The man who helped pass the GOP budget

Occupation: Deputy staff director for the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee

Age: 55

Alma mater: St. John’s College, Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government

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Washington Examiner: How did you first get interested in budgets and government?

Kowalski: Once upon a time I ran for comptroller in the city of Albany, which is a very Democrat-run town. Before I came here, I worked for the state senate in New York state. The comptroller died in office and they were looking for a Republican candidate. I was asked by the party if I would accept their nomination to run, and so I did. It was just a lot of fun.

We got interest in a race that otherwise wouldn’t have had any interest, and a Republican actually got a decent number of votes in a very Democratic stronghold. And that was the first and only time I ran for public office.

Examiner: And how did you get from there to here?

Kowalski: That was 1992. I was on the ballot with Bill Clinton. That was a long time ago, right? In 1994, my team won Congress. Then I started working for the Congressional Budget Office in February 1995. I worked there for three years. I worked for [the House Budget Committee] from ’98 through ’06 — actually ’07, I can say I worked for Paul Ryan. Worked for John Kasich, all through the Jim Nussle years, doing basically budget resolutions for them and basically being the chief number-cruncher.

Then we lost the election in ’06. I had seen an ad in Roll Call. The Missouri general assembly was looking to establish a legislative budget office. I told my wife, “Oh, this would be a great job for me, but too bad it’s in Missouri, right?” She said, “You gotta apply, you gotta apply.” So I applied. They offered me the job, but you know I kind of pussyfooted around with them whether I wanted to take it. Then we lost the election — we closed on that real quick.

I moved out to Missouri for three years, and then came back here in I guess that would have been ’09. I started working for the Senate Budget Committee. It was sort of a condition on the job that I had to be here when they started considering Obamacare legislation on the floor because [committee Chairman] Judd Gregg’s team was pretty involved in the Obamacare stuff. So what I did was take on a lot of the basic Budget Committee stuff while all other hands were on the Obamacare legislation.

Examiner: What is it like working on budgets for a chairman, Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, who is an accountant?

Kowalski: He pays attention to the details. I think that’s the difference that we have now. He wants to know what’s going on and I’d say that Sen. Enzi has really — he’s been paying attention in his 18 years here in the Congress. I think that he really has a pretty good mastery of the details. He checks the details and understands them, which is good. It’s a good fit for this committee.

Examiner: Can you talk about your experience last year: Republicans won, and then immediately had to put together the budget. The first balanced budget in—

Kowalski: First bicameral budget since 2009, first bicameral, balanced budget since 2001.

Well, we had done some work here on trying to put together some budget options in the fall, just in case, but we weren’t quite sure who our chairman was going to be. I had a much more relaxed Christmas this year than I had last year, because we produced a lot of written material for Chairman-elect Enzi so that he could kind of get up to speed on the different budget options that we put forward.

It’s a really exciting time. I’ve worked in both the majority and the minority, and I’ll tell you it’s a lot better if you’re working in the majority.

Examiner: What do you do other than crunch numbers?

Kowalski: [points to a photo of a white BMW M3 on his bookshelf] I drive that white car at high speeds on a race track. E92, 2009. I took that up a couple of years ago. I had a Mini Cooper, and I thought that was fun to drive. And then I found out that there are places around here — there’s a race track in West Virginia not too far from here, actually, Summit Point, W.Va., where you can go out and learn how to drive your car on a track.

I am not competition-ready. That’s kind of OK, anyway, because as long as I don’t go into timed events, my insurance will still cover me. But once you start actually going into timed events, you’ve taken it to a different level.