WASHINGTON — Shifting his Cabinet reorganization back into high gear, President Bush on Monday nominated Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt to head the Department of Health and Human Services, which faces a fiscal crunch over the massive medical costs of the elderly and the poor.
The morning announcement at the White House underscored Bush's determination to move beyond the withdrawal Friday of Department of Homeland Security nominee Bernard Kerik amid disclosures that a nanny he had hired may have been an illegal immigrant and that he had not paid all her Social Security taxes.
Homeland Security remains the only unfilled post of the 15 Cabinet positions, nine of which are changing hands.
Leavitt, 53, is a former governor of Utah who served a little more than a year at the EPA -- not long enough to leave a substantial legacy. A pragmatist who sought to balance competing policy interests, he was criticized by environmental groups for falling short in efforts to reduce power plant emissions, although he did institute a regulation to reduce diesel pollution.
Addressing EPA employees Monday, Leavitt said the president had called him Sunday evening to ask that he take a new job.
"This happened fairly suddenly," he said.
"EPA and HHS, in large measure, share a mission of protecting human health," Leavitt added.
Praising Leavitt's work at the EPA, Bush said Leavitt had enforced high standards with "a spirit of cooperation and with good common sense."
The Senate is expected to easily confirm Leavitt. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who sets his party's tone on many social welfare issues, welcomed Leavitt's nomination and said he was looking forward to working with him.
As head of HHS, Leavitt would oversee an agency with 67,000 employees and a $573-billion budget -- bigger than the Pentagon's.
Its wide-ranging missions include paying the healthcare bills of the elderly under Medicare and the poor under Medicaid, assuring the safety of prescription drugs, protecting the nation from naturally occurring epidemics as well as from bioterrorism, and sponsoring cutting-edge medical research.
If confirmed, Leavitt's challenges would begin immediately. He would oversee the regulatory groundwork to set up a new Medicare outpatient prescription benefit in 2006, the biggest change for the program in 40 years and one that its 40 million beneficiaries have clamored for.
