Bruce Bartlett

45
Bruce Bartlett bigraphy, stories - Historians

Bruce Bartlett : biography

October 11, 1951 –

Bruce Reeves Bartlett (b. October 11, 1951, in Ann Arbor, Michigan) is an American historian whose area of expertise is supply-side economics. He served as a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and as a Treasury official under President George H. W. Bush.

Bartlett has written several books and magazine articles critical of the George W. Bush Administration, whose economic policies he believes significantly depart from traditional conservative principles.

Works

Books
  • Bruce R. Bartlett, The Keynesian Revolution Revisited, Committee for Monetary Research and Education, 1977.
  • Bruce R. Bartlett, Cover-Up: The Politics of Pearl Harbor, 1941-1946, Arlington House Productions (1978) ISBN 978-0-87000-423-0
  • Bruce R. Bartlett, Reagonomics: Supply-side economics in action, Arlington House (1981) ISBN 978-0-87000-505-3, Random House Value Publishing (March 24, 1982) ISBN 978-0-517-54817-2
  • Bruce R. Bartlett and Timothy Roth, The Supply Side Solution, Chatham House (October 1983) ISBN 978-0-934540-18-6, Palgrave Macmillan (September 27, 1984) ISBN 978-0-333-37364-4
  • Bruce R. Bartlett, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, Doubleday (February 21, 2006) ISBN 978-0-385-51827-7
  • Bruce R. Bartlett, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past, Palgrave Macmillan (January 8, 2008) ISBN 978-0-230-60062-1, Palgrave Macmillan (January 6, 2009) ISBN 978-0-230-61099-6
  • Bruce R. Bartlett, The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward, Palgrave Macmillan (October 13, 2009) ISBN 978-0-230-61587-8
  • Bruce R. Bartlett, The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform – Why We Need It and What It Will Take, Simon & Schuster (January 24, 2012) ISBN 978-1-4516-4619-1
Contributor to
  • The First Year: A Mandate for Leadership Report, Heritage Foundation, 1982.
  • Supply Side Economics, Aletheia Books, 1982.
  • Agenda ’83: A Mandate for Leadership Report, Heritage Foundation, 1983.
  • The Federal Debt: On-Budget, Off-Budget, and Contingent Liabilities: A Staff Study, U.S. G.P.O., 1983.
  • The Industrial Policy Debate, Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1984.
  • Beyond the Status Quo, Cato Institute, 1985.
  • Articles in National Review, Human Events, Conservative Digest, and Modern Age, and to newspapers. Contributing editor of Libertarian Review.

Personal life

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

Criticism of the neoconservative movement

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 (ISBN 0-385-51827-7), which is critical of the 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."Bruce Bartlett, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, New York: Doubleday, 2006, p. 155

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. Other sponsors of the plan were 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 FairTax/national sales tax has its origins with the Church of Scientology. Bartlett restated information about the bill ("prebate" distribution method, i.e., rebate in advance) and what is included in the rate studies (prebate and government) that the plan’s proponents have disputed and claim are false. defines the rebate (it is based on family size and does not track income as Bartlett criticizes). Section III A & B defines the rebate based on family size and what the rate would be with and without the rebate (Bartlett stated the prebate was not included in rate studies). Section III D(2) and elsewhere in the study for inclusion of Government (Bartlett stated that Government was not include in rate studies). The prebate and government are also included in the . and found the rate to be approx. 23% inclusive (Bartlett criticized that revenue estimators have always found the rate to be much, much higher than 23%).