Facing the Future

This week on Facing the Future, Mark Warshawsky of the American Enterprise Institute explains why the projected finances of both Social Security and Medicare were substantially worse in the 2026 trustees report than they were last year and why early action is the best way to prevent sudden cuts.

This week on Facing the Future, G. William Hoagland, Senior Vice President of the Bipartisan Policy Center, lays out the case for public engagement on major budget decisions, gives an update on the federal budget and reacts to the new Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports.

This week on Facing the Future, host Bob Bixby joins Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Jonathan Silver of Affinity Solutions and Andrew Lewis of the University of Cincinnati's Portman Center in a panel discussion on strategies for getting the public to put deficit reduction on the political agenda.

This week on Facing the Future, Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute lays out the pros and cons of the president's request for a 50 percent increase in the defense budget.

This week on Facing the Future, former U.S. Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) explains why he supports a new fiscal commission as a way of finding solutions to the nation's growing debt and how reinstating the "Conrad rule" in the Senate would help.

This week on Facing the Future, Molly Reynolds of the Brookings Institution explains why the budget resolution recently passed by Congress is highly unusual and a year behind schedule.

This week on Facing the Future, students from the University of Iowa and their faculty adviser Dr. Alexandra Nica, describe how they reduced the debt-to-GDP ratio over the next 30 years and what they learned in winning this year's nationwide Fiscal Challenge competition.

This week on Facing the Future, Ben Ritz, Vice President of Policy Development at the Progressive Policy Institute, discusses why new tax cut proposals have him wondering whether Democrats learned the wrong lesson from 2024. 

This week on Facing the Future, Jessica Riedl of the Brookings Institution evaluates President Trump's new budget and describes her findings on the Biden fiscal legacy.

The week on Facing the Future, former Senator Rob Portman and Concord Coalition Executive Director Carolyn Bourdeaux lay out the opportunities for impactful legislation to bring the debt under control. Alex Brill, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, moderates the discussion.