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**AGENCIES/SECRECY** Agency Links – General
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- Agency action doesn’t cost PC
- No Agency Links – Agenda Crowd Out
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- Circumventing them is an independent link – congress must be notified - spurs fights over competing priorities and broader dispute over division of powers
- Obama will get the blame for all policies – the hill is too polarized for any blame deflection.
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**AGENCIES/SECRECY**Agency Links – GeneralNo Agency Links – GeneralAgency action doesn’t link – Congress prefers to stay out of itCohen 12 [Michael Cohen is regular writer and commentator on American politics and U.S. foreign policy. He is the author of Live from the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the 20th Century and How They Shaped Modern America (Walker Books, 2008), as well as a columnist the Guardian newspaper. He previously wrote a weekly column forForeign Policy and was a blogger for the New York Daily News. Formerly he was a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the American Security Project. He also served in the U.S. Department of State as chief speechwriter for U.S. Representative to the United Nations Bill Richardson and Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat. He has worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was chief speechwriter for Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT). 3-28-2012 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/28/power_grab?page=0,0] What has been Congress's response to this disregarding of its role in foreign policy decision-making? The usual hemming and hawing, but little in the way of concrete action. During the Bush years, Republicans were more than happy to let the president expand his executive powers when it came to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the global war on terrorism. When Democrats took back the House and Senate from Republicans in 2006, they placed greater scrutiny on the Bush administration's conduct of the war in Iraq -- but still continued to fund the conflict. Even in Washington's highly partisan current environment, little has changed; it's mostly sound and fury signifying nothing.¶ Republicans eschewed a constitutional confrontation with the White House over Libya, though the House GOP did make a rather partisan effort to defund the Libya operations (a measure that failed) and still today House and Senate members raise their frustrations in committee hearings over their heavy-handed treatment by the White House. But the actions of some Republicans point in a different direction. Last year, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon actually tried to expand the original Authorization for Use of Military Force that granted U.S. kinetic actions just three days after 9/11 -- which would have actually increased executive war-making power. While some on the Hill have long suspected the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution, it was one of the few checks that Congress maintained over the president (aside from ability to defund operations, which in itself is a difficult tool to wield effectively). Now they have been complicit in its further watering down.¶ Aside from Ron Paul, there's been little mention of the president's overreach in Libya by the GOP's presidential aspirants. And why should there be? If any of them become president they too would want to enjoy the expanded executive power that Obama has helped provide for them. Quite simply, in a closely divided country in which each party has a fair shot to win the White House every four years, there is little political incentive for either Democrats or Republicans to say enough is enough. Agency action doesn’t cost PCMayer and Price 2 (Kenneth R., Prof Poli Sci – U Wisc Madison and Kevin, Graduate Student, U Wisc Madison, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 6-1, Lexis) By using their formal powers, presidents structure the institutions that surround them to standardize their interactions with other actors. To convert the bargains that would otherwise require skill and scarce political capital into manageable leadership opportunities, presidents seek routines that encourage compliance from other actors. By creating institutions and processes that make these once-expensive bargains part of the political landscape, presidents alter default outcomes, leaving it to other actors to expend resources to undo what the president has done. No Agency Links – Agenda Crowd OutAgency action avoids agenda crowd outEpstein and O’Halloran 99 [David Epstein and Sharyn O'Halloran, Political Science @ Columbia and Stanford Graduate School of Business, Political Science @ Columbia and Stanford, Cardozo Law Review, January, 1999 (20 Cardozo L. Rev. 947)] In making this institutional choice, legislators face costs either way. Making explicit laws requires legislative time and energy that might be profitably spent on more electorally productive activities. After all, one of the reasons bureaucracies are created is for agencies to implement policies in areas where Congress has neither the time nor expertise to micro-manage policy decisions, and by restricting flexibility, Congress would be limiting agencies' ability to adjust to changing circumstances. This tradeoff is captured well by Terry Moe in his discussion of regulatory structure: The most direct way [to control agencies] is for today's authorities to specify, in excruciating detail, precisely what the agency is to do and how it is to do it, leaving as little as possible to the discretionary judgment of bureaucrats - and thus as little as possible for future authorities to exercise control over, short of passing new legislation.... Obviously, this is not a formula for creating effective organizations. In the interests of public protection, agencies are knowingly burdened with cumbersome, complicated, technically inappropriate structures that undermine their capacity to perform their jobs well. 40 Where oversight and monitoring problems do not exist, legislators would readily delegate authority to the executive branch, taking advantage of agency expertise, conserving scarce resources of time, staff, and energy, and avoiding the logrolls, delays, and informational inefficiencies associated with the committee system. Yes Agency Links – GeneralAll our links still apply – Obama can’t escape blameNicholas and Hook 10. (Peter and Janet, Staff Writers – LA Times, “Obama the Velcro president”, LA Times, 7-30, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/30/nation/la-na-velcro-presidency-20100730/3) If Ronald Reagan was the classic Teflon president, Barack Obama is made of Velcro. Through two terms, Reagan eluded much of the responsibility for recession and foreign policy scandal. In less than two years, Obama has become ensnared in blame. Hoping to better insulate Obama, White House aides have sought to give other Cabinet officials a higher profile and additional public exposure. They are also crafting new ways to explain the president's policies to a skeptical public. But Obama remains the colossus of his administration — to a point where trouble anywhere in the world is often his to solve. The president is on the hook to repair the Gulf Coast oil spill disaster, stabilize Afghanistan, help fix Greece's ailing economy and do right by Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official fired as a result of a misleading fragment of videotape. What's not sticking to Obama is a legislative track record that his recent predecessors might envy. Political dividends from passage of a healthcare overhaul or a financial regulatory bill have been fleeting. Instead, voters are measuring his presidency by a more immediate yardstick: Is he creating enough jobs? So far the verdict is no, and that has taken a toll on Obama's approval ratings. Only 46% approve of Obama's job performance, compared with 47% who disapprove, according to Gallup's daily tracking poll. "I think the accomplishments are very significant, but I think most people would look at this and say, 'What was the plan for jobs?' " said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.). "The agenda he's pushed here has been a very important agenda, but it hasn't translated into dinner table conversations." Reagan was able to glide past controversies with his popularity largely intact. He maintained his affable persona as a small-government advocate while seeming above the fray in his own administration. Reagan was untarnished by such calamities as the 1983 terrorist bombing of the Marines stationed in Beirut and scandals involving members of his administration. In the 1986 Iran-Contra affair, most of the blame fell on lieutenants. Obama lately has tried to rip off the Velcro veneer. In a revealing moment during the oil spill crisis, he reminded Americans that his powers aren't "limitless." He told residents in Grand Isle, La., that he is a flesh-and-blood president, not a comic-book superhero able to dive to the bottom of the sea and plug the hole. "I can't suck it up with a straw," he said. But as a candidate in 2008, he set sky-high expectations about what he could achieve and what government could accomplish. Clinching the Democratic nomination two years ago, Obama described the moment as an epic breakthrough when "we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless" and "when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Those towering goals remain a long way off. And most people would have preferred to see Obama focus more narrowly on the "good jobs" part of the promise. A recent Gallup poll showed that 53% of the population rated unemployment and the economy as the nation's most important problem. By contrast, only 7% cited healthcare — a single-minded focus of the White House for a full year. At every turn, Obama makes the argument that he has improved lives in concrete ways. Without the steps he took, he says, the economy would be in worse shape and more people would be out of work. There's evidence to support that. Two economists, Mark Zandi and Alan Blinder, reported recently that without the stimulus and other measures, gross domestic product would be about 6.5% lower. Yet, Americans aren't apt to cheer when something bad doesn't materialize. Unemployment has been rising — from 7.7% when Obama took office, to 9.5%. Last month, more than 2 million homes in the U.S. were in various stages of foreclosure — up from 1.7 million when Obama was sworn in. "Folks just aren't in a mood to hand out gold stars when unemployment is hovering around 10%," said Paul Begala, a Democratic pundit. Insulating the president from bad news has proved impossible. Other White Houses have tried doing so with more success. Reagan's Cabinet officials often took the blame, shielding the boss. But the Obama administration is about one man. Obama is the White House's chief spokesman, policy pitchman, fundraiser and negotiator. No Cabinet secretary has emerged as an adequate surrogate. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is seen as a tepid public speaker; Energy Secretary Steven Chu is prone to long, wonky digressions and has rarely gone before the cameras during an oil spill crisis that he is working to end. So, more falls to Obama, reinforcing the Velcro effect: Everything sticks to him. He has opined on virtually everything in the hundreds of public statements he has made: nuclear arms treaties, basketball star LeBron James' career plans; Chelsea Clinton's wedding. Few audiences are off-limits. On Wednesday, he taped a spot on ABC's "The View," drawing a rebuke from Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, who deemed the appearance unworthy of the presidency during tough times. "Stylistically he creates some of those problems," Eddie Mahe, a Republican political strategist, said in an interview. "His favorite pronoun is 'I.' When you position yourself as being all things to all people, the ultimate controller and decision maker with the capacity to fix anything, you set yourself up to be blamed when it doesn't get fixed or things happen." A new White House strategy is to forgo talk of big policy changes that are easy to ridicule. Instead, aides want to market policies as more digestible pieces. So, rather than tout the healthcare package as a whole, advisors will talk about smaller parts that may be more appealing and understandable — such as barring insurers from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions. But at this stage, it may be late in the game to downsize either the president or his agenda. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said: "The man came in promising change. He has a higher profile than some presidents because of his youth, his race and the way he came to the White House with the message he brought in. It's naive to believe he can step back and have some Cabinet secretary be the face of the oil spill. The buck stops with his office." Circumventing them is an independent link – congress must be notified - spurs fights over competing priorities and broader dispute over division of powersMelia 5 (George, Inst for Diplomacy-Georgetown, “The Democracy Bureaucracy”, http://www.princeton.edu/~ppns/papers/democracy_bureaucracy.pdf) As suggested in the previous section, the democracy promotion infrastructure is also a moving target, as numerous actors are advocating, legislating or announcing changes in the way business is done in this field. Among the issues at play in mid-2005 are the following. 1. Congress/Executive As in most aspects for foreign relations, inherent differences in perspective obtain between legislators (and their staffs) and Administration officials (and the permanent professionals at State, USAID, DOD and the intelligence community) about priorities, budget allocations, reporting and notification requirements, and mechanisms. At mid-summer 2005, the battles are just now being joined between the Congress and the Executive over: ƒ the State Department authorization bill (to which the House has added the ADVANCE Democracy Act); ƒ the Foreign Operations and State Department appropriations bill (to which the Senate Committee has added aspects of the ADVANCE Democracy Act, and substantial earmarks, diverse country-specific policy guidance, including on Iran and central Asia, and operational constraints on USAID); ƒ the UN Reform Act 20 , likely to be added to the State Department authorization (if one is to be enacted this year), in which the UN Democracy Fund, the role of the Democracy Caucus, the composition of the UN Human Rights Commission/Council are all addressed, and the virtues of withholding assessed contributions to the UN as leverage are all considered. Some of the impending tussle will be about specific aspects of the proposals, combined with more general institutional angst in the Executive about how much it can or should tolerate policy direction (often seen as “micromanagement”) from the Congress. Obama will get the blame for all policies – the hill is too polarized for any blame deflection.Politico 9. [2-13-09 -- http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18827.html] The Washington climate, which led to a party-line vote on the stimulus, has big political implications: It means that Obama will have sole ownership -- whether that means credit or blame -- for all the massive changes in government he envisions over the coming year. Ext. Obama Gets BlameAgency action is connected to the president.Cohen and Collier 99 (Jeffrey E. and Ken, professors of political science at Fordham and Kansas, 1999 Presidential Policymaking: An End of Century Assessment, p. 42) In his study of the agenda-setting process, Kingdon finds that respondents cite the president and his administration as perhaps the most important actor with agenda influence. As Kingdon states, "there is little doubt that the president remains a powerful force in agenda setting, particularly compared to other actors." Moreover, the views of department heads and others associated with the administration are usually thought of as the president's or as having the president's stamp of approval. When they speak, it is for the administration and the president. Thus, the president has many "voices". No political cover – president gets the blame.Lewis 3 (David E., prof. politics and public affairs @ Princeton, 2003 Presidents and the Politics of Agency Design, p. 4) Agency design determines bureaucratic responsiveness to democratic impulses and pressure, particularly those channeled through elected officials like the president. It can determine the success or failure of modern presidents in meeting constitutional and electoral mandates. One of the central concerns of presidency scholars beginning with Richard Neustadt (1960) has been increasing public expectations of presidents (Lowi 1985; Skowronek 1993). The president is held accountable for the success or failure of the entire government. When the economy is in recession, when an agency blunders, or when some social problem goes unaddressed, it is the president whose reelection and historical legacy are on the line. 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