Bush names four new Cabinet members

President-elect Bush nominates four new Cabinet members on Friday, including Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson as health and human services secretary

December 29, 2000
Web posted at: 12:48 PM EST (1748 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President-elect George W. Bush announced four new nominees to his Cabinet Friday as he rushed to fill top jobs in his administration, including tapping Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson as health and human services secretary.

Bush also nominated Gale Norton, Colorado's former attorney general, as secretary of the interior; Rod Paige, now superintendent of schools in Houston, Texas, as secretary of education; and Anthony Principi as secretary of veterans affairs. All must be confirmed by the Senate.

First elected in 1986, Thompson is the nation's longest-serving governor. He instituted one of the first large-scale welfare reform projects and has supported education overhaul measures in the state.

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If confirmed, he would take over the agency that oversees most federal health and welfare efforts -- the largest civilian department in the government. Thompson said he looked forward to helping Bush carry out campaign pledges to overhaul Social Security and Medicare, among other programs.

"As we all know, the issues that were prominent on President-elect Bush's campaign agenda are the issues that, predominantly, the Department of the Health and Human Services will help him tackle over the next four years. I appreciate the confidence that he is showing in me today," Thompson said.

"These are all tough issues, but solving tough issues is why I got into this business, and I know it is why President-elect Bush sought this job," he added.

An anti-abortion conservative, Thompson's nomination immediately drew opposition from the abortion rights group Planned Parenthood.

After announcing the nominations, Bush quickly left Washington for Texas, where he will spend the New Year's holiday. After a short Florida vacation with his family, Bush spent two days in the capital to name several Cabinet choices. Thursday, he said he hoped to complete his Cabinet by the end of next week.

Thompson's selection had been expected for several days, but the others emerged only recently.

The Interior Department, while not always considered a top-tier Cabinet post, will be at the center of several pressing debates in the Bush administration. Bush said he picked Norton because she has a reputation for seeking consensus on difficult issues.

"In my administration, she'll have a clear charge," Bush said. "We will restore our national parks system. We will develop partnerships with states and local governments and private citizens to conserve our lands and resources and to protect the endangered species of America."

Bush is under pressure from corporate and other interests to roll back late-term Clinton administration environmental decrees, and Bush pledged in the campaign to seek to open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, a pledge that angered many environmental groups.

Norton said she supported Bush's plan to open the Alaskan refuge to oil exploration, but would work with landowners, local authorities and state governments to oversee the country's federal lands and national parks.

"An entire one-third of our land is owned by the federal government," she said. "We must build strong partnerships, as the president-elect said, with states, local governments and private citizens to make thoughtful decisions about our natural resources."

That has been a common theme among many western Republicans, who have complained that the Clinton administration's Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt took an overly active federal role in the environment and land issues.

Bush said he picked Paige because of his experience at several levels of education management -- as a college dean, a school board member and administrator. And like Bush, Paige is an advocate of school vouchers, which would use public money to send students to private schools.

"Mr. President-elect, you made education a cornerstone of your campaign," Paige said. "Those of us in education know you meant it when you said no child was to be left behind." A longtime Bush family friend, Paige has been widely credited with improving academic performance at the school district and was named superintendent of the year by the National Alliance of Black School Educators. He will be the second black member of Bush's Cabinet, along with Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell.

For Principi, meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs will be familiar turf: He has served as the agency's deputy chief and acting secretary in the administration of Bush's father, as well as leading a 1999 commission on easing servicemembers' transitions to civilian life.

"I know of no mission more worthwhile than serving the men and women who have so honorably served their nation," said Principi, a former Navy officer decorated in Vietnam.

The latest announcements come a day after Bush reached back to the days of the Ford administration to name veteran GOP insider Donald Rumsfeld his secretary of defense. In Rumsfeld, Bush turned to a veteran insider or adviser to the last four Republican presidents, and a Pentagon veteran as well, having served as President Ford's defense secretary in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

Rumsfeld had been in line to direct the Central Intelligence Agency before Bush turned to him for Pentagon chief.

As a result, transition and other GOP sources said there is a good chance Bush will ask George Tenet, the current CIA director and a Clinton appointee, to stay on; Tenet draws bipartisan praise in Congress.