The federal debt: Fiscal choices for America's future

Maya MacGuineas is the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Her areas of expertise include budget, tax, and economic policy. As a leading budget expert and a political independent, she works closely with members of both parties and serves as a trusted resource on Capitol Hill. MacGuineas testifies regularly before Congress and has published widely, including in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, and other outlets. She also appears regularly as a commentator on television. Previously, MacGuineas worked at the Brookings Institution and on Wall Street, and in the spring of 2009 she served on The Washington Post editorial board, covering economic and fiscal policy. She graduated from Northwestern University and holds an MPP from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Wilcox is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. His current research focuses on the U.S. macroeconomy and monetary policy. He also is director of U.S. economic research at Bloomberg Economics. From 2011 to 2018, he served as director of the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC, functioning as the chief economist of the division, a senior advisor to three successive chairs of the Federal Reserve Board, the division’s lead for strategic direction, and its chief manager. From 2001 to 2011, he served as deputy director. From 1997 to 2001, he served as assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department. He was a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisors from 1994 to 1995. Wilcox holds a BA from Williams College and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Shalanda Young is the Compton Visiting Professor at the Miller Center and a distinguished scholar in residence at NYU School of Law. From 2021 to 2025, she led the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, confirmed twice by the Senate with bipartisan support, becoming in 2022 the first black woman to direct the agency. As a member of President Biden's cabinet, she managed the federal government's $7 trillion annual budget, led development of all four of Biden's budgets, and was a lead negotiator for the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, which averted a first-ever debt default. Young also served as staff director of the House Appropriations Committee from 2017 to 2021. Young holds a BA from Loyola University New Orleans and a master of health administration from Tulane University.

Michael Lenox is a senior faculty fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. He is a University Professor at UVA and is also the academic co-director of the Democracy and Capitalism Lab. His primary appointment is as the Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration at UVA's Darden School of Business. He also holds an appointment as a professor of public policy (by courtesy) at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. In 2026, Lenox served as Darden’s interim dean from January through July. Among his other senior leadership roles, from 2023 to 2025, he served as the inaugural Donna & Richard Tadler University Chair of Entrepreneurship and led a new pan-university initiative, UVA Innovates. He previously helped found and served as the inaugural president of the multiple-university Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability. Lenox holds a BA and an MS in systems engineering from the University of Virginia and a PhD in technology management and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.