Clinton-Era Budget Team Takes Over

Wall Street Journal: “The economics team Mr. Obama built in his first term to deal with the financial crisis has mostly exited. As the White House retools advisers for the second term, it is assembling a cadre of budget experts from the Clinton administration. Ms. Burwell, Mr. Lew and Mr. Sperling joined Mr. Rubin in helping the Clinton administration erase annual deficits and build a budget surplus. Mr. Rubin, 74 years old, a centrist Democrat with a firm understanding of markets and Wall Street, was a big proponent of pushing for aggressive deficit-reduction… The Obama White House faces a political dynamic very similar to the one that the Clinton team faced in the 1990s — a House of Representative controlled by Republicans who oppose tax increases and are demanding large spending cuts.”