Earlier today the Senate voted 78-17 in Executive Session to confirm the nomination of Ms. Sylvia Mathews Burwell to be the new Secretary of The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Ms. Burwell was most recently the head of President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget before being nominated for her new role. Ms. Burwell takes the helm of HSS from the former Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. A native of Hinton, West Virginia—a town of roughly 3,000, Ms. Burwell held the position of Deputy Chief of Staff working with Erskine Bowles in President Bill Clinton’s second administration. Ms. Burwell becomes the 22nd Secretary of HHS, an agency of over 70,000 federal employees across a number of important departments: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); the National Institutes of Health (NIH); the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA); the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); and the Administration on Aging among others. The largest portion of the agency’s near trillion dollar annual budget is dedicated to funding the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) charged with running the Medicare and Medicaid programs nationwide.