Thread: Obama elevates Small Business Administration head to Cabinet, seeks authority to merg

Obama elevates Small Business Administration head to Cabinet, seeks authority to merge agencies

Published January 13, 2012
| FoxNews.com


WASHINGTON – President Obama announced Friday that he is elevating the head of the Small Business Administration to a Cabinet-level position, as he urged Congress to also grant him permission to consolidate that and other federal agencies in an attempt to make government more efficient.

The decision to bring SBA Administrator Karen Mills into the president's Cabinet does not need congressional approval. However, Obama's much broader proposal to merge overlapping agencies does -- the president appealed to Congress Friday to help make that happen.

"This is the same sort of authority that every business owner has to make sure that his or her company keeps pace with the times," Obama said. "Let me be clear, I will only use this authority for reforms that result in more efficiency, better service and leaner government."
Under the proposal, six major trade and commerce agencies with overlapping programs would be merged. The Commerce Department would be among those that would cease to exist.

The proposal dates back to the president's 2011 State of the Union address, in which the president complained of government overlap and red tape that clogs the federal government, promising to tackle the problem. He injected a bit of humor into his speech to illustrate the point: "The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they're in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them when they're in saltwater," he said to laughter. "I hear it gets even more complicated once they're smoked."

By late that year, however, officials shied away from forecasting when the president would fulfill his promise.

The White House announced early Friday morning that Obama would seek authority from Congress, not granted since the days of Ronald Reagan, to reorganize and consolidate portions of the federal government. His first proposal would be to reduce redundancy in the area of trade and commerce.

Should Congress grant the president this streamlining authority, each proposal he made would then receive an up-or-down vote from Congress within 90 days.

However, the president's track record with Congress isn't exactly favorable, following public disputes over issues like the nation's debt ceiling and extending payroll tax cuts. In an increasingly fierce election season, the president's move could be aimed at putting Congress on the defense.

The administration has for months highlighted a "We Can't Wait" campaign, intended to showcase issues that the White House says Congress isn't acting on. The president, therefore, has been unilaterally taking action; igniting controversy over whether he is overstepping his constitutional authority.

Now, the president will lean on the very Congress that he's been lambasting for its inaction.

The administration admits 1,000 to 2,000 jobs would be lost in the consolidation process, should it be approved, but officials say the plan would fall in line with the natural course of employee departure. The White House also says the plan could save the government $3 billion over 10 years.

From Congress, a spokesman for Sen. Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, pledged Obama's plan would get a careful review.

The spokesman, Don Stewart, also said: "After presiding over one of the largest expansions of government in history, and a year after raising the issue in his last State of the Union, it's interesting to see the president finally acknowledge that Washington is out of control."

Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, said Republicans "look forward to hearing more" about the plan.

"Given the president's record of growing government, we're interested to learn whether this proposal represents actual relief for American businesses or just the appearance of it. American small businesses are more concerned about this administration's policies than from which building in Washington they originate," he said. "We hope the president isn't simply proposing new packaging for the same burdensome approach. However, eliminating duplicative programs and making the federal government more simple, streamlined, and business-friendly is always an idea worth exploring."

Fox News' Kelly Chernenkoff and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read more: Obama Elevates Small Business Administration Head To Cabinet, Seeks Authority To Merge Agencies | Fox News

APNewsBreak: Obama seeks power to merge agencies

Jan 13, 7:45 AM (ET)

By BEN FELLER

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama will ask Congress on Friday for greater power to shrink the federal government, and his first idea is merging six sprawling trade and commerce agencies whose overlapping programs can be baffling to businesses, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.
Obama will call on Congress to give him a type of reorganizational power last held by a president when Ronald Reagan was in office. The Obama version would be a so-called consolidation authority allowing him to propose mergers that promise to save money and help consumers. The deal would entitle him to an up-or-down vote from Congress in 90 days.
It would be up to lawmakers, therefore, to first grant Obama this fast-track authority and then decide whether to approve any of his specific ideas.
The White House said Obama would address his proposals for government reform Friday morning. The official confirmed the details to the AP on condition of anonymity ahead of the president's event.
In an election year and a political atmosphere of tighter spending, Obama's motivation is about improving a giant bureaucracy - but that's hardly all of it.
To voters sick of dysfunction, Obama wants to show some action on making Washington work better. Politically, his plan would allow him to do so by putting the onus on Congress and in particular his Republican critics in the House and Senate, to show why they would be against the pursuit of a leaner government.
Obama also has an imperative to deliver. He made a promise to come up with a smart reorganization of the government in his last State of the Union speech. That was nearly a year ago.
At the time, Obama grabbed attention by pointing out the absurdity of government inefficiency. In what he called his favorite example, Obama said: "The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they're in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them when they're in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they're smoked."
The White House said the problem is serious for consumers who turn to their government for help and often do not know where to begin.
Not in decades has the government undergone a sustained reorganization of itself. Presidents have tried from time to time, but each part of the bureaucracy has its own defenders inside and outside the government, which can make merger ideas politically impossible. That's particularly true because "efficiency" is often another way of saying people will lose their jobs.
Obama hopes to enhance his chances by getting Congress to give him the assurance of a clean, relatively speedy vote on any of his proposals.
There is no clear sign that Obama would get that cooperation. He spent much of 2011 in gridlock with Republicans who control the House and can halt votes in the Senate.
Should he prevail, Obama's first project would be to combine six major operations of the government that focus on business and trade.
They are: the Commerce Department's core business and trade functions; the Small Business Administration; the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative; the Export-Import Bank; the Overseas Private Investment Corporation; and the Trade and Development Agency. The goal would be one agency designed to help businesses thrive.

The official said 1,000 to 2,000 jobs would be cut, but the administration would do so through attrition; that is, as people routinely leave their jobs over time.

The administration said the merger would save $3 billion over 10 years by getting rid of duplicative overhead costs, human resources divisions and programs.
The point, the official said, is not just making the government smaller but better by saving people time and eliminating bureaucratic nightmares. The idea for the consolidated business agency grew out of discussions with hundreds of business leaders and agency heads over the last several months.
The administration official presented Obama as the CEO of an operation who should have more power to influence how it is designed. According to the White House, presidents held such a reorganizational authority for about 50 years until it ran out during Reagan's presidency in 1984.

My Way News - APNewsBreak: Obama seeks power to merge agencies

Karen G. Mills


Karen Gordon Mills was sworn in April 6, 2009, as the 23rd Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration after being appointed by President Barack Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
She leads a team of 3,000 employees whose mission is to help entrepreneurs and small business owners grow and create jobs by providing greater access to capital, counseling, federal contracting opportunities, disaster assistance and more. Among its priorities, the SBA has a portfolio of more than $90 billion in loan guarantees. Each year, the agency helps leverage nearly $100 billion in federal contracts to small businesses and supports free counseling and technical assistance to more than 1 million entrepreneurs. In addition, SBA provides disaster assistance to homeowners, renters, and businesses with the help of 2,000 additional on-call employees.
Throughout her career, Mills has owned, managed, mentored, and invested in small and growing businesses across the country.
As an investor and owner, she helped several small manufacturers improve their competitiveness and ultimately survive the downturn of the early 1990s. This included producers of hardwood flooring, refrigerator motor manufacturers, plastic injection molding companies, and more. More recently, she was President of the MMP Group, which invested and grew businesses in sectors such as consumer products, food, textiles, and industrial components.
In 2007, Maine Gov. John Baldacci appointed Mills to chair the state’s Council on Competitiveness and the Economy, where she focused on attracting investment in rural and regional development initiatives, including a regional economic cluster with Maine’s boatbuilding industry. She also served on the Governor’s Council for the Redevelopment of the Brunswick Naval Air Station.
In her current position, Mills has helped expand access to capital through SBA lending, increase small business’ share of federal contracts, strengthen SBA’s network of more than 14,000 affiliated counselors, and oversee critical disaster assistance operations across the country.
Mills earned an A.B. in economics from Harvard University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School where she was a Baker Scholar. Additionally, she served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was vice chairman of the Harvard Overseers.

She and her husband, Barry Mills, president of Bowdoin College, live in Brunswick, Maine. They have three sons.











Office of the Administrator - Staff - Karen G. Mills | SBA.gov

President Barack Obama will ask Congress on Friday for greater power to shrink the federal government

Perfect now start at the top and work your way down...do ya think he will use shrink wrap????

Obama Bid to Cut the Government Tests Congress
Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama emphasized the confusing tangle of agencies that businesses face when they seek help from the government.
By MARK LANDLER and ANNIE LOWREY
Published: January 13, 2012


WASHINGTON — President Obama on Friday announced an aggressive campaign to shrink the size of the federal government, a proposal less notable for its goal — the fight against bloat has been embraced by every modern-day president — than for the political challenge it poses to a hostile Congress.


Mr. Obama called on lawmakers to grant him broad new powers to propose mergers of agencies, which Congress would then have to approve or reject in an up-or-down vote. If granted the authority, he said, he would begin pruning by folding the Small Business Administration and five other trade and business agencies into a single agency that would replace the Commerce Department.

The White House estimated that the consolidation would save $3 billion over 10 years and result in reductions of 1,000 to 2,000 jobs. The savings is a mere rounding error in the $3.7 trillion annual budget, but the numbers may be less important than the message that Mr. Obama wants to cut wasteful spending.

“No business or nonprofit leader would allow this kind of duplication or unnecessary complexity in their operations,” Mr. Obama said to an audience of small business owners at the White House. “You wouldn’t do it when you’re thinking about your businesses, so why is it O.K. for our government? It’s not.”

By putting the onus on Congress to provide the authority for streamlining the government, Mr. Obama is seizing a core Republican issue — the inexorable growth of the public sector in recent decades — and trying to turn it to his advantage. Even his language was reminiscent of Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential front-runner, who says he would use his experience in business to make government more efficient.

It is not clear whether Congress, where much of Mr. Obama’s legislative agenda has languished, will go along with this initiative. Republicans were immediately skeptical, suggesting that the White House was more interested in honing its re-election message than in reducing the size of government.

Even Democratic leaders expressed misgivings about folding the Office of the United States Trade Representative, a stand-alone agency with just 227 employees, into a large bureaucracy, saying it could harm American trade policy.

“Making it just another corner of a new bureaucratic behemoth would hurt American exports and hinder American job creation,” said Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, in a statement with Representative Dave Camp, the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Despite regular vows by presidents to overhaul government — Mr. Obama made one in his State of the Union address last January — few have followed through. Those who did, like Richard M. Nixon, often met with failure. Scholars have mixed feelings about such reorganizations, with some arguing that they rarely lead to lower head counts, more effective departments or savings.

“My gut tells me those benefits will end up being much smaller than advertised, and the costs much larger,” said Steven M. Teles, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, pointing to the time wasted during the consolidation and the changed political dynamic between the agencies and Congress.

But experts on government efficiency applauded the initiative, saying it was overdue, and some analysts said it made sense to combine agencies involved in business development, foreign investment and trade promotion into a single department with the mandate to promote American exports.

“If you look at American exports, it’s dominated by big business,” said Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University. “If you want small and medium enterprises to get more involved in exporting” — a goal of the Obama administration — “having small business and the trade office in the same agency makes sense,” he said. “So this could be a boon for that.”

Mr. Obama emphasized the confusing tangle of agencies that businesses face when they seek help from the government. To illustrate the problem, he gestured toward a screen behind him that showed the dozens of Web sites, offices and customer service centers, many with overlapping functions.



This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 13, 2012

An earlier version of this article contained an incorrect count of the people who work at the Office of the United States Trade Representative. It has 227 employees, not 277.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 14, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama Bid To Cut The Government Tests Congress.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/us...cies.html?_r=1


Again I repeat he should start with the top 2 in the big house and work his way down, once that is accomplished we can go from there

Does Obama’s Latest Ruse Plays Us For Fools?
Posted on January 13, 2012 by Conservative Byte

After a year of interminable feuds with congressional Republicans who made smaller, cheaper federal government a political crusade, President Obama on Friday signaled his intention to do some sail-trimming of his own.

Obama asked Congress for the authority to consolidate the roles of several federal agencies which he said would lead to streamlined services and a smaller government workforce.

The proposal comes at a politically opportune moment for the president, who has faced sustained Republican criticism that his administration has failed to tame a bloated federal bureaucracy.

With an eye squarely on his reelection campaign, Obama announced that he would initially focus on merging sprawling entities that deal with small businesses in a bid to save $3 billion by eliminating more than 1,000 jobs over the next decade.

Almost a year ago, Obama promised in his State of the Union address to create a leaner, more efficient federal bureaucracy. Since then, Republicans — both on Capitol Hill and in the presidential campaign — have charged that the administration’s health-care, environmental and financial reforms have added layers of red tape and costs at the worse possible time.


Does Obama’s Latest Ruse Plays Us For Fools? | Conservative Byte

MORE HERE WITH VIDEO AT LINK BELOW

Obama seeks more power to merge agencies, streamline government

Video: President Obama announces he will seek the power to consolidate parts of the federal government, proposing a first step of merging several trade- and commerce-related agencies. (Jan. 13)



By David Nakamura and Ed O’Keefe, Published: January 13

After a year of interminable feuds with congressional Republicans who made smaller, cheaper federal government a political crusade, President Obama on Friday signaled his intention to do some sail-trimming of his own.

Obama asked Congress for the authority to consolidate the roles of several federal agencies which he said would lead to streamlined services and a smaller government workforce.



The proposal comes at a politically opportune moment for the president, who has faced sustained Republican criticism that his administration has failed to tame a bloated federal bureaucracy.

With an eye squarely on his reelection campaign, Obama announced that he would initially focus on merging sprawling entities that deal with small businesses in a bid to save $3 billion by eliminating more than 1,000 jobs over the next decade.

Almost a year ago, Obama promised in his State of the Union address to create a leaner, more efficient federal bureaucracy. Since then, Republicans — both on Capitol Hill and in the presidential campaign — have charged that the administration’s health-care, environmental and financial reforms have added layers of red tape and costs at the worse possible time.

For a president who has spent months pushing his $447 billion jobs bills, the proposal sought to establish that he is also committed to reducing spending over the long term. His announcement came a day after he notified Congress of his intent to raise the national debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion to cover increased U.S. spending commitments.

Obama noted before an audience of small-business owners at the White House that the federal bureaucracy includes five different entities involved in housing and more than a dozen that regulate food safety.

“No business or nonprofit leader would allow this kind of duplication or unnecessary complexity in their operations,” Obama said. “So why is it okay in our government? It’s not. It has to change.”

Obama is scheduled to deliver this year’s State of the Union address on Jan. 24, and Republican critics, while embracing the spirit of paring the government’s size, questioned whether Obama was scrambling to make good on his pledge with his reelection effort looming.

“A year after raising the issue . . . it’s interesting to see the president finally acknowledge that Washington is out of control,” said Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Other lawmakers expressed concern that the reorganization could harm U.S. trade policy, noting that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which is among the agencies the president would consolidate, was established to serve a distinct role.

In a joint statement, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) questioned whether the legislation would hamper the government’s ability “to aggressively open new markets to American-made goods and services and create U.S. jobs.”

Yet the White House was banking on muted opposition from GOP lawmakers, because the consolidation proposal goes right to the Republicans’ core ideological belief that the government is too large.

Under the plan, Obama is seeking broad consolidation authority, which had been granted to the White House by Congress during the Great Depression but was taken away from President Ronald Reagan after a sunset provision in the law kicked in, in 1984.

Once Congress grants him authority, officials said, Obama would establish a new department charged with overseeing trade and investment, business and economic development, technology and innovation, and economic statistics.


The year in photos: Some of White House Photographer Pete Souza’s picks for best images of the year.

The new department would combine the trade and commerce functions of the Commerce Department, the Small Business Administration, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corp. and the Trade and Development Agency.

The Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics would also be included to focus on government statistical data. But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — now the largest part of Commerce’s budget — would be moved to the Interior Department.

The new department would be led by a Cabinet secretary; the U.S. trade representative would remain a member of the Cabinet, officials said.

Congress would be able to vote on each specific proposed merger. Jeffrey D. Zients, the Obama administration’s chief performance officer, stressed that any proposal would have to reduce the size of government and save money.

“The government we have is not the government that we need,” Obama said. “We live in a 21st-century economy, but we’ve still got a government organized for the 20th century. ”

In a signal that the proposal may hold some attraction for Republicans, Rep. Darrell Issa, who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and one of Obama’s biggest GOP critics, said Friday that he stands “ready to work with President Obama” on the reorganization.

“I hope this announcement represents the beginning of a sincere and dedicated effort to enact meaningful reforms,” said Issa (Calif.).

While symbolically important — especially because similar reform efforts by previous administrations have often failed — the specific consolidations being proposed would barely dent the number of workers and the amount of spending in the country’s 2.1 million-employee federal bureaucracy.

Still, despite GOP criticisms of the government’s size, White House budget data show that the number of federal employees last year was fewer than in 1985, under Reagan, despite a U.S. population that is about 30 percent larger now.

In his 2011 State of the Union address, Obama vowed to tackle federal inefficiency, famously joking: “The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them when they’re in salt water. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked.”

Aides said the quip came from White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley, who served as commerce secretary during the Clinton administration and had urged Obama to tackle concerns with the sprawling federal bureaucracy.

Despite the prominent discussion of the issue and Obama’s vow to release specific plans within six months, administration officials spent most of last year playing down the goal of a major reorganization.

They said they were sidetracked by the need to draft contingency planning for a possible government shutdown and the acrimonious debate in the summer over raising the federal debt ceiling. At the same time, Obama commissioned a study of which entities should be targeted and received the results in June.

Though White House officials estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 jobs could be eliminated in the first wave of reorganizations, they said most of the cuts would come through natural attrition as employees retire or seek outside employment.

Elaine Powell-Belnavis, president of the Council of Small Business Administration locals, said she could not rubber-stamp the president’s plan without knowing what the “slimmer” workforce the White House promises will mean for her union members.

“Nothing goes away tomorrow,” Small Business Administration director Karen G. Mills told her employees in a Friday conference call.

Staff writers Lisa Rein and Paul Kane contributed to this report.



Obama seeks more power to merge agencies, streamline government - The Washington Post


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