As the Trump administration bench appears to completely unwind, with the firing of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, and the subsequent ousting of his deputy for telling the truth about the firing, attention has now shifted. The latest is the prospect of moving Energy Secretary Rick Perry to the Veterans Administration, replacing Dr. David Shulkin, the lone Obama administration holdover on the Trump team.
Shulkin has been engaged in a war with Trump apparatchiks over whether and how much the VA should outsource medical care to the private sector and away from the VA medical system. The Trump insider team appears to have won the war.
Warning: this is all speculation. Not “fake news,” but informed guesswork until something comes to pass. The same was true of the long-rumored inside activity behind this week’s firing of Tillerson. His spokesman Steve Goldstein then got the axe, soon after Tillerson walked the blank. Goldstein’s sin: he committed the truth that Tillerson only found about his ouster from Trump’s midnight tweet.
Multiple press accounts now report that Shulkin is out at VA and Perry is in. The New York Times reported, “President Trump, fresh off replacing his secretary of state and C.I.A. director, is considering firing his secretary of veterans affairs and installing Energy Secretary Rick Perry in the post, according to two people close to the White House.”
The Times and other outlets said Trump met with Perry on Monday to talk about the switch. CNN reported, “Trump and Perry discussed the possible move during a lunch at the White House Monday.” No decision resulted from the lunch, according to the reports.
Why Perry? He’s a former Air Force pilot, which gives him street cred with veterans. The Times reported, “Mr. Perry is seen as a more pliant figure for the veterans affairs position. Unlike Dr. Shulkin, who had run the department’s health care system under President Barack Obama and spent a career in hospital administration, Mr. Perry has no background in health care delivery, but as Texas’ governor, he showed a willingness to experiment.”
But there may be more to it than that. Several sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they didn’t want to be identified, said the White House, and particularly the Office of Management and Budget, were ticked off at Perry because he was using back channels to Congress to oppose large DOE cuts in the Trump administration’s budget (which Congress has failed to enact and is unlikely to do so in the future).
A former high-level Washington lobbyist told The Quad Report, “I am sure the White House is disappointed with Perry and his lack of support for their goal to gut most of the energy R&D programs. They want him to focus on the big proposed increase in funding for weapons production, which is a high priority. VA makes sense as Perry has a high profile as a former governor and VA is a top issue in the Wisconsin Senate race. Trump needs to put a high profile guy in at VA in to help the Republican candidate against Baldwin.” Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin is up for reelection this year.
In a blog posting, Elizabeth Noll of the Natural Resources Defense Council said, prior to the rumors about Perry to VA, “In testimony to Congress last year, the newly installed Energy secretary Rick Perry famously wiped his hands of the White House’s embarrassing budget proposal, saying it didn’t reflect his policy priorities.”
That was then. This time around with the Trump budget plan, said Noll, “Despite Perry being on the job for a year he is set to go to Congress again and defend the Department of Energy budget plan that looks much the same as it did a year ago. So, how will Perry dodge tough questions this year?”
If Perry goes to the VA, he won’t have to defend the proposed (and unlikely to be adopted) budget cuts or utter truth. That would avoid an administration embarrassment.
If Perry departs, it sets off another of the Trump administration’s favorite games of musical administration chairs. Scuttlebutt focuses on the departure of Chief of Staff John Kelly and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. Who’s next? Who knows? Stay tuned.
— Kennedy Maize