Obama’s Addiction to Czar’s

The election of President Obama promised to usher in a new era of which promised to buck the established status quo of past Washington politics. He has done this passing a law guaranteeing the closure of Guantanamo Bay by year’s end, pushing nationalized healthcare reform, passing the most expensive stimulus spending bill in our nation’s history, and proposing a Cap and Trade bill to combat global warming. To tackle this massive agenda President Obama has compiled a shockingly large team of “Czars” to oversee the many different aspects that will help form his policy. The use of Presidential Czar’s isn’t necessarily new. President Reagan created a national Drug Czar to help combat the war on drugs in America in the 80’s and President Bush created a Homeland security Czar after the 9/11 attacks to help fight terrorism. 

Most presidents have had only a few czars with the most being 5 for one president. The use of czars has been previously limited because of their enormous government power and because they only need to answer to the president. The change President Obama promised has extended to his appointments of over 35 czars that are entitled to directly dictating policy, impacting millions of lives in the way that few assistant secretaries or deputy undersecretaries can. Obama’s range of czars is unprecedented in political history and has been largely ignored by the main stream media. The Constitution commands that government officers with significant authority (called “principal officers”) are nominated by the president but then are subject to a confirmation vote by the U.S. Senate. And principal officers include not only cabinet-level department heads, but go five levels deep in executive appointments, to include assistant secretaries and deputy undersecretaries. Most of these czars don’t need any confirmation from the House or Senate and have had little vetting by the media or politicians who usually ensure that political appointees are qualified and clear of any possible conflicts-of-interests which may affect their policy.

 The extent of Obama’s czars is incredible and far reaching. In the current administration there is a czar for practically every phase of our political spectrum. We currently have czars for the Border, Afghanistan, AIDS, Auto Recovery, Cars, California Water, (I kid you not) A Central Region czar, the Climate, Domestic Violence, Drugs, Economics, Energy and the Environment. As well as, Faith Based czars, a Government Performance czar, a Great Lakes czar, Green Jobs czar, A Guantanamo Closure czar, a Health czar, Information czar, Intelligence czar, Mideast Peace Czar, Pay Czar, Regulatory Czar, Science czar, Sudan czar, Stimulus Accountability czar, TARP czar, Technology Czar, Terrorism Czar, an Urban Policy Affairs Czar, A Weapons czar and a WMD Policy czar…just too many a few.

            President Obama’s use of czars has been so unprecedented that Democratic Senator Robert Byrd sent him a letter questioning the Constitutionality of all these appointments. “Senator Byrd said that these appointments violate both the constitutional system of checks and balances and the constitutional separation of powers, and is a clear attempt to evade congressional oversight”. This shows that even within the Democratic Party there is worry that the current president may be overstepping his bounds. This is what makes these appointments so scary and one of the main reasons past presidents have been reluctant to name too many czars. They are also receiving average salary’s of over $190,000 a year (multiply that by 35) and it starts getting a little more expensive for taxpayers. And many of these czars seem totally unnecessary as our government has many different departments such as the EPA, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, State Department, Department of Defense, FBI, CIA, NSA, FDA, and others which are more than capable to cover all the positions that are currently covered by these czars. It’s another reason many people are worried about President Obama’s plan to massively expand the government’s intrusion into their lives. Why does the Federal Government need to appoint a California Water czar? That’s a specific and specialized state problem that should be handled by their State government not by the Federal government.

So as the Administration continues its agenda, only the future can predict the performance of these czars. The people will realize Obama’s plans to aggressively expand the government at an unprecedented pace and hopefully, these czars will be looking for work after 4 years as Americans resist the liberal presidents push to invade our lives.