Jon Cohn has a nice catch from yesterday's Orszag confirmation hearings where Orszag suggested that health care may have moved ahead of energy on the administration's agenda. The key exchange came when Maryland's Ben Cardin asked the incoming OMB director about the new administration's priorities. Orszag answered:Perhaps in that order, health care, energy, education, housing, and obviously support for the middle class being an overarching theme, you’ll see a lot of energy and activity surrounding those major items.Meaningfully, health care precedes energy in Orszag's reply. That's at odds with Obama's past statements, which put health care behind energy on the priority list. This could be meaningless, of course, with Orszag accidentally jumbling the order amidst the heat and pressure of the confirmation hearing. Or it could be more significant: As he says, the Obama administration's "overarching theme" is now the struggling middle class, and it's easier to fit health reform within that rubric then energy. The recession has changed the political calculation, and the particular alignment of anxieties right now arguably favors health care more than carbon pricing.And if anything has changed, Orszag would know. "Remember," says Cohn, "the budget document Obama submits in February will be the first concrete expression of Obama’s governing agenda. Obama's advisors are working on that document now. And Orszag, as the incoming budget director, is at the center of that process." Coincidentally, the lead on TAP today is my profile of Peter Orszag. Go read.
