Major OMB Appointments

The Lost in Transition blog reports that Robert Gordon, pictured to the left, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, will be associate director for education, income maintenance and labor at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). "Income maintenance" sure sounds like Social Security and one can infer the same thing from looking at the OMB organizational chart. Here is some biographical information on Gordon. OMB Watch reports that Cass Sunstein, pictured to the right, a law professor at the University of Chicago, has been appointed director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Policy at OMB.

OMB is the most important actor in determining Social Security's appropriation and the gatekeeper for any regulations that the Social Security Commissioner wants to adopt. Without OMB approval, proposed and final regulations do not go in the Federal Register. For Social Security, Gordon is in charge of the budget and Sunstein is in change of the regulations. OMB mostly operates behind the scenes, but it is enormously powerful.