Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I thank Senator Sessions, and I rise today to speak in support of Sylvia Mathews Burwell, whose nomination to be the next Director of the Office of Management and Budget was approved last week with strong bipartisan support by our Senate Budget Committee.

As we all know, our country does face serious fiscal and economic challenges we have to work together to address. The American people are looking to us to end this constant artificial crisis and political brinkmanship that is threatening our fragile economic recovery. They want us to come together around fair solutions that work for our middle class, help the economy grow, and tackle our deficit and debt fairly and responsibly. It is time we stop governing from crisis to crisis and return stability and regular order to our budget process.

That is why I am so pleased we have such an exceptional and qualified nominee in Sylvia Burwell to lead OMB. I know she is the right person to come into this leadership role at this important time for our country. She is no stranger to OMB or to tackling important fiscal issues.

In the 1990s, she was a critical part of President Clinton's economic team. She served as Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, and Chief of Staff to the Secretary of the Treasury. In those roles, she worked very closely with Jack Lew, Erskine Bowles, Robert Rubin, and the rest of President Clinton's economic team to help produce three out of four budget surpluses in a row. During her tenure, our government took a fair, credible, and sustainable approach to our Federal budget. That gave businesses the confidence to hire new workers and invest in their growth.

Her leadership and hard work in the 1990s helped to create broad-based economic growth that worked for the middle class and turned our debt and deficit problems around. Sylvia's firsthand experience creating a balanced and responsible approach to deficit reduction makes her uniquely qualified to lead OMB at this important time for our country.

Since the 1990s, Sylvia has dedicated her life to helping people all over the world. As the president of the Global Development Program and the chief operating officer at the Gates Foundation, she worked to improve the lives of millions across the globe. Under her leadership, the foundation invested in important programs to help combat poverty and produce clean water and improve literacy, and provides emergency relief to those who need it the most.

Most recently, as president of the Wal-Mart Foundation, she led the Foundation's charitable giving and focused on critical issues such as hunger relief and women's economic empowerment.

Not only do Sylvia's achievements in the foundation of philanthropy worlds demonstrate her vast experience managing large global budgets, but they also speak volumes of her values and demonstrate her deep lifelong commitment to serving others.

Sylvia grew up understanding the value of hard work and public service. Her parents have been community leaders in West Virginia for over half a century. Her father is a long-time optometrist and her mother, the Honorable Cleo Mathews, served as the mayor of her hometown of Hinton, and later served on the West Virginia State Board of Education for a decade. As my colleague Senator Manchin said when he introduced her to our Budget Committee, it is easy to see public service is a part of Sylvia's DNA.

As the Director of OMB, Sylvia will help set our Nation's priorities and make tough decisions about our Federal spending. So I am glad Sylvia knows budgets are about more than abstract numbers and partisan back and forth. As a second generation Greek American, Sylvia understands the importance of the promise of American opportunity. She knows budgets are a reflection of our values and our priorities, and they are about families across the country whose lives and futures are impacted by the decisions we make.

Not only is Sylvia an expert on domestic economic policy and a dedicated public servant, she has a demonstrated track record of working across the aisle to get things done. During her time in Washington in the 1990s, she reached across the aisle and negotiated the balanced and fair budgets with Republicans in Congress. She knows working to find common ground is the key to solving our fiscal challenge--a point made clear by her during her confirmation hearing in front of our Senate Budget Committee this month.

So I am pleased her nomination passed our committee on a voice vote with strong bipartisan approval. Republicans, including Senator Sessions, who here on the floor praised Sylvia as someone who is, by all accounts, well-liked and an able leader committed to public service.

Madam President, I support this nomination, I urge my colleagues to vote yes, and I yield back the remainder of my time.

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