Yesterday I endorsed the President’s nominee for OMB Director, Jack Lew. Far more importantly, I see that Budget Committee Ranking Minority Members Paul Ryan (House) and Judd Gregg (Senate) endorsed Mr. Lew. This tells me his eventual confirmation is a slam dunk.

In a follow-up email conversation a well-connected Republican friend stressed the intensity of internecine warfare among DC Democrats right now. To this insider, Democratic House and Senate Leaders appear to be at each other’s throats, largely over Leader Reid’s inability to pass bills that in the past have been routine (like extenders + UI), as well as a belief among some House Democrats that the White House uses them as “cannon fodder.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ comment this weekend that Republicans might take the House created a dustup with House Democrats that continues to swirl. I then read Dana Perino’s post about the Pelosi-Gibbs spat and what it may tell us about White House thinking. Key quote:

Democrats know they’ll lose seats in November — I think what surprised people is that their internal polling at the White House must be such that they really think they could be dealing with a Republican House majority for the next two years.

My friend and I surmised that this Democrat-on-Democrat violence results in large part from their fear of losing seats or even the majority, driven by the combination of a weak economy, huge budget deficits, and no apparently effective policy solution to either. In my experience it’s very hard to keep a partisan majority working together as a team when that majority is threatened — individuals are less willing to “take one for the team” and worry far more about what they need to do to keep their own seat.

Combining Republican support for Mr. Lew, with Democratic intraparty squabbling, with Dana’s hypothesis about the White House’s view about the fall elections leads me to a hypothesis.

Of the candidates publicly discussed for OMB, Mr. Lew is the one most likely to draw praise from Republicans, and the President’s team is smart enough to know that. There are plenty of reasons why Mr. Lew will make a good budget director, and I detailed them yesterday.

At the same time, I wonder if the President’s selection of Mr. Lew in part reflects a view among Team Obama that they may be dealing with a Republican House Majority next year. At a minimum it’s an added bonus and smart contingency planning on the part of the White House, albeit at the expense (once again) of their House Democratic allies.

Put it this way: as President if you somehow knew you would face a Republican House majority next year, you’d want a budget director who could work with them while ardently defending your policy views. Jack Lew would be that guy. Team Obama cannot possibly know this, but I wonder if Dana is right — maybe they think they could be dealing with a Republican House majority for the next two years, and maybe they’re starting to play for that possibility.

Is Team Obama contingency planning for a Republican House?

© 2010 Keith Hennessey - Your guide to American economic policy

Related posts:

1. More health care stumbling by Team Obama
2. Jack Lew for Budget Director
3. What can President Obama learn from President Bush’s bipartisan successes?

retrun r

While you were preparing for your big New Year’s Eve party, the President’s Executive Clerk was deftly avoiding a Constitutional conflict.  The effect isn’t earth-shattering, but I think it’s a fascinating example of how our Constitution works in practice.  Consider this a lesson in your graduate course of How a Bill Really Becomes a Law (or doesn’t, in this case).

On December 30th President Obama vetoed his first bill.  Before the annual appropriations bill to fund the Department of Defense was enacted into law, Congress had passed a “Continuing Resolution” (CR) to provide funding for continued Pentagon operations.  Once the Defense approps bill had become law, the CR was no longer needed.  So the President prevented it from becoming law by vetoing it.  To my knowledge there was no policy dispute about the need to do this – everyone agreed that the CR was superfluous.

But how the President vetoed it is interesting, if you care about the details of how the Constitution works in practice.

To understand the conflict and how it was avoided, you need to understand how a “normal” veto and a pocket veto work.

First you need to understand how a “normal” veto works, usually called a return veto:

• The bill is passed by both Houses in identical form.  This is the engrossed bill.
• The engrossed bill is then enrolled:  the House (or Senate) Clerk assembles the actual parchment copy, which is then signed by the Speaker of the House (Pelosi) and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate (Byrd).  For this example let’s assume the House Clerk.
• The House clerk then sends the enrolled bill to the President.  Someone from the House Clerk’s office gets in a car and drives the bill to the White House and gives it to the Executive Clerk who works for the President.  The technical term is that the bill is presented to the President.  (“Presented” is in Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution.)
• The President decides to veto it.
• He instructs his Executive Clerk to return the bill to the originating House of Congress (in this case, the House of Representatives) “with his objections.”  In this case the Executive Clerk returns it to the House Clerk, with a Memorandum of Disapproval from the President.
• The Congress can then try to override his veto (if they so choose).  To do so they need 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate to override the veto.

The cool part of a return veto is that the President doesn’t ever have to see or touch the actual bill papers.  There’s no veto stamp, and he doesn’t sign the memorandum of disapproval.  He can do it all by phone.  His Executive Clerk can handle the paperwork without the President’s signature.

This contrasts with the traditional process for signing a bill into law, for which the President must physically have the bill in front of him.  This sometimes involves putting a staffer onto a plane to transport the bill to him (say, to Hawaii) before the 10-day deadline expires.

OK, let’s turn to a pocket veto.  Here’s the relevant sentence, again from Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution:

If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law.

So the President doesn’t (normally) even have to sign a bill for it to become law, although he almost always does.  The tricky part comes when Congress had adjourned.  Let’s use the CR as our example:

• The House passed the CR (House Joint Resolution 64) by voice vote on Wednesday, December 16th.  It passed the Senate by unanimous consent on Saturday, December 19th.
• On Saturday, December 19th, the House Clerk enrolled the CR and presented it to the President.
• The House adjourned for the year on December 23, and the Senate on December 24th.
• The 10-day clock expires on December 31st, since you don’t count Sundays.  If the House is adjourned then to “prevent its return,” then the bill does not become law and we say the President has “pocket vetoed” the bill.

Now that we understand both a return veto and a pocket veto, let’s look at the Constitutional conflict.  Please note that when I say “Congress” below, I am talking about the institutions of the Legislative Branch – the House and the Senate.  Partisanship is in this case irrelevant.  This conflict is about tension between the Legislative and Executive Branches of government, not between Republicans and Democrats.

Here’s the sentence again, which the relevant section in bold:

If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law.

Q:  If the House of Representatives adjourns but leaves the House Clerk in town, does this “prevent the return” of a bill and mean the President cannot pocket veto it?

When the Constitution was young, there were long periods when Congress was not in session, so there was no one to receive a returned bill and convene Congress for a veto override vote.  This was the birth of the pocket veto.

The Legislative Branch view is that the House of Representatives has appointed the Clerk of the House to act as its agent to receive Presidential messages.  Since the House Clerk and Secretary of the Senate are always around, there is always a way for the President to return a bill with a resolution of disapproval, even if Congress has adjourned.  Thus the Legislative Branch view is that a pocket veto is no longer possible.  There’s an exception to this for when Congress adjourns sine die, meaning at the end of a Congress, which happens late in every even-numbered year.  But the Legislative Branch view is that intrasession pocket vetoes are no longer possible, since the President can return a bill even when Congress has adjourned for several weeks (say, during August recess or at the end of an odd-numbered year).

The Executive Branch view is that even if the House of Representatives appoints its Clerk as its agent to receive an objected bill, the House Clerk is not the House, and the Constitution requires the bill to be returned to the House, not to an agent of the House.  If the House has adjourned, then Congress has by their adjournment prevented the return of the bill, and the pocket veto is operable.

These different views create a risk that an intrasession Presidential pocket veto might be challenged by the Congress in court.  Congress might argue in court that the CR (for example) became law after 10 days, even though the President did not sign it.  That would be a silly policy outcome, but the Constitutional dispute can and should be separated from the policy question of what the bill would do.

The Executive Branch would rather not provoke this fight, so they use a belt-and-suspenders approach.  The President pocket vetoes the bill and he return vetoes it.  The President pocket vetoes the bill and does not sign it into law during the 10 days allowed him by the Constitution.  He also returns it to the originating body of Congress (in this case the House) with a statement of his reasons for disapproving it – a return veto.  The President’s statement says that he is pocket vetoing it (the Executive Branch view), and he takes all the steps necessary to return veto it.  The term of art is a pocket veto with protective return.

MEMORANDUM OF DISAPPROVAL

The enactment of H.R. 3326 (Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010, Public Law 111-118), which was signed into law on December 19, 2009, has rendered the enactment of H.J.Res. 64 (Continuing Appropriations, FY 2010) unnecessary. Accordingly, I am withholding my approval from the bill. (The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U.S. 655 (1929)).

To leave no doubt that the bill is being vetoed as unnecessary legislation, in addition to withholding my signature, I am also returning H.J.Res. 64 to the Clerk of the House of Representatives, along with this Memorandum of Disapproval.

BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE,
December 30, 2009.

The result:  the Legislative and Executive Branches agree that the bill has been vetoed, but for different reasons.  The Congress says the bill has been return vetoed.  The Executive Branch says the bill has been pocket vetoed.  Since both agree the bill has been vetoed, there’s no opportunity for a court challenge.

Conflict avoided.

Kudos to the President’s Executive Clerk Tim Saunders for his many years of service to six Presidents.  Kudos to the New York Times’ Peter Baker, the only MSM reporter I can find who wrote about this.  And thanks to Brent McIntosh, former White House Deputy Staff Secretary, for once again teaching me how the Constitution works in practice.  Thanks also go to another former colleague for his help.

If you found this post interesting, here is a description of how vetoes work here when things get fouled up:  A messy end to a bad farm bill.

Happy New Year.

Avoiding a Constitutional conflict

© 2010 Keith Hennessey - Your guide to American economic policy

Related posts:

1. When the pocket veto conflict mattered
2. A messy end to a bad farm bill
3. President Bush vetoed the farm bill

Here is a small Christmas gift for you:  The Real West Wing Tour Guide (circa 2007).

While the general public can often get a White House East Wing tour through the office of their Member of Congress, West Wing tours can only be given by White House staff.

Through most of President Bush’s time in office, staff were allowed to give tours Tuesday through Friday evenings, and also on weekends.

One summer (I think it was 2003) my West Wing colleague Krista Ritacco and I thought it would be helpful and fun to create a written tour guide for staff.  We could improve the quality and accuracy of information and generally help make tours better for both the visitors and the tour guides.

We recruited Krista’s intern, then-Duke University student Sarah Hawkins, to research and write the first version.  We then produced simple decks of index cards which we distributed to friends and colleagues on the White House staff.  They quickly became an underground hit and were frequently used on tours.

The project went through several iterations, the last quasi-public version of which was developed by Ashley Hickey.

Karen Evans came up with the idea of upgrading it from index cards to a more professional appearance.  This is the version you see below, produced by Karen Evans, Tony Summerlin, and the Touchstone Consulting Group on a volunteer basis without using taxpayer dollars.  We never distributed this version broadly, even to other White House staff.  The contents are identical to the last “public” version, but this version looks even better.

I am distributing this under a Creative Commons License – you can distribute, share, and display this, but you must attribute it, you may not edit it, and you may not use it for commercial purposes.

I invite others to mirror the 10 MB PDF so my host isn’t overloaded.  Please provide a link to this page if you do.

I expect that today’s West Wing is somewhat different, especially in the displayed artwork and decor.  Nevertheless, I hope you find this interesting and enjoyable.

Merry Christmas.  Please click on the cover below to see the Guide.  If you get an error message, please update your version of Adobe Acrobat Reader.  And thanks to those submitting errata in the comments.

The Real West Wing Tour Guide

© 2010 Keith Hennessey - Your guide to American economic policy

Related posts:

1. Working in the West Wing: Senior Staff
2. Working in the West Wing: Doing a TV news interview on the North Lawn
3. Debt and the real threat

I did my first TV interview at the beginning of 2008 shortly after being promoted.  At first it was stressful, and it took me a while to get used to it.  Now that I’m on the outside, I do an occasional interview on CNBC, Fox, or CNN.  Today I’d like to describe the mechanics of doing a TV news interview from the North Lawn of the White House.  Even though I had worked in the White House for more than five years before my first on-camera interview, I did not know any of this until I actually had to do it.

Today is Jobs Day:  the first Friday of the month, when the Labor Department releases the monthly employment report.  The employment report is generally the most important economic data point of the month, and the business news channels (CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox Business) always cover it.  They always ask for someone from the Administration to comment on the data and what it means for the economy and the policy agenda.  I see the Vice President’s economic advisor, Jared Bernstein, is doing CNBC now.  In 2008, CEA Chairman Dr. Ed Lazear and I typically did this duty.

The jobs report is released at 8:30 AM on Friday.  As with all economic data releases, Administration officials are embargoed from talking about it publicly for one hour after the release.  This gives the markets time to process the data without the Administration’s viewpoint.

For each show broadcasting at 9:30 AM, a network producer negotiates with a staffer in the White House press shop.  For us it was Eryn Witcher, a top-notch professional with prior experience in TV news who now works as the communications director at Stanford’s Hoover Institute.  Eryn would negotiate with the producers and set Ed and/or me up with interviews.

Ed and I would talk the night before about the upcoming data and what we might say about it on the air.  We were among a handful of officials who got the data reports before they were released, so that we could advise the President.  Ed and his staff also used that data to prepare the daily “economic data memos” that the President received each morning.

We would generally watch the CNBC commentary immediately after the data release (at 8:30 AM sharp) to see if we had missed anything, and to take a temperature check on the initial market reaction and expert analysis.  We would generally be prepped by Ed’s chief of staff, Pierce Scranton, who had an uncanny ability to predict what questions we would be asked, and coached us on how to give a short effective answer.  If he wasn’t fighting other fires, Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto would also sit in the prep session.

A little after 9 AM someone would do my makeup in my office.  Around 9:15 Eryn and I (or Eryn and Ed) would walk out to the North Lawn.  You need a good TV tie (no busy patterns), straight collar (I was often scolded for button down collars), and American flag pin.  After a while I got my own earpiece that I would bring out with me, so I wouldn’t have to use the common one that everyone else uses.  It’s also nice to know you won’t lose the earpiece during the interview.

Each network has a TV camera set up in an area on the North Lawn next to the driveway from Pennsylvania Avenue to the West Wing entrance.  The networks semi-permanently set up shop there in 1998 during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and the gravel-filled area became known as Pebble Beach.  It was refurbished during the Bush Administration with slate and the cameras and tripods are covered with heavy green canvas when they’re not being used.  It is now referred to as Stonehenge, to which it bears a vague resemblance.

The cameras are in a long line next to each other.  Each is set up so that the person on air has the north entrance to the White House residence in the background.  Because of the different camera positions, each has a slightly different angle on the White House.  On the night of a big Presidential speech from the White House, try quickly switching channels and you can see the different angles.

Here’s a diagram for CNBC (roughly).  As always, you can click on the picture for a larger view.

The West Wing is the square building in the lower-left (southwest) corner.  The residence is in the lower-right corner, and that’s Pennsylvania Avenue up top.

The blue box surrounds Stonehenge with all the TV cameras.  When you’re on CNBC you stand at the red dot, facing the camera at the orange dot.  The yellow line shows the camera angle, extended to capture the north entrance to the Residence in the background.

If you look closely, to the right (east) of the blue box you can see the driveway that heads south from the Northwest Appointment Gate to the West Wing entrance.  Visitors with appointments in the West Wing walk up this driveway, and you can occasionally see them passing behind someone being interviewed on TV (especially on the evening news broadcasts).  If they’re walking from left to right on your screen, they’re arriving at the West Wing.  Right to left, they’re leaving.

About 9:15 AM Eryn and I would walk out to Stonehenge.  We would greet the cameraman and a producer, and I’d get miked up.  All the producers I met were friendly and professional, and the cameraman are universally great.  I would stand at the red dot facing the camera.  My earpiece cord would clip to the back of my jacket collar.  The cameraman would connect an audio cable to that cord, and there’s a small box at about waist high with a volume dial.  He attaches a tiny microphone to my lapel and I’m all set.

The cameraman then adjusts the camera for the shot.  I’m generally looking at myself on a monitor below the camera:  tie is straight, flag pin is upright.  (Left and right are reversed from what you’re used to in a mirror.  That takes getting used to.)  Around 9:25, I’ll hear audio of the show in my earpiece, and then a voice:

Voice 1:  Mr. Hennessey, this is [Bob] at CNBC headquarters.  Can you hear me?

Me:  Yes I can, Bob.

Voice 1:  And you can hear the program?

Me:  Yes.

Voice 1:  Great.  Can you count to ten for me, please, so we can do an audio check?

Me:  1,2,3,4,5,6,7,…

Voice 1:  That’s perfect.  Thank you.

After another minute, another voice, the producer for my segment of the show.

Voice 2:  Mr. Hennessey, this is [Tom].  We’re going to a commercial break, and will be going to you in about 2 minutes.  You’ll be interviewed by [Erin / Mark / Erin & Mark].

Me:  Sounds great.  Thank you.

During my first few interviews, the substance wasn’t that difficult for me.  I had been prepping principals for interviews and writing talking points for more than 13
years, now I just had to do the talking.  The hard parts were the nerves and the physical mechanics:

• Look at the camera lens.  Don’t let your eyes wander.
• Smile.
• Try not to “um” and “you know” too much.
• Slow down.
• Relax.

Also, TV moves very quickly.  Long answers don’t work, so I had to train myself to make my point in one or two sentences, rather than four or five.  (That’s difficult for me.)  If you go on too long, you’ll start hearing the anchor trying to jump in and move things along.  And before you know it, you’re done.

After the interview, you unmike, thank the cameraman and producer, and you’re done.  If you have another interview, you move down the line and repeat.  If not, head inside, take off the makeup, and get feedback from your colleagues and friends who email that they saw you on TV.

I only did a few in-studio interviews, and guest hosted CNBC’s Squawk Box once.  I was blown away by the ability of the anchors to multitask, and how quickly they think and react.  While one of them is talking on camera, another is checking market news or data on their screen, or scanning email.  Their producers are talking to them in their earpieces, and they are talking on camera with each other and the guests.  The coordination, reaction times, ability to adapt and improvise, and teamwork among the anchors and their producers are amazing.  Beginning that day, and ever since I have developed tremendous respect for those business news anchors hosting live fast-moving discussions.  I have enough trouble doing a single five minute segment, and they do it for 2-3 hours five days a week.

Working in the West Wing: Doing a TV news interview on the North Lawn

© 2010 Keith Hennessey - Your guide to American economic policy

Related posts:

1. Working in the West Wing: Senior Staff
2. The Real West Wing Tour Guide
3. CNN interview today

I should qualify this by acknowledging that each White House is different, reflecting both the character and the management style of the particular President. I was tremendously privileged to work for one President (George W. Bush) under two Chiefs of Staff (Andy Card and Joshua Bolten), from August of 2002 through January of 2009.  I do not argue that the Obama White House should do things the way that we did, or that our way was better.  I am merely describing how we did it for those who might care.   So for all you CSPAN junkies and West Wing watchers, here is the first in a series of posts about some process mechanics of working in the West Wing of the (Bush 43) White House.

Commissioned Officers

White House staff can be divided into two groups:  commissioned officers, and everyone else.  As a technical matter, a commissioned officer works for the President, and everyone else in the White House works for a commissioned officer.  There are three levels of commissioned officers.  Starting with the most senior, they are:

1. Assistant to the President (AP)
2. Deputy Assistant to the President (DAP), aka “Deputies”
3. Special Assistant to the President (SAP), aka “Specials” or “SAPs”

We had about 20 AP’s at any given time, with a little fluctuation.  Here are some examples:

• Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten
• Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove
• Assistant to the President and Counselor to the President Ed Gillespie
• Assistant to the President and Press Secretary Dana Perino
• Assistant to the President and Counsel to the President Fred Fielding
• Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs Dan Meyer
• Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director, National Economic Council Keith Hennessey

Each of us was an assistant to the President.  As a formal matter, he was our boss, and we 20 or so AP’s were his direct reports.  Note that not all AP’s are equal.  As a formal matter there’s a Chief of Staff who is senior to all other staff, and we had two Deputy Chiefs of Staff as well.  In a few cases, there was an AP reporting to an AP — at the National Security Council, the #1 and #2 people both had AP rank.  And as an informal matter, some AP’s have more practical impact than others, as you might expect in any organization.

Each AP runs part of the White House staff, and has commissioned officers and non-commissioned staff reporting to him or her.  The National Economic Council (NEC) had 1.5 deputies (I’ll explain the .5 another time) and 4-6 Specials.  As an example, in 2006 we had at the NEC:

• AP for Economic Policy and Director, NEC Al Hubbard
• DAP for Economic Policy and Deputy Director, NEC Keith Hennessey
• SAP for Economic Policy Chuck Blahous (Social Security)
• SAP for Economic Policy Julie Goon (Health)
• SAP for Economic Policy Bryan Corbett (Domestic Finance)
• SAP for Economic Policy Jason Thomas (Tax & Budget)
• SAP for Economic Policy Hunter Moorhead (Agriculture)

We also had substantive experts on other issues (e.g., Technology and Telecommunications) who were not commissioned officers.  And we had 8-12 noncommissioned staff, split about evenly between policy aides and support staff.

The Deputies and Specials also technically report to the President, and they get their commissions from the President (“Special Assistant to the President“).  They report to him through an AP, however.  As an example, every item on the President’s schedule had a “project officer” who was an AP that was formally responsible for that segment of the President’s day.  As a practical matter, the Deputies and Specials did much of the spade work to make that time segment successful, with the AP overseeing the process and working on strategic issues.

I spent most of my White House time (5 1/2 years) as the NEC Deputy, and a bit over a year (2008) as the NEC AP.  I used to joke that “Assistants make the key strategic recommendations to the President and decisions, Specials are the experts, and Deputies make everything happen.”  White House meetings would often segment by level.  In our economic policy development process, we would often have a series of policy meetings at three levels:

• In 2007, SAP for Economic Policy Julie Goon (Health) would chair a Policy Coordinating Committtee (PCC) meeting (or three) of White House SAPs and Assistant Secretaries from Cabinet Agencies.  Julie’s meetings would tee issues up for …
• … a Deputies meeting that I would chair (when I was the NEC Deputy), with White House Deputies and more senior Agency staff (like Deputy Secretaries) attending (as well as Julie).  My deputies meeting would tee issues up for …
• … a Principals meeting that the NEC AP would chair (in this example, Al Hubbard), with White House AP’s and Cabinet Secretaries (e.g., Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt and Budget Director Jim Nussle) attending.  Julie and I would also attend, since it was an NEC meeting.  The Principals meeting would tee issues up for …
• … a Policy Time meeting with the President in the Oval Office or the Roosevelt Room, generally attended by the same people who attended the Principals meeting.

Andy Card always used to say that White House staff work “at the pleasure of the President, and for the time being.”  This apparently repetitive statement was intended to emphasize how ephemeral our employment status was, in contrast to, for instance, a career civil servant with all sorts of legal protections.  White House staff, and in particular commissioned officers, have no formal job security.  And the hours are brutal.

At the same time, there are a few perks that come with being a commissioned officer:

• You get a nice commission, signed by the President and the Secretary of State.  Most staff would hang their commision on their office wall.  Those with multiple commissions (often from prior Administrations) would generally hang all of them.
• White House Mess sit-down privileges are for commissioned officers and Cabinet-rank officials.
• The in-town transportation service, run by top-notch Army personnel, is available only for commissioned staff.
• Technically, you get the title “The Honorable John Doe.”  I don’t know anyone who actually used this, but some friends and relatives think it’s cool.

As a legal and organizational matter, the White House is a subset of the Executive Office of the President (EOP).  The Executive Office of the President also includes some organizations that are not part of the White House, but are close to the President in a physical and practical way.  So the grouping of about 25 “White House Senior Staff” includes:

• All 20-ish Assistants to the President
• The Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (Eddie Lazear in 2008)
• The Director of the Office of Management and Budget (Jim Nussle in 2008)
• The Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (Jim Connaughton for eight years!)
• The Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (Jack Marburger for eight years)

There are some minor differences between the 20 AP’s and the other four, but they are truly minor.  As a practical matter, this group of about two dozen comprises the White House senior staff that report to and directly assist the President on a daily basis.

I found it interesting how few people understand this most basic tiered structure of the senior White House staff.  Then again, I worked on Capitol Hill for more than seven years, and had no idea about this structure until I moved into the White House.  What you should remember is that when you see a (current or former) White House staffer on TV or in the press, look carefully at their title.  If it says “Assistant to the President for ______,” then you know they are (or were) White House “senior staff,” with a tremendous amount of influence.  If you see “Deputy Assistant to the President,” you’ve stepped down one tier, and “Special Assistant to the President,” you have stepped down two tiers.  Don’t get me wrong — Deputies and SAPs can be tremendously powerful and influential.  But we alumni are always keeping track of “Who’s the ________ Deputy” or “Who got the ________ SAP job” in the Obama White House, and we have these tiers in mind as we observe and analyze the Obama White House decision-making structure.

Working in the West Wing: Senior Staff

© 2010 Keith Hennessey - Your guide to American economic policy

Related posts:

1. Working in the West Wing: Doing a TV news interview on the North Lawn
2. The Real West Wing Tour Guide
3. Working in Congress: Barking at the ref

There is a lot of hype about how Sen. Specter’s switch from Republican to Democrat will give Senate Majority Leader Reid 60 votes, assuming that Mr. Al Franken is sworn in as a Democrat Senator from Minneota.  Some are suggesting that there will be no legislative check on Democrat majorities, now that Senator Reid has 60 votes to invoke cloture and shut off filibusters.

This is an exaggeration.  While Leader Reid’s tactical position is clearly stronger, given that Sen. Specter was a frequent Reid target for that 60th vote, it is important not to overstate the change.

Here are what I think will be some practical consequences of the party switch:

1. I imagine Sen. Specter’s voting patterns on issues that are clearly high personal priorities for him, like judicial issues, health, and appropriations, will show almost no appreciable change.  I think the same will be true for headline issues like Iraq, Afghanistan, and terrorist surveillance.
2. The biggest effect will be on the small votes, as well as votes on things that are not high priorities for Sen. Specter.  If he behaves like other party switchers, his new party will get many of these votes, because his default vote will switch from R to D.  This benefits Leader Reid in that he has more flexibility with other Democrats who might be tempted to vote against the party on a particular issue.
3. The same will be true for many procedural votes, on which I expect him to vote with his new party.
4. But on cloture votes, where Sen. Specter has often been the marginal Republican vote, it is easy to imagine him being a less-than-reliable Democrat vote for cloture, just as he was a less-than-reliable Republican vote against cloture.
5. Assuming Sen. Specter wins re-election, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans on committees will improve slightly for Democrats.  This has a significant practical effect on the legislation that actually reaches the Senate floor.
6. I assume Sen. Specter’s chance for re-election increases substantially.

The Specter switch contributes to significant short-term Democrat political momentum.  The long-term legislative effect matters, but it is not as large as some observers are suggesting.

Tactical consequences of the Specter switch

© 2010 Keith Hennessey - Your guide to American economic policy

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2. Five important upcoming Senate health care votes
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