Burden of Debt: A Discussion with Rep. Paul Ryan

Transcript

RON HASKINS: Welcome. My name is Ron Haskins; I’m a senior fellow here at Brookings and along with Belle Sawhill I run a center here called the Center on Children and Families. And as part of the Center on Children and Families, in 2003, we started another organization called Budgeting for National Priorities. At that time, I don’t think the deficit was quite as well understood or feared as it is now, and one of our goals was to do everything we could to bring attention to the deficit. We also formed something we called the Fiscal Seminar, a bipartisan group that had various distinguished budget people and people who understand politics in Washington. And we did lots of scholarly things, like write books and articles, so, you had dramatic impact, as all of you know. Sometimes when we’re really feeling radical we wrote a letter to the President and told him what to do and he didn’t do it, so we sent him another letter. So, very effective way to operate.

So, as you can tell, none of us vote and, therefore, we like to hang out with people who vote. Many of you may know that we previously invited House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to come and give a talk about the deficit. And I was -- I think a lot of people were surprised by the passion that he showed toward doing something about the deficit. Although he did not necessarily have specific ideas about what to do, he indicated that they -- Democrats -- were open to ideas about the deficit.

So today we’re sponsoring a talk by Paul Ryan, Republican Representative from Wisconsin’s 1st District.

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