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That President Obama intended to nominate White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew as his next Treasury Secretary was probably the most open secret in Washington. In fact, Obama kept Lew out of the recent talks because the president was "saving him" -- Obama was "reluctant to embroil him in tense negotiations if he needs the Senate to approve his nomination."
And so it came as no surprise when the president introduced Lew this afternoon as his choice to replace Tim Geithner at the Treasury Department.
I suppose the first question after any nomination announcement is whether Senate confirmation is likely. In this case, the Senate Republican minority already hates him, but history is clearly on Lew's side -- not only has it been 169 years since a Treasury nominee lost a confirmation vote, but Lew has personally been subjected to the Senate confirmation process five times. The combined number of "nay" votes? Zero.
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.
Of course, some on the left have raised concerns about Lew, too, most notably the fact that worked briefly on Wall Street. That's true, though I think there's evidence to suggest his work was largely administrative and he was never actually a Wall Street insider.
That said, progressives concerned with Lew's ideology should re-read Michael Grunwald's "The New New Deal," in which Lew is presented as one of the most ambitious Keynesians in the Obama administration.
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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"
So in other words, Lew kept President Can't-Neogtiate-His-Way-Out-Of-A-Wet-Paper-Bag-With-Hand-Grenades, and the two dildos masquerading as human beings, Daley and Geithner, from selling the country down the river to the Republicans? Well, in that case my estimation of him goes way up.
Being smarter than Boehner is no accomplishment. My 19-year old senile cat who sleeps in the window all day is smarter that Boehner and his entire caucus, combined. Hell, she's smarter than the entire Republican Party and all its voters, combined.
Lolz! Are the hand-grenades in the wet paper bag or does he use them on the two dildos? Thanks for the laugh!!
Instructions to prevent the debt ceiling from exploding the US economy.
1. President uses the loop-hold in 31 USC § 5112 to issue an executive order to the US Mint instructing them to produce $1 trillion of platinum coins.
2. US Treasury deposits the platinum coins in the Federal Reserve and Mr. Lew uses the deposit to cancel $1 trillion of federal debt.
3. Federal Reserve issues low-interest federal business loans for anyone that has enough education, experience, and a good business plan in a demand industry (technology, health care, ...). Or they don't and the US earns interest from the Fed.
4. Repeat steps 1 to 3 every time congress: A) can't reach an agreement on the debt ceiling; and B) fails to repeal the loop-hold in 31 USC § 5112 that allows this.
Obama can indeed negotiate. Sorry I don't like your rhetoric.
Swell.
Obama errs on the side of Wall Street again. Former Citigroup manager Jack Lew.
Even before Krugman said he wasn't interested, he was out of the question for Obama since as Dean Baker pointed out, Krugman has been right about most of the economic challenges facing the economy for the last decade. He was right about the housing bubble, warning about it 6 years before it popped. He was right about the insufficiency of the stimulus. He was right that the Wall Street behemoths should have been broken up when Obama had the chance.
But as Suskind pointed out, Summers and Geitner convinced Obama long ago that the Presidential maxim in the economy should be: Do no Harm.
But there were plenty of other candidates Obama did not choose. For example:
But no. Do we get to here why? Or is that asking too much. Nothing against Lew, but why can't he be an undersecretary doing administration. Where are the big ideas going to come from about reforming our financial system?
About Dr. Krugman, while he obviously knows more about how economics than most of the dorks pontificating on the subject, I recall one of his columns where he said that his expertise doesn't extend to administration. He would be the person to be an undersecretary doing the ideas and letting the Treasury Secretary do the administering.
I see. So if Krugman was in some "ideas" position in 2002, he would have had the power to stop the housing bubble before it turned into the meltdown of 2008.
Think that one through.
To extend your thinking- since Obama is no wiz with administration, then he should be the idea guy, and some highly qualified technocratic administrator should be president?
In 1983 Steve Jobs persuaded gifted administrator from Pepsi to help him run Apple. In two years, this administrator had persuaded the board that Jobs was a bad manager and should be moved aside to work on ideas. They agreed. Jobs left the company, and in less than 8 years they had fired this administrator. Apple was being run into the ground with one disaster after another until the board asked the "Ideas" guy to return.
The rest is history.
As for the Krugman's remarks- he made them 3 days ago and didn't just say his expertise in administration was limited. He said he was the "World’s Worst Administrator"
I'll take him at his word. If he has no interest in any manner of management, then he would be a bad pick.
My first choice would have been someone like David Korten, but Katrina vanden Heuvel named the realistic choice: Eliot Spitzer.
Instead we get a guy like Jack Lew. I like to hear the arguments against a reformer. Sure with Lew, all the columns will add up tidily as we hurtle the next meltdown. Nothing will be done about the systemic rottenness on Wall Street that is only going to blow up the economy sooner rather than later since Dem leadership including the President prefers to engage in magical thinking. In their minds they reassure themselves that this time, things will be different- that the reckless cowboys in the financial world have been chastened and will turn over a new leaf after this close brush with Armageddon.
It's a bunch of crap. We can start by taking apart these too big to fail institutions.
Please sign the White House petition online to End Drone Strikes Killing Children!
http://wh.gov/UKpQ
I will side with the decisions of the only 3 respectable members of the senate: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, & Al Franken.
What will you do if they're not unanimous? So far, Sanders is against; haven't yet heard what Warren's and Franken's positions are.
Before people start buying into the meme floating around questioning the diversity of the Obama administration, it should be noted that President Obama nominated two of the four female judges to ever sit on the Supreme Court. And women have played a crucial role in the Obama administration, including Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Valerie Jarrett, Kathleen Sebelius, Regina Benjamin, Janet Napolitano, Rebecca Blank, Hilda Solis, Lisa Jackson, Susan Rice, Tammy Duckworth, Karen Mills, Christina Romer, Sara Manzano-Diaz, Melody Barnes, Latifa Lyles, Cecilia Muñoz, Mary Schapiro, Nancy Sutley, Carol Browner, Ellen Moran, Jen Psaki, Katie Hogan, Stephanie Cutter and many others.
Not only have more women served in the Obama administration than any previous administration, but more people from the LGBT community have also served in the Obama administration than any other administration.
The accusations coming from those on the right are nothing more than a weak attempt to divert attention from the GOP's abysmal record of inequality and to take away the sting from their war on women and binders full of women.
Well, I guess you can say one thing about Obama and diversity. He got a black man elected President. Is that something?
I don't watch Fox News, so I can't for sure disagree with you about all the accusations from the right, but the criticisms I've seen in the media were mostly softballs from prominent women who did not accuse President Obama of shortchanging women in his overall appointments, or who specifically criticized the recent "white men" appointments. It looked to me that these media commenters are just trying to remind him that we are out there, and expect to get our share in the Big Picture. That means a larger share of appointments than Labor or EPA. I have not seen anyone who needed to be reminded that Obama - and Democrats in general - are doing better by women than the House Administration Committee.
Disgusted: Does your dissatisfaction with Obama's negotiating skills now trump your acceptance of known facts? I ask this because lets face it, anyone harping about Obama and women/diversity is not being serious. Thats like giving credibility to Mitt Romney giving a speech surrounded by women, or Ann Romney saying "love you women" at the convention.
"That means a larger share of the appointments than Labor or EPA."
how about 4th in line of Presidential Succession? I think that's Secretary of State... is that powerful enough?
maybe Obama can throw in Labor, Health&Human Services, Acting Secretary of Commerce and DHS for good measure. I just don't understand this obsession. in America there only appears to be one remaining glass ceiling and you've got to get elected through that one.
at the risk of upsetting my mother (and her generation) who had to genuinely struggle for opportunities, at this point it would seem that in this WH, you get jobs based on your merits and your relationship with the President. no discrimination found and simply looking through 'binders full of women' to meet some undefined, imaginary quotas won't make things better for anyone.
4th in line of Presidential Succession is the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, which is the longest serving Senator of the Majority Party. It was Sen. Daniel Inouye until he died a few weeks ago. I'm not sure who the current longest serving Democrat is, but it is not Harry Reid.
How about the fact that Washington DC is all 'het up' about a freakin' PICTURE? We don't know what the whole picture looks like yet. Oh and M.Peters? It's Pat Leahy as President Pro-tem.
Heh. I'd very much like to see this Boehner vs. Lew stuff. Sounds like fun. Let's get 'em in a conference room with cameras rolling, grab some popcorn, and let the budgeting begin, hm?
The larger issue, of course, is that Republicans want him out of the discussion, period. It's telling, is it not? So many conservative ideas seem to not work when experts in the fields of those ideas actually comment, and in many ways, their ideas have been driven right from the mainstream spheres. Example: Wikipedia lets anyone edit, but the result is too liberal. Solution: Conservapedia. Or how about the Godtube instead of Youtube? Or private schools that teach Creation Science? The Fox News Channel?
And now, budget math without those pesky mathematicians interfering. If your ideas can't stand on their own two feet, as it were, it seems you can protect them anyway if only you stick to your bubble. But isn't the existence of the bubble itself evidence of the wrongness of the opinions, views, and now budget proposals, presented?
Pretty much says it all about Republicans.
please send president obama a 3rd bible for swearing in because the first two have blank pages in one, and a comic book inside the other.
he needs a real bible.
please sign the white house petition online to end drone strikes killing children and innocent civilians. http://wh.gov/ukpq
obama drone control has got to stop, don't you think?
Actually, he should not be using a bible at all, that pesky establishment clause and all, he should swear on a copy of the Constitution, yanno, the one he is swearing to defend?
hey, you changed my previous comment to all lower case so people can't get to the white house petition site. you are denying me freedom of speech to petition the government.
http://wh.gov/UKpQ
that is upper case UK lower case p upper case Q
Put a post-it note on the keyboard:
"Take meds before typing."
You do know that the 1st Amendment only applies to the government, don't you?
You do know that you are excersizing your First Amendment rights just by posting here, don't you?
So, the Republicans are afraid of Jack Lew because he's smarter than they are and can call them on their BS.
BTW, my cat is smarter than the Republicans are, and my neighbors' dumb dog who eats his own poo is also smarter than the Republicans are.
ad hominem attacks are not helpful
Yet, there is something to what Karensc says, given how petrified the GOP is of intellect, reason, fact-based thinking. Even algebra, it seems, is called 'left wing' by one conservative commentator just now, because it "teaches the distributive property'" (Eric Bolling)... think about how many misprisions, confusions, et al you've heard from GOPers in the last couple of years. Clutching their pearls because someone uttered a word or stated a fact that they cannot fathom. SAD.
I agree, jjm. You can't miss the pronounced bias against intellect among rank and file Republicans. Like it's associated with the devil or something. What's incomprehensible to me is that I want the smartest, most capable people handling the business of my country. That anyone would want lesser folks in those positions is just strange.
The fact that antiintellectualism has become a defining characteristic of the whole right wing movement pretty much tells you how the republican party operates.
The REAL problem is Lew's "loopy" signature. Once that goes on our money, folks will be too embarrassed to take it out of their wallets. Or, so the GuanoNutz are saying.
"The Senate Republican Minority already hates him", please, the republicans HATE anyone or anything that Obama does, says, thinks, etc. it's very Christian of them don't you think? Our government cannot endure with this kind of grade school b.s.!
They have hated Obama from day one because he is smarter than the republicans and he surrounds himself with competent people.
"... because he is smarter than the republicans and he surrounds himself with competent people."
And there was something else, too. I just can't think of it right now. What WAS it? I'm sure it'll come to me.
Good. Someone who won't give away the farm to make the Reps happy.
Mr. Lew had better practice his penmanship. His current signature definitely looks like the product of "public education". I wonder how he cashes his gov't paycheck when the bank teller will ask for his id to match signatures ? Don't they teach the 'palmer method' anymore where cursive writing is actually legible? Oh never mind it's all texting on facebook and twitter now.
Do you want us to get off your lawn?
Come on. Did you see Geithner's before he was made to fix it in order to sign the money?
Good for President Obama. Maybe the cry baby Republicans that seem not to like any of the president's nominees, or anything else about him for that matter, will hold their breathes until the country turns blue.
Uh oh, a lack of the beauty of diversity http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/01/10/melissa_harris_perry_on_cabinet_diversity_clarence_thomas_doesnt_represent_blacks.html
Does Lew have any grasp of the economic issues of a giant economy like the United States?
Chief of Staff to.........Treasury Secretary?.....Really??.....Obama, you cannot do one iota better than this?
It looks like President Obama needs Governor Romney's Binders on women applicants
Talk about President Obamas White Mans Club
But its O.K. because MSDNC viewers are Liberal Democrats
See Mike Jones and kaneblues above. Think Sec. of State, Sec. of Labor, Sec. of Homeland Security, Sec of Human Services, ambassador to the UN, two SC justices, ...
Your apology is accepted.
"Of course, some on the left have raised concerns about Lew, too, most notably the fact that worked briefly on Wall Street. That's true, though I think there's evidence to suggest his work was largely administrative and he was never actually a Wall Street insider."
If anyone paid attention to the Josesph Jett, Mike Milken or the London Whale the administrative side was what kept the information from the parent company. while in Jett and Milken's case they ran the book themselves, the London whale entire administrative group withheld info from JPM's NYC HQ's. Lew is just as much a friend of Wall Street as Geithner is. Do not be fooled
What scares me about Lew is that he is famously known for being the great de-regulator.