This week on Facing the Future, we heard from students who participated in a unique edition of The Concord Coalition’s Principles and Priorities budget exercise at New Hampshire Boys State. Bob was joined by Phil Smith, Concord Coalition National Field Director, and Kyle Duffy, Concord Coalition Policy and Media Intern, to discuss the high schoolers’ experience and lessons learned during the exercise. During the show, we heard directly from the Boys State participants. Concord Coalition Chief Economist Steve Robinson also joined Bob to recap the questions about debt and Social Security from the first presidential debate.
Duffy, a counselor at and alumnus of the Boys State program, explained the relevance of the Principles and Priorities exercises. “We’re working through local, party, and state government, and budgeting is a really important aspect that we want the boys to take away at the end of the week. Being able to work through these deficit and debt activities gives them a much clearer picture of what it takes to make really hard decisions about budgets, especially when you have constituents all over the state who are going to respond. You’re going to have to take action based on what they say, even though they may not agree with you.”
Smith added, “There’s 30 different options that the CBO has scored here. They really do dive deep into federal budget policy in each of the major areas of the federal budget. It’s a great training ground not only to be a good citizen and to be an educated voter, but some of these boys I fully expect to run for elected office one day – maybe serve as staff people in Washington – and they already have a jump on their colleagues by doing this exercise.”
Later on in the show, Steve Robinson joined to highlight some important points from the debate, including President Biden’s claims that simply taxing the rich could solve many of our fiscal problems and former President Trump’s claims that illegal immigrants and border crossers were unfairly taking Social Security and Medicare benefits from the American system.
“[President Biden] started out by saying that the payroll tax was 6% and, technically, employees pay 6.2%. Their employer pays another 6.2%. So the total tax is 12.4%. He sort of stated that wrong,” said Robinson. “And then he said, ‘well, if we just had a 1% tax on people making over a million dollars or over $400,000, that would solve the whole problem.’ If you apply the entire 12.4% payroll tax to income over $400,000, the Social Security actuaries have said that would extend the trust fund for about 10 years. Contrary to what the President said, that policy alone wouldn’t permanently solve the problem.”
On President Trump’s policies, Robinson said, “The bottom line here is that there’s almost no way someone can come to the U.S. and work illegally and qualify for benefits, and then receive those benefits here in the country, particularly with regard to Medicare”, Robinson said,. “If you’re overseas even U.S. citizens have a hard time getting benefits under Medicare. Basically, no, there are not millions of illegal immigrants or border crossers, or whatever the term is that Trump wants to use, they’re not collecting Social Security. They’re actually more often than not probably providing more money to the system than any potential undocumented worker would ever receive from the system.”
Hear more on Facing the Future. Concord Coalition Executive Director Bob Bixby hosts the program each week on WKXL in Concord N.H., and it is also available via podcast. Join us as The Concord Coalition team discusses issues relating to national fiscal policy with budget experts, industry leaders, and elected officials. Past broadcasts are available here. You can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or with an RSS feed. Follow Facing the Future on Facebook, and watch videos from past episodes on The Concord Coalition YouTube channel.
