Washington (CNN) -- Tapping two candidates with a
strong mix of business and governmental experience for Cabinet posts,
President Barack Obama is naming women to two of the potentially
toughest jobs in Washington -- director of the Office of Management and
Budget, and administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He
also named an MIT scientist with government experience as his nominee to
be energy secretary.
Sylvia Mathews Burwell,
who was nominated Monday for the OMB position, is the head of the
Walmart Foundation, the retail chain's charitable organization. If
confirmed by the Senate, she would assume a Cabinet-rank position as
head of the White House agency that has the herculean task of advising
the president on budget matters.
Gina McCarthy, currently
an assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation,
could also potentially step into the political hot seat as head of the
agency, which has frequently clashed with Republican lawmakers.
Obama also announced on Monday that he was nominating physicist Ernest Moniz to lead the Energy Department.
Burwell would join a
growing number of Clinton administration officials, including newly
confirmed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and former OMB director Peter
Orszag, who have gone on to work for the Obama administration. She
served as deputy director of OMB and chief of staff to former Treasury
Secretary Robert Rubin during the Clinton administration.
The stakes for the
director of OMB are especially high now, with Obama engaged in a
protracted, heated battle with the Republican-led House of
Representatives about the size and shape of the federal government's
budget.
The two sides have failed
to reach an agreement to avert mandatory, across-the-board spending
cuts -- to the tune of $85 billion through the next seven months of the
current fiscal year -- that took effect Friday. In addition, a possible
government shutdown looms at the end of this month.
"I'm confident that my
nominee for OMB director, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, is the right person to
continue Jeff's great work," Obama said, referring to Jeff Zients, the
acting director of OMB. "In the 1990s ... Sylvia served under Jack Lew
as deputy director of OMB, part of the team that presided over three
budget surpluses in a row. Later she helped the Gates Foundation grow
into a global force for good, and then she helped the Walmart Foundation
expand its charitable work. So Sylvia knows her way around a budget."
McCarthy would succeed
former EPA chief Lisa Jackson, who announced her plans to step down in
late December. During Jackson's tenure, she was repeatedly forced to
defend herself and her agency during congressional hearings over new
federal standards on toxic pollutants and mercury emissions from coal
power plants.
Jackson also vigorously
defended her agency against a 2010 bill that would have stopped the EPA
from regulating carbon emissions. She wrote a column where she accused
the bill's backers of siding with "big oil companies and their
lobbyists" in an effort to "take away EPA's ability to protect the
health and welfare of Americans from greenhouse gas pollution."
The bill was defeated in the Senate.
During the 2012
presidential campaign, GOP candidate Mitt Romney accused Jackson and two
other Obama appointees of pursuing policies that drive up gasoline
prices. He called for her firing.
McCarthy's choice is
thought to signal Obama's plans to make climate change a larger part of
his environmental agenda during his second term. The president made
headlines when he made the issue a key subject in his inauguration
address this year.
"We will respond to the
threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray
our children and future generations," he said.
Environmental advocates applauded the choice.
"Gina McCarthy is a
strong choice for EPA administrator -- she's worked for and with both
sides of the aisle to forge common-sense and science-based solutions to
protect children, seniors, and the public health from dangerous
pollution. She has a strong background in working with business,
conservationists, public health officials, and other leaders -- they
know her and know what to expect from her," Carol Browner, a senior
fellow for the Center for American Progress, former EPA administrator
and former director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate
Change Policy, said in a statement.
In her 25-year career,
McCarthy has worked at the state and local levels, including time as
commissioner for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection,
before coming to the federal level.
McCarthy has also worked
for Republican governors, including Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, where
she once directed Romney's environmental policy.
"I played a pretty good
role in trying to get Gov. Romney to finally sign the Massachusetts
climate change action plan," she told CNN's Jim Acosta last March during
the Republican primary.
Along the same lines,
Obama has tapped Moniz to lead the Energy Department. Moniz has served
on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1973,
with a research focus on energy technology and policy.
Moniz also has also
worked at the federal level, serving as undersecretary of the Department
of Energy from 1997 to January 2001, where he focused on nuclear
weapons stockpile stewardship and was the secretary's special negotiator
for Russian nuclear materials disposition programs. Other work includes
his time as associate director for science in the Office of Science and
Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President from 1995 to
1997.
"Ernie knows that we can
produce more energy and grow our economy while still taking care of our
air, our water, and our climate," the president said. " And so I could
not be more pleased to have Ernie join us, and he will be joined in that
effort by my nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency."
President Obama/Courtesy photo
