Bruce Bartlett
Bruce Bartlett
Bruce Reeves Bartlettis an American historian whose area of expertise is supply-side economics. He served as a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and as a Treasury official under George H. W. Bush...
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth11 October 1951
certainly misleading morally situation wrong
Morally it was wrong to do so in this situation and certainly misleading to the officer,
blatant debating encourage errors falsehoods intervene interview minute offered point respond separately views
Why not interview those with opposing views separately and give each more than a minute or two to make their point without having to respond to another person's debating tactics? And why not encourage interviewers to intervene when blatant errors or falsehoods are offered as facts?
believe locks decline
I believe any decline would lock in a Fed increase with some certainty.
ideas dumb trying
With all due respect to Speaker Hastert, trying to eliminate the IRS by adopting a national retail sales tax is a very dumb idea.
recovery years investment
There's bound to be a recovery in [capital spending] sometime soon. We have had basically no capital investment for about year. At some point, machinery wears out, and you've got to replace it.
responsibility white house
The problem we have had on the budget all along is a lack of adult supervision on the part of the White House. You can't blame members of Congress for looking out for their parochial interests. It is the president's responsibility to look out for the national interest.
eye thinking saving
So I think we shouldn't be overly concerned about the decline in personal saving at this particular moment and time, but it's something we certainly need to keep an eye on.
glasses drug doubt
The break for me was the Medicare drug benefit in 2003. It's just grossly expensive, bad policy. After that, I no longer gave them the benefit of the doubt and started seeing the glass as half-empty.
freedom cutting games
Democrats will play the old Washington game of calling reductions in the rate of growth of spending for any program a 'cut'.
cutting thinking government
The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to - to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government.
people unemployment republican
People are increasingly concerned about unemployment, but Republicans have nothing to offer them.
thinking idiot disagree
Rick Perry's an idiot, and I don't think anyone would disagree with that,
thinking years ideas
The conservative side of our political spectrum has had an outsized voice over the last few years. I think especially since the establishment of Fox News, which has created an echo chamber in which people just hear the same ideas repeated ad infinitum. And you know, it's just basic advertising, basically. You hear the same idea over and over again. Or you can call it propaganda if you like.
country memories moving
Up until 1986, the top marginal rate, the top statutory rate was 50 percent. Now it's 35 percent. And all the pressure is on to lower that even further. And this just doesn't make a great deal of sense. When people say, 'Oh, we can't raise taxes on the rich. They'll go on strike, they'll move to another country.' But within recent memory, it hasn't been that long ago that we had rates that were substantially higher. And these people did just fine. I just think that there's a disconnect between the facts of what taxes do and the sort of mythology of what they do.