The Fiscal Solutions Tour is coming to Portsmouth, New Hampshire on October 7, 2010 and holding a series of public events.   

For this stop of the Fiscal Solutions Tour, experts will include:

Robert L. Bixby, executive director of The Concord Coalition

David M. Walker, president and CEO of The Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former U.S. comptroller general

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of The American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office

Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow, Economic Studies, Brookings Institution, and former associate director of OMB

The Fiscal Solutions Tour is designed to help Americans think constructively about how to build a stronger economic future by meeting the challenges of unsustainable budget policies, spiraling debt, low savings rates, dangerous reliance on foreign lenders, and the growing needs of an aging population.

The tour will bring several top national experts to cities around the country to discuss the wide range of options for putting the country on a more prudent and sustainable fiscal path in the next decade and beyond. These options will include possible defense and non-defense spending cuts, Social Security reforms, improvements in the health care system, tax reforms and tough budget controls. Many such options are currently being considered by the presidentʼs bipartisan commission on fiscal responsibility and reform.

Cutting through the usual partisan rhetoric, ideological divides and political smoke screens, the Fiscal Solutions Tour will focus on the positive: Where do we go from here? What key decisions need to be made in the not-too-distant future? How can reforms lead to a brighter future?

The programs this fall follow up on “The Fiscal Wake-Up Tour,” a highly acclaimed effort in which public policy analysts of diverse perspectives explained why they were increasingly alarmed by the nation’s longer-term fiscal outlook.  Between 2005 and 2009, the Wake-Up Tour visited more than 70 cities across the country and was the subject of the documentary film “I.O.U.S.A.”

The Concord Coalition is conducting the tour with support from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.