OMG at OMB!

President Obama has announced two impressive choices within the Office of Management and Budget, both of whom will be overseeing areas vital to reducing poverty.  Joining our man Peter Orszag at OMB as associate directors will be Robert Gordon and Xavier Briggs.  As any wonk or wonkette worth an impact analysis knows, OMB is a hugely powerful agency, able to stifle or advance almost any departmental proposal that involves money and/or regulations in other words, just about anything in government.   And, the most powerful posts at OMB are the Associate Directors effectively masters of their domains!  

Robert Gordon will be OMB۪s Associate Director for Education, Income Maintenance and Labor.   Robert is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he focuses on education and domestic policy. While on leave from the Center in 2006 and 2007, Robert served as a senior advisor to the chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, leading an overhaul of the city۪s multi-billion dollar school budgeting system and developing new human capital initiatives.  Prior to joining CAP in 2005, he was domestic policy director for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. He previously worked for Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) as Judiciary Committee counsel, legislative director, and policy director on his first presidential campaign. Earlier in his career, Robert was a law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a Skadden Fellow at the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society in New York City, where he represented children in abuse and neglect proceedings. He also served in the Clinton White House as an aide to the National Economic Council and the Office of National Service, helping craft the legislation creating AmeriCorps.  

Xavier de Souza Briggs will be OMB۪s Associate Director for General Government Programs.  Xavier is probably best known for his work on social capital and community building, as well as the concept of the “geography of opportunity,” which addresses the consequences of race and class segregation on the well-being and life prospects of the disadvantaged. He is Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. He is also a former faculty member of Harvard۪s Kennedy School of Government. He was a presidential appointee in the Clinton Administration, serving as a senior policy official at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

Posted by Mike

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