Jacob Lew

Office of Management and Budget Director (since November 2010)

(Ray Lustig/TWP)

Why He Matters

Widely respected by centrists and liberals alike, Lew won positive reviews of his work as deputy secretary of state under Hillary Rodham Clinton after his role as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Clinton administration. In July 2010, President Obama tapped him to return to his old White House stomping grounds as the replacement for OMB Director Peter Orszag. He was confirmed that November.

As Clinton OMB director, Lew was responsible for coordinating administration efforts on the budget and appropriations and operated at a surplus for three years. At the time he drew praise from many Hill Republicans like Rep. C. W. "Bill" Young (R-Fla.), the former Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. ''I enjoy working with Jack Lew,'' said Young in 1999. ''He's a tough negotiator, but he's very nice to work with.''

Read more

Corrections?

Background

At a Glance

Career History: Deputy Secretary of State (January 2009-November 2010); COO of Citi Alternative Investments (June 2006 to present); Executive vice president of New York University (2001 to 2006); Director of the Office of Management and Budget (1998 to 2001)
Birthday: August 29, 1955
Hometown: New York City, New York
Alma Mater: Harvard University, B.A., 1978; Georgetown University, J.D., 1983

Spouse: Not Available
Religion: Jewish
Party: Democrat

Path to Power

Lew was born in New York City in 1955 and grew up in Queens. His father was a lawyer and rare-book dealer who emigrated from Poland. Lew's first political experience was volunteering for Eugene McCarthy's 1968 anti-war presidential Democratic primary campaign, at the age of 12. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1978 after cutting his teeth on the Hill as an aide to the famous Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.).

Veteran Hill Aide

After graduating from college he worked as a senior domestic policy adviser to then-House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr.(D), also of Massachusetts, until 1987. While working for O'Neill, Lew got his law degree from Georgetown University in 1983.

Read more

He spent over seven years working for O'Neill on the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee as assistant director and later executive director. Lew served as liaison to the famous Greenspan Commission, which, between 1981 and 1983, reached a landmark bipartisan agreement to reform Social Security to ensure its continued solvency. ''He took away from that experience the best of Tip O'Neill - using power as an instrument to help people,'' John D. Podesta, the former White House chief of staff who helped run Obama's transition team told the New York Times in 1999.

Lew has also worked as executive director of the Center for Middle East Research, issues director for the Democratic National Committee's Campaign 88, and deputy director of the Office of Program Analysis in the city of Boston's Office of Management and Budget.

A member of the bar in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., Lew spent five years as an attorney in private practice in Washington, D.C. at the law firm Van Ness, Feldman, where he focused on administrative and transactional issues related to power plant development.

Clinton Administration

Lew joined the Clinton administration in February 1993 as special assistant to the president. In that role Lew was responsible for policy development and the drafting of the national service initiative and health care reform.

In October 1994, he moved to OMB where he served as executive associate director and as associate director for legislative affairs.

In August of 1995, Lew was promoted to deputy director of OMB. He served as deputy director until May 1998 when he became acting director. Lew was confirmed as OMB director on July 31, 1998.

Banker and Academic

As COO of Citi Alternative Investments beginning in June 2006, Lew oversaw operations, technology, human resources, legal, finance and regional coordination for that division. Before going to Citi, Lew was executive vice president and chief operating officer of New York University, where he oversaw the school's budget, finance and operations.

In 2008, Lew received $1.1 million in salary and discretionary cash compensation as a managing director of the banking giant - which took tens of millions of dollars in government bailout money - and he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in restricted stock upon his departure, according to documents.

Since working for Clinton, Lew has taught at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute and served as executive vice president of New York University. Although he had tense relations with the union of graduate student teaching assistants, his selection by Obama has not engendered any public criticism from organized labor.

The Issues

Lew is not known as an ideological warrior, but (former) Republicans such as ex-Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) have described him as a tough, even unpleasant negotiator. Although Lew came up through what might be called the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, working for such unreconstructed liberal icons as Abzug and O'Neill, he fit comfortably into the more centrist Clinton administration.

The Hamilton Project was founded by Rubin and is viewed as a bastion of the fiscally moderate wing of the Democratic Party.

Read more

The Network

Lew is the embodiment of an old Washington hand. He began working on Capitol Hill at the age of 18. He apprenticed himself to congressional legends such as Abzug and O'Neill, and has more experience on the Hill than most executive branch appointees. Having worked in both the House and the Clinton administration, Lew is well-known to Democrats all over Washington. In particular he is close to John D. Podesta, who runs the Center for American Progress think tank and is co-chair of the Obama transition team. Podesta also came to the Clinton administration from Capitol Hill.

Lew's time at Citigroup has overlapped with that of Robert Rubin, former Treasury secretary under Clinton, who is director and senior counselor at Citigroup. In the Clinton administration's OMB Lew initially worked under Leon Panetta, who was Clinton's first OMB director and was recently nominated by Obama to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Read more

Additional Resources