Posted on 12/31/2016 10:45:22 AM PST by ducttape45
President-elect Donald Trump is stocking his administration with businessmen and regulatory reformers who are intent on cutting through what they see as red tape from Washington.
Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor, will oversee the Trump administration’s regulatory reform efforts. He will be joined by several other Wall Street investors and corporate executives who have first-hand experience dealing with government rules.
Here are six figures in the Trump administration poised to have an outsized role in scaling back regulations.
Regulatory adviser Carl Icahn
Trump created a new position in the White House for the billionaire investor to serve as a “special adviser on regulatory issues,” where he will seek to trim back rules that businesses consider unnecessary and burdensome.
"Under President Obama, America's business owners have been crippled by over $1 trillion in new regulations,” Icahn said in a statement issued by the Trump transition team. “It's time to break free of excessive regulation and let our entrepreneurs do what they do best: create jobs and support communities."
Icahn, 80, is the founder of Icahn Enterprises, and has become known over the years as an activist shareholder.
Trump, who has done deals with Icahn in the past, called him “one of the world’s great businessmen.”
“His help on the strangling regulations that our country is faced with will be invaluable,” Trump said in a statement.
Icahn, who holds a majority stake in CVR Energy and has also invested in several other oil and gas companies, has been a particularly vocal critic of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Obama administration.
Icahn has already advised the president-elect on several key appointments, including Steve Mnuchin to the Treasury Department, Wilbur Ross to the Commerce Department, and Scott Pruitt to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to The Wall Street Journal.
He is also expected to hold sway over Trump’s choice for a new chairman for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Commerce Secretary nominee Wilbur Ross
Ross once helped save Trump’s casino business.
The Wall Street banker built a career by investing in distressed companies and turning them around. In the 1990s, Ross and Icahn helped finance the president-elect’s Taj Mahal casino as bondholders. When the casino ran into trouble, the two men could have foreclosed, but instead negotiated with Trump to keep the business afloat.
“We could have foreclosed [on the Trump Taj Mahal], and he would have been gone,” Ross told The New York Post last month.
Trump on Nov. 30 tapped Ross to lead to the Commerce Department on Nov. 30. In that role, he will have a major role in shaping U.S. trade policy, including import and export regulations that companies must comply with.
Both Trump and Ross have taken a hard line against trade deals, saying many of them have hurt American jobs.
Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin
Mnuchin’s portfolio stretches from Wall Street to Hollywood. He spent the better half of two decades as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, before becoming a hedge fund manager. At the height of the financial crisis in 2009, Mnuchin purchased a failed mortgage lender that he renamed OneWest Bank.
During his time on Wall Street, Mnuchin butted heads with Trump on a business deal. Dune Capital Management, the hedge fund Mnuchin created after leaving Goldman Sachs, helped finance the construction of Trump hotels in Chicago and Honolulu. But Trump sued multiple lenders, including Mnuchin’s company, over a disagreement with the Chicago deal. The case was eventually settled. up.
The two men have since become close allies. Mnuchin served as Trump’s national finance chairman during the campaign, a critical role where he helped the businessman quickly construct a fundraising machine.
Trump nominated Mnuchin, who is also a member of the president-elect’s transition team, to serve as Treasury secretary on Nov. 30. In the role, Mnuchin will lead the charge against the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
“We want to strip back parts of Dodd-Frank that prevent banks from lending, and that will be the number one priority on the regulatory side,” Mnuchin told CNBC.
Trump and his appointees cannot completely roll back Dodd-Frank without action from Congress, but they will have significant power to change how it is enforced through regulations.
Mnuchin has been particularly critical of the Volcker rule, which prevents large banks from engaging in speculative trading.
Health secretary nominee Tom Price
Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), a doctor, will play a key role in the Republican push to scale back ObamaCare.
Republicans plan to pass an ObamaCare repeal bill early in 2017, jumpstarting the process.
As secretary of Health and Human Services, Price will have a chance to reshape the slew of new healthcare regulations that were issued under President Obama. With help from Congress, some of the rules could be eliminated entirely.
EPA administrator nominee Scott Pruitt
As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Scott Pruitt led the charge against the Obama administration’s climate agenda. Now, Pruitt will be tasked with changing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from the inside out.
Trump tapped Pruitt to lead the EPA on Dec. 7, putting him in a position to dismantle many of the EPA’s most controversial actions under Obama.
Some of the regulations that could be on the chopping block include the EPA’s rules for power plants, water, ozone, and fuel economy. But changing any of those rules are likely to set off a major court battle with environmentalists that could rage for years.
Labor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder
Trump’s Labor nominee is a long-time restaurant executive. As the head of CKE Restaurants, he runs popular fast-food chains like Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.
Puzder is opposed to raising the minimum wage, and has also criticized the Labor Department’s policies on overtime and paid sick leave under Obama.
The Labor Department is pushing to expand overtime pay to another 4 million workers. Currently, many employees who make more than $23,660 in a year are not eligible to be paid time and a half when they work more than 40 hours in a week.
But the Obama administration raised the threshold to $47,476 per year. The overtime rule is on hold due to a court challenge.
Republicans say the overtime rule could lead to reduced hours for low-wage workers and fewer opportunities to grow within the company, raising the likelihood that the Trump administration will decline to defend the rule in court, potentially killing it.
Puzder could also target the Labor Department’s joint employer policy, which makes it easier for companies to be held responsible for labor violations committed by franchises. That rule was vehemently opposed by the fast food industry.
“Andy will fight to make American workers safer and more prosperous by enforcing fair occupational safety standards and ensuring workers receive the benefits they deserve,” Trump said in a statement, “and he will save small businesses from the crushing burdens of unnecessary regulations that are stunting job growth and suppressing wages.”
I commented on the website as follows:
Gawd I hope so! Gone are the days when we can just pick up a phone and order something, such as IT equipment. It has now morphed into what I call an "impossibly complex" purchase process that requires no less than approval at at least 10 different levels! It's ridiculous!
The red tape is overwhelming!
Richard Nixon’s biggest failure wasn’t Watergate, but the myriad of alphabet agencies formed on his watch that are used to beat private industry into bloody submission to the state.
Just cut! Get rid of stuff! If it’s really important the need will be so great they can reinstate it later. Only one out of 100 is really needed!
I would have named him the “Regulatory Reducer Czar”.
No more requiring HR departments to supply the statistice on the racial and sexual make up of corporations.
Richard Nixon was no conservative. He was very much in the Bush mold.
I wish I could find a job outside of the government. I really do, but at 56 years of age, constantly being denied promotion due to cronyism and illegal hiring practices, always being kept from advancing, I’m not past the hiring age for most companies. I’m stuck and I don’t see a way out.
It was once a simple matter of making a request, getting local approval for it at one level, and it was purchased.
Now that same process is as follows:
1. Request is made in what is called the PWRR system. Within that system, it goes through no less than 5-6 different approval authorities within the local Communication squadron.
2. After that, the process has to go to MAJCOM for approval, Before that happens, it has to go through the Base Commander. Before that happens, it has to go through two lower level authorities, at least at my base it does. At larger bases it could be more. So add 3 more levels of approval because it goes from my Director of Operations, to the Operations Group Commander to the Wing/Base Commander.
3. Then when it goes to MAJCOM, it has to clear 3 more approval levels, the A6 office, his supervisor then his O-6 commander.
That's a total, so far, of up to 12 levels of approval.
Then it has to finally go to the local purchasing office and you can add 2 more levels of approval because it has to be requested for purchase by folks in the Communications Squadron and then go through Base Contracting for the actual purchase. Then they have to contact the vendor and make the purchase as contained in the most recent QEB contract. Make that 3 more levels, not 2.
So far I'm up to 15 levels of authority in making an IT purchase. Shall I go on?
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Note that Trump, Icahn, their rich friends, and all taxpayers for that matter, have probably paid much more federal taxes then the corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Congress can justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
Also consider that even if rich people and corporations have provided “incentives” (pronounced as bribes) to lawmakers to include loopholes for the rich in appropriations bills, that corrupt lawmakers still probably laugh all the way to the bank to deposit such incentives since they didn’t have the express constitutional authority to make many such bills in the first place.
Patriots need to support Trump and Icahn in putting a stop to unconstitutional federal taxes. Once such taxes are stopped then the states will probably find a tsunami of new revenues that they won’t know what to do with.
Patriots need to support Trump and Icahn in draining the unconstitutionally big federal government swamp.
(I personally think land mines would be more effective ... you wouldn't need as many ... sort of like concealed carry. Just dig a bunch of holes, put duds in most of em and a few real ones. You blow up 3 or 4 people then let the lib media go crazy and advertise the terrible danger and people will have real fear in stepping onto the USA. Wouldn't need a wall. Just a little sign "step here to blow yourself up.")
When I say stuff like that people look at me funny and think I’m mean.
Although land mines appeal to my “let God sort ‘em out” mentality, I have a better idea. Why don’t we just start enforcing the many laws we have on the books. Don’t give them anything if they are here illegally. Don’t let them work here illegally. When we catch them here put them in jail for a month until you have enough to fill up a bus and ship them back! The word will get out and they will deport themselves. We do not need more laws!! Enforce the ones we have now!!!!!!!!!!! Can you hear me now?
No, first a year of 10 hour days at hard labor, building the wall. Jobs that can't be sabotaged, like moving a cubic mile of sand in wheelbarrows. No pay.
Second offense, 2 years, third 6. Then they are sent back.
Jail is like a 4 star hotel with “free” medical, meals, education and recreation/entertainment.
I like the land mine idea.
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