President Obama announced his choices earlier today to replace Energy Secretary Steven Chu, EPA’s Lisa Jackson and Office of Management and Budget.The three nominations came during the president’s first cabinet meeting of 2013.
” I’m proud to nominate another brilliant scientist to take his place — Mr. Ernie Moniz. There’s Ernie right there. Now, the good news is that Ernie already knows his way around the Department of Energy. He is a physicist by training, but he also served as Under Secretary of Energy under President Clinton. Since then, he’s directed MIT’s Energy Initiative, which brings together prominent thinkers and energy companies to develop the technologies that can lead us to more energy independence and also to new jobs,” said Obama.
“At EPA, Gina McCarthy would take over Lisa Jackson’s position and Sylvia Mathews Burnwell would replace Jeff Zients at OMB. As I said before, the American people are resilient. And I know that Jeff and Sylvia will do everything in their power to blunt the impact of these cuts on businesses and middle-class families. But eventually, a lot of people are going to feel some pain. That’s why we’ve got to keep on working to reduce our deficit in a balanced way — an approach that’s supported by the majority of the American people, including a majority of Republicans. And I’m confident that we can get there if people of goodwill come together. So I want to thank Steve and Lisa and Jeff once more for their outstanding service, for all the great work that they’ve done in this administration over the last several years. I want to thank Ernie, Gina and Sylvia, and their families, for agreeing to take on these big roles.”
USA Today pointed out the obvious announcement:”In introducing his new budget director, Burwell, Obama cited her biggest immediate challenge: the sequester, $85 billion in automatic budget cuts over the next seven months that began over the weekend.”
The three will have to go through the Senate, but two of the nominees–per Politico–are bringing the conversation back to the sequester and environment. But that’ll be yet another issue in the coming weeks as the country learns exactly how the sequester will effect the country.
