Priming the Pump: What Policymakers Should Consider in Deciding Whether or Not to Go Forward with a Stimulus Package

January 9, 2009, 10:00am – 11:30am

About This Event

Confronting the growing economic crisis will be the first order of business for the new Congress and the incoming Obama administration. Should the incoming administration work to deliberately increase the size of a federal deficit already projected by the Congressional Budget Office to exceed $1.2 trillion for the current year? How big should a stimulus package be? How should it be structured?

These are the questions that a Center for American Progress panel on fiscal stimulus will grapple with at an upcoming event. Part of the discussion will involve what the Labor Department's December employment report (to be released an hour and a half before the beginning of the event) will tell us about the future course of the economy and the need for stimulus.

Featured Panelists:

Jim Horney, Director of Federal Fiscal Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who has previously served as Deputy Democratic Staff Director at the Senate Budget Committee and Chief of the Projections Unit at the Congressional Budget Office
Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, Chief Economist for Ford Motor Company who also currently serves as President of the National Association for Business Economics and formerly served as Staff Economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers
Brian M. Riedl, (invited) Lead Budget Analyst at The Heritage Foundation and Grover Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies

Moderated by:

Scott Lilly, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, former Clerk and Staff Director of the House Appropriations Committee and the Congressional Joint Economic Committee

A report on economic stimulus was published earlier this week by the Center for American Progress. Read the full report here.

Location

Center for American Progress
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005