House Votes to Dethrone Czars

Washington DC. Feb. 18, 2011. The House of Representatives voted yesterday to dethrone nine White House “czars.”

These are well paid and very influential "project managers" who are neither elected by the people, nor confirmed by Congress. They simply serve at the will of the President, and are accountable only to him.  No one seems to know precisely what they do, or why they were hired.

Many of the Czars duplicate cabinet functions. For example, President Barack Hussein Obama, D-Keyna, has a "Czar for Afghanistan and Pakistan" a "Middle East Czar" and an "Iran Czar." Which makes you wonder what our official Secretary of State is doing.

President Obama has two separate Czars for the "Auto Industry Recovery" (The Auto Czar, and the Auto Worker Czar). And there are multiple Czars for functions normally conducted by the Treasury Department, HUD, HHS, and Homeland Security.

Some critics have suggested that the Czars are the President's shadow government and have effectively replaced the Cabinet, all of whom had to go through the confirmation process, and may be less radical than the Czars are.

Republicans successfully added an amendment to the continuing resolution that would leave President Barack Obama’s senior advisers on policy issues including health care, energy and others out of a job.

The vote was for defunding was 249-179, with 13 fed-up Democrats joining the Republicans to vote against funding. There was one Republican, who is planning to lose in 2012, that voted with the Democrats.

Rep. Steve Scalise, R-LA, offered the amendment that blocks funding for various policy advisers to combat what he called “a very disturbing proliferation of czars” under Obama. President GW Bush had 2 Czars. President Bill Clinon had 3 Czars. President Obama has 46 Czars.

“These unappointed, unaccountable people who are literally running a shadow government, heading up these little fiefdoms that nobody can really seem to identify where they are or what they’re doing,” Scalise said Thursday. “But we do know that they’re wielding vast amounts of power.”

This amendment eliminates funding for these jobs: White House-appointed advisers on health care, energy and climate, green jobs, urban affairs, the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, oversight of TARP executive compensation, diversity at the Federal Communications Commission and the auto industry manufacturing policy.

The amendment would defund the White House “green jobs czar” slot that has been vacant since Van Jones resigned in 2009 after reports surfaced that he signed a petition seeking an investigation into whether the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“The last green jobs czar we had left in disgrace because he expressed comments embracing communism and actually tried to blame the government, the American government, for September 11th attacks,” Scalise said.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) welcomed Republicans’ use of what he called “gender neutral” language to describe the administration’s appointees.

“A large number of the czars would have been called czarinas in the old days,” Frank said. “So I appreciate the fact that we’ve gotten past sex stereotyping of people.”