Obama’s Man on the Budget: Just 40 and Going Like 60

In the article Mr. Orszag is the youngest member of President Obama’s team holding cabinet status, a 40-year-old with what colleagues call a graybeard’s knowledge of how the government spends money.
A former director of the Congressional Budget Office, Mr. Orszag is what passes in the Democratic Party for a deficit hawk. But with the economy requiring a jolt from deficit spending, and with his boss determined to press ahead with expensive domestic initiatives while he has the weight to do so, Mr. Orszag embodies the administration’s awkward fiscal policy positioning: big spending now, with a promise to scrub the budget of waste and a bet that economic recovery and changes to health care will gradually reduce the deficit. Mr. Orszag earned master’s and doctoral degrees at the London School of Economics.)In classic political fashion, Mr. Orszag trained for Washington rivalry through family rivalry, not just with his father but also with his economist brothers. Peter, Michael and Jonathan Orszag have worked and written papers together and still compare electronic gadgets and their Princeton grade-point averages.
In Washington, Mr. Orszag’s prowess with numbers has always meant opportunity. (Mr. Orszag, a divorced father of two, is so cozy with the Capitol Hill crowd that Senator Ron Wyden and his wife, Nancy Bass Wyden, found him a girlfriend.) Both sides benefited: lawmakers were more likely to receive favorable rulings on cost, and Mr. Orszag became more policy partner than accountant.
Now he has stocked the White House’s budget office with advisers who aspire to shape policy across the administration. Mr. Orszag had a large role in the economic stimulus bill, taking charge of sorting the workable spending ideas from the impractical ones and helping negotiate its final passage on Capitol Hill. Asked about his relationship with Mr. Summers, Mr. Orszag answered politely but stiffened visibly. For weeks after Mr. Obama took office, Mr. Orszag sat directly across the table from him in the Roosevelt Room. In recent years, many say, he has helped popularize the idea that reducing health care costs is essential to the country’s economic future and the sustainability of the federal budget.
The future looks bright for Mr. Orszag and sheds some light at the end f the tunnel for the U.S. With his dedication and hard work to see that we all benefit from the economic stimulus bill.