Federal Budgets and Spending: The Implications of Increased Deficits on Federal and State Budgets

To register please email Mary Gotaas at mgotaas@gmu.edu.

Featuring:

Dr. Roy T. Meyers 
Professor of Political Science and
Director of the Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars Program
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Eileen Norcross
Senior Research Fellow
Director of the State and Local Policy Project
Mercatus Center at George Mason University

The nation's budgetary challenges have received much attention in recent months.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the federal budget deficit for 2009 will total $1.4 trillion.  At 11.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), this projected deficit will be the highest since World War II.  Adding to these fiscal challenges, Congress is in the process of debating a health care bill that could cost $1 trillion, or more, over the next 10 years.

Policymakers are recognizing that this level of federal spending is unsustainable.  They are also realizing that state governments are forming an unsustainable dependency on federal transfers.  This has, and is, expected to cause more distortion of state budgets. 

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University will offer a course led by Dr. Roy Meyers, a former analyst at the Congressional Budget Office and currently Professor of Political Science at the University of Maryland; and Eileen Norcross, Senior Research Fellow and Director of the State and Local Policy Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.  Please join us as we address such questions as:

• What is the current budget situation and how will the projected deficits affect us?
• How is the current federal budget situation affecting the states?
• What can Congress do to rein in spending and return to a course toward fiscal sustainability?

This program is reserved exclusively for full-time, Congressional, agency and Library of Congress employees.