Executive Departments of The Present
All departments are listed by their present-day name and only departments with past or present cabinet-level status are listed. Order of succession has always included the Vice President (1) as the first in line; at times – including presently – the Speaker of the House (2) and the President pro tempore of the Senate (3) have also been included.
| Department |
Creation |
Order of succession |
Notes | 2009 Outlays in billions of dollars |
Employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| State | 1789 | 4 | Initially named "Department of Foreign Affairs". | 16.39 | 18,900 |
| Treasury | 1789 | 5 | 19.56 | 115,897 | |
| Justice | 1870 | 7 | Position of Attorney General created in 1789, but had no department until 1870 | 46.20 | 112,557 |
| Interior | 1849 | 8 | 90.00 | 71,436 | |
| Agriculture | 1862 | 9 | 134.12 | 109,832 | |
| Commerce | 1903 | 10 | Originally named Commerce and Labor; Labor later separated | 15.77 | 43,880 |
| Labor | 1913 | 11 | 137.97 | 17,347 | |
| Defense | 1947 | 6 | Initially named "National Military Establishment" 1947-49. Created as a subsuming—from executive to sub-executive status—of the Departments of Air Force, Army (War), and Navy. | 651.16 | 3,000,000 |
| Health and Human Services | 1953 | 12 | Originally named Health, Education, and Welfare; Education later separated | 879.20 | 67,000 |
| Housing and Urban Development | 1965 | 13 | 40.53 | 10,600 | |
| Transportation | 1966 | 14 | 73.20 | 58,622 | |
| Energy | 1977 | 15 | 24.10 | 109,094 | |
| Education | 1980 | 16 | 45.40 | 4,487 | |
| Veterans Affairs | 1989 | 17 | formerly an independent agency as the Veterans Administration | 97.70 | 235,000 |
| Homeland Security | 2002 | 18 | 40.00 | 208,000 | |
| Total outlays, employees: | $2,311.30B | 4,193,144 | |||
Read more about this topic: United States Federal Executive Departments
Famous quotes containing the words executive, departments and/or present:
“Testimony of all ages forces us to admit that war is among the most dangerous enemies to liberty, and that the executive is the branch most favored by it of all the branches of Power.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“A man sees only what concerns him.... How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When we leave our child in nursery school for the first time, it won’t be just our child’s feelings about separation that we will have to cope with, but our own feelings as well—from our present and from our past, parents are extra vulnerable to new tremors from old earthquakes.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)