Conclusion

This blog turned out to be a much larger project that I initially envisioned. I would love to get any feedback on what people thought. If there is anything that you have questions about or feel like I left out please let me know and I will look into it.

 Thank you for taking the time to read all of this, I hope you found this blog interesting and informative.  My initial plan was to end the blog with my opinion on how to best deal with the national debt problem, base on what I learned through my research. But now that I have finished, I realize that the problem is not so much that there is a "right" solution that we have not found. But that there are several solutions to the federal debt crisis and they all boil down to the simple answer that the federal government either needs to spend less money, collect more revenue, or some combination of the two, until budget is balanced. It is not what we need to do that the country is hung up on, it is how we need to do it and honestly I do not think there is right or wrong choice here. No matter how we do it there will be consequences. We just need to decide as a nation which consequences we can live with. So in the end it is more about our values and our perspectives, then a right or wrong way to do it.

So I decided to scrap my opinion piece at the end of the blog, because after reading though all these figures and delving though government policy. I am no more equipped to tell someone what to value or what perspective to take on the world than before I started.

Now the question is, "where do I go from here?" and this is what I have settled on. I want to do something about this problem, but I do not think I can do much by myself.  At this point I would like to ask all of you out there to help. First of all, if you have not read through my blog, please read through it (and if you do not mind this shameless plug if you know anyone who might find this interesting please share a link to my blog with them). When you are done, ask yourself how you think the country needs to go about balancing the budget. Then write up your what you think in a letter and send a copy to the your Congressman, both of your Senators, and the President you can email them all through this site:

http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

This may seem small thing to do, but there is power in writing your elected representatives. One letter does not get much notice, but fifty, or one hundred, or a thousand causes these people to take notice. It easy for us to be anger at our elected officials for not doing enough, but ultimate we have no one to blame but ourselves. Politicians want to be reelected and ultimately they pursue the issues that will get them reelected, and if we do not let them know that the debt matters to us or what we think they need to do about it, then they are not likely to make the issue a priority, let alone take action in a way that we are likely to agree with.

I would encourage you all to do this and with that said thank you all again for reading. I enjoyed putting this all together and I hope you found it interesting.