Trump taps Kushner to lead a SWAT team to fix government with business ideas

Washington Post ^ | March 27, 2017 | Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker

[Pinkbell]

President Trump plans to unveil a new White House office on Monday with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises — such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction — by harvesting ideas from the business world and, potentially, privatizing some government functions. The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump.

Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be staffed by former business executives and is designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington, float above the daily political grind and create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements.

(Snip)

Kushner is positioning the new office as “an offensive team” — an aggressive, nonideological ideas factory capable of attracting top talent from both inside and outside of government, and serving as a conduit with the business, philanthropic and academic communities.

“We should have excellence in government,” Kushner said Sunday in an interview in his West Wing office. “The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens.”

The innovation office has a particular focus on technology and data, and it is working with such titans as Apple chief executive Tim Cook, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff and Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk. The group has already hosted sessions with more than 100 such leaders and government officials.

[Pinkbell]

Kushner’s ambitions for what the new office can achieve are grand. At least to start, the team plans to focus its attention on reimagining Veterans Affairs; modernizing the technology and data infrastructure of every federal department and agency; remodeling workforce-training programs; and developing “transformative projects” under the banner of Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, such as providing broadband Internet service to every American.

In some cases, the office could direct that government functions be privatized, or that existing contracts be awarded to new bidders.

The office will also focus on combating opioid abuse, a regular emphasis for Trump on the campaign trail. The president later this week plans to announce an official drug commission devoted to the problem that will be chaired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R). He has been working informally on the issue for several weeks with Kushner, despite reported tension between the two.

[exnavy]

Not sure this is going to shrink an already bloated feral gubmint.

[Zenjitsuman]

bring in Nute he is always talking about an overhaul of federal system.

[TheConservator]

... still searching for a signature achievement.

WAPO is sufficiently impressed that it took til the end of the 2nd paragraph to through in a jab. The man has only been in office two months!

[imardmd1]

H dot E dot double-toothpicks! This is just a bald-faced way to grab family power via flagrant nepotism, a la Clinton and Bush and Kennedy, by expanding the function of the magnate overlords and ignoring the Constitution re representation of The People.

Hopefully, this is just more satirical "semi-news," right?

[nathanbedford]

Not one word in the description telling us how this… Thing… Will see as its mandate to reduce and eliminate government only how it will make it more efficient. The old siren, folks, this time we can make socialism work better because we are smarter than every socialist before us who has failed.

But of one thing we can be sure, its confidence in itself is not lacking. Any bunch, even a bunch of billionaires, that thinks it can make a real and permanent solution to opioid addiction through government programs probably also believes that we are winning the war on drugs, or, worse, thinks it knows how to win it. Such an elite group has to be driven by a Napoleonic self-confidence that it can conquer where everyone else has failed. Not one word telling us about congressional oversight, about budgeting for this organization, about its powers apart from its close relationship by blood, marriage and intimate membership in the billionaires club to presumably wheedle executive orders out of the president.

When Nigel Farage stood up in front of the European union and demanded, "who the hell do you think you are? Who elected you?" He had a point.

[sargon]

H dot E dot double-toothpicks! This is just a bald-faced way to grab family power via flagrant nepotism, a la Clinton and Bush and Kennedy, by expanding the function of the magnate overlords and ignoring the Constitution re representation of The People.

Hopefully, this is just more satirical "semi-news," right?

Hopefully, that's what your post was...

[sargon]

Such an elite group has to be driven by a Napoleonic self-confidence that it can conquer where everyone else has failed.

Such confidence could certainly be a positive thing, if directed properly...

[nathanbedford]

… Or properly overseen.

This can be a benign force for a limited period of time until it becomes, like all bureaucracies, dug in and self-aggrandizing.

Or,

it can become like the whiz kids that surrounded Franklin Roosevelt and did generations worth of mischief.

[Angels27]

Good grief. This is getting worse than watching the W Bush administration.

[sargon]

Not one word in the description telling us how this… Thing… Will see as its mandate to reduce and eliminate government only how it will make it more efficient.

There have been bona fide steps proposed and taken by this President to "reduce and eliminate government".

Whether that is the focus of this "Thing" or not, there can be no doubt that reducing government—in numerous areas—is a goal of the Trump administration.

[nathanbedford]

That may be in some areas but we certainly did not see it when the administration supported Rino care, did we?

[9YearLurker]

Are there any actual, philosophical Republicans involved—or is it all, like Kusnher, Cohn, Ivanka, and the CEOs, liberal Democrats?

[sargon]

This can be a benign force for a limited period of time until it becomes, like all bureaucracies, dug in and self-aggrandizing.

Or,

it can become like the whiz kids that surrounded Franklin Roosevelt and did generations worth of mischief

So only negative outcomes are conceivable?

[Jonty30]

You could eliminate 90% of government workers through technology. A lot things could be put on the web for people to find.

[Gargantua]

While your skepticism has been well-earned by the professional political class which preceded him, Trump has spent his first two months doing nothing but keeping campaign promises. Until and unless he changes that, he has my confidence.

As to the corpulence of our current government swine, I believe it is among the goals of this Swat Team to put those steatopygic piggys on a liposuction diet.

[9YearLurker]

Note how the RINO/GOPe Priebus is now cast as a hardline conservative, and Trump is handing over power to the Democrats—Kushner and Cohn, most notably—in (and outside) his administration.

[nathanbedford]

So only negative outcomes are conceivable? I thought I said, "This can be a benign force" so it is not fair of you to play games with words.

It is not what is "conceivable" but what is constitutional, conservative, prudent, likely. These people want and intend to wield power over us. We have a Constitution to protect us against exactly that, a federal government exercising powers beyond its mandate. We have history to tell us about entrenched bureaucracies. We have history to tell us about unaccountable arms of government.

We have a recent campaign in which everyone who was not Trump-correct was labeled a globalist and a slave of Goldman Sachs.

That was then, this is now.

[Gargantua]

How dystopian and stuff. I think Trump will be viewed historically, looking back years or decades from now, as the greatest president this country ever had. His changes and business-model innovations and institutions will outlive us all, and the country will be the better for it for the coming century at least.

In my humble, uneducated opinion.

[Gargantua]

I’m sure it hasn’t slipped your notice that your logon rendered backwards is “nogras.” I have no idea what that means in Matabele.