He was hired by the Obama administration to slash executive compensation at companies bailed out by the federal government. But now he’s involved in a salary controversy of his own. In a Washington corruption chronicles classic, the Obama administration can’t even shoot straight on the pay of its pay czar!

I’m speaking of Kenneth Feinberg, President Obama’s “Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation.” Judicial Watch recently received documents from the Treasury Department indicating that Feinberg received a $120,830 annual salary to establish executive compensation levels at companies bailed out by the federal government. We got hold of these documents pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we filed on July 20, 2010.

Now there’s nothing necessarily unusual about a federal appointee hauling in six figures. But here’s the problem: These documents contradict multiple press reports that Feinberg would not be compensated for this work for the Treasury Department at all.

When President Obama appointed Washington lawyer Feinberg “Pay Czar” in 2009, the press reported that he would perform his duties pro bono. Dozens of mainstream media stories confirmed that Feinberg, founder and managing partner of the Washington, D.C., firm Feinberg, Rozen, LLP, would not receive a salary to set pay limits for more than two dozen executives at companies receiving government bailouts.

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Even though politicians already have flushed $400 billion down the rathole, the Obama Administration has announced that it will now give unlimited amounts of our money to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-created mortgage companies.

While President Obama should be castigated for this decision, let’s not forget that this latest boondoggle is only possible because President Bush did not do the right thing and liquidate Fannie and Freddie when they collapsed last year. And, to add insult to injury, Obama’s pay czar played Santa Claus and announced that that a dozen top “executives” could divvy up $42 million of bonuses financed by you and me. Not a bad deal for a group of people that more properly should be classified as government bureaucrats.

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President Obama’s decision to appoint so many czars is  clearly troubling members of Congress, who have taken the  unusual step of holding hearings on the issue.  The decision of the two Senate committees is remarkable because a President’s management style is rarely questioned by the Senate or House during the first year of his term, especially when they are all members of the same political party.   But, Obama’s decision to appoint almost 40 policy czars, and then give them broad powers and budgetary responsibilities, has created a more serious constitutional issue.  

The Senate is primarily concerned that President Obama may be end-running the Constitution, along with the growing fear, shared by many citizens, that the power and the extraordinary amount of funding that is controlled by the Czars may be undermining the authorities of the senate-confirmed agency heads on whom the Senate has placed its imprimatur and its trust. 

Czars currently influence or directly control over a trillion dollars of government spending, which is more than the spending of the entire federal government during the Reagan Administration.  And, yet, few of the Obama  czars were ever vetted through the traditional review process where potential conflicts of interest are revealed.  Nor are Obama’s czars accountable to the Senate to justify policy or spending decisions. 

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A year or two ago, only the most radical leftists would have dreamed that we’d be living in a country where the government owns a majority share in GM, bailed out private insurers, took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and handed over billions of dollars to the financial sector.

It continues to bailout homeowners doing more of the same policies that put us in this mess in the first place. The government now plans to bailout seniors and small businesses and it won’t be long before Obama proposes to bailout children. Also,  as the debate over health care reform continues, we are left to wonder: how much is this going to cost us? One trillion dollars or two?

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