Due to unforeseen circumstances, the event with Representative Frank has been postponed.

President Barack Obama will soon release his fiscal year 2012 budget, including a request for $553 billion in baseline spending for the Department of Defense. This budget is part of a multiyear savings and efficiencies initiative proposed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, which will reduce projected Pentagon spending levels by $78 billion by 2016. Yet despite these proposed reductions, the new budget provides for real growth over last year’s defense request and continues the trend of funding overbudget, outdated weapons programs that do not meet the strategic needs of the United States.

Please join the Center for American Progress Action Fund for a keynote address by Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA4), Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, on the newly released defense budget and the nation’s defense-spending priorities. Frank has been an outspoken proponent of sensible defense-spending reductions and last year convened the Sustainable Defense Task Force, an expert working group that included CAPAF Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb, and that proposed $960 billion in defense-spending reductions between 2011 and 2020.

The recent economic crisis has highlighted just how vulnerable many families are, particularly those hardest hit in communities of color. Social Security offers key income protections for American families in case the main breadwinner retires, becomes disabled, or dies. Social Security has thus far been very successful in offering families income when they need it the most. Still, demographic and economic changes require that we periodically revisit how Social Security works to make sure it continues to protect those most dependent on the program. Policymakers also need to find ways to pay for promised benefits for generations to come as they contemplate Social Security modernization to address demographic and economic trends. This panel will discuss several progressive approaches to modernize Social Security so it can deliver basic income protections to American families.

Read "Building It Up, Not Tearing It Down"