This week on Facing the Future, we focus on the ongoing war in Ukraine. Already the war  has taken the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, contributed greatly to rising energy costs, and may bring dramatic shifts in US foreign policy, energy policy, and strategic alliances that could impact our economy and federal budget for decades. We were fortunate to have as a guest this week Dr.

This week on Facing the Future, we spoke with one of the top experts on Congressional process and economic policy – Jon Lieber, managing director for the Eurasia Group’s United States Practice.   Lieber has extensive experience in top policy positions in government, serving as an economist on the House Ways and Means Committee, an associate director at the National Economic Council at the White House, and a senior economic policy adviser on the leadership team of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

This week on Facing the Future, we looked at the state of the economy, including the first quarter GDP report, inflation expectations, the prospects for a "soft landing" as the Fed begins to tighten monetary policy, and whether there are any glimmers of hope for immigration reform. 

Our guest was Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President of the American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. Concord Coalition policy director Tori Gorman and chief economist Steve Robinsion joined the conversation.

This week on Facing the Future, we go back in for a deeper dive with the voices of our future leaders and how they would address the growing challenge of putting the federal budget on a more sustainable path over the next 30 years. We spoke to college students from all over the country who recently competed in the national finals of the Fiscal Challenge held here in Washington, D.C.  

This week on Facing the Future, we explored the connection between environmental and fiscal sustainability with Brian Keane,  president of SmartPower, a Washington, DC based non-profit renewable energy and energy efficiency outreach organization.  Keane also has years of experience working on Capitol Hill and was a key staffer to the Paul Tsongas presidential campaign in 1992.

This Week on Facing the Future, we look to our future leaders to see how they would put the federal budget on a more sustainable path over the next 30 years. Our guests were college students who competed in the recent Fiscal Challenge, a national competition which culminated last Friday April 8 in Washington DC.

This week on Facing the Future, we revisit the issue of immigration – vital to sustaining American economic growth – in light of millions of refugees fleeing war-torn Ukraine.  The Biden Administration recently announced an initial program giving the green light to welcoming in at least 100,000 Ukrainian refugees and signaling there may be more admitted to the United States.  There are also thousands of Russians fleeing their own repressive regime who may end up applying for political asylum as a result of the war in Ukraine.

This week on Facing the Future, Concord Coalition Policy Director Tori Gorman, Chief Economist Steve Robinson, and I took a look at President Biden’s newly released Fiscal Year 2023 $5.8 Trillion federal budget proposal, measuring the new spending and revenue proposals against our own budget criteria that we released last week.

This week, Facing the Future took to the road to Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana where The Concord Coalition’s national field director Phil Smith helped run our Principles and Priorities federal budget exercise with students and local community members, in coordination with the university’s Bowen Institute. It’s all part of our college campus events around the country happening this year to mark the 30th anniversary of The Concord Coalition’s founding.  

This week on Facing the Future, we have a special edition of the program featuring excerpts from a recent panel discussion at the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership, and Public Service at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law.  The virtual forum focused on our national debt outlook and changing views on the role of government, two years into the pandemic.  

This week on Facing the Future, Concord Coalition Communications Director Av Harris and I discussed the military and economic fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our guest was former Congressman Richard Swett (D-NH), who also served as US Ambassador to Denmark, a NATO member, from 1998-2001.  The first major land war in Europe since World War II is already having a dramatic impact on the price of gasoline and influenced Congress to increase defense appropriations, emergency military aid to Ukraine  and humanitarian assistance.  

This week on Facing the Future, we focus on healthcare costs and inflation, two factors that have an enormous impact on the federal budget and our national debt.  In the first part of the program, we spoke to friend of the show Richard Jackson, President of the Global Aging Institute (GAI), about a new paper he recently authored entitled “Three Myths About Health Care Reform.” The paper is the latest in a series of iss

This week on Facing the Future, we got a rare opportunity to speak about leadership in a time of crisis with a real scholar of presidential politics: Professor David Gergen of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Gergen served as a White House advisor to four US presidents: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. He has also been a long time television commentator on both PBS and CNN and has a new book coming out later this spring titled “Hearts Touched by Fire: How Great Leaders are Made.”  

This week on Facing the Future, we take a deep dive into the broken federal budget appropriations process in Congress with journalist David Lerman, editor of Congressional Quarterly Budget (CQ Budget). Lerman previously covered national security, defense spending, and foreign policy matters for Bloomberg News. Concord Coalition policy director Tori Gorman joined me for that conversation. 

This week on Facing the Future, we listen to a veteran Blue Dog Democrat bark one more time. That would be Congressman Jim Cooper (D-TN) who has represented his Nashville area district for more than three decades. Concord Coalition national field director Phil Smith and I spoke with Cooper about his decision not to seek re-election after a Republican state legislative redistricting plan divided his district among neighboring Congressional districts all currently held by GOP representatives. Cooper was a founding member of the Blue Dog coalition in the House, a group of fi

This week on Facing the Future, Concord Coalition Policy Director Tori Gorman and I  spoke with Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, to help us parse through recent economic data crosscurrents, seemingly buffeted by the effects of the Omicron variant on employers and employees.  On the one hand, the unemployment rate has fallen to 3.9% and real GDP rose 5.7% overall last year, the highest annual growth rate since 1984.  

This week on Facing the Future, we spoke with Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, one of the world’s leading experts on infectious disease and epidemiology.

This week on Facing the Future, we discussed the inflation outlook with Jason Furman, former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors from 2013-17, and now a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Concord Coalition Policy Director Tori Gorman and our Chief Economist Steve Robinson joined me for the conversation. 

This week on Facing the Future, we plowed through the ‘Wintry Mix’ contained in the December jobs report put out by the U.S.

This week on Facing the Future, we kicked off the 30th anniversary of The Concord Coalition’s founding by talking with Kitty Kurth, a veteran of the 1992 Paul Tsongas presidential campaign who would later that year become the first ever employee of The Concord Coalition. Kurth is currently president of Kurth-Lampe Worldwide, a political and management consulting firm in Chicago, and conducts democracy training all over the globe.  Also joining us for this discussion was Concord Coalition national field director Phil Smith, who now holds the job first occupied by Kurth.

For our last Facing the Future program of 2021, I gathered an all-star panel of Concord Coalition staff including: Policy Director Tori Gorman, Chief Economist Steve Robinson, National Field Director Phil Smith, Deputy Director Chris Colligan, and our newest staff member, Communications Director Av Harris. I asked the team to join me to review the significant events of 2021 related to the federal budget and the economy, what surprised us all, and what challenges and opportunities lie ahead for 2022.

This week on Facing the Future, Concord Coalition Chief Economist Steve Robinson and I spoke with Richard Jackson, President and Founder of the Global Aging Institute, about the new issue brief he authored, The Vital Role of Immigration in an Aging America.  This latest edition is part of a periodic series of issue briefs published jointly by the Concord Coalition and The Global Aging Institute entitled,

This week on Facing the Future, we looked at congressional dysfunction; whether it has grown in recent years and why it matters. Our guests were former Congressman Paul Hodes, Democrat of New Hampshire, and political analyst Matt Robison, who served as Hodes’ congressional chief of staff. Concord Coalition Policy Director Tori Gorman, also a Capitol Hill veteran, joined the conversation.

This week on Facing the Future, Concord Coalition Communications Director Av Harris,  National Field Director Phil Smith’ and I spoke with Dr. Jodie Guest, an epidemiologist and professor at the School of Public Health and Medicine at Emory University in Atlanta for an update on where we are with the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Later on in the program, Tori Gorman and I spoke with Rachel Snyderman, Associate Director of the Economic Policy Project with the Bipartisan Policy Center, about the looming debt ceiling crisis.  

This week on Facing the Future, Concord Coalition Policy Director Tori Gorman and I spoke to Joshua Gordon, Director of Health Policy for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget about some of the health care provisions that are contained in the version of the Build Back Better Act (BBBA) passed by the House, that now awaits action in the US Senate.  According to CRFB estimates, the bill includes close to $330 billion in new health care costs, mostly offset by about $325 billion in health care cost savings and new revenue. 

This week on Facing the Future, we focused on the political environment facing President Biden’s Build Back Better Act (BBBA) now that it has passed the House and moved onto the Senate. Joining me in that discussion were The Concord Coalition’s Policy Director, Tori Gorman, the Coalition’s Chief Economist, Steve Robinson, and Communications Director Av Harris.  We also had an in depth discussion on Steve’s latest issue brief entitled Will President Biden Rais

This week on Facing the Future, we focused on the political arguments surrounding President Biden’s Build Back Better Act (BBBA) and specifically the concerns raised by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin – a fiscally conservative Democrat – over the cost of the bill and how it is paid for.  The bill cannot survive a Senate vote without Manchin’s support, and his outsized influence has already whittled down the overall price tag of the new social safety net and climate change spending bill from an estimated $3.5 trillion over 10 years to $1.75 trillion.  

This week on Facing the Future, we explored the potential economic effects of President Biden’s Build Back Better Framework, as released by the White House on October 28th, 2021, and the cost of making its temporary provisions permanent. Our guest was Kent Smetters, Faculty Director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model. Concord Coalition Policy Director Tori Gorman joined me for the conversation with Dr. Smetters. 

This week on Facing the Future, we discussed the economic strengths and weaknesses of the Build Back Better Act now making its way through Congress. Democrats are pushing to finalize this broad social spending and climate change bill, which would cost about $1.8 trillion over 10 years and be paid for with a number of new tax provisions targeted at large corporations and households earning more than $400,000 a year. Our guest was Bill Gale, a senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution.  

This week on Facing the Future, we looked at various proposals on how to pay for the roughly $2 trillion social spending bill that Democrats hope to pass soon. These proposals include familiar ideas like raising rates on corporations and upper-income households, as well as new ideas like implementing some form of a "billionaires tax."  We also looked at the potential for raising revenue through better enforcement of existing laws (the “tax gap”) and the amount the Treasury loses  through ill-targeted "tax expenditures." 

This week on Facing the Future, we heard from Ben Ritz, Director of the Center for Funding America’s Future at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and the author of a new paper, “Reconciling with Reality: The Top Priorities for Building Back Better.” 

This week on Facing the Future we took a step back from the day-to-day budget battles in Washington to consider the overall fiscal outlook. Our guest was Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who recently published a comprehensive chart book on federal spending, taxes, and deficits. Among the questions we discussed were: What is driving CBO’s projected $112 trillion deficit over 30 years, and could the deficit top $3 trillion yet again within a decade?

This week on Facing the Future, we sorted through the various internal divisions among congressional Democrats that have slowed President Biden’s legislative agenda. We also looked at some non-traditional ideas that have been floated for getting around the debt limit, which was given a small boost of $480 billion in a deal struck at the end of the week. 

This week on Facing the Future, we got a bipartisan view of a big week in Washington from two veteran Capitol Hill staffers, Bill Hoagland, senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, and Joe Minarik, senior vice president and director of research at the Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board. Concord Coalition Policy Director

This week on Facing the Future, Tori Gorman and I discussed balance sheets, risk, and the “arrhythmia of finance'' with Peter Fisher, Senior Fellow at the Center for Business, Government & Society at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, where he also serves as a Clinical Professor. Our discussion encompassed the long-term budget outlook, debt limit dysfunction, and the challenges of monetary policy in the post-pandemic environment. 

This week on Facing the Future, we got a thorough briefing on the latest Social Security and Medicare Trustees’ Report from Dr. Charles Blahous, a former Public Trustee of both programs and now Senior Research Strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Concord Coalition Chief Economist Steve Robinson, a former Senior Policy Advisor at the Social Security Administration, joined the conversation.

This week on Facing the Future we went from Georgia to Colorado and back to Washington, D.C. as we discussed the upcoming reconciliation bill, a view from the grassroots, and the 2021 Social Security and Medicare Trustees' Report. 

This week on Facing the Future our guest was Austin Smythe who has over 30 years of experience working in both the legislative and executive branches of the Federal government. Concord Coalition Policy Director Tori Gorman joined the conversation as we previewed a host of looming budget challenges that Congress and President Biden are facing in September.

This week on Facing the Future, we took a break from the federal budget but kept our focus on public sector budgeting. States have budgets too and the choices can be just as difficult and just as impactful on constituents as the federal budget. As an example, we examined the New Hampshire state budget with Phil Sletten, Senior Policy Analyst at the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, an independent, non-profit policy research organization in Concord NH, where he has worked since 2016.

This week on Facing the Future, we turned to health care and the brewing controversy over Aduhelm, a new drug for treating Alzheimer's Disease that was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Is it effective, will it be covered by Medicare and how much will it cost? We asked Josh Gordon, Director of Health Policy at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Next, we looked at where things stand in Washington as the two parties move from a bipartisan infrastructure bill to a one-party budget resolution.

This week on Facing the Future we heard from Tom Kahn, a veteran Democrat congressional staffer who is concerned that both parties have abandoned fiscal discipline. Concord’s National Field Director Phil Smith joined the conversation. 

This week on Facing the Future we waded into several fast-breaking budget developments in Washington, including the Senate's bipartisan infrastructure plan and the upcoming budget resolution. Concord Coalition Policy Director Tori Gorman and Chief Economist Steve Robinson, both Capitol Hill veterans, joined me to  examine whether the infrastructure bill is paid for and what clues the budget resolution will give us about the even bigger "reconciliation" bill expected this fall. 

This week on Facing the Future we talked with Richard Jackson, President and Founder of the Global Aging Institute, and the author of a timely new paper titled, Why the National Debt Still Matters. Concord Coalition chief economist Steve Robinson, who contributed a debt model used in the paper, joined the conversation.

This week on Facing the Future we looked at a subject on the minds of many economists as well as everyday consumers: what’s up with inflation? Are recent sharp increases something to be concerned about and how does it affect our economic future? We also assessed the outlook for jobs, wages and overall economic growth.

This week on Facing the Future we looked at the nation’s statutory debt limit. What is it? Why doesn’t it work to control the growing debt and are there viable alternatives? To get answers and perspectives, we talked to Susan Irving, of the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Concord Coalition Policy Director Tori Gorman joined the conversation.

This week on Facing the Future we turned our attention to national security. Our guest was Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, author of the new book Waging War in a Time of Peace. We discussed his concept of "resolute restraint" and why the economy, including the level of debt, is a national security issue.

This week on Facing the Future, we got an update on the economic recovery from Joe Minarik, Senior Vice President and Director of Research at the Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board. We also heard about an idea he has for paying off the extra federal debt incurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Concord Coalition Policy Director Tori Gorman joined the conversation.

This week on Facing the Future, we welcomed back to the program Concord Coalition Co-Chairs, Bob Kerrey and Jack Danforth. The two former U.S. Senators discussed their recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, titled “How Long Can America Keep Borrowing?” and the value of creating a Centrist Caucus in the Senate. Concord’s policy director Tori Gorman joined the conversation.

This week on Facing the Future, we looked at some longer-term budget and economic issues that are crucial for understanding President Biden’s policy agenda and whether it would fully address the challenges ahead, Joining me for this discussion was Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute, one of the nation’s top experts on the budget, economic growth and taxes.

This week on Facing the Future, we took a close look at President Biden’s much-awaited Fiscal Year 2022 federal budget. My first guest was Marc Goldwein, Senior Vice President and Senior Policy Director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Later, I was joined by Steve Robinson, Chief Economist of The Concord Coalition.

This week's guest on Facing the Future was Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (GA-7th). In addition to serving on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, she Chairs the Blue Dog Coalition's Task Force on Fiscal Responsibility and Government Reform. 

This week on Facing the Future, I talked to EcomonistMom.com blogger Diane Lim about the surprisingly weak April jobs report. Then we turned our attention to President Biden's proposals for the "care economy," including their potential to expand the work force and the political difficulty of raising enough revenue to pay for them.

This week on Facing the Future Tori Gorman and I went to the movies, an appropriate thing to do following the Oscars. We looked at some fiscal policy aspects of an award winning  documentary called UnRepresented, which deals with the influence of money in politics. At the conclusion, I had some observations about the new 2020 U.S. Census data and its implications for future economic growth. It’s not good news.

This week on Facing the Future, former Ambassador and New Hampshire Congressman Richard Swett gave me his thoughts on President Biden’s policy agenda. Then I took a virtual trip to Las Vegas with Concord Coalition National Field Director Phil Smith. We interviewed Jayce Farmer, a professor of public policy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who has conducted our budget exercise Principles and Priorities with his mid-career graduate students for the past three years. 

What’s a “skinny budget?” Concord Coalition Policy Director Tori Gorman explains on this week’s Facing the Future podcast. We also look a little deeper into the Biden Administration’s expansive definition of “infrastructure” with Concord Coalition Chief Economist Steve Robinson. Rounding out the podcast is a thought provoking conversation with Richard Jackson, President of the Global Aging Institute, about the macro challenges of population aging. Spoiler alert; it goes beyond the budgetary impact.

It was infrastructure week on Facing the Future and we tried to “bridge” the divide between differing perspectives of President Biden’s $2.3 American Jobs Plan. Our guests were Ben Ritz, Director of the Center for Funding America’s Future at the Progressive Policy Institute, and Brian Riedl a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Also joining the conversation was Concord Coalition policy director Tori Gorman.

President Biden began rolling out his first budget this week and on Facing the Future, we took a look at why it matters and how he might pay for new proposals.

On the latest Facing the Future, we took a wide-ranging tour of the fiscal policy landscape as the Biden Administration prepares to unveil new proposals that media reports indicate could cost $3 trillion or more without offsets. Our tour guide was Jon Lieber, a Capitol Hill veteran of many important budget negotiations who is now Managing Director of the Eurasia Group. Concord Coalition policy director Tori Gorman joined the conversation.

On the latest Facing the Future, I was joined by Concord Coalition Executive Director, Robert L.

On the latest Facing the Future, I was joined by former Comptroller General of the United States, David M. Walker, Concord Coalition Executive Director, Robert L. Bixby, and Concord’s Policy Director, Tori Gorman.

On the latest Facing the Future, I was joined by Concord Coalition Executive Director, Robert L. Bixby, Concord's Policy Director, Tori Gorman, and Bill Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center. We discussed the ongoing reconciliation process.

Also this week, an interview with Hamilton Project Director and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Wendy Edelberg, on COVID-19 relief proposals, which was recorded as part of a recent webinar.

On the latest Facing the Future, I was joined by Concord Coalition Executive Director, Robert L. Bixby, Concord's Policy Director, Tori Gorman, and former ambassador and immigration attorney, George Bruno. We discussed immigration reform, the ongoing reconciliation process in Congress, and COVID-19 relief.

On the latest Facing the Future, I was joined by Robin Abbott, CEO of the New Hampshire Society of CPAs, and Matt DiLoreto, vice president of state government affairs for the Healthcare Distribution Alliance.

On the latest Facing the Future, I was joined by Ben Gitis, a senior policy analyst for the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Economic Policy Project, Concord Coalition Executive Director, Bob Bixby, and Concord’s Policy Director, Tori Gorman.

On the latest Facing the Future, I was joined by Concord Coalition Executive Director, Bob Bixby, and Richard Jackson, president of the Global Aging Institute.

On the latest Facing the Future, I was joined by Concord Coalition Executive Director, Bob Bixby, and former U.S. Senators Bob Kerrey (D-NE) and Jack Danforth (R-MO).

On the latest Facing the Future, I was joined by Concord Coalition Executive Director, Bob Bixby, and Gene Dodaro, the Comptroller General of the United States and head of the Government Accountability Office.

On the latest Facing the Future, I was joined by Concord Coalition Executive Director, Bob Bixby, Concord's Policy Director, Tori Gorman, and Director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s Center for Funding America’s Future, Ben Ritz.

On the latest Facing the Future, I was joined by Concord Coalition Executive Director, Bob Bixby, and former Congressman from Minnesota, Tim Penny. We discussed challenges facing the incoming Biden administration and the new Congress as we begin 2021, the importance of long-term fiscal responsibility, and U.S. House of Representatives rules changes that affect PAYGO.