Spratt makes several suggestions for new OMB director

By Vicki Needham - 06/23/10 05:01 PM ET

As the names begin bouncing around for who might take over as the nation's budget chief, one lawmaker has a few suggestions of his own.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-S.C.) told The Hill that he would like to see Rob Nabors, Gene Sperling or Stan Collender replace the departing Peter Orszag as head of the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

Orszag announced this week that he will depart in July.

Nabors served as the chief of staff for the House Appropriations Committee before taking over as deputy director at OMB. He now is a senior advisor to Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff.

Sperling, who is already part of the White House economic team as an advisor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, has been mentioned as a possible replacement. He is a former Clinton administration official and became head of the National Economic Council in 1996.

Collender has spent most of his career in financial affairs and communications and currently works for Qorvis Communications. He has worked for the Office of Financial Dynamics Business Communications, Fleishman-Hillard and Burson-Marsteller. He has also worked for the House and Senate Budget committees and for several House members.

Among several other names being circulated is Laura Tyson, who was chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton presidency. She is a professor at the Haas School of Business and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. She also is on President Barack Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a group of outside experts who advise the administration. That group is led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

Another possibility is Bob Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Greenstein founded the left-leaning think tank in 1982. Most of its policy papers focus on the effects of budget policies on lower- and middle-income Americans. In 1994, he was tapped by President Bill Clinton to serve on an entitlement and tax reform panel.