Tarsi Dunlop is the former Director of Operations for the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network and the Communications Director for the Roosevelt Pipeline, DC Chapter. 

Millennials have just as much of a stake in the answers to long-term budget questions as we do in the short-term decisions concerning the economic recovery. As the newest civic generation, we value community, volunteering and public service.

Tarsi Dunlop at the Capitol

We consider ourselves the 9/11-generation; our worldviews and identity were shaped, in part, by a day of horror, patriotism and unity. Today, we are working to develop a coherent narrative around our ...

Paul from Northampton, Mass., wrote in to ask: "Some politicians say Social Security in no way contributes to the deficit. But for the last two years Social Security expenditures have exceeded Social Security revenues. How does this not contribute to the deficit?" Good question, Paul.

First, some key background. The Social Security program is funded with your payroll taxes:

Payroll taxes fund the Social Security program as well as part of Medicare. In most years, workers and employers each pay 6.2 percent of wages toward Social Security, and those taxes are usually more than enough to cover the whole ...

These days, it’s fashionable for any candidate for federal office to talk about how quickly he’ll reduce the budget deficit, which totaled around $1.1 trillion in fiscal 2012.  And you’re going to hear talk about the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan and more like it in the coming debates.  But immediate deep deficit reduction will reverse the economic recovery, and that fact is left out of election rhetoric.  Think of it this way: If you woke up tomorrow and learned that Washington had solved the deficit crisis and you’d lost your job, would you celebrate? Of ...

A few weeks ago, with the announcement of Rep. Paul Ryan as Gov. Romney’s running mate, we wrote about how the two presidential candidates represent starkly different visions for this country in the years to come. One issue we didn’t cover in detail is the candidates’ projected budget deficits.

Since immediate deficit reduction would bring setbacks for our already fragile economy, it makes sense to look at the candidates’ projected deficits several years down the road. Gov. Romney hasn’t put forth a comprehensive budget proposal, but he’s voiced strong support for Rep. Ryan’s budget; as ...

Recently the notion of the "debt ceiling" has been appearing in the news. It's making a comeback after spending months in the spotlight last summer, when the federal government nearly shut down as federal debt reached the legal limit. (Lawmakers ultimately raised the limit in the eleventh hour.) Currently, it is projected that the federal debt will hit the new debt ceiling sometime before the end of 2012. To once again avoid a government shutdown, lawmakers will again have to raise the debt ceiling, which is now set at $16.4 trillion.

Sound a little complicated? It just so ...

In a recent blog my colleague Mattea noted that a February poll by the Hill of likely voters found that the top priority for 45 percent of respondents was "job creation." In close second, with 40 percent, was "cutting spending." Support for cutting government spending is certainly the result of growing concerns about the federal deficit.As the chart below shows, annual deficits – when the amount of money the government spends exceeds the amount it takes in – are nothing new.  Since 1940 the federal budget has experienced periods of both deficits and surpluses, with deficits becoming the norm in the ...

November 23rd is the deadline for the super committee, officially named the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. They’ve all but announced failure to come up with even $1 of their $1.2 trillion deficit reduction task. Since the creation of the super committee, we’ve been hearing there would be automatic, across-the-board cuts to security and non-security spending—called “sequestration”— if the committee failed its task.

Well, here we are. Bracing yourself?

If those cuts took effect, they would work out to around $55 billion cut from non-security discretionary spending every year for ten years, or roughly 13 ...

There’s so much talk these days about federal deficits and cutting spending. So we at NPP thought it would be good to talk about tax revenues—the other half of the budget picture—and not just about spending (For some background on how the budget works, check out the People’s Guide to the Federal Budget)

Some folks say the government is “bankrupt,” but a look at Costoftaxcuts.com suggests that temporary tax cuts, enacted by President Bush and extended through 2012 by President Obama, have a lot to do with current deficits.

For example,

• Bush tax cuts for ...

Followers of "Ask Kyle" may be surprised to see this, as our good friend and colleague Kyle Andrejczyk posted his last post on September 12. But so many people found Kyle's work to be so helpful in explaining the craziness that went on this summer in Washington around the federal budget that we at NPP are reluctant to let Kyle go. And with a complicated road still to be driven by Congress between now and the end of the year on the federal deficit and the national debt, we need Kyle more than ever.So Kyle is staying, at ...

Obama's speech in the Rose Garden on

Monday outlined his proposal to control deficit spending, which

features the “Buffet Rule” to ensure that households earning over

$1 million do not pay a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.

Critics of Obama's plan called this class warfare.

But in today's flagging economy, if

“class warfare” describes an assault on the highest earners, it

may also be an apt description for what's happening to more

vulnerable Americans. Census data released last week revealed that

more than 40 percent of households headed by women were impoverished

in 2010. For ...