Tag Archives: Office of Management and Budget

business news

More chaos and confusion in the Trump administration

You’ve heard it said that the Trump administration “thrives” on chaos, that it cannot execute simple transitions without all hell breaking loose.

Consider the latest stumble-bum example from Donald John Trump’s presidential team.

Richard Corddray resigned as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; President Barack Obama appointed him to lead the agency created in 2010 in the wake of the 2008-09 financial crisis. The law allows Corddray to appoint his successor, which he did when he named deputy director Leandra English to lead the agency.

Oh, no. You can’t do that, said Donald John “Smart Person” Trump, who then named Budget Director Mick Mulvaney as the interim head of he CFPB. Trump then instructed the agency to ignore any directives coming from English and act only on those coming from Mulvaney.

Hey, there’s a bit more. English has filed a lawsuit preventing Mulvaney from taking over.

The CFPB has been a Republican bogeyman ever since it was founded. The GOP contends it puts too many restrictions on banks.

From my standpoint — and acknowledging my own bias — this has the smell of yet another attempt to overturn an Obama-era agency reform. If the former president did it, the agency is a “disaster,” according to Trump, who attaches that term to any agency or program created by his predecessor that he wants to gut.

CFPB targets banks’ practices

Trump tweeted this: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, has been a total disaster as run by the previous Administrations pick. Financial Institutions have been devastated and unable to properly serve the public. We will bring it back to life!

My actual point, though, is that we are witnessing yet another clumsy, cumbersome cluster-fudge that illustrates once again — as if we need any reminders — that the Trump administration cannot do a single thing without making a total hash out of it.

medical news

They want to let ACA ‘explode’ before stepping in?

Donald J. Trump couldn’t have been clearer immediately after the Republican “alternative” to the Affordable Care Act went down in flames.

The president said he intends to let the ACA “explode” before doing anything else. That’s it. The president is ready to watch millions of Americans lose their health insurance the instant the existing health insurance plan disintegrates.

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney echoed the president’s view this morning in an appearance on “Meet the Press.” Let it blow apart, he said. Then we’ll get busy with an alternative.

What a crock!

First of all, many of us doubt the Trump team’s belief that the ACA is doomed to fail. Millions of Americans keep signing up for health insurance covered by former President Obama’s signature domestic initiative. They’re continuing to purchase insurance they couldn’t afford until the ACA was enacted.

Yet we keep hearing assertions about the ACA suffering from a “death spiral.” That it’s doomed to croak.

I believe it’s good to remind congressional Republicans that they had nearly eight years to come up with an alternative to the ACA. They didn’t. They threw something together after their guy Trump took office.

Is it going to blow apart? The Trumpkins believe it will. I guess they’re entitled to their belief. However, if they’re so damn certain that the ACA will fail, why in the world are they waiting for the worst outcome before coming up with a way to improve it?

That isn’t leadership. It’s petulance.

business news, national news, political news

POTUS takes credit he doesn’t deserve

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Flash! National debt drops a tad, while the president of the United States takes credit for it!

Hold on for just a New York minute, shall we?

Donald J. Trump shouldn’t be taking credit for a slight dip in the national debt, any more than Barack Obama should have taken the hickey for it when it blipped up in the first month of his administration.

However, do not expect that to inhibit the new president from taking credit on such matters.

The president has shown this habit of taking credit for positive things but then passing off negative elements as if he’s some sort of innocent bystander.

The New York Times reported: “The federal debt is determined by the government’s decisions about taxing and spending, and by the strength of the American economy. The debt was increasing rapidly in early 2009 because the economy was in free fall, and because of policy decisions made during the administration of President George W. Bush.

“The debt is rising more slowly now because economic growth has strengthened and because of policy decisions made during Mr. Obama’s administration. But the debt is on a clear upward trend. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in January that the debt would increase by $559 billion in the current fiscal year, ending in September.”

Trump has been in office for a whole month. He’s got 47 more of them to go. The president, though, is so darn quick with his Twitter trigger finger that he cannot help but assume this minor downtick in the debt is all his doing.

We’d better get used to this kind of thing.

Oh, the fact-checkers will be busy.

Uncategorized

Meanwhile … the budget deficit keeps shrinking

Bad news tends to run laps around good news.

People are drawn to negativity in a curious way. Positive developments? Oh, forget about it. We’ll get to the good stuff later — if we remember to think about it.

I hereby want to present a bit of cheer amid all the tumult over child refugees, Israel vs. Hamas, Iraqi insurgents, impeachment, congressional lawsuit and anything else of late.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/wh-budget-deficit-will-drop-to-583-billion-108822.html?hp=l9

The federal ran a surplus of $71 billion in June. There’s more. The annual budget deficit is going to hit — at most by some estimates — $583 billion for the current fiscal year that ends Sept. 30; indeed, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of $492 billion.

It’s that surplus business that has me most intrigued.

Could it be the spurt of new jobs, which reached 288,000 in June, producing more tax revenue for the Treasury? Might it be accompanied by a burst of new business activity, which generates even more revenue?

Why, you would think we’d hear cheers from both sides of the political aisle.

Didn’t happen. Nope. We’ve been fixated by that negativity thing. We respond to the bad news and shrug at the good news.

I’m no Pollyanna. I know we’ve got problems at home. We damn sure have them around the world. Our government is coping as best as it can, or one should hope.

The budget deficit, which once was the Bogeyman of the Right, is being slain. It’s not gone yet. It’s still too great. It’s less than half of what it was when the current administration took over.

I think I’ll hoist a cold one in honor of the good news.

Uncategorized

Burwell a lock for HHS boss, but first …

Sylvia Mathews Burwell should be able to skate easily from her job as head of the Office of Management and Budget into her new post as health and human services secretary.

She’ll likely get there, but it will be far from an smooth ride from one high-powered government job to another.

You see, the U.S. Senate — which already has confirmed her to the OMB job — will have this other issue to continue litigating. It’s called the Affordable Care Act. Burwell is now the newest woman on the hot seat in that matter, given that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has resigned and is likely headed back to Kansas.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/sylvia-mathews-burwell-democrats-obamacare-affordable-care-act-105641.html?hp=l4

Sebelius came under intense fire for the handling of the ACA rollout and the collapse of the Healthcare.gov website when the enrollment opened up in January. It all happened on her watch at HHS and she deserved a lot of the pounding she received.

Now she’s on her way out, apparently with few expressions of regret from the White House at her departure.

Burwell is known to be a cool customer who will be able to handle Republican senators’ expected tough grilling during her confirmation hearing. She’ll need all the coolness she can muster, as GOP senators likely are going to beat the daylights out of her over how she intends to implement an established law that Republicans still hate with a passion.

So, as with everything political these days, what’s supposed to be an easy transition will resemble something quite different. Hold on tightly, Ms. Burwell.