Lanhee Chen

Lanhee Chen 陳仁宜
Born	(1978-07-04) July 4, 1978 Fayetteville, North Carolina, U.S.
Residence	Silicon Valley,[1] California
Nationality	American
Education	John A. Rowland High School, Rowland Heights, California
Alma mater	Harvard University (A.B., A.M., J.D., Ph.D.)[2][3]
Occupation	Public Intellectual, University Faculty, Attorney, and Policy Expert
Years active	2003 — present
Known for	Senior Adviser, Marco Rubio presidential campaign, 2016; Policy Director, Mitt Romney presidential campaign, 2012; Domestic Policy Director, Mitt Romney presidential campaign, 2008
Political party	Republican
Parent(s)	Originated from Taiwan
Website	Official website

Lanhee J. Chen (Chinese: 陳仁宜; pinyin: Chén Rényí; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tân Jîn-gî; born July 4, 1978)^[4] is an American political commentator. Chen currently serves as the David and Diane Steffy Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution,^[5] Director of Domestic Policy Studies and Lecturer in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University,^[6] and Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School.^[7] Chen is also a political commentator for CNN, on which he frequently provides insights related to the 2016 presidential election. He is also counsel at the law firm Arent Fox LLP.^[8] He was a senior adviser to the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio.^[9]

Chen was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to a seat on the bipartisan and independent Social Security Advisory Board, which advises the President, Congress, and the Social Security Administrator on Social Security policies.^[10] He was recommended for the post by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He also currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of El Camino Hospital, the hospital of Silicon Valley.^[11]

Chen is most well known for his role as policy director for the 2012 Mitt Romney presidential campaign and Romney's chief policy adviser. He has been described as the "orchestra leader" behind the Romney 2012 campaign.^[2] Romney confidante Beth Myers described Chen as the person Romney relied on "entirely" for policy direction.^[2]

Early life

Chen was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, but grew up in Rowland Heights in Southern California, the son of Taiwanese immigrants.^[12] He speaks Taiwanese Hokkien more fluently than Mandarin Chinese.^[2] His father is originally from the western county of Yunlin, Taiwan, while his mother grew up in Taipei, Taiwan.^[2] They currently live in the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California.^[13]

Education

Chen was educated at John A. Rowland High School, a public high school in his hometown of Rowland Heights in Southern California, where he founded the Junior State of America (JSA) Chapter in 1992, and was Chapter President through the 1993–1994 academic year.^[14] After high school graduation, he went to Harvard University, where he earned four degrees (an A.B. in Government magna cum laude, an A.M. in Political Science, a J.D. cum laude, and a Ph.D. in Political Science).^[2][3] At Harvard he was active in campus Republican politics.^[15] He was the co-president of Harvard Model Congress.^[4] The topic of his Ph.D. dissertation was a look at electoral politics, which included analyses of judicial elections, presidential elections, and the impact of redistricting on electoral outcomes.^[4] His dissertation adviser was Sidney Verba.^[16]

Life and career

Chen has been described by the National Journal as a "prodigy."^[3] He has spent time in government, academia, and the private sector. He is a devout Christian.^[17]

Prior to serving as Romney's chief campaign policy adviser, he joined Romney's Free and Strong America PAC in 2011 as policy director.^[15] He was a visiting scholar at the University of California's Institute of Governmental Studies from 2010 to 2011. Previously, he was deputy campaign manager and policy director on California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner's campaign for governor, Domestic Policy Director during Romney's 2008 campaign for president, and Senior Counselor to the Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services.^[18] He was the healthcare adviser for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign.^[2] He was also an Associate Attorney at the international law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. In 2003, Chen was the Winnie Neubauer Visiting Fellow in Health Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.^[19]

In 2015, Chen was named one of the POLITICO 50, a list of the top "thinkers, doers, and visionaries transforming American politics".^[20] He earned a similar honor in 2012, when he was named to a list of POLITICO's "50 Politicos to Watch". Chen was recently called a "rising star" of the Republican Party.^[13]

Chen was named a CNN Political Commentator in 2016, and is believed to be the first Asian American to hold that position.

Chen is married, has two children, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.^[21]

Media personality

Chen is often on television and radio, and is currently affiliated with CNN. Before joining that network, he frequently appeared on networks including NBC, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, CNBC, Bloomberg Television, and FOX Business. He has appeared as a roundtable guest on Meet the Press and is a guest on top television political programming, including MSNBC's Morning Joe and Hardball with Chris Matthews, Bloomberg TV's With All Due Respect, and CNN's State of the Union and The Lead with Jake Tapper. Chen is also a frequent guest on the Hugh Hewitt Show, a conservative talk radio program. He was also one of the lead commentators on Bloomberg TV's 2014 election night coverage with Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.

Policy positions

Healthcare

Chen is a healthcare policy expert and has argued for repeal of President Obama's healthcare law. More recently, he has stated that changes to Obamacare can help reduce the deficit^[22] and that the law is problematic because it distorts the healthcare marketplace.^[23] He contributed to a conservative, market-based replacement for the Affordable Care Act, which was published by the American Enterprise Institute in 2015.^[24]

Taxes and domestic economic plan

Chen advised Romney on tax policy.^[25] He said on August 30, 2012, that Romney would work with Congress on the details of his tax policy once he's sworn in.^[25][26] Chen is proposing in part a flat tax, or at least a "flatter" tax, and tax simplification. He told the Wall Street Journal that Romney offers a tax plan "that is flatter, that is simpler, that will raise the amount of revenue that govt. needs to run properly and run well".^[25] In another interview, Chen said "Tax reform will get our tax code simpler, it’ll get it fairer, it’ll get it flatter, it’ll get it much more efficient."^[27]

Chen is a proponent of the Feldstein cap, which is a proposal written about by Martin Feldstein of Harvard University in the New York Times on May 4, 2011, that would cap the tax reduction that each taxpayer could get from tax expenditures to 2 percent of his or her adjusted gross income.^[28] Chen also has said that Romney would "make permanent" the round of tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 and "pursue fundamental tax reform" in order to "eliminate uncertainty".^[29]

Chen and Romney are advocates for so-called "paycheck protection". This entails passing a law which would keep unions form automatically deducting fees from paychecks for political activities.^[16]

Chen said that Romney would get "rid of Dodd-Frank" and replace it with regulation "that works".^[27] He said that Romney's plan would instead use more limited regulation with more "reasonable" rules, including those that govern derivatives and "some kind of consumer protection". Chen said, "The mistake here is to say that somehow because we repealed Dodd-Frank and we get rid of the really burdensome set of regulations that Dodd-Frank put in place, that somehow we’re going back to a dog-eat-dog kind of situation where there’s absolutely no regulation."^[26]

East Asia

Chen has criticized the Obama Administration for its failed efforts to "pivot" to Asia.^[30] He has also spoken extensively about U.S. policy toward China, particularly during the Romney campaign.^[31] and has been called "hawkish".^[31] Chen viewed China as a topic that distinguished Romney in the 2012 campaign.^[26] Chen said that Romney plans to maintain the current China and Taiwan policies. He has noted that as China is the largest trading partner with the United States, Romney "doesn't intend to start a trade war" with China nor will the United States "succumb" to China. Chen describes the Romney position as critical of China's "manipulation" of its currency, putting up trade barriers, and infringing on intellectual property rights.

Other foreign policy views

Chen accompanied Mitt Romney on his campaign swing through Britain, Israel, and Poland in August 2012^[32] and was one of the advisers who approved Romney's criticism of President Obama in the wake of the attack on the embassy in Libya on September 11, 2012, and the resulting death of J. Christopher Stevens.^[33]

Nonprofit work

Chen is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Junior Statesmen Foundation^[34] and is on the Advisory Board of the Partnership for the Future of Medicare.^[35] He was recently selected as a member of the Committee of 100, a membership organization of prominent Chinese Americans.^[36]

See also

• History of the Chinese Americans in Los Angeles

References

External links

• Lanhee Chen's columns at Bloomberg View
• Appearances on C-SPAN