Walking on a Fragile Fiscal Cliff

This week on Facing the Future, host Bob Bixby shares excerpts from a recent Concord Action webinar on defense spending featuring Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute and Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. They discuss how defense dollars are allocated, whether the proposed increase to $1.5 trillion reflects an actual strategy, what drone warfare means for the cost of conflict, and whether the U.S. military is overstretched.

This week on Facing the Future, Capitol Hill budget experts Bill Hoagland of the Bipartisan Policy Center and Tom Kahn of American University join Concord Coalition executive director Dr. Carolyn Bourdeaux and host Bob Bixby to discuss how the midterm elections could affect the budget and the economy.

This week on Facing the Future Dr. Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, describes various reform options from differing political perspectives that can maintain trust fund solvency, improve the budget outlook and grow the economy.

This week on Facing the Future, Dr. Phillip Joyce of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy describes the substantive, procedural and Constitutional fiscal challenges that Congress has repeatedly kicked down the road.

This week on Facing the Future, former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President of the American Action Forum, explains why problems in France's bond market carry a warning for the U.S. He also argues that the Federal Reserve should keep raising interest rates to fight inflation.

This week on Facing the Future, Ben Ritz of the Progressive Policy Institute explains why the rising national debt has become a big cost-of-living problem.

This week on Facing the Future, we discuss two very different visions of how to keep Social Security solvent over the long-term without a bailout from the U.S. Treasury. Wendell Primus of the Brookings Institution and Romina Boccia of the Cato Institute debate the options.

This week on Facing the Future, we hear from a prominent group of former elected officials and economists who describe what a debt-induced fiscal crisis would look like in the United States, what could trigger such an event and how to avoid one.

This week on Facing the Future, we discussed President Trump's promise of $5,000 checks, tariff income, war spending and the economy with Jim Capretta, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

This week on Facing the Future, Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, explains why the cost of borrowing is going up and the implications of higher interest rates for families, businesses and the federal budget. She also discusses inflation, tariffs and Social Security reform.