Indian-American becomes chief economic policy advisor to U.S. Senate leader

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An Indian-American who was in a senior position on the Senate Finance Committee, has been appointed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to head the Republican leader’s economic policy team.

Jay Khosla, who was the staff director for the Senate Finance Committee will serve as the chief economic policy counsel to McConnell, R-Kentucky.

According to Politico, which reported the new appointment, Khosla was “a crucial staffer on tax reform” as staff director, and according to the David Winston Health Policy Fellowship of which Khosla is a board member, the Indian-American was “responsible for driving and implementing a broad legislative agenda for the committee with the largest jurisdiction in Congress.” Prior to becoming staff director, Khosla served as Policy Director and the Chief Health Counsel, and Legislative Director for Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Khosla was Arizona Republican Senator John McCain’s health policy director. He has a storied career on Capitol Hill, serving as senior health counsel for the United States Senate Budget Committee and prior to that as policy counsel for former Senate Majority Leader William (Bill) Frist, R-Tennessee.  He has been profiled several times as a leading Capitol Hill staffer, and worked on major laws including Deficit Reduction Act, the SGR Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernizatin Act of 2014, and the Trade Promotion Authority Act of 2015, the Winston site says.

A graduate of the Virginia Commonwealth University with a law degree from the University of Richmond School of Law, Khosla told the Washington Examiner in a 2017 interview that he got into government through “a lot of happenstance,” starting with a fellowship that placed him in Sen. Frist’s office. “They gave me two topics that nobody wanted in the office. They were, I still remember, small business health plans and medical malpractice reform… As luck would have it, that entire Congress, the only two health bills that came to the floor were those two bills. It was a great experience. I stayed on until he retired,” Khosla told the Examiner.