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November 23, 2020
What A Bold Treasury Secretary Could Do
President-Elect Joe Biden’s choice to name Janet Yellen as his Treasury Secretary represents a tremendous opportunity to take executive action on the issues most pressing to all Americans. Here are just some meaningful actions the next Treasury Secretary could take without having to go through Congress.
November 23, 2020
JANET YELLEN: What You Need to Know
Janet Yellen has had a long and distinguished career in the academy and in public service. Like anyone with such a lengthy career, there have been misses along the way. And RDP and other progressives will be sure to speak out in the future should any of them resurface. But Yellen’s commitment to fighting unemployment and the conventional wisdom has been the through line of her career. The differences between the worldviews of Janet Yellen and Tim Geithner, President Obama’s first Treasury Secretary, could hardly be more stark.
November 13, 2020
Economists-For-Hire Help Monopolists And Big Oil Both
On Wednesday, The New York Times exposed that a network of seemingly-grassroots campaigns to promote the use of fossil fuels was actually organized by FTI Consulting, a dystopic corporate consulting firm working on behalf of oil and gas behemoths like ExxonMobil. The Times also implicates an FTI subsidiary, Compass Lexecon, in producing academic reports to support these astroturfed campaigns’ talking points. Compass Lexecon employees wrote reports criticizing activist shareholders and university divestment campaigns, tactics often used by the environmental activists FTI was paid to undermine.
November 06, 2020
No, Mitch McConnell is Not the 46th President
A false narrative, undergirded by self interest and misguided assumptions, is dominating early transition coverage. Key voices are already insisting that Joe Biden’s presidency will fail to deliver on any of its promises. According to this view, with Mitch McConnell in the Senate, Biden will not only be impelled to abandon his legislative vision, but also any hope of delivering for the American people via his power over the executive branch. They say that to wrest confirmations from McConnell’s hands, Biden will have no choice but to appoint moderates who will not rock the boat.
November 05, 2020
Biden Can Still Govern Without the Senate. Here’s How.
Having won more votes than any President in U.S. history, Joe Biden is set to enter the Oval Office with a mandate. However, it looks as though the wave that will have propelled him to the White House may not have been strong enough to break Republican control over the profoundly undemocratic Senate. For at least the next two years, Biden’s legislative agenda will face a formidable breakwater in the form of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. There is little doubt that McConnell will attempt to extend his stranglehold on action to the executive branch as well, by denying the President many, if not all, Senate confirmations.
November 02, 2020
October 2020 Update on the State of Independent Federal Agencies
Over the past several years, President Trump’s assault on governing norms, from his refusal to reveal information about his finances to his glee in firing those who are not sufficiently loyal to him, has sparked public outcry. One set of norm violations, however, has received relatively little attention from the media or from Senate Democrats. Quietly Trump and Mitch McConnell have undermined independent agencies’ functionality by slow-walking minority party nominations. And, in particular, they have undermined the norm of statutorily-mandated political balance on many independent agency boards in a move that could keep regulatory power in Republican hands for years after Trump leaves office.
October 23, 2020
Breaking With the Trade Consensus
Over the past decades, U.S. trade policies have primarily served the interests of corporate America. The result? The American worker experienced few if any of the promised benefits of globalization. President Trump seized upon this in his bid for the Presidency in 2016, but his declaration of China as an enemy and ill-advised trade war have only widened the trade deficit he vowed to close. The data show that the trade deficit reached $67 billion in August, its highest level since August 2006. More so, job growth in the manufacturing sector has been on decline since before the pandemic. Indeed, the current deficit in manufactured goods, $84 billion, is the largest on record with data starting in 1992.
October 21, 2020
The Fed’s Neglect of State and Local Governments Will Cost Us
Last week, the Congressional Oversight Commission — charged with overseeing $500 billion in federal coronavirus aid — finally published its fifth report. Disagreements between Republican and Democratic commissioners delayed its release. The Commission described in detail the blatant prioritization of Wall Street over everyday Americans of Jerome Powell’s Fed. Here’s what we learned:

October 20, 2020
Opposing Trump’s Proto-Fascism Doesn’t Merit a Cabinet Spot
Obama famously assembled a “Team of Rivals” when he swept into office in 2008. His cabinet consolidated the ideological flanks of his party while extending an olive branch to Republicans by leaving Bush-appointee Bob Gates in office at the Department of Defense.
The 2010 Republican sweep of Congress quickly incinerated that olive branch.

October 14, 2020
How Biden's Treasury Department Could Fight Climate Change
The fossil fuel industry depends on financial institutions to survive. And banks, for their part, pull in big profits from underwriting climate disaster. That’s why, if Joe Biden wins in November, his pick for Treasury Secretary must be an aggressive advocate for climate action. The Treasury Department has untapped capacity to push financial institutions and insurance companies to take the risks of the climate crisis seriously. While his legislative proposals elicit proper close scrutiny, his choice of Treasury Secretary is arguably among Biden’s most important climate policy decisions.
October 05, 2020
September 2020 Update on the State of Independent Federal Agencies
Over the past several years, President Trump’s assault on governing norms, from his refusal to reveal information about his finances to his glee in firing those who are not sufficiently loyal to him, has sparked public outcry. One set of norm violations, however, has received relatively little attention from the media or from Senate Democrats.
September 17, 2020
The Revolving Door Project on Foreign Policy
For too long, American foreign policy decisions have been controlled by the wealthy and well-connected, trampling on the rights and interests of regular people, both at home and abroad. These decisions, including corporate negotiated trade deals and continued engagement in armed conflict abroad, have failed all but a small clique of committed warhawks, defense contractors, and international corporations.
September 08, 2020
August 2020 Update on the State of Independent Federal Agencies
Over the past several years, President Trump’s assault on governing norms, from his refusal to reveal information about his finances to his glee in firing those who are not sufficiently loyal to him, has sparked public outcry. One set of norm violations, however, has received relatively little attention from the media or from Senate Democrats. Quietly, Trump and Mitch McConnell have undermined independent agencies’ functionality by slow-walking nominations. And, in particular, they have undermined the norm of statutorily-mandated political balance on many independent agency boards in a move that could keep regulatory power in Republican hands for years after Trump leaves office.

August 19, 2020
The Revolving Door Project On Aggressive Climate Action From The Executive Branch
Incalculable, world-historic pain and suffering are already happening as a result of the climate crisis. Yet the forces of big business responsible — most especially the fossil fuel industry, but also Big Ag, the military-industrial complex, and others — continue to spend tens of millions every year blackmailing American leaders into softballing or even ignoring the literal end of the world as we know it.
August 10, 2020
July 2020 Update on the State of Independent Federal Agencies
Over the past several years, President Trump’s assault on governing norms, from his refusal to reveal information about his finances to his glee in firing those who are not sufficiently loyal to him, has sparked public outcry. One set of norm violations, however, has received relatively little attention from the media or from Senate Democrats. Quietly, Trump and Mitch McConnell have undermined independent agencies’ functionality by slow-walking nominations. And, in particular, they have undermined the norm of statutorily-mandated political balance on many independent agency boards in a move that could keep regulatory power in Republican hands for years after Trump leaves office.