Appendix K: Staffing the White House and rebuilding the agencies

Supports staffing and delivery.

A president can announce an industrial mobilization in one speech. Underwriting a loan, preparing a wage determination, awarding a grant, and writing a construction contract take people who know how to do them. Project 2029 will fail on staffing before it runs out of worthy projects if those people are missing.

The personnel list therefore begins before the election. The transition turns it into assignments, appointing decisions, and recruitment plans. By inauguration the administration should know who will coordinate the Mission from the White House, who can make the first departmental appointments, and which agency teams must be rebuilt for the work to move.

The authorities described here permit action without a new hiring statute. They do not create unlimited salary money or make every person eligible for every appointment. The administration uses available staffing authority and resources, while seeking the appropriations and program renewals needed for the wider plan.

Two workforces, prepared together

The plan's workforce baseline records federal employment falling from 2,313,216 in September 2024 to 2,035,344 in January 2026, approximately 12 percent, reaching what the source describes as the lowest headcount in at least 15 years. It records 386,826 departures between January 20, 2025 and January 2026. Of those, 10,436 were formal layoffs, against its normal-year comparison of roughly 300; layoffs represented under 3 percent of the departures. The deferred-resignation program accounted for 136,822 departures. Hiring over the same year reached 122,598, against the source's decade-long average of about 250,000 annually. These are the dated planning baseline figures, not a fresh count of the workforce that will remain in 2029.

The loss matters because government capacity lives in particular people. The loan officer who understands a difficult program, the grants specialist who can tell a state what its application lacks, and the wage specialist who knows which determination a project requires cannot be replaced by telling their agency to work faster.

The immediate White House requirement is a few hundred staff at their desks within weeks of inauguration, across its policy councils and related work, with a few dozen in the temporary RFC coordinating team. The agency requirement is several thousand people during the first year doing underwriting, contracting, and grant administration. Temporary appointments can assemble the first group quickly. They do not automatically rebuild the second.

Nor does a White House title confer an agency's legal authority. The Ballroom team coordinates, finds blockages, and helps applicants. Appropriately authorized government officials approve commitments and administer awards.¹ Contracting officers, for example, bind the government only within their delegated authority. The boundary turns on authorization and the work involved, not a universal rule that only career employees can obligate funds. Federal Acquisition Regulation 1.602-1.

Assemble the temporary RFC team

The DOGE arrangement demonstrated how much a small unit close to the president could do quickly. Project 2029 will direct that speed toward building productive capacity and improving public services. Executive Order 14158 renamed the United States Digital Service and created a temporary organization inside it. The order specified July 4, 2026 as the temporary organization's termination date, expressly leaving its other authorities unaffected. That date alone does not establish that the renamed service ceased to exist. Executive Order 14158.

Section 3161 of title 5 provides staffing powers for a temporary organization established by law or executive order to carry out a specific project. Its definition concerns an organization established for no more than three years. It allows excepted-service appointments, nonreimbursable details from departments and agencies, specified pay arrangements, and acceptance of volunteer services. A presidential order can establish the temporary coordinating organization within the available legal and budget framework. It cannot charter the full Reconstruction Finance Corporation or grant it general lending powers. 5 U.S.C. §3161.

The hiring flexibility lets the organization recruit for the particular work instead of building its first team through ordinary competitive examinations. The statute allows appointments of up to three years and, under OPM regulations, extensions of appointments for up to two additional years. That appointment provision does not automatically turn an organization established for three years into a five-year institution. Project 2029 needs a team for the demonstration period, with a defined project and end date; continuation must rest on valid authority.

Details are especially valuable. At the temporary organization's request, an agency head may lend personnel on a nonreimbursable basis. A Treasury lawyer or Energy loan specialist can bring the knowledge of an operating credit program directly into the coordinating team. The employee remains paid by the home agency, with the employment protections and return arrangements applicable to the detail. The receiving team avoids a separate salary charge and a new hire. Government still pays the salary, and the home agency must have a workable arrangement for the duties it loses while that person is away.

The section's pay limits are tied to federal schedules: executive-level positions are capped by the maximum Senior Executive Service basic rate, while other positions have the statute's General Schedule limit. The plan describes the executive ceiling as a little over $200,000; the applicable year's schedules determine actual compensation. The recruitment case cannot depend on outbidding a bank. It rests on the work, presidential backing, and the opportunity to spend two years building something. Permission to accept volunteers is useful at the margin, not a substitute for a functioning staff.

Fill the operational appointments first

The director of the Office of Energy Dominance Financing is an early priority. The plan identifies this successor to the Loan Programs Office as a departmental appointment requiring no Senate confirmation. The candidate should be selected before the election, with the objective of putting the director at their desk on January 21 after appointment by a lawfully serving department head. The source's $44.9 billion figure describes estimated 2025 lending under the predecessor energy-infrastructure program, not money waiting for that director in 2029. Establishing available authority, uncommitted balances and renewal requirements is among the first tasks.

A department does not have to wait indefinitely for its permanent secretary to be confirmed. A lawfully serving acting official can exercise the authorities available to the office, subject to the governing succession and vacancies rules. The plan's historical illustration is Steven Chu's confirmation as Energy Secretary by voice vote on January 20, 2009: some confirmations happen immediately, while others need a lawful acting arrangement. The transition prepares for both.

The plan identifies 11 categories to prepare for early appointments outside the ordinary Senate-confirmation queue. Their importance is the work they control:

• OMB's four program associate directors, who manage major portions of the budget's operating decisions.
• The director of Treasury's Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which supports community lenders.
• The Rural Utilities Service administrator, overseeing rural electricity, water, and broadband instruments; the plan's lending baseline exceeds $7 billion in 2025.
• The Public Buildings Service commissioner at GSA, responsible for the federal property portfolio that supplies early retrofit work.
• The director of HHS's Office of Child Care, central to the pilot's childcare arrangements.
• Labor's Office of Apprenticeship administrator, responsible for the apprenticeship system the training plan uses.
• The director of the Office of Strategic Capital at Defense, administering industrial-base lending where authority and funding remain available.
• The director of the CHIPS Program Office, connecting semiconductor projects with the relevant federal instruments.
• The United States Digital Service administrator, leading the proposed restoration of government-service delivery capacity.
• The White House policy leadership, including the National Economic Council and Domestic Policy Council.
• The first-assistant positions beneath Senate-confirmed offices, where those positions can lawfully be filled without confirmation and can provide an acting succession route.

The final category requires office-by-office legal preparation. A president cannot simply name anyone “first assistant” and thereby avoid every appointment or service restriction. The Federal Vacancies Reform Act identifies eligible acting officials and imposes time and nomination-related limits; agency-specific succession statutes can also matter. The appointment roster must identify the actual appointing officer and the lawful succession route. 5 U.S.C. §§3345–3346.

For qualifying vacancies at the start of a new presidency, the initial acting-service window is generally 300 days. The statute also permits service during specified first and second nomination periods. A president can designate someone currently serving in another presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed office, or a qualifying senior official of the affected agency, with the eligibility and nomination restrictions checked for the actual vacancy. Changing acting officials does not restart the clock. These routes allow a lawful start while permanent appointments proceed; they create no additional program authority. 5 U.S.C. §3349a, CRS's legal overview.

Concentrate confirmation work on the posts that move the plan

The plan estimates about 35 priority posts within the roughly 1,300 positions requiring Senate action. The confirmation priorities are:

• The secretaries and deputy secretaries of Treasury, Energy, Commerce, Labor, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, and Defense.
• The OMB director and deputy director.
• The under secretary of Energy for Infrastructure.
• The assistant secretary of Energy for Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation, the office identified in the plan's account of the 2025 reorganization.
• The assistant secretary of Labor for Employment and Training.
• The Wage and Hour administrator, responsible for the wage determinations covered work needs.
• The under secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development.
• The assistant secretary of Commerce for Economic Development and the head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
• The Small Business Administration administrator and General Services administrator.
• The United States trade representative.
• The Export-Import Bank board.

The list is an operating priority, not a claim that every organizational title or confirmation requirement will remain identical through 2029. The transition checks the legal office and its duties while preparing the candidate. Necessary wage determinations must be ready before affected crews begin, avoiding the weatherization bottleneck experienced in 2009. Later determinations must be requested early enough to protect construction schedules.

Use the hiring tools, and specify the jobs

The competitive civil service grew from the reforms of the 1880s, which established merit selection as a protection against patronage. The plan criticizes a process in which safeguards accumulate while too little attention goes to producing a good hire promptly. That is an argument for improving the process, not a claim that hiring law has remained unchanged since its origin. OPM’s institutional history describes that development.

The plan describes an ordinary federal hire taking about three months and an OPM target of 80 days. Classification, posting, assessment, human-resources review, preference rules, candidate lists, interviews, offers, and investigations can each become a place where the file waits. The response is to use the available authority for the particular vacancy and make someone responsible for moving it through.

Direct-hire authority is one of the strongest tools. OPM can authorize it where there is a severe candidate shortage or critical hiring need. It removes competitive rating and ranking and veterans' preference from selection under that authority. Public notice, qualifications, suitability and other applicable requirements remain. Occupation-specific authorizations also have their own terms and expiration dates; an existing authorization is not assumed to last through inauguration. OPM's direct-hire guidance.

The Intergovernmental Personnel Act supplies another route: temporary assignments involving eligible state, local, and tribal governments, universities, and qualifying organizations, including eligible federally funded research organizations. An assignment normally lasts up to two years and may be extended for two more, subject to the applicable limits. It can bring someone who ran a state weatherization program into the federal effort, or put federal expertise inside the pilot state. Assignments require agreements, eligible participants, and a genuine governmental purpose; the cost-sharing arrangement has to be stated. OPM's IPA guidance.

Interagency details, term appointments, authorized Schedule A appointments, and expert or consultant appointments under section 3109 fill other defined needs. Schedule A is a set of specific excepted authorities, not a general exemption from hiring law. Expert and consultant appointments must fit their authorized work and cannot simply replace an agency's ordinary permanent operating staff. OPM's expert and consultant guidance.

Most retrofit, training, care, and ordinary loan-administration work is unclassified. That avoids treating a security clearance as the universal explanation for delay. Suitability, credentialing, and the position's actual investigative requirements still apply. Interim arrangements can sometimes permit an earlier start, but the personnel plan must identify what the particular job requires.

Take the right lesson from CHIPS

Commerce's inspector general found that NIST exceeded its CHIPS hiring targets: 149 hires by September 11, 2023, against a goal of 135 by the end of that month, rising to 187 by mid-January 2024. Those totals cover the CHIPS Program Office and CHIPS Research and Development Office together. The effort used special tools, including authority for 25 scientific and technical appointments, direct hiring, and Schedule A. Some depended on legislation specific to CHIPS and cannot simply be claimed for every Mission office. Commerce OIG's May 2024 report.

The failure the inspector general identified was the absence of a comprehensive workforce plan. Fast recruiting had not supplied a complete account of the skills and staffing the program would need. Project 2029 should learn from both findings: government can assemble people quickly, and it must know what it is assembling them to do.

The administration prepares the jobs and the candidates together, fills the operating leadership early, and gives the agencies the people needed to carry out lawful decisions. The protections and public accountability that make this workforce effective are developed in Appendix L.

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