Clay Johnson

Office of Management and Budget
Clay Johnson
Deputy Director for Management

When Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., introduced Clay Johnson at a congressional hearing in March, he referred to the OMB deputy director's close ties to President Bush. "Mr. Johnson," he said, "you clearly have the ear of the president."

Indeed, few in Washington have as much history with President Bush as Johnson does. The boys from Texas first met as teenagers when they enrolled at Phillips Academy, an elite boarding school in Andover, Mass. They later roomed together at Yale and partook in shenanigans such as tearing down the Princeton goal posts after a Yale victory.

After college, Johnson attended the MIT Sloan School of Management and then worked for Frito-Lay, Citicorp and the Dallas Museum of Art. They joined forces again in 1995, when Johnson went to work for then-governor Bush, serving first as his appointments director and later as chief of staff.

In Washington, Johnson is known not only for having the ear of the president, but also for speaking on the president's behalf. His booming Southern baritone has been an important instrument in the Bush administration's campaign to bring private sector management strategies to the federal government.

Accountability, measuring results and giving taxpayers more for their money are Johnson's constant themes. At OMB, he has pushed pay for performance and competitive sourcing, and instituted a quarterly score card grading system that evaluates agencies' progress toward goals in five areas of the President's Management Agenda.

During an online chat on the White House Web site, Johnson said agencies that don't perform well on the score card face "public shame and humiliation and the opportunity to be questioned about it by the president." After four years of the score card, only one agency-the Labor Department-has satisfied all its requirements.