Episode # 19: Former Senate Finance Staffer & Family First Architect Laura Berntsen
Welcome to our latest edition of WonkCast: People Power Policy.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of reading a law out of context; comparing it to a perfect ideal, and then wondering why parts of it are seemingly inefficient or contradictory.
Equally easy is romanticizing a “perfect” policy fix that is unsullied by political realities, but impossible to enact, because it lacks the buy-in that trade-offs secure.
Today’s guest is a former senior Hill staffer who doesn’t just understand the realities of where policy and politics intersect, but actually navigated them to craft the biggest recent overhaul of child welfare financing, the Family First Prevention Services Act.
Laura Berntsen previously served as Chief Domestic Policy Advisor on the Senate Finance Committee for now Ranking Member Ron Wyden of Oregon.
She was one of the core staff architects of the Family First Prevention Services Act; developing, drafting, negotiating, and advancing it from a set of ideas into law.
Today, she’s a Principal Advisor at The Treasury of New Zealand, advising on income support, child welfare, and social service policy.
She shared about how to work with Hill staffers from the outside, the difficulties of weaving evidence into policy, and why “tiny little changes” are usually anything but.
Her insider perspective from “in the room” on Family First is a guide to navigating the terrain of power in Congress to encode ideas into durable financing architecture.
This builds on our recent Think Like A Staffer and What Hill Staff Wish the Child & Family Policy Understood pieces, pointing to strategic opportunities for success.
Sponsorship Shoutout
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