“Erskine Bowles remembers what Jack Lew taught him during the Clinton administration, when Bowles was Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and Lew was budget director.

As they worked through details of budget talks with Congress, two things stood out about Lew, Bowles said. He knew all the details of the obscure tax laws and spending programs — and understood how changing them would affect poor people.

Those twin passions will drive the 57-year-old Lew, now President Obama’s chief of staff, if he becomes the next Treasury secretary and leads the administration’s side in upcoming talks about budget cuts, raising the debt ceiling and avoiding a government shutdown this spring, Bowles said.”

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“”There’s a reason to be concerned about Lew’s commitment to financial reform and regulating Wall Street,” said Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, a non-profit group advocating tighter regulation.

Kelleher cites Lew’s 2011 testimony during confirmation hearings for his OMB job that he didn’t think deregulation was a “proximate cause” of the 2008 meltdown.”

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Read full USA Today article here