About Dean

Dean Clancy is a policy analyst, consultant, opinion writer, and public speaker who has held high-level policy positions in Congress, the White House, and the U.S. health care industry.

A partner at Adams Auld LLC, he counsels clients on a variety of policy and political matters. His specializes in U.S. health care financing and federal budget policy.

Clancy was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, grew up in Aurora, Colorado, and has spent more than two decades in and around the nation's capital. He and his wife have four children.

Clancy serves on the boards of several educational nonprofits, including the Default Clock Committee, which educates the public in a neutral, factual way about the imminence of a catastrophic U.S. government bond default, and Opportunity Solutions Project, an affiliate of the Foundation for Government Accountability that promotes common sense reforms of public welfare programs.

Clancy is president and founder of HSAs for ALL, a nonprofit that works to enable all Americans, including the uninsured, to have a tax-advantaged Health Savings Account (HSA) and to be able to save and spend their own money for their own health care, tax-free.

Clancy has a personal interest in what he dubs 'renewing the promise of American life' through reforms rooted in common sense and the universal principles of the American founding. He advocates a return to a strictly limited, constitutional government and the traditional American policy mix of 'balanced budgets, sound money, and no income tax.' He advocates the hard-money and small-government policies of Andrew Jackson, the full-dinner-pail economics of William McKinley, and the civil-rights and free-labor principles of Abraham Lincoln.

A passionate advocate for civil rights, federalism, and local self-government, Clancy has compiled an American renewal plan that he believes would reverse the errors of progressivism and restore America's founding principles to the center of the nation's life.

'We already know the formula for happiness. We just have to follow it.'

He is strongly pro-life and dedicated to ending what he calls 'the judicial usurpation of democracy.'

In political terms, Clancy describes himself as a 'decentralist,' eschewing such familiar labels as 'conservative,' 'liberal,' and 'libertarian,' which, he says, have lost their usefulness through overextension. 'I'm absolutely passionate about the need for us to follow the Constitution as originally understood, and I basically oppose monopoly in all its forms, and I stand for the little guy and common sense. Small is beautiful.'

Clancy names E.F. Schumacher and Orestes Brownson as important influences on his thinking, as well as a trio of British Christians with initials for first names: C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

He has written: 'James Madison is my homeboy, Walker Percy is my spirit guide, and Toshiro Mifune is my BSF (best samurai forever). And I would rather be George Smiley than James Bond.'

'To me, the happiest kind of life is the one in which you forget yourself in the service of others, pursue justice without fear, and let yourself be moved by wonder and beauty.' Optimistic by temperament, Clancy gives as his philosophy:

'Be of good cheer. There's always hope. After all, life's an adventure, each new day is an opportunity, and every person is a miracle, even the annoying ones.'