Senator Byrd, the most tenured Democrat in the Senate, believes that the creation of these “czar” positions wrongfully moves oversight and management from the legislative branch to the executive. To put more of a point on the issue programs are normally overseen by either a Congressional committee or a Presidential cabinet appointee who has been vetted and approved by Congress. The way President Obama is appointing people to positions of power where they report to him with no Congressional oversight of the appointment or review of the program circumvents the principle of checks and balances.

Some items of interest:

• Gov. Sebelius is a moderate Democrat who might further bring political discussion to middle ground much like President Obama’s choice of Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, tempered Obama advisor Larry Summers’ plans for the ARRA.
• Kansas, Gov. Sebelius’ home state, has some financial problems.  The Obama administration also has budgetary problems.
• President Obama’s healthcare goals, much like Secretary Clinton’s, are to control healthcare costs.  This will be an involved and nuanced interaction with both healthcare and insurance leaders at a time when the administration is pushing much more of its weight into the financial sector than it probably ever wanted to.

For my part, I’d like to see Gov. Sebelius have a more national stage.  I like the more moderate voices in the Obama administration so far (Timothy Geithner, Christina Rumor) and I like to “hear” the dialog (even when I’m reading transcripts).  This is definitely an appointment I’d prefer to see a moderate Democrat take over a Republican or a more liberal Democrat.  I believe healthcare deserves frank and passionate discussion but someone with a stronger desire to move the discussion forward than a desire to be right would benefit all of us.

 This bill may have some legs as Sen. Feingold is Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution.

1 Time.com, Mark Halperin on The Page editorial, Jan 26, 2009. 

2 FiveThirtyEight.com, Feingold Introduces 28th Amendment, Jan 25, 2009

Richardson would have been the ranking Latino in the Obama administration so his loss is a blow to the administration’s ethnic diversity but more importantly the issue that spurred the Obama camp to urge Richardson to refuse calls into question the thorough, professional manner of Obama’s current camp.  The Obama administration released a seven page, 63-question form for people to fill out if they wanted to be part of the administration. 3, 4 

Given the ethnic importance of Richardson’s appointment and the fact that Obama may have been paying him back for the early support that Ricardson gave in spite of calls for him to support Hillary Clinton in the Primaries I would expect the Obama administration to take more pains to vet Mr. Richardson before Mr. Obama went public with the nomination.  Now the well-known questionnaire looks like it either isn’t applied across the board, it isn’t applied diligently or perhaps it has some large loopholes.  Any way you cut this, it looks like the first major political forehead smack for the Obama administration.

1 – http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/04/richardson.withdrawal/index.html?eref=rss_topstories, CNN.com, 1/4/09

2 – http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN0434631820090104, Reuters.com, 1/4/09

3 - http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/13/transition.questionnaire/index.html, CNN.com, 11/13/09

4 – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3453916/Barack-Obama-staff-to-have-email-and-Facebook-vetted.html, Telegraph, 1/4/09