President Cabinet - Emma Ringstand and Henry Finer

Emma Ringstad & Henry Finer

AP Government p. 5

12/13/16

Scott Pruitt was recently appointed to be Administrator of the EPA. He has been the Attorney General of the state of Oklahoma since 2011 and between 1998 and 2006 he served in the Oklahoma State Senate. However, neither of these jobs give him and experience or knowledge about our environment and it’s issues. Scott Pruitt is a known republican therefore he should have no issue getting his policies through the current republican congress. Scott Pruitt has been known to believe that climate change is not real, so he will most likely set back the progress we have made reducing our carbon footprint and the standards we created to reduce companies pollution.  

Andy Puzder has been appointed as the new Secretary of Labor. Hannity.com states, “ Andy Puzder is the chief executive of CKE Restaurants, which include the Carl's Jr./Hardee's chain.” He has experience working in the labor department, being an executive of a company with a large labor force. He most often identifies with Republican establishments and has affiliated himself with known Republicans such as Mitt Romney, which means that he will most likely have success in Congress because the current Congress is majority Republican. He disagrees with the increase in minimum wage as well as very anti-labor. Therefore he will most likely prevent the wage increase, which in turn hurts the progress of that movement.

Ben Carson: Department of Housing and Urban Development

Ben Carson has been recently appointed by President Elect Trump as the head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Before Ben Carson run for the presidency in the 2016 election he was neurosurgeon. Other than his attempt at the presidency Carson has no political experience and prior to his acceptance of this role in the cabinet Carsons advisor stated, "Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency." Carson ran under the republican platform and has some strong conservative believes. It shouldn’t be hard for Carson to get through what he wants being that congress will have a republican majority for the next two years. Some of these things that Carson could try and get through would be to reduce government agencies helping in low income areas being an opponent to many government programs put in place to help the poor. Carson believes that “the people have the responsibility to take care of the indigent in our society. It’s not the government’s job.” Other programs Ben Carson would likely try to repel would be Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, which he believes is “government overreach” and stop other programs put in place to help out these communities. Some positives Ben Carson could bring to this agency is if he applies his medical background to help with the connections between low income areas and poor health.