The White House Office of Management and Budget unveiled an ambitious government restructuring plan Thursday, calling for streamlined regulatory processes and a shakeup of agency roles.
Included in the plan is a proposal to merge the Departments of Education and Labor, a detail that leaked before the official announcement, and a proposal to create a new Bureau of Economic Growth within the Commerce Department.
The plan calls for moving food safety regulation under one roof at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and renaming the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Health and Public Welfare.
OMB Director Mick Mulvaney discussed the plans during a Cabinet meeting. President Trump introduced Mulvaney by warning that the discussion may be “boring.” Some cable news channels used the cue to cut away from the presentation.
An animated Mulvaney offered various examples of “byzantine” government processes. “This is stupid. This makes no sense,” Mulvaney said at one point.
Details about the reorganization plan were closely held ahead of the release, with OMB officials noting that the livelihood of federal workers could be implicated.
“We’re pretty pleased that the leaks only started during the last week,” OMB Deputy Director Margaret Weichert told reporters on an afternoon conference call. Weichert said some agency restructuring plans can be implemented this summer, but that others require legislation.
Among the changes that can be made immediately, Weichert cited internal shakeups at the USAID and the Interior Department, and the moving of policy-related jobs from within the Office of Personnel Management to the Executive Office of the President.
Weichert defended the idea to combine the education and labor departments, saying a similar structures exist in foreign countries, aimed at both “preparing children for the workplace” and “re-skilling adults,” with “flexibility to meet the needs of the workforce.”
“The goal isn’t to downgrade any of the missions of the two organizations,” she said. “We absolutely believe this proposal has rich merit.”
Weichert said she didn’t know why the reorganization plan calls for adding the word “welfare” into the name of HHS, but said she was concerned about political posturing rather than sensible consensus.
Weichert declined to say how many workers could be affected by the plan, but said “I am not concerned about us having too many workers. I’m concerned that 60 percent of our workforce is eligible to retire in the next 10 years… [and that] skills are not aligned with the jobs we need today.”
The reorganization is part of a broader Trump administration push to modernize government, including a recent trio of executive orders reducing union rights and quickening firing procedures for federal workers.
