Facing the Future

This week on Facing the Future, we have an in-house panel of Concord Coalition experts - policy director Tori Gorman and chief economist Steve Robinson - evaluate the validity and credibility of President Biden's recently released Fiscal Year 2024 federal budget plan. The President did propose some changes to Medicare and a significant amount of new revenue, but his plan comes up short in other areas. We take a look at the budget through a set of criteria we developed and assign some color codes - green, yellow and red - to tell us whether the President's budget meets the mark.

This week on Facing the Future, we hear from Andrew Biggs, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In a recent Op-Ed for the Washington Post entitled "Biden Once Cut Social Security. Now, He Can Save It" Biggs argues that both Republicans and Democrats need to stop making empty promises not to touch Social Security retiree benefits if they're unwilling to pay higher payroll taxes to fund them. And we also hear from Concord Coalition chief economist Steve Robinson on how the federal government might still be able to cut Social Security checks even when it hits the debt limit and can't borrow any more money. 

This week on Facing the Future, we get further analysis of the latest 10-year budget and economic outlook recently released by the Congressional Budget Office from Jeff Holland of the Peterson Foundation, who used to run the CBO projection unit. Plus, we hear from Josh Gordon of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget for a closer look at how the runaway train that is healthcare costs is having a major impact on the federal budget over the next 10 years. Gordon also describes some big problems with the popular Medicare Advantage program.

This week on Facing the Future, we are joined one more time by Dr. Philip Swagel, an economist who is Director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The CBO has just released its newest 10 year federal budget and economic outlook. The picture it paints is quite concerning. Deficits are expected to climb to an average of more than $2 trillion per year, and for the first time ever the Social Security trust fund is predicted to go insolvent within that 10-year window. If Congress does not act to shore up the program, beneficiaries could be facing cuts of more than 20%

This week on Facing the Future, we check in with Ben Ritz - director of the Center for Funding America's Future with the Progressive Policy Institute. Ben has written a number of recent works including one exploring what President Biden's call in the State of the Union Address to 'stand up for seniors' means for Social Security and Medicare when their trust funds are on track to run out of money in the next few years. And, how to move forward meaningful, bipartisan fiscal policy in a divided Congress. 

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.