Study Group with Governor Asa Hutchinson

Legislative Leadership in Times of Hyper Partisan Division in America: Who can Lead? Who will Follow? Will the Next Congress Bring Us Halloween or Thanksgiving?

Congressman French Hill is a leader in the financial services industry and in the House of Representatives. He was elected in a moderate district that has grown more conservative. He leads as a conservative but with compassion and honesty. Congressman Hill will discuss the current Congressional climate; what will happen after the presidential election; and how the GOP majority or minority will work with a Trump or Harris administration. Is there any hope for action on big items like deficit control; a new border bill; and a Congress that does not govern by brinkmanship?

GUEST: Congressman French Hill, U.S. Representative (R-AR 2nd District) since 2015, will join Governor Asa Hutchinson virtually for the October 31 session.

A ninth-generation Arkansan, Congressman French Hill has represented Arkansas’s Second Congressional District since January 2015. He serves as the Vice Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and as Chairman of the new subcommittee tasked with overseeing all areas related to digital assets and financial technology. Additionally, he is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He was also elected to the Republican Steering Committee for the 118th Congress, which determines committee assignments for Republican members of Congress.

Prior to his congressional service, Congressman Hill was founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Delta Trust & Banking Corporation. From 1989 to 1991, he also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Corporate Finance, where one of his key assignments was representing the U.S. as a negotiator in the historic bilateral talks with Japan known as the Structural Impediments Initiative (SII).

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Rep. Hill led the design of U.S. technical assistance to the emerging economies of eastern and central Europe in the areas of banking and securities. In 1991, at the age of 34, President Bush appointed Rep. Hill to be Executive Secretary to the President’s Economic Policy Council (EPC), where he coordinated all White House economic policy. For his leadership and service at the Treasury and the White House, Rep. Hill was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady in January 1993. Prior to his Executive Branch Service, from 1982 until 1984, Rep. Hill served on the staff of then-U.S. Senator John Tower (R-TX), as well as on the staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs.

Throughout his career, Rep. Hill has been active in civic affairs. He is a past president of the Rotary Club of Little Rock and served as the 2013 chairman of the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce. He has received numerous awards and recognition for his long-time support of the Boy Scouts of America, the arts and humanities, tourism, and historic preservation in Arkansas. He is an avid outdoorsman.

Rep. Hill is a magna cum laude graduate in Economics from Vanderbilt University. He and his wife, Martha, have a daughter and a son. The Hill family resides in Little Rock.

AUDIENCE: These conversations are open to members of the Harvard community. Please RSVP with a valid Harvard email address. 

OFF-THE-RECORD: In keeping with our long tradition at the IOP to ensure honest and candid discussions of politics, all IOP study groups are off-the-record.