For college students today, the word “debt” is an omnipresent warning about the problems facing our future. From record student loan debt, about $27,000 on average per person, to the immense and growing national debt, college students are bombarded by figures that demonstrate the threat to our American dreams. Unemployment for young people remains in the double digits, about 11 percent, due to the lasting impact of the Great Recession. Our national debt has reached $200 trillion, and counting. Yet, despite these staggering facts, many college students remain unmoved, either feeling powerless to enact real change or disengaged from politics in general. But perhaps the scariest part about the national debt is that it threatens our futures to an even greater extent than it does those best positioned to fix it. And so, it is up to our generation to defeat the debt, before it defeats us.
When politicians talk about our $17 trillion national debt they are only referring to the amount of money our country has borrowed in the past –– not where we are going in the future. The true national debt (otherwise known as the “fiscal gap” which is currently $200 trillion), includes the present value of unfunded future obligations of programs like Social Security and Medicare, today’s debt, and the cost of interest payments. It is a tab so large that it is beyond our generation’s capacity to pay. It is a very real threat to the priorities you care about, no matter what your political affiliation and beliefs. If Washington continues to kick the can down the road by failing to address the problem, it is our generation that will be most impacted. Investments in our future (education, research, infrastructure, etc.) will hit their lowest relative level on record by 2023, as interest payments on the debt approach $1 trillion a year. By 2031, every penny of federal revenue will just be enough to cover so-called mandatory spending (primarily entitlements), meaning spending on everything else must be borrowed. By 2033, the Social Security trust fund will run totally dry and the program will only be able to pay a fraction of its benefits. In sum, if we don’t address this problem soon, we’ll be left with more debt, higher taxes, fewer benefits and a lower standard of living.
As the president of University of Wisconsin’s chapter of the Bipartisan Issues Group, I understand how differently conservatives and liberals view this issue. The UW BIG was founded last year by two friends, one conservative and one liberal, who, when talking about current issues, realized that they could find middle ground and that they were discouraged by national partisan divides. The BIG was founded on the belief that despite varied ideological preferences, a large group of our generation knows that practical solutions do exist and that excessive partisanship only impedes the political process. While we might not see eye to eye on how to fix the debt problem, we can agree that this is a problem that needs to be addressed and that the status quo is the worst option on the table. Every day that our country puts off tough choices, the financial burden being placed on young people and future Americans grows. That is why the UW Bipartisan Issues Group, College Republicans and College Democrats have joined together to welcome the “Generational Equity Tour” to campus on Oct. 8. The tour is organized by The Can Kicks Back (www.TheCanKicksBack.org) campaign, a non-partisan group of young people that advocates for a fiscally sustainable and generationally equitable federal budget.
I hope that you take some time on Tuesday, Oct. 8 to stop by our tent on East Campus Mall during the day and to attend our screening of the nonpartisan deficit documentary Overdraft in Humanities 1111 at 7:30 that night. It is time that we start fighting for our future, together.
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