David Stockman
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David Alan Stockman (born November 10, 1946) was a U.S. politician, serving as U.S. Representative from the state of Michigan 1977-1981 and as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget 1981-1985.
Stockman was born in Fort Hood, Texas and educated in the public schools of St. Joseph, Michigan. He graduated from Lakeshore High School, 1964 and received a B.A. from Michigan State University, East Lansing in 1968. He pursued graduate studies at Harvard University, 1968-1970 and 1974-1975. He served as special assistant to United States Representative John Bayard Anderson of Illinois, 1970-1972 and was executive director, United States House of Representatives Republican Conference, 1972-1975.
Stockman was elected to the United States House of Representatives for the Ninety-fifth Congress and was reelected to the Ninety-sixth and Ninety-seventh Congresses, serving from January 3, 1977, until his resignation January 27, 1981 to accept appointment as Director of the Office of Management and Budget under U.S. President Ronald Reagan. In 1981, proposed classifying ketchup as a vegetable as part of Reagan's budget cuts for federally financed school lunch programs (it would make it cheaper to satisfy the requirements on vegetable content of lunches). The suggestion was widely ridiculed and the proposal was killed. He was committed to reducing government spending, but left after disagreement with the Reagan's policies. In 1986, he wrote a book critcizing the Reagan administration called The Triumph of Politics. He is best known for having referred to supply-side economics as a "trojan horse" used to cut taxes on the wealthy. Stockman also admitted to purposefully running up the budget deficit and using it as an excuse to cut spending on domestic programs.
He was managing director of Salomon Brothers and eventually became senior managing director of a New York-based investment bank, the Blackstone Group, in the 1990s. He left Blackstone in 1998 to start his own industrial focused private equity firm, appropriately named Heartland Industrial Partners. The firm was charged with putting $1.3 billion of capital to work by investing in traditional, American manufacturing companies. Stockman went on to become the CEO of one of the firm's portfolio companies, Collins and Aikman Corp, a Detroit-based manufacturer of automotive interiors and components. He was ousted from that role days before a Chapter 11 filing on May 17, 2005.