Peter R. Orszag will leave his job as the White House budget director in July, according to someone familiar with his plans, making him perhaps the first official to leave the Obama Cabinet and removing a major player from President Obama’s economic team.
Mr. Orszag, an economist who previously spent nearly two years as director of the Congressional Budget Office, somewhat reluctantly accepted Mr. Obama’s invitation to join the Cabinet after the 2008 election and never planned to stay more than two years. Typically, budget directors do not.
While the president recently urged Mr. Orszag to remain, the calendar for drafting the next budget weighed in favor of Mr. Orszag leaving sooner. So did Mr. Orszag’s personal calendar: He is getting married in September.
By fall, as Congress is taking final action on the budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, the Office of Management and Budget is busy preparing the next year’s budget request to be released next February. Mr. Orszag argued inside the White House that his successor should be in place to put the next budget together from the start.
In recent months, Mr. Orszag, 41, espoused deficit reduction strategies in administration debates against those who pressed for more stimulus spending and tax cuts to keep the economy from slipping back into recession. He will leave before the bipartisan debt-reduction commission that Mr. Obama formed earlier this year — and which Mr. Orszag championed — is due to report its recommendations by Dec. 1.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/orszag-leaving-as-budget-director/
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