Photo Courtesy of International Telecommunication Union

By Ben West-Weyner

I’m 21. According to many Americans I must be self centered, entitled, and lazy. I’m probably politically unaware, and could care less about who my elected representatives are, let alone their positions on the issues that affect me.

Maybe these stereotypes hold some truth, but I resent the idea that apathy is all we’re capable of. It's time for us to step up to the plate. Let’s prove our critics wrong.

As more millennials begin to graduate and enter the full time workforce, it's our responsibility to stay vigilant in keeping aware of our representatives’ spending of taxpayers’ dollars in Washington. Now that we’re primary investors in the federal budget, shouldn't we have a say in what it looks like?

To make our priorities heard, we have to first:

• Understand the procedures involved in preparing the federal budget: http://nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/
• Be aware of how the budget is divided amongst different services, and why: http://nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/
• Know the ways available to take a stand for our values: http://nationalpriorities.org/take-action/

The mission of the National Priorities Project is to help ordinary Americans with those tasks, and create a link between the decisions made in Washington to the effects of those decisions on the ground in daily life. You can check out the details of President Obama’s budget proposal here, and decide for yourself how legislators should revise it.

My name is Ben West-Weyner, and I've been tasked with helping to build that connection in a way that makes the relevance of the federal budget process clear to members of our generation. I'm currently finishing my degree in Legal Studies and Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, and I’m here to answer any questions you may have.

Get in touch with me at info@nationalpriorities.org, and look forward to more posts throughout the Spring geared towards a millennial's perspective regarding the budget, and your role in it's completion.