by Gene Healy, CATO

“No more czars!” is the new tea party rallying cry, as conservatives across the country fear that President Obama has unleashed a legion of unaccountable bureaucratic overlords on the body politic.

Having helped oust Van Jones, Obama’s “green jobs” czar, Fox News’ Sean Hannity swears that he won’t rest until he’s gotten “rid of every other one.” But if he succeeds, will the country be appreciably freer, or the government noticeably smaller?

No, it won’t, because the conservatives’ current bout of czar mania elevates symbolism over substance. All the focus on a scary moniker for certain executive officials misses the real problem: Unconstitutional delegation of power to the executive branch. Whether those illegitimate powers are exercised by unconfirmed presidential advisers or the president himself is quite beside the point.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., notes that you won’t find the word “czar” in the Constitution; but you won’t find it in federal law either. That’s because “czar” is a media-coined, catchall term for presidential assistants tasked with coordinating policy on issues that cut across departmental lines.

Officials dubbed “czars” range from the truly powerful, like Nixon’s National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, to the ineffectual such as cybersecurity czar Melissa Hathaway, who quit last month because she lacked real authority.

Often, czars are mere figureheads, appointed to signal concern over the latest hot-button issue. As one presidential scholar puts it, “when in doubt, create a czar.”

True, it’s problematic that some of these appointees aren’t vetted by the Senate, and that presidents claim czars don’t have to answer to Congress — as when the Bush administration asserted in 2002 that executive privilege shielded then-homeland security czar Tom Ridge from testifying on the Hill.

But as the Washington Independent‘s Dave Weigel has pointed out, many of the “czars” who appear on the conservative target list already have to be confirmed by the Senate. Others don’t, but when Obama is hell-bent on taking over the health care sector — one-sixth of the U.S. economy — it’s bizarre to agonize over the allegedly unchecked power exercised by the likes of the AIDS and urban affairs czars.

Similarly, while it’s great to see a 9/11 “Truther” like Van Jones denied a federal salary, few of those cheering Jones’ defenestration can coherently explain what the green jobs czar actually does, or the threat he was supposed to represent.

What, was Jones going to give 9/11 “Truthers” and black nationalists jobs weatherizing homes? Will we stop wasting money on such projects now that he’s gone?

In contrast, the “pay czar” and the “car czar” have considerable power, and such offices have no place in a free country. But it was Obama himself, not his car czar, who summarily fired the chief executive officer of General Motors. Is that power less disturbing when it’s exercised directly by the president, rather than delegated to a so-called “czar”?

Blame Congress. The “pay czar” grew out of a provision Congress passed with the stimulus package, ordering the Treasury Department to come up with rules on executive compensation for firms taking Troubled Assets Relief Program money.

The auto bailout itself is a result of congressional fecklessness. Many in Congress protested when President George W. Bush used the TARP statute to lend billions to Chrysler and GM. How, they asked, could that possibly be authorized by a law allowing the purchase of “troubled assets” from “financial institutions”?

If they’d bothered to read the bill, they’d know. Those terms were so loosely defined in the statute that they gave Bush and Obama a colorable argument for reshaping the bailout as they saw fit. Here congressional outrage was more than a day late and $700 billion short.

There’s plenty Congress can and should do to enhance oversight over executive branch officials. Yale Law’s Bruce Ackerman argues that “we need to seriously consider requiring Senate approval of senior White House staff positions.” But as long as Congress continues to write blank checks to the executive branch, it’s the height of hypocrisy for them to complain about that branch’s unchecked power.

by Sheldon Richman

Government power is growing, and unless President Barack Obama and the majority in Congress have a libertarian epiphany, it will continue to grow for years.

Obama’s 2010 budget will come in at more than $3.4 trillion, with a deficit of well over $1 trillion. Though the deficit will decline — if the administration’s dubious projections of economic growth and war spending are correct — it will remain high, at about $1 trillion a year. The Congressional Budget Office sees $2.3 trillion morein deficits over the next decade than Obama anticipates. The main reason for the CBO’s disagreement is that it believes Obama is understating spending, by $1.7 trillion. That will bring spending to more than a quarter of GDP before falling to 23-24 percent. This is high even by recent standards.

As a result, the government’s debt will climb steadily toward 80 percent of GDP and beyond. As has been pointed out, this is in the banana-republic range. What happens when the consequences of the bailouts kick in?

Domestic spending, coming on top of the nearly $800 billion misnamed “stimulus” bill and $400 billion barrel of pork, will skyrocket. Obama, while promising fiscal responsibility, plans to spend hundreds of billions of new dollars to overhaul (i.e., centralize) medical care (which his budget understates), education, and energy production. Social Security and Medicare, already on the road to bankruptcy, will explode.

And so-called defense spending — the cost of empire — will also increase, though perhaps not as much as it did under George W. Bush. That could change, however, if Obama’s scenario about Iraq turns out to be too optimistic, as some people think it is. Republican hawks fear that after 2011 military spending will be flat, but there is no reason to think Obama is any less committed to an American global military presence than his predecessor. Watch what he does in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Taxes, direct and indirect, will be on the rise, too. Income tax rates for upper-income people will go up, and deductions will phase out. If Obama gets his cap-and-trade scheme, under which emitters of carbon dioxide will have to pay government for the privilege, everyone will pay higher prices as the cost of producing everything rises. So much for Obama’s promise to cut taxes for 95 percent of working people.

Obama’s budget is so audaciously ridiculous, even some of his fellow Democrats talked of revolt.

If the expansion of intrusive government (a redundancy) gives you the willies — it should; the cost is freedom and prosperity — you may be tempted to direct your anger at Obama and the rest of the Democratic leadership. That would be myopic, however.

Blame the Republicans, beginning with the former president, George W. Bush. (We could go back further, but time and space are limited.)

The reason can be illustrated by an extraordinary moment that occurred just after Obama unveiled his multiyear budget plan. Contemplating the spending blueprint, Republican House leader John Boehner went before the media microphones and declared, “The era of big government is back.”

For Boehner to make such a statement suggests two possibilities, although both could be true: he thinks Americans are morons or he’s been in a coma since January 20, 2001, when Bush took office.

Note that he didn’t say, “Uh oh, government is going to get even bigger than it is now.” No, he said, “The era of big government is back.” Back — as in: returned after having gone away.

When did it go away? And does Boehner really believe that the American people don’t realize how much government grew under Bush?

It was Bill Clinton who declared the era of big government over in 1996, more than a year after his party lost control of Congress to the GOP. He hadn’t become a libertarian, but he was lucky enough to be president during a period of economic growth (the high-tech revolution was kicking in), when the public wanted a balanced budget and some retrenchment of the welfare state.

But in fact, big government did not disappear in the Clinton years, even if the rate of growth slowed.
Big government under Bush

Under Bush and a Republican Congress there was an explosion of growth on all fronts: hefty spending increased in virtually all respects, huge deficits and a doubling of the national debt, corporate bailouts, further centralization of education, protectionism, expansion of Medicare, increased regulation, undeclared wars, civil-liberties violations and other unchecked executive power, and more. Bush did not veto a single spending bill in eight years. His cutting of tax rates in 2001 and 2003 has to be judged in the context of growing spending. Milton Friedman pointed out that the level of spending, not taxation, is the truer gauge of the government burden. The money has to come from somewhere. Removing it from the economy through borrowing is as economically damaging as taxation — more so when you figure that the government will perpetrate inflation to manage the debt, depreciating the currency and eroding Americans’ purchasing power.

That was bad enough, but the Republicans added rank hypocrisy to the mix by claiming to favor free markets. Those who want increasingly to replace the market with government administration are happy to take the Republicans at their word and propagate the myth that GOP policies are the only alternative to statism.

In light of recent history, Boehner’s remark is more than a little absurd. It’s dishonest, even demagogic.

And it will have consequences beyond the moment. Advocates of government control of the economy have a stake in persuading the public that the current financial turmoil is mostly the result of the Bush administration’s alleged laissez-faire approach to governing. This is an outrageous lie. There was no laissez faire — quite the contrary. The Federal Register, which catalogues new regulations, grew apace in the Bush years. The last banking deregulation of any significance — repeal of the New Deal’s separation of investment and commercial banking — was signed by Clinton while Larry Summers was Treasury secretary. Summers today is Obama’s top economic advisor. (This is not to say that this deregulation contributed to the economic turmoil. It did not.)

Boehner’s statement, however, sounds as though he accepts the charge that America’s troubles come from too little government, not too much, in the Bush years. As result, his words have the effect of making free-market, small-government rhetoric sound merely partisan, if not incredible, even ridiculous. Anyone who believes Boehner’s (false) story would have to reject his opposition to Obama’s program as cynical. After all, if big government really disappeared from 2001 to 2009, it can’t be blamed for the economic meltdown.

But it didn’t disappear, and it can and should be blamed for the meltdown. The Republicans, by their cynicism and lack of principle, are as responsible for what’s going on as any Democrat — even more, because in the public’s eyes they have undermined sound economic reasoning by their hypocrisy.

Today Republican complaints about big government are easy targets of ridicule. There is a fallacy here, of course. The hypocrite’s offense is not that what he says is necessarily wrong, but that he does not practice what he preaches. Unfortunately, many people don’t understand that distinction. They assume that if someone who calls for limited government actually increases the size of government, then it’s the professed philosophy that is flawed. The Democrats are happy to encourage that conclusion. Thanks a lot, Republicans.

by Laurence M. Vance

Now that the Democrats have regained complete control of the government, many conservatives are looking to the Republicans in Congress to save us from the socialism and fascism of the Democrats. As we saw when Clinton was president, many Republicans have started talking, and some have started acting, like the conservative advocates of liberty and less government they claim to be. Will the Republicans save us?

Don’t count on it.

So why am I so pessimistic? Because I actually check how the Republicans in Congress vote instead of just listening to their free-market, limited government, and anti-Democratic rhetoric, that’s why.

The New American magazine’s “Freedom Index” for the new 111^th Congress has just been released. The higher the number on this index, the stronger a congressman’s “adherence to constitutional principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and a traditional foreign policy of avoiding foreign entanglements.” Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) scored a perfect 100 on the House version of the index, as he consistently does. This time, however, two other Republicans in the House (John Duncan of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona) also scored a 100. The high scorer in the Senate was Tom Coburn (R-OK), with a 100.

The composition of the 111^th Congress in the House is 256 Democrats and 178 Republicans (there is one vacancy). In the Senate, there are 58 Democrats, 2 Independents, and 40 Republicans.

The ten issues that members of the 111^th Congress in the House are being rated on this time are TARP funding, reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), economic stimulus spending, national service, federal funding of more police, the $3.56 trillion federal budget, hate crimes legislation, supplemental appropriations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, TSA use of body imaging screening, and the “cash for clunkers” program.

In the Senate, the issues are TARP funding, the Mexico City Policy on abortion funding, SCHIP reauthorization, economic stimulus spending, District of Columbia congressional voting rights, the Fairness Doctrine, national service, the federal budget, funding for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and supplemental appropriations.

The average House score on the “Freedom Index” is 38; the average Senate score is 34. The average Republican score in the House is 71; the average Republican score in the Senate is 76. (The Republican average in the Senate should actually be less since Arlen Specter [D-PA] was a Republican for the first seven of the ten Senate votes tracked by the “Freedom Index.”) Obviously, the Democratic averages are less than the overall averages.

Okay, so the Republicans don’t look too bad – if we compare them with the Democrats. And that’s the problem. When the Republicans look good, it is usually because they are being compared with the Democrats. Even when they look bad, they end up looking good because they are said to be the lesser of two evils.

But judged by the standards of liberty and the Constitution, the Republicans in the House only get a C–, while those in the Senate get a C. This is not good for a party whose members take an oath to uphold the Constitution and profess to believe in free markets and limited government. Who praises their kids for having a C average on their report card?

Another reason I am not excited about these Republican scores is that their numbers in previous editions of the “Freedom Index” are much, much lower. For example, the last “Freedom Index” gave the cumulative scores for forty key votes in the 110^th Congress. The Republican average in the Senate was a pathetic 47. But shouldn’t we still be happy about the higher scores for the Republicans in the 111^th Congress? Yes and no. I rejoice that many Republicans have started acting like the defenders of liberty and less government they claim to be. But I am not dumb enough to think that they are doing it for any other reason than they are opposing the Democrats. Almost half of the Republicans in the House and over two-thirds of the Republicans in the Senate voted for the bailout bill (H.R. 1424) last year. What a difference a Democratic president makes.

Am I being too hard on the Republicans? I think not.

When we dig a little deeper into the legislation tracked by the “Freedom Index” we see that it’s not just a few bad grapes that are corrupting the Republican vine. The Republicans show themselves to be against liberty and limited government on certain key issues. On the issue of national service, 70 Republicans in the House and 22 in the Senate voted for The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act (H.R. 1388). On the supplemental appropriations bill (H.R. 2346) that funneled another $84.5 billion to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and authorized another $10 billion in foreign aid, only 9 Republicans in the House and 1 in the Senate voted no. A House vote authorizing the federal government to spend $1.8 billion a year to hire local law-enforcement officers through the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program (H.R. 1139) was supported by 94 Republicans. There were 59 House Republicans that voted for the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act (H.R. 2751), known as the “cash for clunkers” program. This authorizes the federal government to give consumers rebates of up to $4,500 for trading in their old cars for more fuel-efficient ones. I am still trying to find authorization for that one in the Constitution.

I applaud the Republicans for overwhelmingly rejecting Obama’s economic stimulus (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act [H.R. 1]) and bloated federal budget. But where were these born-again fiscal conservatives during the Bush years? Is there any doubt that a McCain stimulus and a McCain budget would be strongly supported by most of the Republicans in Congress? How can anyone look at the Republican track record and think otherwise?

So, can we look to the Republicans to save us? Obviously not. So many of them violate the Constitution without even blinking, the vast majority of them still support billions more in spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so few of them are even close to being Ron Paul Republicans.

As I have said on several occasions, I rarely bother to write about the evils of the Democratic Party. The socialist and statist policies of the Democratic Party are well known and expected. The Democrats don’t masquerade as advocates of more liberty and less government. They openly preach the redistribution of wealth, draconian environmental laws, the nanny state, and massive increases in government intervention in the economy and society. The only thing surprising about the Democrats turning this country into a socialist/fascist paradise is the speed in which they are going about it.

We can count on the Republicans to oppose some of the socialism and fascism of the Democrats, grudgingly go along with some of it in exchange for something they want, wholeheartedly support some of it, and then, as we saw in the Bush years, enact some of their own once they get in power.

This means that if we’re looking to the Republicans save us, we’re doomed.

(Originally published as a comment to a Facebook thread)

Personally, I could care less who’s running the GOP or the DNC. As far as I’m concerned, the GOP has basically ruined itself and has lost nearly all credibility nationally.

That’s fine with me. That’s one down, one to go.

Political parties are tools. They don’t exist to promote ideals, push for certain issues, or anything other than to promote candidates. Candidates (that win) know this and use their parties as tools for election. Only morons (aka the “grassroots”) believe that their party exists to do anything but be a runway for candidates into office.

Parties create political planks to attract the sheep in the grassroots. Candidates realize that those political planks, once an election is over, are just marketing tools and nothing more.

This is why neo-cons get elected as Republicans. This is why Marxists get elected as Democrats.

Once a political party gets beyond the size of a grassroots organization, it becomes nothing more than a tool, a conduit for elections. The UTGOP is no different. It’s just a conduit for power in Utah. Candidates know that 9/10 times, if you want to get elected in Utah, you need that (R) after your name. That’s it.

This is why big-government sheisters who’re more than happy to rob Peter to pay Paul, to propose hundreds of unconstitutional legislation during their careers, and who’re ecstatic about creating larger bureaucracies and more taxation can get elected in Utah as “Republicans.” Just look at your lovely governor, Orrin Hatch, Mark Shurtleff, and pretty much everyone else in elected office.

The sooner there’s a mass exodus of supporters from the GOP in UT, the better.

Why can’t you people see that the UTGOP is worthless? A total waste of time? Beyond saving? Dump it!

“But then the Democrats will win!”

Stupid argument. That’s the downright dumbest reason I can imagine for staying with a failed, worthless, corrupt, broken, political party. Eventually, you “GOP is God” types will realize that the people who’re getting elected through your party are no different than the Dems anyway. They just use different rhetoric.

Just my thoughts. I lived in Utah long enough to realize that there aren’t any good political parties there. If you must have a political party to give meaning to your life, choose one of the smaller ones. Go LPUT or CPUT or even PCPUT and focus on localized, grassroots campaigns. All of these organizations, at the national level, are no better than the GOP/DNC, though, so don’t fall for that either.

–Aaron Turpen (MilitantLibertarian.org)