[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 57 (Wednesday, April 24, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2919-S2921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  Nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell

  Madam President, I would like to speak a bit, if I may, on the 
nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell, whose nomination as the Director 
of the Office of Management and Budget has come through our Committee 
on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs as well as through the 
Budget

[[Page S2920]]

Committee. Her nomination was reported out unanimously by voice vote a 
week or so ago by our committee and unanimously on the same day by the 
Budget Committee.
  The nomination comes at a critical time not just for this 
administration but I think at a critical time for our country. We are 
wrestling with this large budget deficit. We know there are management 
challenges. When a person says OMB, it stands for the Office of 
Management and Budget, and whoever is confirmed to serve in this 
position is expected to oversee a great group of people, a good team 
that will focus on budget issues. The issues include how do we continue 
to rein in our budget deficit and bring it back to a more sustainable 
fiscal position for us, also what do we need to do on the management 
side to help hasten that day.
  We have across the Federal Government in this administration, and we 
had it in the last Bush administration as well, something I call 
executive branch Swiss cheese. We have too many senior positions in 
this administration; we had a number of them in the last administration 
but not to the extent we have them in this administration. We have too 
many positions that are going wanting. In some cases, the 
administration has not vetted, nominated, and submitted names to us; in 
some cases, we are not moving them very quickly once they have, so 
there is a shared responsibility. The administration--in this case, we 
haven't had a confirmed Director of OMB for about 1 year, since Jack 
Lew left to become Chief of Staff, who is now Secretary of the 
Treasury. We have gone about 1 year without a Senate-confirmed OMB 
Director. That is not good. Jeff Zients, who has been the Deputy 
Director and who has basically been responsible for being Acting 
Director; also, if you will, the ``m'' in OMB, the Management Deputy 
for OMB. We haven't had anybody running it for a while, which these are 
the regulations since Cass Sunstein left, who was very good at it.
  So the senior leadership team at OMB pretty much has been Jeff 
Zients, and we are grateful to him for taking on all this 
responsibility. But he may have other things he wants to do with his 
life and we need to put somebody in place to head up OMB and to 
surround that person with a first-rate team and I pledge to do that.
  I wish to say to my colleagues, Democratic and Republican in the 
Senate, on our Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 
on the Budget Committee, just a big thank-you for getting this 
nomination, once we had it in hand, to move it quickly, hearings, 
through the vetting, staff interviews, and to bring that nomination to 
the floor. Thanks to the leadership, Democratic and Republican, for 
helping to make that possible.
  Who is this person whom the President has nominated? She used to be a 
Mathews, with one ``t''--a Mathews with one ``t.'' She is now Sylvia 
Mathews Burwell. She is a pretty remarkable person for someone who was 
raised and grew up in Hinton, WV, where I lived when I was 4 years old. 
I was born in Beckley, WV, not far from where Sylvia grew up. I said to 
her at our confirmation hearing: What is the likelihood that the 
President would nominate as the Director of OMB, one of the most 
powerful positions in any administration, a gal who was born in Hinton, 
WV, on the New River, close to the Bluestone Dam where I learned to 
fish as a little boy and she would be before our committee at a hearing 
chaired by a guy who used to live in Hinton, WV, when he was a 4-year-
old kid? Pretty amazing. But she is extraordinary, as the Presiding 
Officer knows.
  Sylvia Burwell grew up in West Virginia. She didn't go off to some 
fancy private school in another State. She went to Hinton High School. 
She played on the girls' basketball team there. I was kidding her at 
her confirmation hearing, and I asked her: What was the mascot? She 
said: We were the Bobcats. So she is a Bobcat. There were at the 
confirmation hearing a number of her colleagues from Hinton, who were 
fellow Bobcats and played on the basketball team with her--just a great 
celebration. She is a real person. She is just a real person. She has 
wonderful interpersonal skills.
  When the President nominated her, I found out she used to work in the 
Clinton administration. But I asked her after high school what did she 
do. I like to say she couldn't get into Delaware or North Dakota 
University, she had to go to Harvard. From there, she became a Rhodes 
Scholar over in England. She came back and did some work on the 
Clinton-Gore campaign, I think, in 1992 and ended up working for the 
administration. What did she do? She was Chief of Staff to Bob Rubin, 
one of the leaders of the economic development team in the Clinton 
administration. She was a Deputy to Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, 
Deputy Chief of Staff, and I think for the last year or two of the 
Clinton administration she was Deputy OMB Director and she had a pretty 
good experience there. She finished there and ended up working for 
McKinsey & Company, one of the top management consulting firms in the 
world. She helped stand up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and 
more recently has helped to run the Wal-Mart Foundation. What great 
credentials.
  I called Erskine Bowles when I found out she worked for and with him, 
and I said: Tell me about this Sylvia Burwell, who has been nominated 
to head up the OMB. Here is what he told me. He told me a truly great 
story. He said: Here is the setting. We are in the Oval Office with the 
President. Bob Rubin, Sylvia Mathews at the time--for a while--and 
Erskine, and the President is having a conversation with Bob Rubin, 
asking him some questions. And Erskine notices Sylvia, who is Rubin's 
Chief of Staff, slips him a note and Rubin looks at the note, and he 
answers the President's questions to great effect and very brilliant 
responses. The President is oohing and aahing at how good that response 
was, and Erskine says: Mr. President, I have broken the code here on 
Rubin. He is not that smart. It is Sylvia. She gave him the note to 
answer the question. If I had Sylvia working for me, people might think 
I am as smart as they think Rubin is.

  Well, she ended up working with Erskine as the Deputy Chief of Staff.
  I also talked to Bruce Reed about her. Bruce was President Clinton's 
former domestic policy adviser. He and I worked with a bunch of other 
people on welfare reform. He is a great guy. He is Vice President 
Biden's Chief of Staff today. I asked him to tell me some more about 
Sylvia.
  One of the other things I sensed from both of them is this: She is a 
real person. She is a good person. We have all heard the term ``good 
guy.'' I do not know how you say that about a woman--if they are a 
``good gal'' or whatever--but if she were a man, you would say ``a 
really good guy.'' She has a great personality. People like her. Around 
here, that is actually pretty helpful. The other thing they said is 
that she is incredibly bright and able to juggle a whole lot of things 
at the same time.
  Somehow along the way, she has gotten married to a lucky guy named 
Stephen. She said she is lucky too. They have these two young kids, and 
somehow they have managed to keep all the balls in the air and raise a 
family while having these careers.
  But I asked Erskine and Bruce, what is she really like? Great, just a 
really good person, with good values. I have talked to her about her 
values, including the one that involves faith, and it is just the kind 
of thing you are encouraged to hear. She is very bright.
  The other thing they said about her is this: She has a great ability 
to get things done. We all know people who are a good guy or gal, 
people who are arguably bright, but they are not able to get things 
done. Well, we need somebody in this position who is able to lead a 
team that gets things done. We have a huge deficit, about $800 billion. 
It is coming down, but it is still too big. We have all kinds of GAO 
issues that they raise to us on their High Risk List--the things that 
are problematic because we waste money on ineffective spending. GAO, 
most recently, has given us a whole big report on duplication in the 
Federal Government. There is a huge to-do list. And part of it is our 
jurisdiction in our Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental 
Affairs. That is an obligation and responsibility we share with the 
administration and with other branches of our government. But we need 
somebody who is very good at multitasking and who can get things done. 
And I think if we help put the

[[Page S2921]]

right team around here, they will get a lot done and we will do this 
together.
  I will close, if I could, with this: I have never met her parents. 
Obviously, I think she has at least one sibling. But, boy, when I asked 
her how she turned out this way, Sylvia really gives the credit to her 
parents. I think most of us probably do if we have had success in life, 
although we had a great witness before the Finance Committee at 
yesterday's hearing--Antwone Fisher, a sort of self-made, up-from-the-
roots, amazing, successful guy. You never would have imagined he would 
have enjoyed the success he has, coming up through the foster care 
system in his home State.
  But she gives a lot of credit to her parents. Obviously, they are 
doing something right at Hinton High School and maybe even at Harvard 
and over in Oxford, England. But she has had good mentors. She is a 
very humble person--a very humble person. She is the real deal, and we 
are lucky she is willing to take this on.
  I commend the President for nominating her. I want to thank her 
husband and her family for their willingness to share her. I hope she 
gets a unanimous vote here today. She ought to.