President Nancy Birdsall is quoted in the Financial Times on the nomination of Sylvia Matthews Burwell.
President Barack Obama harked back to Sylvia Mathews Burwell’s upbringing in rural West Virginia – as the daughter of “educators” and the granddaughter of Greek immigrants – to explain why he picked her to be budget director in the midst of America’s rolling fiscal crises.
One of Ms Burwell’s first tasks will be to administer and blunt the impact of those cuts, known as sequestration, which went into effect last week and are forcing US government agencies to slash $85bn from their budgets over the next ten years. Her second job will be to help Mr Obama in the other fiscal negotiations with congressional Republicans over the coming year, including the next deadline to raise America’s borrowing limit over the summer.
Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, a Washington-think-tank, says Ms Burwell was instrumental when the Gates Foundation decided to expand beyond health into other areas such as agriculture and financial services. “She’s the sort of person who was able to manage a process which required a lot of analytics and juggling a lot of pressures – a lot of groups wanted money from Gates,” says Mrs Birdsall. Ms Burwell’s work in development and philanthropy would have also deepened her international expertise. “I like having someone in there who has a larger vision of what’s going on in the world,” Ms Birdsall adds.