More Republicans praise Obama picks
Posted: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 3:06 PM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
Congress, Republicans
From NBC's Ken Strickland
During his news conference today, President-elect Obama said there has been bipartisan support for his newly named economic team.
Here's what a couple of key Senate Republicans have said.
As the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Judd Gregg called the nomination of Peter Orszag to OMB Director "another positive choice by President-elect Obama as he unveils his new economic team this week." In a written statement issued this afternoon, Gregg went on to call Orszag "an excellent choice."
Gregg said the earlier selection of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers "assures that we will continue to see a clear commitment by the federal government and the new administration to do whatever is needed to ensure the solvency and orderly functioning of the credit markets and key institutions."
Support from Gregg is significant. Besides his role on the budget committee, Gregg is also a de facto member of Senate's Republican leadership. And he was recently appointed by Republican Leader Mitch McConnell as a member of a congressionally created oversight panel to keep track of federal bailout spending.
The Senate Finance Committee's top Republican, Chuck Grassley, was apprehensive about Obama during the campaign but seems won over by the new administration's economic team.
"The kind of change that the President-elect promised was so undefined it made me nervous," he said in a written statement yesterday. "Now that he's appointing familiar faces from the Clinton administration to very high-level positions I'm less concerned."
Citing Summers' and Orszag's experience in the Clinton Administration, Grassley said, "They saw up close how the tech bubble developed. They also responded constructively to pressure from the Republican-led Congress to restrain spending and put in place pro-growth and pro-family tax relief policies."
