Nine Jobs to Watch

By Margaret Carlson/Washington

While most of the attention is focusing on appointments to prestigious positions in the White House and Cabinet, many of the Administration's new policies will be shaped by a less visible layer of sub-Cabinet officials. Bush's choices for these little-known but powerful posts could foreshadow his decisions on urgent issues that are certain to crop up over the next four years. What to watch for:

Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition. A double whammy is in store for the new occupant of this post, created two years ago to coordinate and streamline the world's biggest purchasing program ($160 billion a year). A federal grand jury is expected soon to indict up to a dozen defense contractors, consultants and former Pentagon officials for fraud. Moreover, budgetary pressures will force the nation's No. 1 shopper to prune as much as $400 billion from purchases over the next five years. One indication of how difficult the job can be: Richard Godwin, the first man to hold it, quit after only a year.

Under Secretary of Treasury for Finance. One out of every six savings and loans has gone bankrupt, and the Treasury Under Secretary will have to concoct a plan to raise $60 billion to bail them out. In his spare time he will oversee the so-called Baker Plan for easing the Third World debt crisis and coordinate efforts to steady the unstable dollar.

Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration. With the annual federal health-care tab at more than $140 billion and increasing at more than twice the rate of inflation, the overseer of Medicare and Medicaid will to , have to perform surgery to contain costs. Doctors are already howling over caps on fees, and the National Leadership Commission on Health Care, which found that billions of dollars are wasted annually on services that are not needed and do not work, has just recommended further cuts. The burgeoning long-term medical needs of an expanding elderly population further complicate the job.

Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust. Even some big-time investment bankers are wincing at the turmoil created by the megamergers that took place under the Reagan Administration's relaxed custody of the antitrust laws. This prosecutor will have to decide if there is such a thing as a merger that is too big, and if so, how to chop it down to size.

Assistant EPA Administrator for Solid Waste and Emergency Response. Bush has promised to do a better job on the environment, which after eight years of not so benign neglect needs attention fast. The new boss of the $8.5 billion Superfund will be caught between environmentalists, outraged that only a fraction of the 1,177 highly contaminated sites on the agency's list were cleaned up under Reagan, and corporations balking at paying for it. On top of that, this administrator will have to find inventive ways to keep medical syringes and other noxious debris from washing up on the nation's beaches.

Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. This was a sleepy backwater at State until the combative Elliott Abrams took over in 1985. Bush's selection will indicate whether he will keep pursuing military support for the Nicaraguan contras or try more diplomatic approaches to influence the Sandinista regime. Other big items: developing a strategy for fighting Latin drug lords, bolstering the feeble governments of El Salvador and Honduras, and figuring out how to deal with Panamanian strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega, who remains under indictment in the U.S.

U.S. Trade Representative. Last week's numbers notwithstanding, the trade deficit remains a major threat to the domestic economy. The next trade rep, with fast-track negotiating powers, will face a thorny round of talks with members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the need to continue pressing Japan and other U.S. trading partners to open more of their markets to American exporters.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Reagan's man, William Bradford Reynolds, outraged minorities by breaking the Justice Department's long- standing alliance with civil rights organizations. The new appointee could help the G.O.P. lure nonwhite voters by reversing Reynolds' opposition to affirmative-action quotas. One key decision: whether the Administration should side with civil rights groups in opposing any rollback on discrimination suits brought under the Civil Rights Act of 1866 when the issue is argued before the Supreme Court next year.

Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management. Known by critics as the Assistant Secretary for Oil, this official will help decide whether to continue such controversial Reagan policies as the sale of wilderness areas and extension of oil-drilling rights off the coasts and Alaska's North Slope, and whether to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to development.