The Trump Administration has floated a plan to reorganize the federal government, the Washington Post reports.
The proposal would create new divisions while consolidating or eliminating others with the stated goal of streamlining government bureaucracy, the Post adds. "We're dealing with a government that's so byzantine you don't know where to start," Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told the Cabinet, according to the Post.
The Post adds that the proposal would rebrand the Department of Health and Human Services — which includes the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, among other agencies — as the Department of Health and Public Welfare. This, OMB Deputy Director for Management Margaret Weichert tells the paper, would "better capture the nature of its programs."
In particular, three agencies that oversee health care research, occupational safety, and disability research would be moved to NIH from other parts of HHS, Science adds. The proposal would also give the National Science Foundation oversight of all federal graduate fellowship programs, Science says, noting that a similar, though larger plan was outlined by the Obama Administration.
The Post adds that previous administrations "mixed success in their attempts to streamline government functions."