We are pleased to announce that our organizational partners at the National Issues Forums Institute have released their latest issue guide. The newest guide is called America’s Future: What Should Our Budget Priorities Be?, and it is designed to help facilitate discussion on national budget issues.

As with other NIFI issue guides, the new guide encourages forum participants to weigh three different courses of action on a controversial issue. The guide lays out the choices on dealing with the national budget in this way:

Option One: Keep Tightening Our Belt

Though painful, the sequester showed that we can get by with less. We should continue cutting gradually to bring down the deficit, shrink the national debt, and let the private sector drive the recovery.

Option Two: Invest for the Future

We are making progress on the deficit. We need to make some adjustments to entitlements, but now is not the time to slash programs and hobble the recovery.

Option Three: Tame the Monsters

We need to control the unbridled growth of defense, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid, which are the main consumers of federal dollars.

You can read more about the new issue guide at by clicking here, and we encourage you to order or download the issue materials here.