Upcoming Conferences
The Minnesota Taxpayers Association Presents:
Beyond Budget Balancing: Core Issues in Fiscal Reform
Featuring Bruce Bartlett
New York Times Best Selling Author and Columnist
and
Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Candidate Forum
If you need assistance, call Linda at 651-224-7477 x101 Thank you.
Date: Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Time: 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. (Business Meeting of MTA Members at 8:00)
Place: St. Paul Hotel, 350 Market Street, St. Paul, MN 55101
AGENDA
8:00 am MTA Business Meeting
9:00 am Conference Registration
9:30 – 11:30 am Lieutenant Governor Candidate Forum
This year, the field of lieutenant governor candidates is distinctive for its depth of experience, accomplishments, skills, and breadth of perspective – particularly in the area of public finance. Our candidate forum will address three areas that have long-term implications for Minnesota traditions of good government and sound public finance in the years ahead:
The Future of State and Local Tax Policy How should we pursue different and at times contradictory principles of good tax policy in a time of economic turmoil, budget deficits, and demographic change?
The Future of State/Local Government Relationships Is the model of the “Minnesota Miracle” still sustainable? How do state/local relationships need to change to ensure good public services at acceptable tax prices?
Government Redesign Where do opportunities exist? How do we get beyond talking about the importance and merits of redesign and actually do it? Are any changes in public administration, budgeting, and compensation systems needed to enable redesign efforts to thrive and prosper?
11:45am – 1:30 pm Conference Luncheon
Guest Speaker: Bruce Bartlett
New York Times Best Selling Author, Historian, and Columnist
Any reader of Bruce Bartlett’s considerable body of work on the intersection of politics, economics and tax policy is struck by his thoughtfulness, his readiness to go outside of political talking points, and his willingness to have his thinking take him where the evidence leads him. His frank assessments, analysis, and commentary challenges thinking and conventional wisdom on both sides of the aisle. As The Economist magazine described him in a recent interview, “Mr Bartlett's loyalties are economic, not partisan.”
He is a columnist for The Fiscal Times, an online newspaper covering the economy, business and personal finance. He was previously a columnist for Forbes Magazine and Creators Syndicate. He also blogs at http://capitalgainsandgames.com.
Bartlett’s work is informed by many years in government, including service on the staffs of Congressmen Ron Paul and Jack Kemp and Senator Roger Jepsen; as staff director of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress; senior policy analyst in the Reagan White House; and deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department during the George H.W. Bush administration.
Bruce is the author of seven books including the New York Times best-seller, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy (Doubleday, 2006). His latest book is The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).