He previously worked on the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012, being described as a "general policy impresario of the emerging conservative consensus on fighting poverty".

[2] Between 2015 and 2019, Cass was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and he was the author of The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America.

He argues that the obsessive focus of policymakers and economists on "consumer welfare" has been misguided because it is as workers and productive contributors that people flourish and build strong families and communities.

[14] As of July 2024[update], American Compass is also a member of the advisory board of Project 2025,[15] a collection of conservative policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican nominee win the 2024 presidential election.

[16] Dedicated to reforming conservatism, American Compass is endeavoring to shift the economic consensus towards a high view "of family, community, and industry.

[17] Cass wrote an essay in 2017 framing rejection of strong measures to combat climate change as a form of moderation, by criticizing both those on the political right who question the validity of climate science and those on the political left whom he characterizes as suffering from depression and misusing data to paint a picture of imminent catastrophe.