HousingWire: Ben Carson: Brain surgery was easier than running HUD

"There are more complexities here than in brain surgery," HUD secretary tells NYT

In a new report from The New York Times, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson acknowledged the difficulties of his role, which he once considered quitting, within the Trump administration, stating “There are more complexities here than in brain surgery.”

From the article:

Mr. Carson, people close to him said, has been whipsawed by a job he has found puzzling and frustrating — so much so that he considered quitting during recent wrangling over the department's budget.

“There are more complexities here than in brain surgery,” Mr. Carson said in an interview last week. “Doing this job is going to be a very intricate process.”

Mr. Carson's efforts to steer the agency toward programs that foster self-sufficiency, one of his stated goals, have been undermined by staffing mistakes, his indecisiveness and a president indifferent, at best, to the department's mission of helping the poor, according to two dozen current and former HUD and administration officials. All of this has been exacerbated by Mr. Carson's tin ear for politics — such as the damaging disclosure that he had looked the other way when subordinates spent, at a time of savage budget cuts, $31,000 to buy him a new mahogany dining room suite for his office that included a pair of $1,000 side chairs.

The NYT article also reports that prior to accepting the job as HUD secretary, a confidant urged Carson to not accept and “preserve the reputation he had earned as a brilliant neurosurgeon and lost, in part, as a politician.”

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Courtesy of HousingWire