Current Position: Assistant to the President and Director of Legislative Affairs (since January 2009)
Credit: Robert A. Reeder/TWP
Why He Matters
After more than 25 years as a congressional aide, Schiliro wound up on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, where he plays pointman in pushing Congress to enact Barack Obama’s legislative agenda.
A longtime aide to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), Schiliro was behind major Hill investigations into Halliburton, Blackwater USA and Major League Baseball when Waxman was chairman of the House Government and Oversight Committee, which dogged President George W. Bush through the last two years of his administration.
Even when Waxman served as ranking member of that investigative panel, his team, led by Schiliro, still produced 2,000 reports on a wide range of issues.
Schiliro, who twice ran for Congress himself in his parents’ Long Island, N.Y. district, left the Hill during the 2008 presidential campaign to act as Barack Obama’s congressional liaison, dispatched by Obama to successfully convince House Democrats to support the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street.
His first major task in the Obama administration was convincing Congress to pass the president’s $787 billion economic stimulus package. The second was trying to get liberal and conservative Democrats, as well as some Republicans, to support a health-care reform package. Lots of arm-twisting may
At a Glance
Current Position: Assistant to the President and Director of Legislative Affairs (since January 2009)
Career History: Congressional Liaison for Barack Obama's presidential campaign (July 2008 to November 2008); Democratic chief of staff for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (2005 to 2008 and 1997 to 2004); Policy Director for Sen. Tom Daschle (2004); Administrative Assistant to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (1982 to 1997)
Birthday: N/A
Hometown: Brooklyn, N.Y.
Alma Mater: Hofstra University; Lewis & Clark Law School, J.D., 1981
Spouse: N/A
Religion: N/A
DC Office: N/A
Email N/A
Web site
Path to Power
Schiliro was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduated from Hofstra University. As an environmentalist teenager, he organized his neighbors against a business that was polluting a reservoir near his home. He got the media involved and helped shut down the company. He then spent the next quarter century fighting similar battles.
After graduating from Lewis & Clark Law School in Oregon in 1981, Schiliro moved to Washington, D.C., in order to work on environmental issues. He worked briefly for then-Reps. Butler Derrick (D-S.C.) and Tim Wirth (D-Colo.) before joining the staff of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who was then chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Health and Environment.
Waxman poached Schiliro from Wirth’s staff after observing the young staffer’s work on a bill that Wirth and Waxman thought would have “gutted” the Clean Air Act.
Oversight Staff Director
For 15 years, Schiliro worked directly for Waxman as his administrative assistant, and was Democratic staff director for the Oversight Committee starting in 1997. During that time, he twice ran for elected office in New York. In 1992, Waxman wrote letters to lobbyists and colleagues saying that Schiliro’s election was “one of my highest priorities this election year and means a great deal to me.” Despite Waxman’s endorsement, Schiliro came up short in 1992 — and again in 1994.
In 1997, Waxman left the House Energy and Commerce Committee to become the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Schiliro went with Waxman and became the Democratic chief of staff for the committee. Over the next decade, he helped Waxman file more than 2,000 investigative reports. The committee famously looked into steroid use by baseball players and investigated items in the Capitol gift shop that contained lead.
In 2004, Schiliro joined Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and worked as the minority leader’s policy director for one year. But when Daschle lost his 2004 Senate campaign, Schiliro went back to the Oversight panel under Waxman. Schiliro left Congress in July 2008, when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama asked him to be the campaign’s liaison to Congress. He worked in the same capacity during the transition.
Schiliro was named assistant to the president for legislative affairs in November 2008.
“The Obama administration is very lucky to have him work for them,” Waxman said. “[Schiliro] understands the Congress and the legislative process probably better than anyone else around. He’s calm and rational and has a very good perspective on how to get things done.”
The Issues
Environmental protection has been a longtime interest of Schiliro’s, dating back to his work as a New York teenager.
Waxman first noticed Schiliro while the staffer was fighting for the survival of the Clean Air Act in the 1980s and has called Schiliro a strong force behind the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1990, which let the EPA set the levels of pollutants allowed in the atmosphere and permitted companies to bank and trade emissions. Schiliro also helped investigate the threat of pesticide residue in foods, and he said at the start of the 110th Congress that he intended to focus on “whether the [Bush] administration has been distorting and suppressing the science of global warming.”
Investigations
Waxman, with Schiliro at his side, took a starring role on the House Oversight panel. For much of the last decade, their hands were tied by their minority status, but Waxman’s team still issued reports on global warming, intelligence in Iraq and the levels of formaldehyde found in federal trailers given to Gulf Coast residents following the hurricanes in 2005.
After taking over as Oversight chairman in 2007, Waxman had subpoena power and used to it to aggressively challenge a wide array of Bush administration officials and programs.
Less than three months after assuming the chairmanship in 2007, Waxman held hearings investigating the Defense Department’s awarding of Iraq contracts. The hearings led the Pentagon to withhold $20 million from military contractor Halliburton after Waxman’s committee found the company wrongly charged taxpayers for subcontracted work. The committee also investigated the security contractor Blackwater USA for 195 “escalation of force” incidents.
Schiliro also played a large role in the high-profile investigation of Major League Baseball for steroid use by its players. Schiliro, an avid baseball fan, convinced Waxman to act after concluding that MLB wasn’t taking seriously enough the increasingly common allegations of steroids use. Schiliro said he was worried that continued steroids use would convince young athletes to use drugs too, and Waxman claimed that partially because of Schiliro, there has been a change in attitude toward steroid use in all sports.
Financial Bailout and Stimulus Package
During the 2008 race, Obama dispatched Schiliro to talk with House Democrats who were skeptical about the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Then, just a month after Obama’s election, Schiliro found himself on the Hill trying to convince members of Congress to support a $20 billion loan for the “Big Three” American car companies. Schiliro unsuccessfully tried to get lawmakers to stay in Washington until they reached a deal.
But Schiliro was back to work explaining Obama’s proposed $800 billion economic stimulus package to congressional staffers.
The Network
Schiliro’s closest political allies are Rep. Waxman, the recently elected chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Phil Barnett, the staff director for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee under Waxman. Schiliro worked for Waxman for 25 years, and their friendship will likely prove invaluable for Obama, who, like Waxman, would like to use his first term to improve the country’s green energy infrastructure. Waxman is now in a position to help make that happen.
Schiliro also worked with former Sen. Tom Daschle for a year on the Hill.
