The White House is behind on staffing decisions, creating a "bottleneck" that's affecting even "regular activities" at the Small Business Association, its new administrator and Cabinet member Linda McMahon says.
In an interview on Politico's "Off Message" podcast, McMahon, an ally and longtime friend of President Donald Trump, said she understands the problem: "It's a lot of people to process."
"We're not even staffed up to where we need to be or where we were, to do a lot of our regular activities," she told Politico. "A lot of the staffing that I'm talking about does have to have White House approval. … There's been some bottleneck, you know. They're trying to fill a lot of roles at one time."
Still, McMahon said she's been pleased with the operation she took on, remarking, "I can't say that I've seen things relative to draining the swamp here" – but wants to get going on ambitious plans to spread the word about what the SBA does.
And that takes staff.
"There would be the head of your communications division, our general counsel, inspector general position here, our advocacy attorney," she said ticking off needed positions to fill.
"All of those are White House approvals, and they're big jobs, so that the positions underneath them are not able to be filled. Some of them are filled with acting people who are here and who are doing a good job. But until you have that leader in that position who can really manage and evaluate the work that's been done, you do have a little bit of a time gap there."
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