Veteran of Hill to be White House liaison

CHICAGO - President-elect Barack Obama has chosen a veteran Capitol Hill aide as his top White House representative to Congress, the Democrat's transition team announced yesterday as he works to fill out the senior ranks of his team.

Philip Schiliro has worked in Congress for more than 25 years, many of which were spent as a top aide to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D., Calif.), and the House Oversight Committee. His official title will be assistant to the president for legislative affairs when the new administration takes over Jan. 20.

The move signals a continuing effort by Obama to ensure he has a smooth relationship with the Democratic-controlled House and Senate. Others on his team also have long ties to Capitol Hill, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who will be White House chief of staff.

Obama's team also formally announced that Ron Klain, who was a chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, would serve in the same role for Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., and that longtime Obama friend and supporter Valerie Jarrett will be a senior adviser and assistant to Obama for intergovernmental relations.

In the coming days, Obama's transition team plans to announce more senior staff positions, including the likely appointments of campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs as White House press secretary and chief strategist David Axelrod as a top White House adviser.

Currently, Schiliro is the director of congressional relations for Obama's transition team. He was a senior adviser on the presidential campaign.

Like several other top Obama advisers, Schiliro has ties to Tom Daschle of South Dakota; he served as policy director when Daschle was the Senate Democratic leader. He also was the staff director of the Senate Democratic Leadership Committee. In the 1990s, he twice unsuccessfully ran for a congressional seat from New York's Long Island.

Much of Schiliro's career has been spent investigating allegations of wrongdoing under Waxman and the House Oversight Committee.