President Barack Obama is six months into his second term as the nation’s commander-in-chief and several of his appointees to key government leadership positions have received the required stamp of approval from the Senate.ExecutiveGov, Executive Mosaic‘s website for and about public sector leaders, has tracked the Senate confirmations to fulfill its mission of providing readers the latest developments on who will serve as executives for the country in public service.
In recent months, the confirmations have stretched from Cabinet-level down to the agency.
Obama’s Cabinet gained a new member in May when the Senate voted 97-0 to approve the nomination of Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Ernest Moniz as energy secretary.
Moniz served as energy under secretary during the George W. Bush administration and led an energy research institute at MIT during his tenure at the university.
One month earlier, the Senate voted 87-11 to rubber-stamp REI CEO Sally Jewell as the country’s next interior secretary and giving her responsibility for the agency in charge of national parks and 500 million acres of land that contain minerals and offshore resource development.
DOI also is responsible for developing rules regarding hydraulic fracturing on public lands and drilling for oil and gas in the arctic region.
The Senate continued to move Obama’s nominations through during April by unanimously approving the nomination of Sylvia Burwell, now former head of the Walmart Foundation, as the next director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Burwell is expected to play a significant role in negotiations with Congress over tax and spending issues such as Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget proposal.
In May, senators voted in the first full-time director the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has had since 2006 by approving Marilyn Tavenner’s nomination to head the agency by a 91-7 vote.
Tavenner had led CMS in a temporary capacity since 2010 and was first nominated for the full-time role during Obama’s first term, but the Senate did not move her nomination through.
