Note: We’ll continue to update this thread as the president-elect reveals his plans for the Homeland Security Department. Secretary President-elect Barack Obama has reportedly offered the job to Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano. The president-elect has reportedly picked Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano to head DHS. Napolitano still has to be vetted by Obama’s transition team; a spokesperson for the Arizona governor’s office declined to comment on the selection. She would take over a five-year-old agency that is plagued by organizational problems and struggles with many of its core missions, particularly immigration. The department has spent billions on a still-unproven “virtual fence”…
Browsing: Agencies
President-elect Barack Obama said Sunday on CBS’s “Sixty Minutes” he would start making Cabinet picks “soon.” Soon it is. In just the three days since that interview aired, several names have been reported as likely candidates for key administration posts: Peter Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. Eric Holder Jr., former number two at the Justice Department, to be Attorny General. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton to be secretary of State, although it is still unclear whether Obama has actually offered the job to her, even after conflict-of-interest issues…
CBO director Peter Orszag is the likely choice to head the Office of Management and Budget. The National Journal is reporting that President-elect Barack Obama will name Congressional Budget Office director Peter Orszag as director of the Office of Management and Budget. The OMB director will play a crucial role in the Obama administration, which inherits a $10 billion national debt and an annual deficit approaching $1 trillion. He will also be responsible for putting together Obama’s 2010 budget — and trying to push the 2009 budget through Congress before the current continuing resolution ends on March 6. Orszag has…
FedLine noted last week that Treasury secretary Henry Paulson had spent almost half of the $700 billion allocated as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (or “the bailout,” as we like to call it). The Obama administration apparently gets to spend the other half. At a contentious House Financial Services committee hearing today, Paulson said he didn’t think spending the other $350 billion in the next two months was the best plan: We have decided the best course of action is to preserve half of the TARP fund for flexibility, and for the next administration. This sets up an…
You could say Sen. Ron Wyden is unhappy with Treasury’s actions on the Troubled Asset Relief Program. “It’s like Dodge City before the marshals show up,” said Wyden, D-Ore., bemoaning the lack of oversight into Treasury’s spending of $700 billion intended to unfreeze the credit markets. This analogy was thrown out at today’s Senate Finance Committee hearing regarding the nomination of Neil Barofsky as the special inspector general for TARP. The committee doesn’t have jurisdiction to deliberate on Barofsky’s nomination — that falls to the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday — but its members wanted to discuss their concerns with…
Plans for a consolidated home for the newest Cabinet agency, the Homeland Security Department, are laid out in impressive detail in a series of documents that were submitted to federal planning officials earlier this week. Here are some highlights: The master plan calls for 4.5 million square feet of new and existing office space, plus another 1.5 million square feet of parking. Most of the development will be located on the west campus of the former St. Elizabeths mental hospital, a 176-acre site in southeast Washington that predates the Civil War. However, about 750,000 square feet of office space and another 270,000 square…
The proof is out there…thanks to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble took the first picture of a planet outside our solar system orbiting a star called Fomalhaut, NASA has announced. Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkley, and his team have been studying debris around the star since 2001. Obervations taken 21 months apart show that there is an object moving around that star the way Earth moves around the sun. To celebrate this federally supported discovery, we give you the following facts, courtesy of NASA: The planet called Fomalhaut b is located 25 light-years away from us in the costellation Piscis…
President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team yesterday announced a roster of 19 heavyweights who will conduct top-to-bottom reviews of federal agencies beginning next week. The agency review teams will complete a thorough review of departments, agencies and commissions to provide Obama and his advisers information need to make strategic policy, budgetary and personnel decisions prior to the Jan. 20 inauguration. As this press release  from the Obama transition Web site illustrates, most of the names should ring a bell to employees who were around during the previous Democratic administration under President Clinton. There’s Sally Katzen, who headed the Office of Information…
Looking for a job in the Obama administration? Then you should check out the Plum Book, the federal directory of leadership jobs released after every presidential election. The book was released today and contains more than 7,000 federal civil service leadership and support job descriptions in the legislative and executive branches. Of course, there’s no guarantee that all of the jobs will be filled when Obama takes office. It does, however, give you a look at the scope of opportunities available for you in certain sectors of the federal government (and could even help you get that ol’ resume ready!)…
The Treasury Department has spent most of the first $350 billion allocated by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, passed just over one month ago: Most of the spending — $250 billion — is going directly to banks. The banks get immediate cash; Treasury gets an ownership share of the bank. AIG got another $40 billion loan yesterday, on top of the $100 billion it’s already received. That’s $290 billion in spending since Oct. 3, an impressive $86,064 per second. And it leaves just $60 billion; most experts I’ve talked with say that money will be gone soon. What does that…