Free Republic

In 2008 Michael B. Froman, then Citigroup executive, sends John Podesta a list of cabinet members. The email is dated Oct. 6, 2008 and bears the subject line “Lists.” It went to Podesta a month before he was named chairman of President-Elect Obama’s transition team. Froman’s list proved remarkably prescient. As it proposed, Robert Gates, a Bush holdover, became secretary of Defense; Eric Holder became attorney general; Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security; Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff; Susan Rice, United Nations ambassador; Arne Duncan, secretary of Education; Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services; Peter Orszag,...

Peter Orszag, former head of the Obama Office of Management and Budget, is desperate. With even Roll Call recognizing that President Obama is fighting an uphill battle for re-election, Orszag is floating a trial balloon: mandatory voting. His call for forced voting comes in an op/ed for Bloomberg News: The U.S. prides itself as the beacon of democracy, but it’s very likely no U.S. president has ever been elected by a majority of American adults. It’s our own fault -- because voter participation rates are running below 60 percent, a candidate would have to win 85 percent or more of...

MEN OF HONOR Apparently, if you want to cheat on your wife or spurn the mother of your unborn child, cover up and easily settle your institution's criminal efforts to help Americans avoid paying their federal income taxes, or just avoid paying your own fair share, the place to be is on President Barack Obama's economic-recovery advisory board. Because that's where Robert Wolf, chief executive of UBS Group Americas, the U.S. arm of one of Switzerland's largest banks, UBS AG, sits, as do Charles E. Phillips, President of Oracle Corporation, Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management of...

When Congress was debating the Obamacare law last year, I raised many concerns about the size and scope of the law and the outrageous amount of new federal taxes and spending it created. Like many people, I also have grown concerned about the law’s impact on Americans’ personal freedoms. My concern stems not only from its controversial mandate that every American buy health insurance, but also from other federal mandates that could follow. In challenging Obamacare’s individual mandate, the law’s critics have pointed out that if Congress can force Americans to buy health insurance, federal power would be nearly unlimited....

Comedy gold or a pathetic partisan ploy can characterize Kathleen Sebelius’s testimony when she attempts to minimize the immense authority granted to the Independent Medicare Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), when so many of us know the raw real deal. On July 13, the House Subcomittee on Health and Energy held hearings on the controversial IPAB, in which Sebelius attempted to minimize and circumvent the truth (pdf and a must read) with regards to the IPAB. Congressman Michael Burgess (R-TX and yes, he is also Dr. Burgess) questioned Secretary Sebelius on several key factors, including the unelected 15-person panel, their potential...

The Washington to Wall Street revolving door spins on, Bloomie reports: Citigroup Inc., recovering from its $45 billion bailout in 2008, is in advanced talks to hire former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, people with knowledge of the matter said. Orszag, 41, may take a job in the New York-based firm’s investment-banking division, the people said, declining to be identified because the discussions are private. An announcement may come as early as today, one of the people said. Of course, there is a well-trampled trail between the White House and Citigroup, most prominently traveled by Clinton administration Treasury Secretary...

For the second time in a week, Peter Orszag has zinged his former boss. Former OMB Director Peter Orszag (Photo by Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images) Orszag, who just left his job as President Barack Obama’s budget chief, said Sunday that the president’s policy of making the Bush-era tax cuts permanent for middle-income families would jeopardize the nation’s finances. Last week, he made the same argument in a New York Times column that took the White House by surprise. “We, unfortunately, can’t afford the tax cuts over the medium and long term,” Orszag said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.” “We face too...

Departed Obama Aide Now Says Ending Bush Tax Cuts Will Make Unemployment WORSE Joe Weisenthal Sep. 7, 2010, 6:31 AM The newest member of the New York Times' stable of columnists is Peter Orszag, who just recent quit his post as Obama's top aide on the budget. His first piece is on the question of the tax cuts, and guess what, he doesn't share the administration's official line. In fact, he says, revoking the Bush tax cuts will make the jobs picture worse. Higher taxes now would crimp consumer spending, further depressing the already inadequate demand for what firms are...

White House budget chief Peter Orszag said on Wednesday it would be "foolish" to cut the U.S. deficit while economic growth was still frail, but it would be equally foolish not to significantly curb the deficit by 2015. Orszag told an audience at The Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank, that failing to take real steps toward closing the record U.S. budget gap would do as much harm to the economy has choking off fiscal stimulus now. It was his last public speech before stepping down as head of the White House Office of Management and Budget on Friday. President Barack...

White House budget chief Peter Orszag said on Wednesday it would be "foolish" to cut the U.S. deficit while economic growth was still frail, but it would be equally foolish not to significantly curb the deficit by 2015. Orszag told an audience at The Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank, that failing to take real steps toward closing the record U.S. budget gap would do as much harm to the economy has choking off fiscal stimulus now. It was his last public speech before stepping down as head of the White House Office of Management and Budget on Friday. SNIP The...

As we speculated previously, the sudden and unprecedented departure of Peter Orszag, the day prior to the US Budget's formalization (which incidentally never happened as now the US will likely not have a 2010 budget at all, for fear of disclosing to most Americans just how broke the country is ahead of mid-terms) was due to Orszag's disagreement with the administration's, and particularly Larry Summer's, inability to fathom that reckless spending is a recipe for bankruptcy. As the FT reports: "Peter Orszag, Barack Obama’s budget director, resigned this week partly in frustration over his lack of success in persuading the...

WASHINGTON—The White House said budget director Peter Orszag, one of the most visible members of President Barack Obama's economic team, will be leaving his post this summer. Mr. Orszag, the most senior official to leave the Obama administration, will step down in July, two administration officials said. Officials close to Mr. Orszag noted that he had served nearly four stressful years in similar posts, first as director of the Congressional Budget Office, then as Mr. Obama's first director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Orszag helped steer through Congress a $797 billion economic-stimulus bill in his first weeks...

...the Feral Government is increasingly being exposed as a pack of animals - cornered animals. Recognition that The Feral Government has run the ship not aground but rather into an iceberg is rapidly spreading throughout the second-level administration people - along with firms and individuals who are in some way dependent on it.

Developing...

Ten months after graduating from Ohio State University with a civil-engineering degree and three internships, Matt Grant finally has a job — as a banquet waiter at a Clarion Inn near Akron, Ohio. “It’s discouraging right now,” said the 24-year-old, who sent out more than 100 applications for engineering positions. “It’s getting closer to the Class of 2010, their graduation date. I’m starting to worry more.”

Remember President Obama’s supposedly inviolable pledge—repeatedly uttered during the 2008 campaign and at countless town meetings since the inauguration—that he would never raise taxes on middle-class citizens who earn $250,000 a year or less? This morning at a Manhattan breakfast sponsored by Thomson Reuters, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag threw that pledge out the window. Instead, he described Obama’s “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge as a “stance” and a “preference” that is subject to study by the president’s newly formed bipartisan Commission on Fiscal Responsibility. “The president has been very clear about what he prefers,” Orszag said...

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, grilled about Obama’s pledge not to raise middle-class taxes, left the president wiggle room. Lloyd Grove reports.

The planets are aligned just right for Bianna Golodryga lately. The ABC News correspondent, one of the best at covering the economy, got engaged in December to Barak Obama's budget director, Peter Orszag, who hid a 5-carat, cushion-cut diamond ring under her menu over lunch at Sarabeth's on Central Park South. Now she's been promoted to co-anchor of the weekend edition of "Good Morning America," joining Bill Weir.

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag is arguing that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) underestimates the savings from President Barack Obama's healthcare bill. CBO, the independent agency Orszag ran before he joined the Obama administration, said the legislation will reduce deficits $143 billion in its first decade and by even more -- roughly 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent of gross domestic product -- in its second decade. That would probably amount to more than $1 trillion in savings, but Orszag considers that a lowball estimate.

"The No. 1 lesson from 1993," said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff and a former Clinton aide, "was to make sure you could use reconciliation for health care and education." Last April, Mr. Emanuel and Peter R. Orszag, the administration's budget guru, went to Capitol Hill to press Senate Democrats to make sure the budget then being written would provide the ability to approve a health care bill with the simple Senate majority that reconciliation requires. ...Democrats inserted the procedural fail-safe in the budget document, allowing special protection for legislation covering health and education as long as...