New post could enhance options down road
 | Deseret Morning News graphic Utahns in presidential Cabinets Requires Adobe Acrobat. |
"Along with tax reform, health care and welfare should be one of President Bush's concentrations in his second term. I think we'll see Bush implement compassionate conservatism" — something that really couldn't be done after 9/11 since the Iraq war and re-election political battles molded his first term, said Scruggs, who is president of Leucadia Asset Management Group but who teamed with Leavitt in the mid-1980s in a local political consulting firm.
Leavitt will take over one of the largest and most bureaucratic federal departments that makes up a quarter of all the spending of the federal government.
It's a huge challenge, said both Scruggs and Pat Shea, a local attorney who was head of the Bureau of Land Management and deputy Interior Department secretary in Bill Clinton's administration.
What heading HHS really means, assuming Leavitt is confirmed, is a high-power job in the private sector when he leaves federal employment, said Shea, who also ran for governor and the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in Utah.
Leavitt, already a millionaire through his family's Leavitt Group insurance firms, "will have a good chance to become the CEO of a Fortune 500 firm," Shea said. "He clearly is ambitious, and this will be a chance to take care of his family (financially)."
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