Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a resident fellow at AEI. She is coauthor of Women’s Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America (1999), as well as The Feminist Dilemma: When Success Is Not Enough, which will appear later this year. Her articles on labor and tax policy have been published in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal , Investor’s Business Daily, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. Before joining AEI in 1993, Ms. Furchtgott-Roth was the deputy executive secretary of the Domestic Policy Council and later associate director in the Office of Policy Planning at the White House under President Bush. She served on the staff of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1986 to 1987. She has appeared on numerous television and radio shows, including Fox News, C-Span, and NPR.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, is a senior fellow at AEI, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and board member of the Internet Policy Institute. He is also the chief executive officer of the Gingrich Group, an Atlanta-based consulting firm, and is a political commentator and analyst for FOX Television. He is a member of the secretary of defense’s National Security Study Group and is the founder of the Committee on New American Leadership and two Internet-based grassroots organizations, SocialSecurityPlus.org and MaxTax.org. Mr. Gingrich serves on the Boards of Directors of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and the Wildlife Conservation Society. A member of Congress for twenty years and Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999, Mr. Gingrich is credited as being the chief architect of the Contract with America, which led to the 1994 Republican congressional victory—the first GOP majority in forty years.

Robert D. Reischauer is the president of the Urban Institute. He was previously a senior fellow in the economic studies program at the Brookings Institution. From March 1989 until March 1995, he served as the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). He helped Alice Rivlin, CBO’s first director, set up the office in 1975 and, in the organization’s formative years, served as the assistant director for human resources and community development and later as the deputy director. Mr. Reischauer has written and lectured extensively on a wide range of topics including federal budget policy, Congress, health reform, social welfare issues, entitlements, the Medicare and Medicaid programs, poverty, and state and local fiscal problems. He serves on the boards of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Academy of Political Science, and several other organizations. He is an overseer of Harvard University, is a member of the editorial board for Health Affairs, and is chair of the National Academy of Social Insurance’s project, "Restructuring Medicare for the Long Term." In addition, Mr. Reischauer is a member of advisory boards serving a wide variety of organizations, including the CBO, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and National Institute of Health Care Management.

Mark Sanford was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994, representing the first district of South Carolina. He serves on the Government Reform Committee, the International Relations Committee, the Science Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee, and he has been active in seeking social security reform, balancing the budget, reducing the deficit, reforming Congress, and instituting term limits. Rep. Sanford was a speaker at the second of the president’s three national town hall meetings on Social Security and an attendee at the president’s White House conference on Social Security in 1998, and he has introduced several bills toward a system of personal Social Security accounts. Before serving in Congress, he worked in real estate finance and investment in New York City and Charleston, South Carolina.

Carolyn L. Weaver is resident scholar and director of Social Security and pension studies at AEI. She is the author of Crisis in Social Security: Economic and Political Origins (Duke University Press) and the editor of two books published by the AEI Press, Social Security’s Looming Surpluses: Prospects and Implications and Disability and Work: Incentives, Rights, and Opportunities, and has written widely on Social Security, disability policy, and political economy. Ms. Weaver is presently completing a book on Social Security reform. From 1981 to 1984, she served as chief professional staff member on Social Security for the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, and during that time also served as senior adviser to the 1983 National Commission on Social Security Reform (the "Greenspan Panel"). Since then, she has served on several public advisory councils, including the 1994–1996 Social Security Advisory Council and the U.S. Social Security Advisory Board. She also served on the national advisory board of "Americans Discuss Social Security," a major project of the Pew Charitable Trust. Ms. Weaver has testified frequently on Capitol Hill on issues pertaining to Social Security and the budget, Social Security solvency and reform, disability policy, and welfare reform. Before joining AEI, she was a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She has also been a member of the economics faculties of Tulane University and Virginia Tech.