An Urban Institute 40th Anniversary Roundtable
September 22, 2008
An overwhelming majority of elected and appointed policymakers in both parties agrees that the nation is on an unsustainable fiscal path—that without fundamental changes in spending and tax policy, deficits will grow to levels that risk serious economic instability and anemic growth.
Policy makers also understand that the longer they delay addressing this challenge, the more wrenching and politically difficult the unavoidable adjustments will be. Notwithstanding this consensus, elected policymakers have been unwilling to adopt measures to deal with the problem.
On Monday, September 22, the Urban Institute convened an invitation-only policy roundtable of some of the nation's leading budget experts to explore the political barriers to fiscal reform and how they might be overcome. The discussion was kicked off by brief context-setting remarks by:
- Leon Panetta, former chair of the House Budget Committee, OMB Director and White House Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton, now the founder and director of the Panetta Institute
- Bill Gradison, former Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee and a founding Member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
The roundtable will be moderated by:
- Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute and director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 1989-1995, and
- Rudy Penner, Urban Institute Senior Fellow and CBO Director from 1983-1987
