Setting National Priorities continues the highly acclaimed and influential series of books that examine domestic and foreign policy choices confronting the United States. Members of the Brookings staff join outside experts to evaluate America's course through the next decade.
In clear and nontechnical terms the contributors explain and evaluate options for the United States in the 1990s, consider whether the federal government's current pollicies are consistent with long-term objectives, and explain what action could best achieve those goals.
Charles L. Schultze shows why it is important to solve the problem of the federal budget deficit and how it can be done: John D. Steinbruner addresses the revolution taking place in American foreign policy and explains how the United States can be more secure with lower defense spending; Lawrence J. Korb evaluates President Bush's defense budget and suggests possible improvements; Robert Z. Lawrence describes how the U.S. government and private industry should respond to the competitive challenge from foreign companies; William D. Nordhaus explains the risks form global warming and presents a policy to meet them; John E. Chubb and Eric A. Hanshek chart new directions of American elementary and secondary education; Henry J. Aaron identifies the major problems with the financing of healthcare and describes how they can be solved; and Thomas E. Mann considers how political institutions and public preferences constrain our ability to enact needed policy changes and what might be done to overcome those obstacles.

Henry J. Aaron is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and the author or editor of numerous books, including Using Taxes to Reform Health Insurance (with Leonard E. Burman), The Problem That Won't Go Away, and Behavioral Dimensions of Retirement Economics, all published by Brookings.