Kaplan ’15 and Gilman ’15: American youth must take a stand on the sequester

By Andrew Kaplan and Sam Gilman
Guest Columnists

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Did you know the federal budget hurricane, known as the sequester, is set to land on college students tomorrow? Federal student aid will be cut by 6 percent. What does 6 percent mean? According to the Student Aid Alliance, if Congress does not act by its March 1 deadline — to avert a disaster it created — more than 100,000 students will lose a “major portion” of their student aid, and millions of students will lose some portion of their aid.

These are not empty numbers. If we translate the percentages to cash, we find that some students will lose up to $876 in aid. For a student struggling to make ends meet, $876 dollars may be the difference between going to college and dropping out.

When we ask students if they know that their federal student aid could be cut by up to $876 dollars, we are met with shock, awe and outrage. Most ask: What can we do? How can we stop this? How can we champion our interests?

Unfortunately, there is not much we can do. We are not organized. Minimal infrastructure exists for youth to campaign for our own interests. Student governments are the only institution common to most universities, and they are understandably wary of political action.

Common Sense Action is a new student organization founded in Providence for moments like these. We believe the United States needs a common sense nation-building strategy that invests in opportunities for the next generation and finds a compassionate way to reduce our long-term budget deficits. We imagined a grassroots organization that could mobilize a bipartisan network of youth voices who demand society open the gateways of opportunity for our generation. Currently, we are representing Brown in the Up to Us Competition to raise awareness about the impacts of long-term federal debt on our generation.

As student contestants, we cannot support any political parties or pieces of legislation. But we can support a common sense approach to deficit reduction.

So what are some “common sense” ideas? We believe in increased investments and strategic — not political — cuts. And our work begins with defeating the sequester. Whether we are conservative or liberal, engaged or apathetic, we owe it to ourselves and to our future to demand the 113th Congress avert the 6 percent cuts to federal student aid, known as the student fiscal cliff. As students, we cannot afford to allow Congress to mortgage our future and the futures of our classmates for the sake of political maneuvering. Yes, addressing the long-term debt is important, but we cannot be goaded into taking a cleaver to the federal deficit and calling it a day. Across the board cuts that eliminate desperately needed investments will not only have an immediate impact on federal student aid, but they also will set a dangerous precedent.

Young Americans are already mobilizing against the sequester. On Feb. 23, students from colleges across Rhode Island convened at the Rhode Island Fiscal Summit to discuss our generation’s spending priorities. College Democrats, college Republicans and student government leaders from Brown, the University of Rhode Island, Roger Williams University, Rhode Island College and the Rhode Island School of Design assembled at the summit.

Unsurprisingly, the sequester was a major topic of discussion. The students assembled had a clear message for Washington: Congress should avert the sequester.

But students gathered on a Saturday in Rhode Island cannot make a difference if the conversation stops here. To truly affect the decisions being made in Washington, we must first have a voice. We must tell our elected officials that as young Americans, we refuse to sit on the sidelines and watch while our economic future is derailed by a crisis of leadership in Congress.

So what actionable steps can we take against these looming automatic cuts? Unfortunately, the hour is late. Even if we mobilize against the sequester, it may still occur.

Yet we must still come together as proud Democrats, proud Republicans and proud Independents — as proud youth — so that we are prepared to fight the next battle and the battle after that. So if you are a young American, start to raise your voice. Organize with your classmates. Contact your elected officials. Vote in the next election.

Most of us don’t do any of those things. Voice by voice, decibel by decibel, let’s raise the volume of our demands, so they can be heard at the policymaking table. It is time young people had a say in the future of their country.

Andrew Kaplan ’15 and Sam Gilman ’15 are cofounders of Common Sense Action, which is representing Brown in the Up to Us Competition.

anonymous

“As student contestants, we cannot support any political parties or pieces of legislation.” I for one am inspired. Grassroots!

Reducing the deficit right now with 8% unemployment and historically low interest rates is a terrible idea. Austerity isn’t “common sense,” it’s a political stance that a whole lot of people disagree with (and it happens to be a stance that overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy). As this column seems to recognize, this particular sequester-based round of deficit reduction is a bad idea, which is, for an aspiring grassroots organization whose only actual position is deficit reduction, awkward.

Others may disagree, and they do, and that’s why we have arguments and political parties. This is where Simpson and Bowles, the judges of this so-called “Up to Us” competition, are so uniquely full of it. Their abominable web page (“http://itsuptous.org/rules-faq/”) makes the absurd claim that they have no “political agenda.” But they do, of course they do, and so does “Common Sense Action.”

Which is fine! Every single successful grassroots movement has a political agenda. To pretend that deficit reduction is somehow different, somehow this exalted common sense position, is absurd.

I’ll admit, though, that I can’t think of a single successful grassroots group that started with a vow to never support any legislation under any circumstances. That’s a new one. I hope it’s worth the $10,000 in prize money for this strange little banker-backed thing.

(Sidenote: long-term deficit reduction is great and is supported by basically every politician in Washington and doesn’t really need a grassroots movement. It’s totally uncontroversial. The judges for the prize you want think we should do it by cutting Social Security and Medicare, which is…more controversial. Check out the http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/the-peoples-budget/ for a much better way of doing it, although that would probably fall under “specific legislation.”)
Daniel Moraff

“Whether we are conservative or liberal, engaged or apathetic, we owe it to ourselves and to our future to demand the 113th Congress avert the 6 percent cuts to federal student aid, known as the student fiscal cliff.”

That’s actually not a “common-sense idea.” That’s a liberal idea. That’s supporting need-based government spending on college education. A conservative idea would be to spend less money on student aid and cut taxes. And that’s great because it’s okay to have liberal ideas and it’s okay to have conservative ideas. You’re just not going to find some magic special idea everyone can agree on, because that’s not how government works and it shouldn’t be how government works.
Bradley Silverman

Your article, like your stance, is incoherent. Your only stated political position is debt reduction. The sequester, for all of its other assorted vices and virtues, will cut the debt. I’m against the sequester, but that is objectively what it will do. Your principle and only policy stance is more or less entirely coextensive with the sequester. And yet, you’re against it, because even though we’re cutting the national debt we’re not doing it the right way, or something. You are being disingenuous with respect to your goals, and it frankly causes me to question your motivation. Why would you be so passionately against expanding the debt, and yet expend so much energy advocating against a policy occurrence that will do the literal opposite? That doesn’t make any sense – I don’t understand how you benefit. On the other hand, I understand how you benefit by winning a prestigious $10,000 national prize and being able to write on your resume that you founded and served as President of an active political group that espouses the sort of mushy bipartisan mainstream groupthink advanced by respectable bourgeoisie opinion leaders. Color me skeptical.
anonymous

Somewhat embarrassed that fellow Brown students are falling for the pointless BS of Pete Peterson. Let’s hope that this contest remains as meaningless and ineffectual as all his other endeavors.

A relevant piece: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/02/how-to-spend-500-million-on-nothing.html
- Bradley Silverman
  
  My only criticism – if I were linking to New York Magazine, I would link to a Jon Chait piece, as he is one of the most effective skewerers of Petersonology writing today.
Andrew Kaplan

First off, I’d like to apologize for any confusion that this piece created. We are not in favor of immediate austerity cuts, nor do we support Peter G. Peterson’s policies about deficit reduction, as was suggested below. We do believe that long-term debt is a problem, but knee-jerk automatic cuts, like the Sequester, are not the solution. If you’d like to engage us on whether long-term debt is a problem, fine.

That being said, one of the main reasons that I (I’ll speak explicitly for myself here) decided to take part in this competition to raise awareness about the debt was in order to access the contextual discussions that accompany debt talks. Many of the issues that are important to me (like Social Security, education, healthcare, etc) are discussed in conjunction with debt negotiations. Whether we like it or not, current politicians are going to take some sort of action regarding these programs and policies. All in all, I’d like to have some say in how that action is shaped, as I would imagine most young people do.

Part of the reason why our position may seem “mushy” so far is because we have not carved out an extremely explicit position yet. We are a new group that was started around the idea of bipartisan compromise and sacrifice. Currently, our team is in the process of figuring out what directions we would like to go in. Obviously, we’d like to transition into finding ways to actually make a difference, instead of the usual “compromise” for “compromise’s” sake.

I’m not a huge fan of online back and forth, so if you’d like to continue the conversation with me, please email me at andrew_kaplan@brown.edu, so we can set up a meeting or something. And Bradley, I’m very sorry that our group came across as resume padding, but the ideas behind Common Sense Action are ones that I care deeply about. Feel free to get in touch with me if you need any more convincing about my motivations.