Trump Says Hes Deliberately Refusing to Fill Hundreds of Top Agency Jobs

[babylonsister]

This is about a week old, but explains some twisted reasoning.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/02/trump-says-hes-deliberately-not-filing-top-positions.html?mid=facebook_nymag

Trump Says He’s Deliberately Refusing to Fill Hundreds of Top Agency Jobs
By Ed Kilgore


Far from just being behind in its paperwork, Trump says, his administration wants to pass up the chance to appoint the people who largely run federal agencies. Photo: Fox News

In another illustration of what President Trump thinks of as a “fine-tuned machine,” he defended his failure to move faster on filling the hundreds of top-level administration jobs that require Senate confirmation by suggesting he plans to keep them unfilled for the duration. Here’s what he said to Fox News this morning:

“A lot of those jobs, I don’t want to appoint someone because they’re unnecessary to have,” Trump said. “In government, we have too many people.”

Keep in mind the jobs we are talking about here include the top sub-Cabinet positions that set policies and provide the day-to-day operations for vast government departments. Just yesterday, the conservative Washington Examiner explained that these are precisely the positions someone like Trump needs to fill if he is serious about “draining the swamp” in Washington:

Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, said the quality of political appointees below the Cabinet level can have a dramatic effect on how administration policies are ultimately executed.

“Do they affect the operation of government? The short answer is very much,” Reeher said. “These are the folks who actually attempt to implement the policy changes that the administration is trying to push down from above.”

Reeher said the relationships between politically appointed officials in top positions and the career bureaucrats who make up the rest of the federal government are “critical” for ensuring policies get put in place smoothly.

So using these top positions to achieve reductions in the size of the bureaucracy, as Trump seems to suggest is his rationale, is a pretty classic unforced error. It’s like trying to reduce overcrowding in schools by firing most of the teachers.

One might be tempted to think the president misspoke out of a desire to avoid admitting his team hasn’t gotten its act together just yet. Earlier he tried to blame the slow pace of appointments on Senate Democrats obstructing confirmations, before it was pointed out how few nominations had been made in the first place.

But Trump seems serious about this claim that he wants empty offices all across the top tier of his administration. So we can only hope his Cabinet secretaries don’t mind working nights and weekends, to make up for the lack of help — or significantly scaling back their plans.

[dalton99a]

1. It's Trump's neutron bomb - maximize damage to people but minimize damage to buildings

[MineralMan]

2. Well put!

[WhiteTara]

24. After all, he might be able to sell those buildings

and skim some money off the top.

[uponit7771]

3. The msm will of course hold his feet to the fire on this when shitt the fan

[MineralMan]

4. Well, that would explain it, I guess.

He has appointed almost nobody to the positions that actually run most Executive Branch agencies and departments. He has barely appointed the top-level people.

As your quoted material says, without those second and third level appointees, those agencies and departments simply cannot get anything done. If that is Trump's goal, then he is succeeding.

[2naSalit]

18. He has power over

the militaries/police to enforce his policies... compliance is mandatory.

[MineralMan]

20. The military, yes. The police, not so much.

He is Commander-in-Chief of the military. He's commander of nothing when it comes to the police, federal or otherwise.

[2naSalit]

22. I just threw that in

for the sake of trying to cover the entire spectrum in a phrase. I do suspect that Betsy's brother's guys will be infiltrating our policing agencies (I'm thinking ICE and the FBI here) along with any other "enforcement" agency they can foul with their presence and heinous actions.

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. When lobbyists are eager to write government regulations

and when his billionaire friends can afford to hire as many people as they want to write up position papers on any matter of concern to them, and when our oligarchy owns subsidiaries all over the globe who can conduct their own negotiations with foreign powers on behalf of Donald Trump's administration - who needs government officials?

OK, maybe the American people, but not the President.

[Freethinker65]

6. Deconstruction of the administrative state

[annabanana]

10. Bannon's avowed purpose. . . .n/t

[mercuryblues]

7. this is what

running the country like a business looks like to trump. Less top management, less salaries to pay, more money for him. In his businesses that lead to his many bankruptcies.
Only when running a country it has the opposite effect. Less management equals more corruption, less national security and less scrutiny on legislation passed. This leads to anarchy.

[Lotusflower70]

8. Yeah right

It's because he is struggling to get people that fit his criteria for the positions and because he has such a low level of trust. Also he does not have a truly comprehensive grasp of how government works.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

12. There are probably a lot of people

whom don't want to work for him as well.

[Lotusflower70]

13. Agreed

I have no doubt about that. It is a huge gamble to tie your career and reputation to that man. It has been obvious in those that turned him down as well. They tried to do it gently. I can't even imagine what that would be like to dream of working in government and then realize that would involve 45.

[underpants]

9. But he has THREE spokespeople

Spicer
Kellyanne
and Huckabee's daughter

[Proud Liberal Dem]

11. Just waiting for the MSM to normalize this

and tell us that this sort of thing happens in all Administrations.

[MedusaX]

14. Goal: Zero Oversight

And zero non-complicit witnesses

By removing the "processors" you simultaneously deconstruct the established rules of the process ...

At which point, you say that it is necessary to do things the (allegedly more effective & efficient) Trump way.

Pretty soon Bannon & Kushner handle everything and slowly the functionality of each of the (traditional) related bureaucratic processes ceases.

Which will then become the justification for the elimination of those related processes ...
which then creates the opportunity to put the preferred Trump - way in place ... again & again

By starting with the cabinet departments, the entire bureaucratic structure will slowly and sequentially starve itself to the point at which the surviving skeletal remains will be completely comprised of the artificial Trump-Way Replacement processes that were put in place along the way.

[bettyellen]

23. Yes -plus they are making all decisions based on "deals" with partners who will be writing the...

Policies and suggesting implementation themselves. They don't want people there telling them it's illegal or immoral and they don't want anyone who will talk to congress or the press. Scary. No oversight at all.

[mackdaddy]

15. No source, but supposedly over 600 appointed exec branch positions are unfilled

Just a discussion on a talk show be supposedly less than 40 appointments have been made of this total.

They were saying that usually the executive office building parking lot is packed, but it looks like a closed k-mart lot with only a couple of cars. Only a very few Obama administration hold over people rattling around in a mostly empty building.

Of course Trump still bitching about how slow the senate has been is confirming this hand-full of appointments he has made.

This nymag story seems to confirm this discussion.

[babylonsister]

17. Here's cnn link; 2000 jobs unfilled!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/25/politics/donald-trump-cabinet-vacancies/
Trump still has to fill nearly 2,000 vacancies

[dawnie51]

16. no one wants to work for him.....

and also, he doesn't really want a lot of people around. Too many people, too many eyes, chances for things to become known that he doesn't want known. This guy has ruled with non disclosure for his whole life; now he is exposed and he hates it.

[HipChick]

19. Ding! Ding! Ding!

[Dem2]

21. I came here to type this