CABINET/NOMINATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/VA: “The last two secretaries of the Department of Veterans Affairs were private-sector outsiders intent on bringing expertise from beyond Washington’s Capital Beltway into the VA. But Robert Wilkie, President Donald Trump’s presumptive nominee to head the department, is the opposite—a long-serving public official steeped in federal bureaucracy. Mr. Wilkie has decades of experience in government and familiarity with the companies and industries that rely on it, and now is expected to take over a sprawling department that has been on the verge of large-scale changes. For a president who campaigned on a pledge to ‘drain the swamp,’ the nomination would come as an example of a change in Mr. Trump’s approach, by relying on a Washington insider as the president reshapes the second-largest department in the federal government..Mr. Wilkie, whose nomination hasn’t been formally made and who doesn’t yet have a timeline for confirmation, stands ready to take over a department that has some 350,000 employees, has a nearly $200 billion budget, and is reliant on Congress for policy decisions.”
-Ben Kesling, “At Veterans Affairs, Trump to Try His Luck With a Washington Insider,” The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2018 8:00 am