Institutional Reform / Change

In contrast to rising health care and interests costs, Social Security's growing benefits relative to taxes received represent only a modest part of the nation's major fiscal problems. Nonetheless, Social Security serves as the flagship of social welfare policy, and it places increasing demands on the economy as annual benefits grow, life expectancies increase, and the baby boomers retire. Social Security reform, moreover, has far-reaching implications. Done the right way, it can generate higher national output, personal income, and revenues for Social Security and other purposes-helping the nation achieve budget sustainability and a stronger Social Security system.

Among the questions to be addressed: Are projections showing that Social Security revenues will soon fall short of benefit payments reasonable and certain? What are the implications of using general revenues to pay benefits? What is Social Security's role in the broader budget deficit debate? Is there a politically viable way to achieve long-term solvency? Is Social Security reform critical now?

City and county governments, caught between escalating and costly criminal justice populations and strapped budgets, are searching for ways to control costs without compromising public safety. In testimony before the U.S. House Crime Subcommittee, the Urban Institute's Nancy La Vigne explained how justice reinvestment -- a process for identifying the drivers of criminal justice costs and developing new ways of reinvesting those scarce resources – can benefit localities.

Institute Fellow Olivia Golden, the former head of the District of Columbia’s Child and Family Services Agency, offers the region’s subway and bus system five management lessons for turning around the problem-plagued agency.

Today's federal budget policies are unsustainable. Three programs - Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid - constitute more than 40 percent of spending other than interest in a normal year and all are growing faster than the economy and tax revenues. At the same time, Congress has kept the overall tax burden remarkably constant as a share of gross domestic product for most of the past 50 years. The combination of these factors leads to a growing deficit. This testimony, by a former Congressional Budget Office director, discusses four policy packages that would return the United States to a sustainable budget.