That’s not true about the IRS. That was an early talking point, but it was quickly done away with. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department. It is his responsibility. The Fed is actually independent and unaccountable and designed to be that way, which is why many people hate it. The IRS is completely democratically accountable, because the President is responsible for its performance. Which he demonstrated by firing a few people in the DC office.
Now if you want the IRS to be completely independent, you need to put Ben Bernanke in charge of it.
I believe there’s something in there about “to the best of his ability”. It’s impossible for any one person to do the job perfectly - it always has been - and the moment that duties get delegated, accountability has to be adjusted.
And thus you lose democratic accountability. The Constitution doesn’t invest all this power in an unaccountable, unelected bureaucracy. It invests it in the President.
You are advocating for something new and dangerous here.
I didn’t remember anything like this happening, but I needed time to check it out.
What happened in my world was that Acting Commissioner Steven Miller was allowed to resign, three weeks before he would have left anyway. Commissioners, as I’ve already stated, are political appointees made by the President.
Obama did not, under any definition or interpretation, “fir[e] a few people in DC office.” Because, as I also said, that would be improper, and probably actively illegal.
Lois Lerner, director of Exempt Organizations at the IRS, Holly Paz, the director of Ruling and Agreements, and Joseph Grant, the former commissioner for Tax Exempt & Government Entities, were either placed on administrative leave or chose to resign. The placement onto administrative leave was not done by Obama, but by the new Acting Commissioner, which was the proper internal procedure.
Fortunately, our academic President is far better versed in actual law and in the Constitution than you appear to be.
Actually, he’s kinda of a dumbass when it comes to those types of issues, as witnessed by his weekly court smackdowns.
But anyway, the President is in charge of the executive branch. The IRS is not independent, it’s part of the Treasury Department. The fact that the chain of command was used properly does not mean that the President isn’t still at the top of it, and that all of his underlings derive their authority from the office of the Presidency.
basic stuff:
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. The IRS is responsible for collecting taxes and the interpretation and enforcement of the Internal Revenue Code.
Now, who is in charge of the Dept. of the Treasury, and who is that person’s boss?
The only people the President appoints who are not under his direction are members of truly independent bodies who do not serve at his pleasure. Supreme Court justices, the Fed, etc. Every single political appointee in the Treasury Department serves at the pleasure of the President and is directly accountable to him, and the career employees are accountable to the political appointees. Thus we get something called “democratic accountability”. If we decide that the President is not actually in charge of all this, then we do not have democratic accountability, which would be news to 99% of citizens, who would then demand that either democratic accountability be restored, or the IRS abolished.
I’m complaining about those who would try to absolve the President of his constitutional duties. Which begs the question of what exactly the purpose of the office is. Legislator-in-chief?
So stating that Obama fired people in the DC office, even though not a single person was fired, is OK because of something something something. Got it.
The position of President is to head the government. Government. That thing you don’t believe in, don’t like, and want to get rid of. But won’t go away no matter what you do.
No, they are supporters of the President who strive to give him credit for all the good things and absolve him of blame for all the bad things. and since there are a lot of bad things going on in the federal government, we get a novel description of the President’s duties. Which apparently involve speechmaking, ribbon cutting, and playing golf.
THe other advantage of this new Presidential job description is that it allows Democrats to go to the Senate well again with a clean conscience, rather than doing the responsible thing and nominating a governor.
A governor for the Presidency. As in, not Liz Warren. Or if we do get a Senator, at least one with military experience or business experience, like John Kerry, who had both.
He means Obama should have been a governor first. They used to attack him for not having enough experience (community organizer, only 3 years in the Senate, etc.) but that didn’t stick so now he’s flinging this at him.
The fact that he needs to be absolved for the numerous failings of his administration speaks volumes about the importance of having a skilled manager at the helm.
Notice the difference between the Clinton scandals and the Obama scandals. Clinton’s scandals were almost all personal. There were no major government screwups under his watch. Under Obama, they come at us left and right and cover almost every agency of the federal government. Are there any that haven’t been affected yet?
No, the Obama scandals bring to mind the Reagan administration. The guy at the top has no idea what’s going on. As Dana Milbank recently wrote, he’s a bystander in his own administration. Only in reagan’s case, even his supporters had to admit that the guy was just out of touch with his own administration.
You left out the part where I mentioned military experience or business experience. Academics don’t even do well transitioning to low positions in corporate organizations.