Budget chief is Obama's choice as new health secretary

Even when Sylvia Mathews Burwell was in her early 30s, friends speculated that she might return to her native Hinton, W.Va., and run for governor someday. After all, she had been a Rhodes scholar, and her mother — who later became mayor of Hinton, population 2,600 — had driven her daughter's interest in politics. So far that has not happened, but plenty of other things under two presidents have. On Friday, President Obama is to nominate Ms. Burwell, currently director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to take over one of the largest and most unwieldy parts of the federal bureaucracy as secretary of health and human services.