When I left the University of Chicago to become Secretary of Labor about a quarter century ago, I recognized that I was leaving the role of professional economist and taking on the responsibilities of a player in the public policy process. But I quickly discovered that I could not get away from economics: habits of thinking stay with you. So I have found myself to be still an economist, responsible for action. I had some helpful tutorials along the way. I recall a session with the Ways and Means Committee and its chairman, Wilbur Mills, not long after I started as Secretary of Labor. The subject was unemployment compensation. I was invited to take part in the Committee's deliberations and did so vigorously. The Chairman interrupted me: Mr. Secretary, when you are in your classroom, you are accustomed to getting your way, down here, we compromise. But I also learned that the real task is to know when to compromise and when to hold firm, how to move tactically while maintaining your strategy. Late one night, some two years later, when I was budget director and we were at the end of the long annual struggle to contain spending, I asked a veteran civil servant, Sam Cohen, if there was really any difference between Republicans and Democrats when it came to the budget. They both spend money, he replied, but the Democrats enjoy it. So cuts in government spending are easier to advocate than to execute. That is the part that takes real conviction, in the Congress as well as in the Executive Branch. I have also realized increasingly that my training in economics has had a major influence on the way I think about public policy tasks, even when they have no particular relationship to economics. Our discipline makes one think ahead, ask about indirect consequences, take note of variables that may not be directly under consideration. Economics deals with markets and how they work and seeks out the wide ramifications of policies and events across industries and over time. Economic policies are partially anticipated before enactment and continue to affect the economy, often in ways not anticipated, long after they have been put in place. Results occur, with a lag. The key to a successful policy is often to get the right process going. While the economist is accustomed to the concept of lags, the politician likes instant results. The tension comes because, as I have seen on many occasions, the economist's lag is the politician's nightmare. So my training as an economist has taught me also to be a strategist who tries to understand the constellation of forces present in a situation and to arrange them to point toward a desirable result. A kind of patient impatience is required. With this in mind I address you about some opportunities and problems facing us today.