American Debt: Causes, Consequences, and Fixes

This is the first session of the American Debt: Causes, Consequences, and Fixes symposium. The symposium is held in honor and memory of Peter G. Peterson, who passed away on March 20, 2018. Peterson served as Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations for twenty-two years, and was a passionate advocate for fiscal responsibility and protecting the United States from what he believed was an unsustainable national debt.

This event was underwritten by Steve and Roberta Denning and the Sage Foundation in appreciation of Peter G. Peterson and his impact on and leadership of both the Council on Foreign Relations and this country.

RUBENSTEIN: Welcome, everybody. My name is David Rubenstein, and I have the honor and privilege of serving as the chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. My immediate predecessors are Carla Hills and Bob Rubin, and they are here. And their immediate predecessor was Pete Peterson. And we wanted to have a symposium to honor Pete because of his great commitment to fiscal discipline and reducing the debt and dealing with entitlement issues. And we thought, as an appropriate way to do that, we would have some seminars or symposiums...

This is the second session of the American Debt: Causes, Consequences, and Fixes symposium. The symposium is held in honor and memory of Peter G. Peterson, who passed away on March 20, 2018. Peterson served as Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations for twenty-two years, and was a passionate advocate for fiscal responsibility and protecting the United States from what he believed was an unsustainable national debt.

This event was underwritten by Steve and Roberta Denning and the Sage Foundation in appreciation of Peter G. Peterson and his impact on and leadership of both the Council on Foreign Relations and this country.

RUBIN: Welcome to the second session of our fiscal discussion. I’m Bob Rubin. I will moderate this. We have a terrific panel: Joyce Chang, who is head of global research for JPM corporate investment bank; Doug Holtz-Eakin, who has been all over the place but was head of CBO at one time—and head of CEA, right?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Right.

RUBIN: Both, OK. And Peter. (Laughter.) He’s like Bono. He only needs one name. No, Peter was head of OMB and CBO, as we know, and now is an investment banker of...