The director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, Smith has worked on Capitol Hill in several capacities and has served as a senior fellow at the Brooking Institution. He has also authored or co-authored six books on congressional politics and recently a book on the formation of the Russian State Duma. He is working on books on party leadership in the U.S. Senate and the nature of party effects on congressional voting. Smith also directs The American Panel Survey (TAPS), a national political opinion poll that goes out each month to the same group of about 2000 citizens.
To govern all this, once the trial begins, a simple majority of the Senate can adopt supplementary rules — including the currently contentious question of the timing of motions to call witnesses, which largely divides senators along party lines.
In a November wave of The American Social Survey conducted by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, political scientists polled likely primary voters to find that — despite consensus among Democratic candidates and the Trump administration’s actions to repeal environmental regulations — the two parties’ electorates don’t match their candidates’ stances on climate change.
Whatever impeachment moves the Democratic-majority U.S. House of Representatives makes next, it’s ultimately up to the Republican-controlled and administration-friendly Senate to hold a trial on the matter — and Washington University in St. Louis political scientist Steve Smith anticipates the Senate could make a number of moves to avoid the issue.
Congressional Republicans agree on tax cuts more than they agree on nearly any other issue. Tax cuts have been central to Republican economic policy since the mid-20th century.
As House Republicans struggle to define a new plan to replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), public support for the 2010 legislation is at an all-time high, according to a national survey taken in January by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis.
