An active and informed university group, the ISU Retirees, is meeting this Friday, Nov. 15, to consider the important political topic “The Budget Deficit: On Whose Back Shall the Budget be Balanced?”

The meeting, which is open to the public, will begin at 3:30 p.m. in Room 204 of the Scheman building. A social at 3 p.m. will precede the meeting.

John Miranowski, professor and chair of the department of economics, will be the featured speaker. Miranowski said he will address three questions in his presentation.

“The first of the questions is ‘Why are we concerned about running deficits?’ …We have a lot of concern about it, but why should we be concerned about it?” he said.

“The second question ‘What are the tradeoffs involved in balancing the budget?’ In other words, there’s no free lunch,” Miranowski said.

“Are we going to do it by taking funding out of entitlements like social security and Medicare, or are we going to do it by taking it out of food stamps, or … out of defense?”

Miranowski believes the government will either raise taxes or take the money from entitlements. He said ” … roughly 75 percent of the households in the country receive some form of entitlements.

“The third question is ‘Why does Congress have so much difficulty in getting the job done?'” he said.

“I think we basically face a lot of very tough choices. I want the audience to understand what the tough choices are, and even more importantly, that those choices are going to become tougher in the future as well,” Miranowski said.

Wesley Shank, co-chair of the retirees program sub-committee and professor emeritus of architecture, said the committee tries to pick important topics that are of interest to retirees, such as a recent program on medical coverage.

Shank said the committee wanted to study the budget deficit before the recent election, but scheduling problems made it impossible.

R. Dale Voorhees, a program sub-committee member and professor emeritus of the College of Business, said Miranowski is an established economist with a long record of achievement.

“He has an extremely distinguished background, and he has a very good presentation about the problems of the national budget,” Voorhees said.

In addition to his economic credentials, which include a masters and a Ph.D. from Harvard, Miranowski has extensive national political experience.

He served in Washington, D.C., for 10 years as director of the Resource and Technology Division in the Economic Research Service, and for a year and a half as special assistant to the office of the Secretary of Agriculture.

In addition to programming informative meetings ISU Retirees continue to serve the University on many committees and as ISU Diplomats, a service organization administered through the External Affairs office. Both the ISU Diplomats and the College for Seniors originated from ideas by retirees.