Kenneth S. Apfel is the Sid Richardson Chair in Public Affairs, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. From 1997 to 2001 he served as the comissioner of Social Security.

Michael J. Graetz is Justus S. Hotchkiss Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He served in the U.S. Department of Treasury from 1990 to 1992. His most recent book is Death by a Thousand Cuts (Princeton, 2005).