Online game lets students slash, tax their way to balanced budget

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Dennis Pierce

Dennis Pierce writes,"Our Site of the Week is a new budget simulation game from the nonpartisan Wilson Center that invites players to find ways to trim the nation's debt--while teaching how the government spends money."

University of Maryland (UM) College Park students last week finagled with federal spending and deficit reduction so that, at the very worst, they could delay economic Armageddon in the United States.
 

Budget Hero: Election Edition
 

UM students, most of them majoring in public policy, experimented with ways to get the country’s fiscal house in working order Sept. 19 during the launch of “Budget Hero: Election Edition,” a web-based game that invites players to find ways to trim the nation’s debt by raising taxes, doing away with certain tax deductions, raising the age of Social Security recipients, and reining in the defense budget, among dozens of options.

Even allowing the country to fall off the proverbial fiscal cliff—a combination of economic policies dreaded by both major parties—would keep the government running until well into 2027, according to the game.

But simply delaying the economic Armageddon isn’t the point, said Diane Tucker, leader of the serious games initiative at the nonpartisan Wilson Center, which created the game and introduced the election-year edition in College Park and on Capitol Hill last week.

The game aims to better inform students and the general public of the federal government’s financial obligations reaching into the next few decades—projections based on information from the Congressional Budget Office, the referee of partisan bickering surrounding economic policy in Washington, D.C.
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Source: eSchool News and Public Insight Network