President Barack Obama announced Monday that he is nominating Lanhee Chen, Mitt Romney’s former top policy adviser, to the Social Security Advisory Board.

The independent and bipartisan board advises the president, Congress and the Commissioner of Social Security on the program, but does not have any decision-making authority. Chen, who served as the Romney campaign’s policy director and is a research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, was deeply critical of the president’s management of federal entitlement programs during the campaign.

“On retirement programs, the President’s plan is laughable,” Chen wrote in a memo to reporters two weeks before election day. “With both Social Security and Medicare on the path to insolvency, the President has proposed to do nothing. The Social Security and Medicare Trustees have concluded that doing nothing – the President’s plan – will result in seniors seeing their Social Security benefits cut by 25% in 2033 and that the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2024. As President-elect Obama acknowledged in early 2009, we can’t kick the can down the road any further. But rather than offering an honest proposal to protect and strengthen these programs, the President offers just more empty promises.”

Chen’s nomination follows Obama’s decision to appoint former Romney campaign counsel Ben Ginsberg as co-chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which is reviewing ways to make voting easier

Pennsylvania Department of Health officials are reminding residents that Women, Infants and Children (WIC) offices throughout the state are open and providing services despite the federal government shutdown.

The Pennsylvania WIC program is expected to be able to continue normal operations “for a few weeks” because of funds that were carried forward from the previous year and additional food funds, including rebates, department Secretary Michael Wolf said in a news release.

Wolf said the department is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Gov. Tom Corbett’s office to develop a plan to avoid major service disruptions in the event of a long-term federal government shutdown.

As part of the long-term planning process, local WIC agencies were asked to submit an outline to the department that details steps to minimize administrative spending and ways to ensure minimal reductions to participant food benefits should the shutdown continue. The department will then coordinate plans and submit them for review to the USDA.

The Pennsylvania WIC program provides services including nutrition services, breastfeeding support, health care and social service referrals, and healthy foods, to about 250,000 recipients per month. The program’s 2013-14 federal budget was about $208 million.

WIC operates local offices in Aliquippa, Ambridge, Beaver Falls, Freedom and Midland.

Additional information is available online at www.pawic.com or by telephone at 800-942-9467. Local offices can be reached at 866-942-2778.