Media Tip Sheet: Republican Unity in Focus as Trump Meets GOP Lawmakers to Discuss Impending Agenda


June 12, 2024

As the election approaches, congressional Republicans are looking to coordinate their priorities with former president Donald Trump. The former president will meet with both House and Senate Republicans in separate sessions, while Speaker Mike Johnson will debate future legislative agendas with Senate Republicans. 

Despite ongoing divisions within the party, these meetings aim to create a unified strategy, particularly if Trump wins the White House and Republicans control both chambers of Congress.

Faculty experts at the George Washington University are available to provide context, commentary and analysis on this matter. If you would like to speak to an expert, please contact GW Media Relations Specialist Tayah Frye at [email protected].


Congress

Casey Burgat is the director of the Legislative Affairs program at the Graduate School of Political Management and host of its Mastering the Room podcast. Prior to joining GSPM, Burgat was a Senior Governance Fellow at the R Street Institute where his research focused on issues of congressional capacity and reform. Burgat co-authored Congress Explained: Representation and Lawmaking in the First Branch, a textbook on all things Congress.

Tax Policy & Public Policy

Christopher Carrigan is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration and a Co-Director of the GW Regulatory Studies Center. His research focuses on regulatory and bureaucratic policymaking, exploring the effects of organizational design on agency rulemaking and enforcement practices, political responses to disasters in regulated industries, factors that influence rule timing and durability, and the role supporting analysis plays in regulatory outcomes. Professor Carrigan is author of the Cambridge University Press book, Structured to Fail? Regulatory Performance under Competing Mandates, and co-editor of the University of Pennsylvania Press volume, Does Regulation Kill Jobs?

Joe Cordes is professor of Economics, Public Policy and Public Administration, and International Affairs and a co-director of the George Washington Regulatory Studies Center. Dr. Cordes was a Brookings Economic Policy fellow in the Office of Tax Policy in the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 1980-81, and served as a senior economist on the Treasury's Tax Reform project in 1984. From 1989 to 1991 he was Deputy Assistant Director for Tax Analysis at the Congressional Budget Office. He has been a consultant to the Washington, DC Tax Revision Commission, the RAND Corporation, and numerous government agencies including the Congressional Budget Office, Internal Revenue Service Office of Research, the U.S. Treasury Department, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Research Council.

Economists

Steven Hamilton is an Assistant Professor of Economics at The George Washington University. His primary area of research is public finance, where he studies the effects of taxes on behavior with a view to designing better tax policy. In recent research, he investigates the degree to which taxpayers should be allowed to claim tax deductions by measuring the extent to which taxpayers use deductions to avoid paying taxes. Hamilton has provided extensive economic commentary to the New York Times, the LA Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Slate, The Hill, the Sydney Morning Herald, and The Australian, among others. 

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