Daschle to HHS

Former Senator Tom Daschle will have a new gig in the Obama Administration:

­President-elect Barack Obama has offered the nomination of Secretary of Health and Human Services to Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the former Democratic Senate leader who was an early supporter of Mr. Obama’s run for the presidency.

Democratic officials said that Mr. Daschle has accepted the nomination. But they said that a formal announcement won’t be made until Mr. Obama first settles on his national security and economic teams, and no job offers have been extended in those areas.

Mr. Obama’s transition team announced on Wednesday that Mr. Daschle will also oversee Mr. Obama’s health policy working group to develop a health care plan, which could take care of what his friends say was one of Mr. Daschle’s conditions for considering the HHS post­. He was concerned that he not just be the head of a huge bureaucracy but a chief player on the subject he has literally written a book on.

Does anybody really know what HHS does? I'm sure health care will be a big deal to Obama, but I've just got to believe that if you ended tomorrow 90% of the activities of HHS nobody would notice.