About Bill Dauster | ||||||
Bill Dauster is Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. Bill was born in Sacramento, California, and received his Bachelors Degree (in International Relations, Political Science, and Economics) and Masters Degree (in Economics) from the University of Southern California. He went on to get a law degree from Columbia University.After 3 years of private practice as a litigator with the New York City law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Bill went to the U.S. Senate Budget Committee in 1986, after the election in which Democrats regained control of the Senate. Bill served as Chief Counsel to the Committee from December 1986 to December 1994. In January 1995, he became Democratic Chief of Staff and Chief Counsel, heading the staff for the Budget Committee's minority. He held that position until March of 1997, when he moved to the Democratic staff of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources under Senator Edward M. Kennedy, first as Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel and then, from December 1997 through July 1998, as the Democratic Chief of Staff and Chief Counsel. In July 1998, he went to work for Senator Paul Wellstone as Counselor for the Wellstone Presidential Exploratory Committee. After Senator Wellstone announced his decision not to run for President, Bill came to work for the White House and the National Economic Council in March 1999 as Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. Bill left the White House in January 2000 to join Senator Russ Feingold, for whom he was Senior Counselor and then Legislative Director until April 2003, when he moved to the Finance Committee, first as Democratic General Counsel, and since November 2003, in his current position.Bill's career has given him a front-row seat for much major legislation of recent years. He helped manage Senate passage of (among other bills) the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings restoration of 1987, the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, President Clinton's first budget, the Children's Health Insurance Program, McCain-Feingold, and the Medicare Prescription Drug Act of 2003, and in many cases drafted portions of the legislation.Bill has taught Legislation as part of the adjunct faculty at American University's Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. Bill has written op-ed pieces and articles that have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Progressive, The Washington Monthly, Roll Call, The Hill, The Sunday Journal newspapers of suburban D.C., Public Budgeting & Finance, the Harvard Journal on Legislation, the University of Virginia's Journal of Law and Politics, Notre Dame's Journal of Legislation, and Wikipedia. He has written four books on Senate procedure: Trade Promotion Authority Annotated and three editions of a book entitled Budget Process Law Annotated.Bill lives in Kensington, Maryland, with his wife Ellen Weintraub, a Member of the Federal Election Commission, and their three children, Matthew, Natanya, and Emma. |