Steve Linick in Washington, D.C., Oct. 2, 2019
Photo: Win McNamee/Getty ImagesWhen Donald Trump late last week fired the State Department’s inspector general, Steve Linick, his critics accused him of political retaliation. There’s a case the President didn’t go far enough.
Mr. Trump said Monday he fired Mr. Linick because Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked him to. Mr. Pompeo says Mr. Linick was “undermining” the department and was not acting in a way “consistent with what the statute says he’s supposed to be doing.” He’s not the first cabinet officer to feel this way. The fundamental problem with inspectors general is that they serve as spies for Congress inside an Administration.
As with so many “reforms” done in the name of good government, inspector generals are a legacy of the Jimmy Carter era. In 1977, when the legislation establishing an Office of Inspector General was proposed, the Office of Legal Counsel for Mr. Carter’s Justice Department worried that the “divided and possibly inconsistent obligations to the executive and legislative branches, violate the doctrine of separation of powers and are constitutionally invalid.” Mr. Carter signed the bill anyway, after a few adjustments.
The logic of the OLC’s 1977 argument was picked up a decade later by Justice Antonin Scalia in his famous dissent in Morrison v. Olson. Much of what Scalia highlighted regarding separation of powers and independent counsels applies as well to inspectors general. Scalia conceded that “while the separation of powers may prevent us from righting every wrong, it does so in order to ensure that we do not lose liberty.”
This is not to say that inspectors general haven’t done good work in uncovering waste, fraud, and abuse. Many have. But having an official working inside an Administration who is effectively unaccountable to that Administration is inherently dysfunctional, even when an IG is not abusing his position.
Look at Michael Horowitz, IG for Justice. Though he unearthed genuine abuses by FBI officials, the price was the effective suspension of the normal functioning of American democracy. Congress and the President were warned to wait and not do anything that might interfere with the IG’s investigation. This gets it backward: The permanent bureaucracy is supposed to be accountable to our elected representatives, not the other way around.
In Mr. Trump’s case, the outrage over his firing of five inspectors general in recent weeks is also politically manufactured. Three were only acting IGs. In these cases, the President is filling an opening. Barack Obama clashed with some inspectors general, was slow to fill vacancies, and famously fired Gerald Walpin, an IG who pursued one of Mr. Obama’s political supporters for misusing federal volunteerism subsidies.
We have always been skeptical about institutions—independent counsels, inspectors general, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts—that limit one branch’s constitutional authority or allow that branch to encroach on the constitutional powers of another.
Critics of Mr. Trump’s firings argue we need to protect the “independence” of the IG. This is the logic behind a bill offered by Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), to limit the ability of a President to fire an IG. The problem is that when you limit that authority, you also limit political accountability.
Mr. Trump is on the right track by not being afraid to assert presidential authority over IGs. He’s also probably right to suspect that some may be out to get him. But he’d do American democracy a favor if he took the issue beyond himself and his own Administration to make the larger constitutional case for Congress to get rid of inspectors general once and for all.
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
"general" - Google News
May 23, 2020 at 06:34AM
https://ift.tt/2zYdXKG
All the President’s Inspectors General - The Wall Street Journal
"general" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2YopsF9
https://ift.tt/3faOei7
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "All the President’s Inspectors General - The Wall Street Journal"
Post a Comment