Just Who Is the Future HHS Secretary?

Kathleen Sebelius, to no one’s surprise, is finally leaving the Obama administration.  Ever since the disaster that has been the Obamacare website rollout, and the fight to get those enrollment numbers up, by hook or by crook, plus awkward interviews, many talking heads posited that Sebelius was going to be tossed when the president neglected to mention her at all during his “victory” rally at the White House.  While she was sitting in the front row.

The nominee being put forth to replace Sebelius is the current director of Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Sylvia Mathews Burwell.

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Current OMB director, nominee for HHS Secretary, Sylvia Burwell

From what I’ve been able to glean from profiles written about her when she took the job as director of OMB, she’s a former Clinton administration crony.  Her Clinton connections go all the way back to 1992, when she was on Bill Clinton’s presidential transition team.  She worked under Clinton treasury secretary Robert Rubin, and under Jack Lew, the current treasury secretary, as his deputy director at OMB from 1998-2001.  After the Clinton years, she spent time working for the Gates Foundation and as president of the Walmart Foundation (yes, the evil Walmart’s charity arm), before returning to government bureaucracy in 2013 when she was nominated to be the new director of OMB.

And about six months into her tenure at OMB, Burwell ordered the government shutdown.  Anyone remember that?

Though she may not have put it into so many words, Burwell, as the person who ordered the shutdown, was ultimately the person in charge who made sure that the shutdown hurt people.  It turned our national parks and monuments into protest zones, with images of World War II veterans storming barricades to simply get to a memorial that honored their service.

And now, after just about a year as OMB director, she is going to be nominated to be the next Health and Human Services secretary.  She has proved to be a loyal minion, so now she will get a bigger title and bigger rewards.

And with the “nuclear option” in play, all that’s needed is a simple majority vote in the Senate to confirm her.

Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.  Burwell may not have the same name recognition that Sebelius had when she became HHS secretary, but she’s cut from the exact same cloth.

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