Breaking Down Donald Trump’s Cabinet Picks

Last week, we completed the peaceful transition of power from the administration of President Obama to that of President Trump. A great many of my constituents have significant questions about what a Trump presidency will mean for them, and for the entire country. For other constituents, the inauguration was a time for celebration since their party has taken back the White House.

As the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, l have profound concerns about the Russian interference in our election, and I will be helping to lead an investigation into the Kremlin’s meddling in our affairs.

For the purposes of this column, however, I will not examine the election that brought us a Trump presidency. Instead, I want to take a moment to discuss Trump’s cabinet picks. which are being debated in the Senate.

President-elect Trump ran on a promise to “drain the swamp” and help middle class Americans still reeling from the effects of the Great Recession. Regrettably, however, many of his nominees lack sufficient government experience to run a complex bureaucracy, have questionable conflicts of interest, or want to destroy the departments that they have been chosen to run – and in some cases, all of the above. Few, if any, of these nominees have experience championing the interests of the middle class, and a great many are millionaires, billionaires or spent most of their careers on Wall Street.

As attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions is charged with ensuring justice for all, but his past demonstrates opposition to reproductive health, civil rights and equal protection of the law. Rex Tillerson, nominated for secretary of state, has spent his entire career at an oil company whose interests have sometimes been significantly more aligned with the Kremlin than U.S. policy. Betsy DeVos, nominated for Education secretary, has spent her career arguing against public education. Tom Price, nominated for secretary of Health and Human Services, wants to slash benefits for seniors despite overwhelming American support for Medicare. And who could forget Governor Rick Perry’s inability to name the third agency he wished to abolish – the Dept. of Energy – now nominated to run, you guessed it, the Dept. of Energy.

One of the most objectionable choices, though, is Andy Puzder, who Trump has nominated to be secretary of Labor and has not received much attention. As the CEO of the company that owns Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, Puzder has fought against raising the minimum wage and expanding eligibility for overtime pay. In the past, Puzder has espoused automation because machines are “always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall or an age, sex or race discrimination case.” Is that how the new administration intends to create more jobs for Americans and prevent them from being sent overseas? By cutting pay and vacation time and increasing automation?

This is not to suggest that all of the President’s choices are poor. There are also a number of nominees with whom I have some degree of confidence. General James Mattis, nominated to be Defense secretary, is someone whom I have come to know visiting him in the field in Iraq, and who has a reputation for candor and strategic thinking. Mike Pompeo – whom I have gotten to know on the Intelligence Committee and has been nominated to be CIA director, can be extremely partisan, but if he puts politics aside as he is required to do, he has the intellect and devotion to the workforce to do a good job. And General John Kelly is as solid a choice as we could have hoped for as Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security.

But the long and short of Trump’s picks for key cabinet positions is that they are far more conservative than many would have expected from this former Democrat. And few of them should give Americans any confidence that they will be the champions of the little guy as candidate Trump promised or that they will do more to drain the swamp than they will to fill it.

  ADAM SCHIFF