Barack Obama, president-elect, nominated former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle as secretary of Health and Human Services at a news conference on Thursday morning.
Mr Daschle will also head the Office of Health Reform, a new executive entity tasked with coordinating health care policy and will be a “leading architect” of the incoming administration’s health care policy, Mr Obama said .
Accepting the nomination, Mr Daschle called the plight of the uninsured “unconscionable” and said he looked forward to “not just implementing reform, but helping to generate it.”
Mr Obama is also poised to unveil three more senior administration appointments, with Stephen Chu, a Nobel prize-winning Asian-American physicist, widely considered to be a likely candidate for energy secretary.
Mr Obama, who has made record time filling senior positions in the five weeks since he became president-elect, will also appoint Carol Browner, a long-running Clinton administration official at the Environmental Protection Administration, as his energy co-ordinator in the White House.
Obama transition officials said they would refrain from using the designation “tsar” for the position. But Ms Browner, whose liberal credentials might help appease the Democratic left, which is voicing growing concern about the political leanings of Mr Obama’s more high-profile appointments, would have a powerful role co- ordinating energy policies.
Other appointments are likely to include Lisa Jackson, the chief of staff to Jon Corzine, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, as the head of the EPA.
Mr Obama on Wednesday appointed Nancy Sutley, the gay deputy mayor of Los Angeles, as his head of the Council on Environmental Quality.
The latest appointments would appear to rule out Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, as a second high-profile Republican in Mr Obama’s cabinet after Robert Gates agreed to remain as Pentagon chief.
Mr Schwarzenegger, who is grappling with an acute fiscal crisis, had been rumoured by some as a possible energy secretary. Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, has also ruled himself out as a possible secretary of education but said on Tuesday that he would be open to carrying out “troubleshooting” roles for Mr Obama, which could include acting as an envoy in the Middle East.
Mr Chu, who is head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and a former head of the electronics research laboratory at Bell Labs, is considered highly qualified to be energy secretary from a technical point of view but lacking in any political experience.
The new team will take office after an election in which energy security and climate change figured prominently. Mr Obama met with Al Gore, the former vice-president, on Tuesday and reiterated his pledge to push through a carbon cap-and- trade system in his first term. Mr Obama has also vowed to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil and incorporate energy into his security strategy.
