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Past Event

A Discussion with Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget

Fiscal Accomplishments and Budget Update

Federal Budget, Fiscal Policy, U.S. Economy, Office of Management and Budget

Event Summary

On July 28, the Brookings Institution hosted Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), for a discussion of the economic and fiscal accomplishments of the Obama administration and the path ahead. Orszag was instrumental in crafting several of the administration’s priority policies including the Recovery Act and health reform effort, and as OMB director has been on the front lines of dealing with the fiscal challenges the nation faces. This was Orszag’s last public speech before stepping down as OMB director on July 30.

NOTE: The audio for this event is edited midway through because a portion of the recording is inaudible.

Event Information

When

Wednesday, July 28, 2010
10:30 AM to 11:30 AM

Where

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Map

Event Materials

Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

Email: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105

Before joining the White House, Orszag served as the director of the Congressional Budget Office. He was also the Joseph A. Pechman senior fellow and deputy director of Economic Studies at Brookings.  While at Brookings, he also served as director of The Hamilton Project, director of the Retirement Security Project, and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. During the Clinton administration, he was a special assistant to the president for economic policy and before that a staff economist and then senior advisor and senior economist at the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

Brookings Senior Fellow William Gale introduced Dr. Orszag. After his remarks, Orszag took questions from the audience.

Transcript

PETER ORSZAG: Thank you, Bill, for that kind introduction, and it’s a pleasure to be back here at Brookings among friends and former colleagues. I think it’s particularly appropriate that I give my final speech as OMB Director here, considering how much this institution did to help develop my thinking on a wide range of public policy issues.

Even before the President took office and I was sworn in as OMB Director in early 2009, the economics team was working day and night to mitigate the effects of what threatened to be a second Great Depression. And in the initial days of the administration, the dedicated staff at OMB did the work of six months in six weeks by putting together the President’s first budget, the document that would lay out the blueprint for the President’s first term.

From there, we worked on health care, education reform, eliminating unnecessary military weapons programs while providing necessary funding for our troops, and the list goes on and on and on. I’m not going to go over each of these initiatives, but I do want to discuss three topics in somewhat more detail, the Recovery Act, health reform, and our efforts to modernize government, all of which will have an impact not only for years, but potentially for decades to come. Let me speak about each of them and then I’d be delighted to take your questions.

Participants

Introduction

William G. Gale

Senior Fellow, Economic Studies

Keynote Speaker

Peter Orszag

Director, Office of Management and Budget


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