Incoming Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) announced today that he has selected Brookings Institution economics scholar Peter Orszag to serve as the new director of the Congressional Budget Office, replacing Donald Marron. Conrad said that he selected Orszag after consulting with incoming House Budget Committee chair John Spratt (D-SC), current Senate Budget Committee chair Judd Gregg (R-NH), and the incoming House Budget Committee ranking member Paul Ryan (R-WI). Though praised by Gregg and a noted budget hawk, Orszag is not regarded as a conservative economist. Prior to joining Brookings, he served as a lecturer at U. Cal., Berkeley and as the top economic advisor to the Director of the National Economic Council and the senior economist on the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton Administration. He is a vocal opponent of Social Security privatization, testifying in May 2005 that: The Administration’s proposal to introduce individual accounts within Social Security would substantially increase debt, while failing to reduce the projected Social Security deficit and likely increasing it.