Trump federal reorganization plan due to arrive this week
The White House is expected to announce as soon as Thursday a wide-ranging government reorganization plan that will include a consolidation of safety-net programs under a rebranded Department of Health and Human Services.
The proposal will recommend renaming HHS the Department of Health and Public Welfare and, as POLITICOreported earlier this month, would move the $70 billion food stamp program out of the Department of Agriculture to the new agency, according to two people with knowledge of the plan.
A spokesman for Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, had no comment.
The changes will be part of a sweeping government reorganization Mulvaney has developed since his confirmation more than a year ago. Some of the proposals will require congressional approval to take effect.
The Trump administration is also seeking to merge the Labor and Education departments, POLITICO reported Wednesday.
Government shakeups can be a heavy political and legislative lift, but they’re nothing new. Until a reorganization of agencies in the 1970s, federal social programs were managed by the now-defunct Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The Department of Homeland Security, which combined divisions from 22 different agencies, was stood up after Sept. 11.
Health and Human Services already oversees Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which provides cash assistance to low-income households, and Medicaid, which offers health coverage for more than 70 million Americans.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has deeply influenced Trump’s agenda, last year recommended that USDA nutrition programs, including food stamps, nutrition education and school meal programs, be transferred over to HHS.
Any attempt to move departments around is sure to face serious resistance in Congress, where chairmen of committees tend to fiercely oppose giving up jurisdiction over anything.
Moving the food stamp program from USDA to HHS, for example, would be a huge blow to USDA’s reach and budget -- something that’s not likely to go over well with farm-state lawmakers, in particular. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as its formally known, represents roughly three quarters of USDA’s budget.
House Agriculture Chairman Mike Conaway said late Wednesday he would keep an open mind when reading the White House reorganization report, but he’s not wild about making HHS, which already oversees some $1 trillion in spending, even bigger.
“I’ll need to see the logic behind why it makes sense to make an even larger agency out of one that’s got its issues already,” Conaway said.
“My normal bias is that making monster agencies even bigger is maybe not the best thing to do,” he added.
Andrew Restuccia and Nancy Cook contributed to this report.