{"id":784,"date":"2011-04-22T11:57:12","date_gmt":"2011-04-22T15:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=784"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:57:41","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:57:41","slug":"will-the-new-cfpb-director-be-our-first-real-czar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/04\/22\/will-the-new-cfpb-director-be-our-first-real-czar\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the new CFPB Director be our First Real Czar?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zach Luck\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Wikipedia has a great list of all the \u201c[fill-in-the-broad-policy-concern] Czars\u201d\u00a0here<\/a>. \u00a0Obama has already handed out at least 37 Czar titles.\u00a0 With all these Czars running around, is it possible that the first Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) might be the first real federal Czar of anything?<\/p>\n

By \u201creal Czar\u201d I clearly don\u2019t mean an absolute ruler of the late-medieval Slavic variety. \u00a0I just mean a single policy maker with significant power over some policy area, who faces relatively limited outside control and oversight. \u00a0That\u2019s what the term implies to me \u2013 someone is the \u201cDrug Czar\u201d because they hold lots of power over U.S. drug policy. \u00a0This conception of what the Drug Czar can do, is, of course, not really true. \u00a0Being a federal Czar of something is more like being anointed the \u201corganizer\u201d or \u201cpoint-person\u201d for that issue, but \u201cCzar\u201d sounds\u00a0pretty good<\/a>, so we run with it.<\/p>\n

So how is the CFPB job our first real Czar? \u00a0<\/span>The agency directorship has two characteristics that rarely come together in administrative agencies: 1) a single head for the agency and 2) that agency head (the director) is removable only for cause during a 5 year term\u2014meaning the President can\u2019t fire the person at will to replace them with a political ally. \u00a0Both single heads of agencies and for-cause removal provisions are very common, but they rarely appear together. \u00a0Think through some federal agencies you\u2019ve heard of and they will fall into one category or the other: the\u00a0Federal Reserve<\/a>\u00a0(multi-member board, for cause terms), Federal Trade Commission (multi-member board, for cause terms), Environmental Protection Agency (single-head who gets booted by each new president), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (same). \u00a0Removal only for cause does not make an agency head entirely unaccountable.\u00a0 Among other checks, Congress can always strip away agency funding.\u00a0 But it does give the director a lot of independence from the sitting president, especially when appointed by a president of the opposite party<\/p>\n

Consumers need a strong, independent, and nimble CFPB, focused on consumer protection.\u00a0 Is a single agency head the best path to this goal? \u00a0Jean Noonan, who was the Associate Director of the FTC\u2019s Consumer Protection Bureau,\u00a0persuasively argues\u00a0<\/a>that a compromise to put Elizabeth Warren at the head of a multi-member board could be a good deal for everyone. \u00a0She argues it would put the right person in charge of the panel now, and lower the chance for radical shifts in agency policy or significant periods without authority in the future. \u00a0While I would be happy to see\u00a0Elizabeth Warren get confirmed<\/a>\u00a0to run the agency by herself, I am nervous that the next Czar to come along might be a lot less concerned with protecting consumers. \u00a0That\u2019s the danger with Czars; maybe you like this one, but what about the next guy?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zach Luck\u00a0 Wikipedia has a great list of all the \u201c[fill-in-the-broad-policy-concern] Czars\u201d\u00a0here. \u00a0Obama has already handed out at least 37 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-cE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}