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President Barack Obama on Saturday chose two Indian-Americans to help to streamline the federal government and cut costs. Obama named Aneesh Chopra, the Harvard-educated secretary of technology for the state of Virginia, as the federal government's first chief technology officer. Chopra, 36, will help reduce health care costs and foster cybersecurity. "In this role, Aneesh will promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities - from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure," Obama said in his Saturday radio and Internet address. Chopra's corporate experience included working as managing director of the Advisory...

Facing mounting criticism of a spending package packed with billions of dollars in earmarks, the Obama administration made a vow Sunday: This president will bring a halt to pork-laden bills. Peter Orszag says it is too late to cut earmarks from the spending bill inherited from the Bush administration. "[Such bills] will not happen when the president has the full legislative and appropriations process in place," Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told CNN's "State of the Union with John King." He argued that the White House had little choice but to support the...

White House budget chief Peter Orszag is preparing to push back against critics portraying the Obama budget as a massive increase in federal spending. Mr. Orszag says President Barack Obama's fiscal blueprint would put funding for basic government operations -- outside of the military -- on a downward path over the next decade. According to estimates prepared by the White House's Office of Management and Budget, spending on basic government, which covers everything from Commerce Department trade investigations to cleanups by the Environmental Protection Agency, would decline to 3.1% of GDP in 2019 under the Obama budget, the lowest level...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will break a campaign pledge and sign a budget bill laden with millions in lawmakers' pet projects, administration officials said. Administration budget chief Peter Orszag and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel both downplayed the $410 billion spending bill and signaled Obama would hold his nose and sign it. Orszag said: "We want to just move on. Let's get this bill done, get it into law and move forward. Said Emanuel: "That's last year's business." [snip] Either way, it is far more than Obama promised as a candidate. He refused "earmarks" for the economic...

Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag admitted this morning that capping carbon emissions may increase energy prices but said Americans would receive other benefits through President Obama's budget. "Let's be fair about this," Orszag said in an exclusive "This Week" interview with George Stephanopoulos. "Either you're going to look at what is collected through the tax code and what's returned through the tax code. And on that basis, there's a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans, or you have to go all in. Let's also count the benefits that families get through Pell Grants, the benefits that...

President Obama’s budget director said the White House would consider using a Senate procedural tactic so that only 50 votes would be rquired to pass major healthcare and energy reforms. Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the administration would prefer not to use the budget reconciliation process to push through its package. But he added: "We have to keep everything on the table. We want to get these.... important things done this year." Orszag called healthcare in particular "the key to our fiscal future." Orszag made the comments on ABC’s "This Week with George...

President Obama’s budget director said the White House would consider using a Senate procedural tactic so that only 50 votes would be rquired to pass major healthcare and energy reforms. Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the administration would prefer not to use the budget reconciliation process to push through its package. But he added: "We have to keep everything on the table. We want to get these.... important things done this year." Orszag called healthcare in particular "the key to our fiscal future."

Peter Orszag, the current director of the Congressional Budget Office, smiles as he listens to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama speak about choosing Orszag as his choice for director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during a news conference in Chicago November 25, 2008.

A Democratic senator on Tuesday accused President-elect Obama’s incoming director of the Office of Management and Budget of talking “mumbo jumbo” instead of offering hard details on the economy. “I would think that in this era of freshness and transparency the new administration would want to come forth with detail instead of this mumbo jumbo that is going on,” said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a member of the Senate Budget Committee, during Peter Orszag’s confirmation hearing. Orszag had little to say during Tuesday’s hearing on how the incoming administration would spend the second half of the $700 billion financial rescue...