CONGRESSMAN BARNEY FRANK TO SPEAK AT THE NEW SCHOOL
Tuesday, June 4, 2013

In a discussion entitled "Cutting U.S. Military Spending and Reducing the Federal Deficit in a Socially Responsible Way," Congressman Barney Frank will bring his three decades of public service to an examination of how American security interests can be reconciled with the demands of social justice and a strained federal budget. Part of the Center for Public Scholarship at The New School's Public Voices series.

Barney Frank recently retired from over 30 years in Congress (1981-2013) where he served as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee from 2007 to 2011. As chairman, Frank was instrumental in crafting a compromise bill to stem the tide of home mortgage foreclosures, as well as the subsequent $550 billion rescue plan. He was a co-author of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and led the passage of the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act. In 1987, Frank became the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as openly gay, and in 2012 he married his longtime partner, Jim Ready, becoming the nation’s first congressman to enter into a same-sex marriage while in office.

Robert Pollin, discussant, is Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, frequent contributor to The Nation, and author of the forthcoming Back to Full Employment (MIT Press). Pollin, who worked with a graduate student to disprove Harvard economists' controversial claim that nations must keep debt below 90% of GDP, earned his PhD in Economics at The New School for Social Research.