Never Underestimate Importance of Cabinet Secretaries

During presidential campaigns, Republicans should highlight the importance of the president selecting secretaries of Cabinet agencies. When one casts a ballot for president, one is also voting for the type of people who the president would pick to be secretaries.

The president will likely pick secretaries who have the same types of beliefs as the president. Voters should expect that secretaries will operate and make policies in a manner which reflects the philosophies and expectations of the president.

Secretaries exert enormous power. They set policies for their department, establish rules and regulations, respond to emergencies and disasters and implement tasks which the president delegates. Issues will occur that are beyond the secretaries' control, but their responses to these crises are their choices.

The actions (and inactions) by secretaries in the Biden administration demonstrate the harms which these secretaries can cause.

Transportation (Secretary Pete Buttigieg): On February 3, a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed is East Palestine, Ohio. After the derailment and subsequent controlled release of toxic chemicals, it has been reported that fish and animals have died and residents are reporting symptoms such as headaches, rashes, congestions, etc. Buttigieg did not comment on the derailment until approximately 10 days had passed and he did not visit until 20 days after the derailment.

Buttigieg has had other difficulties. The United States faced a supply chain crisis early in his term. As I argued in previous articles, solutions to this problem existed. In January 2023, air traffic in the United States was grounded for the first time since September 11, 2011.

Defense (Secretary Lloyd Austin): Earlier his month, a Chinese spy balloon traversed the entire continental United States and hovered over America's military bases before the U.S. military shot it down over the coast of South Carolina.

In August 2021, the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan and it resulted in the death of 13 American servicemen, the abandonment of Americans in Afghanistan, the leaving behind of an estimated $7.12 billion in military equipment and a surrender of Bagram Air Base.

Treasury (Secretary Janet Yellen): In June 2021, Yellen referred to inflation as "transitory." In June 2022, Yellen admitted that she was wrong to describe inflation as temporary. In December 2022, the Consumer Price Index was 6.5% (it was 9% in June 2022). The Biden administration spent $3.8 trillion since Biden's inauguration.

Energy (Secretary Jennifer Granholm): In January 2021, the price of gas was $2.42/gallon (in February 2020, the month before the pandemic, the price was $2.53/gallon). In January 2023, the price was $3.45/gallon. On January 20, 2021, the day of president Biden's inauguration, the Biden administration effectively halted the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline which was estimated to transport 800,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta, Canada, to the Texas Gulf Coast.

The Biden administration has taken other measures to halt the production of oil and natural gas in the United States.

Homeland Security (Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas): The number of illegal immigrants entering the United States through the Southern Border is at record numbers. In 2022, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency seized a record 14,700 pounds of the deadly drug fentanyl. In 2022, federal statistics show that 90% of 80,000 opiate deaths in the U.S. involved fentanyl.

Law (Attorney General Merrick Garland): Under Garland's tenure, American cities have experienced a crime wave. The Department of Justice labeled some parents speaking at school board meetings as domestic terrorists. Garland also personally approved of the search warrant of former President Donald Trump's home.

Health and Human Services (Secretary Xavier Becerra) and Agriculture (Secretary Tom Vilsack): In Spring 2022, America faced a shortage of baby formula. The shortage was predictable after the government shut down an Abbott plant in February 2022 and the FDA (an agency of HHS) first learned of the issue in Fall 2021. It appears that the Biden administration was slow to act.

Impeachment of secretaries is often not an appropriate remedy because impeachment is reserved for high crimes and misdemeanors, not policy differences.

In the history of the United States, only one Cabinet secretary has been impeached (Secretary of War William K. Belknap in 1876) and he was acquitted. An alternative to impeachment is to exert public pressure on the president to the replace the secretary, but that outcome is also unlikely.

It is difficult to know if secretaries make their decisions due to ideology (i.e., on purpose), poor job performance (i.e., not intentional but as a by-product of poor judgment or lack of knowledge), or at the direction of the president. It is also tough to ascertain why the presidents retain secretaries with poor job performance.

The best thing for voters to do is to select a president who shares the voters' ideology and management philosophy.