Do You Know How Much You Owe?

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Welcome to the Students section of Students Face Up to the Nation's Finances.  This is the place where you will learn about the challenges facing the federal budget, one of the most serious long-term problems confronting the nation. Here you can have your voice heard as you explore choices on what can be done to fix this.

You probably know the total of your student loans, and how much you owe on your credit cards. Now add $175,000 to that. That's your share of more than $10 trillion in U.S. national debt and another $42 trillion in unfunded federal liabilities (largely for promised future Medicare and Social Security benefits).

Right now, the government has no plan to cover these costs – and if nothing is done, by 2040 every tax dollar the government has will be spent on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the money we've borrowed.

The debt is going to drag down the economy and constrain what government can do, and you'll be looking at either paying a lot more taxes or getting a lot less for the taxes you do pay.

There are solutions, and this is the place to learn about them. Students Face Up is bringing classes around the country together to talk about this problem, and you'll find everything you need to get started.

Classroom Materials

• America's National Debt
  A PowerPoint slide show
  
  
• Federal Impact on State Expenditures
  A PowerPoint slide show
  
  
• Students Face Up Fall 2008 Contest rules and entry instructions
  
  
• Medicare, Medicaid, and Controlling Health Care Costs
  A Facing Up to the Nation’s Finances discussion guide
  
  
• Social Security, the Budget, and an Aging Population
  A Facing Up to the Nation’s Finances discussion guide
  
  
• Making Sure our Government Manages our Money Responsibly
  A Facing Up to the Nation’s Finances discussion guide
  
  
• Can We Bring More Fairness to the Tax System AND Make Revenues Match Spending?
  A primer on taxes and other sources of federal revenue
  
  

Other Places You Can Find Our Classroom Materials

Students Face Up curriculum materials are also available to the public through iTunes University, and to members of the America's Future Scholars program on Epsilen.

Interactive Games

• Budget Hero, a game in which players get a crack at balancing the federal budget, from American Public Media
  
  
• The Kentucky State Budget Game, from the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center
  
  
• The NYC Budget Game, from The Gotham Gazette

Videos

• An Introduction to Facing Up to the Nation's Finances
  
  
• America's Financial Future: What Will Young People Do?

• I.O.U.S.A.: The Byte-Sized Version
  

Reading List

• Forgive Us Our Debts: The Intergenerational Dangers of Fiscal Irresponsibility, by Andrew L. Yarrow (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008)
  
  
• Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis, by Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson (New York: HarperCollins, 2008)
  
  
• The State of the Union's Finances, published by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation
  
  
• Long-Term Budget Outlook (Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, 2008)
  A review of long-term projections
  
  
• The Budget and Economic Outlook (Congressional Budget Office, 2008)
  Budget projections and alternative methodologies
  

• State and Local Governments: Growing Fiscal Challenges Will Emerge during the Next 10 Years (Govermment Accountability Office, 2008)
  

• The Long-Term Fiscal Outlook is Bleak, by Korgan, Richard, et al. (Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2007)
  A liberal approach to solving the fiscal problem
  
  
• Solutions to Our Long-Term Fiscal Challenges, by Stuart Butler (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation, 2007)
  A conservative approach to solving the fiscal problem

• Restoring Fiscal Sanity 2005, edited by Alice Rivlin and Isabel Sawhill (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2005)
  

• A Glossary of Terms Used in the Federal Budget Process (Government Accountability Office, 2005)

Web sites With Additional Information On Federal Fiscal Issues

• Facing Up to the Nation’s Finances
  
  
• PublicAgenda.org's Federal Budget issue guide
  
  
• The Voter's Survival Kit guide to Taxes, Spending & Debt, by PublicAgenda.org
  
  
• The Voter's Survival Kit guide to The Economy, by PublicAgenda.org
  
  
• The Peter G. Peterson Foundation
  
  
• The Concord Coalition
  
  
• Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
  
  
• Congressional Budget Office
  
  
• White House Office of Management and Budget
  
  
• “The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It,” at TreasuryDirect.gov
  
  
• The Brookings Institution's Federal Budget page
  
  
• The Heritage Foundation's Entitlements page
  
  
• The National Debt Clock
  
  
• PublicAgenda.org National Debt Clock widget to put on your own web site, or, send to a friend or colleague
  
  

Our Partners

The Students Face Up to the Nation's Finances initiative is being conducted by Public Agenda in association with the following organizations:

• American Association of Community Colleges
  
  
• AARP
  
  
• American Democracy Project of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities
  
  
• Association for Budgeting and Financial Management
  
  
• Association of Young Americans
  
  
• Brookings Institution
  
  
• Committee for Economic Development
  
  
• Concord Coalition
  
  
• Generations United
  
  
• Heritage Foundation
  
  
• Journalism Center on Children and Families
  
  
• Mobilize.org
  
  
• National Academy of Public Administration
  
  
• National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration
  
  
• Partnership for Public Service
  
  
• Roosevelt Institution