Economix Blog: Continuity on Obama’s Economic Team

After President Obama took office in 2009, Jacob J. Lew became a deputy secretary of state within days. Gene Sperling was serving as an adviser to the Treasury secretary. Austan Goolsbee, a longtime Obama adviser, was serving on Mr. Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. Alan B. Krueger would become an assistant secretary of the Treasury within a few months.

In the last four years, all of these men have gone on to higher jobs within the Obama administration, and Mr. Lew is expected to be named Treasury secretary soon. Mr. Sperling is the top economic adviser inside the West Wing, while Mr. Krueger is the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Goolsbee preceded him at the council before returning to the University of Chicago.

As a picture on Wednesday’s front page of The New York Times makes clear, Mr. Obama’s economic team is made up almost entirely of people who have been with the administration from the very beginning. This approach has benefits, especially because many of the budget battles of the second term will be extensions of the battles of the first.

“We’ve got a weird negotiation — let’s call it a multiyear negotiation,” Mr. Goolsbee said this week on the Charlie Rose show. In 2011, the Obama administration and Congressional Republicans agreed to spending cuts with no new tax revenue, Mr. Goolsbee noted. Last month, the two sides agreed to new tax revenue with no spending cuts. In coming talks, the parties will discuss more of each, with Democrats pushing for more tax revenue and Republicans for more spending cuts.

“After a year and a half of negotiating, we may have a grand bargain; it’s just not a grand bargain they actually struck all at once at the same table,” Mr. Goolsbee added.

But if Mr. Obama’s personnel strategy brings the benefit of consistency, it also has downsides. “Can it really be the case,” Ezra Klein of The Washington Post asked, “that after four very difficult years, there is nothing the White House would gain in its second term by bringing in outsiders with fresh experience, different relationships and a new perspective?”

For more on Mr. Lew, currently the White House chief of staff, see this recent profile by Sheryl Gay Stolberg or this 2010 profile by Jackie Calmes. In May, Annie Lowrey noted that his name seemed logical to include in any list of potential nominees. A 2009 article by Eric Lipton described the significant salary Mr. Lew made while working at Citigroup.

In January, Noah Rosenberg noted that Mr. Lew, who grew up in Queens, continued to live in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. In 1999, when Mr. Lew was the Clinton administration’s budget director, Tim Weiner dug into his New York roots.

Washington Jewish Week profiled Mr. Lew last year, describing him as a “‘regular guy’ who values the importance of friendship.” National Journal described him this way: “Tall and thin, with Harry Potter-like glasses and salt-and-pepper hair, he looks like a typical Washington technocrat, an image that belies his talent for combat.”

The Hill contrasted his speaking style with that of Rahm Emanuel, a former chief of staff. In 2001, The Washington Post noted Mr. Lew’s long history as a budget negotiator, including in the 1980’s debate over Social Security.

Article source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/continuity-on-obamas-economic-team/?partner=rss&emc=rss