Speaker biographies

Joseph Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at AEI. He also is an adjunct professor at the School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mr. Antos’s research focuses on the economics of health policy, including Medicare reform, health insurance regulation, and the uninsured. He is the editor, with Alice Rivlin, of Restoring Fiscal Sanity 2007: The Health Spending Challenge (Brookings Institution Press, 2007). Before joining AEI, Mr. Antos was assistant director for health and human resources at the Congressional Budget Office, and he held senior positions at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Management and Budget, and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Stuart Butler is the vice president for domestic and economic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation. He joined Heritage in 1979 and has since played a major role in shaping the policy debate on a wide range of domestic policy issues, from health care and Social Security to welfare reform and privatizing government services. In 2002, he was a fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, and currently he is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. In the field of health care reform, Mr. Butler has argued for a restructured system based on consumer choice and state-led innovation. He has been published in leading academic journals, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and Health Affairs and in major newspapers. In addition to the dozens of research papers he has written for Heritage, Butler is the author of three books—Enterprise Zones: Greenlining the Inner Cities (Universe Books, 1981), Privatizing Federal Spending (Universe Books, 1985), and Out of the Poverty Trap (Collier Macmillan, 1987)—and has edited several others. He has testified before Congress on a range of policy issues.

Robert Greenstein is the founder and executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He is considered an expert on the federal budget and a range of domestic policy issues, including low-income assistance programs, tax policy, and Social Security. Mr. Greenstein has written numerous reports, op-eds, and magazine articles on budget- and poverty-related issues. He appears on national television news and public affairs programs and is frequently asked to testify on Capitol Hill. In 1996, Mr. Greenstein was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for, according to the citation, making “the Center a model for a non-partisan research and policy organization.” In 1994, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve on the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform. Prior to founding the center, Mr. Greenstein was administrator of the Food and Nutrition Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which operates the federal food assistance programs.

Jim Moody is a trustee of Americans for Generational Equity and was a founding member of the group in 1985. He has had a long and varied career in public policy, international development, and business. Mr. Moody was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1983 to 1993, representing Wisconsin’s fifth district. He served on the House Committee on Ways and Means, sitting on the subcommittees on health and Social Security. Mr. Moody has also been a trustee of the Committee for Economic Development and was president and CEO of InterAction, a coalition of NGOs devoted to expanding opportunities and supporting gender equality throughout the developing world. He was previously vice president of the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development. Mr. Moody has served in the Peace Corps and was elected to both the Wisconsin state assembly and state senate. He has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Wisconsin; Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; and New York University.

Wendell Primus is the senior policy advisor on budget and health issues to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Prior to this appointment in March 2005, Mr. Primus was the minority staff director at the Joint Economic Committee. Prior to serving there, he was the director of income security for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He was deputy assistant secretary for human services policy at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration. In that position, Mr. Primus was primarily responsible for policy development and for the conduct of research and evaluation on issues relating to income assistance, employment, and related human services programs. He has also been chief economist for the House Ways and Means Committee and staff director for the committee’s Subcommittee on Human Resources. During his fifteen-year tenure at Ways and Means, he was responsible for editing thirteen editions of the committee’s Green Book.

Isabel V. Sawhill is a senior fellow and codirector of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution. She holds the Cabot Family Chair. She was vice president and director of the Economic Studies Program from 2003 to 2006. Prior to joining Brookings, Ms. Sawhill was a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. She also was an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1995, where her responsibilities included all the human resource programs of the federal government, accounting for one third of the federal budget. Her books include Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America (with Julia Isaacs and Ron Haskins; Brookings Institution Press, 2008); Restoring Fiscal Sanity 2005: Meeting the Long-Run Challenge (Brookings Institution Press, 2005) and Restoring Fiscal Sanity: How to Balance the Budget (Brookings Institution Press, 2004), both with Alice Rivlin; One Percent for the Kids: New Policies, Brighter Futures for America’s Children (Brookings Institution Press, 2003); Welfare Reform and Beyond: The Future of the Safety Net (Brookings Institution Press, 2002); and Updating America’s Social Contract: Economic Growth and Opportunity in the New Century (with Rudolph Penner and Timothy Taylor; Norton, 2000). Her research has spanned a wide array of economic and social issues, including fiscal policy, economic growth, poverty and inequality, welfare reform, the well-being of children, and changes in the family. Ms. Sawhill cofounded and is president of the board of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. She has been a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center, director of the National Commission for Employment Policy, and president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

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