Kent Conrad

Washington is a place where it's both important to know someone in power and to be seen as knowing someone who is rumored to be in line to be in power. It's not at all surprising, therefore, that, with the White House's announcement earlier this week that Jack Lew will become the administration's next chief of staff, there's been lots of very public speculation about who will replace him as the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Several thoughts:

First, in general it's going to be difficult for any presidential nominee for anything to get confirmed this year. Why would the White House want to undertake a series of bruising confirmation fights in Senate committees and on the Senate floor that, because of GOP filibusters, are highly unlikely to result in anyone actually getting confirmed.

Second, it's also not clear who currently outside government is going to want to put his or her life on hold to go through the very painful vetting process and even more painful confirmation process for a job that may not exist after noon on Inauguration Day.

(originally posted on The Will and the Wallet

For thirty-five years, the Egyptian people believed the myth and lived in fear, fear of the security forces and fear of the chaos and instability that might exist without a strong ruler.  They have just overcome that fear and created hope.   That collective psychic shift was the key to making the change they needed to bring about.

I started saying exactly a year ago that a deficit reduction commission was highly unlikely to be successful, so this quote from a story today in The Fiscal Times anything but a shock:

But whether the rise of the Tea Party and voter repudiation of congressional Democrats will be enough to jolt President Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission into action remains much in doubt. On Tuesday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., offered a tepid prognosis of the chances the 18-member commission will deliver a package of spending savings and revenue raisers by Dec.

Here's my "Fiscal Fitness" column from today's Roll Call.

Fiscal Finger Food Adds Up to One Big Feast on the Budget

This is one of those weeks when there’s time to catch up on new developments on a few items that I’ve already written about and to deal with a few stories that so far haven’t been big enough to merit a column of their own. Think of it as budget tapas, a series of small portions that are not that filling by themselves but make a complete meal when eaten together.

California Really Is Too Big to Fail. Ask yourself this question: If AIG and other Wall Street firms are considered by policymakers to be too big to fail, what does that say about California?