Why subscribe?

There are already a lot of great policy writers on Substack. So why subscribe to yet another account? Here’s what I hope to offer:

A focus on how to achieve progressive outcomes. Plenty of smart folks cover the latest economic data releases or other news of the day. While I may mix in some pieces on those topics, I’m mostly going to focus on how we can actually achieve progressive goals, like more financial security and economic independence for the working class, a fairer and more sustainable tax code, a stronger social safety net, more power and autonomy for workers, a more humane healthcare system, and a higher standard of living. I am interested in what types of policy interventions and political messages will get us to those goals most quickly and most durably. One thing I will be doing to that end is launching an “Ideas That Work” series, which will highlight policy decisions by states, cities, or foreign governments that have really paid off, both practically and politically. (If you have suggestions for good ones to cover, just let me know in the comments.)

A practical perspective. A lot of people who write about policy for a living have never worked in government or on a campaign. I don’t think you need to have done those things to offer useful commentary about politics, but you learn a lot from dealing with the realities of governing or a major campaign that you just can’t absorb from the outside.

I’ve been lucky to serve in all three branches of government: in the White House as the National Economic Council Deputy Director for the first two-and-a-half years of the Biden Administration, in the Senate as an economic advisor to Elizabeth Warren, and in the judiciary as a two-time law clerk in the DC federal courts. In between, I ran economic policy on Senator Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign and served as one of four Commissioners on the Congressional Oversight Commission for the CARES Act, monitoring half a trillion dollars in spending. I’ve helped draft questions for high-profile congressional hearings, prepped for presidential debates, questioned the Treasury Secretary at oversight hearings, negotiated with Congress on big legislative packages, fielded tough questions at the White House press briefing, managed the implementation of hundreds of billions of dollars in small business aid, helped broker an agreement between the wireless industry and the airlines to avoid massive disruptions in domestic travel, and worked on major presidential speeches. I like to think all of that (and more) has given me a better sense of how policy and politics will unfold, how even seemingly the best plans can go awry, and what the real barriers to progress are.

Optimism–and open-mindedness. These are tough times for the country. But we’ve been down before and can come back again. I want to be unsparing in diagnosing what’s gone wrong (including on things that I personally worked on) but not lose the sense that we can make things better if we make the right choices. And I am committed to being open-minded about evaluating ideas on their merits rather than dismissing them because of who happens to be offering them.