Colleagues praise nomination of Sylvia Burwell for OMB chief, but Walmart connection worries critics

Sylvia Mathews Burwell, nominated to head OMB The director's post at the Office of Budget and Management has been vacant for a year, but on Monday President Barack Obama nominated 47-year-old, West Virginia native Sylvia Mathews Burwell to fill it. The Rhodes scholar is another of the many Clinton administration officials who Obama has appointed to high- and mid-level positions. Of her, Erskine Bowles, of the Simpson-Bowles cat food commission and once Bill Clinton's chief of staff, said that the day she came to work to work as deputy chief, his "IQ went up 100 points":

(She is) the single most competent person I've ever worked with.

She's going to need all her skills. As Matthew Cooper points out:

She's got a brutal job ahead of her as OMB director. The age of austerity is upon us; and while the current round of sequestration is largely out of OMB's hands--the Budget Control Act mandates the cuts, leaving little discretion to the president to devise an alternative short of amending the law'the upcoming renewal of last year's continuing resolution will put Burwell in the middle of the action. And, of course, there are the long-term fiscal challenges beyond this year. Whether the genial Burwell ends up as a tough negotiator with the Hill remains to be seen.

After a short stint at the consulting firm McKinsey, Burwell worked as a volunteer in Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, and then filled several budget-related positions in the new administration, including being chief of staff for Robert Rubin when he was secretary of the Treasury. She became deputy chief of staff for Clinton alongside John Podesta, and deputy budget director for Jack Lew, Obama's former chief of staff who just took over as Treasury secretary. He was director of OMB for the last two and a half years of the Clinton administration, and for a year-and-a-half under Obama. So she'll be working with people she's known for a long time.

Although she is unlikely to run into more than token opposition in the Senate'John McCain has already praised her'there are critics.

After 10 years at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Burwell departed 16 months ago to head up the Walmart Foundation. It and its Walmart parent distributed $959 million in cash and in-kind gifts during 2011, $873 million of it in the United States, the rest abroad. The foundation targets hunger relief, environmental sustainability, and, ironically, given its treatment of female employees, women's career opportunities.

Please continue reading what critics and supporters say of Burwell's nomination below the fold.