Howard Lutnick: Even Better Than You Think

Commerce Secretary Nominee

Howard Lutnick is a man who has climbed personal mountains. Yesterday (Jan 29th) he answered questions from members of the Senate Committee on Science, Commerce and Transportation as a prelude to his confirmation. Anyone watching the 3 1/2 hour hearing can not be anything but impressed, not only with his sincerity, intelligence and determination but as a standout among men.

He is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, one of the world’s leading financial services firms. He had the same position on 9/11 when the terrorists’ airplane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. His company occupied the top five floors of one of them. He lost 658 employees, and his brother Gary. Lutnick is alive because he took his son Kyle to his first day of school.

He had employees at different locations and they immediately started to rebuild the company. Each donated 25% of their pay to help the families of those who died. To date, the company has paid $180 million to those families. Lutnick said that he had a plan and five years ago he took one of his companies public and repaid each of those employees double what they had donated over the years.

But before that tragedy, he had suffered more personal ones. When he was sixteen his mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He and his siblings lost her the following year. A year later his father was diagnosed with lung cancer. Lutnick said his father didn’t tell him because he was just getting ready to go to college and didn’t want to worry him. Lutnick said a week after he started at Haverford College his father went for his first chemotherapy treatment. The nurse mixed the ingredients wrong and his father died immediately.

At age twenty-three he went to work for Cantor Fitzgerald and at thirty-five he was the president of the company.

When asked why he wants to be Commerce Secretary, he candidly answers that he has made enough money to take care of his family and it is time to do something for the country. Lutnick, a billionaire, has to divest himself of all business dealings within ninety days, if confirmed, to take a job that pays $246,000 a year.

The hearing was cordial until the expected rudeness of Democrats like Ed Markey from Massachusetts, who has been in the D.C. government for forty-nine years. He’s long overdue to leave. He kept asking the same question over and over. Would Lutnick guarantee that signed contracts from Congress would be honored? Lutnick responded that he would read them all carefully and ensure that they were the best deal for the country.

Markey didn’t like that answer. When Lutnick kept giving the same answer, that inflamed the Democrat. Markey then told him that his responsibility was to make sure signed contracts were honored.

That exchange was curious until Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that the Biden administration had added to the contracts to which Markey was specifically talking about. Cruz said that the Democrats “grafted on to legislation a host of Left-wing social objectives…that they couldn’t get the votes for in the United States Congress.”

I have been following Howard Lutnick since 9/11 for the following reason: After the death of so many employees and his brother, I saw him on the news crying about the horror of it all. I sent to him a letter expressing my sympathies and offering my prayers. To my surprise, I got a response from him.

This is a good man.

Susan Daniels is the author of The Rubbish Hauler’s Wife versus Barack Obama: A True Story,” available at Amazon.com.