Obama Picks His Budget Chief

President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday nominated Peter Orszag to head the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB). As OMB director, Orszag, would prepare the president's federal budget proposals for Congress and analyze the effectiveness of government programs and policies. He will also have a big role in determining funding priorities for the Federal government.

Currently Orszag is the director of the Congressional Budget Office, which calculates the cost of legislative proposals for the House and Senate to consider in their deliberations. It is being written that Orszag has expertise in retirement security, health care and climate change issues. Orszag has also been an honest and loud voice warning about the exploding growth in the annual deficits, and the country's outragous debt load. He has also spoken out about the shortfalls in the Social Security and Medicare programs.

You may remember that President-elect Obama often promised during the campaign that his economic team would go through the federal budget "page by page, line by line" to get rid of programs that aren't working and making others more cost effective. Orszag is definitely a great fit for this job. Along with his experience with the Congressional Budget Office, Orszag served as deputy director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution and served in the Clinton administration as a special assistant to the president for economic policy and senior economic adviser to the National Economic Council.