Scarcnet News Summaries (Advocacy Institute)
Abstract
An article in the WASHINGTON POST profiles Joshua Gotbaum, the executive associate director for management at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), who has provided the Clinton Administration with much of its recent data on the tobacco issue.Gotbaum was a key decision maker in Clinton's $65 billion dollar cigarette revenue proposal, and in how to spend the funds the proposal would generate.He also has been essential in analyzing the $516 billion McCain bill and whether it could actually put the tobacco companies into bankruptcy. Gotbaum worked in the Carter administration and was an analyst with the investment banking firm Lazard Freres and Co., which handled the RJR Nabisco leveraged buyout. RJR CEO Steven Goldstone recently derided Gotbaum's past work with Lazard, saying that he once falsely predicted RJR's 1997 operating budget by "a factor of three . . . For all we know, their expert could be operating on the same numbers he used 10 years ago."
Source: Ceci Connolly, "Crunching the Numbers Against Big Tobacco," WASHINGTON POST, May 21, 1998, p. A25.