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Session 17: Long-Term Fiscal Outlook
How will we pay for the health and retirement benefits of baby boomers without bankrupting the nation? The current path of policy is unsustainable given demographics. The panel will discuss the possible solutions to this serious intergenerational problem.
Speaker Materials
Speakers
David Wessel
The Wall Street Journal
David Wessel, 53, is economics editor of The Wall Street Journal and writes the "Capital” column, a weekly look at the economy and forces shaping living standards around the world. He also appears frequently on CNBC and National Public Radio. David joined The Wall Street Journal in 1984 in Boston, and moved to Washington in 1987, where he was deputy bureau chief until assuming his current job in September 2007. In 1999 and 2000, he served as the newspaper’s Berlin bureau chief. He previously worked for the Boston Globe, the Hartford (Conn.) Courant and Middletown (Conn.) Press. A 1975 graduate of Haverford College, he was Knight Bagehot Fellow in Business & Economics Journalism at Columbia University in 1980-81. David has shared two Pulitzer Prizes, one for Boston Globe stories in 1983 on the persistence of racism in Boston and the other for stories in The Wall Street Journal in 2002 on corporate wrong-doing. He is the co-author, with Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Davis, of Prosperity, a 1998 book that argues that the next 20 years will be better for the American middle class than the previous 20.
He and his wife, Naomi Karp, senior policy advisor at AARP’s Public Policy Institute, have two children, Julia, a senior at Kenyon College, and Ben, a freshman at Middlebury College. David is a trustee of Temple Sinai in Washington, D.C., and has served as a member of the Committee for Economic Development’s Research Advisory Board and the advisory board of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University.
Laurence Kotlikoff
Boston University
Laurence J. Kotlikoff is Professor of Economics at Boston University, Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of the Econometric Society, and President of Economic Security Planning, Inc., a company specializing in financial planning software. Professor Kotlikoff received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973 and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1977. From 1977 through 1983 he served on the faculties of economics of the University of California, Los Angeles and Yale University. In 1981-82 Professor Kotlikoff was a Senior Economist with the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Professor Kotlikoff has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Harvard Institute for International Development, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Swedish Ministry of Finance, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Italy, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, the Government of Russia, the Government of Ukraine, the Government of Bolivia, the Government of Bulgaria, the Treasury of New Zealand, the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Joint Committee on Taxation, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, The American Council of Life Insurance, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity Investments, AT&T, AON Corp., and other major U.S. corporations. He has provided expert testimony on numerous occasions to committees of Congress including the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee. Professor Kotlikoff is author or co-author of 13 books and hundreds of professional journal articles. His most recent book, co-authored with Scott Burns, is forthcoming with Simon&Schuster and is entitled Spend ‘Til the End. Professor Kotlikoff publishes extensively in newspapers, and magazines on issues of deficits, generational accounting, the tax structure, social security, Medicare, health reform, pensions, saving, insurance, and personal finance.
Rudolph Penner
The Urban Institute
Rudolph G. Penner is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and holds the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Public Policy. Previously, he was a managing director of the Barents Group, a KPMG Company. He was director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1983 to 1987. From 1977 to 1983, he was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Previous posts in government include assistant director for economic policy at the Office of Management and Budget, deputy assistant secretary for economic affairs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisors. Before 1975, Dr. Penner was a professor of economics at the University of Rochester.
He is past president of the National Economists Club and, in 1989, he was elected to the Board of Directors of NABE. In 2003, he received the Jesse Burkhead Award for the best article published in Public Budgeting and Finance in 2002.
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