Republicans submit nearly 400 questions to Lew

USATODAY

The Republicans have loaded down Treasury Secretary nominee Jack Lew with a lot of homework.

Senators who are considering Lew's nomination have given him 444 written questions to answer -- more than the six previous Treasury nominees combined.

Most of those questions -- 395 -- came from Republicans.

(If you count multi-part questions as separate questions, Lew has to provide nearly 700 answers to the Senate.)

This is the same same Senate that confirmed Lew unanimously as Obama's budget director in 2010; Lew later worked as Obama's chief of staff.

Lew's 444 questions are more than double the previous Treasury record of 165 queries posed to another Obama nominee, Tim Geithner; the Senate eventually confirmed Geithner.

Geithner and previous Treasury nominees from both parties -- Henry Paulson, John Snowe, Paul O'Neill, Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin -- received a total of 405 questions, according to numbers compiled by Democrats.

Republicans did not challenge the numbers, saying they have a lot of questions about how Lew conducted his job as budget director and the growth of the federal debt.

"Given this history, it is only just and proper that the nominee would have a series of questions from Congress," said Andrew Logan, a Republican spokesman for the Senate Budget Committee.