Posted on 03/20/2017 12:44:19 PM PDT by Red Steel
During his Cabinet meeting Monday, President Donald Trump opened by saying, “We have four empty seats, which is a terrible thing.”
Trump said it’s “because the Senate Democrats are continuing to obstruct the confirmation of our nominees,” the administration is lacking secretaries of labor and agriculture, a director of national intelligence, and a U.S. trade representative.
“The main victim of this very partisan obstruction is the American public,” Trump said.
However, it’s the absence of more than 500 deputy secretaries and assistant secretaries, ambassadors, and commissioners that could put the implementation of Trump’s agenda at risk, some conservatives fear.
“Senate Democrats are continuing to obstruct the confirmation of our nominees,” @POTUS says.
“Assistant Cabinet secretaries and such are as important as the Cabinet, period, because they pretty much run the government,” Don Devine, the former director of the Office of Personnel Management under President Ronald Reagan, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “The Cabinet secretaries are the face of the agencies that talk to reporters and speak to the public.”
Senate Democrats are obstructing confirmations, Devine said, but Trump could move on nominations and the Senate Republican leadership could aggressively push more through.
“Clearly, the Senate leadership is trying to preserve the role of a consensus body, unlike the House,” Devine said. “Trump should just give the Senate too much, and they would have to vote for a slew of nominees. It’s a lost cause to try to continue the Senate as a consensus body.”
The Senate has confirmed 19 of Trump’s nominees, mostly Cabinet secretaries.
Trump has nominated 23 other sub-Cabinet positions and other political appointees that are still awaiting a confirmation vote, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan research group. Still, the president hasn’t submitted nominees for 511 of the 553 political
(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...
Trump, rack'm and stack'm your recess appointments. Just ensure they are loyal and are the hardest hard asses that you can find. Have scores of them ready to go. Submit them later on for Senate confirmation at your leisure the ones that you want to keep.
Oh yeah, and fire FBI Comey and McCabe the other Obama appointee.
Yep. Recess appointments. Immediately fire all those who are leftovers. Maybe that would put the government into a non functioning mode.
Would any of these Concerned Conservatives be some of the ones who did everything they could to try to block Trump’s nomination?
And check into who gave Trump the name of Flynn.
Easter Recess!
Maybe that reflects how important he thinks those position are.
Oh heck no...
/s
...the same
I don’t have any objection to recess appointments as a short-term expedient, but if done, it should be done correctly. Send up the regular nominations. There is no justification for a recess appointment if you don’t have a regular nominee in limbo. The impression is building that Trump’s personnel operation simply isn’t up to the mark.
Not to have even got 90% of his political soldiers into the senate approval process 4 and 1/2 months after winning the election (when they had a transition team of course working before that, too) is absolutely horrid.
Did Priebus and Pence (the head of the transition team) horribly mislead him on this? Is he too set in his ways to understand not only the scale but the politically charged environment that he’s trying to direct?
What the heck is going on?
ANd please don’t tell me that he’s just saving money for the taxpayers—getting his own team in there to tame the massive bureaucracy would save far more money than letting the Dems continue to run things by default.
Yes many are redundant that he won’t fill. However at this point, Trump should be thinking about some loyal guys downstream to watch, investigate, and remove the liberals in the bureaucracy who are working against him.
I wouldn’t argue with that.
I wonder if the Obama appointees are still on the job in these positions.
At least some of them, and I suspect, a lot of them are. An example is that John Koskinen is still serving as the Commissioner of the IRS. He is reviled by conservatives and led, along with some of his staff, the targeting of conservative organizations. Yet, Trump has not fired him.
>> check into who gave Trump the name of Flynn <<
Judge Nap? General McInerney? Paul Manafort? Roger Stone? Ambassador Kislyak?
Not good. He should have gone before now.
This is a huge failing on Trump's part, if true. If Democrats are seen s holding up FIVE HUNDRED appointments, that would help get it all done much sooner. Holding up just 4 is not going to trouble voters. 500 would be a different story. Trump needs to make picks, and soon.
Trump has said he doesn’t want all these positions filled
Even when republicans have majorities they let the Democrats dictate to them.
The same thing happened back in the Bush 43 administration when they had the House majority and, for a short while, a Senate majority.
Basically Harry Reid still controlled what happened in the senate back then.
Patience kiddies. Remember the story about the old bull and the young bull.
Right—and that is clearly a problem. If the departments aren’t being run by guys on his team, they are being run by guys on the other team.
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