Spring Break
The Daily OrangeProfessor works on Bush's new budget plan
By Nicky Corbett
Posted: 2/18/05, 12:12 AM EST Section: News
"I can't say with any certainty what will happen, but it's worth watching," he said.
As with the national budget, Congress essentially uses the CBO and Holtz-Eakin to get estimates of the fiscal impacts of different policies in clear and understandable terms, Holtz-Eakin said.
"I think of the CBO as a very high-level consulting firm for Congress," he said.
Holtz-Eakin has been a professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs since fall 1990, where he taught courses in public finance, public policy and a graduate course in taxation.
Michael Wasylenko, senior associate dean at the Maxwell School, said Holtz-Eakin was dynamic and imaginative, inventing new courses such as economics for journalists, a class he created with S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications Dean David Rubin.
"And to top it off, he has a great sense of humor," Wasylenko said. "He's just the kind of professor you'd dream of having."
Holtz-Eakin said he also created a course about public policy towards financial markets, in which he showed movies with related themes, like "Wall Street" and the bank run in
"Mary Poppins" to his students.
Holtz-Eakin went from professor to his current job when House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and the president pro tempore of the Senate, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, jointly appointed Holtz-Eakin as CBO director while he was serving as chief economist of the President's Council of Economic Advisers since his leave from SU in 2001.
"They're looking for all those skills wrapped up in one person," Wasylenko said. "It's pretty rare."
The position requires well-connectedness and good relations with the congressional committees who do analyses, as well as with the experts who frame the issues, Wasylenko said.
Holtz-Eakin said the skills required for a CBO director are the same skills he used as chair of the economics department at SU. The director supervises and does research on projects. Then he testifies to Congress, a task Holtz-Eakin thinks of as teaching - only instead of students he teaches congressmen, and the hearing is their classroom.
Staying nonpartisan may be one of the most important skills a director should have, and Wasylenko said Holtz-Eakin pulls it off.
"You've got to hear all sides and get the analysis they want done," Wasylenko said. "You've got to be able to reconcile differences."
Holtz-Eakin said he expects to come back to SU in roughly two years, after the duration of the four-year appointment, and is so busy he hasn't had time to reflect on his experience in Washington, D.C.
"I don't have a perspective on it," he said. "That's my biggest job when I get back (to SU)."
As with the national budget, Congress essentially uses the CBO and Holtz-Eakin to get estimates of the fiscal impacts of different policies in clear and understandable terms, Holtz-Eakin said.
"I think of the CBO as a very high-level consulting firm for Congress," he said.
Holtz-Eakin has been a professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs since fall 1990, where he taught courses in public finance, public policy and a graduate course in taxation.
Michael Wasylenko, senior associate dean at the Maxwell School, said Holtz-Eakin was dynamic and imaginative, inventing new courses such as economics for journalists, a class he created with S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications Dean David Rubin.
"And to top it off, he has a great sense of humor," Wasylenko said. "He's just the kind of professor you'd dream of having."
Holtz-Eakin said he also created a course about public policy towards financial markets, in which he showed movies with related themes, like "Wall Street" and the bank run in
"Mary Poppins" to his students.
Holtz-Eakin went from professor to his current job when House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and the president pro tempore of the Senate, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, jointly appointed Holtz-Eakin as CBO director while he was serving as chief economist of the President's Council of Economic Advisers since his leave from SU in 2001.
"They're looking for all those skills wrapped up in one person," Wasylenko said. "It's pretty rare."
The position requires well-connectedness and good relations with the congressional committees who do analyses, as well as with the experts who frame the issues, Wasylenko said.
Holtz-Eakin said the skills required for a CBO director are the same skills he used as chair of the economics department at SU. The director supervises and does research on projects. Then he testifies to Congress, a task Holtz-Eakin thinks of as teaching - only instead of students he teaches congressmen, and the hearing is their classroom.
Staying nonpartisan may be one of the most important skills a director should have, and Wasylenko said Holtz-Eakin pulls it off.
"You've got to hear all sides and get the analysis they want done," Wasylenko said. "You've got to be able to reconcile differences."
Holtz-Eakin said he expects to come back to SU in roughly two years, after the duration of the four-year appointment, and is so busy he hasn't had time to reflect on his experience in Washington, D.C.
"I don't have a perspective on it," he said. "That's my biggest job when I get back (to SU)."
