Summary: The United States Cabinet

The United States Cabinet (usually referred to as "the Cabinet") is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the federal government. Cabinet officers are nominated by the President and confirmed or rejected by the Senate. There is no explicit definition of the term "Cabinet" in either the United States Code or the Code of Federal Regulations. Authority for the Cabinet rests with Article Two of the U.S. Constitution, which gives the President the authority to seek external advisors. It states that the President can require "the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices." Congress, in turn, determines
Much like the Executive Office of the President, the Cabinet is as important to the President decides; the frequency of cabinet meetings varies from one president to another. There appears to be a trend to hold fewer cabinet meetings the longer the president remains in office. This is because once the President has achieved his aim of welding his cabinet members into his team to move forward his agenda, usually within the first year, the engendering of team spirit ceases to be an important function of the cabinet, from the President's perspective. To promote bipartisanship, especially during periods of national crisis, (Obama has only one Republican on his Cabinet, Rep. Ray LaHood of Illinois) Presidents have appointed members of the opposite party to cabinet posts. For these reasons, Presidents usually prefer to seek advice elsewhere and to confine cabinet meetings to general discussions of administration policy. With Obama’s senior advisors in the EXOP having experience in Washington politics, foreign policy, it is likely that he too will be a President preferring to consult his White House Staff instead of his
Firstly, the Constitution grants "all executive power" to the President. Cabinet members have no direct, constitutional power vested in them. Secondly, there is no doctrine of collective responsibility, unlike the UK, the President is not the "first among equals", and as Professor Anthony King once said: "He doesn't sum up at the end of a meeting; he is the meeting". Thirdly, cabinet members are not like the UK's shadow cabinet in that they are not the President's political rivals. Fourthly, members of the President's cabinet have loyalties that lie elsewhere also. Although they are appointed by the President and serve only at his pleasure, they have other loyalties to consider; they have a loyalty to Congress, whose votes decide their departmental budgets and whose committees can call them to account in person. They have a loyalty to their own departmental bureaucracy to interest groups with which their department has close ties. Lastly, the relative importance of the cabinet to the president is largely dependent on how highly he values the EXOP as both the cabinet and EXOP provide advisory roles. In the EXOP, the Cabinet has something of a rival, and a rival with a number of key