The legacy of conservative governance combined with a faltering economy has left our country and many of our states facing a fundamental budget challenge: how to restore fiscal responsibility while making needed investments in infrastructure, energy, health care, education, housing, and elsewhere.

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley has been a leader in demonstrating progressive fiscal responsibility and will discuss his efforts to close an inherited $1.7 billion structural deficit, while making critical investments to protect and invest in Maryland's priorities.

Please join the Center for American Progress Action Fund as we host Governor O'Malley for this stimulating discussion on fiscal responsibility.

Five years after Donald Rumsfeld asked whether we are capturing and killing more terrorists than we are creating, the answer remains deeply uncertain and troubling. Global terrorist attacks are near historic highs, and this month Secretary Gates acknowledged that we cannot capture and kill our way to victory over the terrorists. We need a new approach to this fight, one that emphasizes stopping the breeding of future terrorists as much as eliminating the current ones.

Drawing on insights from his recent trips to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Middle East, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) will discuss a different framework for the "war on terror", a global counterinsurgency campaign that uses all elements of U.S. national power to address this threat more effectively. Please join the Center for American Progress Action Fund for this scintillating discussion.

Americans increasingly face financial uncertainty as they struggle to make ends meet during a period of rising food and fuel prices, a continuing mortgage crisis, and an overall economic downturn. Yet even before these latest challenges, a growing number of state and local governments launched comprehensive anti-poverty initiatives. These include special legislative caucuses, poverty reduction targets, and information-sharing summits.

Join us for a policy forum featuring two panels to explore this growing trend. Speakers will include advocates, experts, and state and local officials from Minnesota, Connecticut and New York City.

This forum is sponsored by the Half in Ten Campaign, National League of Cities and Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity.

With health care costs escalating at rates that dramatically exceed wage growth and inflation, future health care spending poses a significant challenge for the Federal budget, for employers, and for families. Health care spending in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2006, and is expected to double again in the next decade. Policymakers and political candidates of all philosophical stripes have offered dramatically different strategies for controlling health care spending. These approaches range from placing the locus of health care spending decisions – and risk for health care costs - with individuals and families, to making long-term investments in prevention, better information and better health care quality that will be best realized if all Americans have health care coverage. Please join the Center for American Progress Action Fund for a lively exploration of these divergent strategies.

As the nation's political discourse turns again to health reform, pundits and policymakers have begun handicapping the prospects of meaningful change in 2009. After years of failed efforts and incremental changes, the nation may be poised, with new leadership in the White House and committed leaders in Congress, to guarantee affordable health coverage for all Americans. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a lifelong champion for this issue, will look back at the history of health reform in the United States and offer his perspective on the possibilities for reform with a new president.