Many young American are increasingly concerned about their student loan debt.

However, University of Wisconsin-Madison student Jennifer Pavelec is thinking on a larger scale and believes bipartisan approaches are best to deal with the national debt.

For college students today, the word “debt” is an omnipresent warning about the problems facing our future. From record student loan debt, about $27,000 on average per person, to the immense and growing national debt, college students are bombarded by figures that demonstrate the threat to our American dreams. Unemployment for young people remains in the double digits, about 11 percent, due to the lasting impact of the Great Recession.

Our national debt has reached $200 trillion, and counting. Yet, despite these staggering facts, many college students remain unmoved, either feeling powerless to enact real change or disengaged from politics in general. But perhaps the scariest part about the national debt is that it threatens our futures to an even greater extent than it does those best positioned to fix it. And so, it is up to our generation to defeat the debt, before it defeats us.

When politicians talk about our $17 trillion national debt they are only referring to the amount of money our country has borrowed in the past –– not where we are going in the future. The true national debt (otherwise known as the “fiscal gap” which is currently $200 trillion), includes the present value of unfunded future obligations of programs like Social Security and Medicare, today’s debt, and the cost of interest payments. It is a tab so large that it is beyond our generation’s capacity to pay. …

As the president of University of Wisconsin’s chapter of the Bipartisan Issues Group, I understand how differently conservatives and liberals view this issue. The UW BIG was founded last year by two friends, one conservative and one liberal, who, when talking about current issues, realized that they could find middle ground and that they were discouraged by national partisan divides. The BIG was founded on the belief that despite varied ideological preferences, a large group of our generation knows that practical solutions do exist and that excessive partisanship only impedes the political process.

While we might not see eye to eye on how to fix the debt problem, we can agree that this is a problem that needs to be addressed and that the status quo is the worst option on the table. Every day that our country puts off tough choices, the financial burden being placed on young people and future Americans grows. That is why the UW Bipartisan Issues Group, College Republicans and College Democrats have joined together to welcome the “Generational Equity Tour” to campus on Oct. 8. The tour is organized by The Can Kicks Back (www.TheCanKicksBack.org) campaign, a non-partisan group of young people that advocates for a fiscally sustainable and generationally equitable federal budget.