Last week I went to Madison, Wisconsin, to talk with students at the U.S. Students Association national conference. The USSA has a simple, powerful slogan: "Education is a right." I had the chance to talk with a small group of students about the federal budget. It was a 90 degree afternoon and these young people had been up until 4 o'clock in the morning in a legislative session, but that didn't stop them from pulling out their notebooks and asking for information about how Washington spends our tax dollars.

Last week President Obama affirmed his support for letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire for American families making over $250,000. There was a flurry of activity on our Facebook page as folks debated the merits of extending all the tax cuts versus allowing them to expire for upper-income taxpayers. And there were lots of questions and some confusion over who benefits from these tax cuts.

Since the Supreme Court ruled on the Affordable Care Act – also known as Obamacare – there have been lots of questions about Medicaid: How it's funded, what the Supreme Court decision meant, and what's going to change now. While the Supreme Court upheld most of the Affordable Care Act, it struck down a part of the law pertaining to states' participation in expanding Medicaid eligibility. The Court ruled that Congress cannot hold hostage existing Medicaid funding in order to compel states to comply with the expansion. If you find this a little confusing, you're not alone.

Karen from Colorado asks us, “What’s a block grant?” She said she’s been hearing that phrase a lot without knowing what it means – or if it’s important. It’s a great question, Karen, because block grants are important. They’re part of the reason a group of nuns recently began the Nuns on the Bus cross-country tour.

Today the Supreme Court upheld nearly all provisions of the Affordable Care Act, the health care reform legislation also referred to as Obamacare. The most controversial part of the law — the individual mandate requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance — was upheld. One part of the law was struck down.

William from Denver, Colorado, asks: “Is there a way to show whether or not the private sector is actually ‘doing fine?’ In TV commercials I see that Mitt Romney is criticizing President Obama for saying that.” Great minds can disagree about what constitutes “fine,” so let’s look at a firm measure of private sector health – the most recent jobs report. It didn’t contain a lot of good news, though there was perhaps one bright spot.

The Supreme Court is expected to announce any day now its ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 health care reform legislation. The central question of the case is whether Congress has the authority to require Americans to purchase health insurance.

Bob from Vacaville, California, wrote in to ask us for some fact checking. He said he hears all the time that the size of the federal government has ballooned under President Obama, and wondered if that could be true given all of the budget cuts.

This week, in honor of high school and college graduations, we’re talking about job creation and employment. There’s much disagreement over the federal government and job creation—that is, if the federal government can, or should, create jobs.

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.