With President Biden’s withdrawal from the Presidential race, there will not be an incumbent President taking the oath on January 20, 2025. Due to concerns that new Presidents were ill-prepared when they first assumed the responsibilities of the office, Congress enacted the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 and has amended that statute multiple times (most recently in 2022).
The transition has two phases, pre-election and post-election and involves two separate groups, the federal agencies and the transition teams established by the Presidential candidates. These transition efforts play an important role in jump-starting plans and options for the President-elect to consider while the candidates and their key staff and advisors focus on their campaigns and on winning the election, to and through election day.
The campaign was the lead horse in this effort. We prioritized their needs.
Yohannes Abraham, Executive Director of the Biden-Harris 2020 transition
January 19, 2021
The law triggers a process that includes the agencies, which are required to prepare for the transition. As part of this effort, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memorandum on April 26, 2024 with three directives to the agencies:
- Appoint a transition director;
- Name a point of contact for communications purposes related to Presidential transition efforts; and
- Develop a succession plan for each senior noncareer official in their agency.
The General Services Administration (GSA) is the lead agency supporting transition efforts. After the nominating conventions, GSA provides each candidate’s transition team office space and resources. Agencies, including major departments such as Commerce, Homeland Security, and HHS, and White House offices (e.g., OMB, National Security Council) provide briefing materials and establish personnel transition plans.
Former President Trump has selected Howard Lutnick (CEO and Chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald) and Linda McMahon (Administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA) during Trump’s first term) to lead his transition team. McMahon also chairs the American First Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. conservative think tank. Vice President Harris selected Yohannes Abraham (recently served as Biden’s Ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations). Abraham also served as Executive Director of the Biden- Harris 2020 transition team.
After the election and as soon as one of the candidates concedes, GSA provides support for the President-elect’s transition team. The main focus of a transition team is personnel. There are roughly 8,000 non-career positions in the federal government (every four years after an election, a “Plum Book” is published listing those positions). The White House Office of Presidential Personnel is responsible for vetting these positions, but it is not established until inauguration day. As a result, a key focus of a transition team is to start the process of identifying personnel in advance for a new administration.
After the election, the President-elect and his advisors shift from a near-exclusive focus on the campaign to getting ready to govern. A key focus will be nomination and Senate confirmation of the incoming Administration’s national security team (State and Defense) and economic team (Treasury and OMB)1. A second key focus of the President-elect, their advisors, and his or her transition team is to prepare administrative actions for execution early in the new Administration. That usually includes a series of executive orders right out of the gate. Finally, the President-elect and his team will begin preparing a legislative program, including the President’s FY26 Budget.
My objective is to show the President a mosaic of all these different people who want to serve, they’ve already been vetted, and let’s go select the greatest government we’ve ever had.
Howard Lutnick, Co-chair of the Trump transition team
September 16, 2024
It is impractical to submit the budget by the deadline (less than one month after the inauguration). New administrations typically wait to get their Senate-confirmed team in key roles before submitting a full budget. As a result, new administrations usually submit a summary of the budget in late February or early spring followed by the full submission in April or May. In recent history, the first budget of a new President tends to have the biggest changes to taxes or entitlement programs. If there is one-party control of the Congress and the White House, the budget reconciliation process is often used to implement most of the President’s proposals with modifications. Since appropriations bills cannot be passed through reconciliation (with its simple majority threshold), unless there is a wave election, a new administration will have less success in gaining as much of its significant programmatic changes enacted.
BUDGETS FOR TRANSITIONS AND TIMELINES
Congress enacted $10.4 million in FY24 for Presidential transition activities. OMB submitted a list of FY25 continuing resolution (CR) “anomalies” that would provide $25 million to the White House Office of Administration for transition activities, $19.4 million to GSA to provide office space and compensation for staff to support transition activities, and $23 million to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for retention of federal records and artifacts from the outgoing Biden Administration.
Chart I. Source: Center for Presidential Transition, GSA
CHALLENGES AHEAD
There were dramatic shifts, particularly though administrative actions (executive orders, regulations, and other actions) that were implemented in both the 2017 Obama to Trump and the 2021 Trump to Biden transitions. In the case of Vice President Harris, there will not be as dramatic a change, but she will want to put her on mark on her administration and that will be reflected in her personnel decisions, her administrative actions, and her proposed budget.
The President-elect will face a number of existing challenges (completing full-year government funding if a continuing resolution is extended into the new year, need to raise the debt limit in late spring or early summer, international conflicts such as the Ukraine War and the Gaza conflict, and the expiration of the 2017 tax law at the end of 2025), along with unexpected challenges that invariably surface. The transition from campaign mode to governing will be critical to their success in their first year, usually the year when an administration has the greatest momentum and potential to achieve its objectives.