Free Republic

President Trump's new acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney isn't giving up his old job as White House budget director, meaning he can be forced to testify before Congress when Democrats retake the House of Representatives next month. White House chiefs of staff generally are off-limits to congressional subpoenas, but Mulvaney's decision to be both acting chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget sets up potentially ugly fights over his testimony. "I think this is a huge mistake for Mulvaney and for the president because it creates a real possibility for separation of...

Who is Shaun Donovan? Recently confirmed by the Senate to head the White House’s budget office, Donovan at first appears to be a typical bureaucrat. He has held the position of Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) since 2009, and has now been promoted to one of the highest offices in the U.S. bureaucracy. However, a look at Donovan’s tenure at HUD and his lack of knowledge about America’s fiscal circumstances shows that the Senate should have opposed his nomination. Instead, a majority of Republicans and every voting Democrat ignored Donovan’s ignorance about the federal budget...

The Obama administration’s new nominee for OMB director, Jacob Lew, had some interesting comments about financial regulation reform back in 2009. Watch: "Its important that other nations of the world do the same thing. They’d have to be similar rules around the world or else there will be a natural tendency for institutions to look for the places they would not have to comply with tougher standards." Right. The nominee to run Obama’s budget office is openly admitting that if the rest of the world doesn’t adopt equally unfriendly business practices as those in the liberal’s financial regulation reform bill...

Remember when the radical left wing, including our President, as well as the squishy, gutless Republican “moderates” lost their minds when Sarah Palin said she wasn’t all that happy to know that her special needs son and aging parents would have to stand before Obama’s “death panels” and be evaluated before they received care? Yeah, me too.

Jonathan Gruber, Peter Orszag and the press corps. The press corps is agonizing, or claims to be agonizing, over the news of Jonathan Gruber's conflict of interest: The MIT economist has been among the foremost promoters of ObamaCare—even as he had nearly $400,000 in consulting contracts with the Administration that weren't disclosed in the many stories in which he was cited as an independent authority. Mr. Gruber is a health economist and former Clinton Treasury hand, as well an architect of Mitt Romney's 2006 health plan in Massachusetts that so closely resembles ObamaCare. His econometric health-care modelling is well-regarded. So...

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag released a statement Wednesday about the birth of a daughter out-of-wedlock. The mother of Tatiana Zoe is Orszag's former girlfriend, Claire Milonas. She gave birth on Nov. 17, months after she and Orszag broke off their relationship. Orszag has since become engaged to ABC News reporter Bianna Golodryga, whom he met in April at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington. The joint statement from Orszag and Milonas said the two were in a committed relationship until the spring of 2009. “In November, Claire gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Although we...

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Tuesday nominated Trade Representative Rob Portman (news, bio, voting record) as the White House budget director, turning to a Washington insider and longtime friend as part of an effort to re-energize the administration and boost the president's record-low approval ratings. Bush said more changes are in the works under his new chief of staff, Joshua Bolten. "With a new man will come some changes," the president said. But he emphasized anew that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's job is safe, despite calls for his resignation from a half dozen retired military commanders. "I hear the voices...

May 22 — By Adam Entous WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush picked trusted adviser Joshua Bolten on Thursday to serve as White House budget director, a job that puts him at the center of a brewing election-year battle over record budget deficits. Bolten, who was a deputy White House chief of staff, vowed to be "a tight-fisted custodian of the people's money" while advocating Bush's tax-and-spending priorities, which Democrats blame for turning record budget surpluses into record deficits. His nomination as the director of the Office of Management and Budget must be approved by the Senate, which may prove difficult....