Jim Lockhart, Senior Fellow at Bipartisan Policy Center on capital market, alternative and impact investing with Matt Bird at Greenwich Economic Forum (Greenwich, CT)
HIGHLIGHTS
- Goal of Bipartisan Policy Center is to get Democrats and Republicans to work together to solve the countries biggest problems
- BPC annual revenue is over $19 million
- BPC predicts social security’s main trust fund to run dry by 2034
FULL COVERAGE
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS: Jim Lockhart, Senior Fellow at Bipartisan Policy Center with Matt Bird
Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 00:00
Welcome back to the Traders Network Show broadcasting worldwide from Greenwich, Connecticut. I’m Matt Bird. We’re here covering the 2019 Greenwich Economic Forum. And my next guest is Jim Lockhart. He is a senior fellow for the Bipartisan Policy Center. He’s also former head of the pensions and federal housing agencies for both Bush administrations. Jim, welcome to show. Oh, it’s my pleasure. And thanks for taking the time to come over here. So, you know, here we are. We’ve seen a lot of thought leadership going on in the main forum. We’ve had the governor, we’ve had the mayor, we’ve had heads of some of the biggest institutions in the world. Speaking from an economic development standpoint, what are some of your big takeaways?
Jim Lockhart – Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center: 00:44
Well, certainly though the speakers were very, very good, very entertaining too. But there was a little negative out of here that some people are really worried about the economy, the deficit, and some of those big issues, some of which I’ve worked with over the years. One of those issues is social security, which has a, just a giant shortfall. But overall it’s nice to see all these people come together. And Greenwich I live in Greenwich. I actually am the chairman of the local museum, the various museum. So that’s another good reason. Just up the streets. I’ll come visit it.
Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 01:03
I am actually, I have an extra couple of days where I’m actually do that. But continue on the forum side. This is a great example of what I would call a very strategic public private partnership with the creating the gathering. And we have here how important are public private partnerships for economic development both regionally and nationally?
Jim Lockhart – Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center: 01:30
I think they’re incredibly important. Obviously we have a very large deficit and I country and many States are have big underfunded pension plans. So we need to bring more private sector money in and private sector expertise. I’ve been working with an infrastructure group that has really pitching a lot of towns and States on helping them develop their infrastructure.
Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 02:02
As a resident of Connecticut, what do you see next as far as the economic milestones that connect an easy get to hit the next?
Jim Lockhart – Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center: 02:25
Well, Connecticut has some real challenges. It has the underfunded pension plan. Its tax system is higher than most people would like. And we need to get the economic development going again. We need to have companies moving in. The governor was talking about many companies starting to build here and that’s extremely important and we also need to put money into our infrastructure. Our trains and our highways need work as well. So it’s a big task he has ahead.
Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 02:42
Well balancing and budgets very difficult, especially when you, it need infrastructure development and you need adoption within the community, but both financially, fiscally and from a taxpayer standpoint, there’s a lot of moving parts.
Jim Lockhart – Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center: 02:55
There really is. And Connecticut is a microcosm of many other States in the US a where we have too large a deficit and it’s a microcosm of the whole US at this point. I mean there are trillion dollar deficit. So again, I think it’s really important to get private sector money in and private sector expertise and the governor’s doing that here and I think a lot of space could really learn from that. That’s great.
Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 03:22
I know your time is really valuable and I like to kind of wrap this up with getting, getting a little bit about the bipartisan policy work that you’re doing and the group there. Tell us about some of the stuff that we can expect coming out of that.
Jim Lockhart – Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center: 03:34
Well, it’s really important group in Washington. It was founded by forks, a Senate majority leaders, two Republicans, two Democrats. And the whole idea is to get Democrats and Republicans to work on an issue together and come up with a bipartisan solution. ICharity a big commission, 19 members with Senator Conrad from North Dakota on retirement security and personal savings. And we came up with a, a report that really is a blueprint of how we should solve our pension problems in the US and also very importantly, social security. And we do it in a lot of other areas too. So healthcare, housing. And it’s oftentimes what we’re trying to do is promote ideas, bipartisan ideas, taking the Congress and hopefully get them passed.
Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 04:23
You’re touching on the broken pension models that are out today and the CEO, former CEO of GE said the growing, the fastest growing emerging market right now is healthcare. And the reason is that the drug companies are becoming so efficient on the data aggregation side that we’re solving problems within the health sector faster than the pension models can keep up with them. How do we balance that out if we live longer, and we keep living longer, longer, and those economic pension models are set for, how do you fix that?
Jim Lockhart – Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center: 04:56
Well, it’s a big issue. Medicare and social security. I am actually been nominated via trustee of Medicare and social security and they’re big issues and they’re very much tied together. Social security has a very large, you know, 75 year whole present value is $13 trillion. Yeah, Medicare’s problems are even worse and we need to have attention in Washington and those issues. And unfortunately at this point we’re not paying as much attention as we should, I mean it’s great. We’re having all this medical new ideas, new fixes and it’s, it’s really important and over time we need to also fix our social security system.
Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 05:41
Well, I would love and our network who loved the follow the things that you’re doing over at the bipartisan policy center.
Jim Lockhart – Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center: 05:49
So free to come down and visit anytime.
Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 05:55
You know what I will in the next forum, we’d love to cover it and I think what you guys are doing there is terrific.
Jim Lockhart – Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center: 06:01
Thank you very much Matt.
Matt Bird – Host, Traders Network Show: 06:04
Jim, thank you. Listen and have a great afternoon. We got Jim Lockhart here. We are going to be coming back right after these messages. Special thanks to our affiliate partners, ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS. Don’t go way we’ll be right back.