Rep Honda, senior member of the House Budget and Appropriations Committee and lead author of the People’s Budget, is hosting a panel discussion to highlight the growing income inequality in the United States, its effect on our society, and what the Federal Government can do to address it.

Brought to you by Congressman Michael Honda & The Congressional Progressive Caucus

Friday, October 7, 2011, 10:00 – 11:0O a.m.
House Budget Committee Hearing Room
Cannon House Office Building 210

Moderator: Heather McGhee, Director, Demos, Washington DC Office

Panelists:

Richard Wilkerson, Author of Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
Chuck Collins, Program Director, Program on Inequality and the Common Good Institute for Policy Studies


Richard Wilkerson
In Spirit Level, Mr. Wilkinson shows how America’s income inequality, the highest among the world’s richest countries, correlates with a host of health and social problems. Wilkinson makes the case that this inequality is corrosive: America has the highest inequality and the worst rates of life expectancy, social mobility, violence, infant mortality, obesity, literacy, homicides, incarceration, teenage pregnancy, mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction.  Wilkinson shows how the cost to society is financially unsustainable.

Maya MacGuineas
Maya MacGuineas is the President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Additionally, she is the Director of the Fiscal Policy Program at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. Maya testifies regularly before Congress, advises the administration and has published broadly, including articles in The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Financial Times and the Los Angeles Times. Once dubbed “an anti-deficit warrior” by The Wall Street Journal, Maya comments often on broadcast news and is widely cited by the national press. In the spring of 2009 Maya did a stint on The Washington Post editorial board, covering economic and fiscal policy.

Maya has worked at the Brookings Institution and on Wall Street. As a political independent, she has advised numerous candidates for office from both parties, and works regularly with members of Congress on health, economic, tax, and budget policy. She serves on the boards of a number of national, nonpartisan organizations and received her Master in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.


Chuck Collins
Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and directs IPS's Program on Inequality and the Common Good. He is an expert on U.S. inequality and author of several books, including Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Inequality and Insecurity, co-authored with Felice Yeskel. (New Press, 2005). He co-authored with Bill Gates Sr. Wealth and Our Commonwealth, (Beacon Press, 2003), a case for taxing inherited fortunes. He is co-author with Mary Wright of The Moral Measure of the Economy, a book about Christian ethics and economic life. He is co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good, a network of business leaders, high-income households and partners working together to promote shared prosperity and fair taxation.

In 1995, he co-founded United for a Fair Economy (UFE) to raise the profile of the inequality issue and support popular education and organizing efforts to address inequality. He was Executive Director of UFE from 1995-2001 and Program Director until 2005.


Moderator: Heather McGhee
As the Director of Demos' Washington office, Heather develops and executes strategy for increasing the organization's impact on federal policy debates in Washington. Previously, she was the Deputy Policy Director, Domestic and Economic Policy, for the John Edwards for President 2008 campaign, and a Program Associate in Demos' Economic Opportunity Program.

Her writing and research on debt, financial services regulation, retirement and inequality have appeared in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Detroit Free-Press and CNN. She is the co-author of a chapter on retirement insecurity in the book Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide in America and its Poisonous Consequences (New Press, 2005).  She holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.