President Barack Obama's plan to cut $400 billion in security spending by 2023 is an admirable but modest first step toward getting our nation’s fiscal house in order. After 13 straight years of real growth in the baseline defense budget—the longest period of sustained real growth in U.S. history—our nation now spends more on defense than it has at any point since the end of World War II, including during the peak of the Cold War.

Please join the Center for American Progress Action Fund for a keynote address by Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, on 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.

Large numbers of schools across the country are low performing and have been for years. This longstanding, widespread problem reveals that districts and states, as well as schools, wrestle with how to turn around struggling schools. Federal policy can play a key role in rectifying the systemic failures that allow schools to flounder. The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is a ripe opportunity to revise the law's main program that supports school turnaround, the School Improvement Grant fund.

Join us as we hear from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who will outline the administration’s ESEA priorities for school turnaround. Sen. Kay Hagan will discuss the introduction of her school reward and turnaround bill, the STAR Act. A panel discussion will follow that examines how lessons learned from leading states and districts can inform the reauthorization of ESEA.

The strength of American manufacturing carries implications for the entire economy, our national security, and the well-being of all Americans. For generations the strength of our country rested on the power of our factory floors. Manufacturing needs to continue to be a bedrock of strength for generations to come. American manufacturing is a success story, and it is not a story approaching its end. We as a nation should respond to the challenges now facing U.S. manufacturing as there is something left to fight for.

On May 31, the Center for American Progress Action Fund will host an open conversation to talk about how to write the next chapter of this success story.