| Budget Blues: Yes, It Can Get Worse |
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Joe White, Ph.D. – Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy |
Friday April 5, 2019
12:30-1:30 p.m.
***Alternate Room: LL06A/B/C, Lower Level***
Kelvin Smith Library*
Case Western Reserve University
Dear Colleagues:
Are you sick of hearing about the federal budget? It’s easy to get fed up with “shutdowns” and horror stories about the wolf at the door, especially since the wolf keeps not showing up. But the wolf – or perhaps a pack of wolves – may be getting more real.
One horror story, about damaging deficits far in the future, has become a bit more plausible because deficits are already far higher than would be normal given economic conditions. More immediately, the Democrats taking over the House of Representatives increases the risk of an appropriations veto battle that could make the most recent shutdown look minor.
The recent shutdowns involved only a portion of domestic spending because the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 temporarily raised legal “caps” on defense and domestic appropriations. This allowed passage of both defense and the largest domestic appropriations before the shutdown. Now, with the president wanting to mobilize his base for the 2020 election, the House providing a fat target and a leftward tilt among Democratic legislators, agreement seems much less likely.
Meanwhile legislation suspending the federal debt ceiling has expired, and sometime around September, absent new legislation, the government will no longer have authority to borrow to pay its bills. It seems highly unlikely that Congress and the President will agree on a debt ceiling fix separate from settling the conflict about defense and domestic spending. So we may be facing an epic budget process crack-up in time for the new fiscal and academic years.
I’m a bit sick of federal budgeting too, but it’s my field and I’ll try to explain which risks are real, which are exaggerated, and what might happen.
All best regards,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
Joe White is Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy, with his primary appointment in the Department of Political Science and secondary in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences. He also directs the Center for Policy Studies and so organizes the Public Affairs Discussion Group. Joe joined the CWRU faculty in 2000, having previously been at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine of Tulane University and a Research Associate and then Senior Fellow in the Governmental Studies Program of the Brookings Institution.
Joe began studying federal budgeting when he entered graduate school at UC Berkeley in 1980. In 2014 he received the Aaron Wildavsky Award of the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management for lifetime achievement in the field. He is the author or co-author of two books and more than two dozen articles or book chapters on aspects of the topic. Most recently, “Long-term budgeting: A cautionary tale from U.S. experience” was published in the OECD Journal on Budgeting in August; and in May he testified to the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform about possible less partisan improvements to the process. Some of his work can be found at http://policy.case.edu/research/health-care-federal-budget-articles/.
Where We Meet
The Friday Public Affairs Lunch convenes each Friday when classes are in session, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Our programs are open to all and no registration is required. We usually meet in the Dampeer Room of Kelvin Smith Library.
* Kelvin Smith Library requires all entrants to show identification when entering the building, unless they have a university i.d. that they can magnetically scan. We are sorry if that seems like a hassle, but it has been Library policy for a while in response to security concerns. Please do not complain to the library staff at the entrance, who are just doing their jobs.
Parking Possibilities
The most convenient parking is the lot underneath Severance Hall. We regret that it is not free. From that lot there is an elevator up to street level (labeled as for the Thwing Center); it is less than 50 yards from that exit to the library entrance. You can get from the Severance garage to the library without going outside. Near the entry gates – just to the right if you were driving out – there is a door into a corridor. Walk down the corridor and there will be another door. Beyond that door you’ll find the entrance to an elevator which goes up to an entrance right inside the doors to Kelvin Smith Library.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
April 12: The Polar Silk Road? With Kathryn C. Lavelle, Ellen and Dixon Long Professor of World Affairs.
April 19: Managing in a Trumped-Up Economy. With Mark Sniderman, Executive-in-Residence and Adjunct Professor of Economics, Weatherhead School, and former Executive Vice President and Chief Policy Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
April 26: What Do We Know About the Health and Safety Effects of Marijuana: Medical, Recreational, or Otherwise? With Theodore Parran Jr. MD, Isabel and Carter Wang Professor and Chair in Medical Education and Associate Director, Rosary Hall at St. Vincent Charity Medical Center. |
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March 31, 2019
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Upcoming Events
War, Fragmentation, and Reconstruction in Yemen
A Global Currents Discussion with Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Wednesday, April 3, 4:30 – 6:00 p.m., Baker-Nord Center, Clark Hall 206, 11130 Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH 44106. This program is made possible by the generous support of Ms. Eloise Briskin.
The horrifying human toll in Yemen’s war, and backlash against the Saudi regime for other reasons, have led to both the House and Senate voting to criticize U.S. support for the Saudi role in that conflict. But Yemen has a long history of strife, and needs to be understood in its own terms. Professor Philbrick-Yadav serves on the executive committee of the American Institute of Yemeni Studies and co-edited a recent Project on Middle East Political Science report on the situation. Join us as she offers perspective on Yemen’s past, present, and possible future.
Pretextual Orientation: Testing Religious Sincerity After Masterpiece Cakeshop
A discussion with Bryan Adamson, J.D., Associate Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law, Thursday April 18, 2019, 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m., CWRU School of Law, Moot Courtroom (A59), 11075 East Blvd., Cleveland, Ohio 44106 Free and open to the public.
Professor Adamson’s conversation will explore the Supreme Court’s recent Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission decision. While it is questionable as to whether the Court should have accepted certiorari in the first instance, it is clear that the decision did not resolve the core issues of whether the creation of a wedding cake constitutes speech or expression nor the thorny issue of what is to be done when civil rights collide with assertions of religious freedom. Thus, it is important to explore what the decision augers for the LGBTQ community when actors might invoke religious beliefs as a pretext for discrimination which, under similar circumstances, an adjudicative body must not interrogate. Given the social, public and private harms caused by religious insincerity (.e.g., fraud and false public accommodation claims), it is important to explore whether the evidentiary bar of religious animus established in Masterpiece Cakeshop has real precedential effects, and whether the First Amendment’s “no orthodoxy” principle and “no religious test” clause of Article VI are so embedded in the Court’s jurisprudence that pre-textual invocations of religious beliefs which work injury upon the rights of LGBTQ citizens can never be impeached.
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