The author did not receive financial support from any firm or person for this article or from any firm or person with a financial or political interest in this article. She is currently not an officer, director, or board member of any organization with a financial or political interest in this article. Report Produced by Economic Studies. Almost all cabinet departments provide information on confirmed officials in the highest job secretary or attorney general.
Combining the OPM and agency-provided information with extensive searches of public material including congressional documents, litigation materials, and news sources , I determined the start and end dates of all confirmed and recess appointees, within a few days. If someone served across two administrations, she has two observations in the database, one for service in each administration. Using those extensive searches and the gaps in service, I was able to determine start and end dates of interim leaders in these very top jobs, again within a few days.
For the interim periods, I was able to locate information on the specific official serving in all but 16 of them. As with confirmed service, if the interim period spanned two presidential administrations e. All 16 missing periods are in the final few days of an administration or the first days of a new administration. All but one of these stints are between one and three days, and the final one is under ten days. I excluded interim periods of under a day i. I excluded the empty period at the Commerce Department in from the tenure measurements and analysis of Table 2.
If included, acting secretaries and the period when no one was in the top job at Commerce took up 2. Two of the current fifteen cabinet departments came into existence after —the Veterans Affairs Department started in after being elevated from a stand-alone agency and the Homeland Security Department commenced operations in The database includes officials for those agencies from and , respectively.
I am grateful for the excellent research assistance provided by reference law librarians at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, Nero Dotson, and Natalie Peelish.
I used July 19, as the end date for acting officials currently serving. Citizenship and Immigration Services, qualifies under the Vacancies Act. These two interim periods therefore are not included in Table 4. Darwin officially became the acting deputy administrator on March 1. As with the cabinet secretary data, I treated service—in any capacity—across two administrations separately.
Three additional items to note: First, I assume there was a sixth empty period in the deputy administrator role, from January 20, to May 19, The EPA lists nothing for that period; I exclude it from the analysis. Second, there is also a gap between April 3 and April 12, in the agency data for the deputy administrator. Because Mike Flynn could continue serving under the Vacancies Act until Wheeler was confirmed on April 12, I did not treat the short period as empty.
I did not, however, add the time to the tenure of the acting deputy administrators in Table 6. Third, there is one gap in the EPA data for the general counsel—between the departure of Jonathan Cannon on July 4, and the start of Gary Guzy on November 17, Both Cannon and Guzy were acting officials.
I assume this period was entirely vacant after the enactment of the Vacancies Act and count it as empty in the analysis. Play Audio. Kathryn Dunn Tenpas. Footnotes [1] Using data I had previously obtained from the Office of Personnel Management for other research, I had start and end dates of confirmed and recess appointees for to Related Topics th U.
Congress Executive Branch U. More on U. FixGov Anger, betrayal, and humiliation: how veterans feel about the withdrawal from Afghanistan William A. It's then up to the Senate to push many Cabinet members through or not after various hearings and votes. It's important to note that, technically, Cabinet members are installed for longer than the next four years, but, seeing as presidents pick their own Cabinets , its customary that current Cabinet members resign on their own after their president's term comes to a close.
A policy clash due to an overlap in presidential terms was recently shown, as President Barack Obama's attorney general "[refused] to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States" regarding Trump's recent executive actions on immigration, as White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed in a news conference on Tuesday. It should be acknowledged, though, that Trump's confirmed Cabinet differs from his personally-appointed staff.
Cabinet Members Under Truman. Cabinet Members Under Eisenhower. Cabinet Members Under Kennedy. Cabinet Members Under L. Cabinet Members Under Nixon. Cabinet Members Under Ford. Cabinet Members Under Carter. Cabinet Members Under Reagan. Cabinet Members Under G.
Cabinet Members Under Clinton. Cabinet Members Under Barack Obama. Cabinet Members Under Donald J. Although the Constitution made no provision for a president's advisory group, the heads of the three executive departments State, Treasury, and War and the attorney general were organized by Washington into such a group; and by about , the name?
With the exception of the attorney general up to and the postmaster general from to , cabinet members have been heads of executive departments. Cabinet members are appointed by the president, subject to the confirmation of the Senate; and as their terms are not fixed, they may be replaced at any time by the president. The term "cabinet" comes from the Italian word "cabinetto," meaning "a small, private room.
More of a tradition than a requirement, the concept of a Cabinet sprang from a debate at the Constitutional Convention of over whether the president should wield executive authority solely or as advised by a cabinet of ministers or a privy council, as in Great Britain. The Constitution specifies neither the number of executive departments nor their duties.
Not directly. Constitutional authority for the Cabinet comes from Article 2, Section 2, which says that the president " Just another indication that the Constitution is a flexible, living document, well capable of governing our country without stifling its growth.
President George Washington convened the first cabinet meeting on February 25, Then as now, that first Cabinet meeting featured tension when Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton butted heads on the question of centralizing the then widely fragmented U.
When the debate became particularly heated, Jefferson, who opposed a national bank, tried to calm the waters in the room by suggesting that the acrimonious tone of the debate had no impact on the achieving a sound governmental structure. The Cabinet secretaries are appointed by the president of the United States but must be approved by a simple majority vote of the Senate.
The only qualification is that a department secretary cannot be a current member of Congress or hold any other elected office. Their pay is set annual by Congress as part of its approval of the federal budget.
Members of the Cabinet except for the Vice President serve at the pleasure of the president, who can dismiss them at will for no cause.
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