To A Meeting of Prosperity Caucus

with Guest Speaker

Harold Furchtgott-Roth

“Spectrum Allocation and Economic Growth”

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

6:00 p.m.

Location:

Heritage Foundation

214 Massachusetts Ave NE
Washington DC 20002-4999
Get directions to Heritage

RSVP

Harold Furchtgott-Roth is the founder and president of Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises, an economic consulting firm. From 2001-2003, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth was a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. From 1997 through 2001, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. Before his appointment to the FCC, he was chief economist for the House Committee on Commerce and a principal staff member on the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Daniel Corrin from Washington, D.C., notes that “every January the federal government increases retirees’ Social Security payments, federal pensions, and government workers’ salaries by the growth in the Consumer Price Index.” He suggests that the federal government wait until the cost of living has gone up by 5 percent before implementing any of these Cost of Living Adjustments. Assuming a steady 3 percent inflation rate, for example, the federal government would give out a 5 percent COLA every 20 months instead of a 3 percent one every year. Over time, the savings add up (Corrin’s back-of-the-envelope calculation has the federal government cutting spending by more than $250 billion over the first five years).

The entire article can be found here.

To A Meeting of the Prosperity Caucus

with Guest Speaker

Douglas Elmendorf

Congressional Budget Office Director

Tuesday, February 23th, 2010

6:00 p.m.

Location:

Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

1101 K Street, N.W. Suite 610
Washington, DC 20005
Get directions to ITIF

RSVP

Douglas W. Elmendorf is the eighth Director of Congressional Budget Office. Before he came to CBO, Doug Elmendorf was a senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. Given how much the federal budget has been in the news and how important the issue will be in the forthcoming Congressional campaign, the opportunity to hear from the head of CBO will be a priceless opportunity. Well, more accurately it will cost $5 for the beer, soda, and pizza.

Also, the Prosperity Caucus was recently profiled in Roll Call (see below). Friends of the Prosperity Caucus are also invited to join their groups on Facebook and Linkedin.

Prosperity Caucus Stays Faithful to Its Conservative History

Hill Caucus Enjoys a Rise

By Kristin Coyner
Roll Call Staff

Feb. 3, 2010, 12 a.m.

When you step into the room, you can tell this isn’t your typical night at the Heritage Foundation offices on Massachusetts Avenue Northeast. For starters, it’s the middle of the week, and wine and beer are flowing freely, while the pizza is served straight out of the box. This event is a little rough around the edges, but the attendees have reason to celebrate: Scott Brown won election to the United States Senate.

The crowd keeps trickling in and eventually climbs to about 100 people. Excitement carries over from the previous day’s election results, but plenty of people are also revved about tonight: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is slated to speak.

After a brief introduction, Ryan bounds to the lectern, beer in hand. The lawmaker quickly launches into an indictment on everything from federal spending to the tax code and the “entitlement state.”

After a 10-minute talk, Ryan moves into question-and-answer time, which allows the lawmaker to intermittently swig from his beer in between queries on the Roadmap for America’s Future Act, Ryan’s bill to address the budget; what the Republicans need to do to regain the majority; and Democrats’ plans on health care reform.

Welcome to the Prosperity Caucus, version 2010. Founded in 1986, the group has a simple purpose: to gather libertarian-minded economists, Hill staffers and academics over beer and pizza to hear someone talk about the burning policy issues of the day.

With Washington’s quick pace, group turnover has been the name of the game in the quarter-century that the Prosperity Caucus has been in business. But by tonight’s attendance, it’s pretty clear that a number of attendees are throwbacks themselves, guys — and the group is overwhelmingly male — who have been attending since they were new to Washington 25 years ago.

Ryan is a Prosperity Caucus original. He regularly attended while working for Sen. Bob Kasten (R-Wis.) in the early 1990s. After Kasten’s retirement, Ryan worked as legislative director to Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.).

Ryan has long passed being a regular attendee or having the time to help run the group — it was his first return to the Prosperity Caucus in nearly a decade — but the group’s reins still rest on Capitol Hill. Ike Brannon, an economist with the Republican staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is the man in charge today.

Brannon said he took on the role somewhat unintentionally. “It was kind of in a lull back in 2001 and 2002,” Brannon said. “A friend of mine and I were working at the Joint Economic Committee back then. … A couple people suggested that we take it over, so in 2003 we started it up again.”

Brannon devotes most of his time on behalf of the caucus to securing speakers.

The Prosperity Caucus was the brainchild of Ralph Benko, an attorney who fled New York for Washington during Ronald Reagan’s second term. After securing a civil servant job with the Department of Energy, Benko was ready to recruit for his cause: supply-side economics, the crux of which rested in low tax rates, hard money, free trade and gentle regulations.

“At the time, if you read the New York Times and the Washington Post, we were thick on the ground,” Benko said. “You couldn’t swing a dead cat in a room without hitting at least three supply-siders. … I looked around looking for all these supply-siders in whom at the end of the day I could make common cause, and I couldn’t find any. It was the weirdest thing.”

So Benko decided to do something about it. “I made it my mission to track down every arguable supply-sider in Washington,” he said. “If I read a quotation in the newspaper that sounded like it had supply-side connotations, I would just call them up.”

Benko easily drops the names of supply-side originalists, many of whom attended the Prosperity Caucus in its early days: Basil Petrou, Paul Craig Roberts, Arthur Laffer and Jude Wanniski.

Benko gathered a group for drinks at the Apple and Eve Bar in L’Enfant Plaza in 1986. The only agenda was to socialize. Upon leaving, everyone agreed that is was something that should be continued, so the task fell on Benko.

Eventually the group became too big for bars, so conservative think tanks or House committee rooms served as host, always with the accompaniment of beer and pizza and a $5 cover.

Back in the early days, Benko said there was an inside joke to the Prosperity Caucus. “Nobody ever made it explicit, but everybody got the joke — this was Jack Kemp’s team,” Benko said. “When Kemp got elected president, this was going to be the pool of talent from which he was going to be recruiting.”

Kemp, a New York Republican and an advocate of supply-side economics, did run for president in 1988, but he lost in the primary to George H.W. Bush. Kemp would go on to work in the Bush administration as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, taking many of the Prosperity Caucus faithful with him as staff.

In the early 1990s, the group peaked at nearly 900 members.

Benko led the group for six years before transferring leadership in 1992 to Stephen Moore, who was an economist at the Joint Economic Committee and is now a Wall Street Journal editorial board member. The group would have two other leadership successions before Brannon took over in 2003.

Brannon said he’s trying to usher the Prosperity Caucus into the age of social media. The group recently established a Web site and is revamping its Facebook page.

Ultimately, Brannon said he would be content if things didn’t change too much. Typically, monthly meetings number about 50 people, a quarter of whom are Hill staffers.

“My idea is to have a place where people who want to think about big thoughts, about long-term issues, can come and get together and argue about those things and meet other people like that,” Brannon said.

Regardless of what happens, the Prosperity Caucus’ staying power can’t be disputed. Ryan even immortalized the group with the name of his political action committee, the Prosperity PAC.

And Benko predicts that “things are going to be getting very, very interesting over the next couple of years, and this group, whether it’s on the surface or in its own quiet modest unassuming way, is going to be a key part of developing the solution to the incredible fiscal crisis that is about to come.”

To A Meeting of Prosperity Caucus

with Guest Speaker

Paul Ryan

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

6:00 p.m.

Location:

Heritage Foundation

214 Massachusetts Ave NE
Washington DC 20002-4999
Get directions to Heritage

RSVP

Congressman Ryan is the Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee, where he works to bring fiscal discipline and accountability to the federal government. He is a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy, Social Security, health care and trade laws. Paul has focused his recent legislative efforts on addressing our long-term fiscal crisis: the explosion of entitlement spending.

To A Meeting of Prosperity Caucus

with Guest Speaker

Matt Continetti

Recent Book: The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

6:00 p.m.

Location:

American Enterprise Institute

1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
[Directions to AEI]

RSVP

Upcoming Events:

January 20^th, Heritage Foundation with Congressman Joe Barton

Matthew Continetti is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard. His articles and reviews have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and Doublethink. He lives in Washington, D.C. His book, “The K-Street Gang,” was published in April 2006, and he recently authored The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star.

To A Meeting of Prosperity Caucus

with Guest Speaker

Bruce Bartlett

The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward

(Link)

David Leonhardt Article: Partisan Economics in Action

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

6:00 p.m.

Location:

American Enterprise Institute

1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
[Directions to AEI]

RSVP

Upcoming Events:

November 18^th, Heritage Foundation with Robert Pozen (book)

Bruce Bartlett was deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, where he served from September 1988 to January 1993. In 1987 and 1988, Bartlett was a senior policy analyst in the Office of Policy Development at the White House.

From 1985 through 1987, he was a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Between 1976 and 1984, Bartlett held numerous positions on Capitol Hill. In 1976, he served on the staff of Rep. Ron Paul of Texas as a legislative assistant. In 1977, he joined the staff of Rep. Jack Kemp of New York as a special assistant and staff economist. While with Kemp, Bartlett helped draft the famous Kemp-Roth tax bill. Between 1979 and 1980, he worked for Sen. Roger Jepsen of Iowa as chief legislative assistant. In 1981, Bartlett joined the staff of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress as deputy director, becoming executive director in 1983. Bartlett is a prolific author, having published over 900 articles in national publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, as well as many prominent magazines such as Fortune. In 1996, one of his columns inspired Bob Dole’s 15 percent tax reduction plan.

Bartlett has also written for important academic journals and published four books, including Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action, published in 1981.

To A Meeting of Prosperity Caucus

with Guest Speaker

Richard Reeves

Director of the think tank Demos

and author of the new book:  John Stuart Mill–Victorian Firebrand

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

6:00 p.m.

Location:

Heritage Foundation

214 Massachusetts Ave NE
Washington DC 20002-4999

RSVP

Upcoming Events:

October, AEI

Richard Reeves is the Director of Demos, a London-based think tank.  His latest book is John Stuart Mill – Victorian Firebrand, an intellectual biography of the British liberal philosopher and politician, which was shortlisted for the Channel Four Political Book of the Year, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Richard is a political columnist for Prospect magazine and a regular contributor to The Guardian, Observer and New Statesman as well as a range of British radio and television programmes.

To the Annual Prosperity Caucus Happy Hour

Come join your fellow Prosperity Caucus members in drinks, food and intelligent conversation

(by the way, the food and drinks are on us).

with Special Guests

Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University, who will discus his new book Create Your Own Economy

and

Doug Holtz-Eakin, former chief economic advisor to the McCain campaign, who will talk about the Forum for Issues, Ideas, and Innovation

Monday, August 3, 2009 6:00 p.m.

Location: Union Pub

201 Massachusetts Ave, NE (across the street from Heritage Foundation)

RSVP

Upcoming Events:

September, 2009: Tucker Carlson at Heritage Foundation

John Taylor

Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics

Stanford University

Topic

A discussion and book signing of Dr. Taylor’s new book, Getting Off Track

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

6:00 p.m.

Location:

Americans for Tax Reform

722 12^th St., NW
Suite 400
Washington, DC 20005

RSVP

Upcoming Events:

July – Heritage Foundation with guest Rich Miniter of The Washington Times

August—Annual Happy Hour at Union Pub

John B. Taylor is the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University.  He formerly served as the Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research where he is currently a Senior Fellow.  He is also the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.  Taylor’s fields of expertise are monetary policy, fiscal policy, and international economics.