Presidential Transition in The United States
In the United States, a presidential election is held every four years. While transitions between presidents are peaceful, they are highly complicated and expensive. After the President-elect is sworn in, one of his primary obligations is to build his administration. The most publicized of these duties is appointing members of his Cabinet (Secretary of State, Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of Defense, et cetera). In total, the President makes 6,000 to 9,000 appointments, although he has the right to appoint as many as 700,000 to the federal bureaucracy. Sometimes, a President will allow appointments from the previous administration to maintain their position. "Normally these appointments include: Cabinet Officers and heads of other executive branch agencies; Under Secretaries; Assistant Secretaries; Directors of Bureaus and Services; and Chairpersons and Members of Boards, Commissions, and Committees. Theses appointments are often authorized by specific provisions of law or approved by the Senate. "
Until 1963, the President-elect paid for his own smooth transition. In 1963, Congress passed the Presidential Transition Act in which allocates up to $900,000.
There are three different types of positions that the President can delegate.
- PA - Presidential appoint officials unilaterally.
- PAS - President has the ability to appoint officials with the advice and assent of the Senate.
- SES- Non-career Senior Executive Service- are appointed "based on their responsibility for advocating public policy.
-
- confidential character. (Sometimes referred to as 'Schedule C' position)
- The average age of a SES is 54 and serves for 23 years.
There are different pay levels for Executive employees, ranging from $114,500 to $ 157,000. Civilian Payroll for Executive Agencies is nearly 12 million a year. Executive Direct Compensation was $129,923 million and personal benefits were $47,596 million. (As of September 2006)
Read more about this topic: Presidency
Famous quotes containing the words united states, presidential, transition, united and/or states:
“The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss. They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure.... Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon.... The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness.”
—Henri Lefebvre (b. 1901)
“The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“In the case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of ... powers not granted by the compact, the States ... are in duty bound to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)