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Indian American among top staffers in Congress
Attorney Rohit Kumar, a 30-year-old Indian American, has been counted among the top staffers in the US Congress by The Hill newspaper.
Attorney Rohit Kumar, a 30-year-old Indian American, has been counted among the top staffers in the US Congress by The Hill newspaper.
Kumar is counsel to Senator Majority Leader Bill First, a Republican from Tennessee.
But he had made a name for himself long before that, having worked closely on the creation of the Homeland Security Department and on myriad tax issues.
For Kumar, public policy seemed the natural niche after he began debating national issues back in high school.
That he is an independent thinker is also evident from the fact that his parents, physicians Vinay and Raminder, and his sister Ambika are Democrats, whereas he chose to be a Republican.
"I don't know why I am a Republican," Kumar told IANS. "The ideas appeal to me and they make sense."
Kumar got his first serious political exposure during a 1993 summer internship with the mayor of Dallas, the city Kumar's family moved to after many years in Boston.
"In high school I was interested in politics and national issues. I debated and so was exposed to these issues," Kumar recalls.
He then met Texas Senator Phil Gramm and that led to the next summer's internship at the latter's Dallas office. Gramm then offered him a job in the senator's Washington office where Kumar began to work in 1995.
"I was interested mostly in tax issues - the economics of it was attractive to me. I could see how decisions affected people's behaviour."
Kumar worked with Gramm during 1995-97 and then completed law school at the University of Virginia (1997-2000). He then clerked for a federal judge from 2000-01 and returned to the senators office.
From June to December 2002, he worked at Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott's office and it was during that period that he worked on Homeland Security.
Tax and trade are his forte but the most significant matters he has dealt with closely are the Tax Bill 2003, and the creation of the Homeland Security Department.
"Those are the biggest two things with lots of little things along the way like trade agreements, energy legislation," Kumar said.
"Now I'm working on manufacturing jobs, which are on the decline. We are hoping to stop or slow the decline," he said. He is also working on the Highway Bill reauthorisation.
While there's no one seminal experience that Kumar can recount, he said: "Working for Phil Gramm had a tremendous influence on me, because of the man. He was both a boss and a mentor and joked that I was learning so much from him I should give him tuition rather than be paid a salary."
