Biography provided by participant
Brian Riedl is the Grover M. Hermann Fellow for Federal Budgetary Affairs at the Heritage Foundation. Riedl mainly focuses on federal spending trends, appropriations, budget process reform, and budget deficits. He also studies economic growth, tax policy, agriculture spending, antipoverty programs, and long-term entitlement spending trends.
As early and 2002 and 2003, Riedl became one of the first writers to note the beginning of a massive federal spending spree under President Bush, which has since pushed federal spending above $25,000 per household. In 2006, Riedl’s writings helped expose $14 billion in additional domestic spending added to an Iraq bill (including Mississippi's "railroad to nowhere") and the ensuing public backlash forced Congress to strip these funds from the bill. In 2008, Riedl was a leading critic of the farm bill, which was ultimately vetoed by President Bush (although overridden by Congress).
Riedl's budget research has been featured in front-page stories and editorials in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. He has discussed budget policy on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN. He also participates in the bipartisan "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour," which holds town hall meetings across America focusing on the looming crisis in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Before coming to Heritage in 2001, Riedl worked for then-Gov. Tommy Thompson, former Rep. Mark Green (R-WI), and the Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly. Riedl holds a bachelor's degree in economics and political science from the University of Wisconsin, and a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton University.
