Bill Dauster

Bill Dauster is a lawyer and economist who served on United States Senate, White House, and campaign staffs from 1986 to 2017 and returned to the Senate in 2020 as Chief Counsel for the Senate Budget Committee. Bill has served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy for Leader Harry Reid; Staff Director or Deputy Staff Director of the Senate Budget, Labor and Human Resources, and Finance Committees; and Deputy Director of the White House National Economic Council in the Clinton Administration.  Dauster helped manage Senate passage of several budgets, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings restoration of 1987, the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997 and 2007, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold), the Medicare Prescription Drug Act of 2003, the Affordable Care Act, the Budget Control Act of 2011, and the 2013 Senate filibuster reforms.  Dauster has written four books, including Budget Process Law Annotated and Trade Promotion Authority Annotated, and more than 40 articles. 

Dauster received a bachelor’s degree in international relations, economics, and political science (magna cum laude) from the University of Southern California, a master’s degree in economics from the University of Southern California, and a Juris Doctor from the Columbia University school of law. He has taught Legislation as an adjunct professor at the American University’s Washington College of Law, and has guest lectured at Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, the University of Chicago Law School, New York University School of Law, the University of Southern California’s Washington program, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law, the American University’s Washington College of Law, Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, the Graduate School of Political Management at the George Washington University, and the National War College. He testified on the budget process before the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform. Dauster also studies Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.