A non-partisan group of government watchdog groups is holding a town hall meeting Tuesday in Omaha/Council Bluffs to discuss what they call the nation’s long-term fiscal challenges. Bob Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, is one of five panelists who will lead the meeting. Bixby says they hope to attract a wide audience.
Bixby says “We’re trying to get students involved in this because it’s their future that’s at stake and the future of the country. We also want to get the business community involved in this because you can’t have a thriving business community if the government is taking up too much of the resources. We also want to get the elderly involved because they have a key stake in looking at the future of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.”
This is the only Nebraska/Iowa stop for the groups’ series of forums which are called the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour. Bixby compares the town hall meetings to an alarm clock. Bixby says “Everybody hears an alarm clock going off in the morning. They may want to throw it against the wall but it is telling you something that you need to know. We think Americans need to know our fiscal policy is on an unsustainable course, which means that we’ve gotten more promises for future spending than we’re willing to pay for.” He says the nation simply can’t continue to borrow into oblivion because at some point, politicians are going to have to scale back their promises or further raise taxes.
Other panelists include: David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, in addition to members of the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Institution and the Committee for Economic Development. Bixby says “There are lots of other organizations involved in this and they come from diverse perspectives on the budget. It doesn’t matter if you’re a liberal or a conservative or somewhere in between, if you just look at the facts, you can see that we have an unsustainable fiscal situation and we need to do something about it and take it seriously and not hope there’s some sort of free lunch out there.”
The meeting is scheduled to run from 9 to 11:30 AM Tuesday at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the Scott Conference Center. The Concord Coalition is a nationwide, non-partisan, organization advocating fiscal responsibility while ensuring Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are secure for all generations. More information on the forum is at: “www.concordcoalition.org”.
Related web sites:
Information on the Concord Coalition