Today’s Debt, Tomorrow’s Burden

College freshman Yoni Gruskin sometimes walks around Penn’s campus wearing a sign that bears a thirteen-digit number. If you ask him about it, he will be happy to explain that it’s the U.S. national debt – more than nine trillion dollars and counting.

The sign is one of many tactics Gruskin and fellow members of the organization Concerned Youth of America (CYA) use to educate their peers about the national debt. He founded the organization with a group of friends as a senior in Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and started a Penn chapter during his first semester here. Gruskin, who is executive director of CYA, believes that the issue is one of the most important for people his age to understand.

“This is the issue that will affect our generation more than any other issue that’s being debated in this election or any other election,” Gruskin says. “This has to do with the kind of country we’ll be raising our children in and whether we’ll inherit a prosperous America and a government that’s still functioning.”

Although there are many national organizations grappling with the issue of fiscal responsibility, Gruskin feels that few of them are youth oriented. “People are used to hearing about this issue from older men and women, and their discussions are thick with policy details and large numbers,” Gruskin explains. “We’re not going to pretend that this is the sexiest issue going around campus, but we think our strength is that we speak the same language as kids our age.”

This language includes experimenting with what Gruskin calls “PR stunts” – one of which made it all the way to the Sundance Film Festival.  Last November, CYA members dressed in prison jumpsuits (symbolizing that America’s youth were “prisoners of national debt”) stood on the campus’ Locust Walk and distributed literature about the issue. The demonstration and a CYA-hosted forum on the topic were filmed as part of a Sundance documentary called I.O.U.S.A., which will also be shown at the Philadelphia Film Festival this April. Gruskin hopes the film will turn this “wonkish, policy-oriented issue into one that gets people really fired up.”

With the support of both Penn faculty and of business, political and civic leaders around the country, the group is planning future awareness-raising events. CYA is currently working with the Concord Coalition, a grassroots organization focused on fiscal responsibility, and Penn’s Fels Institute of Government to bring former U.S. comptroller general David Walker to speak on the issue at Penn. The group also plans to co-host a forum at the Philadelphia Convention Center that will include other schools from the region.

Gruskin’s future goals for CYA go beyond education to affecting actual policy change. “Once we feel that we have a strong base of support,” Gruskin says, “we’re going to try to tackle specific pieces of legislation and specific congressional habits with a bottom-up campaign that includes letters to the editor, letters to congressmen and other standard grassroots tactics. We want to show people that our generation is alert to this issue, cares about this issue, and isn’t going to sit by while our future is pulled out from under us.”