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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Does OMB Nominee Bring Budget Baggage?
Ignore that man on the floor with a bag over his head. Pay attention instead to what he does behind closed doors.
That was the message of OMB Director-nominee Jim Nussle yesterday at his Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmation hearing:
I believe the way I would like to be judged is not only by how you battled each other on the floor, and during debates like that where passion certainly can sometimes even get the best of you, but it's also on how you conduct yourself behind closed doors, and with colleagues, and honoring agreements and working to find consensus when that becomes the opportunity and I believe I've done that as well.
I wonder if Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) was making a pun at Nussle's expense when he told reporters on the day Jim Nussle was nominated that Nussle is "an intense partisan more given to confrontation than cooperation — he's coming here with baggage." (emph. added)
Nussle -- who put a bag over his head on the House floor to draw attention to the House bank overdraught scandal in 1991 -- goes before Conrad's committee for a second confirmation hearing tomorrow morning.
Posted by Dana Chasin
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