Facing the Future

This week on Facing the Future we’ll examine developments on the national security front with Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. Topics include the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza as well as competition with China.

This week on Facing the Future we'll talk with Jason Furman, a former top economic advisor to Presidents Clinton and Obama. He now teaches economics at Harvard University. We discussed the prospects of a "soft landing" for the economy and the crucial role of interest rates in projecting future debt.

This week on Facing the Future, we'll hear first from two UNH professors, Dr Carolyn Arcand and NH State Senator Dan Innis, about the relevance of fiscal policy to their students' future.

Then we'll take another look at GAO's new estimate of government-wide fraud with Rebecca Shea, co-author of the report.

This week on Facing the Future we’ll look at the future of Social Security with former U.S. Representative Reid Ribble (R-WI), who served in Congress from 2011-2017.

In 2016, Ribble released the Save Our Social Security Act (S.O.S.) with a bipartisan group of co-sponsors. We discussed that plan with him and why he thinks Social Security reform is essential.

This week on Facing the Future, we'll discuss a new report on fraud by the Government Accountability Office, along with a review of the foreign aid spending bill and the latest news on the economy.

This week on Facing the Future, we'll get some policy ideas from three college students who recently took part in an annual Fiscal Challenge competition where teams from around the country devise and defend their own plans for putting the federal budget on a sustainable path. Dr. Mike Aguilar, founder and president of the Fiscal Challenge also joined the discussion.

This week on Facing the Future, we'll look at what happens at the end of 2025 when many of the tax cuts enacted in 2017 are scheduled to expire. What should Congress be doing to prepare for this fiscal cliff? How much would it cost to extend the tax cuts? Are there viable options to offset the revenue loss? We’ll get some perspectives on all these questions from Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

This week on Facing the Future, Concord Coalition Chief Economist Steve Robinson discusses his new issue brief, "The Rhetoric and Reality of Taxing the Rich." Then we'll talk with Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute about his new column explaining that "Major Budget Reform Must Accommodate Legislators' Need to Give Money Away."

This week on Facing the Future, we'll look at the economics of immigration reform with Teresa Cardinal Brown, Senior Advisor for Immigration and Border Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

With the U.S on track to have more deaths than births by 2040, immigration is an increasingly necessary component for a growing economy. Is there a way forward on bipartisan reform?

This week on Facing the Future we hear from Zach Moller, director of the economic program at Third Way, a center-left think tank. He'll discuss his recent report called, "A Democratic Case for Fiscal Responsibility." We'll also look at the latest numbers on jobs and inflation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.