Paying for Katrina: Closing the Fiscal Gap

The New America Foundation, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and the Committee for Economic Development convened a forum on the budget deficit in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Entitled "Paying for Katrina: Specifics for Closing the Fiscal Gap," and covered live by C-SPAN 2 on Monday, November 14, 2005, the forum featured experts from a diversity of ideological perspectives.

Despite this diversity, there was a surprising degree of consensus among the panelists, who expressed universal alarm with our current fiscal position. Describing our budget woes as a "fiscal Cassandra," Bob Bixby of the bi-partisan Concord Coalition warned that if policy makers continue to ignore mounting budget deficits, the damage to the U.S. economy will be comparable to the physical damage wrought in New Orleans: "Katrina is a metaphor for the federal budget: we knew this was a danger for years

Participants

• Charlie Stenholm
  Member, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget; Former Member of Congress (D-TX)


• Maya MacGuineas
  President, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget & Director, Fiscal Policy Program


• Charles Kolb
  President, Committee for Economic Development


• Bob Bixby
  Executive Director, The Concord Coalition


• Brian Riedl
  Fellow, Budgetary Affairs, Heritage Foundation


• Isabel Sawhill
  Vice President and Director, Economic Studies Program, Brookings Institution