Carolyn Bourdeaux delivers a talk on the growing national debt. (Bri Nitsberg | Managing Photo Editor)

Representatives from the Concord Coalition urged the WashU community to learn about and respond to the impact of the United States’ rising national debt and its effect on the next generation of students through a presentation and interactive activity last week, Jan. 14-15.

The Concord Coalition is a nonpartisan organization focused on educating and engaging people around the rising national debt. On Wednesday, Carolyn Bourdeaux, the executive director of the Concord Coalition and a former U.S. Representative from Georgia, shared her experience in Congress and illustrated the current scale of the national debt through graphs.

Bourdeaux emphasized both the scale and trajectory of the national debt. The U.S. national debt is currently over $38 trillion. The U.S. now spends more on interest payments for the national debt than it does national defense. 

“Every year Congress comes in, and not only do they not address this issue, but they vote on different policies that make the situation worse,” Bourdeaux said. 

The next day, the Concord Coalition hosted an interactive budget simulation exercise on campus sponsored by the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement. Groups of attendees had the opportunity to debate and vote on a myriad of proposals that could increase or decrease the national debt in order to craft a new federal budget.

Phil Smith, the national field director for the Concord Coalition, led Thursday’s Jan. 14 budget activity.

“This is my favorite thing that we do, because people actually get their hands dirty and grapple themselves with these big challenges that we have,” Smith said.

Professor Andrew Reeves, the director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, introduced the Wednesday event with Bourdeaux.

“Today’s conversation addresses the challenges of governing in an era of polarization while confronting difficult fiscal realities, including deficits, debt and the trade-offs required to sustain public trust and economic stability,” Reeves said. 

Prior to entering Congress in 2021, Bourdeaux was a professor at Georgia State University and worked on fiscal policy at the state and local level.

“[The national debt] is a very, very important topic. It’s one very, very near and dear to my heart,” Bourdeaux said.

Bourdeaux described her time in Congress as “truly a crazy experience” as she confronted issues as a policymaker rather than as an academic. Her first month in office included dramatic events like the January 6 insurrection, the second impeachment of Donald Trump, and voting on the American Rescue Plan Act.

During her two-year tenure in the House of Representatives, Bourdeaux said she repeatedly encountered proposals that would increase the debt.

“I got into huge tangle-ups with my own party over these issues, in part because having worked in budgets for a long time, I had a sense of the scope of the problem that we were facing and that we were going to face going forward,” Bourdeaux said. 

In her talk, Bourdeaux said she thinks that action from the federal government is needed to make significant changes to the federal budget to reduce the deficit.

“Some of that we can do with growth, right? Some of that we can do with interest savings if we start cutting or raising revenues now, but one way or another, we are going to have to be making some hard choices,” Bourdeaux said.

Bourdeaux also emphasized the issue’s impact on WashU students.

“Who is going to pay that [debt] off? It is the younger generation,” Bourdeaux said. “Further, if we save Social Security, save everybody’s benefits, who is going to pay for that? Who is going to pay for those retirees? It is the younger generation.”

Bourdeaux called the issue of the national debt a “social justice problem” that disproportionately impacts young people.

“We are transferring enormous debt to our children, to our grandchildren. We ourselves will feel this,” Bourdeaux said. “We are not leaving our children a stronger country than the one we inherited.”

In an interview with Student Life, Bourdeaux urged communities like WashU to get involved and put pressure on Congress to act.

“This is about engaging the public. It is about building awareness,” Bourdeaux said. “We really as a community need to start insisting that they pay for these priorities, and they develop a plan to cut the debt.”