Facing the Future

Facing the Future

How the nation’s fiscal and economic challenges, and possible solutions, impact current and future generations.

Episodes

March 15, 2024 44 mins

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.

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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.

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February 28, 2024 44 mins

This week on Facing the Future we’ll talk about the long drawn-out Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations process in Washington, which may be finally wrapping up in the next two weeks — or maybe not. With a partial shutdown looming on March 1st, we'll talk to Bill Hoagland, Senior Vice President of the Bipartisan Policy Center and former Republican staff director of the Senate Budget Committee.

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February 21, 2024 44 mins

This week on Facing the Future we'll examine how policies of the Federal Reserve Board affect the economy and the budget. Did the Fed's "quantitative easing" go too far and last too long?

Our guest is Thomas Hoenig, former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and a member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) from 1991 to 2011.

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February 15, 2024 43 mins

This week on Facing the Future, our guest was Dr. Phillip Swagel, Director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO just released its Budget and Economic Outlook for 2024-2034. Spoiler alert: It's not great news.

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February 8, 2024 43 mins

This week on Facing the Future, we’ll look at the latest economic numbers with a focus on jobs, wages and interest rates. The January jobs report showed a very robust, and surprising, gain of 353,000 jobs, up from 333,000 in December.

Gordon Gray, Vice President for Economic Policy at the American Action Forum will give us his take on what it means.

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January 31, 2024 43 mins

This week on Facing the Future, we’ll take a close look at President Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on households with annual income below $400,000.

Our guest is Ben Ritz, Director of the Center for Funding America’s Future at the Progressive Policy Institute. Ritz explains why that pledge is difficult to implement and how it undermines policymaking.

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January 24, 2024 44 mins

This week on Facing the Future, we’ll look at the congressional tax agenda, both in the next few weeks and into 2025 when a number of provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) are set to expire at the end of the year.

Our guide through the congressional tax thicket is Rohit Kumar, Co-Leader of Washington National Tax Services at PricewaterhouseCoopers and a former Deputy Chief of Staff to Senate Republican Leader Mitch Mc...

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January 17, 2024 45 mins

This week on Facing the Future, our guest is Rachel Snyderman, Director of Economic Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. We’ll ask her about the fiscal challenges awaiting the winner of the 2024 presidential election and the more immediate challenge of finally passing the Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations bills – something that is now four months overdue.

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January 10, 2024 44 mins

This week on Facing the Future, we talked with Molly Reynolds, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, about the breakdown of the congressional budget process.

With another partial shutdown looming on January 19, we discussed why Congress never passes its annual appropriations bills on time, the problems this creates and whether there are any remedies.

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Fiscal Challenges for the Next Administration

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December 27, 2023 44 mins

This week on Facing the Future, we looked back on budget and economic policy in 2023, which was mostly about avoiding crises, and where things stand heading into 2024.

Our discussion featured a panel of Concord Coalition experts, including policy director Tori Gorman, chief economist Steve Robinson, national field director Phil Smith, deputy director Chris Colligan, and media and policy intern Kyle Duffy.

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December 20, 2023 44 mins

This week on Facing the Future, we’ll focus on the latest economic projections from the Federal Reserve Board. Their last meeting, which concluded on December 13, certainly made some news with the projection that the Fed might actually begin to reduce interest rates in 2024. To guide us through the economic news, our guest this week is Robert Carroll, Co-leader of the EY’s Quantitative Economics and Statistics (QUEST) group. Concor...

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December 13, 2023 41 mins

This week, on Facing the Future, we began with a review of the oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in Moore vs. United States, a case that could have a big effect on federal government revenues. Our guest was Steven Rosenthal, Senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Then, Tori Goman, Steve Robinson and I looked at some new numbers on U.S. life expectancy and whether there may be a glimmer of hope that a gov...

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December 6, 2023 44 mins

This week on Facing the Future we got an update on the latest inflation and economic growth numbers from Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President of the American Action Forum and former Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Despite some encouraging short-term numbers, Holtz-Eakin sees a few warning signs for 2024.

We also discussed his new issue brief on employment-based immigration.

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This week on Facing the Future our guests were former U.S. Senators, Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Rob Portman (R-OH). They have been lending their voices to the push for a new bipartisan fiscal commission that would propose solutions to our nation’s unsustainable budget outlook.

Conrad chaired the Senate Budget Committee from 2001 to 2003, and again from 2007 to 2013. Portman served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB...

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This week on Facing the Future, we’ll do a round-up of topics including new Census Bureau population projections, the road ahead for FY 2024 appropriations following passage of a new CR (continuing resolution) and a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, Moore v. United States, that could have a big effect on federal government revenues. Concord Coalition policy director Tori Gorman and chief economist Steve Robinson join th...

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This week on Facing the Future we heard from three members of Congress who took part in a virtual discussion on November 13 titled, “Working Toward a Sustainable Fiscal Future in a Divided Congress.” The three congressmen, Don Bacon (R-NE), Jared Golden (D-ME), and Scott Peters (D-CA) were recipients of The Concord Coalition’s 2023 Economic Patriot Award, which is given for efforts to bring about a more fiscally sustainable path fo...

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November 8, 2023 44 mins

This week on Facing the Future, we’ll get an update on COVID-19 as we enter another holiday travel season. Our guest is Dr. Jodie Guest, an epidemiologist and professor at Emory University in Atlanta who also serves as an advisor to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Then, we’ll switch gears to discuss the latest developments on the economic front, such as the Fed’s decision to hold rates steady for now and the “Goldilocks” Oct...

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November 2, 2023 43 mins

This week on Facing the Future, we begin with a status check on the stalled appropriations process on Capitol Hill now that a new Speaker of the House has been selected by the Republican caucus. Our guest for that segment is Tom Kahn who served as Democratic House Budget Committee staff director from 1997 to 2016. He now teaches budget policy at American University in Washington. Then we’ll talk with Richard Coffin, Chief of Resear...

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