Facing the Future

This week on Facing the Future, we examine the possibility of a government shutdown. If Congress fails to agree on funding levels for the next fiscal year, which begins on October 1st, many government offices will need to close their doors. With less than two weeks to go, negotiators seem far apart and it's not just Democrats vs Republicans. Division among House Republicans has also been a problem. We discuss the state of play with Jon Lieber, managing director of the Eurasia Group and a former senior advisor to Senator Mitch McConnell. 

This week on Facing the Future, we talk to Romina Boccia, Director of Budget and Entitlement Policy for the CATO Institute. Boccia argues in a recent piece that it is time for a new bipartisan commission to take a broad look at the serious fiscal challenges the federal government faces and propose some solutions that would become law directly unless Congress opts out of any of the proposals. This would include everything from how to reduce massive government healthcare spending to raising new revenue and reforming Social Security and Medicare. This idea of a commission has been tried in the past, but often Congress fails to implement any of the reasonable and well thought out reforms. Could this time perhaps be different?

This week on Facing the Future, we catch up with Phill Sletten, research director of the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, a Concord based nonpartisan state budget think tank. Phil walks us through the current state budget snapshot and talks about some of the short and long-term economic challenges facing the Granite State. Though a smaller scale, many of New Hampshire's budgetary problems mirror our national fiscal challenges at the federal level. Plus, we hear from Concord Coalition chief economist Steve Robinson who has just completed a three-part issue brief series looking at the history and future of the Social Security Trust Fund.  

This week on Facing the Future, we hear from Ben Ritz, Director of the Center for Growing America's Future at the Progressive Policy Institute, and one of our more frequent show contributors. Ben has written several interesting pieces including one where he asserts that the Fitch rating agency's recent downgrade of the federal government's credit rating should be a wakeup call for all those concerned about the budget and our national debt - even if the downgrade itself was not warranted. So we talk to Ben about that and also, how is the federal government doing about investing in scientific and technological research and innovation a year after Congress passed the Chips and Science Act.  

This week on Facing the Future, we mark the 88th birthday of Social Security, the benefit program that is a real lifeline for seniors and the disabled. Social Security is now in serious fiscal trouble and its Trust Funds may become insolvent just within the next few years. So we looked back at the history of the program as well as into the future at possible solutions to save Social Security with two experts: Concord Coalition chief economist Steve Robinson, and Dr. Charles Blahous, senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

This week on Facing the Future, we revisit a conversation from earlier this year with Alex Pollock and Howard Adler, authors of a new book entitled "Surprised Again: The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble." The book examines the recent economic crises, including the COVID related economic shutdown and the Great Recession of 2008-10, and asks why these types of events always seem to take us by surprise. Though inflation has come down somewhat from its peak in the last year, it is still a problem for our economy, brought about in large part by the federal government's responses to the two most recent economic crises. Not to mention the trillions of dollars these crisis responses added to our national debt.

This week on Facing the Future, we turn once again to the expertise of David Lerman, editor of CQ Budget Tracker, for a breakdown on the current breakdown in Congress when it comes to passing bills to fund the government. The clock is ticking towards the end of the current fiscal year on September 30th and if nothing is passed, the federal government would go into a partial shutdown. The Senate has passed all 12 appropriations bills out of committee with a strong bipartisan vote (for the first time in a dozen years), but the House is not able to come to consensus. Hard right members are seeking deeper spending cuts than the caps set in the bipartisan debt limit deal between Speaker McCarthy and President Biden. 

This week on Facing the Future, we speak with Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution for an assessment of US national security strategy from Ukraine to China, the Arctic, and everything in between. And, what this means for future US defense spending, which is a significant part of the federal budget. O'Hanlon has served as an advisor to both the Defense Department and the CIA, and gives us a preview of his new paper assessing the Pentagon's budget needs relative to the global threats and challenges we face. Also we'll take a look at how a few small changes to economic assumptions make major changes in long-term projections for the federal budget and our national debt.

This week on Facing the Future, we get an update from Concord Coalition policy director Tori Gorman and chief economist Steve Robinson on the latest economic news plus the looming Congressional battle over appropriations bills for the next fiscal year. No agreement by the end of the current fiscal year on September 30th could force a partial government shutdown. Plus, we visit New Hampshire Boys State where a group of high school students were engaged in serious policy debates over how to reduce the federal deficit over the next 10 years as they took on the Principles and Priorities budget exercise.