Cabinet nominees face committees

At confirmation hearings, picks voice policy views

WASHINGTON - In their busiest day yet, President-elect Barack Obama's Cabinet picks fanned out across Capitol Hill yesterday for confirmation hearings where they reinforced the policy changes he vows to make.

Nobel physics laureate Steven Chu promised yesterday that if confirmed as energy secretary he will aggressively pursue policies aimed at addressing climate change and achieving greater energy independence by developing clean energy sources.

But he also told lawmakers that he views nuclear power and coal as critical parts of the nation's energy mix and said he was optimistic that ways can be found to make coal a cleaner energy source by capturing its carbon dioxide emissions.

Chu received immediate support from both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Obama's selection for education secretary, Arne Duncan, said yesterday he wants to improve the No Child Left Behind law and lure more people into teaching. Duncan also said he would like longer school days, Saturday classes, and summer school.

Duncan, the Chicago schools chief, also won a friendly reception from Republicans and Democrats alike at his Senate confirmation hearing. Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican who was education secretary under President George H.W. Bush, declared Duncan to be "the best" of Obama's nominees.

The education community is watching closely to see how Obama will proceed on President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind law, which passed with bipartisan support in 2001 but is deeply unpopular today. Obama has pledged to overhaul it but has been vague about how far he would go. Duncan told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee the law should not punish schools where only a handful of children are struggling.

Obama's nominee for housing secretary pledged to mount a more aggressive response to the foreclosure crisis as he prepares to take the helm of an agency under fire for being slow to react to the end of the US housing bubble.

Shaun Donovan, the commissioner of New York City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, has received acclaim for his leadership of an effort to add 165,000 reasonably priced homes to New York's ultra-expensive housing stock by 2013.

He will face more sweeping challenges in taking over the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which lawmakers say has failed to respond effectively to the surge of foreclosures and defaults. "Housing is at the root of the market crisis we are now experiencing, and HUD must be part of the solution," Donovan said at his Senate confirmation hearing, where he was warmly received.

And Obama's choice to run the White House budget office warned yesterday that the country will probably run bruising budget deficits over the next decade. Peter Orszag, designated by Obama to run the Office of Management and Budget, told the Senate Budget Committee to expect budget deficits equaling 5 percent of the size of the economy for the next five or 10 years.