A former Madison-area congressman informed students about the need to fix the debt in the first meeting of a new student group that would encourage a bipartisan solution.
Former U.S. Rep. Scott Klug, a Republican, joined Katie Belanger, executive director of LGBT advocacy group Fair Wisconsin, in the launch of the campus chapter of The Can Kicks Back.
The youth group is part of the nationwide Fix the Debt campaign from Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who co-chaired President Barack Obama’s deficit commission.
Alex Holland, a University of Wisconsin sophomore and Great Lakes regional director of The Can Kicks Back, told a group of about 20 students that the millennial generation needs to speak up and demand lawmakers fix the debt problem.
“Our legislators will invoke, ‘It’s our next generation; it’s our grandchildren or your grandchildren,'” Holland said. “But we are those grandchildren, and our legislators… have let us down.”
Klug criticized the sequestration cuts, across-the-board discretionary spending cuts that began last month, because Congress did not agree on an alternate plan.
A large reason why the sequestration negotiations failed, he said, is the increased polarization of Congress. Klug, a longtime Republican representative in an area seen as largely liberal, said there were more people like him when he was in Congress than there are now.
There are currently no Republican senators north of New York and only nine Blue Dog, or moderate Democratic, senators, Klug said.
“As they disappear, you’re left with harsh partisans on either sides, and that’s unfortunately where we are right now,” Klug said. “The only way [the debt] is going to get fixed is if the folks in this room speak out and reach out to moderates.”
Belanger said past generations have ignored the country’s fiscal issues, and the millennial generation needs to call for adequate reforms.
She said LGBT individuals need to be part of the conversation as well, especially since the federal and state government have discriminatory laws that severely impact LGBT individuals’ finances.
“When you have … a country that is in a challenging financial or fiscal period, where the debt is growing, where you have an economy that’s not doing well and you have people that are losing their jobs, it all compounds together, and it creates an even worse financial people for LGBT individuals,” Belanger said.
Austin Helmke, a UW sophomore who attended the event, said it was important to have these bipartisan conversations about how to resolve the nation’s fiscal problems.
He added his generation needs to begin thinking about the issue as a generational concern, instead of a partisan one.
“It’s really kind of an issue that breaks the party barriers because it’s generational,” he said.
The Can Kicks Back will host former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Mark Pocan in a panel discussion at the H.F. DeLuca room in the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. The event will be May 2 at 6:30 p.m.
