This week on Q&A, our guests are Allan Sloan and Geoff Colvin, Senior Editors at Large for Fortune Magazine. They discuss their recent cover story titled “Hey Washington: Enough Already!” They describe the article as a common sense proposal for steering America’s economy out of its rut. Sloan and Colvin point out that they have written about these issues for decades, have different journalistic and personal styles, and tend to arrive at different conclusions.They suggest that if the two of them can agree on policy prescriptions, then maybe lawmakers in Washington can too. They discuss controversial policy recommendations which include restricting the end of life care that Medicare will pay for, surcharging smokers and the obese for Medicare coverage, raising the social security retirement age and eliminating the tax deduction for mortgage interest. Both writers acknowledge that the proposals are painful and there must be shared misery for all Americans in order to improve the long term economic outlook for the country.
Allan Sloan was born in Brooklyn, New York. He obtained a Master’s Degree in journalism from Columbia University and graduated from Brooklyn College. Prior to joining Fortune in 2007, he was an editor for Newsweek for twelve years. He and his wife live in New Jersey and have three grown children.
Geoff Colvin was born and raised in Vermillion, South Dakota. He has an economics degree from Harvard and an M.B.A. from New York University. He has worked at Fortune Magazine since college. He authored one book and is heard regularly on CBS Radio.