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Obama Selects Romney Adviser for Social Security Commission

President Obama announced on Monday that he planned to nominate Lanhee J. Chen, the top policy adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, to fill an opening on an independent federal panel whose task is to recommend improvements to Social Security.

The announcement of Mr. Chen’s nomination was peculiarly timed, just a day before the health insurances marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act â€" which Mr. Chen has argued should be repealed â€" can begin accepting customers.

Mr. Chen, 35, was born in Taiwan and grew up in California. He earned four degrees from Harvard University, where he was active in Republican politics. He is currently a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of law and public policy at Stanford University.

Mr. Chen, who specializes in health care policy, has worked in academia, campaigns and government, including stints as a health care adviser to the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004 and as a domestic policy adviser on Mr. Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. In 2008, he was also a senior counselor to the deputy secretary of Health and Human Services.

In 2010, he was the deputy campaign manager of Steve Poizner’s California gubernatorial campaign for eight months, before leaving in August to become a visiting scholar at the University of California’s Institute of Governmental Studies. He worked four months as the policy director of Mr. Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC, before he was tapped in April to join Mr. Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign as policy director.

Mr. Obama will nominate Mr. Chen to serve on the Social Security Advisory Board, a bipartisan panel of seven experts, who serve six-year terms and must be confirmed by the Senate.



Government Workers Get a Self-Esteem Boost, or Blow, as Shutdown Approaches

As the prospect of a government shutdown loomed closer, government agencies have been briefing their employees and contractors over whether they are deemed to provide an essential service that will continue as Congress fights over the budget. Those declared essential will report to work on Tuesday. Those considered nonessential will be furloughed while the politics are worked out on Capitol Hill. A guide to who is and who isn’t furloughed is available here.

As government functions were deemed essential or nonessential, the topic of what is and is not an essential government service was on the minds of many Twitter users. And some who appeared to be government employees were expressing how they felt about being declared “essential” or “nonessential.”

Some government employees, or their spouses, were excited to report that they were “essential”:

For people who appeared to be nonessential federal employees, there was plenty to feel bad about:

But at least one government worker proposed a way that she and her furloughed colleagues could ease the pain of being declared nonessential:

Then again, some observers of government were all too happy to give “nonessential” workers some time off:



Alabama’s Bachus Won’t Seek Re-Election in 2014

Representative Spencer BachusDave Martin/Associated Press Representative Spencer Bachus

Representative Spencer Bachus, the dean of Alabama’s congressional delegation, will not seek re-election in 2014.

Mr. Bachus was the top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, a post he held for six years until 2012, including a stint as the panel’s chairman in the 112th Congress. He came under fire from conservatives for helping Democrats craft the bank bailout in 2008, then he led House Republicans as they pushed back against the Obama administration’s efforts to overhaul financial regulations after the 2008 financial crisis.

In a statement on Monday, Mr. Bachus, 65, said that his choice to leave was a family decision.

“It has been the greatest privilege imaginable to serve as the representative of the people of Alabama in the United States House of Representatives,” he said. “It is an honor that I never dreamed could have been possible for me and the words ‘thank you’ are far from adequate. But as Ecclesiastes 3 says, to everything there is a season, and I feel in my heart that now is the time for me to announce this decision and allow others to have the opportunity to serve.”

Though Mr. Bachus has stuck to a right-of-center agenda of small government and limited regulations in Congress, he also supported a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants as part of a broader effort to overhaul the matrix of immigration laws. Alabama has one of the strictest immigration laws in the country; some lawmakers there have argued that it would force undocumented immigrants in the state to “deport themselves.”

Before he retires in December 2014, Mr. Bachus said he would like to see the government implement a “spending reduction plan that will put the federal government on a sensible and sustainable financial path going forward.”

Mr. Bachus was elected to his 11th term in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote, his smallest margin of victory since 1996, and the first time he had faced a Democratic challenger since 1998. A native of Birmingham, Mr. Bachus is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of Alabama law school. He served in the Alabama National Guard and owned a sawmill before entering Congress. Currently, he is the chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, and the chairman emeritus of the Financial Services panel.

Shortly after Mr. Bachus became the ranking Republican on the Financial Services Committee, his inheritance of the chairmanship was endangered in 2008, when he worked with Democrats in crafting the government’s $700 Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, known as the bank bailout. John A. Boehner of Ohio, then the minority leader, blocked Mr. Bachus from speaking for the G.O.P. during deliberations and replaced him with Roy Blount of Missouri to lead the Republican side of talks. The legislation passed, although Mr. Bachus called his vote for the bill against the will of his constituents a “near-death experience.” After Republicans took control of the House in 2010, Mr. Bachus’s status as a prolific fundraiser for Republicans â€" and support from the incoming majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia â€" helped him to overcome a challenge for the committee gavel.

While he was chairman of the financial services panel, Mr. Bachus faced an ethics investigation after a “60 Minutes” report alleged that he used insider information to make stock trades. Mr. Bachus bet on a market collapse in 2008, after receiving a briefing from Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and other Bush administration officials. He denied wrongdoing and the Office of Congressional Ethics dropped its investigation in May 2012.

His decision to step down leaves an open seat in Alabama’s Sixth Congressional District, which is rated one of the most conservative congressional districts in the country by the Cook Political Report. The district includes the predominantly white middle-class suburbs of Birmingham.



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