EY Accounting and Public Policy Symposium Days 2 and 3

Welcome back, future accounting superstars! Day 2 and 3 of the EY Accounting and Public Policy Symposium were just as exciting as the first.

Capitolizing on a good picture opportunity!

We started Day 2 with an interactive exercise, breaking into groups and making governmental spending decisions. Each decision had information about the policy and how the decision whether or not to implement it would change the federal budget. The challenge was balancing cost savings with providing social services and security to the American people and considering how your decision would affect your reelection prospects. Most groups were very aggressive cost cutters and saved the deficit over $2.5 trillion in exchange for a reduced social safety net and national security. Our older professors were not happy with this!

Speakers included Dr. Joshua Gordon from The Concord Coalition, James Hohmann from the Washington Post, Dr. Aparna Mathur from the American Enterprise Institute, and Robert Knake from the Council on Foreign Relations.

I really enjoyed hearing from James Hohmann during lunch at the National Press Club. James is a national political correspondent for the Washington Post. He shared his story on how he got into journalism (school newspaper while attending Stanford University), his experience covering Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, and his thoughts on President Trump. James, like all our speakers, took our questions and gave very candid answers. I signed up for his daily emails (Daily 202), learned a lot about journalism, and am now considering subscribing to the Washington Post.

US Senator Gary Peters

Robert Knake was President Obama’s Director for Cybersecurity on the National Security Council. This topic may at first glance seem unrelated to accounting, but is actually extremely relevant. Private sector companies are responsible for providing their own cybersecurity and these controls must be audited. A cybersecurity breach can be considered a significant event that must be disclosed on the financial statements. More broadly, cybersecurity affects all of us and is an area that the public and business community needs more education in. I learned that two-factor authentication is a necessity to protect your email accounts from being hacked and all the major email providers offer it. Since this talk, I’ve started using it! Robert also wrote the book I’m reading in my cybersecurity Master of Public Policy elective class at the Ford School, so it was fascinating asking him questions.

US Senator Debbie Stabenow

Day 3 was a field trip! We took a class photo on the steps of the US Capitol and met Senator Debbie Stabenow and Senator Gary Peters from Michigan. We also visited the Senate and House galleries. Most of our class got to witness a Senate confirmation hearing and watch Senators John McCain, Bernie Sanders, and other well-known Senators cast their votes.

Our day wrapped up with a meeting with Margot Cella and Vanessa Teitelbaum from the Center for Audit Quality and Michael Waring from the University of Michigan Federal Relations office. Michael had an interesting job of lobbying for our university. People think of lobbying negatively, but lobbyists are actually a good thing because they provide politicians with fairly unbiased view of policy issues. They are educators and although they have corporate interests at heart, they play a large teaching role that I hadn’t thought of.

Best of luck as you prepare your applications and GO BLUE!