Czar of All the Americans
Anger about Obama’s many “czars” is rising, reports the Washington Post:
On paper, they are special advisers, chairmen of White House boards, special envoys and Cabinet agency deputies, asked by the president to guide high-priority initiatives. But critics call them “czars” whose powers are not subject to congressional oversight, and their increasing numbers have become a flash point for conservative anger at President Obama.
Critics of the proliferation of czars say the White House uses the appointments to circumvent the normal vetting process required for Senate confirmation and to avoid congressional oversight.
I have tended not to take concern over “czars” very seriously. After all, advisers to the president can’t exercise any power that the president doesn’t have (or assume without response from Congress or the courts). And I figured the White House doesn’t call people “czars,” that’s just a media term, so it’s not really fair to blame the White House for what reporters say.
But then, thanks to crack Cato intern Miles Pope, I discovered that the White House does call its czars czars, at least informally. A few examples:
In an interview on April 15, 2009 Obama said, “The goal of the border czar is to help coordinate all the various agencies that fall under the Department of Homeland Security…”
In a March 11, 2009, briefing, press secretary Robert Gibbs turned to “address the czar question for a minute, because I think I’ve been asked in this room any number of times if the czars in our White House to deal with energy and health care had too much power.”
On March 11, 2009 Vice President Biden said, “Today I’m pleased to announce that President Obama has nominated as Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy — our nation’s drug czar — Gil Kerlikowske…”
More examples here.
So they do like czar imagery. So have at them, critics.
And while I said that the advisers have no real power, there’s at least one who does — a real czar — the “pay czar,” Kenneth Feinberg. He “has sole discretion to set compensation for the top 25 employees” of large companies receiving bailouts, and his “decisions won’t be subject to appeal.” Now that’s a czar.
Filed under: Government and Politics; Political Philosophy
The Failure of Do-Nothing Policies
A news story from today in a slightly alternate universe:
Jobless Rate at 26-Year High
Employers kept slashing jobs at a furious pace in June as the unemployment rate edged ever closer to double-digit levels, undermining signs of progress in the economy, and making clear that the job market remains in terrible shape.
The number of jobs on employers’ payrolls fell by 467,000, the Labor Department said. That is many more jobs than were shed in May and far worse than the 350,000 job losses that economists were forecasting.
Job losses peaked in January and had declined every month until June. The steep losses show that even as there are signs that total economic activity may level off or begin growing later this year, the nation’s employers are still pulling back.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “President Obama proposed a $787 billion stimulus program to get this country moving again. He tried to save the jobs at GM and Chrysler. But the do-nothing Republicans filibustered and blocked that progressive legislation, and these are the results.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a press conference, “We begged President Bush to save Fannie Mae, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, AIG, the rest of Wall Street, the banks, and the automobile industry. We begged him to spend $700 billion of taxpayers’ money to bail out America’s great companies. We begged him to ignore the deficit and spend more money we don’t have. But did he listen? No, he just sat there wearing his Adam Smith tie and refused to spend even a single trillion to save jobs. And now unemployment is at 9.5 percent. I hope he’s happy.”
Democrats on Capitol Hill agreed that the “do-nothing” response to the financial crisis had led to rising unemployment and a sluggish economy. If the Bush and Obama administrations had been willing to invest in American companies, run the deficit up to $1.8 trillion, and talk about all sorts of new taxes, regulations, and spending programs, then certainly the economy would be recovering by now, they said.
Filed under: Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy; Government and Politics; Tax and Budget Policy; Trade and Immigration
Civil Liberties and President Barack W. Bush?
It’s fair to say that civil liberties and limited government were not high on President George W. Bush’s priorities list. Indeed, they probably weren’t even on the list. Candidate Barack Obama promised “change” when he took office, and change we have gotten. The name of the president is different.
Alas, the policies are much the same. While it is true that President Obama has not made the same claims of unreviewable monarchical power for the chief executive–an important distinction–he has continued to sacrifice civil liberties for dubious security gains.
Civil libertarians recently accused President Obama of acting like former President George W. Bush, citing reports about Mr. Obama’s plans to detain terrorism suspects without trials on domestic soil after he closes the Guantánamo prison.
It was only the latest instance in which critics have argued that Mr. Obama has failed to live up to his campaign pledge “to restore our Constitution and the rule of law” and raised a pointed question: Has he, on issues related to fighting terrorism, turned out to be little different from his predecessor?
The answer depends on what it means to act like Mr. Bush.
As they move toward completing a review of their options for dealing with the detainees, Obama administration officials insist that there is a fundamental difference between Mr. Bush’s approach and theirs. While Mr. Bush claimed to wield sweeping powers as commander in chief that allowed him to bypass legal constraints when fighting terrorism, they say, Mr. Obama respects checks and balances by relying on — and obeying — Congressional statutes.
“While the administration is considering a series of options, a range of options, none relies on legal theories that we have the inherent authority to detain people,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said this week in response to questions about the preventive detention report. “And this will not be pursued in that manner.”
But Mr. Obama’s critics say that whether statutory authorization exists for his counterterrorism policies is just a legalistic point. The core problem with Mr. Bush’s approach, they argue, was that it trammeled individual rights. And they say Mr. Obama’s policies have not changed that.
“President Obama may mouth very different rhetoric,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “He may have a more complicated process with members of Congress. But in the end, there is no substantive break from the policies of the Bush administration.”
The primary beneficiaries of constitutional liberties are not terrorist suspects, but the rest of us. The necessary trade-offs are not always easy, but the president and legislators must never forget that it is a free society they are supposed to be defending.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Government and Politics; Law and Civil Liberties
Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Philosophy of Judging
Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has been mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee. She also has been caught on tape explaining her view of a judge’s role. Reports the Washington Post:
As White House press secretary Robert Gibbs put it, Obama is looking for “somebody who understands how being a judge affects Americans’ everyday lives.”
Congressional conservatives have reacted anxiously to that qualification, fearing that it means a nominee who is more interested in making the law than in interpreting it.
One possible candidate for the seat, Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, appeared to walk close to that line in a video that emerged yesterday. Sotomayor would be the first Latino and the third woman to serve on the high court.
Speaking at Duke University in 2005, Sotomayor said, “All of the legal defense funds out there, they’re looking for people with court of appeals experience” because “the court of appeals is where policy is made.”
She then sought to soften the statement, adding lightly, “I know this is on tape and I should never say that, because we don’t make law, I know. Um, okay. I know. I’m not promoting it, I’m not advocating it.” The audience laughed as she brushed off the statement, perhaps sarcastically.
Making policy. Yes, it is indisputable that that’s what judges often do. But is that what they are supposed to do?
President Barack Obama seems to think so, when he talks about the importance of “empathy” in judges. (With whom do I empathize in this First Amendment case: the U.S. Attorney General or the New York Times? I vote for the Times!) However, the Senate might want to debate this issue before approving someone to fill Justice David Souter’s vacancy, especially if the nominee shares the president’s apparent view that empathy is a substitute for jurisprudence in interpreting the law and Constitution.
The CIA Is Not the Nation’s Security
Michael Hayden went on Fox News Sunday this week, fiercely objecting to the Obama administration’s release of Bush-era memos regarding “enhanced interrogation techniques.” He and three other former CIA directors objected to the release.
That common front might draw the memo release into doubt if it wasn’t a given that CIA directors are always going to defend the interests of the CIA.
Hayden trotted out the tired “war” on terror metaphor. This framing may be exciting to him and his colleagues, but it is strategic error to address terrorism this way, and the American public chose a presidential candidate last November who campaigned to emphasize hope over fear. Intoning about war did not help Hayden’s case.
The heart of his argument was that release of the memos would allow our enemies to train for “enhanced interrogation techniques” and that we would lose the benefits of those techniques. But a telling moment came when he shifted his argument:
There’s another point, too, that I have to make, and it’s just not the tactical effect of this technique or that. It’s the broader effect on CIA officers. I mean, if you’re a current CIA officer today – in fact, I know this has happened at the agency after the release of these documents – officers are saying, “The things I’m doing now – will this happen to me in five years because of the things I am doing now?”
Moving from tactical considerations to the “broader effect,” Hayden spoke of how the memo release would chill CIA activity. That’s not irrelevant, but it’s not the broader effect that matters: the strategic effect of using torture in counterterrorism activity. Like the myopic critic I wrote about in my post last week, Hayden is not focused on countering the strategic logic of terrorism, but on defending the interests of the agency he headed.
Chris Wallace showed a brief clip of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs criticizing “enhanced interrogation techniques” on a strategic level: “It is the use of those techniques . . . in the view of the world that [has] made us less safe.” Being a secretive torturer drives allies away from the United States.
Hayden didn’t get it, answering, “Most of the people who oppose these techniques want to be able to say, ‘I don’t want my nation doing this,’ which is a purely honorable position, ‘and they didn’t work anyway.’ That back half of the sentence isn’t true.”
Against the argument that the use of torture is strategic error, Hayden responded, “But it works!” Arguing its tactical utility does not meet the strategic case against torture.
And Hayden was well back on his heels when asked whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month.
Hayden is a fierce defender of the CIA. The CIA provides some elements of the nation’s security. But the CIA is not the nation’s security.
Week in Review: A School Choice Victory, Earmark Reform, and Drug Violence in Mexico
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Obama Dips a Toe in the Educational Choice Pool
After Congress voted to let the Washington D.C. voucher program expire, stripping 1,700 low-income children of the opportunity to attend private schools, President Obama said he will keep the program afloat in subsequent legislation.
“It wouldn’t make sense to disrupt the education of those that are in that system,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary. “And I think we’ll work with Congress to ensure that a disruption like that doesn’t take place.”
Andrew J. Coulson, director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, commented on Obama’s decision to continue to extend school choice benefits to underprivileged children in the nation’s capital:
This is a crucial milestone. There is finally a major national Democratic leader who is beginning to catch up to his state-level peers. Democrats all around the country have been supporting and signing small education tax credit programs because they realize that these programs are win-win: good for their constituents and good for their long-term political futures.
In an op-ed that ran the day Gibbs made the announcement, Coulson explained why those who oppose school choice will find themselves on the wrong side of history.
In 2006, Susan Aud and Leon Michos published a report on the fiscal impact of the D.C. voucher program, which documented the success of the District’s school choice pilot, the first federally funded voucher program in the United States.
Obama Signs Earmark-Heavy $410 Billion Omnibus Bill
After signing a bill that had nearly $8 billion in earmarks, President Obama declared that from then on, his administration would work toward earmark reform.
Sounds a bit like St. Augustine’s famous prayer, “Lord, make me chaste but not just yet,” said Daniel Griswold, director of Cato’s Center for Trade Policy Studies:
Recall that as a candidate, Obama said he and Democratic leaders in Congress would change the “business as usual” practice of stuffing spending bills with pet projects. Those earmarks, submitted by individual members to fund obscure projects in their own districts and states, typically become law without any debate or transparency.
Saying he would sign the “imperfect bill,” President Obama offered guidelines to curb earmarks … in the future. “The future demands that we operate in a different way than we have in the past,” he said. “So let there be no doubt: this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability.”
Lord, make us fiscally responsible, but not just yet.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders are condemning the president’s expansion of the federal government. But do they have any standing to judge? Senior Fellow Michael D. Tanner said no:
The Bush administration’s brand of big-government conservatism was, at the very least, the greatest expansion of government from Lyndon Johnson to, well, Barack Obama.
For Cato’s policy recommendations on earmarked spending, see the “Corporate Welfare and Earmark Reform” chapter in the 2009 Cato Handbook for Policymakers.
Violence Spills into the U.S. from Mexico’s Drug War
With daily reports of increased violence coming from Mexico, Cato Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Ted Galen Carpenter said the brutality is an indicator of power and arrogance, not desperation, and asserts that gun restrictions in the U.S. will not subdue violence:
The notion that the violence in Mexico would subside if the United States had more restrictive laws on firearms is devoid of logic and evidence. Mexican drug gangs would have little trouble obtaining all the guns they desire from black market sources in Mexico and elsewhere…
… Even assuming that the Mexican government’s estimate that 97 percent of the weapons used by the cartels come from stores and gun shows in the United States-and Mexican officials are not exactly objective sources for such statistics-the traffickers rely on those outlets simply because they are easier and more convenient, not because there are no other options.
Carpenter spoke at a Cato policy forum last month, and explained why the war on drugs sparks such intense levels of violence.
In a Policy Analysis published in early February, Carpenter warned of the need to change our policy on the Mexican drug conflict, so as to prevent the violence from spreading across the border.
Filed under: Cato Publications; Education and Child Policy; Foreign Policy and National Security; Government and Politics; Tax and Budget Policy
Obama First Dem President to Support Vouchers
Through his press secretary Robert Gibbs, president Obama has declared that he will reverse congressional Democrats’ phase-out of the DC Opportunity Scholarships program. The scholarships make private schooling affordable for 1,700 poor DC children, most of whom would be forced back into the District’s broken public school system if it were to end.
However — yes, there’s always a however — there’s every indication that president Obama will do the minimum necessary to keep the program going at its current size, and will not help to expand it.
This is nevertheless a crucial milestone. There is finally a major national Democratic leader who is beginning to catch up to his state-level peers. Democrats all around the country have been supporting and signing small education tax credit programs because they realize that these programs are win-win: good for their constituents and good for their long-term political futures.
The old guard of the Democratic party — typified by congressional leaders — still imagines that school choice is bad for them. They still think that they can roll back time to a period when the public school monopoly was inviolate. That time has passed. Real educational freedom is spreading — slowly — around the country. That is not going to stop.
The last Democrats to be found jamming their fingers into the dike, hoping to stop the flight to educational freedom, will find their political careers swept away when that dike finally crumbles.
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