President Barack Obama’s Cabinet now has eight official members. The Senate voted by voice vote just before 4 p.m. today to confirm the following seven nominees: Steven Chu for Energy, Arne Duncan for Education, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Peter Orszag for director of the Office of Management and Budget, Ken Salazar for Interior, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs and Tom Vilsak for Agriculture. His Cabinet already included Robert Gates, whom Obama asked to stay on as Defense secretary. But things aren’t moving so quickly for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s secretary of state nomination. After her smooth hearing before the Senate…
Browsing: OMB
On this Inauguration Eve, President-elect Barack Obama has filled in a few more blanks at the Office of Management and Budget. Jeffrey Liebman, a Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor, was named executive associate director for OMB. Steve Kosiak, vice president for budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, was named associate director for Defense and International Affairs. Robert Gordon, a senior education policy fellow at American Progress, was named associate director for Education, Income Maintenance and Labor. Xavier de Souza Briggs, an associate professor of sociology and urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was…
Peter Orszag appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee for a hearing on his nomination as OMB director. It was almost as painless as yesterday’s hearing before the Senate Budget committee. Senators focused mostly on government management issues, and Orszag made a few notable statements. First, though, a word about the budget. Orszag reiterated, once again, that the Obama administration will release a 2010 budget in “mid-to-late February.” One new detail: He said the budget will include “some program eliminations.” No word on which programs, though.
David Safavian, the former Bush administration official and friend of Jack Abramoff, has been convicted for the second time on charges he lied to investigators about his relationship with the corrupt lobbyist. A jury convicted him Friday on one count of obstructing justice and three counts of making false statements to federal investigators, according to the Associated Press. Safavian accepted an extravagant golf trip to Scotland from Abramoff while Safavian was chief of staff at the General Services Administration. Although an ethics officer gave Safavian approval to go on the trip, he failed to tell the ethics officer –Â and later…
12:06 PM: Obama reiterated his pledge to go “line-by-line” through the federal budget looking for failed programs: Budget reform is not an option. It’s a necessity. We can’t sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars on programs that have outlived their usefulness. We simply can’t afford it. 12:00 PM: On top of yesterday’s economic team announcements, the president-elect made two more official nominations today: As expected, Congressional Budget Office director Peter Orszag will take over as head of the Office of Management and Budget; Rob Nabors, the staff director of the House Appropriations committee, will be Orszag’s deputy…
Karen Pica, head of the Federal Acquisition Institute, is moving to the Office of Management and Budget, FedLine has learned. While at FAI, the government’s school for training civilian procurement personnel, Pica has been a leader in acquisition work force recruitment and retention efforts. During her tenure, she worked with OMB to launch a Federal Acquisition Intern Coalition to recruit and train new hires to be contracting officers. FedLine is told that Pica will continue to focus on solving the shortfalls in the acquisition work force as a policy analyst for OMB’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy. No word yet…