Cabinet of the United States

The United States Cabinet (usually referred to as the President's Cabinet or simplified as the Cabinet) is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States, and its existence dates back to the first American President, George Washington, who appointed a Cabinet of four people (Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson; Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton; Secretary of War Henry Knox; and Attorney General Edmund Randolph) to advise and assist him in his duties. Cabinet officers are nominated by the President and then presented to the United States Senate for confirmation or rejection by a simple majority. If approved, they are sworn in and begin their duties. Aside from the Attorney General, and previously, the Postmaster General, they all receive the title Secretary.

Constitutional and legal basis

Confirmation requirement

Article Two, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution says that the President

"...shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments."

Other constitutional references

Article Two of the Constitution provides that the President can require "the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices."^[1] The Constitution did not then establish the names (or list or limit the number) of Cabinet departments; those details were left to the Congress to determine.

Later, upon addition of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, a provision was created allowing that the Vice President and "a majority of the principal officers" of the executive branch departments to transmit a notice (to the Speaker of the House and the Senate President pro tempore) that the President is unfit for office. If the President contests this finding, the Congress is directed to settle the matter.

United States Cabinet nominees are chosen from a large pool of potential candidates. One of the few qualification restrictions is set out in Article One of the Constitution: "no person holding any office under the United States, shall be a member of either house during his continuance in office." Accordingly, a sitting member of the United States Congress must resign his or her seat to accept a Cabinet appointment. Additionally, Article I, Section 6 bars any member of Congress from holding an executive office that was created by law during his or her current term in Congress.

This constitutional separation between the executive and the legislative branches is opposite to the British parliamentary cabinet system, where, although only a limited number of members of the House of Commons may hold Crown offices, members of the Cabinet are in practice required to be sitting members of the legislature.

The Cabinet in federal law

There is no explicit definition of the term "Cabinet" in either the United States Code or the Code of Federal Regulations. However, there are occasional references to "cabinet-level officers" or "secretaries", which when viewed in context appear to refer to the heads of the "executive departments" as listed in 5 U.S.C. § 101.

Under 5 U.S.C. § 3110 federal officials are prohibited from appointing family members to certain governmental posts, including seats in the Cabinet. Passed in 1967, the law was a response to John F. Kennedy's appointment of Robert F. Kennedy to the post of Attorney General.

Significance

Recent decline in influence

Though the Cabinet is still an important organ of bureaucratic management, in recent years, the Cabinet has generally declined in relevance as a policy making body. Starting with President Franklin Roosevelt, the trend has been for Presidents to act through the Executive Office of the President or the National Security Council (which generally does include some Cabinet secretaries) rather than through the Cabinet. This has created a situation in which non-Cabinet (and thus non-confirmed) officials such as the White House Chief of Staff, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the National Security Advisor are now as powerful as or more powerful than some Cabinet officials.^{[citation needed]}

Traditionally, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, and the Attorney General are the most important members of Cabinet, and form an inner circle. In recent years, the Secretary of Homeland Security has risen to a level of significance that is arguably closer to the "big four" than to the other cabinet offices.^{[citation needed]}

During a meeting of the President's Cabinet, members are seated according to the order of precedence, with higher ranking officers sitting closer to the center of the table. Hence, the President and Vice President sit directly across from each other at the middle of the oval shaped table. Then, the Secretaries of State and Defense are seated directly to the right and left, respectively, of the President and the Secretary of Treasury and the Attorney General sit to right and left, respectively, of the Vice President. This alternation according to rank continues, with Cabinet-rank members (those not heading executive departments, the Vice President excluded) sitting at the very ends, farthest away from the president and vice president.^{[citation needed]}

Line of succession

The Cabinet is also important in the presidential line of succession, which determines an order in which Cabinet officers succeed to the office of the president following the death or resignation of the Vice President, Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate. Because of this, it is common practice not to have the entire Cabinet in one location, even for ceremonial occasions like the State of the Union Address, where at least one Cabinet member does not attend. This person is the designated survivor, and they are held at a secure, undisclosed location, ready to take over if the President, Vice President, and the rest of the Cabinet are killed.

Cabinet and Cabinet-level officials

The men and women listed below were nominated by President Barack Obama to form his initial Cabinet and were confirmed by the United States Senate on the date noted. An elected Vice President does not require Senate confirmation, nor do White House staff positions like chief of staff or press secretary. Secretary Gates was previously confirmed by the Senate (as President Bush's Secretary of Defense) and therefore does not need to be re-confirmed.

Cabinet

Department	Office	Incumbent	Image	Confirmed
Department of State	Secretary of State	Hillary Rodham Clinton		January 21, 2009
Department of the Treasury	Secretary of the Treasury	Timothy Geithner		January 26, 2009
Department of Defense	Secretary of Defense	Robert Gates		December 6, 2006
Department of the Interior	Secretary of the Interior	Ken Salazar		January 21, 2009
Department of Agriculture	Secretary of Agriculture	Tom Vilsack		January 21, 2009
Department of Housing and Urban Development	Secretary of Housing and Urban Development	Shaun Donovan		January 22, 2009
Department of Transportation	Secretary of Transportation	Ray LaHood		January 22, 2009
Department of Energy	Secretary of Energy	Steven Chu		January 21, 2009
Department of Education	Secretary of Education	Arne Duncan		January 21, 2009
Department of Veterans' Affairs	Secretary of Veterans' Affairs	Eric Shinseki	File:Shinseki-web.jpg	January 21, 2009
Department of Homeland Security	Secretary of Homeland Security	Janet Napolitano		January 21, 2009

Cabinet-level officers

Department	Office	Incumbent	Confirmed
Office of the Vice President	Vice President of the United States	Joe Biden	N/A
Executive Office of the President	White House Chief of Staff	Rahm Emanuel	N/A
Office of Management and Budget	Director of the Office of Management and Budget	Peter Orszag	January 20, 2009
Environmental Protection Agency	Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency	Lisa P. Jackson	January 22, 2009
Ambassador to the United Nations	Ambassador to the United Nations	Susan Rice	January 22, 2009

Nominated Cabinet and Cabinet-level officials

The persons listed below have been nominated by President Barack Obama to his administration's Cabinet, but have not yet been confirmed by the Senate.

Cabinet nominees

Department	Office	Nominee
Department of Justice	Attorney General	Eric Holder
Department of Commerce	Secretary of Commerce
Department of Labor	Secretary of Labor	Hilda Solis
Department of Health and Human Services	Secretary of Health and Human Services	Tom Daschle

Cabinet-level office nominees

Department	Office	Nominee	Image
Office of National Drug Control Policy	Director of the National Drug Control Policy	To be determined
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative	United States Trade Representative	Ron Kirk	File:Kirk1.jpg

Former Cabinet positions

From 1789 to 1947, the duties of the Secretary of Defense were instead handled by Cabinet-level positions of the Secretary of War (1789–1947) and the Secretary of the Navy (1798–1947).
From 1829 to 1971, the Post Office Department was a Cabinet-level executive agency and thus the Postmaster General was a Cabinet officer.
From 1903 to 1913, the duties of the current Secretaries of Commerce and Labor were held by a single Secretary of Commerce and Labor.
From 1953 to 1979, the duties of the Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Health and Human Services were united as the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.
Under some administrations, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations was allowed to sit in for cabinet meetings.^{[citation needed]}
From 1993 to 2003, the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was a Cabinet-level post; in 2003, it became a sub-department of the newly-created Department of Homeland Security.
From 1993 to 2001, the Director of Central Intelligence was a cabinet-level position.

Proposed Cabinet departments

U.S. Department of Commerce and Industry (proposed by business interests in the 1880s)
U.S. Department of Agriculture and Labor (proposed by members of U.S. Congress)
U.S. Department of Public Welfare (proposed by President Warren Harding)
U.S. Department of Natural Resources (proposed by former President Herbert Hoover, the Eisenhower administration, President Richard Nixon and the GOP national platform in 1976)
U.S. Department of Peace (proposed by Congressman Dennis Kucinich)
U.S. Department of Social Welfare (proposed by President Franklin Roosevelt)
U.S. Department of Public Works (proposed by President Franklin Roosevelt)
U.S. Department of Conservation (proposed by Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes)
U.S. Department of Urban Affairs (proposed by President John F. Kennedy)
U.S. Department of Business and Labor (proposed by President Lyndon Johnson)
U.S. Department of Community Development (proposed by President Richard Nixon; to be chiefly concerned with infrastructure)
U.S. Department of Human Resources (proposed by President Richard Nixon; essentially a revised Department of Health, Education, and Welfare)
U.S. Department of Economic Development (proposed by President Richard Nixon; essentially a consolidation of the Departments of Commerce and Labor)
U.S. Department of Environmental Protection (proposed by Senator Arlen Specter)
U.S. Department of International Trade (proposed by the Heritage Foundation)
U.S. Department of Global Development (proposed by the Center for Global Development) and many others.

Lists of Cabinets

See: List of United States Cabinets

References

^ Constitution of the United States, gpoaccess.gov

Articles

Rudalevige, Andrew. "The President and the Cabinet", in Michael Nelson, ed., The Presidency and the Political System, 8th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2006).

Books

Grossman, Mark. Encyclopedia of the United States Cabinet (three volumes). Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2000. ISBN 0-87436-977-0. A history of the United States and Confederate States cabinets, their secretaries, and their departments.

Bennett, Anthony. 'The American President's Cabinet' Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1996. ISBN 0-333-60691-4. A study of the U S Cabinet from Kennedy to Clinton.

External links

[1] Constitution of the United States, gpoaccess.gov

[1]

v t e Members of the Cabinet of the United States
Cabinet members	Biden Harris Austin Becerra Blinken Buttigieg Cardona Garland Granholm Haaland Mayorkas McDonough Raimondo Su^a Todman^a Vilsack Yellen
Cabinet-level members	Bernstein Burns Guzman Haines Prabhakar Regan Tai Thomas-Greenfield Young Zients
^a acting Cabinet of Joe Biden

v t e Federal executive departments of the United States of America
Current	Agriculture Commerce Defense Education Energy Health and Human Services Homeland Security Housing and Urban Development Interior Justice Labor State Transportation Treasury Veterans Affairs
Former	Air Force Army Commerce and Labor Health, Education, and Welfare Navy Post Office War