Can you and your students fix the budget problem?

Felix Sockwell

This weekend's New York Times issued a challenge to its readers: you fix the budget problem.  Or at least, look at the various proposals and evaluate what you think would best fit in a new budget to reduce the deficit.  You can examine cuts to spending in the military, Medicare and Social Security.  You can contemplate raising the retirement age.  You can reduce earmarks (or keep them, if you like them).  You also have the opportunity to examine new tax proposals and see what they would do to the deficit.  There is an interactive version of the puzzle here, and a printable PDF version of it here.