Democrats join GOP czar wars
www.politico.comSen. Russ Feingold has asked President Barack Obama to detail the roles and responsibilities of all his czars.
In the war on the czars, Glenn Beck and the GOP are picking up reinforcements from an unlikely source: the Democratic Party.
The Fox News host and leading Republican lawmakers have been hammering President Barack Obama for weeks over a proliferation of policy “czars” — presidential appointees who don’t have to be confirmed by the Senate and aren’t easily held to account by Senate oversight committees.
Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin joined the anti-czar chorus Wednesday, asking Obama to detail the roles and responsibilities of all of the czars in his administration and to explain why he believes the use of czars is consistent with the Senate’s constitutional power to offer advice and consent on top-level executive branch officials.
“To the extent that this undercuts that role and people are put in the place of Cabinet people and really are the key authorities and you can’t question them, that’s something worth talking about,” Feingold said. “I think it’s a fair point.”
Feingold says he doesn’t know if there are any constitutional violations, but he suggested that he may hold an oversight hearing on the matter.
Although the czar charge has come mostly from the right, Feingold isn’t the only Democrat to voice concerns about the issue.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in an interview Wednesday that there needs to be better Senate oversight, although she was quick to add that some czar critics have incorrectly labeled a number of Senate-confirmed administration officials as White House czars.
“If you look over certain people [who] have real titles and real authority, I don’t think it’s quite fair to call, for example, David Hayes at the Department of Interior a czar,” the California Democrat said. “He’s the deputy secretary of the Department of Interior, and he’s got real authority.”
Feinstein said she thinks it’s a “problem” when the White House appoints someone to a czar position that is not clearly defined. “I don’t know what a car czar does, for example,” she said.
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) — a fierce defender of congressional authority — argued in a letter last February that the czars may upset checks and balances in the federal government.
Van Jones, Obama’s green jobs czar, resigned earlier this month amid conservative outcry over his association with the Sept. 11 “truther” movement and derogatory comments he made about Republicans. Beck, who helped lead the push against Jones, called him a “self-avowed radical revolutionary communist.”
Republicans on the Hill have picked up on the czar issue, using the presidential appointees as a powerful symbol for the problems of unchecked government.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said the czar fight is a “great issue because it raises the whole issue of this agenda of expansion of government in Washington — and lack of accountability and transparency.
“It seems like everything we’re doing right now is just consolidating power here, as opposed to distributing, which most of our folks would be more favorably disposed to, at least philosophically.”
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who spearheads messaging for the Senate Republican Conference, has stepped up his criticism of Obama’s use of czars, but he downplayed the role the conservative media have played in his attacks.
“I just think it upsets the checks and balances,” Alexander said. “And it’s a symbol of too many Washington takeovers.”
Democrats note that Obama isn’t the first president to use czars; the Democratic National Committee said Wednesday that George W. Bush had 47 czars — and that congressional Republicans didn’t complain about the use of czars then. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs suggested that Alexander and other Republicans were being hypocritical, since they pushed for czars in the previous administration.
“It’s something that some talk show hosts have made a great deal out of; they apparently didn’t make a great deal out of it when President [Richard] Nixon did it, [and] there were other czars over the course of the last eight years,” said Sen. Ben Nelson, a conservative Democrat from Nebraska. “It wouldn’t necessarily be the way I’d do it, but the president is entitled to have his advisers.”
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) also noted Wednesday that other presidents have made use of czars, but he said that there may be a limit to what they should be allowed to do. “My expectation would be that if you have people with line responsibility, you need to have confirmation,” he said.
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27265_Page2.html#ixzz0RNh36oco________________________
________________________
_______
This admn is alienating his own party with his garbage.
