Peter Orszag to re-join Economic Studies at Brookings

The Brookings Institution today announced that former Obama Office of Management and Budget Director and Congressional Budget Office Director Peter R. Orszag is re-joining the Economic Studies program as a nonresident senior fellow, effective September 8, 2015.

Orszag, who departed Brookings to serve as Director of the Congressional Budget Office from January 2007 to December 2008, was later appointed by President Barack Obama as the 37th Director of the Office of Management and Budget, serving from January 2009 until July 2010. While in President Obama’s cabinet, Orszag played a major role in the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as a response to the financial crisis of 2008, as well as the President’s push to expand health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

Prior to leading CBO, Orszag served as the Joseph A. Pechman Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of Economic Studies, was the first director of The Hamilton Project, was director of the Retirement Security Project, and was a Co-Director of the Brookings-Urban Tax Policy Center.

Before his time at Brookings, Orszag served in the Clinton Administration, where he was Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and prior to that a staff economist and then Senior Advisor and Senior Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Orszag graduated summa cum laude in economics from Princeton University and received his Ph.D in economics from the London School of Economics where he was a Marshall Scholar.

Orszag is currently at Citigroup, Inc., where he holds the roles of Vice Chairman of Corporate and Investment Banking, and Chairman of the Financial Strategy and Solutions Group.  Orszag is also a Distinguished Scholar at the NYU School of Law and a Contributing Columnist at Bloomberg View. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Mt. Sinai Medical Center, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, New Visions for Public Schools, and ideas24. He is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the Trilateral Commission, the Hamilton Project Advisory Council, and the Marshall Scholarship Alumni Advisory Board, and holds an honorary doctorate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has served as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and was a Contributing Columnist at the New York Times.

“We are happy to welcome Peter back to Brookings,” said Brookings Vice President and Director of Economic Studies Ted Gayer. “Peter’s dedication to using economic research to guide sound policymaking, combined with his experiences in key leadership roles, makes him a great addition to the Economics Studies team. My colleagues and I look forward to working with him again.”