DU Wayback Machine: Episode #347... David Stockman 1981...

Stockman emerged as one of the most powerful and controversial OMB directors ever during a tenure that lasted until his resignation in August 1985. Committed to the doctrine of supply-side economics, Stockman took the lead in directing passage of the "Reagan Budget" (the Gramm-Latta Budget), which Stockman hoped to be a serious curtailment of the "welfare state", gaining a reputation as a tough negotiator with House Speaker Tip O'Neill's Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and Majority Leader Howard Baker's Republican-controlled Senate. During this period, although only in his early 30s, Stockman played a central and highly visible role as the ultimate "budget guru" in the fierce debate and contentious political wrangling over the future direction of the role of the federal government in American society.

Stockman's power within the Reagan Administration waned after the Atlantic Monthly magazine published the famous 18,246 word article, "The Education of David Stockman",<1> in its December 1981 issue, based on lengthy interviews Stockman gave to reporter William Greider. It led to Stockman being "taken to the woodshed by Reagan" as the White House's public relations team attempted to limit the article's damage to Reagan's perceived fiscal-leadership skills. Stockman was quoted as referring to the Reagan Revolution's legacy tax act as: "I mean, Kemp-Roth was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate.... It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down.' So the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory." Of the budget process in his first year on the job, Mr. Stockman is quoted as saying: "None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers," which was used as the subtitle of the article.


After Stockman's first year at OMB and on the heels of 'being taken to the woodshed by the president' over his candor with Atlantic's William Greider, Stockman became disillusioned with the projected trend of increasingly large federal deficits and the rapidly expanding national debt, which he blamed on the Reagan tax cut. On 1 August 1985, he left OMB and later wrote a memoir of his experience in the Reagan Administration titled The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed in which he specifically criticized the failure of Congressional Republicans to support a reduction in government spending as necessary offsets to the large tax cuts, in order to avoid the creation of large deficits and an exploding national debt.