Even before she won her hotly contested Georgia congressional seat in 2020, Carolyn Bourdeaux was always something of a budget nerd.

As director of Georgia’s Senate Budget and Evaluation Office during the Great Recession, the Democrat won recognition from a Republican-controlled Senate for her work to cover a budget shortfall.

On Capitol Hill, she pursued a similar fiscal agenda through the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and as co-chair of a fiscal responsibility task force in the Democrats’ Blue Dog Coalition. She lost her seat just two years later, after a redistricting of the Atlanta suburbs forced her into a primary battle with Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga., in 2022.

But since last year, Bourdeaux has found a new avenue for her fiscal policy work as executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonprofit group advocating policies to curb mounting deficits in Washington.

And under Bourdeaux’s leadership, the group also launched a new advocacy organization, known as Concord Action. The effort is focused on building grassroots support to address the nation’s debt, which now totals more than $40 trillion.

“Trying to reboot interest around the federal budget is what I’m working on,” Bourdeaux said. “And it’s a bit of a passion project for me because I generally thought the federal government is going off the rails fiscally, and would really like to see that turned around,” she said.

“We have a lot of really fabulous organizations, like the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, that does a lot of work to talk to members of Congress and try to get them all on the same page and convene them,” Bourdeaux said.

But in her current position, Bourdeaux said the goal is “to make Concord more outward-focusing,” while emphasizing the need for public awareness around the federal budget.

Her new job is one that allows the former congresswoman to draw from a blend of her background in campaigns and passion in public policy, particularly in federal budgeting, Bourdeaux said.

“A lot of that ties into doing community events and trying to get people involved in a sort of campaign to try to make change in Washington,” she said.

Founded in 1992, the Concord Coalition was the bipartisan brainchild of former Sens. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., and Paul Tsongas, D-Mass., along with Peter G. Peterson, an investment banker who served as Commerce secretary under the Nixon administration. The nonprofit group has spent decades advocating for fiscal policies designed to rein in soaring deficits.

Earlier this year, Concord Action touted adding over 170,000 people to its database of “grassroots subscribers.” Bourdeaux said those subscribers receive action alerts and messages asking them to send letters to Congress, among other efforts to drive up pressure in Washington for action on the debt.

“Largely, these are kind of the armchair-warrior folks who are perfectly happy to hit a button or two and customize the letter to Congress,” Bourdeaux said. “So, with that, we sent over 450,000 letters to Congress, which has been huge, and that’s just in the past year or so alone.”

But through Concord Action, Bourdeaux said the group is also working to build an “advocacy base of people who are willing to go meet with their members of Congress” to encourage members to right the nation’s fiscal trajectory. Without any change in policy, the Congressional Budget Office projects annual deficits exceeding $2 trillion beginning in fiscal 2028, amounting to more than $24 trillion in new debt over the coming decade.

“This is an issue I am passionate about, I always have been, even going back to my time when I was with [Sen.] Ron Wyden, and I cared a lot about debt deficit and budget,” added Bourdeaux, who previously worked as a legislative aide under the Oregon Democrat in the 1990s.

Georgia roots

In the years that followed, Bourdeaux later went on to help balance the state budget back home as director of the Georgia Senate Budget and Evaluation Office. While a Democrat, Bourdeaux acknowledged the nonpartisan job was under Republican leadership in the state chamber.

“There were lots of funny comments about like, ‘So and so’s dusting off her commie flag,’ or stuff like that. And I’d be like, ‘no, no,’” Bourdeaux recalled humorously. “But at any rate, what I tried to do was present them with honest options, and I think they really appreciated that.”

Bourdeaux was recognized for her service to the state during the three-year stint. In that period, she was tasked with helping legislators find options to plug a 20 percent hole in the budget after the state saw its revenues plunge amid the Great Recession.

“When people talk about the federal government getting its act together and getting it done, I have a lot of confidence they can do it,” she said when describing the experience. “But the big difference is the political will and the structures that promote that kind of fiscal discipline are not at the federal level.”

Bourdeaux, who holds a doctorate degree in public administration with a focus on public finance from Syracuse University, believes her educational background, coupled with her upbringing, uniquely positions her in the fight to help get the nation’s budget under control.

“I know the consequences of not doing it in ways that other people don’t really understand, and the consequences are really devastating in ways that hurt all sorts of people,” she said.

Paper hats in the rain

Bourdeaux credits her acceptance into Yale University with a story she said she’s since told “a zillion times” on the campaign trail about her family.

In high school, Bourdeaux, who grew up in Roanoke, Va., said her father “burned out of teaching” and left his career to start a business making paper animal hats.

“He was like, ‘I need to find another way to give myself to the world and be of service,’” Bourdeaux recalled. “Well, the world was pretty cold, and that business went under.”

“My family was just very middle class, did not have any connections to a fancy Ivy League school,” she said. “But I got in because I wrote an essay about how to sell a paper hat in the rain.”

Bourdeaux was able to cover costs at Yale, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in history and economics, through a combination of Pell grants, Perkins loans and chip-in from her community.

After years of adventures in budgeting and finance, it’s become clear to Bourdeaux that she’s had a “long-standing attraction to very difficult causes.”

Asked what she misses most about serving in the House, Bourdeaux stressed “being able to help people really directly.”

“There is no place more joyful and fun for someone like me to be in a place where I could actually help write the bills, help shape the policy, help be in that conversation,” Bourdeaux said.

However, the former congresswoman, 56, said she still hasn’t closed the door on returning to Capitol Hill or someday serving in a presidential cabinet. But she acknowledged there are other forces that factor into the calculus.

“Politics is a lot about luck and timing and being at the right place at the right time,” she said. But for now, Bourdeaux says her current post gives her “a lot of meaning and a lot of satisfaction from a different vantage point now.”