During a discussion of the multiple scandals plaguing the Obama administration on "Squawk Box," CNBC economics reporter Steve Liesman called two-thirds of their responses in recent days "optics only."
LIESMAN: I read somewhere the shield law promoted by the White Houes would not have protected AP. Is that right? And they fired a guy that had nothing to do with the scandal. So what you're saying is at least two of the three, which is 66 percent in my book, are optics only.
JOHN HARWOOD: I would say that they're optics significantly. I don't know if they're optics only. But, yes, I think that's a valid point, Steve. Whatever law you support on shield, you still have on the public record that you've approved a subpoena that looks from what we know now pretty broad, and is something that's of great concern to civil liberties communities, people like us in the press, and something that somebody can come back and say, 'Look, that's chilling for the job that people are trying to do to: cover the administration.' They will at some point say more about it, but that was a response. Miller is a response.
LIESMAN: I get what you're saying.
MICHELLE CARUSO-CABRERA: Back to the whole -- well, speaking of the IRS situation, even if we don't see it go that high, to me there's a bigger lesson here, just about the power that bureaucrats start to feel. Is it a surprise that somebody who works for the IRS would want to target groups that don't want the IRS to have as much power, that want the government to be smaller? If you work for the government, you have an interest in maintaining its size and getting bigger. This is the power of bureaucracy that works on its own, and that is what makes bureaucrats so frightening to people all over the world.
The panel also touched on the Obama administration's interest "across the board in a broader role for government getting into your life," and perhaps the IRS took direction from higher-ups to enact a culture of going after conservative groups against government overreach.
LIESMAN: Ben, are there other things that conservatives would point to that says the IRS is part of a piece of a campaign against groups being used by the administration and their bureaucratic authority?
BEN WHITE: I think what they would say is the Obama administration is interested across the board in a broader role for government getting into in your life, and the IRS maybe took cues from on high that there was a culture of going after conservative groups, and there was a desire to expand the reach of government through health care and other areas.
CARUSO-CABRERA: They didn't think they would get in trouble. Why didn't they think --
WHITE: I also think they thought to some degree they were doing the right thing.
CARUSO-CABRERA: Yeah, exactly.
HARWOOD: But just to be clear, before, like, the imagery gets too far, these are people who work there from one president to the next president, right? So it is not really susceptible to what happens --
CARUSO-CABERA: Which is my point, exactly.
JOE KERNEN: They were helping to elect the one that they wanted to get.