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Bradley Lecture Series
April 2 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm CDT
Debt, Deficits, and Sustainability: The US Fiscal Challenge
James Poterba, Mitsui Professor of Economics at MIT and President of the National Bureau of Economic Research
Federal debt as a share of GDP has increased from about 35% to 95% in the last two decades, with the largest increases occurring during the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal budget deficit was 6.4% of GDP in 2024, and it is projected to grow as the US population ages and a larger share of the population draws Social Security benefits and qualifies for Medicare and Medicaid. What are the economic effects of high and rising deficits, and the debt they create? What are the implications of extending all or most of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on the debt trajectory? Is current fiscal policy on a sustainable path, and if it isn’t, what sort of policy actions, including entitlement program reforms and revenue raisers including tariffs and tax changes, could get it there?
About the Speaker
James Poterba is the Mitsui Professor of Economics at MIT and the President of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a non-profit research organization with nearly 1,600 affiliated economists. Dr. Poterba is a trustee of the College Retirement Equity Fund (CREF), the TIAA-CREF mutual funds, and of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Dr. Poterba served as a member of the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform in 2005.
Dr. Poterba holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard College and a D. Phil. in Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He has been an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, a Batterymarch Fellow, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 2014 he received the Daniel M. Holland Medal from the National Tax Association for the study and practice of public finance.
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Sponsored by UWM’s Lubar College of Business and The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.