A question for those in the know

Obviously over the last few days we've heard the discussion about whether Obamacare can or should be repealed or at least defunded. You know which camp I sit with, but this is a question for my readers who may have a little more awareness about the budgetary process and how Washington works. However, the question doesn't involve Obamacare but instead involves something I presume is on the budget someplace.

Over the last two years, our less-than-illustrious President has hired a number of "czars" who didn't need to be confirmed by Congress. Since they seem to be useless appendages on the federal payroll is it possible to defund them? And what happens to those people if they are?

I would think that their salaries and benefits (along with whatever administrative help they receive) comes out of the allocation for the Executive Branch; probably the same pot of money that is paying for Obama's Asian trip to the tune of $200 million a day (or whatever the true figure is since there's some dispute regarding these expenses.) Obviously there's serious sums of money where the public hasn't the foggiest idea where it goes, and to an outsider like me it just seems to disappear into the ether. I guess transparency and accountability were the buzzwords in vogue two short years ago but they seem to have faded into obscurity of late.

Perhaps this is a shortcoming of me as a citizen that I don't have a great understanding of the process, but it occurs to me that we're playing with sums unthinkable just a couple decades ago. (That "trillion" wasn't needed until the late Reagan years.)

I also realize that getting rid of the "czars" would rank with eliminating earmarks in terms of budgetary impact. The reforms we truly need won't come until 2013 at the earliest since it's going to take a President and Congress with both foresight and cajones to tackle the REAL problem in the budget: entitlements.

But it would feel good to eliminate the "czars" and whether that takes a smaller allocation to the Executive Branch or actual line-item budgeting is beyond my pay grade and scope of knowledge. But that's why I have readers to help me figure out such matters.