Committee: The Fiscal Future of the United States: Analysis and Policy Options

Committee Membership Information


Project Title:	The Fiscal Future of the United States: Analysis and Policy Options
PIN:	EGIS-I-07-02-A
Major Unit:	Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education
Sub Unit:	Center for Economic, Governance, and International Studies
RSO:	Ross, Jane
Subject/Focus Area:

Committee Membership

Date Posted: 07/08/2008

Dr. John L. Palmer - (Co-Chair)
Syracuse University

John L. Palmer is the Distinguished University Professor at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and has recently completed two presidentially-appointed terms as a Public Trustee for the Medicare and Social Security programs. From 1988-2003 he was Dean, and Professor of Economics and Public Administration, of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. As Dean, he was responsible for the academic and administrative leadership of Syracuse University's six social science disciplinary departments, undergraduate and graduate programs in public and international affairs, and numerous interdisciplinary research centers and institutes. During the second half of his tenure as Dean, Maxwell was continuously ranked as the number one school of public affairs in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine.

Before becoming the Maxwell School Dean he held several other positions both in and out of government, including Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Adjunct Professor of Harvard University.

Dr. Palmer has written extensively and engaged in a variety of other professional activities. His publications include 13 books and more than fifty professional and popular articles on a wide range of topics related to economic, budgetary and social policy concerns. He has testified before Congress on many occasions and been a consultant to numerous government agencies, private foundations, and universities. He has also served as an officer of several national professional associations and as a member of the Visiting Committee of the Brookings Institution and various committees of the National Academy of Science’s National Research Council. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and past President of the National Academy of Social Insurance. Dr. Palmer received a B.A from Williams College and a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.

Dr. Rudolph G. Penner - (Co-Chair)
The Urban Institute

Rudolph G. Penner is a Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute and holds the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Public Policy. Previously, he was a Managing Director of the Barents Group, a KPMG Company. He was Director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1983 to 1987. He also was a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Other posts in government include Assistant Director for Economic Policy at the Office of Management and Budget, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Senior Staff Economist at the Council of Economic Advisors.

Before 1975, Dr. Penner was a Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester. He is past President of the National Economists Club and he served on the Board of Directors of NABE. He received the Jesse Burkhead Award for the best article published in Public Budgeting and Finance. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Joseph Antos
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

JOseph Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at AEI. He is also a Commissioner of the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission, and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously, he was Assistant Director for Health and Human Resources at the Congressional Budget Office.

Dr. Antos's research focuses on the economics of health policy, including Medicare reform, health insurance regulation, and the uninsured. He has written and spoken extensively on the Medicare drug benefit and has led a team of experienced independent actuaries and cost estimators in a study to evaluate various proposals to extend health coverage to the uninsured. Dr. Antos also writes for AEI's Health Policy Outlook series. He earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. from University of Rochester.

Mr. Kenneth S. Apfel
University of Maryland, College Park

Kenneth S. Apfel is a Professor of the Practice at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. His primary teaching and research interests are in public management and leadership, as well as in social policy, with a particular focus on aging, health care, and retirement issues. He served as Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) from 1997 until his term ended in January 2001. He is a Principal of the Council for Excellence in Government and an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Mr. Apfel has served as Assistant Secretary for Management and Budget at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In this capacity, he served as the Senior Budget Official and Chief Financial Officer for HHS. He formulated and executed the third largest budget in the world -- a $700 billion budget for a department staffed nationwide by 125,000 people. He also served as a Member of the President’s working group on welfare reform and the Secretary’s task force on Head Start quality improvement.

From 1989-1993, Mr. Apfel was Legislative Director to Senator Bill Bradley, and from 1982-1989, he was Senator Bradley’s chief staff person for Federal social and budget policy, with a particular focus on the Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Welfare programs under the jurisdiction of the Senate Finance Committee. From 1980-1982, he served as a committee staff person for human resource programs for the Senate Budget Committee. He earned a B.S. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; an M.A. from Northeastern University; and an M.A. from the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas.

Dr. Richard C. Atkinson
University of California, San Diego

RICHARD C. ATKINSON is President Emeritus of the University of California System. He took office on October 1, 1995. Before becoming President of the UC System, he served as Chancellor of UC San Diego, Director of the National Science Foundation and was a long-term member of the faculty at Stanford University. An internationally respected scholar and scientist, Dr. Atkinson became the fifth Chancellor of UC San Diego in 1980. During his tenure, the university doubled in size to about 18,000 students while increasing the distinction and breadth of its programs. The campus consistently placed among the top five universities in federal funding for research. In 1995, the quality of its graduate programs was ranked tenth in the nation by the National Research Council.

Dr. Atkinson's research dealt with problems of memory and cognition. His theory of human memory has been influential in shaping research in the field. It has helped in clarifying the relationship between brain structures and psychological phenomena, in explaining the effects of drugs on memory, and in formulating techniques that optimize the learning process. He has also been interested in the more applied problems of learning in the classroom. He developed one of the first computer-controlled systems for instruction, which served as a prototype for the commercial development of computer-assisted instruction. Reading instruction under computer control for young school children has been an important application of his work. He was co-founder of the Computer Curriculum Corporation.
Dr. Atkinson's scientific contributions have resulted in election to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Education, and the American Philosophical Society. He is past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, former Chair of the Association of American Universities, the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, and a mountain in Antarctica has been named in his honor. He earned his B.S. from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. from Indiana University.

Dr. Alan J. Auerbach
University of California, Berkeley

Alan J. Auerbach is a Robert D. Burch Professor of Economics and Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also Director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance. He served as an Assistant, then Associate Professor, of Economics at Harvard University, and as a Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and as the Deputy Chief of Staff on the U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation. He joined Boalt in 1994 and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Economics.

Dr. Auerbach was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999. He has authored numerous articles, books and reviews and is the past or present Associate Editor of six journals, including the Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Review, National Tax Journal, and International Tax and Public Finance. He earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University and a B.A. from Yale University.

Dr. Andrea L. Campbell
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Andrea L. Campbell is a Hayes Career Development Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT. She studies American politics, political behavior, public opinion, political inequality, and social policy. In particular, Dr. Campbell is interested in the interplay between political institutions such as public policies and federal systems and the political behavior and attitudes of mass publics. Her first book, How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Political Activism and the American Welfare State (Princeton University Press, 2003), bridges the political behavior and historical institutionalist literatures to argue that democratic participation and public policy powerfully reinforce each other. Using a wealth of survey and historical data, the book shows how highly participatory groups get their policy preferences fulfilled and how public policy itself helps create political inequality.

Dr. Campbell is currently working on two major projects. First is a new book on taxes, public opinion, and the American fiscal state, under advanced contract with Princeton University Press. The second project, with Professor Kimberly Morgan of George Washington University, examines the politics of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 and is funded by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Investigators Award and a National Science Foundation grant.
Professor Campbell’s work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Political Behavior, Studies in American Political Development, and Comparative Political Studies. In 2001- 03, Professor Campbell was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy at Yale University. She earned and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and a B.A. from Harvard University.

Mr. Chris Edwards
Cato Institute

Chris Edwards is the Director of Tax Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Previously, Mr. Edwards was Senior Economist on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee examining tax, Social Security, and entrepreneurship issues. From 1994 to 1998, he was a Consultant and Manager with Price Waterhouse Coopers examining fiscal issues being considered by Congress.

From 1992 to 1994, he was an Economist with the Tax Foundation. Dr. Edwards' articles on tax and budget policies have appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Times, Investor’s Business Daily, and other major newspapers. He earned an M.A. from George Mason University in Virginia.

Dr. Dana P. Goldman
The RAND Corporation

Dana P. Goldman is the Director of the RAND Center on Health Economics and Director of the RAND Roybal Center for Health Policy Simulation, designed to provide better estimates of the impact of health policy changes. Additionally, Dr. Goldman is an Adjunct Professor of Health Services and Radiology at UCLA. His areas of expertise are the economics of chronic disease, health care reform, health care organization, economics, and finance, pharmaceutical regulation and innovation, pharmacy benefit design. His research interests combine applied microeconomics and medical issues, with a special interest in the role that medical technology and health insurance play in determining health-related outcomes.

Dr. Goldman was the recipient of the National Institute for Health Care Management Research Foundation award for Excellence in Health Policy, and the Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award that recognizes the outstanding contributions of a young scholar to the field of health services research. He is also a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. He earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.A from Cornell University.

Dr. Ellen Hughes-Cromwick
Ford Motor Company

Ellen Hughes-Cromwick is the Director and Chief Economist for Ford Motor Company with major responsibility for the company's global economic and automotive industry forecasts used to support business strategy, finance, and planning. She leads the group's effort on special industry studies and strategic issues that provide input to the Company's evaluation of business risks and opportunities in global markets. Dr. Hughes-Cromwick oversees the group's publications, including the Global Business Summary, and provides presentations to both external groups and internal customers. She serves on the Company's Treasury Matters Committee, Global Risk Management Committee and advises the finance team on business issues relating to the global external environment for the automotive industry.

Dr. Hughes-Cromwick was also a Senior Economist at Mellon Bank from 1990 to 1996. Her major responsibilities included the monthly U.S. macroeconomic forecast, credit markets outlook, and industry analysis. Ellen began doing research on emerging markets for Mellon’s clients and for its trade finance business in 1994, focusing on selected Latin and Asian markets as well as South Africa.

Before her experience at Mellon, Dr. Hughes-Cromwick was Assistant Professor of Economics at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She also served for two years as a Staff Economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Reagan Administration. She is currently serving a one-year term as President of the National Association for Business Economics. Dr. Hughes-Cromwick also serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the nonprofit organization called Operation ABLE that helps unemployed workers in Detroit obtain training and job placement assistance. She earned a M.A. and a Ph.D. from Clark University in Massachusetts.

Dr. Joseph J. Minarik
Committee for Economic Development

Joseph J. Minarik is the Senior Vice President and Director of Research at the Committee for Economic Development (CED). Dr. Minarik leads policy research projects on CED’s agenda, including; economy and the federal budget; globalization; trade; early childhood education; campaign finance reform; and digital copyright. From 1981 to 1986, Dr. Minarik worked closely with Members of Congress, especially Senator Bill Bradley, on efforts to reform the Federal income tax. Dr. Minarik published Making Tax Choices (Urban Institute Press, 1985) and many articles on this issue, testified before the Congress on numerous occasions, served on the faculty of the two issue retreats of the House Ways & Means Committee, and worked informally with policymakers on the evolution and the eventual enactment of the legislation.

In 1991 and 1992, Dr. Minarik served as Executive Director for Policy and Chief Economist of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, for then-Chairman Leon E. Panetta. When Chairman Panetta was nominated as Director of the Office of Management and Budget in 1993, Dr. Minarik became OMB’s Associate Director for Economic Policy, and worked on the formulation and adoption of President Bill Clinton’s 1993 economic program. When the Federal budget became a leading issue in 1995 and 1996, Dr. Minarik worked with then-Chief of Staff Panetta and new OMB Director Alice M. Rivlin in the formulation of the Administration’s program to eliminate the budget deficit, which evolved into the Bipartisan Balanced Budget Agreement of 1997. He earned a PhD from Yale University and a B.A. from Georgetown University.

Dr. Olivia S. Mitchell
University of Pennsylvania

Olivia S. Mitchell is the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor of Insurance and Risk Management and the Executive Director of the Pension Research Council at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. At the University, Dr. Mitchell is also the Director of the Boettner Center on Pensions and Retirement Research. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Co-Investigator for the AHEAD/ Health and Retirement Studies at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Mitchell's main areas of research and teaching are private and public insurance, risk management, public finance and labor markets, and compensation and pensions, with a US and an international focus. Her extensive research analyzes public and private retirement pensions as well as links between wealth, health, and retirement. Dr. Mitchell recently served on President Bush’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security. Dr. Mitchell has published extensively in the area of saving, pension, and retirement. Her coauthored study on Social Security reform won the Paul Samuelson Award for "Outstanding Writing on Lifelong Financial Security" from TIAA-CREF. She has spoken before the World Economic Forum; the International Monetary Fund; the Investment Company Institute; the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans; the White House Conference on Social Security; the President’s Economic Forum; and she has provided testimony to committees of the US Congress, the UK Parliament, the Australian Parliament, and the Brazilian Senate. She earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mr. Sean C. O'Keefe
General Electric Company

Sean O’Keefe is the Corporate Officer of the General Electric Company in the Technology Infrastructure sector and he leads the General Electric Aviation business’ Washington operations. Previously, Mr. O’Keefe held the position of Chancellor and Chief Executive Officer of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA. He has served as Deputy Assistant to the President, Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and NASA Administrator. Mr. O’Keefe was appointed Secretary of the Navy in July 1992 by President George Bush. Additionally, he has served as Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Defense on the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations staff for eight years and was Staff Director of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

Mr. O'Keefe is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and the International Academy of Astronautics. He is also a Member of the Naval Postgraduate School Board of Advisors, and previously served on several public and private corporate boards of directors. During his academic postings, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Wolfson College of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, a Member of the Naval Postgraduate School's civil-military relations seminar team, and conducted seminars for the Strategic Studies Group at Oxford University. He served on the National Security Panel to devise the 1988 Republican platform and was a Member of the 1985 Kennedy School of Government program for National Security Executives at Harvard University.

Mr. O’Keefe is the author of several journal articles and contributing author of “Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future” released in October 2000. In 1998, he co-authored “The Defense Industry in the Post-Cold War Era: Corporate Strategies and Public Policy Perspectives”. He earned his B.A. from Loyola University and an M.P.A. from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University.

Dr. June E. O'Neill
Baruch College of the City University of New York

June E. O'Neill is the Wollman Professor of Economics at the Zicklin School of Business and the Director of the Center for the Study of Business and Government, School of Public Affairs, at Baruch College, CUNY. She is also an Adjunct Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Dr. O’Neill has also served as Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in Washington. Earlier she held positions as Director of Policy and Research at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Senior Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute, and Research Associate at the Brookings Institution.

Dr. O’Neill was elected Vice President of the American Economics Association in 1998. Her published research covers several areas including wage differentials by race and gender, health insurance, tax and budget policy, and social security. Her prior publications on welfare issues include Gaining Ground: Measuring the Impact of Welfare Reform on Welfare and Work; Work and Welfare in Massachusetts: An Evaluation of the ET Program; Lessons for Welfare Reform: An Analysis of the AFDC Caseload and Past Welfare-to-Work Programs (with Dave M. O’Neill); and The Duration of Welfare Spells (with Laurie Bassi and Douglas Wolf). She earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Dr. Gilbert S. Omenn
University of Michigan Medical School

Gilbert S. Omenn is the Professor of Internal Medicine, Human Genetics, and Public Health at the University of Michigan. He served as Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs and as Chief Executive Officer of the University of Michigan Health System from 1997 to 2002. He was formerly Dean of the School of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine and Environmental Health, University of Washington, Seattle. His research interests include cancer proteomics, chemoprevention of cancers, public health genetics, science-based risk analysis, and health policy. He was Principal Investigator of the Beta-Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial (CARET) of preventive agents against lung cancer and heart disease; Director of the Center for Health Promotion in Older Adults; and creator of a university-wide initiative on Public Health Genetics in Ethical, Legal, and Policy Context while at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Dr. Omenn served as Associate Director for the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget, in the Executive Office of the President in the Carter Administration. He is a longtime Director of Amgen Inc. and of Rohm & Haas Company. He is a member of the Council and Leader of the Plasma Proteome Project for the international Human Proteome Organization, and he was the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Omenn is the author of over 390 research papers and scientific reviews and author/editor of 17 books. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, and the American College of Physicians. He was the Chair for the Presidential and Congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management (“Omenn Commission”). He served on the National Commission on the Environment, and chaired the NAS/NRC/IOM Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy. He received the John W. Gardner Legacy of Leadership Award from the White House Fellows Association in 2004. He earned a B.A. from Princeton, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington.

Dr. Paul L. Posner
George Mason University

Paul L. Posner is the Director of the Public Administration Program at George Mason University. He also led the budget and public finance work of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) for 14 years. During this period, he led GAO’s work developing long term models of the federal budget, outlining opportunities for reform in major federal programs, and recommending changes to the budget process to provide greater visibility to long term issues. He led GAO in examining experiences of other nations with deficits, surpluses and budgetary reforms such as accrual budgeting to provide fresh ideas for budgetary deliberations. He worked closely with the Congress on budget issues, both near and long term, including testimonies on the long term outlook, process reforms to address entitlement growth, performance budgeting and capital budgeting.

Dr. Posner’s work on the federal budget has earned him the James Blum Award, conferred by the Association of Budget and Program Analysis to honor outstanding public budgeting leadership. He was the President of the Association for Budget and Financial Management, a section of American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), and was elected to the Presidency of ASPA last year. Dr. Posner is the author of The Politics of Unfunded Federal Mandates, published by Georgetown University Press in 1998, and has published articles on public budgeting and federalism issues in various academic journals and books. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and the Chair of their Federal Systems Panel. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Dr. Robert D. Reischauer
The Urban Institute

Robert D. Reischauer is the former Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and a nationally known expert on the federal budget, Medicare, and Social Security. He began his tenure as the second president of the Urban Institute in February 2000. Among his many areas of expertise are the federal budget in general and, in particular, the impact of entitlement programs on the fiscal outlook.

Prior to becoming President of The Urban Institute in 2000, Dr. Reischauer was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. From 1989 to 1995, he was the Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Dr. Reischauer served as the Urban Institute's Senior Vice President from 1981 to 1986. He was the CBO's Assistant Director for Human Resources and its Deputy Director between 1977 and 1981.

Dr. Reischauer serves on the boards of several educational and nonprofit organizations. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Vice Chair of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. He frequently contributes to the opinion pages of the nation's major newspapers, comments on public policy developments on radio and television, and testifies before congressional committees. His writings include The Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution: Ensuring a Balanced and Informed Debate; "Deficit Budgeting: The Federal Budget Process and Budget Reform," in the Harvard Journal on Legislation (1992); and "Fiscal Policy and the Economy," in Personal Saving, Consumption, and Tax Policy (1992). He earned an M.I.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Dr. Margaret C. Simms
The Urban Institute

Margaret C. Simms is a Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute and Director of the Institute's Low-Income Working Families project, a research initiative exploring challenges faced by 9 million families and their 19 million children. A nationally recognized expert on the economic well-being of African Americans, Dr. Simms spent 21 years with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in a number of leadership positions. Most recently, she was appointed Vice President for Governance and Economic analysis in 2005 and served as interim President from May to December 2006. She began working at the Joint Center, one of the nation's premier think tanks dealing with public-policy issues of concern to African Americans and other communities of color, in 1986 as Deputy Director of Research.

She was a faculty member at Atlanta University from 1972 to 1981, teaching first in the School of Business Administration and then serving as Chair of the Economics Department. She also taught at Clark College (Atlanta) and the University of California at Santa Cruz. In 1977 and 1978, she was a Brookings Economic Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Dr. Simms has also edited many books and monographs, including Job Creation Prospects and Strategies (with Wilhelmina Leigh), Economic Perspectives on Affirmative Action, and Slipping Through the Cracks: The Status of Black Women (with Julianne Malveaux). She was Editor of the Review of Black Political Economy from 1983 to 1988 and Board Chair of the Institute for Women's Policy Research from 1993 to 1998. She has been a Member of Black Enterprise magazine's Board of Economists since 1987 and is the incoming President of the National Academy of Social Insurance. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. She earned a M.A. degree and a Ph.D. in from Stanford University.

Mr. Thomas C. Sutton
Pacific Life Insurance Company [Retired]

Thomas C. Sutton is retired Chairman and CEO of Pacific Life Insurance Company, based in Newport Beach, one of the largest life insurance companies in the nation. He joined Pacific Life in 1965, becoming its President and CEO in 1987 and Chairman of its board in 1990. He also joined Public Policy Institute of California’s (PPIC)’s Board of Directors in 2002 and was elected chair in March 2005.

Mr. Sutton has an extensive record of corporate, nonprofit, and civic service. He has served alternately as Chairman or Vice Chairman of the Association of California Life and Health Insurance Companies since 1988. He is currently Chairman of the Pacific Life Foundation and serves on the Board of Directors of the American Council of Life Insurers, The Irvine Company, Edison International, and the California Chamber of Commerce. He is also a Member of the California Business Roundtable. Previously, he served on the Board of Trustees of South Coast Repertory Theatre and as Director of the Orange County Performing Arts Center. He earned a B.S. from the University of Toronto and he completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard University.

Dr. Susan Tanaka
Committee for a Responsible Budget

Susan Tanaka serves as a Consultant to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget on the Exercise in Hard Choices project, which the committee created to increase public understanding of U.S. fiscal policy. She is the creator of PolicySite.org, a gateway to web-based information related to budget and fiscal policy. Ms. Tanaka writes about federal budget and fiscal policy issues and serves as a consultant to non-profit organizations that work on federal budget issues. From 1999-2000 she was the Associate Director for Communications and a Senior Analyst in the Budget Analysis Division of the Congressional Budget Office, located in Washington, DC. In the first capacity, she was CBO’s spokesperson and managed the agency’s press contacts. As a member of CBO’s Projections Unit, Ms. Tanaka participated in the preparation of projections of federal spending that were used by the Congress to develop and enforce the annual congressional budget resolution. She wrote chapters of CBO’s annual reports, congressional testimony, and other materials that focused on federal budget process, concepts and scorekeeping issues.

Ms. Tanaka was Vice President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bi-partisan, non-profit educational organization. Ms. Tanaka directed the committee’s analytic work on issues related to the federal budget, including Social Security, health care programs, tax issues, and budget process and scorekeeping. In 1992, Ms. Tanaka was a Budget Examiner in the Office of Management and Budget. During her 10 years in the Executive Branch, Ms. Tanaka analyzed budget, regulatory, and legislative policy proposals related to disaster assistance, emergency preparedness, small businesses, minority-owned businesses, housing, and other programs funded through annual appropriations. She also served as a Special Assistant to OMB’s Assistant Director of Administration and Legislation and worked on agency-wide personnel and administrative issues. In addition, on several occasions, she served as an Acting Branch Chief and managed staff and analytic work. She earned an M.B.A. from the Yale School of Management, an M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Ms. Ruth A. Wooden
Public Agenda

Ruth A. Wooden is the President of Public Agenda. Previously, Ms. Wooden was Executive Vice President-Senior Counselor at the international public relations firm of Porter Novelli where she led the Advertising and Cause-Related Marketing Practice. She served as Volunteer President of the National Parenting Association. She was also President of The Advertising Council, the nation’s leading producer of public service announcements. During Ms. Wooden’s tenure, the Ad Council collaborated with Public Agenda on the ground-breaking study Kids These Days: What Americans Really Think About the Next Generation which was named by Congressional Quarterly as one of the 50 most important documents of 1995.

Ms. Wooden currently serves as Chair of the Board of Civic Ventures and as a Member of the Board of U.S. Trust Company, Phoenix House Foundation, Research!America, Teachers Count, Independent Sector and Demos. She serves on a number of advisory committees and was a former Director of CARE and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.

She is the recipient of United Jewish Appeal’s Maxwell Dane Humanitarian Award; Advertising Woman of the Year; the Prudential Prize in Non-Profit Leadership and the Matrix Award from New York Women in Communication. She received a B.A. in Sociology and History from the University of Minnesota and was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from Northeastern University.

Committee Membership Roster Comments

In February 2009, Robert Hale resigned from committee service upon appointment to the Obama Administration. Sean O'Keefe joined the committee on February 17, 2009 in order to replace Robert Hale. In April 2009, Rebecca Blank and William Spriggs resigned from committee service upon appointment to the Obama Administration. No attempt was made to replace either committee member.