Defense Secretary Robert Gates pledged to give more personal attention to procurement and acquisition challenges as he continues his work under the Obama administration. Here is what he had to say during a media briefing yesterday: I suppose it should go without saying, but I have no intention of being a caretaker secretary. Our challenges, from the budget to acquisition and procurement reform, war strategy, care of wounded warriors, meeting the needs of warfighters, decisions on important modernization and capitalization projects and more, all demand the personal attention of the secretary of Defense and they will get it. When asked…
Browsing: Transition
No surprises from the president-elect’s press conference this morning. You can read about Obama’s national security team, and watch the conference, on the transition Web site. But there was an interesting bit of language in Obama’s introduction of Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, his nomination for Homeland Security secretary: She understands the need for a homeland security department that can respond to terrorist attacks and respond to catastrophes. What’s interesting is the part about “respond[ing] to catastrophes.” That’s the responsibility of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And there’s been a lot of talk about removing FEMA from DHS and restoring it…
Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving weekend! (Back to reality, now.) A quick heads-up: The president-elect will hold his fourth news conference in a week at 10:40 this morning. He’ll announce his national security team, which is expected to include Sen. Hillary Clinton at State and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano at the Homeland Security Department. Both have received strong praise from experts and colleagues — and their management styles are profiled in this week’s Federal Times. We’ll have a full rundown of Obama’s national security picks after the press conference.
An obscure provision in the U.S. Constitution poses a potential roadblock on Sen. Hillary Clinton’s path to becoming Secretary of State. It turns out that the Constitution (specifically Article I, Section 6) prohibits a lawmaker from taking any goverment job for which the salary was raised during the lawmaker’s elected term. As the Washington Post and numerous bloggers have noted, this would effectively preclude Clinton from taking the State Department gig. Salaries for Cabinet secretaries have been increased twice since Clinton started her second term as the junior New York senator in January 2007: to $191,300 in January 2008 and…
MSNBC is reporting that John Brennan has just taken his name out of the running to be the next Director of Central Intelligence. Speculation that Brennan, a member of president-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, was a leading candidate to run the CIA sparked serious criticism from some who believed Brennan supported torturing terrorism suspects. In today’s letter to Obama, Brennan firmly denied those accusations: It has been immaterial to the critics that I have been a strong opponent of many of the policies of the Bush Administration such as the preemptive war in Iraq and coercive interrogation tactics, to include waterboarding. The…
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…
NBC News today reported that Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will likely be Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary. Along with current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Geithner has been a central figure in formulating the government’s response to the recent economic turmoil. The choice of Geithner may have boosted confidence on Wall Street. In the last hour of trading, stocks shot up and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up nearly 500 points at its close. The Washington Post has this to say about Geithner: Geithner, who is 47, is most closely…
We’ve already reported that agencies are likely to face new environmental goals under the Obama administration. They’re also going to have to learn to work together. The group of advisers developing key proposals and plans for energy and environmental policies under the new administration met this week to discuss issues that will need to be addressed right away, like climate change and rising energy costs. The head of the group, Carol Browner, who led the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration, said the focus will be on getting agencies like the EPA, Energy Department and others to better coordinate their efforts. One…
At the pace in which potential candidates for top spots in the Obama administration are being leaked to the press, it was bound to happen: someone got one wrong. CNN quoted multiple unnamed sources yesterday evening that Obama fundraiser Penny Pritzker was the top choice to become secretary of the Commerce Department. The 49-year-old billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, Pritzker was national finance chair of Obama’s record-breaking presidential campaign, which netted $640 million. But after numerous media sources picked up the news, Pritzer issued a statement today saying she was not in the running for the position. ABC News…
Earlier today we mentioned that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is at the top of the list of candidates to take over the Homeland Security Department. And, as the Government Accountability Office reminds us in a new report released today, she would take over an agency full of management challenges. From the GAO: However, most initiatives related to defining and identifying the acquisition workforce and assessing workforce needs have not yet produced results and in some cases are progressing more slowly than originally projected. The department spends more than $10 billion each year on contracts — including some expensive and hard-to-manage…