Too Much Good Sense
Imagine the media outrage if a Republican Congress reduced funding for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Yet that’s exactly what Democrats did in the omnibus spending bill that President Bush signed yesterday. Not that we’re complaining. The commission, which does fact-finding and issues reports but has no enforcement power, marks its 50th anniversary next month. Needless to say, the country has made enormous racial progress since the Eisenhower Administration. And the federal government already handles discrimination allegations through the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, among other agencies.
By way of explaining the funding cut, however, lawmakers didn’t mention redundancy or obsolescence. Instead, they said, “The Appropriations Committees have serious reservations about the Commission’s current capacity and commitment to fulfilling its civil rights mission in a fair and effective manner.” In other words, Democrats are hot and bothered because liberals no longer run the place, and they don’t like the positions the commission has been taking of late.
Last year, for example, the commission criticized the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, which is very popular with Democrats. Sponsored by Democratic Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, it would create a sovereign government for native Hawaiians that could lead to discriminatory treatment of non-natives who make up more than 80% of the state’s population. A commission majority noted that the Akaka bill would “establish an impermissible racial preference in the establishment and operation of a governing entity.”
Other commission reports that haven’t sat well with the political left include “Affirmative Action in American Law Schools,” which found that “admitting students into law schools for which they might not academically be prepared could harm their academic performance and hinder their ability to obtain secure and gainful employment.” And in 2005, the commission described how several federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Education and Energy, had failed to consider race-neutral procurement practices as required by the 1995 Supreme Court decision, Adarand v. Pena.
The timing of the funding cut is also odd given that the commission has rarely been better managed. Back in the 1990s, a Government Accountability Office report referred to the commission under liberal activist Mary Frances Berry as “an agency in disarray” and said it lacked “basic management controls.” Ms. Berry, who served at the agency for more than 20 years before her term expired in 2004, had turned it into her personal fiefdom. Things got so bad that when Mr. Bush named Peter Kirsanow to fill a vacancy in 2001, Ms. Berry refused to seat him until a federal court forced her to do so.
The agency has since put its own house in order under current Chairman Gerald Reynolds. Last month it earned an unprecedented second consecutive clean financial audit. If anything today’s commission deserves a medal for good governance, not a reprimand from Congress. Today’s commission is also truer to its original conception as promoting equal rights, which is what really drives the left mad.
However, as long as the agency exists, so will the temptation to politicize it. Perhaps the best course is to defund it completely, which might happen if the agency keeps up the good work.