Political News

John Heller/WireImage(WASHINGTON) -- President Obama will nominate former campaign official Katherine Archuleta as director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Thursday, according to a White House official.

Archuleta served as national political director for Obama's 2012 reelection campaign. She was the first Latina to serve in that role on a major presidential campaign, the White House said. Former OPM director John Berry's term expired last month.

Obama's appointment of Archuleta comes after the president faced pressure from Latino advocacy groups to appoint Hispanics to serve in his second-term cabinet. More than seven in 10 Latinos voted for Obama in last year's election, but the number of Latino cabinet members is set to fall from two to one.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar both left the administration this year. Thomas Perez, a former Justice Department official, was nominated to fill Solis' position at the Department of Labor.

The position of OPM director is not a cabinet-level role. The agency, however, does oversee the hiring of federal employees and the pension and insurance plans for federal retirees. That role has become increasingly important as the federal government grapples with across-the-board sequestration spending cuts. The $85 billion in cuts this year alone have caused agencies to furlough employees.

Before serving as the Obama campaign's political director in 2012, Archuleta was chief of staff to Solis at the Department of Labor. A Colorado native, she worked as a senior adviser to Denver's first Latino mayor, Federico Peña (D), from 2005 to 2009.

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Alex Wong/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Facing angry lawmakers before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew promised that those involved in the Internal Revenue Service scandal will be held accountable once more facts are known.
 
“We are going to get to the bottom of it -- anyone who is accountable will be held accountable,” Lew told the House Committee Wednesday. “I have made clear that it is an extraordinarily high priority, my highest priority to restore confidence in the IRS.”
 
As Lew faced the committee, in another hearing room a few doors down, Lois Lerner, the IRS’ director of the Exempt Organizations, pleaded the Fifth Amendment in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Lew was pressed if he agreed with Lerner’s personal assessment that she did “nothing wrong.”  The treasury secretary refused to answer one way or the other.
 
“I'm going to wait to have all the facts,” he replied, “I don't have all the facts. We have to make decisions based on facts.”
 
Lew, who also testified before the Senate Banking Committee Wednesday, ticked through more broadly what details are still not known. These items, he said, will be reviewed by incoming Commissioner Daniel Werfel, whose first day on the job was Wednesday.
 
“How could the communications be so bad? How could the management be so loose? And I can't sit here today and tell you we've completed that,” Lew said, “Is there something systemic about the management structure of the Internal Revenue Service that needs to be fixed to be able to say, with confidence, that not just with regard to this area, but more broadly, we've taken the kind of look to be able to say that we can be confident that this won't happen again?”
 
As he did Tuesday, Lew continued to stress that he believes, backed up by the evidence of the IG report, that while “outrageous methods to determine if certain groups qualifies for tax-exempt status” were used, “this conduct was not politically motivated.”
 
“It was unacceptable and it was inexcusable,” Lew said, “We’re going to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.”
 
Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., told Lew that he found his response to this scandal “disingenuous at best.”
 
“We can judge for ourselves whether you are really making -- trying to fix this for the future a priority,” Congressman Garrett concluded.
 
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