx. Her appointment is not high-profile, so plans for her subcommittee’s hearings aren’t clear. Yet, Foxx, a former educator and community-college president, has tipped her hand on a few priorities she would likely address.

In an interview with the The Chronicle of Higher Education this week, Foxx said she plans to hold hearings on a student-loan bill that ended subsidization of private loan companies.

Ms. Foxx has criticized legislation that ended the bank-based program for supplying federal student loans in favor of 100-percent direct lending, in which students obtain their loans from the Department of Education. She said on Tuesday that the bill “eliminated choice, competition, and innovations from student lending,” and promised hearings aimed at making “improvements to a very flawed law.”

Foxx was no fan of the George W. Bush-era reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, either. She was the only member of the House Education committee to vote against the measure, which Bush signed in 2008.

Among college lobbyists, Ms. Foxx is best known for her support of community colleges and her opposition to the creation of a unit-record system for tracking individual students’ educational progress. She was also the only member of the House education committee to vote against final legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act in 2008. Ms. Foxx said on Tuesday that she couldn’t remember why she voted against the bill.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the details of the Act at the time of its passage:

Among its provisions, the law creates dozens of grant programs for colleges and students while imposing hundreds of new reporting requirements on institutions. It cracks down on conflicts of interest in student-loan programs, presses institutions and states to rein in tuition, and makes it easier for for-profit colleges to become, or to remain, eligible to award federal student aid.

It also seeks to prevent students from taking out private loans unnecessarily, and it prohibits the secretary of education from dictating how colleges measure student learning for purposes of accreditation.

Foxx also questions President Obama’s goal for more graduates (5 million more by 2020) at community colleges:

When questioned about whether she supported the president’s ambitious graduation goal for community colleges, she said she was “curious to find out what the basis is for the claim that we have to graduate five million more people.”

“I don’t think the measure of success of a community college is always graduation,” she said. “Many times, all people need to learn is a skill and perhaps get certification in an area.”

In a separate interview unrelated to education, Foxx provides ambitious goals for the Republican House. “We’re promising that the American people are going to know what’s in the bills before they get passed and member are going to know what’s in the bills before they get passed, because the bills are going to be posted on-line and we will all have copies of them 72 hours before they’re voted on,” she told the North Carolina News Network.

Many progressives had pushed for Warren to become the head of the CFPA. But Obama skirted a Congressional confirmation fight by naming her a special adviser instead. Inevitably, that is coming with its own problems. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is questioning whether it is right for Obama to grant Warren the job, designed to skirt a legislative check on executive power. Here’s a press release he and Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) just sent out:

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) and the Ranking Member of the Financial Services Committee Spencer Bachus (R-AL) today sent a letter to White House Counsel Robert Bauer raising questions surrounding the “unusual arrangement” surrounding President Obama’s recent decision to name Elizabeth Warren as Assistant President and Special Advisory to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP).

“In making this appointment, the President bypassed the Senate confirmation process. Furthermore, by giving Professor Warren responsibilities at both the White House and the Treasury Department, he is undermining Congressional oversight while giving her substantive authority over the CFPB.  This is unprecedented,” Issa and Bachus wrote. “Since the CFPB is ‘arguably the most significant new financial industry regulator since the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission was created in 1974,’ Congressional oversight is essential and required. If Professor Warren is not required to testify before Congress and is able to use claims of executive privilege to prevent disclosure of information relating to CFPB operations and its documents, Congress will not be able to perform its proper oversight function.  This is particularly troubling in light of the Administration’s decision to set a ‘transfer date’ of July 21, 2011 for formally standing up the CFPB.  For the next ten months, it appears the CFPB will exist in a murky status that seems designed to obstruct Congressional and public scrutiny of its operations.”

Issa and Bachus conclude, “To better understand how Professor Warren’s appointment will accommodate the need for legitimate oversight of the CFPB, we ask that you disclose her specific responsibilities and supervisory authority, which agency will pay her salary, and where she will file her mandatory financial disclosure statement. We also ask that the White House pledge to make Professor Warren available for testimony before all relevant Congressional committees.”

Obama did not explain any of the technicalities of Warren’s position in his remarks. Earlier this morning, Warren wrote a blog post saying that she accepts the position on the White House blog.