National Press Club
529 14th Street NW Washington, DC 20045
May 23, 2011
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM (GMT-5)
Host:
National Press Club
Estimates of state and local government liabilities owed to public pension beneficiaries range from hundreds of billions of dollars to more than $3 trillion. Experts disagree over the proper assumptions for measuring these liabilities. Usually a long-term problem, now governments are seeing near-term negative effects on their budgets. How important is pension reform for the fiscal health of state and local governments? Does the public pension situation constitute a crisis? And if so, what steps should we be taking to address it? All these questions were discussed and debated in this forum (video). Panelists included Josh Barro (Walter B. Wriston Fellow & Editor of PublicSector.org at the Manhattan Institute), Andrew Biggs (Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute), Dean Baker (Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research), and Elizabeth McNichol (Senior Fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities). This event was moderated by Charles Lane of the Washington Post.
