Bruce Bartlett


Bruce Reeves Bartlett is an American historian and author. He served as a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and as a Treasury official under George H. W. Bush.
Bartlett has written several books and magazine articles critical of the George W. Bush administration and believes that its economic policies significantly departed from traditional conservative principles.

Early life and education

Bartlett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the son of Marjorie and Frank Bartlett. He was educated at Rutgers University and Georgetown University. He originally studied American diplomatic history under Lloyd Gardner at Rutgers and Jules Davids at Georgetown. He did a master's thesis on the origins of the Pearl Harbor attack at Georgetown, the substance of which was later published as Coverup: The Politics of Pearl Harbor, 1941–1946. He was closely advised by Percy Greaves, who had been the Republican counsel to the congressional committee investigating the Pearl Harbor attack in 1946.

Political career

In 1976, Bartlett began working for U.S. Congressman Ron Paul. Paul was defeated when he ran for re-election in November 1976.
In January 1977, Bartlett went to work for U.S. Congressman Jack Kemp as a staff economist. Bartlett spent much of his time on tax issues, helping to draft the Kemp-Roth tax bill, which ultimately formed the basis of Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cut. Bartlett's book, Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action, appeared in 1981. He also co-edited the book The Supply-Side Solution.
In 1978, Bartlett went to work for Perry Duryea, who was the Republican candidate for governor of New York. Duryea was defeated in November and Bartlett returned to Washington, where he joined the staff of newly elected Senator Roger Jepsen.

Reagan administration

In 1981, Jepsen became Vice chairman of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and Bartlett became deputy director of the committee's staff. Jepsen became chairman in 1983 and Bartlett became executive director of the JEC. During this period, the committee was very active in promoting Ronald Reagan's economic policies.
In late 1984, Bartlett became vice president of Polyconomics, a New Jersey-based consulting company founded by Jude Wanniski, a former Wall Street Journal editorial writer, that advised Wall Street clients on economic and investment policy. Bartlett left in 1985 to become a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, where he specialized in tax policy and was involved in the debate around the Tax Reform Act of 1986.

George H. W. Bush administration

In 1987, Bartlett became a senior policy analyst in the White House Office of Policy Development, then headed by Gary Bauer. He left in 1988 to become the deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department, where he served until the end of the George H. W. Bush administration.
Afterwards, Bartlett worked briefly at the Cato Institute in 1993. From 1993 to 2005, Bartlett was affiliated with the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market think tank based in Dallas, Texas.
Since 1995, he has written a newspaper column for Creators Syndicate, based in Los Angeles, and written extensively for many newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune magazine, and Commentary magazine. He currently blogs at .

Political positions

Criticism of George W. Bush administration economic policy

In 2005, the National Center for Policy Analysis fired Bartlett for his outspoken criticism of President George W. Bush.
In 2006, he published Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, which is critical of the George W. Bush administration's economic policies as departing from traditional conservative principles. He compared the second Bush to Richard M. Nixon as "two superficially conservative presidents who enacted liberal programs to buy votes for reelection."
In his 2009 book, The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward, Bartlett defends Keynesian economic policies, stating that while supply-side economics was appropriate for the 1970s and 1980s, supply side arguments do not fit contemporary conditions.
During an interview on CNN on August 19, 2011, Bartlett stated that presidential candidate Rick Perry "is an idiot, and I don't think anybody would disagree with that." The comment was in reference to Perry's earlier assertion that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's actions would be "almost treasonous" if the Federal Reserve were to engage in expansionary monetary policy before the 2012 election in order to stimulate the economy.
In a 2013 article for The American Conservative, Bartlett explains that after conducting research for the book, he "came to the annoying conclusion that Keynes had been 100 percent right in the 1930s," that "we needed Keynesian policies again," and that "no one has been more correct in his analysis and prescriptions for the economy's problems than Paul Krugman," a prominent Keynesian economist.

Criticism of "Fair Tax" proposal

In an August 2007 The Wall Street Journal op-ed, Bartlett criticized the FairTax proposal as misleading and unlikely to simplify taxpaying. Bartlett was especially critical of what he states are FairTax's accounting tricks in rate calculation and proponent claims that "real investment spending would rise 76%" if their plan were adopted. A sponsor of the plan, Representative John Linder acknowledged Bartlett's point that the Church of Scientology had proposed a national sales tax, but said that the FairTax movement was independent of the Church of Scientology and Bartlett had confused them with the Scientology-affiliated Citizens for an Alternative Tax System. Another sponsor of the plan, Leo Linbeck, was critical of Bartlett's article, claiming he used "red herrings" and provided false information on the plan and research. In September 2007, Bartlett wrote an article for The New Republic, where he continued his criticism of the FairTax, including his claim that the idea of a national sales tax to replace income taxes originated with the Church of Scientology.

Personal life

Bartlett lives in Great Falls, Virginia. He is a member of the American Economic Association and the .

Works

;Books
;Contributor to