Fiscal Wake-Up Tour

The Concord Coalition announces a tour:

The Concord Coalition is organizing a series of public forums around the country designed to focus attention on our nation's daunting long-term fiscal challenges. It is called The Fiscal Wake Up Tour. The purpose of this new issue-oriented grassroots project is to draw attention to the simple fact that, according to analysts of diverse political views, current fiscal policy is unsustainable and hard choices must be made to set things right. To that end, we have joined forces with speakers from the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation, the Committee for Economic Development, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget other organizations who may differ on proposed solutions but who all agree on the magnitude of the problem and the need for serious action. Our purpose is not to cast blame but to give the public a better idea of how serious the long-term fiscal problem is; why there is no free lunch, and what the realistic trade-offs are.

We are taking this message across the country because better public awareness of the problem is the first step in finding solutions that are both acceptable and meaningful. Without greater understanding of the problem among the public, community leaders, business leaders and home state media, elected leaders are unlikely to break out of their comfortable partisan talking points. In our Wake Up Tour events we explain the greater context for today's fiscal policy debates, such as: changing demographics; inadequate national savings; intractable health care costs; the crowding out of discretionary spending on everything from defense to education; and ultimately growing deficits and debt that is simply unsustainable.

I don't have any advanced knowledge of what the speakers are going to say but they probably will tell you that cutting foreign aid and pork barrel projects alone will not cut the deficit.