- Pritzker Fellows
- Former Fellows
- Peter Meijer
Peter Meijer
Former Republican U.S. Representative from Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District
Former Congressman Peter Meijer was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where his family has resided for four generations. Peter enlisted in the Army Reserves and, while a student at Columbia University, deployed to Iraq in 2010 to conduct intelligence operations. After graduation, Peter joined Team Rubicon, a veteran-based disaster response organization, and led humanitarian efforts in South Sudan dealing with a refugee crisis, New York after Superstorm Sandy, Oklahoma after a series of devastating tornadoes, and the Philippines following Super Typhoon Yolanda. Concurrently, Peter served on the Board of Directors and was later Chairman of the Board of Student Veterans of America, one of the largest post-9/11 veteran service organizations advocating for veteran educational opportunities.
Peter then worked with an international NGO in Afghanistan, managing a large team to provide conflict analysis to humanitarian groups and deliver emergency assistance after kidnappings and targeted killings, before returning to the United States and obtaining an MBA at New York University. In 2017, Peter returned home to Michigan to work in urban redevelopment before launching his first campaign for Congress. He was elected to represent Michigan’s third congressional district in 2020 in the most expensive congressional race in Michigan of the cycle.
In Congress, Peter served on the Homeland Security, Foreign Affairs, and Science, Space, and Technology committees, and was a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. He doubled the record for the number of bills signed into law by a freshman in the minority, including a commission to reform the State Department, increase resources to combat human trafficking, deal with supply chain crises, and ensure coverage for veterans suffering from burn pit-related ailments. Peter was defeated in his first re-election by a Trump-endorsed primary challenger and currently resides in Grand Rapids with his wife Gabriella.
Seminars
“Government Regulations & the American Dream”
William Strauss and Neil Howe’s prophetic 1997 book The Fourth Turning theorized that cycles of history repeat roughly every 80 years, with each cycle broken down into periods of a High (1940s/1950s), Awakening (1960s/1970s/1980s), Unraveling (1990s/2000s), then Crisis (2010s, 2020s). Perhaps recency bias and ex post rationalizations muddy our judgment, but when for the first time in modern history younger generations are on track to underperform their parents in terms of job status or income, there is at least one objective Crisis at hand.
The recent return of inflation has brought renewed focus on cost of living and affordability issues. Gas prices spiking, shortages in housing supply, and interest rate increases have raised generational doubt about whether younger generations will have access to the same opportunities as their parents. It’s understandable that many turn to state power while seeking solutions, but a thorough study of the cost drivers in each category often reveals government policies and regulations that add significant cost.
This seminar will examine the factors driving cost of living inflation in the United States, while comparing government policies and outcomes in the United States relative to comparable economies. The goal is to both arrive at an understanding of the cost and value of the regulatory state, and the interests and incentive structures at play that make it increasingly difficult to craft nimble policies in the face of daunting challenges.
American writer and historian James Truslow Adams popularized the phrase ‘American Dream’ in 1931, writing that “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” While a modern political consensus on the American Dream has proven elusive, the assumption of state involvement in pursuing the American Dream was in the air back in 1931. The Roosevelt Administration implemented the New Deal from 1933 to 1939, aided by a 1937 shift in the Supreme Court’s view of the constitutionality of the New Deal programs. What followed was rise of the modern administrative state.
This session explores how the role of the federal administrative state has grown from humble origins in the Constitution’s Commerce and Necessary and Proper clauses and what the American public has come to expect from the federal government. Students will understand the judicial decisions and legislative acts that underpin the functions of our modern federal government, and how those functions impact our current ability to address cost of living concerns.
In wilderness survival, the Rule of Three states that one can survive for 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. While the government certainly regulates air (Clean Air Act of 1963) and water (Clean Water Act of 1972), there are few areas where regulations are both more needed and more prevalent than what we consume. Improvements in food safety have been a shining success, and the US leads the globe as the lowest percentage of consumer expenditures of food consumed at home.
Yet recent crises have shown the perils of industries and regulators that grow complacent- from spiking grain and fertilizer prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to the 2022 baby formula shortage, to rapid price fluctuation owing to concentration risk in the meat and poultry industries. This session will explore why the federal government often cannot get out of its own way when unexpected events arise.
Home is where the heart is, and in post-WWII America home ownership (and the leverage it afforded) became a tremendous financial asset. The National Housing Act of 1934 laid out the first underwriting criteria for mortgages, which made home ownership more achievable for the majority, and pushed home ownership further out of reach for minorities living in redlined neighborhoods. Today, our housing market is defined by a complex web of policies at the local (zoning ordinances, building inspectors, historic preservation rules), state (building regulations, labor regulation) and federal (tariffs on materials, energy standards, federal vouchers) levels.
A lack of housing supply and policies that reward home ownership have had the effect of creating a wealth gap between those owning homes, and those stuck in rental purgatory. While the antics of the mustachioed leader of New York’s ‘Rent Is 2 Damn High Party’ have offered some solace to urban dwellers nodding in agreement, this session will decompose the factors driving high housing prices today, what solutions exist, and the political difficulty of solving this challenge.
Modern concerns about climate change have driven political desires to shift away from carbon-based energy sources, while WWI and Nixon-era legislation has hobbled these efforts. From the 1920 Jones Act raising the costs of installing offshore wind turbines to the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act throwing up barriers to interstate transmission of solar energy or delaying geothermal energy development, we continue to arrive at a frustrating stasis thanks to the public choice reality of concentrated benefits and diffuse cost.
The December 2022 announcement of fusion ignition at Lawrence Livermore offers one potential breakthrough, although it’s hard to imagine we will see utility-scale Tokamak reactors any time soon. Closer to home, federal incentives to purchase an electric car and electrify home heating have added significant demand to our energy grid, 61% of which is powered by fossil fuels. This session will explore the logic behind utility regulation, federal efforts to decarbonize energy generation, and what policy solutions exist to decrease energy costs to consumers.
Blessed by 2.3 billion acres of terrain, from the majesty of Monument Valley to the endless expanse of the plains, the breadth of America holds an allure that’s easiest to unlock behind the wheel. “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road,” Kerouac wrote. Granted, most driving is far less ambitious: commutes, errands, the rote realities of everyday life. The year before On the Road was published, President Eisenhower signed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 into law, leading to the explosive growth of the interstate highway system and federally-funded ‘urban renewal’ efforts that resulted in the decimation of many urban areas throughout the country.
While government financing and management of roadways is both logical and the norm since the turnpikes and private toll roads of the 19th century, modern federal transportation regulation began with the creation of the Department of Transportation in 1967. From mandatory safety features to the auto dealer networks to the price of gas, the hand of government relations is omnipresent. This session will look at transportation costs in the United States compared to other countries, and dive into questions like why it costs 5x as much per mile to build subways in New York compared to the average of Madrid, London, Rome, and Berlin, and how we can get to where we need to go faster and cheaper.
Education and the increased economic prospects it offers are essential to James Truslow Adams' definition of the American Dream as being “opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” If there is one area where the American Dream has slipped further out of reach, it has been the education sector.
In 1970, just six weeks of full-time minimum-wage work over the summer was enough to cover tuition and fees at an average public university. In 2020, that same student working a full-time minimum-wage job would have to work 34 weeks to cover tuition and fees. Over this same time frame, teaching staff-to-student ratios remained relatively stable, while administrative staff-to-student ratios tripled.
Seeking to remedy this affordability crisis, President Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which made the federal government the primary distributor of student loans. The result: the amount of outstanding student loan debt tripled from 2009 to 2022.
This session will discuss how affordable education as a means of achieving upward mobility has proven elusive, how a combination of state and federal policies wind up pushing costs higher despite bipartisan agreement on reducing the cost of education, and why political dynamics only serve to enforce the status quo.
The United States spends more on defense than the next ten countries combined - although our share of defense spending to GDP (3.5%) is less than Saudi Arabia (6.6%) and Russia (4.1%) and on par with Israel, South Korea, and India (~2.8%). We know we are getting a bang for our taxpayer buck in the literal sense - the United States has 3,750 nuclear warheads in our active arsenal and millions of smaller things that go boom. But whether the platforms we have are the most efficient means of satisfying a capability - bang for the buck in the figurative sense - is another matter.
Cost-plus contracts, scrapped projects, and legislative manipulation all raise costs. As a member of Congress, I was made acutely aware of how many jobs in my district were dependent on the F-35 fighter program (60). According to lore, every congressional district supplied at least one part to the C-130 cargo plane. Today, in supplying weapons to the Ukrainian military, major defense contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have seen revenues rise due to demand for their anti-tank Javelin and anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, which have been used to devastating effect against Russian weaponry. Meanwhile, General Dynamics have tried to get in on the action by urging purchase of the $200M Gray Eagle drone - despite the $4M Turkish Bayraktar able to do much of the same.
This session will focus on the value proposition of our defense investments and where bad practices have become ingrained. No suggestions of the Air Force holding a bake sale to buy a bomber, but a sober analysis of the benefits and challenges with defense procurement.
This seminar will be a free-flowing discussion of my experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and the perspective on what we have to be grateful for in the U.S.