The Wall Street Journal’s Neil King looks at all the “czars” in the Barack Obama White House, after green jobs czar Van Jones was pressured to resign earlier this week. Some Republicans have been real critical of the czars and they have a point if someone like, say, Energy Czar Carol Browner is performing bureaucratic duties normally done by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and/or Energy Department. Browner, after all, didn’t have to go through the Senate confirmation process.
But: Browner’s role is not to run the EPA or Energy Dept. It’s to push for Obama policies like cap-and-trade legislation and tougher fuel standards. Given that EPA, particularly, had a bunch of a pre-existing problems before the Obama administration, it seems wise to separate out the roles of cheerleading for new Obama policies and cleaning up the old EPA structure.
Where arguments from Republicans like California Rep. Darrell Issa do resonate are czars like auto czar Ron Bloom who run an Obama administration program (here, the TARP auto bailout) that relies on money appropriated from Congress. In making Bloom a czar, Obama conveyed the message that the auto bailout is too important to leave to the politics and deliberative sluggishness of the Senate. This made some practical sense. But it was also kind of unconstitutional.-MB