I agree with the House impeachment resolution in full. The House should vote to impeach President Trump, again. Four years ago minus eight days, Donald J. Trump swore an oath, “…and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Over the past two months he repeatedly violated that oath, attacking the Constitution and the presidential election process. He tried to seize for himself your right and mine to choose our next president by an agreed-upon set of rules. Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden, fair and square. President Trump has then lied ..read more

My layman’s approach to the impeachment of President Trump is somewhat simplistic. We American citizens have the right to choose our leaders by voting in elections. Exercising that right requires that our elections be fair, especially the one for president. Anyone who cheats in an election denies us that right. American elections are for Americans only. When a foreign power interferes in an American election, it attacks our democracy. When our president asked a foreign head of state to interfere in our next presidential election, he cheated and he invited such an attack. Cheating is wrong, and ..read more

My view on Brett Kavanaugh remains unchanged by recent events. Today I reaffirm my July 9th support for, and endorsement of, Brett Kavanaugh, which I share here once again before the Senate begins to vote. “I worked with Brett Kavanaugh on a near-daily basis for three years, from mid-2003 to mid-2006. Part of my job was to write memos and prepare briefing memos for President Bush, and Brett was the coordinator and gatekeeper who made sure my work was ready for the president’s desk. I trusted Brett with the work I did for the president, and I trust him now for an even more important r ..read more

I worked with Brett Kavanaugh on a near-daily basis for three years, from mid-2003 to mid-2006. Part of my job was to write memos and prepare briefing presentations for President Bush. Brett was the coordinator and gatekeeper who made sure my work was ready for the president’s desk. I trusted Brett with the work I did for the president, and I trust him now for an even more important role. Judge Kavanaugh is simply one of the finest professionals with whom I have ever worked. His integrity, intellect, professionalism, and collegiality are unsurpassed. He is a role model for honorable public ser ..read more

The spending bill the Senate will soon consider would significantly increase government spending. While the bill only covers this fiscal year and next, its practical effects will last longer. If you increase discretionary spending by $150 B per year for each of the next two years, you establish higher expectations and a new benchmark, a new baseline, against which future discretionary spending proposals will be judged. This is true even if the bill is drafted to technically cover only the next two years of spending. Using press reports for some back-of-the-envelope calculations of my own, it a ..read more

In their Axios story “Trump team considers nationalizing 5G network,” Jonathan Swan, David McCabe, Ina Fried, and Kim Hart report that “Trump national security officials are considering an unprecedented federal takeover of a portion of the nation’s mobile network to guard against China, according to sensitive documents obtained by Axios.” I had three reactions to the leaked Trump NSC materials. Surely these are not actual policy documents they are using to make decisions. The author is using China as a model to design a U.S. policy. If the President says 5G or build a nationwide wireless netw ..read more

I write in support of Kirstjen Nielsen, President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security, and to recommend the President nominate Kevin Warsh for Chairman of the Federal Reserve. I worked with both of them in the Bush White House, and they are in both cases the best candidates for the job. First, a few words on Kirstjen. She worked on the Homeland Security Council staff when I worked on the National Economic Council staff. She was a skilled, effective professional who delivered results and could make cumbersome bureaucracies move. Some Cabinet secretaries play mostly public-facing ..read more

Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post performs a valuable service with his Fact Checker column. He plays the referee, holding policymakers to account for the accuracy of what they say, and working hard to research, understand, and educate his readers on the veracity of a range of important policy questions. His body of work elevates the quality of policy debate. Even good referees sometimes make a bad call, and I think Mr. Kessler did so yesterday in his column, “Is the GOP plan for Medicaid caps really Bill Clinton’s idea?” I disagree with his conclusion and score of former Senator Rick Santor ..read more

Both President Obama’s 2016 signing of the Paris Agreement on climate change and President Trump’s withdrawal from that agreement today fit into a category I will label as QTIIPS. QTIIPS stands for Quantitatively Trivial Impact + Intense Political Symbolism. QTIIPS policy changes provoke fierce political battles over trivially small policy impacts. Passionate advocates on both sides ignore numbers and policy details while fighting endlessly about symbols. A policy change is QTIIPS if: its direct measurable effects are quite small relative to the underlying policy problem to be solved; it is v ..read more

Kate Davidson and Richard Rubin have an excellent article in today’s Wall Street Journal examining what President Trump’s economic advisors are now saying about how the President wants to allocate $2 trillion in budget benefits they think will result from faster economic growth. I wrote about this question Tuesday. Trump Budget Director Mick Mulvaney testified at the House and Senate Budget Committees, while Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testified at the House Ways & Means and Senate Finance Committees. Director Mulvaney said President Trump was proposing that tax refor ..read more