Less has been written about the policy side, partly because the details of the freeze won’t be public until Obama releases his budget on Monday. But the sense I get — and I alluded to this in a quick State of the Union story last night — is that the freeze will really have a minimal impact on federal employees, both on their priorities and their pay.

Here’s John Palguta, the vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service, in an interview yesterday:

In terms of the actual impact, it’s pretty modest… it does squeeze agencies a bit, because there are adjustments in pay they have to take care of, but it’s really not a dramatic impact in my view. And most of the federal budget is exempt.

And here’s John Gage, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, on a conference call with reporters this afternoon. He argued that the Bush administration “starved” employees by outsourcing work — and he said many agencies can use the money saved by insourcing to continue hiring, even under a freeze:

Obama’s freeze is not on FTEs. It is on overall aggregate money… many of these agencies will be able to achieve their goals, because of the insourcing, because they are cutting so many of these expensive contracts that have been out there.

Gage said AFGE is “keeping its powder dry” on the freeze — not complaining about it loudly, in other words — until it sees Obama’s budget request on Monday. He also predicted the House leadership will “turn a jaundiced eye” to the freeze.  If he’s right, expect a lot of angry rhetoric up and down Pennsylvania Avenue: Obama promised last night to veto any spending bill that doesn’t comply with his freeze.

I could go on — I’ve heard similar things from a number of analysts. Suffice it to say nobody expects this freeze to have a tremendous impact on government operations.

Obama will issue a directive in the next few days suspending the bonuses, according to administration officials. That directive will cover more than 3,000 appointees. And his budget request, scheduled for release on Feb. 1, will propose a pay freeze for top political appointees — a move which would affect 1,200 people, including White House officials, department heads and ambassadors (except for career foreign service officers serving as ambassadors).

The White House wouldn’t say how much money it expects to save with this plan — though the savings would be relatively modest, at least compared to the $1 trillion+ federal budget deficit.

As we mention over on the homepage, the freeze only affects a fraction of the federal budget: $447 billion, or about 17 percent of total spending. Nabors clarified that it exempts Defense, Homeland Security, the VA, and the entire State/international affairs section of the federal budget. He also emphasized that the cuts aren’t uniform.

It’s not an across-the-board cut. We have honored the president’s commitment and gone line-by-line through the budget trying to find those programs that aren’t working, aren’t achieving their mission.

So some agencies in that “non-security discretionary” category will see their budgets continue to increase. Education, for example, probably will see some gains.

The flip side is that other agencies could actually see their budgets shrink. That’s simple math: If the $447 billion figure is fixed, and some agencies get more money, others have to receive less. We won’t know for sure until Monday, though, when the administration’s budget request is released. (And of course this all assumes Congress agrees to a freeze, which it hasn’t yet…)

Schmidt spent about 18 months in the Bush administration, from December 2001 to May 2003, before returning to the private sector. He has also worked as Microsoft’s chief security officer, and eBay’s chief information officer; the White House says Schmidt’s close ties with industry were a factor in his appointment.

The Washington Post first reported the news of Schmidt’s nomination last night. Schmidt was long considered one of the two front-runners for the job, which Obama announced he would create during a White House speech on cybersecurity in May.

We’ll have more details about the announcement, including reactions from the cybersecurity community, throughout the day.

One other item of note that didn’t quite fit into the TSA story: Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., offered a bit of insight into his thinking on cybersecurity. Rockefeller said he was worried about President Barack Obama’s plan to name a “cyber czar” — but, unlike other legislators, he’s not concerned that the czar will be unaccountable to the Senate. Rather, he’s worried that the new cyber coordinator, who will report to the National Economic Council and the National Security Council, will have too many bosses:

We say there ought to be somebody who reports only to the president. If that’s another “czar,” then that’s the kind of czar you want to have, because that [cybersecurity] is the number-one national security threat to the United States. I feel there ought to be somebody who reports directly to the president… otherwise we’re going to drift away from cybersecurity being the top priority.

Rockefeller and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine (they’re the “we” in that quote) have introduced legislation that would create a “czar” accountable directly to the president.

Most of it was focused on the military aspects of Obama’s new strategy, but the officials also said Obama will spend some time in tonight’s speech talking about the civilian role in Afghanistan:

The president will announce how we’re sending additional civilian experts to Afghanistan to team up with military units.

[...] Their approach has to go well beyond Kabul. They have to reach out in a bottom-up approach, in the provinces and districts… and he will announce that our top development priority in Afghanistan will be agriculture.

The administration has struggled to find civilians to deploy to Afghanistan, though. Obama announced a 1,000-strong “civilian surge” in March; Richard Holbrooke, his envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, says those personnel won’t finish deploying until early next year. And many experts have said Afghanistan needs thousands more civilians for meaningful development work.

I know President Barack Obama still has hundreds of positions to fill. But the top job at the Office of Special Counsel would seem to be an important one. The agency hasn’t had political leadership since October 2008, when the Bush administration forced Bloch to resign.

OSC employees I’ve talked to generally say the agency needs some reorganization, but William Reukauf, the acting special counsel, told me last year that he planned to act as a caretaker. Reorganization, in other words, would have to wait for political leadership. He told Government Executive in May that the agency is “looking forward anxiously” for a new political leader.

But that’s not the only important decision on which Obama has delayed. There’s also the question of appointing a “cyber czar,” a White House official to coordinate cybersecurity policy. Obama announced the new position in May, during a White House speech on cybersecurity, but the position has remained vacant for more than five months.

The delay is starting to attract criticism. Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., said last week that he was frustrated with the delay. TechAmerica, an IT industry group, put out a press release this afternoon calling on Obama to appoint a czar “at the earliest possible opportunity.”

Why is the decision taking so long? I’ve posed this question to a few people in recent weeks.

The consensus seems to be that, at first, nobody wanted the job. Several cybersecurity officials have resigned in frustration this year: Mischel Kwon, formerly in charge of US-CERT, stepped down in August; and Rod Beckstrom, the former director of the National Cybersecurity Center, resigned in March.

There’s a general sense that cybersecurity officials don’t have the authority and resources they need to do their jobs — and that scared off a number of would-be applicants for the cyber czar job.

But it seems the White House is finally close to a decision. Several sources told me it could come by the end of the month — perhaps timed around Thanksgiving, when Congress is out of town. (The announcement will surely prompt cries of “what took you so long,” and the administration wants to minimize those.)

Obama announced the program at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Phoenix, Ariz., where he spoke of the agency’s need to better serve veterans. He said asking employees for their ideas can help solve many of the VA’s critical problems, including the backlog of more than half a million veterans’ claims.

Obama said he’d told VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra and Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients to establish a competition to find the very best ideas employees have to improve the VA.

We’re going to challenge each of our 57 regional VA offices to come up with the best ways of doing business, of harnessing the best information technologies, of cutting red tape and breaking through the bureaucracy. And then we’re going to fund the best ideas and put them into action, all with a simple mission: cut those backlogs, slash those wait times, deliver your benefits sooner. I know you’ve heard this for years, but the leadership and resources we’re providing this time means that we’re going to be able to do it. That is our mission, and we are going to make it happen.”

Dr. Regina Benjamin, an Alabama physician, speaks after President Barack Obama announced her nomination for surgeon general Monday in the Rose Garden. AP photo

Dr. Regina Benjamin, a family practice doctor who works with the rural poor in Alabama, is President Barack Obama’s choice for surgeon general, Obama said Monday.

Obama praised Benjamin’s commitment to health care and to providing access to care for those who can’t afford insurance. She is the founder of the Bayou Le Batre Rural Health Clinic in Bayou La Batre, Ala., a fishing village, and has served as its chief exective officer since is founding in 1990.

Benjamin has rebuilt the clinic several times, including after it sustain heavy damages by Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Benjamin, 52, received her bachelor’s degree in 1979 from Xavier University of Louisiana, attended Morehouse School of Medicine from 1980 to 1982, and earned her doctor of medicine degree in 1984 from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Her medical schooling was paid for by the National Health Service Corps, a federal program where medical students pledge to work in underserved areas in exchange for paid tuition, earning one year of free tuition for ever year of service.

Atlanta neurosurgeon and CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta was rumored earlier this year to be Obama’s first choice for surgeon general, but Gupta pulled his name from consideration, citing his desire to spend more time on his current work.

Benjamin’s nomination is subject to Senate confirmation.

Hathaway confirmed her candidacy for the “cybersecurity czar” position to reporters after a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C. policy group. Hathaway said the administration is considering several candidates but President Barack Obama has not yet conducted any interviews.

Hathaway, who led the White House’s 60-day review of cybersecurity policy, said Obama is deeply interested in improving cybersecurity and his leadership will help institute change.

“It’s personal to him … they’ve tried to hack into his BlackBerry on a regular basis. This president is going to drive this forward, and it’s being raised on a weekly basis,” Hathaway said.

• Margaret Hamburg to be FDA commissioner, Department of Health and Human Services.
• Roger Baker to be an assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs.
• Charles Blanchard to be general counsel of the Air Force.
• William Gunn to be general counsel of the VA.
• Thomas Lamont to be an assistant secretary of the Army.
• Raymond Mabus, Jr. to be secretary of the Navy.
• Daniel Poneman to be deputy Energy secretary.
• Jose Riojas to be an assistant secretary of the VA.
• David Sandalow to be an assistant Energy secretary.
• John Sepulveda to be an assistant secretary of the VA.
• Paul Stockton to be an assistant Defense secretary.
• Rhea Suh to be an assistant Interior secretary.
• Andrew Weber to be assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Chemical and Biological Defense Programs.
• Neal Wolin to be deputy secretary of the Treasury.
• Robert Work to be undersecretary of the Navy.

All were confirmed by voice vote.

He will replace acting CDC Director Dr. Rich Besser, who will return to his role leading the CDC’s Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response.

Please visit Federal Times for updates on this story.

FEMA had been an independent agency before the creation of DHS after Sept. 11, 2001, and many have argued that it could respond to disasters best by being removed from the bureaucracy of DHS.

For a full story, check back with Federal Times shortly.

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee approved two nominations by voice vote Monday: W. Craig Fugate for Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator and John Morton for assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Senate may vote this week on their nominations, which aren’t controversial. No vote has been scheduled.

Meanwhile, senators are debating the nomination of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for secretary of Health and Human Services Tuesday, with a vote expected later in the day. The vote on her nomination has been delayed almost three weeks, as some Republicans have taken issue with her pro-choice stance and her acceptance of campaign contributions from a Kansas doctor who performs late-term abortions.

She must receive at least 60 votes for her nomination to pass, part of a compromise reached by Senate Democrats and Republicans late last week. She’s expected to have the needed number of votes, but not by much.

The president laid out a challenge to federal employees this weekend in his weekly blog/radio address, calling for new thinking and creativity among the federal workforce:

“That’s why we’ll establish a process through which every government worker can submit their ideas for how their agency can save money and perform better. We’ll put the suggestions that work into practice. And later this year, I will meet with those who come up with the best ideas to hear firsthand about how they would make your government more efficient and effective.”

There is far to go in modernizing federal agencies to better apply technology, but there also is far to go in modernizing the mindset of how government operates and views itself, he said:

“So much of our government was built to deal with different challenges from a different era. Too often, the result is wasteful spending, bloated programs, and inefficient results. It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.”

In that spirit, President Obama said he plans to motivate agencies to find savings within their current budgets by allowing them to keep a portion of money they don’t spend and reinvest it elsewhere toward programs that are more effective. The end goal, he said: a smaller budget and more effective government programs.

In addition, Obama said he’s also looking for ideas from businesses and reform experts on how to make government operate leaner and more smartly. Later this year, he said he will host a forum on reforming government for the 21st century as a way to bring outside voices into the government reform discussion.

So, will you take the Obama challenge? Tell us what great ideas you have for saving money.

Sebelius’ nomination now goes to the full Senate for a vote, the date of which hasn’t yet been announced. Sebelius had a confirmation hearing before the Finance Committee two weeks ago, but Republicans wary with her stances on abortion and Obama’s health care reforms delayed a vote on her nomination until after Congress returned from a two-week recess.

Republican senators Pat Roberts, from Sebelius’ home state of Kansas, and Maine’s Olympia Snowe voted in favor of Sebelius.

Sebelius, currently governor of Kansas, was Obama’s second choice to lead HHS. His first choice, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, stepped down in February after he acknowledged owing more than $140,000 in back taxes for use of a car and driver.

The Senate has done virtually nothing, for example, to address the glacial pace of confirmations that often leads presidents to expand the White House staff as well as the number of appointees who serve without Senate approval. Although he has submitted the names of nominees to the Senate relatively quickly, President Obama will be lucky if the last of his nearly 500 full-time cabinet and subcabinet officers are confirmed by March 2010.

Obviously the president has made some mistakes with his Cabinet picks. The endless parade of nominees with tax problems — Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer, Hilda Solis — has not exactly inspired confidence in the vetting process or the integrity of the people being tapped for public service.

But, tax troubles and all, Obama still has 55 nominees pending before the Senate; legislators have confirmed just 43 people in the more than two months of Obama’s presidency.

Congress has a lot on its plate. But you would think confirming Obama’s appointees would be a higher priority.

Kundra has served as the chief technology officer for Washington, D.C. since 2007. In his new role, he will direct governmentwide information technology investments, policy and spending oversight.  When a governmentwide chief technology officer is named, they will work together to advance the president’s technology agenda.

We’ll have more for you following a news conference with Kundra later today.

Where you see this sign, your tax dollars are at work.

It seems President Obama wants this emblem to be his seal of approval, showing government’s accountability to taxpayers for the billions being spent on projects to stimulate the economy. Here is what he had to say at the Transportation Department today:

These emblems are symbols of our commitment to you, the American people — a commitment to investing your tax dollars wisely, to put Americans to work doing the work that needs to be done.  So when you see them on projects that your tax dollars made possible, let it be a reminder that our government — your government — is doing its part to put the economy back on the road of recovery.

Obama, of course, is not the first president to use logos to spur confidence in policy, especially in tough economic times. During the New Deal, the blue eagle of the National Recovery Administration adorned store fronts and packages of businesses that had adopted fair competition practices, such as minimum wage.