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4 Ways Congress Sought to Change or Scrap the Electoral College

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On Monday, 538 presidential electors selected by voters on Nov. 8 will choose a president when the Electoral College votes in states across the country.

This year marks the fifth time in history the popular vote winner lost the presidency. The other elections were in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000.

Though Donald Trump won 306 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 232, it may not be over yet. Several activist groups are demanding electors reject their state’s voters and cast a vote for someone other than Trump.

More than 50 of the 232 Democratic electors, and one Republican elector, have even asked for a national security briefing on the potential Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee emails before casting a vote.

President Barack Obama opted against weighing in on what electors should do, but spoke during his Friday press conference more generally about the Electoral College. Obama said:

The Electoral College is a vestige of an earlier vision of how our federal government was going to work that put a lot of premium on states. It used to be that the Senate was not elected directly, it was just decided by state legislatures. It’s the same type of thinking that gives Wyoming two senators with about half a million people and California with 32 million get the same two. There are some structures in our political system that disadvantage Democrats. But the truth of the matter is, if we have a strong message, if we are speaking to the issues the American people care about, typically the popular vote and the Electoral College vote will align.

Congress has considered 850 separate proposals to amend the Constitution to change the way a president is elected, said Christine Blackerby, co-curator of the “Amending America” exhibit at the National Archives Museum.

Here is a look at a few of those efforts.

12th Amendment

The first major proposed change to the Electoral College was the only successful reform, coming in response to a glitch exposed in the 1800 election.

Presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson and his vice presidential running mate Aaron Burr got the same number of Electoral College votes, 73 each. The problem was, in those days, the second place finisher in a presidential race was the vice president. The House of Representatives voted 35 times before finally electing Jefferson president.

Congress passed the amendment on Dec. 9, 1803, and it was ratified on June 15, 1804, putting the president and vice president on a ticket for electors to choose.

Lottery President

In 1846, a proposal was floated in Congress to replace the Electoral College with a lottery system.

Under this proposal, each state would have its own election. The winners of each of those elections would then be chosen by lot in Washington. Balls with names of candidates would be placed in a bowl, similar to lottery drawings seen today on TV. The first name drawn would be president, the second name drawn would be the vice president, Blackerby explained.

The proposal, House Joint Resolution 8, introduced on Jan. 13, 1846, never came to a vote.

Still, the “Amending America” exhibit allows visitors to see the most popular person from each state based on Google searches, then entered into a random drawing, to see who could be president today if this system had been enacted.

Executive Committees

Although the biggest complaint against the Electoral College is typically that it’s undemocratic, the exhibit lists two occasions that Congress considered taking matters entirely out of voters’ hands.

In 1808, a constitutional amendment was introduced in Congress to scrap the Electoral College and replace it with a special committee of retired U.S. senators to choose the next president.

Congress introduced a similar proposal in 1860, just before the Civil War broke out. In this case, Congress and the executive branch would appoint a three-person committee that would choose the president every four years.

Direct Popular Vote

Of the hundreds of proposed changes to electing a president, a popular vote was far and away the most common. Similar bills have been introduced in nearly every session of Congress, but in most cases they were never debated nor acted upon.

The most recent examples where a popular vote proposal nearly passed were in 1969 and 1975, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

After the 1968 presidential election, third-party candidate George Wallace won 46 electoral votes. This prompted enough concern about third parties that Rep. Emanuel Celler, D-N.Y., proposed a resolution abolishing the Electoral College in favor of a popular election, in which the winner would have to win at least 40 percent of the vote. The resolution passed the House by a 338-70 vote, but it was blocked by a filibuster in the Senate.

After the close 1976 election, Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Ind., proposed a bill to amend the Constitution and switch to a direct popular vote. The bill failed by a close 51-48 vote

In other examples of action on the proposal to move to a popular vote, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on the proposal in 1947, 1949, 1951, and 1969. The Senate subcommittee on constitutional amendments held hearings in 1948, 1953, 1955, 1961, 1963, 1966, 1967, and 1969. (For more from the author of “4 Ways Congress Sought to Change or Scrap the Electoral College” please click HERE)

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What to Know About the Fiscal Hawk Trump Chose as Budget Director

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President-elect Donald Trump chose one of the most outspoken fiscal conservatives in Congress, Rep. Mick Mulvaney, to be director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Mulvaney, a South Carolina Republican, is a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, the most conservative group in Congress. He has pushed to cut both domestic and defense spending since being elected to the House in 2010 as part of the tea party wave.

“It is a great honor to be appointed director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Mulvaney said in a statement. “The Trump administration will restore budgetary and fiscal sanity back in Washington after eight years of an out-of-control, tax-and-spend financial agenda, and will work with Congress to create policies that will be friendly to American workers and businesses.”

If the Senate confirms Mulvaney, 49, as budget director, he will help shepherd Trump’s agenda through Congress, including drafting the president’s first budget, guiding repeal of Obamacare, enacting tax reform, and potentially, passing a major infrastructure spending package.

“We are going to do great things for the American people with Mick Mulvaney leading the Office of Management and Budget,” Trump said in a statement. “Right now we are nearly $20 trillion in debt, but Mick is a very high-energy leader with deep convictions for how to responsibly manage our nation’s finances and save our country from drowning in red ink.”

Here are four things to know about Mulvaney.

1. Not Afraid to Fight the Establishment

In 2011, as the U.S. was on the brink of default, Mulvaney voted against raising the debt ceiling, insisting that its passage be paired with “Cut, Cap and Balance,” a measure that would have slashed spending and imposed a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.

He also helped lead an effort to defund Obamacare that resulted in a 16-day government shutdown in 2013.

At the start of his second term in 2013, Mulvaney declined to support the re-election of then-House Speaker John Boehner, abstaining from the vote in protest.

2. Founder of the Freedom Caucus

After he lost his campaign in 2014 to become chairman of the Republican Study Committee—the largest group of House Republicans—Mulvaney helped organize a splinter group, the Freedom Caucus, to push the chamber further to the right.

The Freedom Caucus attracted national attention in 2015 when it pushed Boehner into early retirement.

As budget director, Mulvaney will be a key figure in repealing federal regulations implemented by the Obama administration.

Recently, the Freedom Caucus released a list of 232 regulations that it wants Trump to repeal, including ones dealing with climate change, nutrition, immigration, labor, and energy.

3. Willingness to Work With Leadership, Democrats

Mulvaney has allied with Republican leaders and Democrats on some issues.

On defense issues, he has opposed the use of a separate war funding account known as overseas contingency operations, a budgetary maneuver used to avoid spending caps to fund military and anti-terror operations abroad, such as the military campaign against ISIS.

He’s called the account a “slush fund.” Trump, meanwhile, has promised to invest more in the military and escalate the fight against ISIS.

Mulvaney, who speaks Spanish, has also worked on immigration reform, and he said that he supports legal status for some of the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

He’s friendly with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and was among three members who gave nominating speeches for Ryan in the House GOP leadership election last month.

During his run for Republican Study Committee chairman, Mulvaney told The Daily Signal how he balances his rabble-rousing instincts with dealmaking on issues he cares about.

“I don’t think it’s the role of the RSC chair to be a shill for leadership,” Mulvaney said. “This is not a leadership position. This is separate and apart from that. So I think it’s incumbent upon the chairman to walk that fine line between working with leadership sometimes and pushing back at them at others. And I think I’ve shown the ability to do that. You have to have that credibility. What’s the best way to move the larger conference to the right?”

4. Personal, Professional Background

Mulvaney serves on the Financial Services Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He first entered politics in 2006, when he was elected to the South Carolina House. Before that, he was a private-practice lawyer and businessman, working in his family’s home-building business, and helping run a regional restaurant chain.

Mulvaney has a degree in international economics from Georgetown University and a law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He was born in Alexandria, Virginia, but grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, before moving to South Carolina.

His House office is decorated with South Carolina sports memorabilia. Mulvaney is Roman Catholic. He is married with three children, a set of triplets. (For more from the author of “What to Know About the Fiscal Hawk Trump Chose as Budget Director” please click HERE)

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The Most Important Cabinet Member You’re Not Paying Attention To

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President-elect Trump is nearly finished filling out his Cabinet. One of the remaining spots — and in my opinion, the most important — remains undecided. The position in question? The director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The individuals who serve in Trump’s Cabinet will get the opportunity to oversee the agency or department within their specialized domains, like, for example, the Department of Defense, or the Environmental Protection Agency. But unlike those positions, the director of OMB gets the opportunity to keep tabs on each individual government agency.

That’s because OMB is specifically tasked with allocating the federal budget to the various agencies, as well as monitoring agency performance and providing financial management. OMB is also required to, “coordinate and review all significant Federal regulations by executive agencies,” — no easy task for a government that loves to spend money and promulgate never-ending regulations.

Since OMB is also responsible for drafting and formatting the President’s budget, this also allows this office to be intimately involved in all the policy and spending priorities for the entire federal government.

Although the director of OMB is not treated with the same eminence as those who run the State Department or the Department of Defense, few Cabinet positions are as important as the individual in charge of the budget office for these very reasons.

Some of the individuals chosen to join Trump’s Cabinet are controversial. For example, Trump’s choice for the deputy secretary of state postition, John Bolton, has been met with consternation by many in the liberty movement, such as Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky. (A, 92%) for his stance on issues like bombing Iran and supporting the Iraq war.

Still, conservatives and small-government Republicans should be optimistic about the names currently being floated for director of OMB. The first name floated was former Senator Tom Coburn. Coburn was an astute study of the budget during his days in the Senate, and was referred to by CNN as “a former US Senator from Oklahoma, who turned his Senate career into a crusade against government spending.”

He was also the champion of eliminating government waste, even in programs considered sacrosanct, like the military; he was a long-time advocate of fixing the Pentagon’s broken budget by demanding an audit. But Coburn also made that his mission government-wide, and was well known for publishing detailed reports on government waste.

Another promising name, and small government warrior, that has been mentioned is Congressman Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C. (A, 94%). One of the more conservative members of Congress, he is a member of the Freedom Caucus.

This often means that Mulvaney stands on principle against his own party. For example, when Republican leaders proposed the Bipartisan Budget Act — a bill to hamstring spending restraints by $63 billion — it was Mulvaney that spearheaded opposition to the deal.

In addition, Mulvaney has long advocated for a balanced budget, lower taxes, and eliminating corporate cronyism, like the Export-Import bank.

Among some of the other promising names that have been mentioned is David Malpass, a strong conservative economist by training, and a former high-ranking Reagan and George H.W. Bush official. Malpass also shares the list of names with Eric Ueland, a long-time budget staffer on the Senate Budget Committee.

The current list of conservative individuals under consideration for this position deserves more attention than perhaps any time since President Truman took office. That’s because this OMB director will have a daunting challenge in controlling government spending and debt, more than ever before. Consider the article by the Committee for a Responsible Federal budget, titled, “Trump Will Face Highest Debt-to-GDP Ratio of Any New President Since Truman.”

By our estimates, the national debt will total about 77 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) when Trump takes office, compared to 103 percent when Truman took office at the end of World War II, 58 percent when Eisenhower took office, and 46 percent when Clinton took office.

And yet, it’s not even fair to compare the debt under Truman with that of Obama. The debt that materialized under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman was almost solely related to the one-time expenses of fighting World War II. As you can see in the graph, once the war was over, the debts were quickly whittled away. That’s not the case today. Instead, our debts are becoming increasingly structural; the result of promised entitlement spending like Social Security and Medicare.

So really, the task that confronts today’s budget head will be far more daunting than anything that faced Truman. Consider this; by 2021, Social Security and Medicare alone will consume half of every dollar the government brings in. Whereas Truman could allocate surplus dollars to paying down the debt instead of buying tanks, post WWII, the budget director under Trump must decide between taking on more debt and tackling the acrimonious challenge of entitlement reform.

Still, conservatives deserved a good list of names to run what may become the most important office in the White House, and Trump has made a wise selection so far. This is what conservatives fought for. This is where we can make the government small again, and scale back Obama’s absurd regulations. (For more from the author of “The Most Important Cabinet Member You’re Not Paying Attention To” please click HERE)

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Electoral College Survey Shows Electors Will Stand by Trump

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There are some Republican members of the Electoral College who wish they were not voting for President-elect Donald Trump on Monday.

However, an Associated Press survey of more than 300 electors has found that Trump opponents’ dreams to use the Electoral College as the final place to block Trump’s ascent to the White House have little hope of becoming reality.

Although the electors admit to an unprecedented wave of pleas to change their votes, AP noted that electors cited everything from the law, to duty, to loyalty to cast their votes for Trump.

Trump won 306 electoral votes on election night, far above the 270 needed to win election Monday, when the electors will gather in their respective state capitals to vote.

For Trump to lose, at least 37 electors would need to forsake him. AP reported that only one Republican elector told AP he won’t vote for Trump.

Many are solidly behind the president-elect.

“Hell will freeze and we will be skating on the lava before I change,” said Republican Tom Lawless of Tennessee. “He won the state and I’ve pledged and gave my word that that’s what I would do. And I won’t break it.”

Republican elector Jim Skaggs of Kentucky said he will swallow his concerns and vote for Trump.

“His personality worries me,” Skaggs said. “He is not open-minded. I hope he is far better than I think he is.”

Misgivings aside, he said, “I fully intend to vote for Donald Trump. I think it’s a duty.”

Although being an elector is usually a very low-key role in America’s political process, electors told AP that has not been the case with Trump’s election.

“Let me give you the total as of right now: 48,324 emails about my role as an elector,” said Brian Westrate of Wisconsin. “I have a Twitter debate with a former porn star from California asking me to change my vote. It’s been fascinating.”

Although efforts to stop Trump have been organized, they have not been effective, said some electors.

“We got a stack of letters from idiots,” said Republican elector Edward Robson of Arizona.

Fellow Arizona GOP elector Carole Joyce said the deluge has been profound.

“They’ve caused me great distress on my computer, that’s for sure,” she said.

“I average anywhere from a thousand to 3,000 emails a day. And I’m getting inundated in my regular mailbox out front — anywhere from 17 to 35 letters a day coming from Washington state, Oregon, all around the country. Hand-written, some of them five or six pages long, quoting me the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, asking me again out of desperation not to vote for Donald Trump,” she said.

Joyce was philosophical about the fuss.

“… that’s their right,” she said. “I’ve had nothing threatening, I’m happy to say. The election is over. They need to move on.” (For more from the author of “Electoral College Survey Shows Electors Will Stand by Trump” please click HERE)

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Why 209 Is the Most Significant Number Behind Trump’s Victory

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Since her op-ed in the Washington Post last week lamenting “the way Trump won,” Clinton Communications Director Jen Palmieri has done a turn on a host of cable news shows, demanding “introspection” from the Trump team for supposedly winning by appealing to, and empowering, white supremacists.

Ms. Palmieri, it seems, has taken her sour grapes and disguised them as a self-righteous crusade against the very “deplorables” that cost her boss the election.

Ms. Palmieri’s op-ed and subsequent comments read like a calculated exercise in self-delusion; the kind where people construct an alternate reality to live in because reality itself is too difficult to accept. In this instance, Palmieri takes the existence of white supremacy in America as somehow proof that Donald Trump rode to power on its back.

While that might make a more comfortable world for Palmieri to live in — one where she doesn’t have to acknowledge the weaknesses of her own candidate — the electoral facts of this election simply do not bear that out.

Perhaps no detail illustrates this more than the number 209. That’s the number of counties that voted to send Barack Obama to the White House (and not just once, but twice), that flipped to support Trump — and overwhelmingly so.

Again, those are counties that voted for Trump after overwhelmingly supported a black president for two election cycles. If this election was indeed a cover for empowering white supremacists, how does Palmieri explain this statistic?

Aside from how impressive that number is, there are equally unimpressive numbers for Hillary Clinton. In fact, Palmieri might do well to heed the number six. That’s the number of counties that never supported Obama, but voted for Clinton. Yes, just six.

If Palmieri can’t discern the message embedded in those numbers, it’s this: Her candidate failed to reach reliable Democratic voters, but even worse, utterly failed to convince anyone else to join her team.

It wasn’t some bizarre pact with the Ku Klux Klan (an organization that Trump has disavowed) that put Trump in the White House. Nor was there an uprising of white supremacist voters for Donald Trump — or any popular upsurge for Trump at all, in fact. He received about as many votes as Mitt Romney did in 2012. Votes for Trump were just better distributed throughout traditionally blue states in the industrial Midwest — and that was crucial to his victory.

Even more damning for Ms. Palmieri’s claims of empowered sects white supremacists is that Trump actually did better with black and Hispanic voters than Romney did. As one pollster noted in recent analysis,

With Barack Obama off the ticket – and Ms. Clinton on it – higher percentages of both [black and Hispanic voters] voted Republican last month. Black voters helped Mr. Trump even more by staying home. In crucial Michigan and Wisconsin, Ms. Clinton received an estimated 129,000 fewer of their votes than Mr. Obama, more than Mr. Trump’s combined margin of victory in two states. [Emphasis added.]

Ms. Palmieri can bemoan the negative aspects of American society all she wants, but the simple fact is, that’s not why Donald Trump won.

Rather, the post-election analysis shows that Trump simply went to states that Hillary Clinton spent little time in instead taking them for granted. In Michigan and Wisconsin — traditionally blue states that went to Trump — Clinton’s campaign was drastically under resourced.

Per one report, Michigan had one-tenth the canvasser capacity utilized by then-Senator John Kerry during his 2004 presidential race. The same poor ground game cost Clinton Pennsylvania. As tellingly is where the candidates chose to spend the most time in the last 100 days of the election. Trump made 133 visits to Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin. Clinton made 87.

These electoral statistics don’t even begin to address the quality of candidates and their messaging, and the role that played in the election. Trump may have lacked the 30 years of political experience of Clinton; often much less polished, unfiltered, and politically incorrect.

In fact, it’s perhaps exactly what the voters were hungry for: a candidate that appealed to those voters who felt displaced, disenfranchises, and looking for real change (not the type promised by Senator Barack Obama back in 2008).

As for Hillary Clinton, she could not have been a more status-quo candidate. Moreover, she failed entirely to reach voters in rural areas, a constituency Democrats have long taken for granted. But without a compelling economic strategy, or any strategy really — except to promise another Obama-term — the Clinton campaign did little to sway them.

In fact, Politico reported that Clinton’s campaign team had one staffer dedicated to rural outreach — based in Brooklyn.

Despite Palmieri’s hysterics, perceived support from the fringe of American society is not responsible for electing Trump. Palmieri may not agree with all the Trump team’s rhetorical tactics. Indeed, some disagreement should in fact be expected, but her inability to recognize the strategic failures of the campaign she ran, not to mention the poor quality of her own candidate, should be evidence that Democrats are nothing but sore losers. (For more from the author of “Why 209 Is the Most Significant Number Behind Trump’s Victory” please click HERE)

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Dems Scramble to Prevent Their Own from Defecting to Trump

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Senate Democrats have been scrambling to prevent two of their members from taking a post in the Trump administration, trying to prevent any defection that could bolster Republicans’ control of the chamber.

They recently launched a “full court press” to retain Sens. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Heidi Heitkamp, of North Dakota, after each met with Republican President-elect Donald Trump, one senior Senate Democrat told Fox News.

Manchin now appears less likely to bolt — after saying he wants to remain in the Senate and being passed over for Energy secretary — which puts the focus squarely on Heitkamp.

The first-term lawmaker, who faces reelection in 2018 in a conservative state, still appears in the running for the Agriculture secretary post.

A Trump transition team source told Fox News the president-elect “really wants her” for the job. (Read more from “Dems Scramble to Prevent Their Own from Defecting to Trump” HERE)

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In Tillerson, Trump Nominates ‘Greatest Ally Liberals Have’ in the Cabinet, Says Christian Conservative Leader

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“The ExxonMobil executive may be the greatest ally liberals have in the Cabinet for their abortion and LGBT agendas,” Christian conservative leader Tony Perkins said of Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. He wrote on Monday before the nomination was officially made. He had been a strong Trump supporter during the election campaign.

Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, is “among the most accomplished business leaders and international deal makers in the world,” Trump said when nominating him. His career “is the embodiment of the American dream.”

The head of the Family Research Council noted in his Washington Update that Tillerson “not only led the charge to open the Boy Scouts to gay troop leaders but [his] company directly gives to Planned Parenthood.” Perkins continued:

FRC knows Tillerson all too well, having worked for years to put the brakes on his reckless agenda for a scouting organization that was already dealing with staggering numbers of sexual abuse cases. Unfortunately, the BSA, under Tillerson, ultimately caved to the pressure of the far-Left, irreparably splitting the Scouts and destroying a proud and honorable American tradition.

Tillerson served as president of the Boy Scouts from 2010 to 2011 and pushed for the acceptance of homosexual scouts and scoutmasters. However, when questioned by the Daily Caller, ExxonMobil said that it gave to Planned Parenthood through its employee matching gift and volunteer programs. The giving “does not reflect ExxonMobil’s philanthropic priorities or support for community causes.”

Support For the LBGT Agenda

Perkins also noted that while Tillerson led the ExxonMobile, its 2017 score on the homosexual lobby Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index “skyrocketed to 87 percent.” (It’s actually a score of 85 out of 100.) It had been only 40 last year.

The company had perfect scores in practices like providing medical and “soft” benefits to homosexual partners and “non-discrimination standards” for its contractors and vendors. It got good scores in prohibiting “discrimination” against homosexual and transgender people and “positively” engaging the “external LGBT community.”

However, the HRC criticized Trump for his four nominees with “troubling anti-LGBTQ records.” They are Rex Perry (Energy), Tom Price (Health and Human Services), Ben Carson (HUD) and Jeff Sessions (Attorney General). It strongly opposes vice president-elect Mike Pence.

Perkins noted that under President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “the State Department lead the global parade for the slaughter of innocent unborn children and the intimidation of nations with natural views on marriage and sexuality.” He worried that Tillerson will continue their policies.

Whether Tillerson will press these issues as secretary of state is unknown, notes Religion News Service’s David Gibson. “He would be serving at the pleasure of a president who has vowed to enshrine the social conservative agenda in his policies,” Gibson writes. However, Perkins’ opposition may “augur an unexpectedly early end to the honeymoon with evangelical Christians — Perkins was one of Trump’s most vocal supporters on the religious right during the campaign.” (For more from the author of “In Tillerson, Trump Nominates ‘Greatest Ally Liberals Have’ in the Cabinet, Says Christian Conservative Leader” please click HERE)

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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)

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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)

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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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