Prospects for regulatory reform in the Trump administration (Ted Gayer, Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/prospects-for-regulatory-reform-in-the-trump-administration/

The final fiscal fight of the Obama administration—and its many predecessors (Molly E. Reynolds, Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/12/08/fiscal-fights/

Did Republicans’ Trump endorsements affect their election chances ? ( Philip A. Wallach, Nicholas W. Zeppos, Brookings)

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/11/10/did-republicans-trump-endorsements-affect-their-election-chances/

Rise of the Libertarian technocrats (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/11/01/rise-of-the-libertarian-technocrats/

Are the US and China ready, willing, and able to achieve their Paris Agreement goals? (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

https://www.brookings.edu/research/are-the-us-and-china-ready-willing-and-able-to-achieve-their-paris-agreement-goals/

The D.C. Circuit considers the Clean Power Plan, and our constitutional future (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/09/27/the-d-c-circuit-considers-the-clean-power-plan-and-our-constitutional-future/

Political prediction markets: What are they good for? (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/09/15/political-prediction-markets-what-are-they-good-for/

What does the Libertarian Party want to be when it grows up? (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

The Libertarian Party has a historic opportunity in this year’s presidential election. The two major political parties appear to be settled on candidates who are each disliked by a larger share of the electorate than any other nominee in recent American history. With no significant independent candidacy on the horizon, Libertarians are the best organized alternative available to voters, including having ballot access in all 50 states. Merely as a result of these conditions, the Libertarian Party will far surpass the record 1.3 million presidential votes it garnered in 2012. On top of that, by nominating Gary Johnson and Bill Weld, two former Republican Governors with good track records governing in blue states, Libertarians seem to be embracing their chance at relevance. There is a non-trivial chance that they could be included in this fall’s nationally televised debates.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2016/07/07-libertarian-party-when-it-grows-up-wallach

Bootleggers, Baptists, bureaucrats, and bongs: How special interests will shape marijuana legalization (Philip A. Wallach, Jonathan Rauch, Brookings)

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2016/06/16-marijuana-special-interests-rauch-wallach

Founding workhorses: Review of 'The First Congress' (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

In his 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton, lately of even greater renown, Ron Chernow writes, “If Washington is the father of the country and Madison the father of the Constitution, then Alexander Hamilton was surely the father of the American government.” Hamilton (everyone now knows) got a lot farther by working a lot harder—and one of the many great accomplishments of Chernow’s book was to show us what that meant, in terms of mundane, toiling administrative work

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2016/05/16-first-congress-founding-workhorses-wallach

The administrative state faces a legitimacy crisis: so fix Congress!? (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

In my new Center for Effective Public Management paper, “The administrative state’s legitimacy crisis,” I argue that Americans’ anxieties about our sprawling, largely impenetrable bureaucracy pose a major challenge to the effective working of our government. This work is largely critical in orientation, contending that technocratic defenses of our current arrangements are complacent about citizens’ sense of alienation while at the same time insisting that populists’ efforts to simply shake free of the administrative state produce only more disappointment and cynicism. I try to sketch out a sensible middle way that values coping, competence, and compromise and functions through intermediation and incrementalism.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2016/04/20-administrative-state-legitimacy-wallach

The administrative state’s legitimacy crisis (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

As the 2016 presidential campaign makes clear, Americans today are bitterly disappointed with their government. People have begun to doubt not only its recent performance, but its basic legitimacy: its claim to be a uniquely representative institution working on the public’s behalf. Anxiety about our administrative state—broadly speaking, “bureaucracy,” which includes controversial agencies like the EPA and IRS—and its compatibility with our ideals of self-government is at the heart of our contemporary legitimacy crisis.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2016/04/20-administrative-state-legitimacy-crisis-wallach

Can the Fed stay independent in a polarized era? (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

My Brookings colleague Sarah Binder and her coauthor Mark Spindel have an important new paperout today: “Independence and accountability: Congress and the Fed in a polarized era.” They ask who in Congress seeks to alter the Fed’s structure or responsibilities and when they do it. They provide answers backed up by an impressive new dataset encompassing 879 bills introduced by 333 lawmakers in the House and Senate between 1947 and 2014 that address the power, structure, and governance of the Federal Reserve.

Continue reading here ...

Philip Wallach is a senior fellow in Governance Studies. He writes on a wide variety of domestic policy topics, including climate change, regulatory reform, the debt ceiling, and marijuana legalization.

Looking back from 2020: Three Trump Presidencies (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

With Donald Trump’s historic Super Tuesday wins now in the books, it is getting quite difficult to see a path to someone beating him for the Republican nomination—indeed, if he were a normal candidate who performed similarly, we might well see him as the presumptive nominee. So now it is time to startthinking seriously about what a Trump presidency would mean. Anyone who cannot imagine relatively benign outcomes simply lacks imagination. Here are three paradigmatic scenarios viewed from the end of Trump’s first term. The question for voters as they begin to weigh Mr. Trump as a general election candidate is how they view the relative probabilities of each.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2016/03/02-super-tuesday-three-visions-of-the-trump-presidency-wallach

Tuesday’s other big news: Supreme Court stays Obama's Clean Power Plan (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

Water cooler talk today is naturally, and justifiably, focused on the stunning New Hampshire primary victories of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. But another momentous piece of news that came out Tuesday evening should not be neglected: a divided Supreme Court stayed the Clean Power Plan, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that is the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s climate plan. That means that no part of the plan, which the EPA formally finalized in October, will come into effect until after all of the legal challenges to it have been resolved.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2016/02/10-supreme-court-clean-power-plan-wallach

If Republicans nominate Trump, can an independent win the presidency? (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2016/01/18-trump-republican-nominee-independent-bid-wallach

(Istituto fondamentale - Global) The Clean Power Plan’s legal future (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2015/08/05-clean-power-plan-legal-future-wallach

(Istituto fondamentale - Global) Which states lose from the changes to the EPA’s Clean Power Plan? (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2015/08/05-state-losers-clean-power-plan-wallach