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Trump Must Fire Swamp Monsters Comey, Koskinen, and Other Obama Holdovers Immediately!

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“You’re Fired!”

If there was ever a president who has the mandate, public expectation, and personal style to drain out the bureaucratic swamp and fire every Obama holdover within the executive branch, it’s Donald Trump. He should exercise this mandate as liberally as he did on Celebrity Apprentice.

Tackling the “fourth branch of government”

Historically, even when Republicans win the White House, the various departments and agencies that actually run government serve as a collective fourth branch and a fifth column, countermanding any semblance of the conservative agenda. Democrat presidents never have these problems because the inherent ideological balance in most of these public policy fields is already oriented towards implementing the Left’s priories. And after eight years of Obama, every nook and cranny of the executive branch will be contaminated with hostile elements. Obama has left no stone unturned in orienting each department, agency, and office towards the execution of a cross-sectional portfolio of liberal priorities.

Trump must be the first GOP president to break the failed streak of Republican presidents to completely drain the swamp. To that end, he must immediately ask for the resignation of every agency head within the executive branch, including those agency heads that don’t automatically turn over with new administrations.

First and foremost, he should get rid of James Comey as FBI director and John Koskinen as IRS commissioner. Both of those individuals have clearly lost the public trust to serve in their positions. Democrats will try to claim that they are tenured in, pursuant to congressional statute, for 10 and five year terms respectively. However, those laws are only as strong as the president wants to make them because a president has plenary power over the personnel he chooses to run executive agencies. The same liberals who believe the executive and judicial branches could run rogue shot over Congress’ authority over broad public policy issues will now suddenly make the case that Congress can force a president to accept a particular individual to head an agency. They are dead wrong and Trump should challenge this assertion.

President controls executive personnel, Congress controls policy

While the legislature is clearly the dominant branch of government in terms of setting public policy and the federal budget, the president gets to determine who will serve in executive positions. To be clear, Congress can always eliminate an agency, completely regulate the scope of its jurisdiction, defund the agency or the office of the agency head, place reasonable qualification conditions on those who serve (e.g. requirement to obtain a security clearance), and, of course, refuse to confirm any presidential picks. But Congress does not have the authority to force the president to maintain any one individual as head of the agency so long as that agency still exists through statute.

The Supreme Court ruled long ago that because the president has the power to appoint [U.S. Const., art. II, §2, cl. 2] executive ministers and councils, he has the power to remove them. After all, if a president can, within reason, appoint anyone he desires to head an agencies, he certainly cannot be boxed in by Congress to only choose or maintain any particular individual. Again, the Senate is very powerful and can defund and abolish an office or refuse to confirm a presidential replacement if they are upset with him firing an FBI director or an IRS commissioner. But they lack the power to directly force a president to keep people like Comey and Koskinen.

Madison explained the distinction in separation of powers very clearly in a letter to Thomas Jefferson [see page 196]:

[Congressional tenure laws] overlook the important distinction between repealing or modifying the office and displacing the officer. The former is a legislative, the latter an Executive function; and even the former, if done with a view of re-establishing the office and letting in a new appointment, would be an indirect violation of the theory and policy of the Constitution.

Although it is widely believed, based on previous activist court decisions, that the president cannot fire commissioners of independent multi-body commissions (such as the Securities and Exchange Commission or Federal Trade Commission )[2] that engage in quasi-legislating and quasi-judicial functions, a president can definitely fire the FBI director and the IRS commissioner in middle of their tenures. As Andy McCarthy wrote in November, given that the FBI is an executive agency and part of the Justice Department, “the FBI director is subordinate to the attorney general in the chain-of-command,” and is therefore subject to termination by the chief executive.

What about the congressional statute creating a 10-year tenure?

“This is a preference, it is not binding on the president,” writes McCarthy. “Presumptively, after being confirmed, the FBI director is retained by subsequent presidents. If the president decides to make a change, however, the president is constitutionally authorized to remove the director and does not need cause — at least not legally.”

Indeed, Bill Clinton, at the recommendation of then-Attorney General Janet Reno, fired the sitting FBI Director, William Sessions, in 1993.

There is no reason the same logic shouldn’t apply for the IRS commissioner who serves under the secretary of treasury.

Additionally, Trump should fire Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB is an unaccountable agency created by Dodd-Frank and operates autonomously within the Federal Reserve. It is essentially the “death panel” of the financial sector, with control over bank accounts, mortgages, and student loans, and serves to limit the choices of consumers in financial markets, making it harder and more expensive to obtain credit. Ideally, Congress should abolish the CFPB, but until such repeal is signed into law, Trump must appoint a new director. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has already ruled that the only way this agency can be constitutional is if it is under the executive stewardship of the president with its director being subject to removal by the president.

The same theory should apply to Mel Watts as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Although an independent agency, the FHFA completely oversees executive policy related to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — and by extension — the entire mortgage industry. Mel Watt, who was sworn in at the beginning of 2014 for a five-year term as director, is promoting the same affordable housing mandates that led to the original subprime mortgage crisis. Trump should immediately ask for his resignation.

Trump was elected president — despite his personal unpopularity — precisely because many people who don’t like him view him as the political Drano to clear out the federal sewer. The lesson from past administrations is that ALL of the agency heads must be fired and fired immediately. Once they are left in place initially, any subsequent decision to fire them is perceived as a scandal. But if Trump waltzes into the White House on January 20 and immediately tells all of Obama’s holdovers they are fired, it will resonate. That is exactly what people expect of The Donald. (For more from the author of “Trump Must Fire Swamp Monsters Comey, Koskinen, and Other Obama Holdovers Immediately!” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

How a Billionaire Democrat Running for Governor Won in Trump Country

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As results rolled in on election night, most political consultants and commentators were caught off guard by the victory of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

But in West Virginia, a state where Trump trounced Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, another wealthy businessman also claimed victory after capturing the attention of voters for his outsider perspective.

In the race for governor, Jim Justice, a Democrat who is West Virginia’s only billionaire, defeated Republican opponent Bill Cole by 7 percentage points.

Though they may be on opposite sides of the political spectrum—at least in party affiliation this year—the similarities between Trump and Justice are evident.

Justice, however, wasn’t the only candidate to win a governor’s race in a state where voters split the ticket.

In Montana and North Carolina, voters also elected Democrat governors, but supported Trump at the top of the ticket. By contrast, Vermont and New Hampshire voters elected Republican governors but supported Clinton.

Still, in none of those states was the support for Trump as overwhelming as it was in West Virginia.

There, the president-elect bested Clinton by 42 percentage points—a margin second only to Wyoming.

On its face, it’s difficult to see how Democrat Justice could have won the state against Republican Cole, especially given West Virginia’s support for Trump.

But to those who have watched the state move from a Democratic stronghold to one where Republicans hold majorities in the House of Delegates and the state Senate, Justice’s rise to the governor’s mansion didn’t come as much of a shock.

“Jim Justice was just an iconic candidate,” Rex Repass, CEO of Repass Research and Strategic Consulting, and director of the MetroNews West Virginia Poll, told The Daily Signal. “He’s the savior of the Greenbrier hotel. He’s well known in the state, and he’s a business person.”

“Plus, he relates to West Virginians very well,” Repass said. “He just comes across as one of them.”

And Trump’s popularity in the state actually may have helped Justice, 65.

“Jim Justice is the most Trump-like person running for office whose name isn’t Donald Trump,” Geoff Skelley, associate editor of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told The Daily Signal.

‘Hero’ in West Virginia

It’s difficult to ignore the parallels between the governor-elect and the president-elect.

“Trump and Justice, the two of them together winning in the same year, makes a lot of sense, especially the way things are going in West Virginia,” Skelley said. “It’s a state that’s suffered immensely in recent times, so it doesn’t shock me that voters really took to a renewal message regardless of the party label of the two candidates.”

Both Trump and Justice are wealthy businessmen with no political experience who used their positions as outsiders to woo voters.

Justice’s net worth tops $1.6 billion, according to Forbes, and he is the only billionaire in West Virginia.

His wealth made it possible for him to self-fund his campaign, as Trump did. According to campaign finance reports, Justice loaned his campaign more than $2.6 million.

Over the course of their lives, both men have pledged allegiance to both political parties, with Justice most recently changing his affiliation from Republican to Democrat in February 2015.

And they both campaigned on the promise of economic prosperity.

Now that they’ve won their respective offices, each man plans to collect a salary of just $1.

But though both Justice and Trump have been successful in business, they’re not without their troubles.

In October, one month before Election Day, NPR reported that Justice’s mining companies owed $15 million in taxes and fines.

Still, Justice’s success as a candidate, like Trump’s, can be tied to his personality.

“Personality matters immensely with these kinds of things,” Skelley said. “The idea of ‘Make America Great Again’ for Trump wasn’t dissimilar for Justice. He’s that ‘West Virginia First’ kind of guy.”

In West Virginia, Justice is considered a hero, and a hero for one reason in particular: Justice saved the Greenbrier resort.

The Greenbrier, located in White Sulphur Springs and dubbed “America’s Resort,” has been in operation since 1778. But by 2009, it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

That year, Justice made national news when he beat Marriott Corp., which thought its effort would be a slam dunk, to buying the resort.

In the 18 months following the purchase, the billionaire was able to return the Greenbrier to profitability, according to The Washington Post.

And six days after buying the Greenbrier, Justice hired back the more than 600 employees who were laid off when the resort was hemorrhaging money.

Justice then convinced the PGA to replace the Buick Open, held in Flint, Michigan, with a golf tournament at the Greenbrier—creating the Greenbrier Classic—and persuaded the New Orleans Saints football team to hold its training camp on the resort’s campus.

In June, after deadly floods hit West Virginia, the Greenbrier closed to the public. But Justice opened the resort free of charge to flood victims in need of a place to stay.

Defeating the guy who restored the Greenbrier to its former glory would be a tall task for any challenger, said Repass, who has conducted the MetroNews West Virginia Poll since 1980.

“He’s done so much, and he’s perceived as someone who can open doors and build positive economic momentum in the state,” Repass said, adding:

Bill Cole ran a strong campaign, but I think he was really behind the eight ball from the beginning. You buy the Greenbrier, and you’re a hero in West Virginia for a long time.

A ‘Coal Man’

Republicans in West Virginia for years have used the “war on coal” as an easy line of attack against Democrats competing at the state and national levels.

But it was nearly impossible for that line to stick to Justice.

Justice made his money in the coal industry, inheriting Bluestone Industries and Bluestone Coal Corp. from his father after his death in 1993.

In 2009, Justice sold Bluestone Coal Corp. to OAO Mechel, a Russian company, for $568 million.

In February 2015, the billionaire bought the coal company back for $5 million—less than 1 percent of what he sold it for—a dramatic indication of how much the price of coal had fallen.

“It’s ridiculous to think a coal man is wanting to support the war on coal,” William Gorby, a history professor at West Virginia University, told The Daily Signal.

During the campaign, Justice distanced himself from Clinton and said he couldn’t support the Democratic presidential nominee because of her energy policies.

“The reason I can’t be [a supporter] is her position on coal is diametrically, completely wrong in many, many different ways,” Justice said in an interview with the MetroNews radio network.

But the billionaire businessman’s record as a coal operator isn’t clean, detractors note.

“He’s screwed every coal operator in West Virginia at one time or another,” Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, a Democratic political strategist, told Politico in September.

In 2014, NPR reported that Justice had nearly $2 million in unpaid fines to the federal government.

Justice’s mining companies still owe a total of $15 million in fines and taxes in six states, according to a second NPR investigation published in October.

But Justice’s troubles in running his coal mines didn’t motivate voters to support Cole.

After the second of two gubernatorial debates, Repass conducted a focus group with 12 voters and found that though Justice’s tax issues “raised a red flag,” they largely still trusted him.

“It was about overall trust and feeling like he would work hard for the state,” Repass said, adding:

People understood that successful business people who have multiple companies from time to time have challenges with basically dealing with tax issues and having to appeal tax issues and having to work with vendors.

Typical Democratic Candidate

Gorby, who studies West Virginia and Appalachian history, said Justice is no different than other Democrats who have run for governor in the Mountain State and won.

Since the 1970s, West Virginia’s Democratic Party has made a habit out of nominating gubernatorial candidates who are independently wealthy or political outsiders, Gorby said. Think Jay Rockefeller, governor from 1977 to 1985, and Gaston Caperton, governor from 1989 to 1997.

“[Caperton] ran on the idea that you need an independently minded figure to run and make some structural reforms, and was able to get elected,” Gorby said. “Justice used that same language and was using that same mentality.”

But this year’s governor’s race didn’t exactly pit an outsider against a political insider.

Like Justice, Republican candidate Cole is a businessman; he owns several car dealerships in West Virginia and Kentucky.

Cole served just seven months in the state House of Delegates in 2010, when he filled a vacant seat. In 2012, Cole was elected to the state Senate and became president of the chamber last year.

During Cole’s tenure, the Senate passed a litany of bills that should’ve bolstered his conservative bonafides, including a ban on abortions after 20 weeks, a right-to-work bill, and a measure allowing residents to carry concealed handguns without a permit.

But Rob Cornelius, who used to work with the state party and currently chairs the Wood County Republican Party, said Cole’s political consultants ended up burying his record and distancing him from Trump.

“[Voters] didn’t know Cole, they didn’t perceive him to be conservative, and they enjoyed Jim Justice’s ‘Mayberry’ act,” Cornelius told The Daily Signal.

Gorby, though, said Justice was able to use Cole’s record against him.

During this year’s legislative session, lawmakers were forced to reconvene in Charleston for a 17-day special session to work out budget issues, which provided Justice with fodder on the campaign trail.

“Bill Cole wasted over a half a million dollars of your money on a special session to pass a budget that solved nothing,” the Democrat candidate said in an ad in September. “What West Virginia needs is jobs—good jobs that increase state revenue and decrease unemployment. That’s how you balance the budget.”

In a radio interview, Cole attempted to shift the blame for the special session to Justice and accused the Democrat’s campaign of pushing House delegates to slow down budget negotiations because “it’ll make the Republicans look bad.”

But Justice’s ability to use the special session against Cole had the desired effect, Gorby said.

“There were a lot of issues that came up during the campaign and during the debates where Justice was able to effectively criticize some of the policies that had been pushed by Cole,” he said. “Jim Justice made a persuasive argument by blaming a lot of that on the Senate president that we had to have a special session, that we spent several hundred thousand dollars, and we didn’t really solve a lot of the long-term budget issues.”

Some say one more legislative change may have hurt Cole.

During the 2015 session—Cole’s first as Senate president—the Republican-controlled state Legislature decided to eliminate “straight-ticket” voting, which allows voters to select a party’s entire slate of candidates.

According to the secretary of state’s office, 27 percent of West Virginia voters took advantage of the straight-ticket option during the 2014 general election. Of those who voted straight ticket, 53 percent voted Republican.

“That was a curious move to make for Republicans controlling both houses of the state Legislature to decide to do that,” Skelley said of the decision to eliminate straight-ticket voting.

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat, perhaps “had some foresight saying this is a good thing to do,” Skelley said.

“I wonder if that hurt Cole to some degree.”

Justice may be faced with an early test as he assumes office Jan. 16.

According to reports, Trump has considered U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., for one or more positions in his administration.

If the president-elect taps Manchin, himself a former West Virginia governor, Justice would be responsible for filling the vacancy. (For more from the author of “How a Billionaire Democrat Running for Governor Won in Trump Country” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Why Many Americans Trust Donald Trump More Than the CIA

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While flying home recently from an overseas trip, I watched a movie in which the CIA played a prominent role, and if the movie is anything is close to reality, the CIA knows a lot – and I mean a whole lot, from what’s on our computers to what we’re talking about on our phones.

Yet a healthy percentage of the American population seems to trust President-elect Trump more than our nation’s Central Intelligence Agency. How can this be?

I asked my Twitter followers, “When it comes to alleged Russian influence on the elections, do you believe the CIA or Trump?”

Remarkably, only 18 percent said they trusted the CIA while 44 percent said they trusted Trump and 38 percent said they were unsure – and it should be noted that while the vast majority of my Twitter followers are, to my knowledge, Christian conservatives, a good number of them did not support Trump. Why, then, are they so distrusting of the CIA?

To answer that question, we can ask this: “Do you personally trust the federal government?” As broad as that question is, I think the answer for many Americans would be, “No, I don’t.”

After all the federal government is the IRS, the Department of Justice, the FBI – and also the CIA. The federal government is the big bad “them” which is always out to get the vulnerable little “us.”

As for Trump, while he is about to become the head of that very federal government, he is perceived by many Americans to be “one of us” rather than part of the system, and the way he is conducting himself thus far as president-elect, with his Twitter account as active as ever, continues to reinforce that perception. He is the champion of “us.”

The federal government is also hardly a stranger to corruption or mismanagement, unless you believe the IRS was not guilty of unfair treatment of conservative organizations and the Department of Justice was not guilty of favored treatment of Hillary Clinton and FBI Director James Comey acted in a completely dispassionate and professional manner. And so it’s easy to think that the information linked from unnamed CIA sources is unreliable. After all, this is President Obama’s CIA, is it not?

Confidence in Institutions
We also should bear in mind that the source for the Russian hacking claims is the liberal, mainstream media, which has also taken a big credibility hit in recent months.

Consider these striking results from a June, 2016 Gallup poll focused on Americans’ “confidence in institutions.”

The pollster said to each participant, “I am going to read you a list of institutions in American society. Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in each one – a great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little?”

At the top of the list was the military, with a high mark of 73 percent positive (41 percent responding with “a great deal” of trust and 32 percent with “quite a lot”). At the bottom of the list was Congress, with only a 6 percent positive response (those responding with “a great deal” of trust were too small to number; 6 percent said they had “quite a lot” of trust in Congress). What a staggeringly poor showing for our elected officials, and what a strong showing for our military.

Numbers two and three at the top of the list were small business (68 percent total) and the police (56 percent). Rounding out the bottom of the list were big business (18 percent total), newspapers (20 percent) and television news (21 percent). And despite the constant attacks on religion in America, the church ranked number four on the list, one slot higher than the presidency, which was then followed by the Supreme Court, the public schools, banks, and organized labor.

The offshoot of all this is that the CIA is perceived by many as being part of a larger, untrustworthy system, while those pushing the Russian hacking narrative are part of the untrustworthy media. Added to this is the fact that the Hillary Clinton campaign is supportive of efforts to launch an investigation into the alleged Russian hack, and it’s easy to see why many trust Trump more than the CIA right now.

Callers to my radio show also emphasized that, whoever was behind the hack, what was revealed was only damning because it was true. Because of this, there’s very little sympathy for the Democratic complaints about the hacking and more concern with the content of the hacked material than the question of who did the hacking.

I personally have no idea whether Russia hacked us or not, and obviously, it will be important for Trump and the CIA to find a place of rapprochement and trust in the days ahead. But right now, Trump continues to represent the views of a fairly significant portion of the populace which is, after all, how he got elected. (For more from the author of “Why Many Americans Trust Donald Trump More Than the CIA” please click HERE)

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Where Was the Media Outrage When Obama Ignored Intelligence Briefings on ISIS?

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In an interview with Chris Wallace and “Fox News Sunday” over the weekend, President-elect Donald Trump indicated that he does not like to receive intelligence briefings every day, because the information can become repetitive.

“You know, I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years. Could be eight years — but eight years. I don’t need that,” Trump said. “But I do say, ‘If something should change, let us know.’”

Naturally, the media and liberal opponents are apoplectic. Outgoing Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. (F, 2%) told CNN Monday that Trump’s stance on briefings was “very concerning.” And Wired.com’s Andy Greenberg stated it is “the most troubling recent revelation of all.” Wrote Greenberg:

That dismissal and disregard of the intelligence agencies’ fact-finding represents a disturbing potential preview of the next four years, say former members of the US intelligence community who spoke with WIRED. They worry that it threatens to politicize the intelligence community’s work, pushing it toward conclusions that will please the president rather than inform him. They say the growing rift demoralizes staffers, leading to a loss of valuable talent, and that it could leave the commander-in-chief himself dangerously ignorant of crucial world events.

Now, the president-elect of the United States disregarding the value of intelligence briefings is absolutely a cause for concern. But where were the media and Harry Reid when it comes to President Obama and the briefings?

Back in 2014, the Government Accountability Institute released a report indicating that Obama only attended a little over just 40 percent of his daily intelligence briefings up to that point in his presidency:

In September 2014, the Government Accountability Institute updated an analysis of how much time President Barack Obama has spent attending his Presidential Daily Briefs (PDBs), as recorded on the White House official calendar and Politico’s comprehensive calendar. The updated study covered the president’s first 2,079 days in office, running from January 20, 2009 through September 29, 2014. Of those, President Obama attended a total of 875 Presidential Daily Briefs for an overall 42.09% attendance rate.

An unidentified senior Pentagon aide also confirmed to the Daily Mail that the president skipped his intel briefings.

“It’s pretty well-known that the president hasn’t taken in-person intelligence briefings with any regularity since the early days of 2009,” an unidentified senior Pentagon aide also stated to the Daily Mail in 2014. “He gets them in writing.”

Worse, still, is those sources in the Daily Mail report confirmed that the president knew about ISIS since before the 2012 election and ignored his intelligence reports to fulfill his campaign promise to remove American boots on the ground in Iraq. The withdrawal of American troops was accomplished in December 2011, and ISIS subsequently grew in strength to become a major threat throughout the Mideast.

The president, he said, was hearing information about ISIS ‘long before that. It goes back to the autumn of 2012.’

Al-Qaeda in Iraq, he said, had already begun to metamorphose into ISIS before Obama ran for president the first time. In 2006 the group’s Mujahideen Shura Council declared an Islamic ‘state’ in western and central Iraq, a development U.S. military intelligence was aware of since they were stationed ‘in country.’

By the late autumn of that year the nascent self-proclaimed Sunni country was organized and holding open-air military parades.

President Obama ordered America’s military to pack up and return home at the end of 2011. By that time, the would-be nation ISIS’s goals had exploded to encompass controlling land in Syria. And its tactical toolbox had grown to include the kind of genocidal preferences that ISIS has showed in 2013 and 2014.

In 2014, President Obama claimed that that U.S. intelligence had been caught off guard by the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. “Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that, I think, they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” Obama said during a “60 Minutes” interview.

Another former Pentagon official with experience combatting the Islamic militants told The Daily Beast, “Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s bullsh—ing.”

So, while the media would like to excoriate Trump for his seemingly hands-off approach to national security thus far during the transition, their words hold little credibility in light of Pres. Obama’s similar intelligence-briefings stance in the past.

Trump has yet to take office, but President Obama’s disregard for intelligence reports and his commitment to ending the war in Iraq solely out of rigid ideological reasons may well have permitted ISIS to become the global threat it quickly became.

Donald Trump would do well to learn from Obama’s mistakes. (For more from the author of “Where Was the Media Outrage When Obama Ignored Intelligence Briefings on ISIS?” please click HERE)

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Trump’s ‘Penny Plan’ Could Slash Federal Spending over Decade

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Being penny-wise could pay off big over the next decade, according to budget experts looking at part of President-elect Donald Trump’s spending plan.

While campaigning in September, Trump told the New York Economic Club, “If we save just one penny of each federal dollar spent on nondefense, and non-entitlement programs, we can save almost $1 trillion over the next decade—again this is spending that does not touch defense, and that does not touch entitlements.”

Trump’s plan is narrower than similar plans previously proposed in Congress for an across-the-board 1 cent out of every $1 cut in each federal agency’s budget from the previous year, because it would exclude cuts from the military and entitlements.

But, since most federal agencies are projected to grow by 4 percent per year, this could lead to a reduction in spending by a quarter over a decade, or about $630 billion less in nondefense discretionary spending, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Trump projected “almost $1 trillion” in his economic speech in September.

For now, the Trump transition team did not have details as to how quickly the plan would be implemented. More details will come after Trump takes office, transition team spokesman Jason Miller said.

“The penny plan is something the president-elect spoke about on the campaign trail as part of a broader economic and spending plan,” Miller told The Daily Signal during a conference call with reporters. “We’ll explain of the mechanics of it after he is in office. But it is an innovative cost-cutting measure.”

What seems to be a small reduction, one penny out of every dollar or 1 percent, would accumulate over 10 years. For example, a federal agency with a $100 billion budget would decline to $99 billion the next year, then to $98.01 billion the year after that.

The Trump version of the penny plan would apply only to nondefense discretionary spending, which already faces spending caps.

Discretionary spending includes areas such as education, research, environmental and health programs, foreign aid, or any spending that Congress must set. That’s as opposed to entitlement or “mandatory” programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that occur without annual action by Congress.

“Trump’s version of the penny plan is actually more targeted and thoughtful because it isolates this to spending that is already being capped,” Marc Goldwein, senior vice president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told The Daily Signal.

Goldwein said a one-fourth reduction in nondiscretionary spending over a decade will accumulate, even if the “penny” branding seems small.

“This will seem modest in the first years, but it will accumulate significantly,” he said. “I’m not advocating against a 25 percent reduction, but it will mean there are some nondefense discretionary programs that they’ve got to deal with.”

Goldwein also said this won’t necessarily conflict with Trump’s ambitious plans for infrastructure, since most of that will be financed through highway funds.

If Trump’s economic policies are successful in spurring job growth, then government revenues could increase enough to pay for infrastructure spending, said Justin Bogie, a senior policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation.

However, unlike other “penny plan” proposals in Congress, the Trump plan shields defense and entitlement spending.

“Entitlements are the biggest driver of the debt,” Bogie told The Daily Signal. “ [Trump’s version of the plan] limits itself on how much it can save. But, it’s better than nothing.”

Politically, Bogie thinks the penny plan could be easy to sell.

“It’s very anecdotal to say that if every agency cuts just one penny from every $1, you’ll have substantial savings,” Bogie said.

The plan already has support in Congress. In July, House Budget Committee member Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., introduced a version of the “penny plan” that “would cut a single penny from every dollar the federal government spends.”

This would be across the board, and would cap federal spending as a percentage of the economy at 18 percent by 2022.

It is quite unlikely lawmakers would have the discipline to keep a “penny plan” in place for a decade, said Damian Brady, director of research at the National Taxpayer Union Foundation. Yet, if such a plan is in place for even a few years it would at least reduce spending as a percentage of the economy and maybe lead to a budget surplus, he said.

“If it’s enacted and actually adhered to, it would definitely lead to more savings,” Brady told The Daily Signal of the penny plan. “It’s nice on paper but history tells us Congress and the executive branch don’t hold the line on spending for long. If they do this for a couple of years, they will have extra money to play around with and begin spending again.” (For more from the author of “Trump’s ‘Penny Plan’ Could Slash Federal Spending over Decade” please click HERE)

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Trump’s Welcome Interest in Kazakhstan, and Why It Matters

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Among the long list of foreign leaders phoning President-elect Donald Trump in recent days was Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev. According to some press reports, Trump described Kazakhstan’s progress since gaining its independence from the Soviet Union as “a miracle.”

If Trump was referring to the country’s economic progress since the mid-1990s, his description wasn’t far off. Yes, many Central Asian countries have faced daunting economic challenges, but in many ways Kazakhstan has been able to rise above the others.

During the early years of independence from Moscow, between 1991 (when Nazarbayev assumed the presidency) and 1995, the Kazakh economy contracted by 31 percent—a bleak situation, to say the least. However, since 2000, the economy has more than recovered, growing on average by 8 percent annually in the first decade of the new century.

When The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom started scoring Kazakhstan’s performance in 1998, the country ranked 136th in the world in terms of economic freedom. Today, it ranks 68th, actually placing it ahead of Western nations such as France and Italy. And Kazakhstan aims to do better.

In 2012, its government set a goal of becoming one of the world’s top 30 developed countries by 2050. So far it has made good progress.

Whether you describe Kazakhstan’s economic growth as a “miracle” (as did Trump) or simply “impressive” (as did the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), this nation of 17 million has made tremendous strides over the past two decades.

Which is why Trump can rightly ponder: What role can Kazakhstan play to help his administration on the world stage?

U.S. foreign policy over the past eight years has left the world more unstable and less predictable. America’s adversaries have been appeased and emboldened; allies have felt abandoned, and certain regions outright ignored.

One of the ignored regions is Central Asia. Though often overlooked, this region is important in regard to challenges such as nuclear proliferation, religious extremism, an increasingly provocative Russia and rising China, a destabilized Afghanistan, and an emboldened Iran. Kazakhstan sits smack dab in the middle of all of this and is emerging as a regional leader.

It is especially well-suited to help on the issue of nuclear nonproliferation.

One of the country’s greatest achievements since 1991 has been its strong commitment to the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons.

It divested itself of all the nukes left behind by the Soviets, and Kazakhs are proud of this fact. As North Korea continues to test nuclear weapons and as the future of the Iran nuclear deal remains uncertain, Kazakhstan’s voice in the nonproliferation debate is crucial.

Or consider the rise of Islamist terrorism. As a secular, Muslim-majority country, Kazakhstan has been able to counter the rise of extremism, making it a natural partner for the U.S.

Another consideration for the U.S. is Kazakhstan’s potential for oil and gas exports to help Europe break its energy dependence on Russia. Freeing Europe from this dependence would directly affect Europe’s security and, potentially, the need for the U.S. to act on its treaty obligations under NATO.

Since the 1990s, Western energy giants, including Chevron and Exxon, have helped Kazakhstan develop some of the largest oil fields on the planet, including Tengiz, Kashagan (which finally came online earlier this year), and Karachaganak.

Human rights problems inevitably loom over U.S. policymaking throughout the region. The U.S. should have a frank, open, and constructive dialogue with its allies in the region when and where there are human rights issues—with the goal of long-term democratization.

However, human rights should be just one part of a multifaceted relationship that considers broader U.S. strategic interests and stability in the region. One issue should not automatically trump the others.

So far it seems that Trump understands this. Let’s hope we see this in practice.

If the U.S. is to have a strategy to deal with the many challenges it faces overseas, then building strong and pragmatic relations with Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, is a must. A new U.S. administration can re-energize our relationship, and the timing now is excellent.

Kazakhstan can be a useful partner in the United Nations when it begins its term as a nonpermanent member of the U.N. Security Council next month.

Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, once said: “The nation with the most allies generally wins; that’s what history teaches.”

The U.S. needs friends in Central Asia, and Kazakhstan has many shared interests—and a lot going for it. (For more from the author of “Trump’s Welcome Interest in Kazakhstan, and Why It Matters” please click HERE)

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Perry Said to Be Trump’s Top Candidate for Energy Secretary

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Donald Trump has narrowed his search for energy secretary to four people, with former Texas Governor Rick Perry the leading candidate.

People familiar with the president-elect’s selection process said two Democratic senators from energy-producing states — Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — are also in the mix, along with Ray Washburne, a Dallas investor and former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

If Trump picks any of the four he’ll break with recent tradition of putting scientists at the top of the Energy Department. Among other things, the agency is responsible for policies on the safe handling of nuclear material and on emerging energy technologies.

Trump met with Perry and Washburne while attending the Army-Navy football game in Baltimore on Saturday. It was at least the second time he’d spoken to the men for potential roles in the new administration. Trump interviewed Heitkamp at Trump Tower in New York on Dec. 2, and is scheduled to meet with Manchin on Monday. (Read more from “Perry Said to Be Trump’s Top Candidate for Energy Secretary” HERE)

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Donald Trump Is Appointing (Gasp!) Conservatives to Serve in His Administration

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The perplexity, outrage, and shock of the left over the election of Donald Trump has been hilarious for those of us watching the liberal commentariat and its (sometimes unwitting) journalistic allies.

In recent days, the geyser of leftist anger has been given new life by the President-elect’s appointment of conservatives to prominent positions in his nascent administration. One headline after another seems to herald amazement that a man who promised conservative governance would appoint conservatives to leadership posts as he assembles his Cabinet. Incredible, right?

Mainstream Media Horrified at Trump’s Appointment of a Pro-Life Health Secretary

Tom Price is a physician who has served in Congress for more than a decade. A solid advocate for the unborn and opponent of the predatory abortion industry, Price is esteemed by his colleagues for his good judgment and sharp mind. Currently serving as chairman of the House Budget Committee, his “Empowering Patients First Act” is a comprehensive alternative to the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”).

Yet Price’s appointment to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services has been greeted with crass vitriol by liberals accustomed to using HHS as their political tool of choice to advance abortion on demand, whether surgical or contraceptive, in every facet of the American health care system. Here are some samples of Rep. Price’s reception by the Left:

“With Extremist Tom Price at Helm, the ‘War on Women Has Reached HHS’” – Reddit.com

“Tom Price, A Radical Choice for Health Secretary” – New York Times editorial board

“Women’s Health Care Threatened by Trump HHS Choice, Tom Price” – Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC

“Trump Pledged to Protect Medicare. His Choice for Health Secretary Has Other Ideas” – Los Angeles Times

Donald Trump promised to be a strongly pro-life President. He has appointed a man to lead the Department of Health and Human Services who is strongly pro-life; in fact, Price, has a 100 percent lifetime legislative score from the National Right to Life organization.

Donald Trump wants to block-grant Medicare to the states. “The state governments know their people best and can manage the administration of Medicaid far better without federal overhead,” explains his campaign website. “States will have the incentives to seek out and eliminate fraud, waste and abuse to preserve our precious resources.”

This idea is fiscally sound and commensurate with the principles of federalism. And it is neither new or radical. Tom Price has long supported block-granting Medicare. Yet now he is “outside the mainstream” (says Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer) and a “radical.”

Getting Personal

The attacks against some of Mr. Trump’s appointments are also personal. Senate Judiciary chairman and 20-year Senate veteran Jeff Sessions has been tapped by the President-elect to head the Justice Department. Sessions, a man who for decades has served the people of his home state without a whisper of personal scandal or political defamation, is now being accused of hidden racism because of off-hand comments he made 35 years ago.

I do not defend any racial bigotry on the part of Senator Sessions or anyone else, for that matter. However, to say that the “Specter of Race Shadows Jeff Sessions” (New York Times headline) is ludicrous. His record speaks to his belief that “all men are created equal.” “The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People … has, without question, done more probably than any other organization to promote racial progress in the South,” he said in his 1986 Senate hearing concerning President Reagan’s nomination of him to be a federal judge and, during the same hearing, strongly condemned the Ku Klux Klan.

Should a remarkably well-qualified, dignified, and decent man be denied a post in which his leadership and probity could do so much good because of remarks he made in 1981? And could it not be that the real concern of determined liberals is not those long-ago comments but the fact that Sessions is a principled conservative who will bring strength, resolve, and courage to the task of de-politicizing a Justice Department that for eight years has been a forum of the extreme progressive agenda?

Here’s what Senator Quinton Ross, the African-American leader of the Democratic minority in the Alabama State Senate, said about Sen. Sessions after the latter was nominated to be Attorney General of the United States: “We’ve spoken about everything from Civil Rights to race relations and we agree that as Christian men our hearts and minds are focused on doing right by all people. We both acknowledge that there are no perfect men, but we continue to work daily to do the right thing for all people.”

Trump Was Elected by the People to Appoint Conservatives

Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. He has a constitutional duty to appoint people who will help him enact the agenda he was elected to implement. The Left should not be endlessly breathless over the conservatism of his appointees, nor so vicious in their hatred that they would destroy honorable people at whatever the cost.

They will continue their campaigns of disparagement and personal destruction, of course. But one thing is sure: If the media continue to parrot the excessive attacks of the left and if enraged liberal commentators continue to spew bile at the prospect of conservatives in charge of the executive branch, they will lose even more of the credibility they saw dissipate on the night of November 8, when their smug predictions and confident projections came to naught.

Even they should not be so out-of-touch as to recognize that. (For more from the author of “Donald Trump Is Appointing (Gasp!) Conservatives to Serve in His Administration” please click HERE)

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CIA Says Russia Intervened to Help Trump Win White House

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The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Post said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.

The officials described the individuals as people known to the intelligence community who were part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and reduce Clinton’s chances of winning the election.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” the Post quoted a senior U.S. official as saying. “That’s the consensus view.”

The Post said the official had been briefed on an intelligence presentation made by the Central Intelligence Agency to key U.S. senators behind closed-doors last week. (Read more from “CIA Says Russia Intervened to Help Trump Win White House” HERE)

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Pruitt Will Be Game Changer at EPA … If Congress Protects Him From Courts

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Trump’s selection of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA is by far his best non-security domestic policy pick. Choosing the man who led the battles against the EPA’s lawless regulations to head that very agency is every bit as sweet as choosing Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. (C, 78%) to clean out the Department of Justice. There is no doubt that Pruitt will bring game-changing reforms to the culture of the EPA, and refuse to enforce any regulations that reach beyond the scope of their statutory authority.

There’s just one problem. Any loyal reader of Conservative Review can already guess it. If left unchecked by Congress, environmental legal defense groups, in conjunction with the lower courts, will essentially require Pruitt to enforce many of the regulations Obama implemented with lawless discretion.

Broken and hypocritical rules for standing in court

For much of Obama’s presidency, conservatives were on offense in the courts as sued Obama for legislating from the executive branch in an attempt to crush power plants and manufacturing. Scott Pruitt was a leader in pushing back against Obama’s overreach. Now the Left will turn the tables on him and we will be exclusively on defense in the courts.

Well, don’t liberals have the same right to sue Pruitt’s EPA policies as Pruitt did during the Obama administration?

This is where the rules of standing have been bastardized over the years, and have essentially turned the federal judiciary into an imperial super legislature.

Nobody can argue that power plants and manufacturers shouldn’t get standing in a court to sue when the executive branch promulgates regulations without statutory authority. If there is ever a legitimate “case or controversy” with established injury-in-fact to the aggrieved party, it is those industries who face wholesale collapse resulting from EPA regulations. In fact, interpreting the laws passed by Congress on behalf of aggrieved parties in the face of lawless administrative fiat — rather than vetoing legislation and redefining the Constitution — is quintessentially the business of the courts.

Contrast this with the environmental legal defense groups that launch class action suits simply because they stand in opposition to the ideology of those in power. Even though there is no established personalized injury, they seek to enact cap-and-trade style policies without passing a bill in Congress. When Democrats are in power, these groups work together with the agency. When conservatives are in power, however, these same groups get the courts to do their bidding against the will of the agency. They should never have standing in court to simply oppose policies they disagree with when agencies are following the letter of the law. Yet, in the ‘70s, the Supreme Court began overturning settled law regarding the rules of standing and essentially granted any third party ideological group standing to sue against the lack of overzealous environment regulations.

Unless Congress reins in the rules of standing, the bottomless pit of moneyed organizations on the Left will sue Pruitt for not enforcing the endless Obama-era edicts. They will largely succeed for a number of reasons. As we’ve noted many times, the lower courts are a dumpster fire and it will take years to clean them out, if ever. In particular, the critical D.C. Circuit is a disaster — with an 11-1 liberal majority on the district level (among non-senior judges) and at least a 7-4 liberal majority at the appellate level. We will find that a court system so committed to the “Chevron doctrine” — which proscribes broad deference to agencies that regulate beyond the scope of congressional authority — will suddenly become heavy-handed enforcers of laws that never passed Congress against the wishes of the agency.

Even if we win a few defensive victories in the courts, there is no limit to the number of avenues that the Left can use to attack a conservative EPA on every facet of environmental regulation policy. The victories are usually narrowly tailored to each circumstance, giving the Left more bites at the apple.

Further complicating things for Pruitt is Massachusetts v. EPA. Another lawless 5-4 decision from Anthony Kennedy in which he ruled states can get standing to force the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide — even though no such law passed Congress — the grievance is speculative and political, and the ability to redress it is even more notional. This ruling occurred at the end of the Bush Administration and will come back to haunt us as blue states file endless lawsuits. This is very different from what Pruitt did when he was protecting states from economic collapse stemming from regulations that never passed Congress. Again, the key element is what the text of the law actually says and the nature of the grievance for standing.

Over the years, the courts have always blocked out conservatives from obtaining standing in court to sue when agencies are not following the letter of the law. At the same time, they grant left-wing groups standing to sue in matters such as a monument of the Ten Commandments, where there is no tangible injury whatsoever. This is why courts have consistently prevented law enforcement, states, and taxpayers from suing the administration for not enforcing unambiguous congressional immigration laws, even as their communities and jurisdictions are flooded with crime and the fiscal drain of importing criminal aliens. Those grievances are always deemed “speculative,” while the global warming groups get standing without question.

Consequently, the courts will be the last stand for the Left when it comes to pushing for cap-and-trade and amnesty. They already have the votes in the lower courts to push their agenda.

As always, Congress is king

To that end, Congress must rein in the ability of the legal profession to enact judicial regulations in place of Obama’s administrate regulations. As we’ve noted many times, with few exceptions, the courts only have jurisdiction over the subject-matter granted to them by Congress. The power of the courts to engage in judicial review over agency regulatory policy comes from Sections 701-706 of the Administrative Procedure Act. Congress must revise 5 U.S.C. § 702 to raise the threshold for injury-in-fact, causation, and redressability as it relates to third party groups suing for non-economic or phony economic grievances.

In addition, Congress can pass a bill making it clear that the EPA has no authority under existing law to regulate carbon dioxide or promulgate any of Obama’s rules, such as the mercury, Boiler MACT, and Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) rules. Congress should also place a provision in the April budget bill prohibiting any funding for the EPA to enact those regulations.

With the courts out of the way, Pruitt can be let loose to systemically reform the entire agency. Much like with Jeff Sessions, the confirmation of Scott Pruitt is all hands on deck for conservatives. (For more from the author of “Pruitt Will Be Game Changer at EPA … If Congress Protects Him From Courts” please click HERE)

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