Solutions Initiative 2024: Charting a Brighter Future
America is on a dangerously unsustainable fiscal path, which threatens our economic future.
The Peterson Foundation asked experts from seven leading organizations — the American Action Forum, the American Enterprise Institute, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Center for American Progress, the Economic Policy Institute, the Manhattan Institute, and the Progressive Policy Institute — to develop specific policy proposals and recommendations to address our fiscal situation and meet their policy priorities over the next 30 years.
All seven organizations — through a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases — successfully put our debt on a sustainable path.
In the five years since the last iteration of this project, our nation has suffered a deeply painful pandemic, with significant costs to our health, our economy, and our fiscal outlook. The debt-to-GDP ratio in the United States is now 20 percentage points higher than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we are facing higher levels of inflation, and the associated higher interest rates have significantly increased the burden of that debt.
Moreover, a series of consequential fiscal deadlines are rapidly approaching, including the reinstatement of the debt limit, the expiration of tax cuts, key decisions on discretionary spending caps and subsidies for healthcare, and looming depletion dates for Social Security and Medicare.
Solutions Initiative 2024 aims to meet this fiscal moment by bringing together seven respected organizations from across the political and ideological spectrum to highlight the wide variety of options available to chart a brighter future in the critical policymaking months ahead.
The Good News
Is that Many Solutions Exist
Interactive Chart
All Seven Organizations
Stabilize Long-term Debt
Interactive Chart
All Seven Plans Address
Both Spending and Revenues
Independent Review
To enable fair and objective comparison of the seven plans, we engaged independent scorekeepers, including revenue estimates provided by the Tax Policy Center, and spending estimates reviewed by former Acting Director at the Congressional Budget Office, Barry Anderson.