Friday January 14, 2022
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Online Zoom Meeting
Dear Colleagues:
Greetings and Happy New Year! I hope that your holidays have been happy and safe, and filled with comfort and joy. I also hope that only health and good things come your way in 2022.
As part of being careful to stay healthy, the “Friday Lunch,” a CWRU tradition since 1989, continues on Zoom. I would like to think we’ll be able to have some in-person meetings sometime during the term, but with classes mostly on Zoom for the first two weeks of the semester, we certainly can’t hold a non-class meeting.
The Public Affairs Discussion Group (the formal name) presents experts from campus and sometimes beyond to discuss important issues for the university, local community, nation or the international stage. We hope to encourage discussion or at least vigorous Q&A.
This Week’s Program
We begin 2022, and the second year of the Biden presidency, with a look at the central policy battle in national politics: the attempt by Biden and the congressional leadership to reorient the U.S.A.’s political economy with new policies enacted through the federal budget process.
2021 ended with a major setback, as Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced he would not support the reconciliation bill Democrats have been calling the “Build Back Better Act.” But we should remember that the Democrats did pass an earlier reconciliation, the American Rescue Plan Act, as well as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Federal budgeting is frequently on the brink not simply of policy disappointments but of disasters: a “government shutdown” because money is not appropriated to operate many agencies, or even the risk of default because the ceiling on the national debt is not lifted. In another sort-of-success, on December 16, the day after the Treasury said it would run out of money, the debt ceiling was fixed until after the 2022 election. But a shutdown is still quite possible. Republicans chose not to filibuster a “continuing resolution” that will keep the government operating through February 18, but there is a huge difference between what the Democrats want to appropriate and what Republicans will accept.
I spent most of December writing a book chapter about this mess, so I figure I ought to try to explain it to the Friday Lunch. Especially since it would be a large part of any retrospective on President Biden’s first year. Any discussion of federal budgeting faces an analogue to the “Antonioni Problem” (does a movie about boredom have to be boring?). Namely, does a talk about total confusion have to be totally confusing? We’ll see!
Signing In
This semester’s discussions will begin at 12:30 p.m., the usual time. The meeting will be set up as from Noon to 2:00 p.m., so people are not all signing in at the same time and to allow for the discussion to run a bit long. Each week we will send out this newsletter with information about the topic. It will also include a link to register (for free) for the discussion. Every Monday the same information will be posted on our website: fridaylunch.case.edu.
If you register, you will automatically receive from the Zoom system the link to join the meeting. This week’s link for registration is:
https://cwru.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIrfu6sqj8iGtNLY_lj3VA80-dlAlAkeBVw
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Please e-mail padg@case.edu if you have questions about how the Zoom version of the Friday Lunch will work or any other suggestions. Or call at 216 368-2426 and we’ll try to get back to you. We are very pleased to be partnering this semester with the Siegal Lifelong Learning Program to share information about the discussions.
Best wishes for safety and security for you and yours,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
Joe White joined the CWRU faculty in 2000, serving as Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Political Science. As director of the Center for Policy Studies, he also organizes the Public Affairs Discussion Group. He previously was Associate Professor in the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and before that Research Associate and then Senior Fellow in Governmental Studies at the Brookings Institution. He teaches a series of courses on public policy and U.S. politics, and his research involves both health care policy and federal budgeting. As a scholar of budgeting, Professor White in 2014 received the Aaron Wildavsky Award for lifetime achievement from the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management. He testified to the congressional Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform in 2018.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
January 21: Multilateralism in an Era of Rising Nationalism. With Kathryn C. Lavelle, Ph.D., Ellen and Dixon Long Professor of World Affairs.
January 28: In Defense of Judgment. With Michael W. Clune, Ph.D., Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of Humanities.
February 4: Cognitive Decline and the Workplace. With Sharona Hoffman, J.D., Edgar A. Hahn Professor of Law.
February 11: What, if Anything, Have We Learned From Cybersecurity Regulation So Far? Wtih Tom Alrich, consultant on cybersecurity regulation especially for the electric power industry.
February 18: TBA
February 25: TBA
March 4: The Present and Future of Cryptocurrency. With Peter Zimmerman, Ph.D., Research Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
March 11: Spring Break
March 18: Inflation. With Mark Sniderman, Ph.D., Executive in Residence and Adjunct Professor of Economics, Weatherhead School of Management; former Executive Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
March 25: Covid-19 Through Covid-22: The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same? Wtih Mark Cameron, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences.
April 1: The French Presidential Election. Wtih Patrick Chamorel, Ph.D., Senior Resident Scholar and Lecturer, Stanford in Washington, Stanford University.
April 8: TBA
April 15: TBA
April 22: TBA |
