San Francisco Chronicle

Overhaul is underdone

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Perhaps emboldened by his efforts to dismantle the federal consumer protection agency, President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney, has trained his wrecking ball on the broader bureaucrac­y. He vowed Thursday to consolidat­e department­s and programs conservati­ves love to hate during one of the reality-show-style Cabinet meetings that have become a dreary ritual of Trump’s rule. The president even worried aloud that the Mulvaney manifesto was too “boring” to make good television — never mind whether it would constitute good government.

Like any cast member The plan would also worth his 15 minutes, move the Supplement­al though, Mulvaney played to Nutrition Assistance Program, the cameras. Rebranding a formerly called food 132-page proposal introduced stamps, from Agricultur­e to last year under the Health and Human Services, soporific title “Delivering to be rechristen­ed Government Solutions in Health and Public Welfare. the 21st Century,” he called That would brand SNAP it his “drain the swamp” and other programs with a plan, a Trumpian catchphras­e word so thoroughly stigmatize­d casting demolition that Pennsylvan­ia, the as reform. That the budget last state with a department director was unfortunat­ely whose name included the seated next to Environmen­tal word “welfare,” renamed its Protection Agency agency Human Services in chief Scott Pruitt, who is 2014. trudging through a quagmire The executive branch’s of ethics investigat­ions,

structure is not sacrosanct did not noticeably

or eternal, of course; the deter him. He even retold

Education Department the hoary fish story of a

hasn’t quite turned 40, and single salmon regulated by

Homeland Security is still three different agencies, one previously rehashed by, an often sullen teenager. among others, Trump nemesis Revisions have been enacted Barack Obama. The occasional­ly and proposed president was pleased neverthele­ss: routinely, although “I think you addition rather than subtractio­n should put that on television,” has been the rule — he said. mostly, in a growing and

To get to some of the changing society, for good potentiall­y boring details, reasons. The trouble for the the overhaul would combine Trump administra­tion, besides the department­s of a probably resistant Labor and Education, apparently Congress, is its own stewardshi­p because the administra­tion of the government isn’t that interested so far, which doesn’t inspire in either. Call it, confidence in its readiness with apologies to the first to reshape it. Organizati­on lady, the Department of I should precede reorganiza­tion. Really Don’t Care Do U.

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