Promises to Keep? Confronting the Nation's Looming Fiscal Crises

October 1, 2026 The United States today faces a variety of looming fiscal crises—from the exploding national debt to the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund, to major cities with difficulties meeting their pension and other debt obligations. Each of these immediate or looming crises has its own particularities. But there also are important similarities among them, and echoes of each in the case of Puerto Rico, which has recently experienced the biggest governmental restructuring in U.S. history. To examine the current fiscal challenges facing the United States—and to consider the range of possible solutions and which might actually work—the Penn Program on Regulation organized a panel discussion among leading economic, legal, and policy experts. The panel featured: Olivia S. Mitchell: International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor, Executive Director of the Pension Research Council, and Director of the Boettner Center on Pensions and Retirement Research, all at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania) Jessica Riedl: Budget and Tax Fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center) Ben Ritz: Vice President of Policy Development at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and Director of PPI’s Center for Funding America’s Future The discussion was moderated by David Skeel, the S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Pennsylvania, former Chair of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, and author of the recently published book, Promise Land: The Inside Story of the Puerto Rico Debt Crisis.