Facing the Future

This week on Facing the Future, we check back in with International Security and Russian/Eurasian affairs professor Adam Stulberg of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech University on the one year anniversary of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine. Stulberg says the war has brought many surprises and poses some complicated questions we need to think about going forward. We'll also get some instant analysis of President Biden's State of the Union Address, specifically what was said (and not said) about major forces impacting the federal budget.

This week on Facing the Future, we talk to Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center about whether the humanitarian and security crisis along the US-Mexican border will be enough to enact some fixes to our broken immigration system. Even with Republicans now controlling the House in a divided Congress, bipartisan talks are underway. Plus, we'll get analysis on the Biden administration's latest move on student loans, which may turn the federal program into grants for college.

This week on Facing the Future, we get the long term perspective on the federal budget and our national debt from Kent Smetters, faculty director of the well-respected Penn Wharton Budget Model. The Budget Model looks at long term trends impacting the federal budget such as projected revenues and expenditures, plus demographics that are already starting to have an enormous impact as the Baby Boomers retire. Dr. Smetters sees our national debt growing higher and faster than ever, and a less productive economy in the future.

This week on Facing the Future, we hear from two authors - Howard Adler and Alex Pollock - who have written a new book called 'Surprised Again: The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble'. The book explores how for the 2nd time in our young century, the federal government's response to an economic crisis had some unintended consequences that we are all paying for. This time, it was the multi-trillion dollar COVID relief packages in two administrations that have significantly contributed to the higher inflation we are all feeling. 

This week on Facing the Future, we get the seasoned perspective of Rohit Kumar to give us some insight on what direction the new Republican majority in the House might pursue when it comes to important fiscal policy choices in the next few months. Kumar is a tax policy expert with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, but also served as a top policy advisor to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. He was around the last time we had a Republican House, and a Democratic Senate and President, and Congress had to act on raising the debt ceiling which is crucial to the economy and budget operations. It wasn't pretty. 

This week on Facing the Future, we speak with University of New Hampshire Political Science Professor Dante Scala about changes the national Democratic party wants to make to its Presidential Primary calendar for 2024 that would have the Granite State lose its first-in-the-nation status. Plus we check in with Concord Coalition Policy Director Tori Gorman and chief economist Steve Robinson about the $1.7 Trillion Omnibus spending package enacted just before Christmas by Congress and President Biden.

This week on Facing the Future, we listen to the best of our program for 2022. This is a year that saw our national debt top $30 Trillion, surging inflation like we haven't seen since the early 1980s, and the largest ground war in Europe since WWII. And all of this with an economy still recovering from the disruptions of the worst pandemic in 100 years. We'll hear from all sorts of economists and federal policy experts who appeared on Facing the Future this past year -  including an advisor to four US Presidents!

This week on Facing the Future, we get the entire Concord Coalition staff on the program to take stock of everything that happened in 2022 that impacted the federal budget and the economy. It was a doozy of a year, with lingering pandemic related supply chain disruptions and a ground war in Europe pushing inflation up to levels we haven't seen in 40 years. The Fed's moves to raise interest rates are making the national debt much more expensive for Congress to carry. We'll review it all plus examine the Santa Claus theory of Congressional budgeting. 

This week on Facing the Future, as the clock ticks down the final days of 2022 and Democratic control of the House, several important tax cuts and credits are set to expire. So can lawmakers strike a deal before the Speaker's gavel is passed to Republicans? We'll hear from tax policy expert George Callas, who was at the center of the action when Congress passed the Trump tax cuts. The individual portion of those cuts is also set to expire in a few years, and we'll get George's take on long-term federal tax policy as well. Because like it or not, we're going to need more revenue to put the federal budget on a more sustainable path.

This week on Facing the Future, we hear from Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Molly Reynolds who specializes in researching Congress. She says the failure of Congress to do the most basic things like pass an annual budget due to partisan polarization and dysfunction weakens the institution and dilutes its constitutionally protected role of appropriating government funds. At the same time, this emboldens Presidents to take unilateral executive actions such as forgiving student loans that cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.