Gene Sperling

Eugene Benton Sperling (born December 24, 1958) is an American lawyer who was director of the National Economic Council and assistant to the president for economic policy under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

He is the only person to serve as national economic advisor under two presidents.

In 1982, he graduated with a B.A. in political science from the University of Minnesota where he was captain of the Men's Varsity Tennis Team.

In 1985 he graduated with a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School where he served as a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal.

While at Yale Law School, he worked for future Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

After graduating from Yale Law School, he attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and worked as an economic adviser on Michael Dukakis' campaign.

Prior to joining the National Economic Council, Sperling served as deputy director of economic policy for the presidential transition and economic policy director of the Clinton-Gore presidential campaign.

From 1990 to 1992, he was an economic advisor to Governor Mario Cuomo of New York.

Sperling served as deputy director (from 1993 to 1996) and then director (from 1996 to 2001) of the National Economic Council during the Clinton administration.

As deputy director from 1993 to 1996, Sperling helped design and pass several of President Clinton's early initiatives, including 1993 Deficit Reduction Act, the major expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Direct Student Loan Act.

As director from 1996 to 2001, Sperling was a principal negotiator of the 1997 bipartisan Balanced Budget Act, which included the creation of the Children's Health Insurance Program.

He reportedly held up the final negotiation to ensure that the design of the child tax credit would lead to bigger payments for lower-income families on the Earned Income Tax Credit.

He also played a leading role in the design and passage of other Clinton administration economic initiatives, including the Hope Scholarship Tax Credit, the New Markets Tax Credit, the Children's Health Insurance Program, the Gear-UP Early College Mentoring program, expanded debt relief to poor nations, and stronger international protections against abusive child labor.

He was the architect of the Save Social Security First budget strategy, and co-negotiated the final week of the China WTO agreement in Beijing in 1999 with United States Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky.

Sperling worked with then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers to negotiate protections for the Community Reinvestment Act in the Financial Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act.

These protections helped secure passage of the bill.

Sperling represented the U.S. government and gave a keynote address at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal in 2000, where the world committed to the second millennium development goal of universal primary education.

After leaving the Clinton Administration, Sperling focused on promoting universal education, particularly for girls in poor and developing nations.

Outside of government, he founded the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution in 2002.

In February 2021, as the nomination of Neera Tanden for OMB director faced opposition, Sperling was considered to be one of the leading contenders to assume the top position.

Sperling currently serves as Senior Advisor to President Biden and Implementation Coordinator of the American Rescue Plan.

Sperling was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the son of Doris Louise (née Hyman) and Lawrence Sperling.

He is of Jewish descent.

He attended Pioneer High School and then Community High School from which he graduated.

In 2002, he founded the Center for Universal Education at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution and served as its first executive director for seven years from 2002 to 2008.

In that role, Sperling advocated for a global compact for education for all children, with publications on universal education for all nations in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, and IMF Quarterly: Finance and Development. He also authored concept papers for the Education for All Fast Track Initiative on Closing the Trust Gaps: Unlocking Financing for Education in Fragile State and How to Unlock Financing for Fragile States and Move Toward a More Unified Global Architecture for Education Financing: Eight Preliminary Recommendations.

Sperling was a member of U.N. Millennium Task Force on Girls' Education.

In 2003, Sperling also founded the Global Campaign for Education-US, a broad-based coalition of national and community-based organizations, international NGOs, teacher unions, faith-based groups, and think tanks dedicated to ensuring universal quality education for all children.

The organization's mission is "to promote education as a basic human right and mobilize to create political will in the United States and internationally to ensure universal quality education."

In 2004, he co-authored the book What Works in Girls' Education: Evidence and Policies from the Developing World with Barbara Herz.

In addition, Sperling was also a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and authored The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity in that role.

For four years, he was a consultant and had partial writing credit for four episodes for the television series The West Wing.

Sperling was a top economic adviser for Hillary Clinton during her 2008 presidential campaign.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Sperling earned $887,727 from Goldman Sachs in 2008 for his work helping to create and implement their 10,000 Women charitable initiative, which funds business education for women in developing nations.

He was also compensated $158,000 for speeches, mostly to financial companies.

Sperling received $2.2 million in total compensation in 2008 from a variety of consulting jobs, board seats, speaking fees and fellowships.

From 2009 to 2011, Sperling served as a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

He advised on responding to the financial crisis, was a member of the Obama Auto Rescue Task Force, was Geithner's top aide on fiscal, budget, tax, and small business issues, and coordinated the Treasury efforts on design and passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Sperling was a leading advocate in the administration for increasing refundable tax credits for working families, extending unemployment benefits, adding restrictions on executive compensation for companies receiving public funds, and proposing a fee on major financial institutions.

Sperling is the author of the 2020 book Economic Dignity, building on a 2019 piece he published in Democracy Journal.