Facing the Future

This week on Facing the Future we took a close look at Social Security and Medicare, the two largest programs in the federal budget. Between them they cost nearly $2.2 trillion dollars in 2023, roughly 36 percent of total federal spending. They also affect the retirement income and healthcare of millions of Americans. 

On Monday, May 6, the Social Security and Medicare trustees issued their 2024 report, which again indicated that both programs have serious challenges ahead, and those challenges are not too far off.

This week on Facing the Future we’ll look at the future of Social Security with former U.S. Representative Reid Ribble (R-WI), who served in Congress from 2011-2017.

In 2016, Ribble released the Save Our Social Security Act (S.O.S.) with a bipartisan group of co-sponsors. We discussed that plan with him and why he thinks Social Security reform is essential.

This week on Facing the Future, we'll discuss a new report on fraud by the Government Accountability Office, along with a review of the foreign aid spending bill and the latest news on the economy.

This week on Facing the Future, we'll get some policy ideas from three college students who recently took part in an annual Fiscal Challenge competition where teams from around the country devise and defend their own plans for putting the federal budget on a sustainable path. Dr. Mike Aguilar, founder and president of the Fiscal Challenge also joined the discussion.

This week on Facing the Future, we'll look at what happens at the end of 2025 when many of the tax cuts enacted in 2017 are scheduled to expire. What should Congress be doing to prepare for this fiscal cliff? How much would it cost to extend the tax cuts? Are there viable options to offset the revenue loss? We’ll get some perspectives on all these questions from Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

This week on Facing the Future, Concord Coalition Chief Economist Steve Robinson discusses his new issue brief, "The Rhetoric and Reality of Taxing the Rich." Then we'll talk with Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute about his new column explaining that "Major Budget Reform Must Accommodate Legislators' Need to Give Money Away."

This week on Facing the Future, we'll look at the economics of immigration reform with Teresa Cardinal Brown, Senior Advisor for Immigration and Border Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

With the U.S on track to have more deaths than births by 2040, immigration is an increasingly necessary component for a growing economy. Is there a way forward on bipartisan reform?

This week on Facing the Future we hear from Zach Moller, director of the economic program at Third Way, a center-left think tank. He'll discuss his recent report called, "A Democratic Case for Fiscal Responsibility." We'll also look at the latest numbers on jobs and inflation.

This week on Facing the Future, we look at President Biden's new budget. It has a plausible deficit reduction path but are the policies used to get there plausible as well?

Our guests are Josh Gordon of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute.

This week on Facing the Future our in-house panel of experts, policy director Tori Gorman and chief economist Steve Robinson, will preview the president’s State of the Union Address, scheduled for Thursday, March 7, and the president’s budget submission, scheduled for Monday, March 11.