Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing/Files
Wiki: Jacob Joseph “Jack” Lew (born August 29, 1955) is an American politician and the 25th and current White House Chief of Staff. Lew previously served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton and Obama Administrations, and is a member of the Democratic Party.
Born in New York City, New York, Lew is a graduate of Harvard College and Georgetown University Law Center. Lew began his career as a legislative assistant to Representative Joe Moakley and as a senior policy adviser to former House Speaker Tip O’Neil. Lew then worked as an attorney in private practice before working as a deputy in Boston’s office of management and budget. In 1993, he began work for the Clinton Administration as Special Assistant to the President.
In 1994 Lew served as Associate Director for Legislative Affairs and Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, where he served a Director of that agency from 1998 to 2001 and from 2010 to 2012. Lew later served as the first Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, from 2009 to 2010.
On January 9, 2013, Lew was tapped as the replacement for retiring Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in President Barack Obama’s second term.[1][2][3]
Photo by: Pablo Martinez Monsivais
President Obama nominates Jack Lew as Secretary of Treasury today. He will replace Timothy Geithner.
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Obama nominates Lew for Treasury
By Steve Benen
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Thu Jan 10, 2013 2:15 PM EST
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That said, it’s worth considering why, exactly, the GOP has come to dislike Lew so much that some Senate Republicans started announcing their opposition to his nomination before he was even introduced.
The answer, it appears, is that GOP leaders see him as too competent and knowledgeable, which has gotten in the way of Republican plans.
The New York Times had a fascinating piece last year on the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis negotiations, and House Speaker John Boehner’s frustrations that Lew had a “detailed knowledge of the budget” that “outpaced anyone else’s in the room.” It got to the point that Boehner kept trying to get Lew out of the room, in the hopes that it’d be easier to strike a GOP-friendly deal.
Matt Yglesias explained last April:
Any time Lew, the math guy, was out of the room [the Republican proposal] could look like a promising approach. But if the math guy kept saying the central tenet of the proposal was founded on bad math, then actually no progress was being made. So for a time Boehner got the math guy out of the room and it looked like progress was getting made. But clearly the president of the United States isn’t going to agree to a budget deal without running it by his budget director and, indeed, it turned out that “the framework negotiated by Obama, Daley, and Geithner — and laid out in the Republicans’ offer sheet — unsettled the stomachs of some White House aides” one of whom I’m going to guess was Lew. As Bai tells it, as soon as the deal exited that room it immediately started deflating.
So, Republicans hate Lew the same way a con man hates the guy who knows how a con works.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/10/16450460-obama-nominates-lew-for-treasury
i appreciate how the president highlights the outgoing and incoming nominees have accomplished and how he expresses his gratitude to them. FIRST CLASS POTUS
Now let’s get down to buisness of GUN SAFETY, JOBS, HEALTHCARE… ISSUES that matter to Americans.
In This Photo: Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, Dan Pfeiffer, Pete Rouse, Jack Lew
In this handout from the White House, President Barack Obama (C) pauses during a meeting with (L-R) Director of Communications Dan Pfeiffer, Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Chief of Staff Jack Lew, and Pete Rouse, Counselor to the President, to observe a moment of silence in the Oval Office December 21, 2012 in Washington, DC. The President observed a moment of silence at 9:30 a.m in remembrance of the 20 children and six adults killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut one week ago.