Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew played down controversy over a $1.7 billion cash payment the Obama administration made to Iran earlier this year, calling the method of payment a "technicality" after it was revealed this month that the entire sum was paid in cash, despite precedent for wire transfers…
Congress has a terrible time with deadlines. It's not that it's unable to meet real deadlines. Just the opposite, in fact: If it absolutely has to pass legislation by a given day it invariably figures out a way to get it done, no matter who is in charge. The trick is convincing everyone that there…
Identity politics are truly the coin of the realm.
Senator Chuck Grassley has written a series of letters to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew demanding answers about a shady uranium deal with a company tied to the Clintons.
On Wednesday, the Treasury Department announced that after 2020, the image of Alexander Hamilton will share a place on the $10 bill with a to-be-determined woman. It has yet to be decided if Hamilton will share each bill with the yet-unnamed woman, or if there will be multiple series of $10 bills…
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, a former State Department official, sidestepped questions about Hillary Clinton's exclusive use of a private email address in testimony today on Capitol Hill:
President Obama has painted a bleak portrait of cooperation in Washington in several recent speeches, charging that Republicans say "no to every proposal that we know could make a difference in the lives of hardworking Americans," and that "Washington doesn’t work" because we have a "party on the…
The government will be tapped out on Oct 17, according to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. Unless, that is, Congress takes:
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew refused to say on national TV this morning whether the politically appointed counsel of the IRS, William Wilkins, has been asked about his participation in the federal agency's scandal:
President Barack Obama's former chief of staff, Jack Lew, the current treasury secretary, said today at a Capitol Hill hearing that he was aware "questions had been raised" about the IRS when he was at the White House:
President Obama says he discussed the IRS scandal with Treasury secretary Jack Lew. The thing is, it's a Jewish holiday, Shavout, and Lew is an observant Jew.
Treasury secretary Jack Lew asked Steven Miller, the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, to resign his post in response to the reports that the IRS had unfairly singled out conservative non-profit groups for close scrutiny. Miller has resigned, President Barack Obama said in a…
NBC's David Gregory suggested that the White House is blaming the growing IRS scandal on the Treasury Department for not "deal[ing] with this more quickly":
Jack Lew, who has been nominated as the next treasury secretary, oversaw up as many as a hundred Cayman Island investments when he worked at Citi Bank as chief operating officer of the alternative investment services unit, SEC disclosures reveal. It has previously been reported that Lew himself had…
There weren't many memorable lines in President Obama's State of the Union speech. Indeed, only one leapt out at me: "As long as I’m commander in chief, we will do whatever we must to protect those who serve their country abroad."
In a premature celebration of Chuck Hagel's nomination being voted out of committee, North Korea tested a nuclear weapon last night. At 1:48 a.m., the White House put out a "Statement by the President" denouncing the test. One understands such statements are staff-written. But presumably President…
In the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama called Cayman Island investments "the biggest tax scam on record." Now, in 2013, President Obama has nominated Jack Lew, who had $56,000 in Cayman Island investments, to be the next secretary of Treasury.
It’s an old basketball adage that teams that apply a full-court press don’t like to be pressed themselves. They like to force the action, not have it forced on them. In a similar vein, those who seek to centralized power by spearheading the passage of new federal laws generally don’t like to obey…
USA Today reports:
Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, says he will oppose Barack Obama's nomination of Jacob Lew for Treasury secretary. " Sessions released a statement Thursday afternoon criticizing Lew's nomination. Here's an excerpt:
By choosing White House chief of staff Jacob Lew as his new treasury secretary, President Obama is bracing himself to battle congressional Republicans in 2013, not seeking bipartisan compromises with them. If confirmed, Lew would succeed Tim Geithner in the treasury job.
Bloomberg reports:
Two days after the Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling on President Obama’s signature legislation, the president delivered his weekly radio address and didn’t utter one word about Obamacare or the ruling.
Yesterday on CNN, White House chief of staff Jack Lew defended the Obama administration's involvement in the Fast and Furious scandal by saying that "this administration has been the most transparent ever."
President Obama's first chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once sat on the board of troubled federal mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Bill Daley, the president's chief of staff whose departure was announced today, was previously a top executive at financial firm J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. So of course there…