“Simply not driving off a cliff”: Linda Bilmes says the latest debt ceiling fight is a symptom of larger budgetary malaise

June 2023, Interview: "In what has become an almost regular event, Congressional leaders and the White House averted economic catastrophe, agreeing to lift the debt ceiling just days ahead of what would have been an unprecedented U.S. default. President Biden and Republican congressional leaders agreed on a package that included some spending cuts in exchange for a two-year suspension on the amount of money the government can continue to borrow. Linda Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, is a public finance and budget expert, and as a former assistant secretary and chief financial officer of the Commerce Department in the Clinton administration, she is a veteran of the budget battles between Clinton and congressional Republicans in the 1990s. Bilmes, an affiliate of HKS’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and Center for Public Leadership, shared her thoughts on the recent resolution to this conflict and her perspective on what it all means." Read Via HKS