Crippen, Dan L.: Files, 1987-1988

Office of the Chief of Staff

Deputy Assistant to the President

This collection is available in whole for research use. Some folders may still have withdrawn material due to Freedom of Information Act restrictions. Most frequently withdrawn material is national security classified material, personal privacy, protection of the President, etc.

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Scope and Content Note

Crippen’s Chief of Staff collection is arranged into six collections: SERIES I: Subject File; SERIES II: Domestic Policy Council; SERIES III: Economic Policy Council; SERIES IV: Budget Files; SERIES V: Office of Management and Budget Material; SERIES VI: Schedule File.

Series List

SERIES I: SUBJECT FILE. 1987-1988. 5.0 ft.

This series consists of material pertaining to policies and events, including the Federal budget and deficit, trade relations with Canada and Japan, trade sanctions against South Africa, the 1987 and 1988 Economic Summits, the Federal Reserve Board, tax policy, the stock market and other financial markets, the 1988 drought, housing policy, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, catastrophic health insurance, Medicare, Social Security, the 1988 State of the Union Address, AIDS, airline legislation, overall legislative strategy, and long-range policy planning. The series also includes Crippen’s appointment books from his time in the Chief of Staff office.

SERIES II: Domestic Policy Council Material

This series consists of material regarding specific Domestic Policy Council meetings including agendas, participant lists, decision memos and background material on topics covered at meetings. Topics include the international convention on stratospheric ozone; The President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors; corporate sentencing; privatization; and low-income opportunity. This series also includes minutes for multiple meetings.

SERIES III: Economic Policy Council Material

This series consists of material regarding specific Economic Policy Council meetings including agendas, participant lists, decision memos and background material on topics covered at meetings.

SERIES IV: WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUMS, May 1987-July 1988

This chronologically arranged series contains copies of materials routed to Crippen and others in the White House. A “White House Staffing Memorandum” form is attached to most of the routed material. This form was used to indicate the intended recipients, and to note whether each recipient was receiving a copy in order to act on it with comments and/or edits, or for strictly informational purposes.

Most routed items pertain in some way to a topic covered in Crippen’s Subject File (e.g., budget, tax, trade, or agricultural policy), while a few pertain to other issues of the day. Types of items include: White House memos discussing policy issues; drafts of material intended for eventual public use or distribution, such as speeches, reports, and bill signing and veto statements; drafts of Presidential talking points for meetings; periodic reports on the work of White House staff, that were included in the President’s Weekly Update (see WHORM Subject File category FG001); routine memos to the President recommending public statements on foreign trade, such as proclamations of unfair trade practices by other countries; and some daily and monthly Presidential schedules. Many of the Staffing Memorandums and accompanying documents contain handwritten edits and notations by Crippen and others.

SERIES V. BUDGET FILES, 1987-1988

This series is divided into two subseries pertaining to the preparation of the Federal budget. Each budget covered one fiscal year (FY), which ran from October 1 to the following September 30. Thus, the budget for FY 1988 covered the period from October 1987 through September 1988, and the budget for FY 1989 covered October 1988 through September 1989.

The FY 1988 and FY 1989 budgets were the first to be affected by the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (aka the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings or Gramm-Rudman Act). This law set yearly deficit targets that were to decline to zero by 1991, required that the President submit budgets to Congress that were consistent with these targets, and mandated automatic budget cuts if the targets were not met. However, the Supreme Court struck down some key provisions of the law, and efforts to meet the law’s deficit targets ultimately failed.

Subseries A.: Fiscal Year 1988 Budget

This subseries contains alphabetically arranged folders pertaining to the Executive Branch’s preparation of the FY 1988 federal budget, and related issues. It documents: proposals and statistical information pertaining to Federal spending, including plans to meet Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit targets; proposals pertaining to the budget formulation and legislation process; Congressional meetings and legislative budget strategy; the role of the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, Pete Domenici (R-NM); Congressional proposals to alter the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction goals; the mid-Congressional session review of the budget that was mandated by Gramm-Rudman-Hollings; and factual information prepared for President Reagan.

Subseries B. Fiscal Year 1988 Supplemental and Fiscal Year 1989 Budget

In mid-1988, emergency supplemental budget laws were enacted that provided additional funds to keep certain Federal programs functioning. At the same time, planning was underway for the Federal budget for Fiscal Year 1989. This subseries contains alphabetically arranged folders pertaining to both the preparation of the FY 1989 budget, and the emergency supplemental items to the FY 1988 budget. Documents pertain to the various budget bills involved, Reagan Administration correspondence involving members of Congress, and materials on Administration legislative strategy.

SERIES VI: OMB FILE, 1987-1988

This series consists of reports, issue analyses, and other materials produced by OMB, including background reports used in periodic reviews of various issues. Topics include planning and legislation pertaining to the FY 1988 and FY 1989 budgets, problems in the banking and savings and loan industries, catastrophic health insurance legislation, and privatization. The material is arranged alphabetically.

SERIES VII: Weekly Appointments

This series consists of appointments and meetings recorded in an appointment book for Dan L. Crippen. Entries include dates, times, names and possibly subject of meetings.

SERIES VIII: SCHEDULE FILE, 1987-1988

This series contains draft and final monthly schedules for President Reagan, daily Presidential schedules, internal schedules from some White House units, and schedules pertaining to the 1987 OMB Director’s Review of the Federal budget. The material came to the Reagan Library in three sets, and the Library has retained the original order of these sets.

Biography

Biography

In May 1987, Dan Crippen (1952- ) joined the White House staff to assist Chief of Staff Howard Baker with economic and budget policy, trade policy, and related matters. Crippen had been Baker’s chief counsel and economic policy adviser when Baker was Senate Majority Leader during President Reagan’s first term (1981-1984). From 1985 to 1987 Crippen was Executive Director of the Merrill Lynch International Advisory Council, a group of prominent people – including Baker – that provided the brokerage house Merrill Lynch with advice and support.

Crippen, a South Dakota native, earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of South Dakota. During the 1970s he held positions in NASA, the Brookings Institution (a Washington, D.C. think tank), the South Dakota state budget office, and the Department of the Treasury. He did his postgraduate work at Ohio State University. He received a Ph.D. in public finance in 1981.

Crippen left the White House staff shortly after Baker resigned in July 1988. He returned to the White House, however, in September 1988, as Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, and remained until the end of the Reagan Administration. Crippen later served as Director of the Congressional Budget Office (1999-2003), and as chairman of a panel that advised NASA in the wake of the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster. He currently lives in the Washington, D.C. area, where he works as a consultant, speaker, and writer, and serves on the board of directors of several corporations.

The records in this collection are concerned mostly with budget, tax, and trade policies, including aspects of business or agriculture related to these policies. A large portion pertains to the work of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), and the Department of the Treasury. There is a small amount of material dated before Crippen’s arrival which he utilized in the course of his work.

Record Type

Textual

Last Modified Date

2025-02-07

WHORM Alpha File

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Crippen, Dan L.: Files, 1987-1988

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