Reforming Congress Interview Series

As the head of the Government Affairs team, Kristine Simmons leads the Partnership for Public Service’s education and advocacy work on Capitol Hill, oversees the Center for Presidential Transition and serves as a member of the Partnership’s senior leadership team. Her responsibilities include developing and executing strategies to improve presidential transitions, informing congressional oversight...

In the second half of this week’s episode, Cys and Chervenak discuss the polarization in Congress, what aspects of Congress work and what doesn’t, and recommendations for how problems could be fixed.

In this week’s episode, Mike Cys joins Matthew Chervenak to discuss the difference between state and national politics, the transition of national politics to a nonprofits, and the interaction of members of Congress and committee members.

Matt Glassman, Ph. D., joined the Government Affairs Institute as a Senior Fellow in 2017. He has taught courses on and off the Hill on American government, congressional process, congressional-presidential relations, and congressional leadership.  Prior to joining GAI, Matt worked on the Hill at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) for ten years. His portfolio included congressional oper...

Matt Glassman, Ph. D., joined the Government Affairs Institute as a Senior Fellow in 2017. He has taught courses on and off the Hill on American government, congressional process, congressional-presidential relations, and congressional leadership.  Prior to joining GAI, Matt worked on the Hill at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) for ten years. His portfolio included congressional oper...

About Craig Volden: Craig Volden is a Co-Director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking. He is a Professor of Public Policy and Politics, with appointments in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics. He studies legislative politics and the interaction among political institutions, with a focus on what policy choices arise from legislati...

Jonathan Bydlak is interim director of the Governance Program at the R Street Institute ( https://rstreet.org ), director of the Fiscal and Budget Policy Project, and a member of the Legislative Branch Capacity Working Group.   Previously, Jonathan was the founder and president of the Institute for Spending Reform and the Coalition to Reduce Spending, which advocated for spending and budget r...

A member of the William & Mary faculty since 1987, Larry Evans is a specialist in American national politics. In addition to three dozen journal articles and chapters in edited volumes, he is the author of three books: The Whips: Building Party Coalitions in Congress (University of Michigan Press, 2018), Congress Under Fire: Reform Politics and the Republican Majority (with Walter Oleszek, Hou...

About the Levin Center:  The Levin Center at Wayne Law was established to carry on the legislative oversight legacy and vision of U.S. Senator Carl Levin, who represented Michigan in the U.S. Senate for 36 years, longer than any other Michigan senator.  A lifelong Detroiter and former President of the Detroit City Council, Carl Levin went to Washington to ensure a compassionate and effec...

Kosar is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies the US Congress, congressional oversight, the administrative state, American politics, and the US Postal Service.   Before joining AEI, Dr. Kosar was at the R Street Institute, where he served as vice president of policy, vice president of research partnerships, and senior fellow and director of the Gover...