TRUMP'S CABINET IS “LIVING LARGE” AT TAX PAYER'S EXPENSE

…Tom Price was forced to resign due to using chartered jets

 

Trump’s White House executives have had a turn-over rate of over 43% in 13½  months.

 

Shermichael Singleton, a former adviser to HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, stated the following: “If the government is going to be run efficiently, he [Trump] has got to clean up a lot of the messes that have gone on at these agencies and, to be honest, replace a lot of people.”

 

Unfortunately for Mr. Singleton, he had to resign after this criticism of Trump surfaced during the White House vetting process.

 

But regardless, the point should have been well taken.

 

Even though during a Cabinet Meeting last October, the president just had to brag about his cabinet when he said: “A great trust has been placed upon each member of our Cabinet,” he declared. “We have a Cabinet that — there are those that are saying it’s one of the finest group of people ever assembled . . . as a Cabinet. And I happen to agree with that.”

But as usual with Donald Trump, less than five months later, the president finds himself presiding over a Cabinet in which a number of members stand accused of living very large at US taxpayer expense.  By that I mean, they often demonstrate that “living large” comment by embracing highly expensive furnishings, First Class and chartered jet travel and other trappings of their government posts.

 

Here are some examples:

 

·       Revelations about repeated use of chartered jets forced the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price last year.

 

·       Veterans Affairs Secretary, David Shulkin, is dealing with the fact that taxpayers covered the expenses for his wife during a 10-day trip to Europe last year.  But more recently, his chief of staff doctored an email and made false statements to justify the payments.

 

·       EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt faces public criticism and government investigators for his frequent first-class travels and for other expenditures he made using public funding.  Pruitt also installed a soundproof phone booth in his office costing $43,000, which was $18,000 more than previously disclosed.

 

·       Interior Department, Secretary, Ryan Zinke faces inquiries about his travel practices.  Last fall an official in the agency’s inspector general office wrote that Zinke had failed to properly document his trips since taking office.  “I resent the fact of your insults. I resent the fact and they’re misleading,” Zinke told Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), who had asked him about a $12,375 flight Zinke chartered from Las Vegas to near his home in Montana.

·       At HUD, public records have detailed how Ben Carson’s wife was closely involved in the redecorating of his office at the agency, including the purchase of a $31,561 dining room set. (A dining set for the office costing over $31K…?) The Post reported that HUD lawyers also warned Carson that he risked running afoul of federal ethics rules by allowing his son and daughter-in-law to be paid for helping to organize a listening tour to Baltimore last summer.

 

These are just a few of the unforced errors that the White House needs to halt.

 

Barry Bennett, who served as Carson’s presidential campaign manager has stated: “The staff needs to get better and principals need to get smarter about asking questions like, ‘How much does this cost?’ ” he said. “All of these folks are all new to Washington power, and so are their staffs. At their power level, anything is possible.”

 

The problem with this, “finest Presidential Cabinet”, is that some Cabinet members had to be treated like Freshmen high-schoolers last month, when at least four Cabinet members including: Carson, Pruitt, Shulkin and Zinke, were required to meet separately with the White House Cabinet Secretary, William McGinley.  The meeting was to discuss proper ethics practices.  This was according to administration officials familiar with the sessions, but of course, who spoke about the meeting on the condition of anonymity.

 

The meeting, first reported by CNN, included handouts with ethics advice and a discussion about “how not to violate federal laws when traveling to campaign for political candidates”.  (Yes, they actually had to be tutored on these ethics basics.) The handout tips included, “You are the best guardian of your reputation. Your record-keeping practices must be designed with a purpose to prove innocence at the complaint phase or with the press,” and “Even if legal, does not mean you should do it — always consider the optics to the public.”  DUH!

 

Here is an example of the juvenile squabbles the current White House personnel have to deal with on a daily basis.

 

Two weeks ago, Chief of Staff John F. Kelly met with veterans service organizations to discuss the current turmoil going on at the VA. Several representatives told him that Secretary Shulkin was being undermined at the department by an insurrection of high-level White House appointees who disagree with many of his policies.  This was according to three people in attendance.  They had expected to get sympathy from Kelly.

 

But Kelly, the former Marine Major General, told the representatives that from his perspective, their observations made a good case that the secretary should be fired because the he had not been able to keep his troops in line. 

The fact is that a communications director for the RNC has stated that some of the conservatives he works with have “lowered expectations for Trump, given the latest spate of Cabinet scandals, because the president promised he would not do things the way they had been done in the past.”

 

Well, it’s true that the president isn’t doing things the way other presidents have done.  But lowering the bar for someone due to their lying and incompetence doesn’t seem to be the right way to deal with these basic problems.

 

Sheesh!

 

Copyright G.Ater  2018