Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 13 • Number 6 • 18th February 2009
Gregg Refuses Obama’s Offer to Lead Commerce Department, Citing Policy Split
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Republican Senator Judd Gregg has turned down US President Barack Obama’s offer to serve as Secretary of Commerce, saying that his views on certain policy questions differ too greatly from those of the administration.
“I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the census, there are irresolvable conflicts for me,” Gregg said in a written statement released last week.
“For me, I just realised as these issues started to come at us and started to crystallise that it really wasn’t a good fit, and that I wouldn’t be comfortable doing this and that it wouldn’t be fair to him [Obama] to be part of the team and not be able to be 100 percent on the team,” Gregg later told reporters.
The Commerce Department oversees a range of programmes, including the national census, small business development, and promotion of US exports.
Obama announced earlier this month that he had offered Gregg the post (see Bridges Weekly, 11 February 2009, http://ictsd.net/i/news/bridgesweekly/40490/). Gregg, a fiscal conservative and 16-year veteran of the Senate, would have been the third Republican member of the Democratic president’s cabinet.
Gregg is the second of Obama’s picks for the commerce post to withdraw from consideration before being confirmed by the Senate. Former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson turned down the offer in January amid a grand jury investigation into alleged misconduct with regard to the granting of state contracts.
The new US President is also still looking to fill the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services.
ICTSD reporting; “Gregg withdraws as Commerce pick,” THE WASHINGTON POST, 13 February 2009.
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