Now out of office, Peter Orszag differs from Obama

Getting a deal in Congress may mean keeping tax cuts for the rich too, he says.

Barely out of office as budget director, Peter Orszag has certainly found a new place -- off of the political reservation.

Orszag, who stepped down over the summer, takes a position slightly at odds with President Obama's in an op-ed piece for Tuesday's New York Times. Orszag argued that the United States faced two deficits: a short-term jobs deficit and a longer-term budget problem.

"In the face of the dueling deficits, the best approach is a compromise: Extend the tax cuts for two years and then end them altogether," he wrote in the New York Times. "Ideally, only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now. Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the high-income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it."  (Continues here)