by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ELECTIONS, GOVERNMENT, POLITICS, TRUMP
Newt Gingrich warned that Trump’s “Drain the Swamp” verbiage was really a lot of bluster. His presidential appointments seems to be reflecting that — but is it really Trump’s fault? Or are his hands tied? Or a mix of both? Jay Cost over at The Weekly Standard, gives some insight into the history of presidential appointments and how the system works. It’s definitely worth a read in its entirety:
As a candidate, Donald Trump promised sweeping change in the way Washington functions. He would tell voters that the system is rigged, it’s broken, it’s run by losers, and only he could fix it. And yet, for all this rhetoric, it is striking how typical his presidential appointments have been: Jeff Sessions, Mike Pompeo, John Kelly, Rick Perry, Elaine Chao, Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, Andrew Puzder, Nikki Haley, Seema Verma. Most of these appointees are conservative, of course, but they are conventionally conservative. It is striking, indeed, that the most controversial appointment so far is Rex Tillerson to the State Department. He is an outsider to the ways of Washington but he is still the CEO of a company with $380 billion in total assets and 75,000 employees. A populist barbarian storming the establishment gate, Tillerson is not!
Little wonder that Politico reported last week, “Donald Trump’s White House-in-waiting is already being roiled by divisions, with the conservative outsiders who helped power his historic victory colliding with a Republican Party establishment muscling its way in.”
Something similar happened eight years ago. Barack Obama promised a major break with the previous practices of both parties. Still, his appointments were conventionally liberal: Hillary Clinton, Tim Geithner, Robert Gates (who was actually a holdover from the George W. Bush administration), Eric Holder, Ken Salazar, Tom Vilsack, Gary Locke, Kathleen Sebelius, and so on. Obama largely sampled from the upper echelon of Democratic politicians and policymakers in forming his cabinet—certainly an ideological change from the Bush era but not a fundamental break from past practices.
The system, as it turns out, is much more resilient than presidential candidates on the trail want voters to believe. Electing a new president certainly changes the course of public policy in Washington, but presidents are nevertheless constrained actors. Presidential candidates want us to think they have free rein to make over the government, but the truth is that the occupant of the Oval Office is boxed in from all sides, including in the appointment process.
Trump faces several challenges in using the appointment power to reshape the government. The first is Congress. The Senate possesses the constitutional authority to review certain appointments and reject those nominees it thinks are unfit. This could be why Trump passed over Rudy Giuliani for a cabinet appointment; he may have judged that the confirmation process would be a difficult one for the former mayor of New York City. This might also explain Trump’s decision to make Michael Flynn his national security adviser: The Senate does not review or confirm West Wing appointments.
Congress imposes broader constraints as well. The cabinet departments are, after all, legislative creations, and Congress has the power to write legislation regulating which employees are and are not subject to the appointment process. Starting with the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883, Congress sharply curtailed the presidential nominating power, setting the overwhelming majority of executive department employees outside the discretion of the commander in chief. By and large, the same civil servants who worked under George W. Bush and Barack Obama will continue to work under Donald Trump, without worry that the president can dismiss them.
John F. Kennedy summarized the limits the president faces better than anybody:
The fact is that I think the Congress looks more powerful sitting here than it did when I was there in the Congress. . . . When you are in Congress, you are one of a hundred in the Senate or one of 435 in the House . . . but from here I look at . . . the collective power of the Congress . . . and it is a substantial power.
Executive appointments are just the tip of the iceberg. When Trump enters office, he will find Congress to be a potentially implacable foe on any matter where his will runs contrary to its own.
And Trump—or for that matter any outsider president looking to effect sweeping change—must confront the problem of asymmetric information. The federal government is so complicated that one must possess a great deal of technical, specialized information to manage it properly. The president typically does not possess that information, at least not outside a few policy domains (for instance, as Dwight Eisenhower did with the military). He must appoint officials who possess such knowledge. But where do people acquire this? They usually gain it from participating in the affairs of state—the very same affairs that the president has promised to alter.
There are, of course, experts who are nonetheless looking for big changes—for instance, Rep. Tom Price, whom Trump nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services, and who came to Congress after a successful career as an orthopedic surgeon, is intent on rolling back Obamacare—but the president still faces a substantial challenge. Oftentimes, those whom he taps to change the system have been longtime participants in sustaining it. This problem is compounded when one considers the large number of lower-level appointments the president is authorized to make, where he can only afford to spend a small amount of face time with his nominees. Quite often, he is forced to trust that the people he has delegated responsibility to will, in turn, make good appointments.
Expertise, in other words, can create a subtle bias for the status quo, which was on full display in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. As Ron Suskind reports in Confidence Men, President Obama wanted to reorganize Citigroup in 2009 and instructed Treasury Secretary Geithner to put together a plan. But, per Suskind, Geithner never followed through. As one high-level banking executive explained to Suskind: “The president had us at a moment of real vulnerability. At that point, he could have ordered us to do just about anything and we would have rolled over. But he didn’t—he mostly wanted to help us out, to quell the mob. And the guy we figured we had to thank for that was Tim. He was our man in Washington.”
The irony is that the president, in many respects, is less able today to fulfill his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” than he was in George Washington’s time. The Senate constrains him, via its advisory role, as always. But now the vast bulk of the executive branch is outside his aegis, easily able to resist his political or ideological agenda. Moreover, the technical expertise required to manage the government means that the relative handful of appointments he does get to make is often from the “establishment” he ran against.
All of this runs contrary to the image of the presidency that candidates wish to cultivate on the campaign trail. They want voters to think of the president as a kind of superman—able to work his will on any policy issue that confronts him. But this is just not the case. The president, in truth, is a restricted government agent, just as all officials are in our system of checks and balances. In this nomination process, we are witnessing an early glimpse of how our system of government will constrain and frustrate Trump, just as it has his predecessors.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES, TRUMP
After telling the American electorate that he wants to repeal and replace Obamacare, Trump has now stated that he may not do this entirely. The way he worded his remarks indicates that he is willing to keep “ObamaCare’s preexisting condition and the 26 year old provision to stay on their parent’s plan” to remain.
These two provisions are not “Obamacare” provisions – they are provisions that could – and maybe should – be part of a new health care law. The new replacement for Obamacare could have provisions for people with preexisting conditions to get insurance and even keeping 26 year olds on the plan — but it should be funded in a new healthcare plan that is able to charge competitively using a Health Saving Account structure, with tort reform, interstate competition, no mandated coverage that people don’t want – and government subsidies for the needy – and not by mandates and intentional overcharges.
The fact that some provisions of ObamaCare are also in the new plan does NOT mean that part of ObamaCare remains. Socialism and Capitalism are not the same just because they both have a police force.
ObamaCare must go in its entirety.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS
Congress heard a report this week that evidenced interference by the Obama administration into Congressional process with regard to a piece of radiation legislation in 2014. The Administration appears to have used the Department of Energy to forward his particular climate change package while simultaneously remove opposing viewpoints and sour lawmakers on a certain bill that would possibly conflict with his agenda.
The Washington Free Beacon produced the overview; I have reprinted it below in its entirety so as to not leave out any pertinent details:
A new congressional investigation has determined that the Obama administration fired a top scientist and intimidated staff at the Department of Energy in order to further its climate change agenda, according to a new report that alleges the administration ordered top officials to obstruct Congress in order to forward this agenda.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, released a wide-ranging report on Tuesday that shows how senior Obama administration officials retaliated against a leading scientist and plotted ways to block a congressional inquiry surrounding key research into the impact of radiation.
A top DoE scientist who liaised with Congress on the matter was fired by the Obama administration for being too forthright with lawmakers, according to the report, which provides an in-depth look at the White House’s efforts to ensure senior staffers toe the administration’s line.
The report also provides evidence that the Obama administration worked to kill legislation in order to ensure that it could receive full funding for its own hotly contested climate change agenda.
The report additionally discovered efforts by the Obama administration to censor the information given to Congress, interfering with the body’s ability to perform critical oversight work.
“Instead of providing the type of scientific information needed by Congress to legislate effectively, senior departmental officials sought to hide information, lobbied against legislation, and retaliated against a scientist for being forthcoming,” Smith said in a statement. “In this staff report based on lengthy record before the committee, much has been revealed about how senior level agency officials under the Obama administration retaliated against a scientist who did not follow the party line.”
“Moving forward, the department needs to overhaul its management practices to ensure that Congress is provided the information it requires to legislate and that federal employees and scientists who provide that information do so without fear of retribution,” Smith said.
The report goes into Congress’ efforts to regulate the Low Dose Radiation Research Program, or LDRRP, which sought to test the impact of radiation on human beings. The program, started in the 1990s, was meant to support research into waste cleanup and the impact of nuclear weapons.
In mid-2014, lawmakers introduced legislation, the Low Dose Radiation Act of 2014, to help regulate the program and minimize harmful side effects.
During an October 2014 briefing with senior DoE staff on the matter, lawmakers heard testimony from Dr. Noelle Metting, the radiation research program’s manager.
Less than a month later, lawmakers discovered that Obama administration officials had “removed Dr. Metting from federal service for allegedly providing too much information in response to questions posed by” Congress during the briefing, the report states.
Congressional investigators later determined that the administration’s “actions to remove Dr. Metting were, in part, retaliation against Dr. Metting because she refused to conform to the predetermined remarks and talking points designed by Management to undermine the advancement of” the 2014 radiation act.
Emails unearthed during the investigation “show a sequence of events leading to a premeditated scheme by senior DoE employees ‘to squash the prospects of Senate support’” for the radiation act, a move that lawmakers claim was meant to help advance President Obama’s own climate change goals.
“The committee has learned that one of DoE’s stated purposes for Dr. Metting’s removal from federal service was her failure to confine the discussion at the briefing to pre-approved talking points,” according to the report. “The committee has also established that DoE management … failed to exercise even a minimal standard of care to avoid chilling other agency scientists as a result of the retaliation against Dr. Metting for her refusal to censor information from Congress.”
The investigation concluded that “DoE placed its own priorities to further the president’s Climate Action Plan before its constitutional obligations to be candid with Congress,” the report states. “The DoE’s actions constitute a reckless and calculated attack on the legislative process itself, which undermines the power of Congress to legislate. The committee further concludes that DoE’s disregard for separation of powers is not limited to a small group of employees, but rather is an institutional problem that must be corrected by overhauling its management practices with respect to its relationship with the Congress.”
These moves by the administration were part of an effort to secure full funding for the president’s climate change agenda, the report claims.
“Instead of working to understand the value of the LDRRP for emergency situations, DoE Management engaged in a campaign to terminate research programs that could divert funds from the president’s Climate Action Plan,” the report states.
Congress is recommending a full overhaul of the DoE’s management structure in order to ensure this type of situation does not occur again.
by | BLOG, EDUCATION, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, POLITICS
In virtually every case where there is a voucher or charter school program, the amount of money provided for the students is significantly less than the public school is charging for educating kids. The fact that public school advocates are seething that these alternative forms of education are destroying the public school system is incredibly outrageous.
If a student in public school costs $15,000 to educate and the same student costs $10,000 for a charter school, it leaves the public school system $5,000 per student free and clear. Why isn’t this a good thing all around? It smacks of mismanagement. Schools should be thrilled at the arrangement; if a public school system loses 1,000 kids and they get $5,000 of funding — free and clear per kid — they actually end up with one one million dollars extra for the supreme price of educating less kids and enjoying a less kids in each classrom.
So why aren’t public schools happy about this kind of set-up? It exposes their incompetence and shows that, given a choice in education, many parents opt for the less expensive, smaller classroom model over the large, bureaucracy that is our public school system today.
by | BLOG, ECONOMY, GOVERNMENT, TAXES
Last week, Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury Secretary pick, announced that high earners won’t receive an “absolute tax cut” suggesting that any tax reductions would also be coupled with less deductions. Unfortunately, Mnuchin doesn’t know or pretends to ignore the fact that high income earner have faced brutal tax increases during the Obama Administration, and thus any decreases are really just a return to the more appropriate rates of the Bush years.
Obama raised the Bush tax rates on only the wealthiest earners from 36% – 39.6 % and then again raised the tax rates on only the same wealthiest by adding a Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT) of 3.8%, — otherwise known as the “Obamacare Tax” — which covered all investment income of individuals, estates, and trusts. What’s more, Obama also raised capital gains on the wealthiest earners from 15% – 20%, but when the NIIT 3.8% tax was added to it, it actually raised the capital gains rates on the highest earners from 15 – 23.8% — an effective increase of nearly 59%! Rolling back the marginal rates and eliminating the Obamacare tax are not tax reductions at all, so to suggest offsetting them with a change in tax deductions is terribly misguided.
The United States has far and away the most progressive income tax in the world. Simplifying the code, ending the war on the wealthy, and lowering corporate and individual taxes are the keys to jump-starting the economy and restoring economic growth and prosperity.
by | BLOG, GOVERNMENT, HEALTHCARE, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS
It gets really annoying when commentators blather on about Obamacare and the Republican’s plan to repeal and replace; they get called hypocrites and the commentators keep suggesting that there is no plan to replace Obamacare, because they are terrified that it actually might happen, striking at the heart of the pinnacle of liberal policies.
But it’s not true and we all know it. It’s like the same lie we keep here over and over from the Democrats that the Republicans are being obstructionist and have nothing to contribute. “Being obstructionist” for the left means that the Republicans aren’t interested in sacrificing core principles for some ridiculous leftist policy. Likewise, saying the Republicans have “nothing to contribute” simply means that the Republicans have nothing to contribute that would appeal to the leftists.
The lie gets repeated because the press is either too lazy or too in the bed with certain camps to actually report on facts. Paul Ryan and Congress have come up their “A Better Way” proposal and its like it doesn’t even exist among mainstream media, because it goes against the narrative that “Republican are bad” and “Democrats are good.” Unfortunately, that narrative got deflated on Election Day.
Until now, no one has bothered to vote on the “A Better Way’ plan, because everyone who pays attention knew that Obama would automatically veto it. Now that Obama will be gone, now is the time to do it. The question is, will the commentators finally admit that such a roadmap to recovery exists?
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, ELECTIONS, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES, TRUMP
I’m sick and tired of reading over and over again in places, both liberal and conservative, that the Trump and GOP-proposed tax reforms are going to give the lion’s share of the cuts to the top 1%. The entire concept is utterly distorted, especially in light of the fact that nobody talked about the litany of tax increases that occurred when Obama and his Democrat cronies passed the Obama and Obamacare increases.
Obama raised the Bush tax rates on only the wealthiest earners from 36% – 39.6 % and then again raised the tax rates on only the same wealthiest by adding a Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT) of 3.8%, — otherwise known as the “Obamacare Tax” — which covered all investment income of individuals, estates, and trusts. What’s more, Obama also raised capital gains on the wealthiest earners from 15% – 20%, but when the NIIT 3.8% tax was added to it, it actually raised the capital gains rates on the highest earners from 15 – 23.8% — an effective increase of nearly 59%!
Those ludicrous tax increases that no one talks about were principally responsible — along with the hemorrhage of regulations coming out of the Obama administration — for the horrific economic performance we’ve experienced since Obama took office. The first step the new Trump administration should take would be to reverse those very tax increases that Obama inflicted, which went 100% to the higher income individuals, and 0% to the middle class and lower income earners. The reversal of those insane tax increases should in no way be considered a tax cut as part of any tax reform package. Such a change would be a mere restoration of more reasonable rates from what was in fact an insane toxin on our entire economy.
by | BLOG, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, TAXES
Let’s put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
>-The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing
>-The fifth would pay $1
>-The sixth would pay $3
>-The seventh $7
>-The eighth $12
>-The ninth $18
>-The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20.” So now dinner for the ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But, what about the other six, the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his “fair share?” The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being “paid” to eat their meal. So the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so:
>-The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings)
>-The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings)
>-The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings)
>-The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings)
>-The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings)
>-The tenth now paid $49 instead $59 (16% savings)
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth. “But he got $10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than me!”
“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes also get the most “benefit” from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore.
Author Unknown
