CSX chief will head treasury
WASHINGTON - John W. Snow, the railroad executive President Bush has chosen to be his next secretary of the treasury, is a pragmatic business executive who once campaigned vociferously to place top priority on balancing the budget rather than on cutting taxes.
"The budget deficit puts a hole in the pocket of every American, every day of their lives," Snow declared in 1995, when he was chairman of the Business Roundtable and when the budget deficit was about the same size as it is right now.
But on Monday, as he stood alongside Bush at the White House, Snow made it clear that his views are now closer to the supply-side, tax-cutting philosophy that is at the center of the administration's economic policy.
He and Bush both alluded to the need for promoting faster growth and more job-creation, which for Bush means more tax cuts for business and individuals even if the deficit widens in the short term.
In picking Snow as his chief salesman on economic policy, Bush settled on a middle-of-the-road Republican whose greatest strengths are not his ideological fervor but rather his skills as a manager and a communicator, his credibility in the business world and his familiarity with Washington. But in making the selection, Bush may have introduced potential tensions within his economic team over the size and scope of future tax cuts.
Many supply-side Republicans said they welcomed the choice of Snow, saying he is an effective political player who knows how to promote Bush's agenda even if he is less than passionate about tax cuts.
"I don't want to say that John Snow is a follower of Jack Kemp's precise philosophy," Jack Kemp, a former cabinet secretary and an ardent advocate of tax cuts, said on Monday. "I am saying that he is an outstanding choice, and he wants to do what Bush wants to do."
But if the welcome for Snow seemed guarded among supply-side Republicans, many expressed alarm at the man Bush is expected to nominate as his economic adviser at the White House - Stephen Friedman, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs. In the past, Friedman has clearly identified himself as an opponent of budget deficits and therefore he is highly suspect to tax-cutting advocates.
"I am not at all pleased with Friedman," said Stephen Moore, director of the Club for Growth, a conservative group that lobbies for deep tax reduction and an overhaul of the tax system. Noting that Friedman has been associated with the Concord Coalition, a group that campaigns for greater budget discipline, Moore accused Friedman of being "hypersensitive about budget deficits."
Bush has not yet announced that Friedman will be his new economic adviser, replacing Lawrence B. Lindsey, who, along with the former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, was fired on Thursday. On Monday, the president focused on Snow, who is chairman and chief executive of the CSX Corp., the railway and shipping company based in Richmond, Va.
Over the years Snow has carefully cultivated his ties in Washington and spoken out on policy issues such as tax changes and corporate governance. His friends range from ardent supply-side Republicans such as Kemp to Democrats such as Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J.
Snow, 63, earned a doctorate in economics at the University of Virginia in 1965 and later a law degree at George Washington University.
He spent part of his early career in the Ford administration and was head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 1976 and 1977.
He then became a lobbyist for the old Chessie System, now part of CSX, and moved through a series of senior management posts before becoming chief executive of CSX in 1991.
Snow has been on a tax-overhaul commission headed by Kemp. He served on a blue-ribbon commission this year that sharply criticized corporate governance in the wake of accounting and compensation scandals at companies such as Enron.
Friends describe Snow as an easy communicator, a person who projects integrity, experience and considerable persuasive charm - all qualities that Republicans complained were lacking in O'Neill.