There's been lots of talk about President Obama's unprecedented appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

In an editorial today, the Wall Street Journal calls out the president for making these appointments to "pick a fight with Congress as part of his re-election campaign." It wonders how these appointments square with the president's call for regulatory relief. They don't. Instead, these constitutionally questionable actions inject more uncertainty in this economy and put the authority of the agencies and the validity of their work in legal jeopardy.

In another editorial, Bloomberg explains how the president's actions will prevent Washington from getting important work done:

The appointment [of Cordray], moreover, will surely heighten the clash between Obama and Congress over a full-year extension of the payroll-tax cut for workers and unemployment insurance for the jobless, endangering the recovery. The president also needs Congress’s cooperation on pending Federal Reserve Board and other bank-regulator nominations.

There are legitimate policy objections to the CFPB's unaccountability and NLRB's pro-union agenda. With our struggling economy, we need more than Washington political games. We need to fix the CFPB so that it doesn't threaten the economic recovery, and we need an NLRB that issues balanced, commonsense rules that don't stifile job creation and businesses' free speech rights.