Tax Policy Budget - Speakers
Federal Budget and Tax Policy for a Sound Fiscal Future
19-21 March 2009
CHERYL BLOCK
Professor Block joined the Washington University Law School faculty in 2007 after spending the 2006-07 academic year as a visiting professor. She regularly teaches courses on tax law and tax policy and also teaches a course on the legislative process and statutory interpretation. Before joining the Washington University faculty, Professor Block was a member of the George Washington University Law School faculty since 1985, and was awarded a Distinguished Faculty Service Award by George Washington University Law School's Class of 1992. She also has taught at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of New Mexico law schools. Professor Block is the author of Corporate Taxation: Examples & Explanations (Aspen Law & Business, 3d ed. 2004). She has written numerous articles on taxation, public policy relating to federal bailouts, legislative voting rules, social choice theory, and most recently, the interplay between tax and budget policy. Her book, entitled Overt and Covert Bailouts: Developing an Effective Public Policy, is forthcoming in 2010 with Cambridge University Press. Before her academic career, Professor Block was an associate at Lord, Day & Lord in New York City, practicing in the tax area. She also clerked for Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy, United States District Court, Southern District of New York.
NEIL BUCHANAN
Neil H. Buchanan teaches tax law and contract law at The George Washington University Law School. He received his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University, specializing in macroeconomics, the history of economic thought, and economic methodology, and his B.A. from Vassar College. He has held full-time faculty positions in economics at several colleges and universities and has also taught law at Rutgers-Newark and at NYU. Professor Buchanan's current research focuses largely on the long-term tax and spending patterns of the federal government, highlighting such issues as budget deficits, the national debt, and the long-run prospects for the Social Security system. He also is developing a long-term research project that asks how current policy choices should be shaped by concerns for the interests of future generations. In a separate research project, he is analyzing survey data to determine the sources of the salary disadvantages that women face in the U.S. legal profession.
STUART BUTLER
Stuart Butler is the vice president of Domestic and Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Since joining Heritage in 1979, Stuart Butler has played a major role in shaping the policy debate on a wide range of domestic policy issues from health care and Social Security to welfare reform and privatizing government services. In 2002, he spent a semester at Harvard University as a Fellow at the Institute of Politics, and currently he is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Graduate School. Butler has degrees in physics and math and a doctorate in American economic history from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Butler’s abiding passion is health care reform, where he has argued for a restructured system based on consumer choice and state-led innovation. He also has been published in leading academic journals, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and Health Affairs, and in leading newspapers. In addition to the dozens of research papers he has written for Heritage, Butler is the author of three books: Enterprise Zones: Greenlining the Inner Cities (1981), Privatizing Federal Spending (1985), and Out of the Poverty Trap (1987), and has edited several others. He has testified before Congress on a range of policy issues.
STEVE FAZZARI
Steven Fazzari, Professor of Economics and Associate Director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis, received his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. Professor Fazzari's research explores two main areas: the financial determinants of investment and R&D spending by U.S. firms and the foundations of Keynesian macroeconomics. His published articles appear in a wide variety of academic. A recent Google Scholar search found more than 4,000 citations to Fazzari's publications. In addition, his research and commentary on public policy issues has been highlighted in the national media and international web publications. Fazzari teaches macroeconomics, from introductory freshman courses to advanced seminars for Ph.D. students. He has won numerous teaching awards and is especially honored to have received the 2002 Missouri Governor’s award for excellence in university teaching, the 2007 Emerson Award for teaching excellence, and Washington University's distinguished faculty award, also in 2007. He has served on many university committees and task forces. After six years as chair of the Department of Economics, Fazzari is now a member of the Washington University Arts & Sciences Academic Planning Committee. In 2008, Fazzari began a new leadership role as Associate Director the Weidenbaum Center, an independent unit of Arts and Sciences that supports social science research and organizes public outreach programs.
J. CLIFTON FLEMING
J. Clifton Fleming, Jr. received the Juris Doctor degree from the George Washington University Law School in 1967. He holds the Wilkinson Chair at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, U.S.A., where he has taught since 1974. His subjects include U.S. income taxation, inbound and outbound international income taxation and public international law. He is a regular visiting professor at the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. He held the Freeland Eminent Visiting Scholar Chair at the University of Florida College of Law in 2002, he has been a visiting professor at the Murdoch University Law School, Perth, Australia, he has twice been a visiting professor at the T.C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland and he was a Fulbright visiting professor at the University of Nairobi. Professor Fleming is a member of the American Law Institute and the European Association of Tax Law Professors. He has served as Professor-in-Residence in the Chief Counsel’s Office of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and has chaired the Teaching Taxation Committee of the American Bar Association Tax Section. He is admitted to practice in the States of Utah and Washington. [view] A partial list of his publications.
EDWARD KLEINBARD
Edward D. Kleinbard is currently Chief of Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation where he began work on September 17, 2007. The Joint Committee is one of four Congressional joint committees; its staff functions as a nonpartisan office to assist Congress in every aspect of the tax legislative process, from the development and analysis of tax proposals for Members of Congress to the drafting of tax bills, estimations of all revenue legislation considered by the Congress, and investigations of various aspects of the Federal tax system. Prior to his appointment to the Join Committee, he worked as a partner based in the New York office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. Mr. Kleinbard's expertise focuses on federal income tax matters, including taxation of new financial products, financial institutions and international mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Kleinbard is widely recognized as one of the elite tax lawyers in the United States. He is consistently listed in The International Who’s Who of Corporate Tax Lawyers, which most recently (fourth edition, 2004) named him one of the top 15 tax lawyers worldwide, calling him an "outstanding" practitioner and "one of the very best in the USA." He is distinguished in The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers (2007) as a leading tax lawyer. Mr. Kleinbard is similarly included in the PLC Which Lawyer? Yearbook (2007) and the PLC Handbook: Tax on Corporate Transactions (2007-2008) as a "leader" in tax law.
ANITA KRISHNAKUMAR
Anita S. Krishnakumar is an Associate Professor at St. John’s University School of Law, where she teaches Legislation, Introduction to Law, and Trusts & Estates. Professor Krishnakumar holds an A.B. (with highest honors) from Stanford University and a J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was a Coker Teaching Fellow and served as the Chair of the Notes Committee for the Yale Law Journal and as a Senior Editor of the Yale Law and Policy Review. After graduating from law school she clerked for the Hon. José A. Cabranes on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then worked as an associate in the appellate litigation group at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw and as a litigation associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. From 2004 to 2006, she was a visiting professor at Touro Law School, where she won the Visiting Professor of the Year Award in 2005. Professor Krishnakumar’s scholarship focuses on the legislative process and statutory interpretation. She has published several articles about the budget process and the legislative process.
REBECCA KYSAR
Before joining the faculty at Brooklyn Law School, Rebecca Kysar practiced as a tax associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where she was responsible for all tax aspects of complex domestic and international transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, securities offerings, bank financings, joint ventures, and restructurings. Professor Kysar’s publications examine the tax legislative process and have appeared in Tax Notes and the Georgia Law Review. An additional article is forthcoming in the Cornell Law Review. At Yale Law School, she was a Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal and a Coker Teaching Fellow. Following law school, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Richard Cardamone of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
RANDALL MARIGER
Randall Mariger has been a senior economist in the Office of Economic Policy of the U.S. Department of the Treasury since October 2001. Before joining the Treasury Department, Mr. Mariger was a director at PricewaterhouseCoopers for two years, an economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for nine years, and an assistant professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Washington in Seattle for eight years. While on leave for the 1986 academic year, he served as a senior staff economist for the President’s Council of Economics Advisers. During his professional career, Mr. Mariger has done analyses of a wide variety of fiscal policy issues, including capital gains taxation, the government’s role in health care, private pensions, and Social Security reform. He is the author of Consumption Behavior and the Effects of Government Fiscal Policies, published by Harvard University Press, and has published numerous articles on a range of policy related issues.
ROBERT J. PERONI
Professor Robert Peroni is the James A. Elkins Centennial Chair in Law at the University of Texas School of Law. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of federal taxation law and professional responsibility and legal ethics. He has co-authored five books, including the three-volume treatise U.S. International Taxation, and has written numerous articles. Professor Peroni was a member of the Tulane law faculty (from 1981-1989) and the George Washington University law faculty (from 1989-2003). During the 1985-86 academic year, he served as a professor-in-residence in the Office of Chief Counsel of the IRS. Professor Peroni also has taught as a visiting professor on the law faculties of New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas, UCLA, and Northwestern University. During the fall 2009 semester, he will be a Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Peroni has been the academic co-chair of the Advisory Board for the Annual Institute on Current Issues in International Taxation, co-sponsored by the IRS and the George Washington University Law School, since 1991, and also is the academic co-chair of the biennial Parker C. Fielder Oil and Gas Tax Conference, co-sponsored by the IRS and the University of Texas School of Law. He is currently serving as a Vice Chair of the ABA Section of Taxation’s Committee on Foreign Activities of U.S. Taxpayers and previously served as the Chair of the AALS’ Tax Section.
DAVID PRIMO
David M. Primo, an associate professor of political science at the University of Rochester, received his Ph.D. in Political Science and M.A. in Economics from Stanford University. His research focuses on American politics and political economy. Primo’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and several other grant-making organizations. In 2005 he was selected as the recipient of two teaching awards at the University of Rochester. Primo has published widely in political science and economics journals and in several edited volumes. He has also published two books. His first book, The Plane Truth: Airline Crashes, the Media, and Transportation Policy, was co-authored with Roger Cobb and published in 2003 by the Brookings Institution Press. Primo’s second book, Rules and Restraint: Government Spending and the Design of Institutions, published in 2007 by the University of Chicago Press as part of the American Politics and Political Economy Series, was selected as the recipient of the 2007 Alan Rosenthal Prize given by the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association. Primo is currently working on his next book, Models with Meaning: Reimagining the Science of Politics, which is under contract with Oxford University Press and co-authored with Kevin Clarke.
ADAM ROSENZWEIG
Adam H. Rosenzweig is an Associate Professor of Law and Israel Treiman Faculty Fellow at Washington University in St Louis, where he teaches federal income tax, international tax and international business transactions. He received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, and his LL.M from New York University School of Law. Prior to joining the faculty of Washington University, Professor Rosenzweig was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northwestern University School of Law, and before that was in private practice at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, LLP in New York and served as a law clerk to the Honorable James L. Dennis of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Rosenzweig’s current research focuses on the taxation of financial markets and private investment funds as they relate to international tax, with an emphasis on tax competition and tax havens. His publications include Harnessing the Costs of International Tax Arbitrage in the Virginia Tax Review and Imperfect Financial Markets and the Hidden Costs of a Modern Income Tax forthcoming in the SMU Law Review. His current research project examines the role that revenue and budgetary constraints play in creating and exacerbating tax competition and tax havens.
IRENE RUBIN
Irene Rubin is Professor Emeritus of political science in the Division of Public Administration at Northern Illinois University. Her research interests include public budgeting, qualitative methodology, and governmental contracting. She is the author of many articles and several books on public budgeting, including The Politics of Public Budgeting and two books on cutbacks in the federal
government, Balancing the Federal Budget: Trimming the Herds or Eating the Seed Corn, and Shrinking the Federal Government: The Effect of Cutbacks on Five Federal Agencies. She was Editor of the Public Administration Review (PAR) from 1996-1999, Editor of Public Budgeting and Finance for two years; and book review editor for PAR for three years. She is an occasional developmental editor for the Government Finance Officers Association in their publication series. She volunteers for the University Annuitant Association, advocating for the preservation of pension funding and health care benefits. She holds a Masters degree in East Asian Studies from Harvard, and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago.
ALLEN SCHICK
Allen Schick is Distinguished University Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, where has taught since l981. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Yale University and a B.A. from Brooklyn College, Schick previously served at a Senior Specialist at the Library of Congress, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Assistant Professor at Tufts University. Schick is the author of more than a dozen books including Congress and Money, The Capacity to Budget, Modern Budgeting, and The Federal Budget: Politics, Policy, Process. Schick has worked in 45 of the 50 states and approximately 50 countries, serving on public management, political institutions, budgeting, and financial management.
DANIEL SHAVIRO
Daniel Shaviro, the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at NYU Law School, is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School. At NYU School of Law Shaviro teaches various tax courses, including a scholarly colloquium on tax policy and public finance. Before entering law teaching, he spent three years in private practice at Caplin & Drysdale, a leading tax specialty firm, and three years as a Legislation Attorney at the Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation, where he worked extensively on the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In 1987, Shaviro began his teaching career at the University of Chicago Law School, and he joined the New York University School of Law in 1995. Shaviro’s scholarly work examines tax policy, budget policy, and entitlements issues. Books he has published include Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax (Urban Institute Press, 2009), Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government’s March Toward Bankruptcy (Cambridge U. Press, 2006), Who Should Pay for Medicare? (U. Chicago Press, 2004), Making Sense of Social Security Reform (U. Chicago Press, 2000), When Rules Change: An Economic and Political Analysis of Transition Relief and Retroactivity (U. Chicago Press, 2000), and Do Deficits Matter? (U. Chicago Press, 1997).
MURRAY WEIDENBAUM
Murray Weidenbaum holds the Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professorship at Washington University in St. Louis where he also is Honorary Chairman of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy. He has served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Nixon Administration and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Reagan. Earlier he was the corporate economist for the Boeing Company and fiscal economist at the U.S. Bureau of the Budget. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He has written widely on economic and financial issues. His latest books are Business and Government in the Global Marketplace (7th ed., 2004) and The Competition of Ideas: The World of the Washington Think Tanks (2008).
JOSEPH WHITE
Joseph White is Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy, Chair of the Department of Political Science, Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Director of the Center for Policy Studies at Case Western Reserve University. He earned his AB in Political Science from the University of Chicago and his MA and PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Before
coming to CWRU, he was Associate Professor of Health Systems Management in the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine (1998-2000); directed a Twentieth Century Fund project on “The Attack on Entitlements for the Elderly” (1996-1999); and was, in succession, Senior Research Analyst, Research Associate, and Senior Fellow in Governmental Studies at The Brookings Institution (1988 – 1996). He has also taught on a visiting basis at Georgetown University, The Johns Hopkins University, and Carleton College. Dr. White’s research focuses on health care policy and politics both in the U.S. and abroad, especially cost control; U.S. national budgeting policy and politics; decision-making in the U.S. Congress; and the policy issues and political disputes related to entitlements for the elderly. He currently teaches courses on Health Policy and Politics, Interest Groups in the Policy Process, and Bureaucratic Politics in the U.S.. Dr. White is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and serves on the Council of the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association.
PETER WIEDENBECK
Peter Wiedenbeck is an expert in the areas of federal income taxation and the regulation of employee benefit plans. ERISA in the Courts, a book for federal judges on the labor law regulation of employee pension and welfare benefit plans under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, was published by the Federal Judicial Center in 2008. Oxford University Press is scheduled to publish an expanded version of the book, including analysis of the qualified retirement plan nondiscrimination rules and discussion of the future of private pensions, in late 2009. Wiedenbeck has coauthored three casebooks, Basic Federal Income Taxation (Aspen, 6th ed. 2009) (with William D. Andrews), Cases and Materials on Employee Benefits (West 1996) (with Russell Osgood), and Cases and Materials on Partnership Taxation (West 1989) (with Curtis Berger). He has also written numerous law journal articles, including “The Ideological Component of Judging in the Taxation Context,” 84 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1797 (2006) (with Nancy Staudt and Lee Epstein), “Nondiscrimination in Employee Benefits: False Starts and Future Trends,” 52 Tenn. L. Rev. 167 (1985), and “Charitable Contributions: A Policy Perspective,” 50 Mo. L. Rev. 85 (1985). Following law school Peter Wiedenbeck practiced in Washington, D.C., with the firm Patton, Boggs & Blow (now Patton Boggs LLP), specializing in matters involving federal tax legislation and tax policy. He began his teaching career in 1982 at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and in 1989 served as a visiting professor at Cornell Law School. Wiedenbeck joined the Washington University law faculty in 1990. From 2003 to 2007 he served as associate dean of faculty. He was named the Joseph H. Zumbalen Professor of the Law of Property in 2004.
GEORGE K. YIN
George Yin is the Edwin S. Cohen Distinguished Professor of Law and Taxation and the Class of 1966 Research Professor at the University of Virginia where he has been on the faculty since 1994. From 2003-05, he served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation. He has also been on the law faculty of the University of Florida and a visiting professor at NYU, Pennsylvania, and Brigham Young, practiced law in D.C., and served as tax counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee during the mid-1980s. While on the staff of the Senate Finance Committee, Yin coordinated a major project to reform and simplify the tax laws dealing with corporate-shareholder transactions, including corporate mergers, acquisitions, and reorganizations. Between 1994-99, he was reporter to the American Law Institute's federal tax project concerning the income taxation of private business enterprises, such as closely held corporations, partnerships, and limited liability companies. He has published widely in the areas of tax policy and taxation, and testified at over 20 markups and hearings while serving as Chief of Staff of the Joint Committee. He is currently a member of the IRS Advisory Council and has served as a consultant to a number of organizations, including the ALI, the Department of Treasury, the U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation, the National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means.
HARRY ZEEVE
Harry Zeeve is the National Field Director of The Concord Coalition. The Concord Coalition is a nationwide, non-partisan organization dedicated to educating the public about the federal budget and its consequences for the future. The Concord Coalition has established chapters in states throughout the nation. Mr. Zeeve has a degree in political science from the University of Massachusetts and a law degree from Boston College Law School. Following his graduation from law school, Mr. Zeeve worked in-house as an attorney for a Texas corporation. He joined The Concord Coalition as a volunteer in 1993, and joined Concord’s staff as the Kansas and Missouri Coordinator in 1995. In 1996, Mr. Zeeve became Concord’s California Coordinator and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1997 as Concord’s National Field Director. As National Field Director, Mr. Zeeve is responsible for coordinating Concord’s grassroots activities such as developing chapters, organizing educational events with Members of Congress, federal agencies and other policy organizations, and coordinating guest op-eds, television and radio appearances with Concord’s Field Staff.
