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Idahoans in D.C.

Idahoan Bruce Reed Will Direct Budget Council for Obama Administration

By Jill Kuraitis, 3-26-10

Idahoan Bruce Reed has been appointed as executive director of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

Reed, who is the son of longtime Democratic state senator Mary Lou Reed of Coeur d’Alene and environmental attorney Scott Reed, was director of President Clinton’s Domestic Policy Council for eight years. Since then he’s been CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist organization.

Reed’s most public achievement under Clinton was heading up a welfare reform initiative which was unpopular with liberal Democrats, and his other moderate views have sometimes put him at odds with that wing of the party.

But Reed is known by Republicans and Democrats as someone who knows and understands the federal budget and the budgeting process. He’ll run the Commission for co-chairs Erskine Bowles, Clinton’s former chief of staff, and former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyoming.

A Rhodes scholar and graduate of Princeton and Oxford, Reed was then-Sen. Al Gore’s speechwriter and later moved to the Democratic Leadership Council. In 1992, he was deputy manager for policy of the Clinton-Gore campaign, and oversaw development of the domestic, economic, and foreign policy positions, then spent his eight years in the White House.

Reed has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The Economist.

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