Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., yesterday named Lily Batchelder chief tax counsel of the Senate Finance Committee.
Batchelder is a professor of law and public policy at New York University School of Law. She is affiliated faculty at the university’s Wagner School of Public Service and an affiliated scholar with the Urban Institute/Brookings Institution’s Tax Policy Center.
“She’s fantastic. She’s really smart. It’s a great catch for Baucus. It suggests to me that they’re going to be serious about tax reform over the next couple of years,” said Howard Gleckman, editor of the Tax Policy Center’s tax and budget policy blog, TaxVox, who stressed this is a personal opinion and not based on any conversations with Batchelder.
Batchelder previously served as assistant and associate professor at the NYU law school and was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School.
She also was a tax associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and conducted research as a fellow at the Wiener Center on Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
She was a social worker in New York State as well as a law clerk for the finance committee’s tax office and for the deputy attorney general at the Justice Department. She has testified before congressional committees.
A native of Brookline, Mass., Batchelder received her law degree from Yale Law School and a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She could not be reached for comment.
