In 1996, while he was a graduate student at Harvard, Furman was hired by economist Joseph Stiglitz to serve a one-year stint as a staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers. He later worked with Stiglitz at the World Bank before joining the National Economic Council as a Special Assistant to the President during the Clinton administration. Furman was involved to varying degrees with the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and Wesley Clark, along with his wife, Eve Gerber, who also contributed as a speechwriter for Clark. In 2004, he took a position as Director of Economic Policy for the 2004 Kerry presidential campaign. At the outset of the election, Furman joined the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities where he was credited with helping defeat the privatization of Social Security proposed by the George W. Bush administration. He was a Visiting Scholar at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and taught as a visiting lecturer at Columbia University and Yale University. From 2006 to 2008, Furman was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy research group that develops policy proposals to achieve shared economic growth founded by former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. During his tenure, Furman published papers on tax treatment of healthcare and edited two published volumes.
Obama administration
In 2008, Furman joined Barack Obama's presidential campaign as the Economic Policy Director. Initially, Furman's appointment as a campaign adviser had been criticized by some labor activists for his defense of Walmart's business model. During Obama's first term, Furman served as the deputy director at the National Economic Council to Lawrence Summers and Gene Sperling. In this role, he was one of the architects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, including stimulus-spending initiatives to benefit the poor as well as business tax incentives. Furman is also credited with helping to create the administration's corporate tax-overhaul plan, influencing fiscal policy negotiations, and for helping to design and negotiate the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. On June 10, 2013, Furman was named Chairman of the three-member Council of Economic Advisers by President Obama. Obama referred to Furman as "one of the most brilliant economic minds of his generation" and said "There's no one I'd rather turn to for straightforward, unvarnished advice that helps me to do my job." His appointment to the role was met with bipartisan support. During his tenure as chairman, Furman played a role in advancing economic debates and public policies around tax reform, competition, artificial intelligence and innovation, and investment issues.
