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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Cutting the federal budget

My AP Government and Politics students are studying economic and social policy this week and so we've been looking at the federal budget. First, I gave them a list of the major items that are part of the federal budget and had them guess what percent of the budget was spent on each category. Almost uniformly the students were way off guessing that the biggest percent of the budget went for defense and guessing from 30 to 50% went to defense instead of about 20% which is the actual percent. Then they spent today's class playing this budget simulation game which readers might enjoy trying out. You get to play around with the increasing or decreasing items in the budget as well as taxes and then find out the effect your new numbers have on the federal deficit. First I told the kids to just take a bit of time and pretend they had complete control of the budget and see what they could do with the deficit. The kids cheerfully cut Social Security and Medicare. Many cut defense spending sharply and raised taxes. Even so, few were able to balance their budgets.

Then I told them to work in groups and pretend they were congressmen who wanted to get reelected so that they could only make cuts or raise taxes that they could sell to their constituents. They soon realized that it would be impossible to make any dent in the deficit. Then I asked them what they could accomplish if they had to hold all the mandatory spending on entitlements and interest on the debt. They immediately realized how hopeless any budget balancing would be at that point.

We've also been talking about the looming problems with Social Security, facts that the newest report on shortfalls on entitlements makes even clearer. My hope is that my students at least will listen more skeptically when they hear candidates making promises about new spending programs while swearing fiscal sanity. They are aware what an impossibility it has become for any reform of Social Security and why they should be demanding that politicians address their concerns that they're going to spend their peak earning years paying for my generation's retirement while they will have no guarantee that those same benefits will be there for them when they are ready to retire.

It's not the most entertaining unit that we cover all year, but I believe that it's one of the most important that we cover all year in preparing them to be intelligent voters.
Labels: Economics

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:02 PM

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HOME Site Feed Comments from an AP history and government teacher in Raleigh, NC. e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com Betsy neither necessarily uses, nor endorses, the products advertised on this site. Wikio Your Market Research Here		Tuesday, March 25, 2008 Cutting the federal budget My AP Government and Politics students are studying economic and social policy this week and so we've been looking at the federal budget. First, I gave them a list of the major items that are part of the federal budget and had them guess what percent of the budget was spent on each category. Almost uniformly the students were way off guessing that the biggest percent of the budget went for defense and guessing from 30 to 50% went to defense instead of about 20% which is the actual percent. Then they spent today's class playing this budget simulation game which readers might enjoy trying out. You get to play around with the increasing or decreasing items in the budget as well as taxes and then find out the effect your new numbers have on the federal deficit. First I told the kids to just take a bit of time and pretend they had complete control of the budget and see what they could do with the deficit. The kids cheerfully cut Social Security and Medicare. Many cut defense spending sharply and raised taxes. Even so, few were able to balance their budgets. Then I told them to work in groups and pretend they were congressmen who wanted to get reelected so that they could only make cuts or raise taxes that they could sell to their constituents. They soon realized that it would be impossible to make any dent in the deficit. Then I asked them what they could accomplish if they had to hold all the mandatory spending on entitlements and interest on the debt. They immediately realized how hopeless any budget balancing would be at that point. We've also been talking about the looming problems with Social Security, facts that the newest report on shortfalls on entitlements makes even clearer. My hope is that my students at least will listen more skeptically when they hear candidates making promises about new spending programs while swearing fiscal sanity. They are aware what an impossibility it has become for any reform of Social Security and why they should be demanding that politicians address their concerns that they're going to spend their peak earning years paying for my generation's retirement while they will have no guarantee that those same benefits will be there for them when they are ready to retire. It's not the most entertaining unit that we cover all year, but I believe that it's one of the most important that we cover all year in preparing them to be intelligent voters. Labels: Economics posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:02 PM \|

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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Cutting the federal budget