Lawmakers are back in Washington, focusing on passing a government funding bill before the looming shutdown deadline on September 30. Speaker Mike Johnson's strategy includes pairing a six-month continuing resolution with a controversial voter registration bill, while impeachment talk and measures targeting China also take the spotlight.
Faculty experts at the George Washington University are available to offer commentary, insight and analysis on this matter. If you would like to speak with an expert, please contact GW Media Relations Specialist Tayah Frye at [email protected].
Public Policy & Economics
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.
Joe Cordes joined the George Washington University faculty in 1975. He 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 was a Visiting Fellow at the Urban Institute in 1998-1999, and is currently an Associate Scholar in the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute. 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.
Lang (Kate) Yang is a professor at GW’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration. Her research interest is in state and local government finances. Her recent publications examine how states address local government fiscal stress through monitoring, intervention, and bankruptcy authorizations. Further, she examines the incentives and impediments to government financial reporting, disclosure, and transparency.
Politics
Peter Loge is the director of GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs. He has nearly 30 years of experience in politics and communications, having served as a deputy to the chief of staff for Sen. Edward Kennedy during the 1995 shutdown, a VP at the US Institute of Peace in 2013, and held senior positions for three members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Loge currently leads the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at the School of Media and Public Affairs and continues to advise advocates and organizations.
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.
Todd Belt is the director of the Political Management Program at the GW Graduate School of Political Management. Belt is an expert on the presidency, campaigns and elections, mass media and politics, public opinion, and political humor. In addition to his expertise, Belt is co-author of four books and helps to run GW’s political poll, which recently shared new findings.
Matt Dallek, a professor at GW’s Graduate School of Political Management, is a political historian with expertise in the intersection of social crises and political transformation, the evolution of the modern conservative movement, and liberalism and its critics. Along with four co-authored books, Dallek is the author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right, which explores the history and influence of America’s right-wing activism.
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