By LUCAS GRINDLEY
The selection of Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., to head the Commerce Department shows how important the Obama administration expects it will be to forge bipartisan agreements, said Linda Bilmes, a former assistant secretary in President Clinton's Commerce Department.
"Just looking at what happened in the House last week with the stimulus package, you can see that old habits die hard in terms of partisanship and so forth. So I think that it's a welcome development that Senator Gregg will join this administration," she said in an interview mainly about how to prevent waste in the stimulus package and about her upcoming book on improving the federal workforce, titled The People Factor.
Bilmes praised Gregg's knowledge of budgeting and said it will be an asset while brokering compromises. "He was on the Senate Budget Committee. He's been in the appropriations world for years. I think he has a very good understanding of the budget, of the competing issues and so forth. And I think that the need -- in the economic crisis -- the need to try and create a bipartisan approach is a very, very important need. And I think that government will be stronger for having that."
Bilmes said that since her former agency focuses largely on science, "a lot of what the Commerce Department does is very bipartisan in nature."
Read more from Blimes in today's Insider Interview at NationalJournal.com. Check back next week for more about her book, which outlines how the government can spend $10 billion on efficiency to earn a $300 billion return.
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