"Obama’s budget director at heart of fiscal cliff talks" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg |
New York Times, December 02, 2012
WASHINGTON — Jacob J. Lew, the master of the
Washington budget deal....
At 57, Lew may be the most unassuming power broker in Washington. He
is deeply religious (an Orthodox Jew, he leaves work each Friday before
sundown, when the Sabbath starts) and so strait-laced his colleagues
feel compelled to apologize when they curse in front of him. He brings
his own lunch (a cheese sandwich and an apple) and eats at his desk.
With his owlish glasses and low-key manner, Lew may come off as just a
policy nerd. But he is a fierce negotiator. When defending social
safety net programs, particularly those like Medicaid that help the
poor, he morphs into a warrior, Republicans say, though he has proved
willing to make concessions.
Ah, yes, once again the good Jews like Lew are looking out for our best interests.
Lew arrived in Washington in 1973, a skinny, bookish 18-year-old from
Queens, N.Y., who got his first taste of Democratic politics at 12,
handing out fliers for Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign. Today,
as a two-time former budget director (he also held the job under
President Bill Clinton) he has an intricate understanding of budget
policy.
In 1983, as an aide to House Speaker Tip O’Neill when Ronald Reagan
was president, Lew helped put Social Security on a path to solvency with
a plan that, to many Democrats’ chagrin, will eventually raise the
retirement age to 67. He keeps a gavel from the day the legislation
passed, signed by O’Neill, on a bookshelf in his office.
In 1997, under Clinton, Lew worked with Republicans to balance the
federal budget, enabling the president to leave office with a surplus.
Lew also has foreign policy experience; he spent the first two years of
the Obama administration as deputy to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton.
He has little use for Washington’s social scene; a check of newspaper
archives going back to 1977 show that Lew has never turned up in The
Washington Post gossip column. His wife, Ruth, lives in their home in
the affluent Riverdale section of the Bronx, N.Y.; they commute and have
a daughter in Washington and a son in New York. He likes to cook.
(Blog editor sighed at this point when reading it)
By the time he was 23, Lew was a top policy aide to O’Neill, an
experience that friends say sharpened his sense of how federal spending
affects people’s lives.
The challenge now for Lew is to forge an agreement with Republicans
that does not cut too deeply into the entitlement programs Democrats
cherish.
So there WILL BE CUTS, folks! The American taxpayers are going to be asked to PAY MORE for LESS and that NEVER GOES OVER WELL!
Related: Mass. Democrats oppose benefit cuts in fiscal-cliff talks
Yeah, good luck with that one.
Also see: ‘Cliff’ talks at stalemate as Obama makes public appeal
Fed Chief Coined Term Fiscal Cliff
Oh, it is the bankers want an austerity deal in place by manufacturing a crisis. How did that work out last time again?
Like Obama, Lew is a pragmatist; one person familiar with his
thinking said he has in the past expressed willingness to raise the
Medicare eligibility age to 67 from 65, a move many liberals oppose.
--more--"
You've been Lew(d), America!
