Politics and Policy on the Potomac

Mark hosts Ed Goeas, co-author with Celinda Lake of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book A Question of Respect: Bringing Us Together in a Deeply Divided Nation.  Goeas reflected on the root causes of polarization and the loss of trust in America’s political system, drawing on decades of experience as a leading Republican pollster and co-director of the bipartisan Battleground Poll. He shared i...

Mark hosts Congressman Buddy Carter (R-GA) on U.S. Energy Policy: Developments from “One Big Beautiful Bill”. Congressman Buddy Carter was a webinar guest in 2023 and frequent attendee of the ACCF’s “Washington’s Last Salon,” a bipartisan forum for public policy discussion. A committed public servant, Rep. Carter previously served as the Mayor of Pooler, Georgia, and in the Georgia General Assembl...

Mark invites his very first guest back for his 100th episode for A Conversation with the Hon. Lawrence H. Summers about “US Economic Policy: Lessons from the Past for Today and the Future”. Professor Summers was the 71st US Secretary of the Treasury,1999 to 2001; Director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama, 2009 to 2010; the 27th President of Harvard, 2001 to 2006; and t...

Mark hosts Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) for a Conversation About “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Senator Johnson has called the legislation “immoral and grotesque” due to its projected $2.4 trillion increase in the national deficit over the next decade. How Senator Johnson votes on the bill may very well determine its fate. He has raised concerns about our growing debt with every president, Democrat and R...

Mark hosts A Conversation with David Malpass, the 13th Chairman of the World Bank (2019-2023) about “Economic Policy Today”.  Mr. Malpass served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs for President Trump and an economic advisor to candidate Trump during the 2016 presidential election. Earlier, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for President G.H. Bush, Deputy As...

Mark Bloomfield welcomes House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill (R-AR) for A Conversation on the European Union’s Evolving and Far-Reaching Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and its Impacts on U.S. Businesses. Chairman Hill brings a unique private sector experience and public service to his chairmanship. He served President George H.W. Bush as Deputy Assistant Secre...

John Sullivan served as the former US Ambassador to Russia under Presidents Trump and Biden. His very timely book documents his time in Moscow when Russia invaded the Ukraine, and that’s why the appropriate subtitle is “A Memoir from the Front Lines of Russia’s War Against the West".  Previously, Ambassador Sullivan was the US Deputy Secretary of State. He has served five presidents in promin...

Kevin Brady, former Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, was the main architect of the TCJA, the first major reform of the Internal Revenue Code since 1986. Chairman Brady also served as chairman of the Joint Economic Committee and Joint Committee on Taxation. Currently he is on the board of the Tax Foundation. He is also a senior consultant to the Akin Gump law firm.

Mark hosts Stephen Moore, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, on ‘Trumponomics’” Stephen Moore is the co-author of Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy, along with Arthur Laffer, the father of SupplySide economics. Steve is a former member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and was a senior economic advisor to President Trump in 2016. He...

Mark Bloomfield welcomes H.E. Oksana Markarova, Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States for a conversation on “The Economic Challenges for Ukraine.” Oksana Markova has served as Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States since February 2021. The Ambassador previously served as Minister of Finance where she co-authored Ukraine’s macroeconomic revival program with unprecedented fiscal success. She...

Mark Bloomfield hosts Her Excellency Jovita Neliupšienė, the European Union Ambassador to the United States, who provided insights into the 2024 U.S. election and its implications for EU-U.S. relations. Ambassador Neliupšienė, with a distinguished background as the former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and Economy and Innovation, shared her perspective on the transatlantic partnership’s future a...

Mark welcomes Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) for a conversation on his thoughts on five decades in public service. Over the last fifty years, Senator Cardin has earned titles of distinction including “Mr. Speaker” as the youngest Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates in history, “Mr. Chairman” of the Maryland House of Delegates Ways & Means Committee, "Mr. Chairman" of the Senate Sma...

Mark Bloomfield welcomes Dr. Arthur Laffer, father of supply side economics and economic advisor to Presidents Reagan and Trump. When he presented Art Laffer with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019, President Trump said, “Few people in history have revolutionized economic thought and policy like Dr. Laffer. The father of supply side economics; a Yale graduate; a Stanford Ph. D.; the younges...

Mark Bloomfield welcomes Representative Linda Sánchez (D-CA), Chair Emeritus of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a member of the Ways & Means Committee, about the “Economic Policy Challenges for Latinos Today”. Representative Sánchez currently serves as the Ways & Means Committee, the first Latina to do so. When she became Vice Chair of the Democratic Caucus, she was the first Latina...

Mark welcomes Greg Ip, Chief Economics Commentator for the Wall Street Journal and  one of the best commentators on the economy and economic policy. He was part of the team of Wall Street Journal reporters who were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting. Greg is also the author of three books with provocative titles: The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real Wor...

Mark Bloomfield welcomes  Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at Financial Times, about his new book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism.     Former Secretary of Treasury Lawrence Summers, who kicked off our webinar series, called Martin Wolf “the world’s preeminent financial journalist.” Ben Bernanke, Nobel Prize-winning former chair of the Federal Reserve wrote, The Cr...

Mark Bloomfield welcomes Michael J. Graetz, Professor Emeritus at Columbia and Yale Law Schools, on his latest book, The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America. Michael J. Graetz is a leading authority on tax politics and policy.  He served in the US Treasury’s Office of tax Policy and is the coauthor of many books including Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight Over Taxing Inhe...

Mark hosts A Conversation with Senator Joe Lieberman, Founding Chairman of No Labels, About “No Labels” & the 2024 Presidential Election.   Joe Lieberman is the founding chairman of No Labels, a political organization whose stated mission is to support centrism and bipartisanship and a possible ballot line to a unity ticket in the 2024 presidential election.  His forty years of public service...

Mark Bloomfield discusses Proxy Advisors with Jay Clayton, Former Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.   Jay Clayton served as Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission from May 2017 to December 2020. He is currently a Senior Policy Advisor and Of Counsel to Sullivan & Cromwell. Mr. Clayton’s practice centers on corporate governance and financial regulatory matters, e...

Mark welcomes Jason Furman, Former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Obama.   Jason Furman is the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy, jointly at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He is also nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Furman engages in public policy through...

Mark Bloomfield welcomes Oren Cass, author of "The Once and Future Worker: A vision for the renewal of work in America."  Oren is an opinion writer for the Financial Times and his work has also appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.  He worked previously as the domestic Policy Director for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, as a management consultant at Bain &...

Rep. Horsford is the 28th Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, which is dedicated to "positively influencing the course of events pertinent to African Americans and others of similar experience and situation", and "achieving greater equity for persons of African descent in the design and content of domestic and international programs and services."     Rep. Horsford has rep...

Mark Bloomfield welcomes H.E. Francisco António Duarte Lopes, Ambassador of Portugal to the United States. Ambassador Lopes previously served as Permanent Representative of Portugal to the United Nations since 2017. Prior to that, he served at Portugal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lisbon, where he was promoted to the rank of Ambassador in December 2015. Earlier, he was the diplomatic adviser t...

Mark Bloomfield hosts Robert Lighthizer, former United States Trade Representative and author of No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers. Robert Lighthizer served in President Trump’s cabinet as the United States Trade Representative from 2017 to 2021 and was a deputy USTR under President Reagan. He has negotiated dozens of international agreements and pra...

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) is the Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee and the Co-chair of both the Blue Collar and European (EU) Caucuses.  He is now serving his fifth term in Pennsylvania's Second District. The first in his family to attend college, he attended the University of Notre Dame and later graduated from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government with a maste...