Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Joe Biden left the Democratic Party convention in August with the nomination and a “build-back-better” plan for clean energy, new jobs, closing the racial wealth gap, and economic renewal. He also left with the 110-page Biden-Sanders plan to restore Donald Trump’s budget cuts, reverse his regulatory rollbacks, attack corporate greed, combat the climate crisis, confront COVID-19, pursue environmental justice, repair the infrastructure, create jobs, and raise the minimum wage. “Folks, it’s not sufficient to build back,” Biden said in early July. “That’s why my plan is to build back better.” Join the NYU Brademas Center in welcoming Professor Paul C. Light as he makes a case for a fix-government-fast reform agenda that provides a framework and game plan for a first Biden administration. Trump could adopt the agenda, too, but would need discipline to make it work. Joining the Dialogue will be Kathryn Tenpas from the Miller Center at the University of Virginia and Brookings Institution, Danielle Brian from the Project on Government Oversight, and Tom Shoop from Government Executive, who will act as moderator.

Will the raucous and undignified first 2020 US Presidential debate sway the few Americans who say they are undecided between Trump and Biden? Dr Kathryn Tenpas says debates generally reinforce predispositions. But it's also a question of whether voters are watching in the first place. Dr Tenpas says the inability of the moderator to quiet Trump in particular, made it difficult to follow points that were being made, so viewers would have struggled in the muddied waters. She says the issues being thrown up in the campaign, like the revelation that Trump likely paid just $US750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, make it difficult to predict where the vote will go, as Biden continues to lead in polls. She also says Donald Trump is setting the stage to cry foul if he doesn't win, as he continues to claim the mail-in ballot system is rigged.

President Donald Trump is expected to nominate an ideologically conservative successor to the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, Senior Fellow with the University of Virginia, discusses the implications.

The Constitution vests responsibility for filling federal leadership positions in both the president and the Senate — the president nominates officials for key posts, and the Senate provides “advice and consent.” But in recent years, presidents have found it increasingly easy to sidestep this process altogether and to install temporary, “acting” officials in place of Senate-confirmed leaders. This report examines the prevalence of vacancies and temporary officials in Senate-confirmed positions, the use of acting officials and the reasons the nomination and confirmation process has broken down. This report also includes specific recommendations to address the prevalence of temporary officials, fix broken processes and improve accountability.

Trump’s management style contributes to high turnover within the administration, said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a nonresident senior fellow with Brookings’ Governance Studies and a fellow and secretary of the Governance Institute. Tenpas calculates that as of August 24, the turnover rate among 65 senior administration positions—Trump’s “A Team”—was 91%, significantly surpassing that of his five predecessors after a full term. “I think what’s unique about this administration is that the president himself tends to publicly fire a lot of his senior staff and humiliate them, and he also oftentimes leaves them looking incompetent,” Tenpas told Government Executive. “If there is a second term, that’s not going to change.”