AMERICAN ISSUES PROJECT

President Obama wants to add yet another czar, a Health Choices Commision czar this time, to the growing list of these unelected officials that are handpicked by the President and go through absolutely no confirmation process. A Virginia paper recently asked, "how many czars can fit into the West Wing?". The same editorial points out that President Obama is not the first President to handpick senior advisers that work behind the scenes and are not confirmed by a formal process. However, the sheer number of czars that Obama has appointed is troubling. In fact, the longest serving Democrat in the Senate and a constitutional scholar at that, Senator Robert Byrd, has criticized Obama's appointments of these czars, citing his concerns that this upsets the system of checks and balances that the Constitution requires and that the czars have "taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials."     

Here are just some of the czars the President has appointed so far; it seems that no one has a definitive count. Foreign Policy and Glenn Beck put the count at 18. Here's a partial list:

• Health reform czar (this czar is different from the Health Choices Commission Czar now being proposed);
• Energy czar;
• Car czar;
• Urban affairs czar;
• Faith-based policies czar;
• TARP czar;
• Stimulus accountability czar;
• Non-proliferation czar;
• Terrorism czar;
• Regulatory czar;
• Drug czar;
• Guantanamo closure czar;
• Border czar; and
• Information technology czar.

The newest czar Obama wants to add the list is the Health Choices Commission Czar who will essentially single-handedly act as a regulator of the newly formed government-run health insurance program. Health insurance is currently regulated at the state level, but when the federal government takes over this arena, this is another power that will be stripped from states' hands. Under the federally controlled insurance scheme, states could only compete with federal programs or set up a state-based insurance exchange program with permission from the federal czar. This is a completely different vision of federalism as we know it with states answering to the federal government and not the other way around.

Robert Moffit of The Heritage Foundation writes that this is not a federal-state partnership - it is federal domination of the states. Mr. Moffit is absolutely correct. But, this is the goal of the Obama administration - to puff up the federal government at the expense of states' rights, individual control and freedom of choice. And, with all of these czars Obama is appointing without any repercussions and without any fury from the public, he is succeeding in taking power from states, from individuals and placing it in the hands of of unelected officials who answer to no one but the President. 

Obama promised us transparency in his administration. Doesn't appointing the largest amount of czars any President has ever had cut against this promise completely? When our President has appointed more czars in the course of six months than Russia did over three centuries, it is an understatement to say that something is very wrong. The appointment of these czars is the epitome of government expansion without any accountability.