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Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel on what Jack Lew's policy could mean for the future of our economy.
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-- Charlie Gasparino just reported Jack -- likely to replace Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to be exact -- been reporting for couple weeks already.
-- official nomination could come as early as this week but who is Jack -- in.
Look at this policy mean for the future of our economy David -- economics editor for the Wall Street Journal joins us now David thanks for joining us.
-- so as we approached this battle over spending cuts with regards the debt ceiling.
We know that Jack -- has been sympathetic supportive of the president in his agenda supporting entitlements supporting spending what's.
And whatnot so what's your take on whether or not we'll get meaningful.
Spending cuts with the treachery secretary like Jack -- I think -- when you look at -- background and you compare him to say Tim Geithner the present Treasury Secretary what you see is a couple things.
One is this is a guy who knows Capitol Hill very well.
He -- of lot of years on the congressional staff.
-- Paula that working for Democrats who worked for tip -- he worked for Joseph Moakley.
I'm so.
-- like Tim Geithner who never worked on Capitol Hill he does have a sense of how to get deals done in congress secondly.
He comes from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party I -- -- when I worked on my book about the budget red ink.
Last year and he's.
He's he believes in the power of government he is not gonna be very since -- -- -- with people like Paul Ryan who believe that the role this whole budget exercises to strengthen government.
But three he's a -- he's a pragmatist he understands that if we don't do something to slow the growth of entitlement spending.
There will be no room in the budget to do all the things investments in children -- infrastructure all those things that matter a lot to the president.
And to Jack glue himself.
So I suspect that he will be -- it's -- nearly all this time on budget matters.
And he has the chance of being -- dealmaker here even though so far he hasn't been very success.
And then in terms of the job that -- Treasury Secretary guys that if you are known to embrace you know more liberal economic policy what would you expect practically to see him -- Well it's not the first time we have a Treasury Secretary who believed in government policy we have Bob Rubin we have Larry Summers in the Clinton administration.
What I expected it means is that he will be very aggressive.
In pushing the president's agenda in budget talks to make sure that when we restrain spending -- we cut spending.
As we surely we'll have to do at some point if not this President Obama to have some future term -- -- -- that we won't Qaeda.
Those in investments.
As they put it that they think are vital.
For the future and I also think it's inching know that we have a Treasury Secretary although he was at the State Department.
He was a management job there and although we -- work a couple years at Citi bank.
Has basically not had a lot of Wall Street experience hasn't have a lot of experience in international negotiations.
So I suspect there will be looking for someone to complement and and the debt.
His job who has strong data and -- slowly opening -- I'm starting to catch a lucky we have we're just we're always on a tight time clock here.
You know is -- is track record when he was OMB director in the Clinton administration.
He did get a bipartisan budget deal with a surplus.
He touched on this what's -- -- that can happen again.
Right right.
Well everybody would love to go back to surpluses but the times are very different we had a strong economy then we had a volatile and we had all those years shrinking deficits.
He's not -- he's not that position now but it does mean he knows the ins and outs of budgets this is not a guy who has to learn on the job.
And that's probably a good thing given how -- our fiscal situation is.
Thank you so much David -- throughout up.
