Do You Know How Much You Owe?

Classroom Materials [0]

Games [0]

Videos [0]

Reading List [0]

Web Sites [0]

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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 $184,000 to that. That's your share of more than $12 trillion in U.S. national debt and another $44 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.

Students Face Up is bringing classes around the country together to talk about this problem.  There are solutions, and this is the place to learn about them.

• Students Face Up Fall 2009 Contest rules and entry instructions [3]
  
  
• America’s Health Care Challenge: [4]
  A Facing Up to the Nation’s Finances Choicework discussion guide
  
  
• Social Security, the Budget, and an Aging Population [5]
  A Facing Up to the Nation’s Finances Choicework discussion guide
  
  
• Making Sure our Government Uses our Money Wisely [6]
  A Facing Up to the Nation’s Finances Choicework discussion guide
  
  
• Deficits in a Time of Crisis: Short-Term, Long-Term and Unimaginable Sums [7]
  Primer on deficits in a time of crisis
  
  
• Can We Bring More Fairness to the Tax System AND Make Revenues Match Spending? [8]
  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 middle and high school teachers through the University of Virginia's Youth Leadership Initiative [9] and for members of the America's Future Scholars program on iTunes for Epsilen [9].

lesson plan [9] and flyer [10] for using Budget Hero for tournaments in which students and concerned citizens try their own hands at balancing the budget. Note: the rules can be adapted for most of the budget-balancing games listed in this section. Some of the games are about the federal budget; others focus on state and local government budgets.

• Budgetball [11]
  
  
• American Public Media's Budget Hero [12]
  
  
• Austin (TX) American-Statesman Budget Game [13]
  
  
• Budget Explorer [14]
  
  
• Budget Simulator [15]
  
  
• Concord Coaltion's Federal Budget Challenge [16]
  
  
• Kansas T-Link Calculator [17]
  
  
• Kentucky State Budget Game [18]
  
  
• Massachusetts Budget Game [19]
  
  
• Montgomery County (MD) Budget Game [20]
  
  
• The New York City Budget Game [21]

Online training sessions [21] by the Public Engagement team from Public Agenda, for faculty, students and concerned citizens using the Students Face Up to the Nation's Finances curriculum

Videos

• An Introduction to Facing Up to the Nation's Finances [22]
  
  
• America's Financial Future: What Will Young People Do? [23]

• I.O.U.S.A.: The Byte-Sized Version [24]
  

• State and Local Governments: Growing Fiscal Challenges Will Emerge during the Next 10 Years [31] (Govermment Accountability Office, 2008)
  

• The Long-Term Fiscal Outlook is Bleak [32], 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 [33], by Stuart Butler (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation, 2007)
  A conservative approach to solving the fiscal problem

• Restoring Fiscal Sanity 2005 [34], edited by Alice Rivlin and Isabel Sawhill (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2005)
  

• A Glossary of Terms Used in the Federal Budget Process [35] (Government Accountability Office, 2005)

• AARP [55]
  
  
• American Bar Association [56]
  
  
• American Democracy Project of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities [57]
  
  
• America's Promise [58]
  
  
• Association for Budgeting and Financial Management [59]
  
  
• Brookings Institution [60]
  
  
• Committee for Economic Development [61]
  
  
• Concord Coalition [62]
  
  
• Generations United [63]
  
  
• Heritage Foundation [64]
  
  
• Mobilize.org [65]
  
  
• National Academy of Public Administration
  
  [66]
• National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration [67]
  
  
• University of Virginia Center for Politics, Youth Leadership Initiative [68]
  
  
• Youth Entitlements Summit (YES) [69]