The President has been stymied by his own bureaucrats at every turn. The latest example comes from Florida, where lawmakers say Obama-era officials kept them in the dark regarding Trump's new Cuba policy.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
A trio of Cuban-American lawmakers representing Miami was not told in advance about long-awaited regulations restricting U.S. business and travel in Cuba, according to GOP congressional sources.
The lawmakers, Sen. Marco Rubio and Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, all Florida Republicans and strong public champions of President Trump's more limited Cuba policy, suspected they were being left out of discussions or briefings on the regulations because they would wind up not being as strong as President Trump had promised them earlier this year.
The State, Treasury, and Commerce Departments, which wrote the new rules, never briefed these members of Congress, and lawmakers ended up having to hear the new rules were coming out Wednesday morning from reporters, the sources told the Washington Free Beacon. [...]
The trio of lawmakers issued statements late Wednesday ranging from mild disappointment to strong dissatisfaction and blaming State Department "bureaucrats" from preventing Trump from going farther. They argued the new regulations preserved too many special carve-outs for certain Cuba military-controlled hotels and existing travel plans.
"The regulatory changes announced today by Treasury and Commerce begin to implement President Trump's 2017 policy for enforcing U.S. sanctions law against the Castro regime," Rubio said. "Unfortunately, however, bureaucrats in the State Department who oppose the president's Cuba policy refused to fully implement it when they omitted from the Cuba Restricted List several entities and sub-entities that are controlled by or act on behalf of the Cuban military, intelligence, or security services." [...]
Diaz-Balart argued that the regulations do not fully implement what the Trump administration previously ordered.
"It is clear that individuals in the bureaucracy who support the former administration's Cuba policy continue to undermine President Trump," he said.
The President has been largely unable to "drain the swamp" because the swamp cannot be drained from the inside. It can only be drained from the outside, by the people and the states, via an Article V Convention of States.
A Convention of States is called and controlled by state legislatures -- federal bureaucrats play no part in the process. The Convention has the power to, with a single move, propose constitutional amendments that reduce the number and power of federal officials, ensuring that these non-elected individuals stop dictating policy for American citizens.
