WKXL - New Hampshire Talk Radio
Facing The Future | Depolarization Needed for Debt Solutions
This week on Facing the Future, guest host Phil Smith discusses the need for political depolarization with two Concord Coalition grassroots leaders. In addition, Phil talks with Bob Bixby about his 25 years as executive director of The Concord Coalition.
- Duration:
- 44m
- Broadcast on:
- 08 Aug 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
"Well, the first thing I think he would do would be to stand up and tell the truth. I mean, he had a great expression that was "just tell the truth and watch him scatter." "Well, the further way the problem is, the easier it is to postpone the action on it. And that's essentially what we're doing." "Be real. Because people in New Hampshire are really cool." "I'd say get in the game. This is a problem facing your generation. You have to have a voice in the decision." Welcome to Facing the Future brought to you by the Concord Coalition on WKXL, New Hampshire's talk radio station. I'm your guest host, Phil Smith, and filling in this week for Bob Bixby. Each week, we take a nonpartisan dive into topics related to the federal budget, the economy, and how they affect our nation's future. This week, my first guest is a very familiar voice. In fact, you hear him on this show every week. I'll be talking with your regular host, Bob Bixby, who is about to celebrate his 25th anniversary as the executive director of the Concord Coalition. Bob and I recorded this interview before he went on vacation. We'll discuss how the all-important federal budget and the Concord Coalition have changed over the years. And later in today's program, I'll welcome two of the Concord Coalition's fiscal lookouts. Kevin Wiley and Eric Carter, Kevin is from Indiana and Eric is from New York. The lookouts are volunteers who in the Great Concord Coalition tradition help us throughout the country and their local communities and networks. But first, let me welcome to the show the one and only Bob Bixby. Thank you, Phil. It's very good to be here on the other side of the microphone. So let's dive right in. It occurred to us that next month in September, you, Bob Bixby, will have been the executive director of the nonpartisan Concord Coalition for 25 years and not to make you feel old, but that is one tenth of the entire history of the United States. Well, I can't believe how time flies so quickly, but it has been 25 years. So looking back at that 10% of American history, let's step into our Concord Coalition time machine and go back to even before you stepped up to be the leader of the Concord Coalition. Let's go back to the year that the Concord Coalition was founded by New Hampshire's Republican U.S. Senator Warren Rudman and his bipartisan neighbor to the South Democratic U.S. Senator Paul Songas of Massachusetts, along with President Nixon's Commerce Secretary, Peter G. Peterson. The year we were talking about is 1992. That was a really special year for budget nerds like us. Is that a good place to start our discussion on how you, Bob Bixby, got involved with the Concord Coalition? Well, it is because that is when I get involved. That's when the Concord Coalition started, and I got involved because I had been a volunteer on Paul Songas's presidential campaign. I figured that I was about the only person in Virginia that had ever heard of them because I grew up in Massachusetts and was living there when he was elected to the Senate and post-law school I was living in Virginia. So I volunteered to work on his campaign and I got very involved in it and it actually ended up being a delegate at the 1992 convention, Songas Delegate, which is kind of interesting because I had worked for Republicans in the past. So a little bit of bipartisan background there. Anyway, he talked to his delegates at the convention, and that's the first time I had ever heard of the Concord Coalition. It wasn't called that. He called it the Rudman Project. He said sometime after this convention, I'm going to be working with Senator Rudman on a project and you'll hear a lot about it and it's going to be about generational responsibility. So I stayed in touch with him and let him know that I'd be interested in this project as time went on. So looking back since the 1990s, how have things changed, both in terms of federal budget policy and also how the nonprofit Concord Coalition organization is managed and operated? I remember we used to have weekly snail mail that went out to all of our volunteer leaders across the country and faxing things around was the latest technology, but my own things have changed. Oh my goodness, yes. Well, as I recall, the debt was somewhere around $4 trillion in those days and people thought that was terrible. It just went over $35 trillion, but even as you look at it as a percentage of the economy, the debt has just exploded and the deficits have gotten much bigger. But I do want to point out that in the first 10 years of the Concord Coalition's existence, the deficit went down every year and then it turned to surpluses and the surpluses rose. So if you go from 1992 when we began September of '92, 2001, the budget was improving every year and it wasn't until this century that the budget deficits really got out of hand. So what that says to me is that it is possible to make progress on this issue, but we haven't been doing it because we haven't been making the changes that we need. Just for how the Concord Coalition has changed, basically, theoretically, it's still the same. We are grassroots, public education and advocating for fiscal responsibility and we do it in a bipartisan way and we have a policy component as well. So it's always been a split between policy and field with the Concord Coalition and you and I have both worn both hats over the years and we continue to do that. So technology has changed a great deal. How we do that has changed a great deal because as you mentioned, we used to make voluminous copies of things on Friday afternoons and then send them out. Somebody would have to be tasked to take these big packets of mail to the post office and get them in the mail. So our grassroots volunteers could get their dispatch in the mail on Monday and fax machines and all like that. Now, of course, Google didn't exist, social media didn't exist and really the internet, I mean, it existed, but it wasn't a thing. Email was not something that a lot of people used. It's gotten a lot more efficient in the field even as the budget has bloated, the methodology has gotten a lot more efficient. The flow of information definitely has changed and one of the things the Concord Coalition does is we try to extinguish myths about the federal budget and unfortunately with the rise of the information age and so much more information is exchanged. But that also means that more myths are being pushed out there because we have our hands full with that, don't we? Yeah, part of it is information flies around at the speed of light and because of social media and the internet and things like that, it's easier for us to educate people, it's also easier for myths to be spread and people can fall for those things if you're in kind of a media silo and you see the same thing over and over again, you're probably going to believe it. And so, yeah, I mean, there are good things and bad things to the proliferation of information that's out there. Well, speaking of how the Concord Coalition operates, this is a great segue to talk about our policy work and our field work all across the country. So the Concord Coalition is really well known for solid and factual information on national fiscal policy. Just look at the Concord Coalition dot org website, our weekly newsletter called The Lookout and of course, this very program you're listening to right now facing the future. But as you say, one of the things that has always separated the Concord Coalition from other Washington based think tanks or DC based educational groups is working in the field across the country in places like New Hampshire, Georgia, Iowa. It's not an exaggeration to say that the Concord Coalition has footprints from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to the state of Maine. So when looking at these two very different models, policy work and field work, how do we balance these two things? Yeah, that's what we've been doing for 30 years as an organization, and it's really important to do that because in order to be effective as a myth buster, as you said, or to do effective public education, you have to have credibility on the policy stuff so that people know that this is coming from a credible source. On the other hand, it was the mission of Paul Songas and Warren Rudman and Pete Peterson when we set this up to be a grassroots entity that would get the message of fiscal responsibility had to come from grassroots people in the field and not just in the halls of Congress. And so you really have to balance both. I remember Paul Songas saying we're not a think tank. We're not going to be a think tank. There are plenty of think tanks and they're great. They do great work. What we need to do is to educate the grassroots and then have the grassroots come back and educate their members of Congress. He used to talk about and you'll well remember this about changing the wind direction. If you want to change the wind direction, you don't go up on the roof and tell the weather vein, "Hey, would you start blowing from a different direction?" You have to actually change the wind direction. So that was the idea conceptually of the conquered coalition with our grassroots was to change the wind direction. Well, and I think back to all those different times across the country where we spent time on college campuses and that's a natural place for us to be out in the field where we take our policy work and we have educational sessions and so forth at college campuses. And we're very fortunate to have been able to interact with a lot of the younger generation and I guess that's one of the key messages of the conquered coalition is that this is a generational issue. So that's when we're looking to feel we want to educate people of all stripes and of all types of diversity. But wouldn't you agree that young people definitely need to be a part of this, a big part of this? Absolutely. Generational responsibility is kind of a mission here. You want a stronger sustainable economy and that's where having a sustainable budget comes in and you want that because you want future generations to have more opportunities and a brighter future than they would have now with a great burden of debt. So it's important to get it's important for us to understand that as older folks to understand that. We're worried about our legacy, but younger people need to be worried about their future and they have a direct stake in this. So it's very much an issue for younger generations and that's why our work on college campuses is so important. Well, you're listening to Facing the Future, I'm your guest host Phil Smith and I'm talking with your regular host Bob Bixby about his 25 years as executive director of the conquered coalition. We'll be right back after these short messages. Welcome back to Facing the Future. I'm your guest host Phil Smith and I'm talking with your regular host Bob Bixby about his 25 years as executive director of the conquered coalition. So Bob over the years the conquer coalition has played a convening role for major public policy events and national tours with experts of diverse ideological backgrounds. There are lots of examples that come to mind, but the first one that really stands out to me involves a certain state of the union speech when the president of the United States told the country in this prime time address that was of course broadcast live on all the major networks. He told America that he was asking two groups who didn't agree on a whole lot to come together for a series of White House town hall meetings and these sessions would occur in four different cities and the purpose was to discuss and come up with true and real solutions for social security reform. So who were those two groups, none other than the AARP and drum roll please, the conquered coalition. Holy cow, how did, how did you feel, what was that like the proverbial dog that had caught the bus and what were those like and how did it turn out? Yeah, we were very excited about that. President Clinton and Gene Spirling was, you know, his economic advisor was instrumental in this and Martha Phillips, then our executive director. But the concept from the Clinton administration was, look, we want to do social security reform. You got to have public engagement to do that because it's a program that everybody knows and it's really, really important to the American public. And so you can't just go out and pass a bill behind closed doors. You need to do this in a very public way and talk about, you know, the finances of the system and how it looks over the coming years. And in order to be credible, let's get two organizations that come at it from different perspectives. So, you know, you have the beneficiary side, which was AARP and you have the fiscal side, which was the conquered coalition. So he asked us to come together. Now this was, this was a holy, you know, you know what, the moment for us because it really is put your money where your mouth is because you guys now have to kind of negotiate with AARP and they had to negotiate with us. And it's kind of like, if you're going to ask, you're going to say, well, compromise is needed. Okay, start with you guys and structure these forums in a way that will be credible. How are you going to present the material that in a way that you guys can agree on? And you know, President Clinton, much to his credit said, I will show up. I will be at the public forums, you know, to help explain this stuff and we'll have bipartisan spokesman from Congress and outside experts, all of which you guys will agree on. And so we did that. And it was a tremendous experience working with AARP because, you know, you have to look at it from somebody else's point of view and say, okay, we want to make these points, but they want to make these points. And our whole point here is not that conquered an AARP is supposed to solve the problem. We're supposed to present a framework for dialogue. Everybody did their part. They thought really, really well, including AARP and the Clinton administration. And those dialogues worked through the summer of, I guess it was 1998, was it, or '97, '98? Unfortunately, it didn't work out in the end because for reasons that had nothing to do with social security. There was, you know, the whole impeachment inquiry and I don't want to get into it. But the administration and the Republicans in Congress ran into some political problems dealing with each other and they chose to go the route of impeachment rather than social security reform. So we didn't get there, but it was a very good model, I think, for future endeavors into how that needs to be done. You do need to, if you're going to touch the third rail of American politics, you have to do it in a credible way and you have to listen to all sides and just get it out before the public. Well, speaking of telling it like it is, one of the co-founders of the conquer coalition, as we mentioned earlier, is the late Paul Songas, US Senator from Massachusetts, Presidential candidate. In fact, speaking of Bill Clinton, he defeated Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential primary in New Hampshire, but fast forward four years later and unfortunately we lost Paul Songas. We did something at the conquer coalition called the Songas Project in a sense to help educate Americans about these issues and to honor his legacy a little bit. Could you tell us a little bit about what the Songas Project was about? Well, that was a nationwide project. We had a number of forums around the country and it actually predated this forum we were just talking about with AARP, it was kind of a lead into that. It was based on the need for reforms of entitlement programs but also revenues to put the nation on a fiscally sustainable path, if that sounds familiar, we're still doing that. What we named it after Paul Songas and the idea was public engagement, Democrats, and Republicans. I remember we kicked it off in local mass, Paul Songas is hometown. Interestingly enough, our current co-chair, Bob Kerry, was one of the speakers at that event along with Warren Rudman. I remember that was a lot of fun and just as an aside, it was leading up to a presidential campaign and Bob Kerry was thinking he might run. Warren Rudman thought he'd have a little fun and after the forum, he'd nudge me and he said, "I'm going to drive Bob Kerry over the border into New Hampshire just to get some people talking. Just follow me." So we did, and Warren Rudman as usual drove like a bat out of hell and I tried to keep up and I thought if some police officer pulls me over, I hope Warren Rudman can get me out of this, but he took Bob Kerry to the Nashua Country Club, as I recall, just introduced him to a bunch of people and they came back and they were both giggling and it was like, "Well, I ought to get people laughing in Washington." Anytime a leader in Washington, business in New Hampshire, it starts this speculation. So speaking of traveling across the country, another initiative that the conquer coalition did was something called the fiscal wake-up tour where we took experts of diverse backgrounds and ideology from Washington out across the country and I had a blast helping to manage this tour and lots of things came out of it. One of the things is you and former controller general of the United States, David Walker, kind of became dual stars of a documentary called IOUSA and this documentary film crew who came to us, we didn't go to them, they came to us, asked if they would film part of this, so what was that tour like? Well, that was really one of the most significant things we've done because it lasted over about five years from 2005 to 2010 and David Walker was instrumental in that because when we started, he was the controller general of the United States. He gave to became president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation when that organization was started and they provided a lot of funding for the fiscal wake-up tour, they still provide funding for the conquered coalition. So Dave had a certain cache as the controller general and we got people from different think tanks in Washington that some were identified as left and some were identified as right. They were Brookings and Heritage that did it. Now Heritage has gone a little bit further to the right, I think now than they were then. But the idea was you have people of diverse perspectives on solutions, but we all agreed on the same set of facts. So that was great. And then the fact that we had a, and people love that, I can tell you, people just love the fact that you had people who didn't necessarily agree with each other on the solutions, agreeing on the facts and being civil about their presentations of their disagreements. People really love that and that's why the documentary works so well, IOUSA, which as you said, we didn't start out to make a documentary. We didn't make it. Patrick Creeden, the great documentary maker, found us and made this documentary, which was, I have to say, a lot of fun doing it, going to the Sundance Film Festival, a bunch of budget wonks interacting with film people was kind of an interesting thing. Bob, we've got about a minute left and in that last minute, I want to ask you, what does the future look like for the conquered coalition? Are you optimistic? I am Phil. Otherwise, I couldn't wake up in the morning. This is, you know, I mean, if you just look at the numbers, they look horrible. It's more challenging now than it was 30 years ago or 25 years ago when I started as executive director. But I am optimistic because I know that we have the capacity to do this. There are all sorts of solutions that are available on both the left and the right and we'd have to get that political will. I do look to younger generations to step up and look to me and the older folks and say, you know, do this for us, you know, have a legacy that you can be proud of and not a legacy that just, you know, leaves future generations with an unsustainable burden of debt. So I am optimistic that we can get this done. It's not easy and we have to keep pushing. Bob, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for taking time to be with us today. Thanks, Phil. Well, you're listening to Facing the Future. I'm your guest host, Phil Smith, and I've been talking with your regular host, Bob Bixby, about his 25 years as executive director of the Concord Coalition. After a short break, we'll be right back to talk with two of our fiscal lookouts about depolarization. Welcome back to Facing the Future. I'm your guest host, Phil Smith, and in this segment, we are interviewing two key volunteer leaders from the ranks of the Concord Coalition's fiscal lookouts. Kevin Wiley and Eric Carter are the state leaders for Indiana and for New York, respectively. Welcome to the program, gentlemen. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Phil. We're so glad that you're here today. We're going to talk about a very unique experience with the Concord Coalition this morning, and that is our partnership with an organization called Braver Angels, an organization designed to help deal with depolarization. And I'll tell you what, there are lots of things out there that are keeping fiscal reform from happening. There's so many different things in the world of the federal budget that we need to fix, but at the top of the list has to be the need for depolarization because polarization is just absolutely killing us. So that's what we're going to talk about today. And first, let me do a little bit more of an introduction of these two gentlemen. First, Kevin Wiley. Kevin has been active with the Concord Coalition since the mid 1990s, playing key roles in Indiana public forums on U.S. fiscal affairs. These include programs at universities, including Purdue, Valparaiso, and Ball State University, and Kevin annually presents Concord's educational programs at Ball State University's Bowen Institute for Political Participation. Kevin's given these presentations to just countless adults and young people at places like the Rotary Club and to members of the Indiana Congressional delegation. But one real standout thing that I like to talk about when it comes to Kevin is back in 2018, he received the Concord Coalition's Tom Rogers Volunteer of the Year award at our annual economic patriot dinner. And so Kevin, thank you so much for all that you do for the Concord Coalition. We're so glad to be here with you today. Thank you for the kind words, Phil. And then also Eric Carter, Eric is such a unique individual and has been so much fun to work with him. Eric was actually the Concord Coalition leader who brought us to volunteer with Braver Angels and to partner with Braver Angels. So we look forward to hearing more about this in today's show, but Eric's a longtime financial planner and he's actually a lawyer as well, but he has long time provided financial education guidance to a wide variety of employees and corporate clients. And he has regularly provided commentary on personal finance topics to a variety of media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business, Time Magazine, Bloomberg. But here's one of my favorites, MTV. So Eric, that's pretty unique that you provided financial commentary on MTV. I don't think I've ever introduced anybody who's done that before. MTV was actually political commentary back. Okay, gotcha. Well, the two can be closed cousins right at times, but you earned a BA in economics from NYU and you got your law degree out at University of San Diego. So Eric, thank you so much for being with us today. Glad to be here. So again, the three of us were recently in Kenosha, Wisconsin at the Braver Angels Convention. And this was such a fun time because we were able to get together with people, Americans from all stripes, and we wore different colors. We wore a red badge or a blue badge or a white badge, meaning that we were neutral or non-partisan or bi-partisan. And it was absolutely fascinating to be. We started our time off watching the presidential debate, which in itself, I mean, we could do an entire program on that presidential debate that was held in my home state of Georgia. And it's set in the motion. So many things that have happened since then. But I thought maybe a good place to get started would be, you know, I think Eric, you were the one that brought us to Braver Angels. Could you tell us a little bit about Braver Angels as an organization and why you thought it would be such a good match for the conquer coalition? Yeah. So Braver Angels started right after the 2016 election, when people got together as supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to just talk to each other, you know, try to understand where they were coming from. And it was such a success that there are chapters now all over the country. So this is a group that I got involved with pretty early in the beginning. And what I realize is as helpful as it is, and it really is important work that happens at Braver Angels, so many times when you have these discussions, people are like, okay, what next? What do we do? You know, how do we actually make a difference dealing with a lot of the issues that we're talking about and perhaps finding common ground on? And so a group like Conquer Coalition, which really to me is very Braver Angels type in its core. You know, started by a Democrat and a Republican and continues leadership that's bipartisan to this day. Really just made sense. Because as you pointed out, I felt this issue, a fiscal responsibility is one that cuts across partisan lines and really requires a depolarization to move the ball forward. Absolutely. Kevin, something motivated you to get in your truck and drive all the way from Indiana to Kenosha, Wisconsin for this. What did you think of the convention? What motivated you to participate in this? Well, first of all, it's very nice to have the invite and go. And obviously, you could see looking at the program and the broad range of breakout sessions, the broad range of topics, including Concorde, which we're pleased to be a part of as a partner, right, that it was going to be well worth everyone's time and it fit our MO as an organization from the beginning, as Eric alluded in his remarks. So I thought all along that it would be really an outstanding experience and it was. So, Braver Angels is an organization that's a lot younger than the Conquer Coalition. The Conquer Coalition has been around for more than 30 years now. But you can check out both organizations on the internet, www.conqueredquilician.org, BraverAngels.org, Eric, could you talk to us a little bit about the need for depolarization? And why this, I mean, we talk to Americans of all stripes all the time and when we talk to them, we find that they may not be quite as divided on some of these issues as the media might have you believe. So when it comes to depolarization, where do you think, you know, the future is there for groups like the Conquer Coalition and when we're talking about fiscal policy, clearly we need to depolarize, can BraverAngels help show us a way how? Yeah, I think there's two parts to it. First of all, when you just talk to people, one of the things that people most complain about is just the division that's going on in their own lives, you know, whether it's trying to Thanksgiving, dinner table, even people talking to coworkers, whatever it may be, the kind of animosity that people are feeling against each other. But then that translates into just in a practical sense, the difficulty of getting things done, you know, especially in Washington, D.C., where just the hatred, the animosity between the parties makes it really hard to do anything bipartisan, and particularly when it comes to fiscal responsibility, which is an issue where, you know, I think really both sides have to come together and it makes some concessions in order to make progress. Kevin, we did a couple of things at the BraverAngels Convention. As you mentioned, a concretollition was a partner organization, which meant we had to muster a certain number of concretollition people to attend the convention, and one of the things we did there is we ran an informational booth where we put out information in you and Eric and I, and some other volunteer from Georgia named David Key. We were able to interact with a lot of the BraverAngels attendees from around the country, but could you tell us a little bit about what it would like to run that booth and interact with all of these Americans that are so passionate about trying to fix things? Right. Well, first of all, they're very interested. Normally, you put out, you know, a standard up there and you talk about fiscal responsibility and people run the other way, right? They were interested, yes, and people came and talked to us. They picked up our information. Three or four of them that came to our booth as such came to our breakout session, right? And that's a very good indicator that there's plenty of interest out there. At no time did they discuss their political affiliation. They just wanted to see what it was all about. And many of the co-exhibitors that I went around and talked to, it could have been somebody from me. There were a number of religious organizations represented in universities and all that kind of thing. I managed to get around and talk to quite a few. They were all interested in what we were doing, and likewise, we're interested in what they're doing. So the combination of the exhibitors and the decent was a 700 people at this event made it well worth everyone's time, and the level of interest was quite high. And Eric, did you have a similar experience when we were working that booth together? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of people were interested in learning more about the Concord Coalition and really, again, finding a way to channel a lot of the depolarization work into something productive. Excellent. So one of the other things that we did at the convention was we ran the Concord Coalition Budget Exercise. We facilitated our budget exercise called Principles and Priorities, and this was actually one of the official sessions for the Braver Angels event. And we had people who wore red badges, which meant they identified as conservative. We had people who wore blue badges, which meant they self-identified as being more liberal or progressive, and then you had people who wore white or yellow badges, which meant that they were either nonpartisan or that they didn't want to declare for whatever reasons. But we had a great mix of people attend our exercise. And when we get back from the break, I would really like to dive deep into what this exercise was like and what the Braver Angels participants got out of it. But Kevin, you help facilitate that event, and what did you think of the results of that? I mean, were they pretty much similar to what we see around the country or did we have results that were out of bounds? In most cases, yes. I think there was one group that was pretty aggressive with their -- well, how they would reduce the deficit over 10 years. For example, the group that I had was an interesting mix of people, a real strong VA guy who also had budget experience, the gal who chaired our group was very much a fiscally oriented person. So they really had a balanced approach to things. And they looked at the options book, which tells us what to do. And so I thought their results of a little under a trillion over a 10-year period were actually very well thought out. And they were selective in what they did, recognizing there's impacts. It's easy to make a cut, but you better know the impact of what you're doing. You're listening to Facing the Future, I'm your guest host, Phil Smith, and I've been talking with two key volunteer leaders from the ranks of the Concord Coalition's fiscal lookouts. Kevin Wiley and Eric Harder, we'll be right back after this. Welcome back to Facing the Future, I'm your guest host, Phil Smith, and we are back interviewing two key volunteer leaders from the ranks of the Concord Coalition's fiscal lookouts, Kevin Wiley of Indiana and Eric Harder of New York. And we're talking about a very interesting convention that the three of us attended in Kenosha, Wisconsin. And that is the organization called Braver Angels, which hosted their annual convention. And the purpose of Braver Angels is to help America depolarize. And if there's ever anything that's keeping us from having fiscal budget solutions, depolarization has to be one of the things at the top of the list. So guys, thank you so much for joining us in this second segment. What I'd like to talk a little bit more about is to dive a little deeper into the federal budget exercise that the Concord Coalition facilitated at the Braver Angels convention. We had people from all across the country, all different types of political ideology, again, people wearing little red badges indicating that they were conservatives or blue badges indicating they might be progressive or liberal, then yellow or white, you know, saying that they're either bipartisan or nonpartisan or for whatever reason can't disclose. So those were the types of people that came together, evenly divided in each of our little groups that put together a 10 year budget. And when we sat down, the first thing we told everybody is that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, has told us that over the next 10 years, the federal budget will run deficits, will add to the national debt, more than $20 trillion. So it's your job today in this exercise to see if you can bring that down and to make the federal budget physically sustainable over this 10 year timeframe. And so we sat down in our groups and we were able to really get a lot of good things done. And so, Kevin, you were explaining what it was like in your group earlier. And were the participants, was the discussion acrimonious? Was it harmonious? Was it productive? What was the discussion like in the group that you were a part of? I would say it was very harmonious and it was well organized because several of them had budget experience. The person selected by them to be their spokesperson and organize it, had done it before. They had a chance to participate, whether your hot button was VA spending, or you wanted to talk about how to increase taxes or not extend the 2017 tax law, which can be acronym really used to some people on a certain side of the aisle. But yet each person had an ability to weigh in and it went fairly quickly and smoothly. It's as good a group as I've seen on this and I've done quite a few of them. So I would say in their trillion dollar effort, they did an awfully good job. Well, again, the CBO tells us that over the next 10 years, we're going to add more than $20 trillion. So, their job is to try to get some savings if they can and put together a reasonable federal budget. And sometimes we would see savings as much as $2 trillion off of that, sometimes as much as $6 trillion. The one that was $6 trillion is actually pretty high. It's kind of difficult to get that high of a figure and the choices you have to make. And I think it comes to surprise a lot of people because people, they've heard that they'd like to balance the budget and it's so difficult to balance the budget, even within 10 years, it's very, very difficult. But Eric, what was the experience like in the group that you were a part of? Again, was it a good solid discussion and did it come up with some deficit savings? Yeah, similar to what Kevin said, I was very productive. I think it was really eye-opening for people to see that, for those people wearing the red, that you can't make a lot of progress just by looking for waste and cutting foreign aid. And for people wearing the blue, it took more than just raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. One of the things that we ask people to do when they look at this is to look at all sides of the budget, to look at the revenue side for revenue reform, to look at the spending side for spending reform. But they also are role-playing as they're doing this, they're actually role-playing as if they were a member of Congress having to make these difficult decisions. And one of the questions that we ask people at the end of the exercise is based on this budget that you've assembled, do you think you'll be reelected? So Kevin and Eric, I'll ask you both this question because you've participated in this exercise in the past. If you were a real live member of Congress and this was the budget that you presented to the American people, it can be a tough question sometimes. But do you think you'll be reelected after assembling a budget like this? I really think you can if it's presented properly and you use your constituents, that being the people who presented and gave you this information in a budget exercise, people that you know or were around gave you this information and came to these conclusions and an opportunity for everybody to participate, I think you can, but you have to take a long-term view. You can't just say, "Okay, it'll be all right, we'll cover it up for another year or two." You have to say, "Look at this 10-year plan. Here's what we need to do. Here were the options and here's what we agreed to and I agree with them." And step forward. Sudo-Congressman Eric Carter, since you were role-playing in this job and you assembled this federal budget trying to make a dent in the long-term deficits over the next 10 years, do you think you'll be reelected based on the federal budget that you've assembled with your group? Well, considering that our group both raised taxes pretty much across the board and instituted the Paul Ryan style Medicare reform, I think the honesty would be a challenge, but I think that's why these exercises and everything Congress does is so important because the more educated people are, the less likely it's going to be difficult to get reelected, even passing a budget like that. Well, Braver Angels was such a great place to host this because, Eric, to your point, you have these people coming from all over the country with altruistic motives, wanting to do something better, trying to depolarize, but Eric, let me ask you this question. What is it you think that the Concord Coalition can do to help depolarize? Because obviously we focus on federal budget policy, but maybe the answer is this exercise in itself is a bit of a depolarizing exercise, if you might agree, but there are lots of ways that we're such a natural partner with Braver Angels. Do you agree? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I think one of the things that brings people together is a common enemy. It's sometimes unfortunate, right? And I remember back when the former governor of Kevin state of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, was talking about this idea of, you know, maybe we need before, you know, the culture wars as bad as they were, kind of a social truth to focus on fiscal responsibility because it really is an issue that cuts across ideological and partisan lines. So I think just promoting the issue is a way to prevent, you know, a lot of this polarization and to really combat it. Just like, you know, depolarizing is important in order to make progress on fiscal responsibility, I think making progress on the issue requires and in fact will help depolarization. Kevin and Eric, were you impressed with a number of young people that were at the Braver Angels Convention, you know, the budget issues that we talk about at the Concord Coalition disproportionately affect younger generations. Did it give you hope to see some of the young people there? It sure did. As a matter of fact, at the end of our session there with our exercises, a couple of young people I talked to about the annual fiscal challenge and the colleges and what they decided to do, fill as you're aware, and I sent them information about what was found out by Temple University back to the future of 50, you know, up to 2050 and how they work backwards from there to do the same budget things but put in things that they wanted. So it has to be part of a generational experience, not just the older generation, because their generation is going to be paying for this somehow. And Eric, what's your takeaway in seeing so many young people at Braver Angels, does it give you hope for the future? You know, it definitely does. I mean, I remember myself when I first got interested in this issue was back during, in '92 when Ross Perot ran for president, I was 14 years old volunteering on that campaign and that's actually when I learned about the issue of fiscal responsibility and actually got on the Concord mailing list way back then. So I do think it gives me hope, you know, because that's the generation, as Kevin pointed out, that's really has the most to benefit. And gentlemen, as we close out today's program, I want to give you each just a few seconds to maybe talk a little bit about why if you're a person listening to this program today and you want to get more involved in federal budget issues and finding solutions for our federal budget challenges, why do you think people should be fiscal lookouts and be a part of the Concord Coalition? Kevin, I'll start with you. Okay, well, I think just reading our website information and reading what the current information is, I think if it's in your heart and you want to do this, you simply need to expand on your base of people that you know in your state or in your area and realize that talking to the other party and talking to other people about this is one of the best things you can do for future generations and yourself. And what I found is the rewards are there if you take the initiative and it doesn't have to be that dramatic, you don't need a PhD in economics, but you do need to have the courage to move forward with it and it's a wonderful experience. Thank you. Kevin Wiley of Indiana. And now Eric Carter, would you recommend people become fiscal lookouts for the Concord Coalition? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think the reason to me this is such an important issue for people to get involved with is first of all, if you care about equity, you know, a big component that is generational equity and fiscal responsibility is really about being fair, you know, to those future generations. If you care about patriotism, you know, if you care about America, I think this issue is so important to the well-being of the country and also just the idea of getting ahead of the problem because too oftentimes we wait until there's a crisis and it gets really difficult to solve it. And this is an opportunity to actually fix a problem, you know, before it gets to that point. You've been listening to Facing the Future. I'm your guest host this week, Phil Smith. And I'd like to thank our guests Kevin Wiley of Indiana and Eric Carter of New York for joining us. These two gentlemen are fiscal lookouts to key volunteers for the Concord Coalition. Thank you both for joining us today and we'll look forward to seeing you next time. Please listen to us right here on Facing the Future. (upbeat music)