Transcripts For CSPAN QA With Maya MacGuineas 20170116

Then at 7 00 we open our phone lines and take a look at todays headlines on washington journal. Announcer this week on q a, maya macguineas. President of the committee for a responsible federal budget. She talks about the federal budget process and what to expect from the new congress and administration. Brian maya macguineas, the president of the committee for a responsible federal budget. Maya i thought you were going to make fun of the name. Happens regularly. This is in organization that has been around for decades. I think the most distinctive feature about it, think of it as very bipartisan. Our board of directors are people who have been in this town in washington and they have run all of the budget organizations. Our cochairs are governor mitch daniels, now the president of purdue, kim penny, leon panetta, democrat, republican, independent. This has been the head of the treasury department, the opposite of management and the house of the Senate Budget committee. Recently, it is a fiscal Watchdog Group with bipartisan leadership that has been involved in these issues. To know what it is like you have to legislate as well as get ideas and thoughts and notes for policymakers to be more fiscally responsible. Our purpose in life is to talk about the things in budgets. Along with the bigger things. I had no intention of doing this kind of work. I was working at it and cant and then i was working on wall street. I was looking at it in the mid90s. Who is on the about deficits. They are pretty slow to where we get access. I want to learn more about the issue. I started reading reports from the Congressional Budget Office which i found fascinating. I have always been a huge critical independent. I have not taken the part of either party. The more i read about it, the more word and became about the trajectory that our country was unaware with you tomorrow more and more. It has become worse over the all of the times that ive been working in this field. I think that sound budgeting and fiscal responsibility and looking at it from a nonpartisan perspective is the underpinnings of a sound and suspended sustainable economy. I think there is a lot of political pressure to not do things that are fiscally irresponsible. I think it is important to help push policymakers they can take make tough choices. This is going seleka nasty question. You have been around for a long time. You have done this since 2003. Brian the nasty question is, if all of them who have been on government and been involved in the budget process, and they havent been able to do anything about it, why would this make any difference . Maya the truth is and i really believe this, i believe that a fiscal situation would be a lot worse if we did not have the very important intellectual policymakers and former policymakers who have been there, but in the trenches, out there, pushing for us to be more responsible. It is easy to borrow money. We certainly borrow a lot of it right now. There are many bills that passed that have borrowed a lot less because of the pressure that this kind of an organization and others that are out there also, put out there. The kind of information, the reaching out to policymakers, the education that we do both in the grassroots and in the country. Unfortunately, what it is not like is a big ribboncutting ceremony. We think the whole situation. If we dont have these watchdog organizations, we will be barring ourselves into oblivion. I think that would be very little pressure to think about how we are going to pay for things. Think about what spending responsibly looks like. The reason that i and a really Terrific Team of colleagues get up everyday and continue to work on this, even though we know were not going to balance the budget today, that is not the goal that we would even want, it is because we need a counterbalance of pressure. So Many Political pressures are to be fiscally irresponsible. Brian so where did you grow up . Maya i grew up here in washington dc. Never thought i would come back, was never interested in politics and i never imagine myself being involved in budget policy. Brian what did your parents do here . Aya my mom was a reporter and my dad was a lawyer. Brian what was your moms name . Maya carol. She was a freelance reporter. She was a travel writer. She was a restaurant reviewer. A theater reviewer. We got to go to Chinese Restaurant and order everything on the menu so that she could review it. My parents were divorced. When i lived with my dad, my mom would go off and travel around the world and you to write an article about it. It was an on washington and very neat job. Brian what did you study in washington . Maya some of the people stayed on the east coast and i thought it was important to say another part of the country. I also hate cold weather so i might have made a mistake in picking chicago. But otherwise northwest was a terrific school to go to. I started as a matter major and decided that there was only so much math that i wanted to be doing. I wish to become an economics and psychology major. If you could understand people and understand markets, you could understand things. They both baffled me. Brian and then you went to harvard. Maya for graduate school. I went to the Kennedy School of government. Brian so you had to do well at northwestern. Maya i did fine at northwestern, i would for a couple of years, i worked at tim weber. What do i love the Kennedy School of government. It was a whole lot of people who like the same kind of thinking. If you are creating a brandnew policy from scratch, how would you do it . There were some a different perspectives is a much expertise there. That was a great two years. Brian one of the most interesting nuggets was the post editorial board. Maya here is what happened. I sent them an oped and the editor of them were calling back. I said they are going to run my oped. The person who covered economics was going on booklet. One of my favorite dutch i had was working there for two months. Another piece of it was to step out of your career. I know nothing about journalism. I dont know how editorial boards work. A separate they are for the rest of the newsroom. I learned so much. Brian they really separate . Maya yes. Any sense you get that they had any editorial impact . i got the sense that they did not. They were very involved but not what you would write about. That was my sense. Brian what about people outside of the d. C. Area . Ookingsered tons of br stuff. Maya a lot of people us out of washington wondered. I have to keep saying how many things were great jobs but brookings was a great first job that anybody could have because as a research assistant, you go in and you work for incredibly smart people. I researched a whole variety of different topics. It was kind of like so many of say, if i were mature and could to college again, i got to get a much more out of it. I thought if they tag that, i was getting paid to research. Always different economic topics. So i worked on the commercial banking crisis, it is going out at that time. Income ability, a whole variety of economic issues. As it had to do issues which is a great skill and incredibly different today. I got to write about things. The question is what is a think tank. Brian what influence do think tanks have on the decisions made it in washington . Maya i think they have more impact than they do now. It had their slant but they were much more academic. Think tanks bill if they are becoming more aligned with a specific party. They are try to get people and policymakers a specific idea that is political and oriented with policy. They were more academic. We were doing regression analysis. You look at all the data and analyze it. You try to figure out what variables affect Different Things. You are running models. Ill think think tanks do as much for that. They do more policymaking. Both are important but i really enjoyed the academic piece of it. I think it had impact because the scholars of the think tanks were so wellregarded that when they said things, they were treated as experts. Right now, it feels like in the country, there is a rejection of expertise and policy expertise. There is no monopoly on the facts the weight better used to be. It is an easier. Where people would come up with ideas and share them and then you would see policymakers whose think i like that idea. They would run with it after that. Everything seems disputed and debated. Brian we have video of you in 2001. We have video, this is just a little clip, it is about a minute. Were 2009 and 2016 when we can see what the progress has been. Clip] the single most important step in strengthening Social Security is to boost national saving. This will tell money into productive investment, read entire economic output and wages. This will reduce the burden of paying melting retirement costs. Other regional assumptions, at some point, it creates a vicious death spiral. Part of the trickiness of the situation is that we dont know when. We dont even know exactly what that would look like. Whether it would take the form of a Economic Activity or slow damage to our standard of living. The bottom line is our budget process is broken. We have the biggest economy in the world and we are regularly operating without a budget in place. When we do these funding bills, small bills, they serve one at a time, they look at the government programs, they figure out what is working, what is not, you make decisions, choices, that is what budgeting is. That process isnt happening anymore. Clips]deo brian last time, they passed a budget. Maya they passed the budget last year. They didnt adhere to the budget. There is a great, broad question. The budget process is still broken at this point. We have the whole process which is a set of steps that have been laid out. There is a secret that is supposed to happen. Every year, we blow through it. The steps are never adhered to the way theyre supposed to be. Last year there was a budget that was passed. It was a budget that was supposed to save 5 trillion. The budget is no my done in 10 years, if you look at the trajectory. They did pass the budget, that was unusual. They proceeded to pass a whole let up legislation that was completely at odds with that budget. The budget was supposed to reach balance in five years and reach balance in five years and reach 5 trillion. In the two policies and laws that added 2. 1 trillion to the deck. Here is an interesting fact about the budget, the budget isnt actually legally binding. It is not a law. It has the guidance of what youre supposed to do. There are no repercussions if that is not followed. We went and blew through that budget last year. Brian what was the politics behind the budget act of 1974 . 1974, the budget act was probably the most influential maya 1974, the budget act was probably the most influential act that has impacted where we are today. We are a long way from where it was at the time. What they were doing then was they were building a whole lot of congressional strength around budgeting. The 1974 act created one of the best things it was the Congressional Budget Office. Their materials, i find very informative and very balanced are what informs me to start working with the budget. It created the Congressional Budget Office. Brian the Congressional Budget Office, where is it located . Maya it is right out in the middle of the city. Brian how big is it . Maya hundreds of people. Brian who is the boss . Maya steve hall. Brian who does he work for . Maya he works for congress. There are two big areas of the budget, there is the office of management and budget. The office of management and budget works for the president and the Congressional Budget Office, which works for congress is the one that provides the numbers for them. Really, the Church People of the Budget Committees are the directors of the cbo. The first director, she is so important in this whole field. The first director of the Congressional Budget Office, that was alice roebling. She is the wisest leader we all have. She is the wisest leader of responsible budgeting. We have to have these outside institutions that people trust. She did an incredible job of establishing it as that. Brian here is keith hall, who is currently the cbo director. [begin video clip] if these laws remain unchanged, the deficit will continue to grow and debt held by the public would raise to 24 trillion or 86 of gdp by 2016, up from 24 of gdp at the end of 2015. Moreover, it would be an upward trajectory. 50 years from now, debt would reach 155 percent of gdp. The highest recorded in the united states. End video clip] brian this is why we get a lot of people who say why would i want to watch cspan . He is talking about all the language that he is using. We talked about this, before here, right here on 2000, when george bush was taking office, 5 trillion in debt in the united states. At the end of his term, it was 10 trillion. At the end of this term for barack obama, it is 20 trillion. About 44 trillion in debt. People through their hands up people who listen to this language throw their hands up and say, it must not matter. Maya here is something i learned. People dont like it when you talk about actuarial balance. They say no. No. No. Actuarialt is talents . Aya that is how you evaluate the health of the trust funds that are part of Social Security. To me, that is really important, that really matters. It is how you talk about it in a way that if you fix it and things become actuarially balanced, Social Security will be able to pay all of the benefits that we promised to pay. Language matters. It saddens me to hear that even cspan viewers get bored of the budget. It is not only a dry and complicated topic, it is a topic when the numbers are so huge that they are not accessible to people. There is a big dilemma because you want to talk about these things in ways that are accurate. The accurate way to talk about this issue is, what is the debts held by the public for the chair the share of the economy . I lost most people,. When you talk about that, a share of families, that is the easy way to understand, is not as technically correct. Any of us struggle with how we talk about it in a way that is not overly politicizing that or scaremongering it. This is a contentious issue. Republicans think youre trying to raise taxes and immigrants and democrats think youre trying to entitlement and no but it was to pay for things. A lot of what we do is try to stay technically accurate. It is very alienating in how you talk about it. That is something we struggle with. Brian why is it that supposedly, democrats always want to cut taxes and republicans want to cut taxes and democrats want to spend. I said in the beginning, i really a strong independent. I dont understand Political Parties. It is not that simple. There are lots of people who are republicans or democrats and lots of policymakers. They all have their own opinions. One of the reasons that im not a big fan of Political Parties is trying to offer support findings. All democrats think this, all republicans think this. Just because you have one position on social policy, you have a similar publican or democratic view on economic or foreign policy. We are all freethinkers, we have a lot of different opinions. I think it is reasonably accurate to generalize that one of the biggest distinctions between republicans and democrats is that they have a preference for a size of government. Republicans think that markets and individuals can make better choices and impressed tend to think democrats seem to that government can still win where there are needs and market failure and do a lot of good that the private sector wont do as well. As well. That will ultimately tend to the effect the size of government. As an independent, i always thought that i like to see government that is smaller than the one that is projected to be but more progressive. Part republican, part democratic. I think a lot of people have different point of view. I dont think they are particularly accurate. Brian if you watched president elect trumps News Conference this week, have you heard him say that we want more f18s, implying versus the f35s which are very expensive . Brian is that going to be significant enough of a if you could get this reduction and the kind of money being spent, would it matter . Maya it would be significant in the area of defense. It will contribute and that every billion dollars makes a difference. The big problem with Donald Trumps fiscal point of view is that he has laid out overall policies. He has talked about the problem of the National Debt and now that it is for the economy. He has proceeded to lay out a whole suite of policies that will make it much worse. Has talked about increasing spending even know you can change were some of the money is spent. That is an order to change how money is spent in the defense department. But the biggest issues are that he talks about trillions and trillions of dollars of tax cuts. He is talk about trillion dollars of infrastructure spending. Is talked about not touching the biggest drivers of National Debt which is retirement and health care programs. They dont add up to a sustainable fiscal pass that we are already on. Donald trump is inheriting one of the worst fiscal situations president has ever inherited. The economy is doing ok but he is inheriting one of the worst is the situations that any new president has ever inherited. Other than president truman, as defined by the debt held by the public. That means our debt, compared to our economy is almost at record levels, it is the highest it has been since we came out a world war ii and if we do nothing, to borrow another 9 trillion over the next few years, that is before you talk about all the new policy initiatives that he addput forward, which would trillion. Were talking about 14 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years. That makes no sense for where our economy is, it makes us very vulnerable to economic downturns or emergency. It will slow the standard of living. Maya let me give you an example of healthy fiscal policy. Brian what does the word fiscal mean . Maya it means how the budget lays with the overall economy. Anything that affects the Government Spending revenues and the spending of the government. When we had this huge economic recession of 2008, our share of the economy debt was 38 of gdp. Whether you like the cinemas or hate the stimulus, that meant the government had to tools, solitary Monetary Policy or fiscal policy. It could do a lot to gin up the economy when we were heading into a very deep recession. Our debt now relative to the economy is twice as high. If and when we going into the next recession, quantity normal length of business cycles, we are likely to be closer to the next downturn. We dont have the same fiscal firepower ready because our debt is a much higher. That means that borrowing will be more difficult to do. We are more vulnerable to how dependent we are in borrowing. Because Interest Rates have been so low for so long, our Monetary Policy, you have to be blathered you have some people out there saying that we should borrow even more. Suddenly, structurally, you are dependent on them, rates go up and you are in trouble. That could happen in the u. S. Very easily. Brian this is senator rand paul. He has a big chart, talking about the budget. Clip] video sen. Rand paul this is what they are for. Intentionally those of new debt. I am not board, that is not what i ran for office, that is not why i in time away from my family and my medical practice. It is because debt is consuming our country. This is a budget. They say that it is just a gimmick, just a game. The numbers dont mean anything, well, if the numbers dont mean anything then put all of the numbers in there and put conservative numbers and there. I for one will put forward a conservative opposition to the republican majoritys budget. I will put forward a budget that freezes spending. In balances the budget over a fiveyear period. Brian what are the chances that they will ever freeze spending riod . A fiveyear pe well, that is the only senator whose Halloween Costume was the National Debts. The 19 trillion National Debt. He is someone who cares about this issue. You are asking before, the republicans really want to cut taxes and democrats want to increase spending . That part is probably true for the most part. But they dont want to do is the opposite. Then, democrats are likely to say that we will raise taxes and democrats say that we will cut spending. No party is eager to do those hard parts. We are seeing that when it comes to cutting spending. That is very easy to talk about. We have two parts of our budget , just to get a little bit wonky. One is discretionary and one is mandatory. Every year, as a part of that budget process, it has to be approved. He goes through the appropriations process. Brian name something that is discretionary. Maya defense is discretionary. Worker training. Most of the pieces of what people think of government as being is discretionary. Mandatory is the two thirds of the budget that doesnt have to be improved. It is on automatic pilot. Social security, medicare, veterans benefits, interest on the debt, things that government doesnt improve every year. They are just paid automatically. They are going more quickly. So if people talk about freezing government, people cannot lose. They say, what you think it is so security benefits . What do you think your benefits will be gotten . Your grandmother is not going to get her Social Security benefits . Brian only three or four years of that have had an increase in Social Security. Maya that is from inflation. Inflation has been so low. Social security grows with the economy and it keeps space with the economy. Social security as a program is one of the fastestgrowing programs there is. Brian you mentioned this earlier about a trust fund. If i had a camera and want to go somewhere and look at the Social Security trust fund, physically, where does it exist and is there any money in it . Maya i saw the Social Security trust fund, filled with bonds in West Virginia in a filing cabinet. A lot has changed since i saw the show and someone went and looked at it. I am sure they have some computer backup files for it as well. This of Security Trust fund, collected money, more money than had to spend in benefits for many years. He knew the baby boomers were coming and moving into retirement. The had to build up that fund. The only place that the Social Security fund can invest is in government bonds. What that means is the extra money is being used to buy government bonds. They are similar to the normal bonds but you can sell them on the secondary market. The money went back to the government. The government uses it for the other spending programs it has. That is spent on defense or health care or any of the other things. Every time i am a cspan, people call up and yell. You are talking about somebody who stole the trust fund, he said that we should not get the money, it is a very contentious issue. Technically, because funds are filled with legitimate, legal ious of the federal government that they have to repay. They are repaying them now, the interest on those are being paid and they will start to retain the principal. The trust funds will use all of of the Government Debt, or the bonds by the 2020s or 2030s. That is what people talk about when there are problems with some security. There are promises of benefits, there are more than they have. They have to raise taxes or slow the growth of those benefits. If we do that today, instead of waiting until the last minute, we can make modest changes. Should have done it 10 or 20 years ago. Trustees have been wanting as every year. Politically, this is one of the hardest issues there is. People dont want to touch it. We have a president elect to who said he wasnt going to touch it. That would buy you about two or three months of solvency. Brian is this is going to go on forever and they will never do anything about it . Maya this issue is all that to be the right way, paintings, doing less and pay for more. We borrow hundreds of millions of dollars every. That makes sense when it is a recession. The economys evolution of department as much as we are. We have to make these hard changes and they involve changes and they involve straight up raising taxes, cutting benefits, performing entitlements. Those are things that every pollster will tell their politician to stay away from. People dont amended. People care about the debt but they dont really know that when they go to the voting book, they have to vote for someone who raises taxes and cut spending if they want to make progress on this. The parties have a real incentive not to fix the others party. They have to clobber each other with it. You want to do Social Security, you want to raise taxes, cut taxes on the rich, raise taxes on the lowerclass. This is used to bludgeon each other. Brian i assume he is still budget chairman, tom price. He is going to the health and Human Services department, where Social Security and medicare is. I want to show you him talking. [begin video clip] we ought to begin any discussion on budget process reform where it began the constitution. Article one gives congress the power of the purse, the authority to determine the federal governments level of taxation and spending. Over the course of many years and congresses, both republican and democrat, the legislative branch has ceded too much Budgetary Authority to the executive branch. This has weakened the representative framework of our democracy. [end video clip] brian i dont want to sound disrespectful, but we have heard that language for years in this town. We have heard members of congress, both sides, say we have ceded too much responsibility. Now that gentlemans party has the white house. What are the chances, when he gets down into hhs, that he will feel the same way about budgeting . Maya i will say kudos to chairman price because he spent a year developing detailed budget process reforms, which he has put out there. He was talking through his plan in that same speech. There are some good ideas there. They are about changing the budget rules so we can do more budgeting so that the budget is more likely to get done and moved through congress. So i actually dont think that just because he will be a member of the administration, he will say the executives should have more power. What i think we will see is you now have republicans with the house, senate, and white house. It is very different to talk about defense. We are seeing it right now in repealing and replacing obamacare. It is easy to message. In saying, weve got to get rid of this. But now that they actually own the government decisions and you have to figure out what you are going to do to control health care costs, not blow up the budget, and maintain coverage in whatever form they decide, it is a lot harder. I think the question is less, will there be more power for the executive . My sense is that congress will still be doing much of the detailed work. But it will be, how are they going to reconcile what the republicans have always talked about the debt and wanting to balance the budget in nine years that has been their goal for the past budgets. Now they have to put forth the policies that will get you there. One example. In past budgets, republicans assumed they would repeal obamacare and save 2 trillion. Now they have put forth the beginning of the process, the budget that has reconciliation instructions and only requires they save 2 billion. So, all the money they were going to save was not really going to happen. They lost a lot of the potential savings or have given themselves a lot of wiggle room. If you are not willing to make the choices of how to get the budget to balance. Or i would say, trying to balance the budget in nine years is more than we need to do. We just need to get the debt so it is not growing faster than the economy. Then we will be on a more sustainable path. But if they suddenly have the power and then walk away from the policies that will get them there that they talked about when the budget was more messaging than policy, that will be a real problem. I think it is people like chairman price who has been quite good on entitlements and budget he is conservative and we are going to have to ultimately have bipartisan deals on how we get things done. But he has been willing to talk about those issues the question will be, within the administration and between the administration and congress, are they willing to confront these tough choices . They have a president elect who did not talk about them on the campaign trail and we have not seen him yet willing to put forward policies that would get the budget close to balanced. Brian i want to show you video from an interview in 2008. The woman doing the interview is paula white, a minister. She is the one who is going to be at the inauguration on the stage doing the invocation. Donald trump is being interviewed by her. Lets watch. Clip] video mr. Trump nobody knows more about debt than i do. I know what im doing and it worked out very well. I negotiated a couple deals with banks and this and that. I have a lot of friends who are bankrupt and you will never hear from them again. In the early 1990s when i was in trouble, i owed billions and billions of dollars. And in a certain way, i love debt because in good times, there is nothing better. In bad times it comes back to bite you. We talk about debt and the assets and liabilities of debt. Generally it is a liability, especially if you are not a really skilled professional. You said something right there. Said a lot of your friends did not make it. Why did you make it . Mr. Trump you have to never give up and god has to have blessed you with a good brain. [end video clip] brian paula white is called a prosperity minister. Some say she brought donald trump to the lord. But when you are watching this, what are you thinking about what he is saying . Maya i was thinking about debt because that is what i think about. I was thinking about how different private sector debt is from Government Debt. He talked about in this and in other discussions about his experience with debt and it seemed as though he thought those applied to the federal government. For instance, renegotiating the debt. The federal Government Debt is really a different beast than any other kind of debt out there in that it is the backbone of the Global Economic system. Renegotiating debt sounds to people like default, which is something this country has talked about occasionally with people saying we dont need to lift the debt ceiling, which is a bad idea. We dont default on our debt in this country and we should not be considering it. Brian how far can you go with it . Maya what you should do is instead of lifting the debt ceiling blindly, you should increase it if it is to pay for bills you have already entered into. And use that as a reminder, this country is on an unsustainable path. What we need to do is put in place a plan to deal with the fiscal challenges. That is the part that never comes. There are antics, heartfelt speeches on the floor about how we are doing this to our children and grandchildren. Then they go ahead and left the debt ceiling and continue to borrow more. The fiscally responsible members and there are many seriously say, we need to put in place a plan, Something Like Simpson Bowles, put forward five or six years ago, the kinds of plans that look like that look at reforming taxes, health care, Social Security, and use all parts of the budget to borrow less in a way that would be progrowth and help get us on a sustainable path. That is what the debt ceiling should remind us to do. Brian simpson and bowles are on your board. How big is your board . Maya 30 people. Brian how much money do you spend a year . Maya budget is about three and a half million dollars. Brian how many people work for you . Maya 18. Most of them are policy. We have the smartest policy team. Then we have communications people. An engagement team. We have public education. It is a great team of people. Brian i have an article from 2012 from the new republic. Maya which one . Brian the headline says maya macguineas, doyenne of debt. Doyenne, that is a woman who is the most respected or prominent person in a particular field. That would be you. What do you think . Do you remember this . Do. i brian it talks about you throwing a glamorous dinner party. Maya i have thrown a lot of dinners for republicans and democrats, or breakfasts, or policy meetings. One of the things i believe is that policymakers dont have enough time where they get to talk policy. These folks come to d. C. Because they want to get things done, although they may have different ideas. It does not seem like a great job from a lot of what i can see. They have to raise a lot of money, do a lot of meetings with their party, and a lot of them are policy wonks. We throw a lot of policy dinners where we bring in experts, hoping to do something on health care or talking about what policies will grow the economy, and we do it with republicans and democrats together. Because they always talk about the loss of they dont live here anymore, they are not on the sidelines of the soccer game. It is good for them to get together with the think tank experts and each other and talk about these issues. And do kind of deeper dives into them. Brian talk about the basics. Where it is you do them . Maya any restaurant where we can find the space, mainly restaurants around here. Brian are you allowed to buy them dinner under the laws . Maya under a certain amount of money, or they can pay for their own dinners, which regularly happens. Or you can just have appetizers and not give them very good food. Brian how do you decide who should come . Maya people interested in policy, recently anybody is welcome to come who shows an interest. Trying to figure out who would be interested in talking more about health care or tax reform. I think the one i am really interested in right now is economic growth, how we are going to grow the economy. Brian there is evidence in this article that you canceled one once because you did not have enough bipartisanship. Maya i dont remember that, but it sounds like something i would do. What i dont do is dinners talking about political strategy. It is important to have people talking to each other from different perspectives. Brian what about people that dont want anything to do with democrats or republicans and think that is the problem in washington . They say both parties are really alike and all they care about is getting reelected. What about the independents out there . Maya i am stuck. I have kids who are 10 and 12 and im trying to figure out what it is you are supposed to teach them. Being a parent is interesting, looking at things through a different lens. One of the things we teach our kids is you dont always get your way and you have to compromise. Or just because you believe something passionately, also understand where other people are coming from. One of the things i am struck by is how this incredible intense partisanship is so opposite of that basic point of view, which is, believe passionately but understand that other people who have different believes are coming from somewhere good as well. I feel like in this city, people think someone with a different is bad. You know, is driven by something bad. I dont think anybody comes to the office and says, i want to do bad work today. People have different believes. For me, again, we all have different beliefs and people have passionate views about what the government should be. I have them, too. But the experience of listening to other peoples perspectives is one of the most important things that everybody who is part of governance should be connected to. Brian in this article, they talk about the socalled deal that was supposed to happen between john boehner and barack obama for some 4 trillion. What is the back story on that . Maya they came so close, those two worked so hard on coming up with a budgetary deal and i think they were really close. Brian do you remember what year . Maya 2011 or 2012. Brian this was 2012. Maya they were so close. They both had members of the party who were nervous, and it was a negotiation where everybody was worried about whether they are getting a fair deal. The sense i have of where they almost landed was that it wouldve been very fair, very similar to Simpson Bowles framework, and would have saved enough money to put us on a path where the debt was no longer going faster than the economy and would have made changes to all parts of the budget that would have respected republican principles that the policies needed to be progrowth and democratic principles of the policies needed to protect the most vulnerable. I think they structured a plan that was close to doing that. I never got the sense that the other political leaders were as boughtin as they were. Boehner was a good leader on this and obama was willing to do it. They walked away because a lot of Different Things that were going on that kind of broke down trust. It is really hard to do. In i think we still have to keep ,n mind that at the Time Congress was having a hard time getting anything done. Things were breaking out of their two camps. Not only because the debt is so important. In my mind, this was an important attempt to show that we could still Work Together and function together. Since then, i feel like any kind of ability to really grapple with Health Issues with republicans and democrats has broken down. To the detriment of this country. Brian before you got this job in 2003, this is 2000, this video. The chairman of the Budget Committee is a man who ran for president this time. There is another familiar face here. I want you to talk about this. [begin video clip] you are going to have a budget that does not spend one dime of the Social Security surplus on anything else, and in fact, my protege on the committee, paul ryan, and i will go to the floor with a formal lockbox proposal that prevents the raiding of Social Security, not just for this congress but i would hope for all congresses so we can stay out of Social Security. [end video clip] brian john kasich and paul ryan sitting right there on the committee. I have been in this town forever. I heard them talk about this raiding of the Social Security trust fund. Why did they still do it and was it Lyndon Johnson that change d the frame on that, using the trust funds and he could say he had a balanced budget . Maya there have been a lot of great minds trying to figure out how to fix it. The problem is because the trust fund has to buy Government Debt there has been talk, should a i buy stock . People are nervous about government buying billions of private sector stocks. So, the safety and appropriateness of Government Debt has always been what has guided us to use the trust fund to invest only in Government Debt. But because Government Debt is also how the government finances deficits, you are by definition giving money that makes the deficit less or effects surplus if you have surpluses. The lockbox, which was an interesting way to try to wall this money off, does not really work unless you are running surpluses so you dont need that money. Once you are taking government treasuries, it means they dont have to borrow from the open market, they are taking it from Social Security. If they are running a deficit, it will go elsewhere. The point of so security surplus is that we wanted to find a way they wanted to find a way to build up savings when that was needed, for the baby boomers in particular that savings would be there. But the government never found a way to actually save that money. Brian why not . Maya it is basically like if you are borrowing in one place of your Household Budget and saving in another, it just means you are borrowing more in the part you are borrowing. It is your overall finances that are affected. Lets talk about the future. You have a couple young kids. 10 and 12 . When they become 25 and 23, what is it going to look like if nothing changes . Maya the interesting thing about our country is, people talk about whether we will have a crisis. Are we going to fix the problem or have a crisis . I think the answer is in between. I dont think we are going to have this big debt deal that i think the country needs to put us on a stronger path, because partisanship is so strong and the issue is so tough. It is a lot easier to compromise on things that are easier. The only way we get bipartisan compromise these days is if both parties get what they want and nobody pays for any of it, so we end up borrowing more. So fiscal policy i think is one of the hardest things to address. Im not optimistic that we are going to have some big, sensible deal that could really help gin up this economy. Brian so we just have to stop worrying. Maya no, we have got to keep working on it and try to not let things get worse. But i dont think were going to have a fiscal crisis. The u. S. Is strong and resilient, people want to lend to us because we are politically stable. It feels crazier here than it has in a while, but we are a politically stable country. I think what happens is we muddle along. That means Charlie Schultz who was a great economist at brookings described as the termite in the basement. The deficit is the termite in the basement. It is eating away at the foundation of the economy, but we dont see it. I think the results for my kids and everybody elses kids, i and it is already the result for us is that our standard of living will be lower than it would have been otherwise. The bottom line is, we dont make very smart decisions for our budget. Our budget is over 80 is consumption, 20 is investment. Roughly seven dollars goes to people over 65 for every one dollar for people under 18. That is the federal budget. This is not a longterm strategic budget. We borrow too much. That means too much goes to interest. By the way, the fastestgrowing part of the budget Interest Payments. That is the single fastestgrowing part of the budget. So we are too dependent on borrowing that we are paying so much on interest that squeezing out other priorities and slowing the growth in the economy that slows the standard of living. When we are spending so much and consumption, that is basically us saying we want to spend money but dont want to pay for it. That means our economy wont grow so our kids will have a lower standard of living than they would have had in a far more globally competitive we could everan have dreamt of. Brian since 2008, anybody that is a saver has gotten the short end of the stick. They have gotten like. 25 of interest on a cd or savings. We have got 20 trillion in debt. What happens if the Interest Rate goes back to 7 or 8 . Maya it feels a bit like a credit card teaser rate. We are so dependent. We have such a high debt load right now, our debt payments are not all that high, considering how much debt we have, because rates have been so low. But if and when they go up and all signs are they are starting to if Interest Rates go up by 1 , our Interest Payments will go up over 10 years by 1. 3 trillion. That is just one percentage point. Brian so if it goes up 5 , 6 , we are talking 6 trillion. Maya massive changes. Inflation will kick in and we will inflate our way out of some of this, which is not a good thing for a lot of folks either. Brian savers will benefit. Maya different people have done well or poorly based on this the fiscal and Monetary Policy. So, savers have done poorly unless they have certain assets that have improved dramatically. The potentials for bubbles in the economy. To me, the drawback for all of that is that it is not a very secure economy. It is a very scary economy for people who are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing working, saving, putting money away for their kids college education. There is not a lot of security. When i look at our budget, i think one of the things we need to be doing is building a federal government that is able to deal with the challenges of this economy. We have a federal government that is built for the challenges of the economy decades ago. The president had a budget where he recommended an idea for wage insurance. I dont know if that is a good or bad idea, i thought it sounded interesting, but we did not have a National Discussion on it. We dont have any resources. We have allocated all our resources already. Most of the budget is preallocated to Social Security and medicare is precommitted. We have very little flexibility. I am worried that our budget is shortterm focused, that we dont invest enough, and dont have enough flexibility so that when there are challenges, our budget can react. It feels like it is cemented instead of nimble and smart. Everybody knows this economy is changing. The pace of change is faster than we could have envisioned, and we are not equipped in terms of our budget to be dealing with that. Brian another member of your board is pete peterson. He spent a lot of money over the years on trying to balance the budget. And you had to raise money you set up a lobbying organization . Maya we set up fix the debt, a grassroots organization. It was going to try to rally around having a big debt deal. Brian how much money did you raise . Maya 35 million. Brian who put money into Something Like that . Maya that was private sector money, almost all private sector and individual. Brian is it still functioning . Maya still functioning. Would hear from debt . E maya fix the debt has hundreds of thousands of members who hear from us regularly. We have a very wonky focus where we talk about debt and actuarial focus in the committee for responsible federal budget. And fix the debt has a couple hundred thousand folks from around the country, where we send information that is more digestible. We dont assume you are a policy wonk, but it is people who signed up because they were worried about fiscal challenges. I was just talking this week with one of our members in colorado, who wants to work on how you build more of a state chapter in colorado. Brian you run fix the debt yourself . Maya yeah, i run it. Brian how do you maintain the balance . Does fix the debt give money to members of congress . Maya no. Brian who do they give it to . Maya we dont spend a lot of money right now because we dont think there is an opportunity for a deal. We used money a few years ago to travel around because we had bigger staff. We do events out in the states with our state chapters, as many as i can, but we are mainly saving those resources for if and when there is an opportunity for a debt deal. I wish i could say when i thought that was going to be. You have to get the grassroots interested. They need to push members, and members have to Work Together. Brian there was a tiny mention of the money problem in the Farewell Speech of barack obama. Here is nine seconds. [begin video clip] pres. Obama government officials raise deficits when we propose to spend money on preschool but not when we are cutting taxes for corporations. [end video clip] brian this is one side of it. You always hear the other side, they want to spend money on corporations but not kids. You have listened to this rhetoric for all these years. How do you know when somebody in politics is telling the truth . Maya i think about that and i think, here is what we do. We spent a whole lot of energy last year lobbying pushing against tax cuts for corporations because they werent paid for. We have a strong position that any policy a tax cut or spending increase should be paid for. But a lot of folks politically are always saying, things are onesided, the right says you are a stalking horse for tax increases, the left says you want to get entitlements. No, we want to make sure the debt is sustainable and we pay for our policies and that this is all part of a comprehensive economic plan. The problem with fiscal policy and politicians is they use it more for defense than trying to achieve it. Folks will find the importance of fiscal responsibility more often when they are trying to stop somebody else from doing a policy they dont like then when they want to make sure that whatever they are putting in place is paid for. Or when they live the fact that we are on you and unsustainable path and we need to do something. Brian we are running out of time, but i want you to tell folks if they are interested in does the average citizen benefit from following your website . Maya i hope so. We have two organizations, the committee for responsible federal budget, and on this one, you will get really unbiased and pretty wonky budget papers sent to you all the time. We also have a weekly summary of things going on in washington. Rsb. Org and you sign up there. And we also have the fix the debt website. Which if you dont want to read as many details about the budget but want to know big things, you can sign up there. We would love it if people sign up at both. I think it is important to say we are nonpartisan. We are not trying to push an agenda. We are equal opportunity fiscal responsibility pushers. We push against unpaidfor tax cuts, unpaidfor spending programs. We dont have a position about what we should be doing. We have a position that we should be doing it in a way that is fiscally responsible because it has such a profound effect on the economy. We love to hear from folks. It is an organization where we have feedback all the time. They can get involved, sign up for either or both. We would love to have more people because this whole issue is not going to change unless voters and citizens are willing to tell their policymakers they understand that tough choices have to be involved if we are going to change the path we are on, which is unsustainable. It is going to keep the economy from being what it could and should be, unless we get this stuff in there. Brian our guest has been the president for the committee for responsible federal budget. Maya macguineas, thank you very much. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q a. Org. Our programs are also available as cspan podcasts. Announcer if you liked this q a program, here are some others you might enjoy. Former white house budget director David Stockman talks about his book the great deformation, which examines how certain actions by wall street and the Federal Reserve have affected the economy. There is also tom coburn, who spoke with us about his career and his desire to see more transparency and less wasteful spending in government. And from 2005, our conversation with then u. S. Comptroller general david walker on the role of the Government Accountability office. You can find those interviews online at cspan. Org. On cspan,here washington journal is next. Then, a look back at past inaugural addresses. And later this afternoon, a life oconnor of the larry radio show. For the next three hours, we will take a look at president obamas legacy. Include jessests holland, sophia nelson, host it is they washington journal, january 16, 2017. That is the memorial for the late dr. Martin luther king. Today celebrates his birthday and his work as a civil rights leader. With that in mind, we are hosting a series of programs leading up to Inauguration Day this friday. As part of that, we want to take a look at president obamas legacy when it comes to race relations. We will examine a topic with guests later. Ask about raceto relations and if you think they have improve