LEW, JACOB

LEW, JACOB (1955– ), director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget 1998–2001. Born in New York City, the son of a Polish immigrant, he received his B.A. from Harvard (1978) and his law degree from Georgetown. He had an early interest in politics and worked for Bella Abzug while still in school. While in law school, he worked for Speaker of the House Thomas "Tip" O'Neill as his domestic policy aide. He then served as a senior adviser to O'Neill and as executive director of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. He was O'Neill's chief policy adviser on Social Security when the government tackled the nation's largest entitlement program, in 1983. When O'Neill left the House, Lew went into private legal practice and then worked with Michael Dukakis in 1988 as the issues director for his unsuccessful presidential campaign. An observant Jew, Lew felt comfortable working at the center of the American government while remaining faithful to his tradition. He joined the Clinton administration and went from a special assistant to the president at the OMB to its deputy director and from 1998 to 2001 as its director, a position that has cabinet rank. During Lew's time, Jews held virtually all of the principal economic positions, from the secretary of the Treasury and his deputy to the head of OMB, Council of Economic Advisors, and the Federal Reserve. It was a first in the federal government. After he left the administration he was named executive vice president of New York University. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: L.S. Maisel and I. Forman, Jews in American Politics (2001). (Michael Berenbaum (2nd ed.)