Fiscal Policy

New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza profiles Rep. Paul Ryan from Wisconsin, whose radical alternatives to President Obama's economic policies have helped shape the GOP as it enters the final stage of the 2012 presidential campaign.

In The Price of Inequality, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz argues that widely unequal societies don't function effectively or have stable economies. Even the rich will pay a steep price if economic inequalities continue to worsen, he says.

David M. Walker is the former comptroller general of the United States. His book, Comeback America, details the current financial crisis and offers his ideas on controlling spending and restoring fiscal responsibility in the United States.

We speak to labor economist Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Living Standards Program at the Economic Policy Institute, about how working families are faring in the current U.S. economy. Bernstein co-authored the forthcoming report The State of Working America 2004-05.

He's run for president three times, twice as a Republican and most recently, in 2000, as the Reform Party candidate. His new book is called How the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency.

Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform. He's credited with helping President Bush formulate his administration's tax plan.