David Dreier, Longtime Chairman of the House Rules Committee, Joins Brookings as Distinguished Fellow

Washington, D.C. — David Dreier, chairman of the Annenberg-Dreier Commission, and longtime chairman of the Rules Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, has joined the Brookings Institution as a distinguished fellow, Brookings President Strobe Talbott announced today.

At Brookings, Dreier will participate in a wide range of events, activities, research projects and conferences.

The Annenberg-Dreier Commission at Sunnylands was launched in February. Dreier brought to Sunnylands a high-profile focus on the greater Pacific, and the political and commercial relations transforming it. The commission will work on concrete steps to advance the free flow of goods, services, capital, ideas and people throughout the region.

“We are honored to welcome Congressman Dreier to Brookings,” said Talbott. “For more than three decades, David has been a leader in Congress and we look forward to drawing on his expertise across a wide range of policy areas, notably including advancing international trade, and strengthening democratic institutions at home and around the world.”

Dreier was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1980, where he served until January 2013. In Congress, he served as the youngest—and the first from California—chairman of the Rules Committee, playing a pivotal role in fashioning all legislation for debate in the House. He authored the 1995 congressional reform package that streamlined committee structure, promoted fiscal responsibility, created term limits for committee chairmen and opened committee meetings to the public and press. In 2006, he authored legislation to reform lobbying and ethics laws. Dreier is a longtime advocate of open commerce as an engine of growth and opportunity. During his tenure in Congress, he was a strong ally of both Democratic and Republican administrations in support of passage of free trade agreements.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the board of the International Republican Institute. Dreier is the founding chairman of the bipartisan House Democracy Partnership, which works directly with legislatures in 17 countries around the globe, helping to build institutions in new and re-emerging democracies. Additionally, he was the founding chair of the Congressional Trade Working Group that has built support for trade agreements for more than twenty years.

Dreier received his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College in 1975 and his M.A. in American government from Claremont Graduate University the following year.

Brookings’s distinguished fellows are individuals of particularly noteworthy distinction whose work across several fields of public policy puts them at the pinnacle of worldwide research and policy impact. Distinguished fellows are actively engaged in the life of the Institution, often with more than one of Brookings’s five research programs. In assuming the title, Congressman Dreier joins Jean-David Levitte, former French ambassador to the United States; Sadako Ogata, former president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and United Nations high commissioner for refugees; Jon Huntsman, former ambassador to China and Singapore and governor of Utah; Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami and former U.S. secretary of health and human services; Itamar Rabinovich, an Israeli diplomat, scholar, and university president; Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania; Thomas Pickering, a career U.S. ambassador and former under secretary of state for political affairs; and Javier Solana, former secretary general of NATO and the European Union’s high representative for foreign and security policy.