Facing the Future

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.

This week on Facing the Future, we talk to Richard Jackson, President of the Global Aging Institute about the combined effects of declining fertility rates, longer life expectancy and the baby boomers entering retirement en masse on our federal budget and our economy. It means more spending on Medicare and Social Security, with a smaller working age population to pay into these safety net programs and sustain them. We will also catch up with Concord Coalition policy director Tori Gorman and chief economist Steve Robinson on the latest economic news.

This week on Facing the Future, Concord Coalition policy director Tori Gorman joins us to analyze the long-term budget outlook recently released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It projects, among other things, a fast growing elderly population combined with declining birth rates and higher health care costs. All this leading to our national debt nearly doubling as a share of our economy over the next 30 years. Plus, we'll revisit our recent conversation about border climate adjustments designed to cut global greenhouse gas emissions and give American manufacturers some competitive advantage. 

This week on Facing the Future, we are joined by the newest member of The  Concord Coalition's Board of Directors, Dr. Carolyn Bourdeaux. Dr. Bourdeaux has extensive experience in public sector budgeting. During the Great Recession, she was director of the Georgia Senate Budget and Evaluation Office, where she worked with both parties to balance Georgia’s budget and get the state economy back on track. She brought this valuable budget and fiscal knowledge to Congress when she served as a member representing Georgia's 7th district. Bourdeaux earned a reputation as a serious legislator who worked with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to find solutions to some of our complicated problems, and shares with us the many lessons she's learned along the way. 

This week on Facing the Future, we hear from two veterans of many Congressional budget battles, Democrat Tom Kahn, who teaches budget policy at American University, and Republican Bill Hoagland, the Senior Vice President of the Bipartisan Policy Center. They recently penned a joint op-ed in which they urge Americans to put pressure on their elected officials to make difficult compromises to address our long-term national debt, because neither party can do it alone.

This week on Facing the Future, we try to examine the mixed signals on the economic trends with a strong jobs report and inflation easing somewhat but key consumer price indicators still too high. For that, we turn to economist Robert Carroll with Ernst and Young, and then we get further analysis on that plus data from the Congressional Budget Office showing the federal budget deficit on the rise again after coming down the last couple of years from Concord Coalition policy director Tori Gorman and chief economist Steve Robinson.

This week on Facing the Future, we hear from Diane Lim - the "Economist Mom" - who gives us some very interesting highlights from a recent Congressional Report she helped put together looking at how the federal government can invest in robust economic growth over the next decade or so. The bottom line: the government should invest more in young people and children to get more economically productive adults. Plus we examine the final score issued by the Congressional Budget Office for the bipartisan debt limit and spending reduction deal enacted by Congress late last week.

This week on Facing the Future, we get expert analysis from the Concord Coalition's policy director Tori Gorman and chief economist Steve Robinson on the debt limit deal struck between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to avert a federal default. We also hear excerpts from a very interesting forum held last week with Harvard economist Jason Furman and Rohit Kumar of PricewaterhouseCoopers who both question the efficacy of even having a debt limit at all. Furman and Kumar were involved in negotiations between President Obama and Republicans in Congress during the last debt limit crisis in 2011.  

This week on Facing the Future, we talk with Greg Bertelsen, CEO of the bipartisan Climate Leadership Council about so-called 'border carbon adjustments.' The concept is getting substantial interest in Congress from both Republicans and Democrats and would impose fees on imported goods whose production pumps a high amount of carbon smog into the atmosphere. It's meant to raise revenue, reduce carbon emissions, and improve the competitive standing of American manufacturers who run much cleaner operations than rivals in China or India. Plus, we'll get an update from Texas on what's happening at the US-Mexico border from immigration lawyer and former US Ambassador to Belize George Bruno.

This week on Facing the Future, we turn to the Concord Coalition's  veterans of Congress - policy director Tori Gorman and chief economist Steve Robinson - for up to the minute analysis on negotiations between President Biden and Congressional leaders over extending or suspending the nation's debt limit. The federal government may have only a few days or the next week to be able to pay all of its bills in full and on time before a default occurs if a deal cannot be reached. If no deal is reached, the consequences on our economy could be serious and far reaching.