Dan Mitchell

Daniel Mitchell is a co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. Dr. Mitchell advocates supply-side tax cuts and fundamental tax reform. Dr. Mitchell also is the nation’s leading opponent of tax harmonization schemes developed by the Brussels-based European Union, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations. His September 2000 analysis of the OECD’s “harmful tax competition” initiative was the opening salvo in a campaign that ended with Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill announcing in May 2001 that the United States could no longer support international proposals to persecute low-tax jurisdictions. He has now turned his attention to the EU’s infamous “Savings Tax Directive” and a UN proposal to undermine the sovereign right of nations to determine their own tax policy.

Dr. Mitchell is one of the nation’s leading experts on tax reform and supply-side tax policy, and he knows how to explain the politics and complexities of tax policy in easy-to-understand terms. As former Presidential candidate Steve Forbes said of Mitchell’s 1996 book, The Flat Tax: Freedom, Fairness, Jobs, and Growth, “Mitchell marvelously demonstrates how the flat tax will rip away the principal source of political pollution in Washington.” In addition to tax policy, Dr. Mitchell is a trenchant observer of economic developments and an expert on Social Security privatization – particularly the fiscal policy impact of reform and what the US can learn from other nations that have created personal retirement accounts.

Dr. Mitchell’s by-line can be found in such national publications as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Investor’s Business Daily, and Washington Times. He is a frequent guest on radio and television and a popular speaker on the lecture circuit. Dr. Mitchell holds a Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in economics from the University of Georgia. Mitchell was a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and The Heritage Foundation, and an economist for Senator Bob Packwood and the Senate Finance Committee. He also served on the 1988 Bush/Quayle transition team and was Director of Tax and Budget Policy for Citizens for a Sound Economy.