Leavitt: new job — Ex-Utah governor nominated to head HHS bureaucracy

"Mike Leavitt will bring competence and compassion to the people's agency," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who has sponsored many of the bills that Leavitt will be implementing as HHS secretary.

"He's got some great challenges ahead, and HHS may be an unadministratable agency," Hatch told the Deseret Morning News. "But he can succeed by leaps and bounds. He is a good administrator, and he is a policy wonk. He is the perfect guy for that job."

"From welfare reform to implementing the new Medicare prescription drug plan, there is a lot we can accomplish for Utahns by working together in a bipartisan manner," Matheson said.

U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett believes Leavitt will face many challenges as he grapples with issues from "rising health-care costs to bringing Medicare, a 40-year-old program, into the 21st century."

"Mike Leavitt is motivated by challenges. He has proven himself as a visionary and talented administrator in Utah and with the EPA, and I agree with the president that he is ideally suited to address these concerns as head of HHS," Bennett said.

As governor, Leavitt used to bemoan the intransigence of federal bureaucrats who were slow or outright refused to grant waivers to the states to implement various welfare reforms. Now Leavitt will be the one the states come to for those waivers.

Hatch believes Leavitt will take a bipartisan approach to an agency with an entrenched bureaucracy that is resistant to change.

"It is one of the greatest bureaucracies in the world and left wing (of politics), but he has proven he will work with anybody," Hatch said. "I think there is a lot more room for bipartisanship at HHS than at EPA, where the far-left environmentalists control the issues."