Jacob Lew: Another Brick in the Wall Street on the Potomac (William K. Black)

[Oilwellian]

33. The canaries are singing, but few care to listen

Next stop, European style austerity. I wonder what national treasure they'll sell first.

They have really been pushing the meme, Lew is a liberal, and a strong advocate for SS, Medicare & Medicaid.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You -- at one point in your profile today, you quote David Plouffe, the special -- or senior adviser to the president, saying Lew has a quiet ferocity to him. And then you cite an incident during the 2011 debt limit fight with the Republicans.

JULIANNA GOLDMAN: Yes, that's right. It was sort of the 11th hour of negotiations.

And Lew was one of the -- he came up with the idea of the sequester and at the last minute Republicans came back and said they wanted to attach Medicaid cuts to the automatic spending cuts that would be in place if they weren't able to come up with a long-term fiscal solution that we now know is the sequester.

And Lew, he hadn't slept in days. He was on speakerphone and he sort of yelled, no, we're not doing that. And he hung up the phone on the Republicans, and ultimately those Medicaid cuts weren't included. But also telling about Jack Lew, he was pretty embarrassed by the incident because for him that kind of rare outburst was something that you don't often see from him.

(snip)
JUDY WOODRUFF: Jared Bernstein, what's he like to work with?

JARED BERNSTEIN, Former Chief Economist to Vice President Joe Biden: Very insightful, deep knowledge of fiscal matters.

He's been working, as you heard, on budgetary issues for about three decades. And these are issues that get more and more complicated. But Jack keeps that all in his head. Extremely good listener, a very reasonable person, but one of the things you always hear -- it reminded me in listening to Julianna -- one of the -- a constant in my work with Jack and his career has been a recognition that one of the important roles of government is to protect economically vulnerable people.

You heard it there in that Medicaid story, but you could say the same thing about protecting the social safety net, about Medicare. Now, this is not a guy who won't put spending cuts on the table, who won't even entertain -- he's a guy who would entertain cuts to entitlements, but they have got to be structured in such a way that protect economically vulnerable retirees, people who have been hurt by recession, folks who need the safety net, people who have been hurt by income inequality, deep values held by Jack Lew.

Video at link:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june13/lew_01-10.html

This is such a classic case of the word games they're now playing, and I'm sure we'll hear them over and over for the next few months. He'll be quickly approved by the Senate, all the while showcasing him as a champion for entitlements. Then, once the sequester and debt ceiling negotiations begin, he'll "advise" that we compromise on entitlements.

Wall Street will be so elated. Their major fantasy, accomplished.