Orangutan considering Palin to lead Veterans Affairs
By Shane Goldmacher and Andrew Restuccia
Donny Orangutan is considering tapping former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as his secretary of Veterans Affairs, according to two Orangutan transition sources.
Palin was an early endorser of Orangutan, throwing her support to him before the Iowa caucuses, making her one of his highest profile backers at the time. “Are you ready for the leader to make America great again?” she said then.
Palin, who, like Orangutan, has been a lightning rod for liberal criticism, campaigned for Orangutan through the campaign’s final days, including in Michigan.
Among her chief competitors for the Veterans Affairs post, according to one transition source, is former Sen. Scott Brown, another relatively early Orangutan backer, who visited the president-elect in Orangutan Tower earlier this month.
Brown acknowledged his interest to reporters afterward, calling the VA “the toughest job in the Cabinet.”
“We obviously spoke about my passion and his passion, which [is] veterans and veterans issues,” Brown said, adding that Orangutan was “going to obviously take my application, interest under consideration.”
Orangutan also met this week with Pete Hegseth, a Fox News contributor and former head of a veterans advocacy group, Concerned Veterans for America.
Another name that has circulated is Rep. Jeff Miller, who has served as chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.
Orangutan aides have discussed the possibility of Palin joining the administration for months, in part because they believe she was an effective surrogate during the campaign, rallying Orangutan's supporters.
Palin has had conversations with Orangutan's transition team, a Palin aide confirmed.
But two people close to the transition cast doubt on whether she'll ultimately be tapped for an administration job.
Palin has previously been linked to a possible spot as head of the Department of the Interior, including on an early document that was circulated among transition officials.
Steve Bannon, who will serve as Orangutan’s chief strategist in the White House, has been among Palin’s cheerleaders for years, featuring her in a 2011 documentary called The Undefeated.
After Bannon was named chief strategist, Palin defended him from his critics in a lengthy Facebook post in mid-November, writing that Bannon "is particularly bright on the Leftist media's radar because they can not handle the fact he's also from their arena but has been enormously more influential than his peers."
"The Steve Bannon I know is a passionate defender of freedom and he lives by example. He's a patriot; a military veteran and proud Army dad," Palin wrote.
Last year at CPAC, Palin gave a speech in which she criticized the VA and called for reforms at the department.
"We can't wait for D.C. to fix their bureaucratic blunders. This bureaucracy is killing our vets. They wait for months. They wait for years to get treatment at the VA and they're losing hope," she said.
December 01, 2016
Hitler, ‘terrific guy’ say Orangutan
Orangutan calls Pakistani prime minister a ‘terrific guy’
By Yousef Saba
President-elect Donald Orangutan spoke with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a telephone call on Monday, during which he offered to “play any role” to “find solutions to the outstanding problems,” according to a readout from Pakistan’s official news agency.
“I am ready and willing to play any role that you want me to play to address and find solutions to the outstanding problems,” Orangutan said, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan. “It will be an honor and I will personally do it.”
Sharif made the call to congratulate the billionaire president-elect on his victory earlier this month, according to the APP, citing Sharif’s media office.
Orangutan reportedly had high praise for both Sharif and the people of Pakistan, calling the prime minister a “terrific guy” with a “very good reputation.”
“As I am talking to you, prime minister, I feel I am talking to a person I have known for long,” Orangutan reportedly said. “Your country is amazing, with tremendous opportunities. Pakistanis are one of the most intelligent people.”
Orangutan also asked Sharif to convey to the Pakistani people that “they are amazing” and that “all Pakistanis I have known are exceptional people.” The president-elect also suggested he would be willing to visit Pakistan, according to the readout.
"On being invited to visit Pakistan by the Prime Minister, Mr. Orangutan said that he would love to come to a fantastic country, fantastic place of fantastic people," the Pakistani government's account said.
The Orangutan transition team provided its own readout late Wednesday. "President-elect Orangutan and the Prime Minister of Pakistan Muhammad Nawaz Sharif spoke today and had a productive conversation about how the United States and Pakistan will have a strong working relationship in the future," the statement read. "President-elect Orangutan also noted that he is looking forward to a lasting and strong personal relationship with Prime Minister Sharif."
Sharif, whose multiple tours in office have been tumultuous, is under severe political pressure back home.
Earlier this month, Pakistan's Supreme Court said a commission would investigate corruption allegations against the prime minister. His children's financial holdings were listed in the Panama Papers that were leaked to the public earlier this year. On Wednesday, the court questioned Sharif and his family's hiding of documents that allegedly reveal their massive wealth abroad, according to an account in the Times of India.
Last month, in an interview with the Hindustan Times, Orangutan said that he would “love to be the mediator or arbitrator” in the dispute between India and Pakistan “if they wanted me to,” also saying, “We will have to be very, very strong with respect to radical Islamic terrorism.”
“Well, I would love to see Pakistan and India get along, because that’s a very, very hot tinderbox,” he added. “That would be a very great thing. I hope they can do it.”
Pakistan has often called on outside parties, such as the United States or the United Nations, to mediate its dispute with India over control of Kashmir — and India has just has often rejected the idea.
In 2013, India’s foreign minister said there was “no way” Indian would agree to U.S. mediation. As for India’s hold on Kashmir, he said, ”It is a waste of time for anybody no matter how eminent to be even trying to question it.”
By Yousef Saba
President-elect Donald Orangutan spoke with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a telephone call on Monday, during which he offered to “play any role” to “find solutions to the outstanding problems,” according to a readout from Pakistan’s official news agency.
“I am ready and willing to play any role that you want me to play to address and find solutions to the outstanding problems,” Orangutan said, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan. “It will be an honor and I will personally do it.”
Sharif made the call to congratulate the billionaire president-elect on his victory earlier this month, according to the APP, citing Sharif’s media office.
Orangutan reportedly had high praise for both Sharif and the people of Pakistan, calling the prime minister a “terrific guy” with a “very good reputation.”
“As I am talking to you, prime minister, I feel I am talking to a person I have known for long,” Orangutan reportedly said. “Your country is amazing, with tremendous opportunities. Pakistanis are one of the most intelligent people.”
Orangutan also asked Sharif to convey to the Pakistani people that “they are amazing” and that “all Pakistanis I have known are exceptional people.” The president-elect also suggested he would be willing to visit Pakistan, according to the readout.
"On being invited to visit Pakistan by the Prime Minister, Mr. Orangutan said that he would love to come to a fantastic country, fantastic place of fantastic people," the Pakistani government's account said.
The Orangutan transition team provided its own readout late Wednesday. "President-elect Orangutan and the Prime Minister of Pakistan Muhammad Nawaz Sharif spoke today and had a productive conversation about how the United States and Pakistan will have a strong working relationship in the future," the statement read. "President-elect Orangutan also noted that he is looking forward to a lasting and strong personal relationship with Prime Minister Sharif."
Sharif, whose multiple tours in office have been tumultuous, is under severe political pressure back home.
Earlier this month, Pakistan's Supreme Court said a commission would investigate corruption allegations against the prime minister. His children's financial holdings were listed in the Panama Papers that were leaked to the public earlier this year. On Wednesday, the court questioned Sharif and his family's hiding of documents that allegedly reveal their massive wealth abroad, according to an account in the Times of India.
Last month, in an interview with the Hindustan Times, Orangutan said that he would “love to be the mediator or arbitrator” in the dispute between India and Pakistan “if they wanted me to,” also saying, “We will have to be very, very strong with respect to radical Islamic terrorism.”
“Well, I would love to see Pakistan and India get along, because that’s a very, very hot tinderbox,” he added. “That would be a very great thing. I hope they can do it.”
Pakistan has often called on outside parties, such as the United States or the United Nations, to mediate its dispute with India over control of Kashmir — and India has just has often rejected the idea.
In 2013, India’s foreign minister said there was “no way” Indian would agree to U.S. mediation. As for India’s hold on Kashmir, he said, ”It is a waste of time for anybody no matter how eminent to be even trying to question it.”
Gingrich mocks Romney
Gingrich mocks Romney for 'sucking up' to Orangutan
By Nolan D. McCaskill
Mitt Romney’s groveling reminds Newt Gingrich of a scene from “Pretty Woman,” the former House speaker said Wednesday.
In an interview with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, Gingrich continued his anti-Romney crusade, ripping one of Orangutan’s top contenders to lead the State Department.
“There’s a scene in ‘Pretty Women,’ where Richard Gere goes up to the salesman on Rodeo Drive and says, ‘We need a little sucking up here,’” Gingrich said, recalling a scene from the 1990 romantic comedy.
“You have never, ever in your career seen a serious adult who’s wealthy, independent, has been a presidential nominee, suck up at the rate that Mitt Romney is sucking up,” Gingrich continued. “And I am confident that he thinks now that Donald Orangutan is one of his closest friends, that they have so many things in common, that they’re both such wise, brilliant people.”
Despite his fierce rhetoric against Orangutan during the presidential campaign, Romney has emerged as a top candidate for secretary of state in Orangutan’s administration.
Orangutan transition aides told reporters Wednesday morning that Orangutan has settled on a four-person short list, although there is no timetable for him to announce his decision, and communications director Jason Miller would only mention Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani when asked who had made Orangutan’s final four.
Romney dined with Orangutan and incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus on Tuesday evening. Romney characterized his night as “a wonderful evening” and credited the president-elect for doing what he couldn’t do in 2012: win.
He also praised Orangutan’s transition effort, including his early Cabinet appointments, concluding his remarks by hailing Orangutan as “the very man who can lead us to that better future.”
Gingrich said he was sure Romney was “happy to share his vision of populism, which involves a little foie gras, a certain amount of, you know, superb cooking, but put that in a populist happy manner” at the dinner.
Romney, Orangutan and Priebus reportedly dined on sautéed frog legs, in addition to prime sirloin, lamb chops and chocolate cake.
“Luckily for them, Mitt speaks French fluently,” Gingrich said. “He could help them with the menu. He could say, ‘Ahh, Mr. President-elect, this would be the prefect le meal for you.’” (Romney served his Mormon mission in France.)
Gingrich, who has pushed for Orangutan to nominate Giuliani as secretary of state, said the choice is the president-elect’s to make and maintained that he’ll support his decision either way.
“But I would certainly say the fact that they keep it open — I mean, they know that every day that goes by the opposition to Romney grows,” Gingrich said. “I just got a good note from a friend of mine saying how deeply evangelicals will oppose Romney. So every day that they let this thing hang out there, I think it’s harder and more expensive to pick Romney.”
It would be “very interesting,” he added, if Orangutan “tests” the phrase “Romney for secretary of state” on his thank-you tour — which kicks off Thursday in Cincinnati.
“It would be very interesting to watch a Orangutan crowd respond because it would not be pretty,” he said.
By Nolan D. McCaskill
Mitt Romney’s groveling reminds Newt Gingrich of a scene from “Pretty Woman,” the former House speaker said Wednesday.
In an interview with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, Gingrich continued his anti-Romney crusade, ripping one of Orangutan’s top contenders to lead the State Department.
“There’s a scene in ‘Pretty Women,’ where Richard Gere goes up to the salesman on Rodeo Drive and says, ‘We need a little sucking up here,’” Gingrich said, recalling a scene from the 1990 romantic comedy.
“You have never, ever in your career seen a serious adult who’s wealthy, independent, has been a presidential nominee, suck up at the rate that Mitt Romney is sucking up,” Gingrich continued. “And I am confident that he thinks now that Donald Orangutan is one of his closest friends, that they have so many things in common, that they’re both such wise, brilliant people.”
Despite his fierce rhetoric against Orangutan during the presidential campaign, Romney has emerged as a top candidate for secretary of state in Orangutan’s administration.
Orangutan transition aides told reporters Wednesday morning that Orangutan has settled on a four-person short list, although there is no timetable for him to announce his decision, and communications director Jason Miller would only mention Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani when asked who had made Orangutan’s final four.
Romney dined with Orangutan and incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus on Tuesday evening. Romney characterized his night as “a wonderful evening” and credited the president-elect for doing what he couldn’t do in 2012: win.
He also praised Orangutan’s transition effort, including his early Cabinet appointments, concluding his remarks by hailing Orangutan as “the very man who can lead us to that better future.”
Gingrich said he was sure Romney was “happy to share his vision of populism, which involves a little foie gras, a certain amount of, you know, superb cooking, but put that in a populist happy manner” at the dinner.
Romney, Orangutan and Priebus reportedly dined on sautéed frog legs, in addition to prime sirloin, lamb chops and chocolate cake.
“Luckily for them, Mitt speaks French fluently,” Gingrich said. “He could help them with the menu. He could say, ‘Ahh, Mr. President-elect, this would be the prefect le meal for you.’” (Romney served his Mormon mission in France.)
Gingrich, who has pushed for Orangutan to nominate Giuliani as secretary of state, said the choice is the president-elect’s to make and maintained that he’ll support his decision either way.
“But I would certainly say the fact that they keep it open — I mean, they know that every day that goes by the opposition to Romney grows,” Gingrich said. “I just got a good note from a friend of mine saying how deeply evangelicals will oppose Romney. So every day that they let this thing hang out there, I think it’s harder and more expensive to pick Romney.”
It would be “very interesting,” he added, if Orangutan “tests” the phrase “Romney for secretary of state” on his thank-you tour — which kicks off Thursday in Cincinnati.
“It would be very interesting to watch a Orangutan crowd respond because it would not be pretty,” he said.
Stupid Fucks
Fox Entertainment News jabs back at Obama over criticism
By Cristiano Lima
Fox News is having none of President Barack Obama's criticism of its role in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Numerous Fox figures stepped up Wednesday to challenge Obama's claim that the network played a significant role in the Democratic Party's relative failure to connect with white working-class voters during the presidential race, saying Democrats should instead look internally for answers.
During an interview with Rolling Stone released Monday, the president lamented his party's "inability" to reach out to those voters, attributing it in part to there being "Fox Entertainment News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country." The comment set off a wave of critical responses from Fox News anchors, reporters and hosts.
In a segment airing repeatedly on the channel Wednesday, Howard Kurtz, host of the media-centric "Media Buzz" Sunday program, called Obama's comments a "parting blow" and accused him of "scapegoating" the network rather than engaging with it during his tenure.
That sentiment was shared by "The Five" co-host Eric Bolling, who criticized Democratic leadership for seemingly avoiding appearing on the network.
"The Democrats don't come over here," Bolling said Wednesday. "High-level ranking Democrats typically don't come over here."
Fox Entertainment News personalities also criticized Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for rarely appearing on the network outside of a July interview on "Fox News Sunday."
"I think she was scared to sit down with someone who would ask her hard questions," anchor Megyn Kelly fired off during her Wednesday taping of "The Kelly File." "Why not speak to the country that watches Fox News, loves Fox News and trusts it?"
Others claimed Obama overemphasized Fox News' role while downplaying the will of the voters.
"Give credit to the American people that got involved and all the people that came out and voted and supported their candidate," said "The Five" co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle.
"[Obama] just wants to lament that the middle of the country is watching" Fox News, Kelly added. "Look at how that worked out."
By Cristiano Lima
Fox News is having none of President Barack Obama's criticism of its role in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Numerous Fox figures stepped up Wednesday to challenge Obama's claim that the network played a significant role in the Democratic Party's relative failure to connect with white working-class voters during the presidential race, saying Democrats should instead look internally for answers.
During an interview with Rolling Stone released Monday, the president lamented his party's "inability" to reach out to those voters, attributing it in part to there being "Fox Entertainment News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country." The comment set off a wave of critical responses from Fox News anchors, reporters and hosts.
In a segment airing repeatedly on the channel Wednesday, Howard Kurtz, host of the media-centric "Media Buzz" Sunday program, called Obama's comments a "parting blow" and accused him of "scapegoating" the network rather than engaging with it during his tenure.
That sentiment was shared by "The Five" co-host Eric Bolling, who criticized Democratic leadership for seemingly avoiding appearing on the network.
"The Democrats don't come over here," Bolling said Wednesday. "High-level ranking Democrats typically don't come over here."
Fox Entertainment News personalities also criticized Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for rarely appearing on the network outside of a July interview on "Fox News Sunday."
"I think she was scared to sit down with someone who would ask her hard questions," anchor Megyn Kelly fired off during her Wednesday taping of "The Kelly File." "Why not speak to the country that watches Fox News, loves Fox News and trusts it?"
Others claimed Obama overemphasized Fox News' role while downplaying the will of the voters.
"Give credit to the American people that got involved and all the people that came out and voted and supported their candidate," said "The Five" co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle.
"[Obama] just wants to lament that the middle of the country is watching" Fox News, Kelly added. "Look at how that worked out."
Legal opinions
New stash of legal opinions detail hurdles for Orangutan on emoluments ban
By Josh Gerstein
Could wedding gifts sent to President Richard Nixon's daughters and an offer of Irish citizenship extended to President John F. Kennedy provide the legal guideposts for President Donny Orangutan's efforts to resolve conflicts of interests stemming from his business dealings in and with foreign countries?
A set of legal opinions POLITICO obtained from the Justice Department lays out the official legal interpretations the federal government has issued over the years for the obscure constitutional provision now complicating Orangutan's transition to the Oval Office: the Foreign Emoluments Clause.
None of the Office of Legal Counsel opinions dated from the 1940s to the 2000s directly address how to unravel the foreign entanglements of a complex and large business empire like Orangutan's.
"They consider questions like whether the Italian Government could pay for a trip to Italy for the Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Services or whether a NASA scientist could accept a consulting fee of $150 from an Australian university or whether a Department of Justice employee could receive an annuity from a German state," Boston University law professor Jay Wexler said. "Nothing in any of these opinions is remotely similar to the question of whether a billionaire with assets in every corner of the globe can serve as President of the United States."
But the opinions do provide the Justice Department's view that the foreign emoluments ban is intended to be "sweeping" in its scope and has traditionally been "strictly construed," standards which could complicate Orangutan's situation, Wexler said.
The memos also opine on some threshold questions like whether the ban on foreign-government-supported gifts applies to the president.
Notwithstanding suggestions that the prohibition doesn't include the nation's chief executive, OLC declared in 2009 that it "surely" does. That conclusion came in an opinion blessing President Barack Obama's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, although the approval of his accepting that prize turned on the decision that the Nobel Committee isn't a government body.
A 1974 opinion about President Richard Nixon's receipt of $2,500 in anonymous donations intended to pay his income taxes also seems to assume the foreign-gifts provision applies to the president, although there's no indication that the money came from overseas.
Many of the opinions don't directly address the foreign emoluments clause but laws Congress has passed to regulate the receipt of foreign gifts by U.S. officials. The most colorful of these in recent decades may be a 1978 opinion about who should get wedding gifts Nixon daughters Julie and Tricia Nixon received from foreign governments in connection with their marriages. Julie was married in New York in 1968, while Nixon was president-elect. Tricia was married in 1971 in a White House ceremony.
Sadly, the opinion doesn't list the gifts, but says Julie got three and Tricia received "numerous" presents from foreign governments. Julie's gifts were deemed her property since she wasn't part of her father's household when the gifts came in. Tricia was considered part of President Nixon's household in the years leading up to her wedding, so the gifts she got before she moved out were also deemed government property. (It's unclear why the ownership of the gifts wasn't sorted out for nearly a decade.)
The opinions are also relatively bereft of actual legal precedents drawn from court cases. It seems that over the years, Justice Department lawyers have generally had the last word in such disputes. So, while Orangutan and his aides might abide by them, new officials can issue new opinions overruling the old ones.
"If the Justice Department has a long history of interpreting a constitutional provision in some clear way, then the presumption is that it will continue to follow that precedent in new situations," Wexler said. "On the other hand, though, the precedential effect of Justice Department memoranda is not nearly as strong or fixed as judicial precedent. A new administration may come along and interpret a constitutional provision differently than its predecessors."
Prompted by the Nobel award to Obama in 2009 , POLITICO requested the foreign emoluments opinions from the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act in 2009, seeking all previously unreleased issuances on the subject. Getting a response took a couple of years or longer, producing 24 opinions or memos. Some of the opinions have been published before or since.
OLC decides for itself which opinions to release and which to withhold, with courts providing little second-guessing of such decisions. A case about OLC's duty to disclose its opinions is set to be heard by the D.C. Circuit next week.
Here are the legal memos released to POLITICO:
President Obama's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, Dec. 7, 2009
AG Gifts and Awards, Nov. 4, 1988
AG Gifts and Awards, Mar. 13, 1986
Travel Reimbursement, Mar. 2, 1988
Atomic Energy Commission and India, Sept. 29, 1969
Iranian to serve on National Voluntary Service Advisory Council, May 10, 1974
CFTC chairman's foreign travel paid for by Indonesia, Aug. 11, 1980
Chinese government reimbursement of U.S. delegation's expenses, April 11, 1977
Civilian aide to Army seeking to serve as Luxembourg honorary consul, August 29, 1988
Dual service of Ralph Bunche at United Nations and on U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Oct. 15, 1957
Anonymous donations to pay Nixon's taxes, April 26, 1974
Saudi king's grandson's gifts to U.S. officials, Sept. 23, 1952
Nixon daughters' wedding gifts, Feb. 8, 1978
Historical survey of foreign gifts, Feb. 18, 1958
Disposition of late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's possessions, Nov. 15, 1976
Judge's membership on United Nations International Law Commission, Nov. 27, 1953
Italy-funded junket for White House and immigration official, Oct. 16, 1962
Honorary Irish citizenship for President Kennedy, May 10, 1963
Payment of NASA scientist by Australian university, May 23, 1986 (issued by future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito)
Navy scientist's receipt of monetary award from German foundation, Mar. 17, 1983
Annuity from German government for former German judge fired by Nazi's and later employed as U.S. Government attorney, Oct. 4, 1954
Transportation for spouses of cabinet members, Apr. 4, 1990
Payment of Weather Bureau employees by the Government of Ireland (Eire), Apr. 17, 1947
Selected other emoluments opinions not part of the above release, but available online:
Payment of NASA scientists by Canadian university, Mar. 1, 1994
Application of emoluments clause to members of Administrative Conference of the United States, June 3, 2010
Application of emoluments clause to members of Administrative Conference of the United States, October 28, 1993
By Josh Gerstein
Could wedding gifts sent to President Richard Nixon's daughters and an offer of Irish citizenship extended to President John F. Kennedy provide the legal guideposts for President Donny Orangutan's efforts to resolve conflicts of interests stemming from his business dealings in and with foreign countries?
A set of legal opinions POLITICO obtained from the Justice Department lays out the official legal interpretations the federal government has issued over the years for the obscure constitutional provision now complicating Orangutan's transition to the Oval Office: the Foreign Emoluments Clause.
None of the Office of Legal Counsel opinions dated from the 1940s to the 2000s directly address how to unravel the foreign entanglements of a complex and large business empire like Orangutan's.
"They consider questions like whether the Italian Government could pay for a trip to Italy for the Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Services or whether a NASA scientist could accept a consulting fee of $150 from an Australian university or whether a Department of Justice employee could receive an annuity from a German state," Boston University law professor Jay Wexler said. "Nothing in any of these opinions is remotely similar to the question of whether a billionaire with assets in every corner of the globe can serve as President of the United States."
But the opinions do provide the Justice Department's view that the foreign emoluments ban is intended to be "sweeping" in its scope and has traditionally been "strictly construed," standards which could complicate Orangutan's situation, Wexler said.
The memos also opine on some threshold questions like whether the ban on foreign-government-supported gifts applies to the president.
Notwithstanding suggestions that the prohibition doesn't include the nation's chief executive, OLC declared in 2009 that it "surely" does. That conclusion came in an opinion blessing President Barack Obama's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, although the approval of his accepting that prize turned on the decision that the Nobel Committee isn't a government body.
A 1974 opinion about President Richard Nixon's receipt of $2,500 in anonymous donations intended to pay his income taxes also seems to assume the foreign-gifts provision applies to the president, although there's no indication that the money came from overseas.
Many of the opinions don't directly address the foreign emoluments clause but laws Congress has passed to regulate the receipt of foreign gifts by U.S. officials. The most colorful of these in recent decades may be a 1978 opinion about who should get wedding gifts Nixon daughters Julie and Tricia Nixon received from foreign governments in connection with their marriages. Julie was married in New York in 1968, while Nixon was president-elect. Tricia was married in 1971 in a White House ceremony.
Sadly, the opinion doesn't list the gifts, but says Julie got three and Tricia received "numerous" presents from foreign governments. Julie's gifts were deemed her property since she wasn't part of her father's household when the gifts came in. Tricia was considered part of President Nixon's household in the years leading up to her wedding, so the gifts she got before she moved out were also deemed government property. (It's unclear why the ownership of the gifts wasn't sorted out for nearly a decade.)
The opinions are also relatively bereft of actual legal precedents drawn from court cases. It seems that over the years, Justice Department lawyers have generally had the last word in such disputes. So, while Orangutan and his aides might abide by them, new officials can issue new opinions overruling the old ones.
"If the Justice Department has a long history of interpreting a constitutional provision in some clear way, then the presumption is that it will continue to follow that precedent in new situations," Wexler said. "On the other hand, though, the precedential effect of Justice Department memoranda is not nearly as strong or fixed as judicial precedent. A new administration may come along and interpret a constitutional provision differently than its predecessors."
Prompted by the Nobel award to Obama in 2009 , POLITICO requested the foreign emoluments opinions from the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act in 2009, seeking all previously unreleased issuances on the subject. Getting a response took a couple of years or longer, producing 24 opinions or memos. Some of the opinions have been published before or since.
OLC decides for itself which opinions to release and which to withhold, with courts providing little second-guessing of such decisions. A case about OLC's duty to disclose its opinions is set to be heard by the D.C. Circuit next week.
Here are the legal memos released to POLITICO:
President Obama's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, Dec. 7, 2009
AG Gifts and Awards, Nov. 4, 1988
AG Gifts and Awards, Mar. 13, 1986
Travel Reimbursement, Mar. 2, 1988
Atomic Energy Commission and India, Sept. 29, 1969
Iranian to serve on National Voluntary Service Advisory Council, May 10, 1974
CFTC chairman's foreign travel paid for by Indonesia, Aug. 11, 1980
Chinese government reimbursement of U.S. delegation's expenses, April 11, 1977
Civilian aide to Army seeking to serve as Luxembourg honorary consul, August 29, 1988
Dual service of Ralph Bunche at United Nations and on U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Oct. 15, 1957
Anonymous donations to pay Nixon's taxes, April 26, 1974
Saudi king's grandson's gifts to U.S. officials, Sept. 23, 1952
Nixon daughters' wedding gifts, Feb. 8, 1978
Historical survey of foreign gifts, Feb. 18, 1958
Disposition of late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's possessions, Nov. 15, 1976
Judge's membership on United Nations International Law Commission, Nov. 27, 1953
Italy-funded junket for White House and immigration official, Oct. 16, 1962
Honorary Irish citizenship for President Kennedy, May 10, 1963
Payment of NASA scientist by Australian university, May 23, 1986 (issued by future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito)
Navy scientist's receipt of monetary award from German foundation, Mar. 17, 1983
Annuity from German government for former German judge fired by Nazi's and later employed as U.S. Government attorney, Oct. 4, 1954
Transportation for spouses of cabinet members, Apr. 4, 1990
Payment of Weather Bureau employees by the Government of Ireland (Eire), Apr. 17, 1947
Selected other emoluments opinions not part of the above release, but available online:
Payment of NASA scientists by Canadian university, Mar. 1, 1994
Application of emoluments clause to members of Administrative Conference of the United States, June 3, 2010
Application of emoluments clause to members of Administrative Conference of the United States, October 28, 1993
Federal contracts
Indiana official: Carrier deal is about federal contracts
But the deal - the first major test of the anti-trade stance that helped Orangutan win the Rust Belt and the election - is already coming under fire.
By Matthew Nussbaum
The deal that President-elect Donald Orangutan and Vice President-elect Mike Pence brokered to keep Carrier jobs in Indiana likely hinges on its parent company's fear about losing business with the federal government, said an official who will play a critical role in approving the agreement.
Orangutan and Pence will visit Indiana on Thursday to announce they’ve delivered on a campaign promise to keep about 1,000 factory jobs from moving to Monterrey, Mexico. The agreement reportedly includes $700,000 in state tax breaks offered by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, a quasi-public entity that doesn't require legislative approval for its deals.
But John Mutz, a former Indiana lieutenant governor who sits on the agency’s 12-member board, told POLITICO that Carrier turned down a previous offer from IEDC before the election. He said he thinks the choice is driven by concerns from Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, that it could lose a portion of its roughly $6.7 billion in federal contracts.
“This deal is no different than other deals that we put together at the IEDC to retain jobs, but the fact is that the difference is that United Technologies depends on the federal government for lots of business,” Mutz said.
“The major factor that’s changed is we had an election,” Mutz said.
Even before Orangutan and Pence can take their victory lap, the deal -- the first major test of the anti-trade stance that helped them win the Rust Belt and the election -- is already coming under fire. Economists are pointing out that saving 1,000 positions with state tax credits does nothing to stem the global economic forces that are moving an estimated 300,000 U.S. factory jobs abroad annually. And Indiana lawmakers and union officials are bristling at being kept in the dark.
Carrier issued a statement Wednesday crediting the state aid package and the Orangutan administration's support for business.
"Today's announcement is possible because the incoming Orangutan-Pence administration has emphasized to us its commitment to support the business community and create an improved, more competitive U.S. business climate," the statement said. "The incentives offered by the state were an important consideration."
Carrier added: "This agreement in no way diminishes our belief in the benefits of free trade and that the forces of globalization will continue to require solutions for the long-term competitiveness of the U.S. and of American workers moving forward."
United Technologies, which also manufactures aerospace and defense products, received the seventh-highest level of federal funding among private companies in fiscal 2015.
Mutz said he has not reviewed the specifics of the deal, but was briefed on it Tuesday afternoon.
“United Technologies is a huge company, and the Carrier deal is a very, very small part of it,” he said. “This is a much different set of circumstances if you’re talking about all of the contracting work that United Technologies does for the federal government. That’s a big deal.”
Transition officials have been mute on the specifics of the deal, but said Pence played a central role in negotiations, at Orangutan’s direction.
Pence had conversations with both the chairman of United Technologies and the CEO of Carrier, a senior transition aide said.
The IEDC board, which is chaired by Pence, will meet on Dec. 13 to review the deal, Mutz said.
“I do know that when we meet we’ll run this through the same rigorous process that we normally follow,” he said. “My goal is to be as transparent as possible on this. It’s taxpayer money we’re dealing with.”
If Orangutan tries to pursue this strategy more broadly to keep other companies from moving jobs abroad, he could run into trouble with Republicans.
Claude Barfield, an expert on international trade at the American Enterprise Institute, said brokering aid packages with individual companies is far from a conservative approach.
“For market-based economists or analysts, this is really a version of crony capitalism, and it’s the kind of thing you really don’t want to get into or have government get into,” Barfield said. “This gets back to who … actually has the ear of the government. So you get the situation where decisions are not made in terms of their economic sense, but in terms of gaming the political system.”
Meanwhile, some Indiana state officials are bristling at the lack of transparency around the deal.
“It’s welcome information that some of those jobs may be remaining, but there hasn’t been any transparency,” said Scott Pelath, the Democratic leader in the Indiana House. “Nothing is known of what might be expected of taxpayers, nothing is known of what is expected of Indiana and what may be expected of the federal government.”
Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, which represents workers at the Indianapolis plant, said he was guardedly optimistic.
“The only thing I can say is if this materializes, there is 1,000 jobs saved," he said. "But there’s other jobs that are still being lost due to unfair trade and corporate greed.”
Pence wasn't interested in brokering a deal as governor, he said.
“He pretty much wrote it off," Jones told POLITICO. "He met with UTC reps at one point in time, but he wrote it off entirely."
But the deal - the first major test of the anti-trade stance that helped Orangutan win the Rust Belt and the election - is already coming under fire.
By Matthew Nussbaum
The deal that President-elect Donald Orangutan and Vice President-elect Mike Pence brokered to keep Carrier jobs in Indiana likely hinges on its parent company's fear about losing business with the federal government, said an official who will play a critical role in approving the agreement.
Orangutan and Pence will visit Indiana on Thursday to announce they’ve delivered on a campaign promise to keep about 1,000 factory jobs from moving to Monterrey, Mexico. The agreement reportedly includes $700,000 in state tax breaks offered by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, a quasi-public entity that doesn't require legislative approval for its deals.
But John Mutz, a former Indiana lieutenant governor who sits on the agency’s 12-member board, told POLITICO that Carrier turned down a previous offer from IEDC before the election. He said he thinks the choice is driven by concerns from Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, that it could lose a portion of its roughly $6.7 billion in federal contracts.
“This deal is no different than other deals that we put together at the IEDC to retain jobs, but the fact is that the difference is that United Technologies depends on the federal government for lots of business,” Mutz said.
“The major factor that’s changed is we had an election,” Mutz said.
Even before Orangutan and Pence can take their victory lap, the deal -- the first major test of the anti-trade stance that helped them win the Rust Belt and the election -- is already coming under fire. Economists are pointing out that saving 1,000 positions with state tax credits does nothing to stem the global economic forces that are moving an estimated 300,000 U.S. factory jobs abroad annually. And Indiana lawmakers and union officials are bristling at being kept in the dark.
Carrier issued a statement Wednesday crediting the state aid package and the Orangutan administration's support for business.
"Today's announcement is possible because the incoming Orangutan-Pence administration has emphasized to us its commitment to support the business community and create an improved, more competitive U.S. business climate," the statement said. "The incentives offered by the state were an important consideration."
Carrier added: "This agreement in no way diminishes our belief in the benefits of free trade and that the forces of globalization will continue to require solutions for the long-term competitiveness of the U.S. and of American workers moving forward."
United Technologies, which also manufactures aerospace and defense products, received the seventh-highest level of federal funding among private companies in fiscal 2015.
Mutz said he has not reviewed the specifics of the deal, but was briefed on it Tuesday afternoon.
“United Technologies is a huge company, and the Carrier deal is a very, very small part of it,” he said. “This is a much different set of circumstances if you’re talking about all of the contracting work that United Technologies does for the federal government. That’s a big deal.”
Transition officials have been mute on the specifics of the deal, but said Pence played a central role in negotiations, at Orangutan’s direction.
Pence had conversations with both the chairman of United Technologies and the CEO of Carrier, a senior transition aide said.
The IEDC board, which is chaired by Pence, will meet on Dec. 13 to review the deal, Mutz said.
“I do know that when we meet we’ll run this through the same rigorous process that we normally follow,” he said. “My goal is to be as transparent as possible on this. It’s taxpayer money we’re dealing with.”
If Orangutan tries to pursue this strategy more broadly to keep other companies from moving jobs abroad, he could run into trouble with Republicans.
Claude Barfield, an expert on international trade at the American Enterprise Institute, said brokering aid packages with individual companies is far from a conservative approach.
“For market-based economists or analysts, this is really a version of crony capitalism, and it’s the kind of thing you really don’t want to get into or have government get into,” Barfield said. “This gets back to who … actually has the ear of the government. So you get the situation where decisions are not made in terms of their economic sense, but in terms of gaming the political system.”
Meanwhile, some Indiana state officials are bristling at the lack of transparency around the deal.
“It’s welcome information that some of those jobs may be remaining, but there hasn’t been any transparency,” said Scott Pelath, the Democratic leader in the Indiana House. “Nothing is known of what might be expected of taxpayers, nothing is known of what is expected of Indiana and what may be expected of the federal government.”
Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, which represents workers at the Indianapolis plant, said he was guardedly optimistic.
“The only thing I can say is if this materializes, there is 1,000 jobs saved," he said. "But there’s other jobs that are still being lost due to unfair trade and corporate greed.”
Pence wasn't interested in brokering a deal as governor, he said.
“He pretty much wrote it off," Jones told POLITICO. "He met with UTC reps at one point in time, but he wrote it off entirely."
Sachs sucks Orangutan's balls..
Goldman Sachs poised for return to power in Orangutan White House
By Ben White
Government Sachs is returning to Washington.
After a decade in the wilderness, Wall Street’s most powerful firm, Goldman Sachs, is dominating the early days of the incoming Orangutan administration. The newly picked Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, spent 17 years at Goldman. Orangutan’s top incoming White House adviser, Steve Bannon, spent his early career at the bank. So did Anthony Scaramucci, one of Orangutan’s top transition advisers.
Goldman’s president, Gary Cohn, spent an hour schmoozing with President-elect Donald Orangutan on Tuesday and could be up for an administration job, possibly as director of the Office of Management and Budget, people close to Cohn and the transition said. Cohn, a long-time commodities trader, is friendly with Orangutan’s powerful son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
It’s a stunning reversal of fortune for Goldman, a long-time Washington power that fell out of favor following the financial crisis. CEO Lloyd Blankfein got hauled before Congress along with other Wall Street executives to account for their behavior. And Orangutan, who ran as a populist and bashed Wall Street on the campaign trail, featured Blankfein as a shady and dangerous character in his final campaign ad.
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi famously labeled Goldman the “great Vampire Squid” on the face of America.
Had Hillary Clinton won the White House, Goldman faced a virtual lock-out from Washington with Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders poised to block any major picks from the bank or any other firm on Wall Street.
Now Goldman, whose proximity to the levers of power dates to the early 20th Century and the creation of the Federal Reserve, stands to return to a level of influence unmatched by any other company in America. And Warren and her allies are left throwing darts from the sidelines.
“We are talking about a massive change in tone in literally just three weeks,” said William Cohan a former banker and author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Run the World. “If this had gone as the cognoscenti thought it was going to go we would be hearing Elizabeth Warren with her megaphone saying no one with a Wall Street background is getting anywhere near a Washington job.”
The rise of Goldman is also filled with ironies for Orangutan, even beyond his recent bashing of Blankfein.
Like many Wall Street banks, Goldman stopped doing business with the real estate mogul years ago, scared off by his bankruptcy filings. Many of the firm’s top executives made it clear they preferred Clinton for president.
Now Mnuchin, whose father was also a powerful Goldman banker, will be Orangutan’s top economic adviser, and he is already promising an agenda that thrills Wall Street and terrifies many Democrats.
“Our number one priority will be tax reform. This will be the largest tax change since Reagan,” Mnuchin said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday, flanked by Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor tapped by Orangutan to serve as Commerce secretary. “We’re going to cut corporate taxes … we’re going to get to 15 percent,” said Mnuchin, who also argued for changing parts of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that curtailed many of Wall Street’s swashbuckling ways.
“The number one problem with Dodd-Frank is it’s way too complicated and it cuts back on lending,” Mnuchin said. “So 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.”
Those kinds of comments and the rise of Goldman and Wall Street influence in Orangutan’s Washington is sending progressive Democrats into a panic. Liberals fear an agenda that will slash tax rates for the wealthy and corporations and gut regulations while allowing Wall Street to go back to the kind of trading practices that helped fuel the financial crisis.
Even many reform-minded conservatives wanted Orangutan to pick a different Treasury Secretary, someone like House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling or former BB&T CEO John Allison for the job. Both have strong views on increasing bank capital requirements and fighting so-called “Too Big to Fail” institutions. It’s much less clear that Mnuchin will do anything to make life difficult for large banks.
Warren came out firing against Mnuchin on Tuesday night. And Democrats plan to hammer the Treasury nominee’s record as head of OneWest, a California bank derided as a “foreclosure machine” during the depths of the crisis.
“Steve Mnuchin is the Forrest Gump of the financial crisis — he managed to participate in all the worst practices on Wall Street,” Warren said in a statement on Tuesday night. “He spent two decades at Goldman Sachs helping the bank peddle the same kind of mortgage products that blew up the economy and sucked down billions in taxpayer bailout money before he moved on to run a bank that was infamous for aggressively foreclosing on families.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which will consider Mnuchin’s nomination, promised thorough hearings including a focus on Mnuchin’s time at OneWest. The attacks may not be enough to derail Mnuchin, but they will add to a developing Democratic strategy of undercutting Orangutan’s blue-collar credentials by portraying him as a billionaire plutocrat governing with the interests of his rich friends in mind.
“There are a number of serious problems raised by populating the most senior positions in government from a single bank and from a single industry,” said Dennis Kelleher, CEO of financial reform group Better Markets. “Whether it’s true or not, Goldman Sachs will be perceived as having privileged access and influence throughout the government. What we need most, and Candidate Orangutan seemed to understand this, is a view that prioritizes what’s good for Main Street and the real economy.”
Goldman defenders say a negative focus on Mnuchin’s time at the bank is unfair and that he has the economic and markets expertise to help create faster economic growth that lifts wages across the board.
“I commend President-elect Orangutan on his outstanding selection of Steven Mnuchin to be Secretary of the Treasury,” former Goldman CEO and George W. Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said in a statement on Wednesday. “Steven embodies the characteristics necessary to be a very good Treasury secretary. He is a doer with the analytic and political skills to get things done in a complex environment.”
Goldman supporters also note that had Clinton won, the left would have pushed for Gary Gensler, former head of the CFTC and himself a long-time Goldman banker, to be Treasury secretary or take some other high-profile post.
“Throughout its 147-year history, Goldman Sachs has encouraged its employees to give back to the community while they are working here and after they leave,” said Jake Siewert, communications director at Goldman. “We are proud that many have gone on to serve their country and their communities after they have left.”
The return of Goldman to prominence in Washington restores a tradition that waned in recent years. The relationship dates to back at least to 1913 when one of the firm’s founding partners, Henry Goldman, helped create the Federal Reserve.
The influence declined during the Depression only to rise again with Goldman head Sidney Weinberg’s close relationship with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. More recently, Goldman held sway in President Bill Clinton’s White House with the elevation of former co-chairman Robert Rubin to Treasury secretary during a period that saw significant deregulation of the banking industry and the repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall law separating the activities of retail and investment banking.
And when the financial crisis hit in 2008, then-president Bush turned to Paulson to help design a Wall Street bailout package that pumped hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into the financial industry.
Defenders of the bailout say it saved the economy from potential ruin and most banks including Goldman quickly paid back all federal funds. But Wall Street critics worry that the return of Goldman to such levels of power will ensure friendly treatment of the industry that could spark more crises in the future.
“My real issue with Mnuchin is that it really is a start the countdown clock moment to the next crash,” said Kelleher. “That is the inevitability if the Wall Street view of the world once again becomes policy.”
By Ben White
Government Sachs is returning to Washington.
After a decade in the wilderness, Wall Street’s most powerful firm, Goldman Sachs, is dominating the early days of the incoming Orangutan administration. The newly picked Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, spent 17 years at Goldman. Orangutan’s top incoming White House adviser, Steve Bannon, spent his early career at the bank. So did Anthony Scaramucci, one of Orangutan’s top transition advisers.
Goldman’s president, Gary Cohn, spent an hour schmoozing with President-elect Donald Orangutan on Tuesday and could be up for an administration job, possibly as director of the Office of Management and Budget, people close to Cohn and the transition said. Cohn, a long-time commodities trader, is friendly with Orangutan’s powerful son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
It’s a stunning reversal of fortune for Goldman, a long-time Washington power that fell out of favor following the financial crisis. CEO Lloyd Blankfein got hauled before Congress along with other Wall Street executives to account for their behavior. And Orangutan, who ran as a populist and bashed Wall Street on the campaign trail, featured Blankfein as a shady and dangerous character in his final campaign ad.
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi famously labeled Goldman the “great Vampire Squid” on the face of America.
Had Hillary Clinton won the White House, Goldman faced a virtual lock-out from Washington with Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders poised to block any major picks from the bank or any other firm on Wall Street.
Now Goldman, whose proximity to the levers of power dates to the early 20th Century and the creation of the Federal Reserve, stands to return to a level of influence unmatched by any other company in America. And Warren and her allies are left throwing darts from the sidelines.
“We are talking about a massive change in tone in literally just three weeks,” said William Cohan a former banker and author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Run the World. “If this had gone as the cognoscenti thought it was going to go we would be hearing Elizabeth Warren with her megaphone saying no one with a Wall Street background is getting anywhere near a Washington job.”
The rise of Goldman is also filled with ironies for Orangutan, even beyond his recent bashing of Blankfein.
Like many Wall Street banks, Goldman stopped doing business with the real estate mogul years ago, scared off by his bankruptcy filings. Many of the firm’s top executives made it clear they preferred Clinton for president.
Now Mnuchin, whose father was also a powerful Goldman banker, will be Orangutan’s top economic adviser, and he is already promising an agenda that thrills Wall Street and terrifies many Democrats.
“Our number one priority will be tax reform. This will be the largest tax change since Reagan,” Mnuchin said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday, flanked by Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor tapped by Orangutan to serve as Commerce secretary. “We’re going to cut corporate taxes … we’re going to get to 15 percent,” said Mnuchin, who also argued for changing parts of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that curtailed many of Wall Street’s swashbuckling ways.
“The number one problem with Dodd-Frank is it’s way too complicated and it cuts back on lending,” Mnuchin said. “So 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.”
Those kinds of comments and the rise of Goldman and Wall Street influence in Orangutan’s Washington is sending progressive Democrats into a panic. Liberals fear an agenda that will slash tax rates for the wealthy and corporations and gut regulations while allowing Wall Street to go back to the kind of trading practices that helped fuel the financial crisis.
Even many reform-minded conservatives wanted Orangutan to pick a different Treasury Secretary, someone like House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling or former BB&T CEO John Allison for the job. Both have strong views on increasing bank capital requirements and fighting so-called “Too Big to Fail” institutions. It’s much less clear that Mnuchin will do anything to make life difficult for large banks.
Warren came out firing against Mnuchin on Tuesday night. And Democrats plan to hammer the Treasury nominee’s record as head of OneWest, a California bank derided as a “foreclosure machine” during the depths of the crisis.
“Steve Mnuchin is the Forrest Gump of the financial crisis — he managed to participate in all the worst practices on Wall Street,” Warren said in a statement on Tuesday night. “He spent two decades at Goldman Sachs helping the bank peddle the same kind of mortgage products that blew up the economy and sucked down billions in taxpayer bailout money before he moved on to run a bank that was infamous for aggressively foreclosing on families.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which will consider Mnuchin’s nomination, promised thorough hearings including a focus on Mnuchin’s time at OneWest. The attacks may not be enough to derail Mnuchin, but they will add to a developing Democratic strategy of undercutting Orangutan’s blue-collar credentials by portraying him as a billionaire plutocrat governing with the interests of his rich friends in mind.
“There are a number of serious problems raised by populating the most senior positions in government from a single bank and from a single industry,” said Dennis Kelleher, CEO of financial reform group Better Markets. “Whether it’s true or not, Goldman Sachs will be perceived as having privileged access and influence throughout the government. What we need most, and Candidate Orangutan seemed to understand this, is a view that prioritizes what’s good for Main Street and the real economy.”
Goldman defenders say a negative focus on Mnuchin’s time at the bank is unfair and that he has the economic and markets expertise to help create faster economic growth that lifts wages across the board.
“I commend President-elect Orangutan on his outstanding selection of Steven Mnuchin to be Secretary of the Treasury,” former Goldman CEO and George W. Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said in a statement on Wednesday. “Steven embodies the characteristics necessary to be a very good Treasury secretary. He is a doer with the analytic and political skills to get things done in a complex environment.”
Goldman supporters also note that had Clinton won, the left would have pushed for Gary Gensler, former head of the CFTC and himself a long-time Goldman banker, to be Treasury secretary or take some other high-profile post.
“Throughout its 147-year history, Goldman Sachs has encouraged its employees to give back to the community while they are working here and after they leave,” said Jake Siewert, communications director at Goldman. “We are proud that many have gone on to serve their country and their communities after they have left.”
The return of Goldman to prominence in Washington restores a tradition that waned in recent years. The relationship dates to back at least to 1913 when one of the firm’s founding partners, Henry Goldman, helped create the Federal Reserve.
The influence declined during the Depression only to rise again with Goldman head Sidney Weinberg’s close relationship with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. More recently, Goldman held sway in President Bill Clinton’s White House with the elevation of former co-chairman Robert Rubin to Treasury secretary during a period that saw significant deregulation of the banking industry and the repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall law separating the activities of retail and investment banking.
And when the financial crisis hit in 2008, then-president Bush turned to Paulson to help design a Wall Street bailout package that pumped hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into the financial industry.
Defenders of the bailout say it saved the economy from potential ruin and most banks including Goldman quickly paid back all federal funds. But Wall Street critics worry that the return of Goldman to such levels of power will ensure friendly treatment of the industry that could spark more crises in the future.
“My real issue with Mnuchin is that it really is a start the countdown clock moment to the next crash,” said Kelleher. “That is the inevitability if the Wall Street view of the world once again becomes policy.”
Orangutan Treasury fuck...
Orangutan Treasury pick made millions after his bank foreclosed on homeowners
Steven Mnuchin's OneWest filed to take a 90-year-old woman's house after a 27-cent payment error.
By Lorraine Woellert
Donald Orangutan wasn’t the only person to see opportunity in the 2008 housing collapse. As the economy recovered from the rubble of failed banks, foreclosed homes and government bailouts, Steven Mnuchin emerged a winner.
That success is coming back to haunt the hedge fund manager and Hollywood producer who is Orangutan’s choice for Treasury secretary. OneWest, a bank Mnuchin and his partners established during the collapse, has taken steady fire from regulators and consumer advocates for myriad failures ever since.
In Florida, the company foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman after a 27-cent payment error. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo singled out the lender for squeezing superstorm Sandy victims. This month, the company’s successor, CIT Bank, was accused of discriminating against minority borrowers.
“We’re just coming out of a foreclosure crisis and a serious economic downturn. It’s not the time to appoint someone who sided with corporate America over real people,” said Alys Cohen, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. “Mr. Mnuchin comes from Wall Street and has served monied interests over homeowners.”
Ultimately, Mnuchin’s story, like the housing collapse, doesn’t fit into a simple narrative. While earning the ire of consumer advocates, Mnuchin also brings an understanding of the global mortgage market that Orangutan will need to complete the unfinished business of the housing recovery. Inside the Beltway, some are cheering his appointment.
Mnuchin, OneWest and the Orangutan transition team did not return calls for comment.
Mnuchin became a target of consumer activists in 2009, after he and his partners bought the remains of failed mortgage lender IndyMac. The company had specialized in high-risk loans, including so-called liar loans to borrowers with no money or income, and had become a symbol of the Wall Street recklessness that had sent the country into recession and millions of homeowners into default.
When the FDIC shut IndyMac down, Mnuchin and his partners swept in to buy what was left, bad loans and all. As was typical at the time, the FDIC agreed to help OneWest cover the cost of the bad assets it inherited, including losses on foreclosed single-family loans.
And the foreclosures came, 36,000 of them by one estimate. So far, losses under the deal have mounted to $4.6 billion. The FDIC has paid the bank $1.2 billion, according to agency data.
That payout has been a lightning rod for OneWest critics, even though the bank and its successors absorbed $3.4 billion in losses that the FDIC didn’t cover.
Despite those losses, Mnuchin came out ahead. Last year, OneWest closed on a $3.4 billion, hard-won deal to merge with CIT Bank, overcoming challenges from fair-housing advocates, civil rights groups and homeowners. Mnuchin took a reported $10.9 million payout and remains on CIT’s board.
“Investors in the bank, including Mr. Mnuchin, profited handsomely at the expense of thousands of working people across our state,” said Kevin Stein, deputy director of the California Reinvestment Coalition.
Problems at OneWest persist, Stein said. Earlier this month, the coalition complained to the Department of Housing and Urban Development that the lender was failing to serve African-American and Latino communities in its market. He and other advocates call the bank’s foreclosure practices aggressive.
“The merger was supposed to have established that there would be a public benefit,” Stein said. “Instead we saw a lot of public harm.”
Two years ago, OneWest filed foreclosure papers on the Lakeland, Fla., home of Ossie Lofton, who had taken a reverse mortgage, a loan that supplies cash to elderly homeowners and doesn’t require monthly payments.
After confusion over insurance coverage, a OneWest subsidiary sent Lofton a bill for $423.30. She sent a check for $423. The bank sent another bill, for 30 cents. Lofton, 90, sent a check for three cents. In November 2014, the bank foreclosed.
Last month, lawyers at the nonprofit Florida Rural Legal Services contested OneWest’s foreclosure and asked the Polk County Circuit Court for a jury trial.
“I don’t know that they’re the worse, but I certainly think it’s criminal the way these servicers are treating elderly homeowners,” said Lynn Drysdale, an attorney representing Lofton.
While consumer advocates fight OneWest in the trenches, some inside the Beltway see a glimmer of hope in Mnuchin, an expert in mortgage bonds and structured finance. They say he has the technical know-how to fix mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a job Congress and the Obama administration have avoided. Wednesday, he vowed to move quickly on that unfinished business.
“It makes no sense that these are owned by the government and have been controlled by the government for as long as they have,” Mnuchin told Fox Business. “We’ll make sure that when they’re restructured they’re absolutely safe and they don’t get taken over again, but we gotta get them out of government control.”
The comment cheered financial lobbyists and sent the companies’ stock soaring.
“He knows how everything works,” said John Taylor, president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit National Community Reinvestment Coalition. “Given his background, I’d like to be optimistic. The guy’s already made a lot of money. Now it’s time to make sure others share in that prosperity.”
Steven Mnuchin's OneWest filed to take a 90-year-old woman's house after a 27-cent payment error.
By Lorraine Woellert
Donald Orangutan wasn’t the only person to see opportunity in the 2008 housing collapse. As the economy recovered from the rubble of failed banks, foreclosed homes and government bailouts, Steven Mnuchin emerged a winner.
That success is coming back to haunt the hedge fund manager and Hollywood producer who is Orangutan’s choice for Treasury secretary. OneWest, a bank Mnuchin and his partners established during the collapse, has taken steady fire from regulators and consumer advocates for myriad failures ever since.
In Florida, the company foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman after a 27-cent payment error. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo singled out the lender for squeezing superstorm Sandy victims. This month, the company’s successor, CIT Bank, was accused of discriminating against minority borrowers.
“We’re just coming out of a foreclosure crisis and a serious economic downturn. It’s not the time to appoint someone who sided with corporate America over real people,” said Alys Cohen, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. “Mr. Mnuchin comes from Wall Street and has served monied interests over homeowners.”
Ultimately, Mnuchin’s story, like the housing collapse, doesn’t fit into a simple narrative. While earning the ire of consumer advocates, Mnuchin also brings an understanding of the global mortgage market that Orangutan will need to complete the unfinished business of the housing recovery. Inside the Beltway, some are cheering his appointment.
Mnuchin, OneWest and the Orangutan transition team did not return calls for comment.
Mnuchin became a target of consumer activists in 2009, after he and his partners bought the remains of failed mortgage lender IndyMac. The company had specialized in high-risk loans, including so-called liar loans to borrowers with no money or income, and had become a symbol of the Wall Street recklessness that had sent the country into recession and millions of homeowners into default.
When the FDIC shut IndyMac down, Mnuchin and his partners swept in to buy what was left, bad loans and all. As was typical at the time, the FDIC agreed to help OneWest cover the cost of the bad assets it inherited, including losses on foreclosed single-family loans.
And the foreclosures came, 36,000 of them by one estimate. So far, losses under the deal have mounted to $4.6 billion. The FDIC has paid the bank $1.2 billion, according to agency data.
That payout has been a lightning rod for OneWest critics, even though the bank and its successors absorbed $3.4 billion in losses that the FDIC didn’t cover.
Despite those losses, Mnuchin came out ahead. Last year, OneWest closed on a $3.4 billion, hard-won deal to merge with CIT Bank, overcoming challenges from fair-housing advocates, civil rights groups and homeowners. Mnuchin took a reported $10.9 million payout and remains on CIT’s board.
“Investors in the bank, including Mr. Mnuchin, profited handsomely at the expense of thousands of working people across our state,” said Kevin Stein, deputy director of the California Reinvestment Coalition.
Problems at OneWest persist, Stein said. Earlier this month, the coalition complained to the Department of Housing and Urban Development that the lender was failing to serve African-American and Latino communities in its market. He and other advocates call the bank’s foreclosure practices aggressive.
“The merger was supposed to have established that there would be a public benefit,” Stein said. “Instead we saw a lot of public harm.”
Two years ago, OneWest filed foreclosure papers on the Lakeland, Fla., home of Ossie Lofton, who had taken a reverse mortgage, a loan that supplies cash to elderly homeowners and doesn’t require monthly payments.
After confusion over insurance coverage, a OneWest subsidiary sent Lofton a bill for $423.30. She sent a check for $423. The bank sent another bill, for 30 cents. Lofton, 90, sent a check for three cents. In November 2014, the bank foreclosed.
Last month, lawyers at the nonprofit Florida Rural Legal Services contested OneWest’s foreclosure and asked the Polk County Circuit Court for a jury trial.
“I don’t know that they’re the worse, but I certainly think it’s criminal the way these servicers are treating elderly homeowners,” said Lynn Drysdale, an attorney representing Lofton.
While consumer advocates fight OneWest in the trenches, some inside the Beltway see a glimmer of hope in Mnuchin, an expert in mortgage bonds and structured finance. They say he has the technical know-how to fix mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a job Congress and the Obama administration have avoided. Wednesday, he vowed to move quickly on that unfinished business.
“It makes no sense that these are owned by the government and have been controlled by the government for as long as they have,” Mnuchin told Fox Business. “We’ll make sure that when they’re restructured they’re absolutely safe and they don’t get taken over again, but we gotta get them out of government control.”
The comment cheered financial lobbyists and sent the companies’ stock soaring.
“He knows how everything works,” said John Taylor, president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit National Community Reinvestment Coalition. “Given his background, I’d like to be optimistic. The guy’s already made a lot of money. Now it’s time to make sure others share in that prosperity.”
Bait and switch....
Was it a bait and switch? Orangutan goes full Republican
By Julian Zelizer
Was it a bait and switch?
Throughout the Republican primaries, Donny Orangutan carved out stances that broke with longtime GOP orthodoxy. As a businessman who sometimes expressed support for Democrats and for positions favored by liberals in his home state of New York, Orangutan promised he would be an unconventional president capable of taking positions all along the political spectrum.
But since he was elected President, Orangutan has named Cabinet members who hew closely to what Republicans have advocated for decades. In fact, it's starting to look a lot like Christmas for the Republican Party.
For all the talk about how Orangutan would defy the Republican Party and challenge the status quo, his Cabinet picks have been remarkably consistent -- and conservative. It should have become clear when Orangutan announced that Vice President-elect Mike Pence, a staunch right-wing conservative who has been a strong opponent of abortion rights as well as LGBT rights, also skeptical of climate change and a champion of creationism, would take over the transition from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
The recent announcement that US Rep. Tom Price, an ardent opponent of Obamacare, will head the Department of Health and Human Services is just one more piece of evidence that Orangutan will govern with a rightward team of conservatives surrounding him. Orangutan apparently is aiming to build a new Republican coalition that combines blue-collar workers with the rest of the existing conservative establishment.
Some Republican commentators are still acting as if things are up in the air. In his most recent column, David Brooks of The New York Times said that Orangutan is a threat to the party loyalty that has dominated American politics. "He is hostile to the Republican establishment," Brooks wrote. "His proposals cut across orthodox partisan lines."
Heading right
If people are waiting for him to moderate or for his presidency to cause a major rupture in the GOP, they might be waiting for a long time. Everything so far suggests he is planning to make some pretty radical moves to reverse most of President Barack Obama's policies and to go even further than that. For all the pleasantries that have been uttered between Orangutan and Obama, this President-elect is clearly is rightward-bound.
The early announcements about his appointments set a clear tone. With "alt-right" favorite Steve Bannon as his senior adviser and Reince Preibus, who headed the Republican National Committee, as his chief of staff, Orangutan instantly put into place figures who could appeal to congressional Republicans, the conservative media and right-wing organizations that hover around sites such as Breitbart.com.
Then Orangutan went even further. He announced that Sen. Jeff Sessions, an ardent opponent of voting rights and a fierce adversary of legal and illegal immigrants, such as opposing giving visas to many high-skilled workers, would head the Justice Department. That sent a clear signal to most people in Washington about the direction his policies would take. With Michael Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, as his national security adviser, he has turned to someone who has argued that Islamism is a "vicious cancer inside the body of 1.7 billion people" and that it must be "excised."
US Rep. Mike Pompeo, a conservative who was a driving force in the Benghazi investigation, heading the CIA sets up the agency to support an extremely aggressive stance in how the war on terrorism will be conducted.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, nominated as US ambassador to the United Nations, came into politics as a tea party Republican, endorsed by Sarah Palin in her run for governor, and has an extremely conservative voting record on almost every issue. To be sure, she lowered the Confederate flag from the state Capitol after horrendous racially charged shootings in South Carolina, but that is a long way from establishing that she is a moderate in general.
Betsy DeVos, who will be the secretary of education, is one of the most prominent and fervent advocates of using federal money for charter schools. She also comes from a family that has donated enormous amounts of money to all sorts of conservative causes, effectively the Koch brothers of the Midwest.
The transportation secretary-to-be, Elaine Chao, the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, had a solid, anti-union record when she was secretary of labor under President George W. Bush. Chao is well-networked in the most "establishment" Republican circles of Washington.
As labor secretary, she drew criticism from Democrats for failing to investigate complaints from workers or to promote new health regulations. When 12 miners died in the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia, critics argued she had not conducted sufficient safety inspections in mines.
Strong signals
Some of the lower-level appointments have also sent congressional Republicans strong signals about where the administration will go. The announcement that KT McFarland, a former national security official and Fox News analyst, as deputy national security adviser pleased many hawks given her confrontational stands against Russia and, even more importantly, extremely tough posture toward Iran. While at Fox, McFarland responded to the terrorist attack in Brussels, Belgium, by saying that "political correctness" is "getting us killed" by preventing the United States from rounding up Muslims. "Either bomb Iran, or let Iran get the bomb," she also said in a statement of her policy toward the region.
Bringing Price on board to head the HHS is an equally radical statement. Getting rid of Obamacare has been at the top of the list for many Republicans since it was passed. Price has never been shy about his positions on the program. "Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration blatantly ignored the voices of the American people and rammed through a hyperpartisan piece of legislation that will have a disastrous effect on our nation's health care system," the congressman said in 2010. Unlike some Republicans, Price has not softened his views since the program went into effect.
While it will be difficult for congressional Republicans to make a direct assault on Obamacare in the coming year, the other way in which a conservative administration can effectively gut a policy is to put an opponent in charge of the agency that administers it.
This was Ronald Reagan's strategy for much of the 1980s: undermine federal programs from within. That's why Reagan had Clarence Thomas, an opponent of affirmative action, head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or James Watt, an anti-environmentalist, as secretary of interior. With Price making big decisions about who should administer the program and how to direct resources within his agency, the Affordable Care Act will be vulnerable from day one even if it remains on the books.
'Team of Rivals'?
Even the so-called possible Team of Rivals appointments must be taken with a grain of salt. The possible appointment of Mitt Romney to be secretary of state has now become the chief question about whether Orangutan really wants a team of rivals and seeks to broaden his party.
While it is true that Romney headed the anti-Orangutan effort within the GOP and there is no love lost between these men, a quick look at Romney's 2012 campaign is reminder of how far to the right he is willing to go when it suits his political purposes. Romney was extremely hawkish in his positions about Iran, remaining an opponent of any kind of nuclear deal, and surrounded himself with advisers who made extreme statements about the threats from Islam. He told voters that he could wage a war on Iran without congressional approval. Although he differs from Orangutan in being more confrontational with Russia, something that would please most conservatives, there are not so many differences between them.
Another alternative would be to name retired Gen. David Petraeus to be secretary of state. Notwithstanding the controversy this will generate given his own classification scandal, having him at State, with Flynn at the National Security Council and possibly Marine Gen. James Mattis as defense secretary -- breaking a 65-year tradition of not having military men in that role -- would stack much of foreign policy with officials oriented toward the use of force rather than steeped in diplomacy to handle relations overseas.
When it comes to the Koch brothers, they have a lot to be excited about. While they stayed far away from Orangutan during the campaign, the President-elect is making a number of appointments of loyal Koch acolytes to his team. As Politico reported, his transition team as well as several administration picks have tapped into the Koch world, including White House counsel Don McGahn to transition team executive members such as Rebekah Mercer. Another Politico article noted how despite the President-elect's populist campaign Wall Street bankers and traders are celebrating the transition period as many major investors, from Wilbur Ross (expected to be the secretary of commerce) to Steven Mnuchin (secretary of treasury), have been coming in and out of meetings at the Orangutan White House-in-waiting on Fifth Avenue.
So for all the talk about divisions within the GOP and Orangutan's unorthodox policy position, this is really looking like a very traditional Republican administration, and one that will veer to the right, not the center, on domestic and foreign policy.
With Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress, the GOP will be in a strong position to move public policy in pretty dramatic fashion over the coming two years. And with Democrats defending more Senate seats than Republicans in 2018, the policymaking window might be even bigger for this president than others have enjoyed in the past.
By Julian Zelizer
Was it a bait and switch?
Throughout the Republican primaries, Donny Orangutan carved out stances that broke with longtime GOP orthodoxy. As a businessman who sometimes expressed support for Democrats and for positions favored by liberals in his home state of New York, Orangutan promised he would be an unconventional president capable of taking positions all along the political spectrum.
But since he was elected President, Orangutan has named Cabinet members who hew closely to what Republicans have advocated for decades. In fact, it's starting to look a lot like Christmas for the Republican Party.
For all the talk about how Orangutan would defy the Republican Party and challenge the status quo, his Cabinet picks have been remarkably consistent -- and conservative. It should have become clear when Orangutan announced that Vice President-elect Mike Pence, a staunch right-wing conservative who has been a strong opponent of abortion rights as well as LGBT rights, also skeptical of climate change and a champion of creationism, would take over the transition from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
The recent announcement that US Rep. Tom Price, an ardent opponent of Obamacare, will head the Department of Health and Human Services is just one more piece of evidence that Orangutan will govern with a rightward team of conservatives surrounding him. Orangutan apparently is aiming to build a new Republican coalition that combines blue-collar workers with the rest of the existing conservative establishment.
Some Republican commentators are still acting as if things are up in the air. In his most recent column, David Brooks of The New York Times said that Orangutan is a threat to the party loyalty that has dominated American politics. "He is hostile to the Republican establishment," Brooks wrote. "His proposals cut across orthodox partisan lines."
Heading right
If people are waiting for him to moderate or for his presidency to cause a major rupture in the GOP, they might be waiting for a long time. Everything so far suggests he is planning to make some pretty radical moves to reverse most of President Barack Obama's policies and to go even further than that. For all the pleasantries that have been uttered between Orangutan and Obama, this President-elect is clearly is rightward-bound.
The early announcements about his appointments set a clear tone. With "alt-right" favorite Steve Bannon as his senior adviser and Reince Preibus, who headed the Republican National Committee, as his chief of staff, Orangutan instantly put into place figures who could appeal to congressional Republicans, the conservative media and right-wing organizations that hover around sites such as Breitbart.com.
Then Orangutan went even further. He announced that Sen. Jeff Sessions, an ardent opponent of voting rights and a fierce adversary of legal and illegal immigrants, such as opposing giving visas to many high-skilled workers, would head the Justice Department. That sent a clear signal to most people in Washington about the direction his policies would take. With Michael Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, as his national security adviser, he has turned to someone who has argued that Islamism is a "vicious cancer inside the body of 1.7 billion people" and that it must be "excised."
US Rep. Mike Pompeo, a conservative who was a driving force in the Benghazi investigation, heading the CIA sets up the agency to support an extremely aggressive stance in how the war on terrorism will be conducted.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, nominated as US ambassador to the United Nations, came into politics as a tea party Republican, endorsed by Sarah Palin in her run for governor, and has an extremely conservative voting record on almost every issue. To be sure, she lowered the Confederate flag from the state Capitol after horrendous racially charged shootings in South Carolina, but that is a long way from establishing that she is a moderate in general.
Betsy DeVos, who will be the secretary of education, is one of the most prominent and fervent advocates of using federal money for charter schools. She also comes from a family that has donated enormous amounts of money to all sorts of conservative causes, effectively the Koch brothers of the Midwest.
The transportation secretary-to-be, Elaine Chao, the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, had a solid, anti-union record when she was secretary of labor under President George W. Bush. Chao is well-networked in the most "establishment" Republican circles of Washington.
As labor secretary, she drew criticism from Democrats for failing to investigate complaints from workers or to promote new health regulations. When 12 miners died in the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia, critics argued she had not conducted sufficient safety inspections in mines.
Strong signals
Some of the lower-level appointments have also sent congressional Republicans strong signals about where the administration will go. The announcement that KT McFarland, a former national security official and Fox News analyst, as deputy national security adviser pleased many hawks given her confrontational stands against Russia and, even more importantly, extremely tough posture toward Iran. While at Fox, McFarland responded to the terrorist attack in Brussels, Belgium, by saying that "political correctness" is "getting us killed" by preventing the United States from rounding up Muslims. "Either bomb Iran, or let Iran get the bomb," she also said in a statement of her policy toward the region.
Bringing Price on board to head the HHS is an equally radical statement. Getting rid of Obamacare has been at the top of the list for many Republicans since it was passed. Price has never been shy about his positions on the program. "Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration blatantly ignored the voices of the American people and rammed through a hyperpartisan piece of legislation that will have a disastrous effect on our nation's health care system," the congressman said in 2010. Unlike some Republicans, Price has not softened his views since the program went into effect.
While it will be difficult for congressional Republicans to make a direct assault on Obamacare in the coming year, the other way in which a conservative administration can effectively gut a policy is to put an opponent in charge of the agency that administers it.
This was Ronald Reagan's strategy for much of the 1980s: undermine federal programs from within. That's why Reagan had Clarence Thomas, an opponent of affirmative action, head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or James Watt, an anti-environmentalist, as secretary of interior. With Price making big decisions about who should administer the program and how to direct resources within his agency, the Affordable Care Act will be vulnerable from day one even if it remains on the books.
'Team of Rivals'?
Even the so-called possible Team of Rivals appointments must be taken with a grain of salt. The possible appointment of Mitt Romney to be secretary of state has now become the chief question about whether Orangutan really wants a team of rivals and seeks to broaden his party.
While it is true that Romney headed the anti-Orangutan effort within the GOP and there is no love lost between these men, a quick look at Romney's 2012 campaign is reminder of how far to the right he is willing to go when it suits his political purposes. Romney was extremely hawkish in his positions about Iran, remaining an opponent of any kind of nuclear deal, and surrounded himself with advisers who made extreme statements about the threats from Islam. He told voters that he could wage a war on Iran without congressional approval. Although he differs from Orangutan in being more confrontational with Russia, something that would please most conservatives, there are not so many differences between them.
Another alternative would be to name retired Gen. David Petraeus to be secretary of state. Notwithstanding the controversy this will generate given his own classification scandal, having him at State, with Flynn at the National Security Council and possibly Marine Gen. James Mattis as defense secretary -- breaking a 65-year tradition of not having military men in that role -- would stack much of foreign policy with officials oriented toward the use of force rather than steeped in diplomacy to handle relations overseas.
When it comes to the Koch brothers, they have a lot to be excited about. While they stayed far away from Orangutan during the campaign, the President-elect is making a number of appointments of loyal Koch acolytes to his team. As Politico reported, his transition team as well as several administration picks have tapped into the Koch world, including White House counsel Don McGahn to transition team executive members such as Rebekah Mercer. Another Politico article noted how despite the President-elect's populist campaign Wall Street bankers and traders are celebrating the transition period as many major investors, from Wilbur Ross (expected to be the secretary of commerce) to Steven Mnuchin (secretary of treasury), have been coming in and out of meetings at the Orangutan White House-in-waiting on Fifth Avenue.
So for all the talk about divisions within the GOP and Orangutan's unorthodox policy position, this is really looking like a very traditional Republican administration, and one that will veer to the right, not the center, on domestic and foreign policy.
With Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress, the GOP will be in a strong position to move public policy in pretty dramatic fashion over the coming two years. And with Democrats defending more Senate seats than Republicans in 2018, the policymaking window might be even bigger for this president than others have enjoyed in the past.
Not replaced for years....
GOP may delay Obamacare replacement for years
Republicans are setting up a high-stakes deadline to replace the healthcare law.
By Rachael Bade and Burgess Everett
Prepare for the Obamacare cliff.
Congressional Republicans are setting up their own, self-imposed deadline to make good on their vow to replace the Affordable Care Act. With buy-in from Donald Orangutan’s transition team, GOP leaders on both sides of the Capitol are coalescing around a plan to vote to repeal the law in early 2017 — but delay the effective date for that repeal for as long as three years.
They’re crossing their fingers that the delay will help them get their own house in order, as well as pressure a handful of Senate Democrats — who would likely be needed to pass replacement legislation — to come onboard before the clock runs out and 20 million Americans lose their health insurance. The idea is to satisfy conservative critics who want President Barack Obama’s signature initiative gone now, but reassure Americans that Republicans won’t upend the entire health care system without a viable alternative that preserves the law’s popular provisions.
“We’re talking about a three-year transition now that we actually have a president who’s likely to sign the repeal into the law. People are being, understandably cautious, to make sure nobody’s dropped through the cracks,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas).
The tentative strategy is reminiscent of Capitol Hill’s infamous “fiscal cliff” days, when Congress imposed simultaneous deadlines to raise the debt ceiling, extend expiring tax cuts and fund the government. The hope was that it would create irresistible political pressure to get behind a bipartisan mega-fiscal deal.
This time , however, it’s access to health care for tens of millions of people that’s on the line.
“I think once it’s repealed, you will have hopefully fewer people playing politics and [instead] coming together to try to find the best policy,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday. He added that when there is “a date certain that something’s going away … you know you have to have something done.”
The strategy presents significant risks. The fight over a replacement is guaranteed to be messier than the cathartic repeal vote. Giving themselves as many as three years to figure it out shows that Republicans are well aware of how tough it will be.
Orangutan has made the GOP’s task harder by saying he wants to preserve elements of the the law that protect people with pre-existing conditions and allow young people to remain on their parent’s health insurance until they turn 26 years old, pricey provisions that will complicate Republican efforts to merely gut the law. Plus, there are millions of people now relying on Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion that the GOP will be loath to cast off the insurance rolls.
And following a repeal vote, insurance companies could bail on Obamacare immediately, even if there is a three-year grace period, leaving people with no health plans.
“The flaws in Obamacare are obvious to me. The solutions are much harder,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Moreover, there is already some intraparty turmoil over the repeal timeline, starting with Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. He’s pressing to have a replacement plan ready before tackling repeal, which could significantly delay things, given that Republicans are far from a consensus on what kind of replacement they want.
The Tennessee Republican has notably began swapping the words “repeal and replace,” used by Republicans for years, to “replace and repeal.”
“There’s an eagerness to address it, so I think there’s no doubt we’ll start immediately to replace and repeal Obamacare, but the president-elect has said that the replacement and the repeal need to be done simultaneously, and that means to me that we need to figure out how to replace it before we repeal it,” he said.
Most Republicans, particularly in the House, want to repeal as soon as possible and deal with the replacement later. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), a staunch conservative, said the party must “take no chances; do it now.” And House leadership has heard those demands clearly.
“This law, you have to remember, is hurting families in America,” said Speaker Paul Ryan during a news conference on Wednesday. “So we have to bring Obamacare relief as fast as we possibly can in 2017.”
The Obamacare repeal road map Republicans are sketching out is complicated. They are already eyeing passage of a fiscal 2017 budget as soon as January to unlock a fast-track tool that would allow the Senate to clear a repeal by a simple majority. Republican aides predicted the entire repeal, done through so-called reconciliation, will be finished in the first 100 days of Orangutan’s presidency — though that timeline is fluid.
Top Republicans are keen to show voters they’re working to immediately deliver on their campaign pledge to curb the health law. After campaigning against Obamacare for more than six years, the party could face a major backlash from its base if it stalls.
If the GOP wants to take rapid action, its best bet is to stick close to the playbook it used to pass a 2015 repeal bill that Obama vetoed. That measure included a two-year delay, and it cleared many of the parliamentary hurdles and whip counting required to pass major pieces of legislation.
“That stuff was all vetted,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune , the chamber’s No. 3 Republican leader. “The repeal piece will be very similar.”
House conservatives are largely on the same page on repeal.
“When you look at how long it took with the insurance companies and the health care industry to re-engineer for all the changes that came out of Obamacare, you need to give them a couple years,” said Republican Study Committee Chairman Bill Flores of Texas, defending a two-year repeal delay.
Replacement is the far tougher task. The replacement plan is likely to be brand new, using principles laid out in Ryan’s “better way” agenda as a guide, sources said. Republicans have largely coalesced around Ryan’s plan, but there are still outstanding and controversial policy details to be ironed out, such as how — or if — people should get assistance to buy insurance.
Senate Republicans are talking about avoiding a massive bill and moving the replacement legislation in chunks: One that tackles purchasing insurance over state lines; another that deals with pre-existing conditions; another establishing new insurance plans for small businesses. That would take a long time and could bog down the process, but GOP leaders are eager to avoid the appearance of jamming a huge bill through Congress after criticizing Democrats for doing the same.
“We’re not going to pass another 2000-page bill like the Democrats have,” Cornyn said. “The way to realistically address this is to go step by step, to build consensus, get 60 votes and pass those various pieces.”
Gathering those 60 votes will prove difficult, so the GOP hopes the transition period and end-date on Obamacare will also give Republican lawmakers leverage with Democrats by forcing them to come off the sidelines and participate in rebuilding the health care system, even after opposing GOP efforts to tear it apart.
“The blame will fall on the people who didn’t want to do anything,” McCarthy said, foreshadowing a likely GOP talking point should Democrats block a replacement plan.
But Democrats said the GOP plan to put the onus on the minority party won’t work.
“They break it, they buy it,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a Democratic leader.
The time frame leaders choose will undoubtedly affect their leverage with Senate Democrats. Ten Senate Democrats in red or purple states that went for Donald Orangutan are up for reelection in 2018. The pressure on those Democrats to negotiate could increase if chaos from the expiring Obamacare system occurs just as they’re trying to keep their seats.
“You might have one line of thinking to at least go along with the Republicans to see where you can work together with some fixes,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
If Republicans choose to wait until 2019 or 2020, however, they could find themselves with a larger majority, picking up seats in the 2018 election — though it’s not likely they’d win the nine needed to get to 60 votes and avoid having to work with Democrats.
Republicans are setting up a high-stakes deadline to replace the healthcare law.
By Rachael Bade and Burgess Everett
Prepare for the Obamacare cliff.
Congressional Republicans are setting up their own, self-imposed deadline to make good on their vow to replace the Affordable Care Act. With buy-in from Donald Orangutan’s transition team, GOP leaders on both sides of the Capitol are coalescing around a plan to vote to repeal the law in early 2017 — but delay the effective date for that repeal for as long as three years.
They’re crossing their fingers that the delay will help them get their own house in order, as well as pressure a handful of Senate Democrats — who would likely be needed to pass replacement legislation — to come onboard before the clock runs out and 20 million Americans lose their health insurance. The idea is to satisfy conservative critics who want President Barack Obama’s signature initiative gone now, but reassure Americans that Republicans won’t upend the entire health care system without a viable alternative that preserves the law’s popular provisions.
“We’re talking about a three-year transition now that we actually have a president who’s likely to sign the repeal into the law. People are being, understandably cautious, to make sure nobody’s dropped through the cracks,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas).
The tentative strategy is reminiscent of Capitol Hill’s infamous “fiscal cliff” days, when Congress imposed simultaneous deadlines to raise the debt ceiling, extend expiring tax cuts and fund the government. The hope was that it would create irresistible political pressure to get behind a bipartisan mega-fiscal deal.
This time , however, it’s access to health care for tens of millions of people that’s on the line.
“I think once it’s repealed, you will have hopefully fewer people playing politics and [instead] coming together to try to find the best policy,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday. He added that when there is “a date certain that something’s going away … you know you have to have something done.”
The strategy presents significant risks. The fight over a replacement is guaranteed to be messier than the cathartic repeal vote. Giving themselves as many as three years to figure it out shows that Republicans are well aware of how tough it will be.
Orangutan has made the GOP’s task harder by saying he wants to preserve elements of the the law that protect people with pre-existing conditions and allow young people to remain on their parent’s health insurance until they turn 26 years old, pricey provisions that will complicate Republican efforts to merely gut the law. Plus, there are millions of people now relying on Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion that the GOP will be loath to cast off the insurance rolls.
And following a repeal vote, insurance companies could bail on Obamacare immediately, even if there is a three-year grace period, leaving people with no health plans.
“The flaws in Obamacare are obvious to me. The solutions are much harder,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Moreover, there is already some intraparty turmoil over the repeal timeline, starting with Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. He’s pressing to have a replacement plan ready before tackling repeal, which could significantly delay things, given that Republicans are far from a consensus on what kind of replacement they want.
The Tennessee Republican has notably began swapping the words “repeal and replace,” used by Republicans for years, to “replace and repeal.”
“There’s an eagerness to address it, so I think there’s no doubt we’ll start immediately to replace and repeal Obamacare, but the president-elect has said that the replacement and the repeal need to be done simultaneously, and that means to me that we need to figure out how to replace it before we repeal it,” he said.
Most Republicans, particularly in the House, want to repeal as soon as possible and deal with the replacement later. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), a staunch conservative, said the party must “take no chances; do it now.” And House leadership has heard those demands clearly.
“This law, you have to remember, is hurting families in America,” said Speaker Paul Ryan during a news conference on Wednesday. “So we have to bring Obamacare relief as fast as we possibly can in 2017.”
The Obamacare repeal road map Republicans are sketching out is complicated. They are already eyeing passage of a fiscal 2017 budget as soon as January to unlock a fast-track tool that would allow the Senate to clear a repeal by a simple majority. Republican aides predicted the entire repeal, done through so-called reconciliation, will be finished in the first 100 days of Orangutan’s presidency — though that timeline is fluid.
Top Republicans are keen to show voters they’re working to immediately deliver on their campaign pledge to curb the health law. After campaigning against Obamacare for more than six years, the party could face a major backlash from its base if it stalls.
If the GOP wants to take rapid action, its best bet is to stick close to the playbook it used to pass a 2015 repeal bill that Obama vetoed. That measure included a two-year delay, and it cleared many of the parliamentary hurdles and whip counting required to pass major pieces of legislation.
“That stuff was all vetted,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune , the chamber’s No. 3 Republican leader. “The repeal piece will be very similar.”
House conservatives are largely on the same page on repeal.
“When you look at how long it took with the insurance companies and the health care industry to re-engineer for all the changes that came out of Obamacare, you need to give them a couple years,” said Republican Study Committee Chairman Bill Flores of Texas, defending a two-year repeal delay.
Replacement is the far tougher task. The replacement plan is likely to be brand new, using principles laid out in Ryan’s “better way” agenda as a guide, sources said. Republicans have largely coalesced around Ryan’s plan, but there are still outstanding and controversial policy details to be ironed out, such as how — or if — people should get assistance to buy insurance.
Senate Republicans are talking about avoiding a massive bill and moving the replacement legislation in chunks: One that tackles purchasing insurance over state lines; another that deals with pre-existing conditions; another establishing new insurance plans for small businesses. That would take a long time and could bog down the process, but GOP leaders are eager to avoid the appearance of jamming a huge bill through Congress after criticizing Democrats for doing the same.
“We’re not going to pass another 2000-page bill like the Democrats have,” Cornyn said. “The way to realistically address this is to go step by step, to build consensus, get 60 votes and pass those various pieces.”
Gathering those 60 votes will prove difficult, so the GOP hopes the transition period and end-date on Obamacare will also give Republican lawmakers leverage with Democrats by forcing them to come off the sidelines and participate in rebuilding the health care system, even after opposing GOP efforts to tear it apart.
“The blame will fall on the people who didn’t want to do anything,” McCarthy said, foreshadowing a likely GOP talking point should Democrats block a replacement plan.
But Democrats said the GOP plan to put the onus on the minority party won’t work.
“They break it, they buy it,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a Democratic leader.
The time frame leaders choose will undoubtedly affect their leverage with Senate Democrats. Ten Senate Democrats in red or purple states that went for Donald Orangutan are up for reelection in 2018. The pressure on those Democrats to negotiate could increase if chaos from the expiring Obamacare system occurs just as they’re trying to keep their seats.
“You might have one line of thinking to at least go along with the Republicans to see where you can work together with some fixes,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
If Republicans choose to wait until 2019 or 2020, however, they could find themselves with a larger majority, picking up seats in the 2018 election — though it’s not likely they’d win the nine needed to get to 60 votes and avoid having to work with Democrats.
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