CNN: The people you don’t know who could be running the government on Friday
While the Senate waits to confirm Trump’s nominees, critical national security and economic posts will be led by designated acting secretaries and agency heads, like Norris Cochran who will lead the Department of Health and Human Services or Catherine McCabe at the Environmental Protection Agency.
This is not unusual. When Obama took office on January 20, 2009, only eight cabinet secretaries were ready to take office and many posts remained vacant. While some like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were confirmed the next day, Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s first HHS secretary, was not confirmed until April of that year.
“You’re not going to get the critical people in place in time,” Max Stier, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, an organization that has been pushing reforms to the presidential transition process, told CNN.
From: The people you don’t know who could be running the government on Friday – CNNPolitics.com
The deep state runs itself nicely without any need for political oversight, aka the cover of “elected gov’t”.Report
Actually it doesn’t. There’s quite a bit that can’t be done without, at the minimum, the signatures of certain appointed positions.
In the sense that the government keeps the lights on, pays it’s staff, continues to disburse money for existing contracts, the courts stay open, etc — yes.
Which is, one would think, how you want it. To use the much-vaunted “business” analogy, you wouldn’t want a company to be unable to do any productive work when it’s been freshly bought out and the new board members still in flux.Report
That’s not the deep state to which I’m referring to. I’m talking about the black stuff that goes on.Report