While not the worst proposal, the budget serves as a political football and shirks the tough decisions staring us in the face.

President Obama's recent budget is the "numbers" version of his State of the Union speech. It mirrors the speech almost exactly. Of course it is a political budget. What else could anyone possibly have expected? The intent is to emphasize a few key themes, give the president's general election opponents no handle to grab on to, and to exit stage right as soon as possible. It will be successful in all of these respects.

But it is entirely a placeholder. It moves generally in a direction the vast center of the electorate will view as right -- if they care. It has a few interesting details and provides his general election opposition with no new attack points. It is not transformative in any respects. It offers no significant guidance as to how President Obama will conduct his second term. And it won't be in any serious way the basis for the actual 2013 budget: Congress won't get its act together to pass a 2013 budget. That would be too much like actually doing its job. So we will have another series of continuing resolutions. Excepting a few ritual attack lines from the left and right, Obama's budget will quickly disappear from sight, if it hasn't already. (After all, 24 hours have passed.) I wish the world and this budget were different, but we are where we are.

The print media have obviously seen it as a rationale for restating whatever their editorial positions were already. The Times, predictably, called it a "clear and welcome contrast to the slashing austerity -- and protect-the-wealthy priorities." The Wall Street Journal opens by calling the budget "a brilliant bit of misdirection" and closes by calling President Obama's fiscal direction as "the worst in modern history." The Washington Post termed it "a serious, if inadequate, effort to put America on a sustainable path." If the reception of the budget is utterly predictable, its results will be even more so.

What's the message? The headline numbers are $2.9 trillion (receipts), $3.8 trillion (expenditures), $900 billion (deficit), 5.5 percent (deficit as a percent of GDP), and 77.4 percent (debt as a percent of GDP). Over 10 years, the deficit falls from 5.5 percent of GDP to 2.8 percent and debt stays at 76 to 78 percent. So the president is not proposing any radical change in fiscal direction, and the big numbers either decline modestly in the right direction (deficit going down) or stay constant (debt as a percent of GDP). The Wall Street Journal to the contrary, these headline numbers are a reasonable fiscal policy -- not the best imaginable but not awful. At the very least, it is simply wrong to try to bring the deficit down rapidly in a still fragile economy.

The two substantive messages are entirely predictable, emphasizing tax fairness and the middle class. The president proposes a long list of tax rate increases on the top 5 and 1 percent. And he underlines his deep devotion to the middle class. But -- as the joke says -- these sardines are for trading and debating, not eating. Barring another political revolution, the tax increases aren't going to happen. Nothing the president proposes -- or right now could propose -- is even close to enough to change the deep structural issues facing the U.S. economy.

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Robert Samuelson says that "this is a formula for governmental failure and generational unfairness." Jeffrey Sachs -- whose new book The Price of Civilization will be the topic of an upcoming Next American Economy breakfast -- says, "The larger truth is that a shrinking federal government will fail to meet America's skill, education, and infrastructure challenges." I agree completely. There are major transformational issues facing us. They are all central to what the next American economy will be and carry major budget implications. None of them are addressed in this budget. Here are five such issues:

• Fiscal policy: To be clear, I believe President Obama's fiscal policy has been largely correct, but the long-run fiscal policy we need and the government we need cannot both be achieved within the world view and assumptions of this budget.
• Government spending: Look at tables S-6 and S-7 of the president's budget. Table S-6 shows you that as a percent of GDP (1) total spending declines from 23.3 percent to 22.8 percent; (2) interest payments rise from 1.5 percent to 3.3 percent; (3) mandatory entitlement spending rises from 14 percent  to 14.4 percent; (4) all of the rest of government -- defense and domestic spending -- falls from 7.7 percent to 5 percent; and (5) domestic spending falls from 2.5 percent to 1.7 percent. Table S-7, continuing the theme, shows actual expenditures in constant dollars: (1) interest payments increase 161 percent; (2) entitlement payments increase 17 percent; and (3) all other domestic spending falls 18 percent. Our fastest-growing program is interest payments. Our government is now mostly about paying interest and sending entitlement checks to the elderly. Nothing goes to all of the other functions of the government. If this trend actually takes place -- and it could -- we will not make any of the national investments I believe are critical, and we will see an even faster erosion of confidence in government.
• Tax reform: We need more revenue, but we even more we need fundamental tax reform. Simply piling increased income tax rates on the top 5 percent and all those undeserving millionaires on the same creaky structure we now have won't raise as much revenue as we think and will make the economy marginally worse. The budget makes a few ritual bows in the direction of reform but no serious moves.
• Infrastructure: We need vastly more public infrastructure investment over the next decade far removed from the current appropriations process. I thought the president was moving in this direction; this budget doesn't.
• Education: The more you pay attention both to some of the scary trends in our economy and society and to the thinking of our best scholars (read The Race Between Education and Technology by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz), the more you realize that we require a fundamental revolution in adult education. The revolution will have to be of the same magnitude as the "high school movement" which Goldin and Katz consider America's second great educational transformation. We need another, but it won't be cheap and the money won't come from the non-existent fund sources of state and local government.

There are other issues, but these are enough to make the point. There is no organized constituency today -- not in the electorate, not in the two major political parties, and certainly not in the Congress -- for a program of transformational change and, crucially, the trade offs that it might require. Mostly I blame some crucial, big factors: the deep polarization in American society, the lethal and maybe now unstoppable effects of unlimited money in politics, the extent of the changes technology and globalization have forced, and the closed duopoly of the two parties. To a very small extent I think President Obama bears some responsibility. He, correctly, wanted to be a transformative president, but he never really thought deeply about what transformation involved, what choices were implied, and the crucial centrality of his role in preparing the American people for these choices.

But it is imaginable that President Obama could have posed the acute trade-offs the big issues are going to require. It would have been reckless to do so. It would have fractured his own difficult coalition, led to nothing, and probably killed off any major changes he did propose. In politics sometimes you try and eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you, and sometimes you best run away from the bear.

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bo Cutter is formerly a managing partner of Warburg Pincus, a major global private equity firm. Recently, he served as the leader of President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) transition team. He has also served in senior roles in the White Houses of two Democratic presidents.

Charter schools give students options they might not otherwise have, but they don't negate our responsibility to provide a quality education to all.

As I've explained in previous posts, inter-district and intra-district school choice programs work by creating choices from the existing schools in a school district. A different approach to school choice is the charter school movement.

As most know, charter schools operate as unique public schools within a school district. Unlike intra and inter-district school choice where the schools students attend are just the regular public schools in the district, charter schools are completely independent. Charter schools operate through a charter from the state government, although they receive their per-pupil funding from the school district where they are located. Because they are not controlled by the school district, they are given vast freedoms in return for higher standards of accountability.

Proponents of charter schools highlight the combination of freedom and accountability that they are provided. That allows them to experiment and innovate in ways that are tailored to meet the needs of the student population. As a result, many charter schools have implemented programs such as extended school day, extended school year, tutoring sessions, required athletic sessions, and hands-on experiences. The Harlem Children's Zone's charter schools exemplify this phenomenon. Faced with their students' limited access to health care services, the Promise Academy opened up the Harlem Children's Health Project to provide access to free medical services for its students.

While most charter schools operate based on similar principles -- high expectations, choice, more time, power to lead, and focus on results (derived from KIPP's "Five Pillars") -- not all charter schools are created equal. Opponents of charter schools worry that the choice created by charter schools is not a choice at all. While the accountability mechanisms in place for charter schools do work to close schools that do not meet their legally mandated goals, opponents note that many charter schools perform on par or worse than their public school counterparts. As CREDO's study notes, on math tests, 46 percent of students in charter schools performed on par with their public school peers, while 37 percent performed worse. Still, 63 percent of charter schools are performing at or above the level that public schools are performing.

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Finally, there's the issue of segregation. Charter schools in urban districts serve an overwhelmingly poor and minority student population, and there is often a higher proportion of poor and minority students in charter schools than in the district overall. This has led some to note that charter schools are creating de facto segregation based primarily on race. Yet while some charter schools cater to specific populations -- a German charter school, for instance, or a bilingual charter school -- this is certainly not a return to life before Brown v. Board of Education. Because charter schools are public, they must accept all students that apply for spots in their classrooms (unless there are too many applications, in which case a lottery must be held). Further, the population of a charter school most often reflects the population of the school district in which it's located. Segregation in schools is a problem, but charter schools are not exacerbating this problem -- they are simply trying to provide a high-quality educational choice for students who may have no other option.

The question this debate boils down to is about choice. If a student's option is to go to a failing public school or take a chance at a charter school with innovative programs, which choice do you think they would make? Parents and students would often rather take a chance with a new and innovative educational program than continue at the same public school that has led to few educational achievements. Charter schools, like inter-district and intra-district school choice, provide an additional educational option for students who have no other choice but to attend public school.

Still, this choice is not enough. Some charter schools have created innovative and effective programs to increase student achievement and success. Other charter schools have failed. But charter schools are not perfect and they certainly are not a panacea for educational issues. In pushing for high-quality school options for all children, the debate shouldn't be about the pros and cons of charter schools, but rather about ensuring that every child has access to a high-quality education. School choice programs, such as intra and inter-district school choice and charter schools, expand educational options for student and families who may have no other choice of schools. But in order to ensure that every child has access to a high quality education, the broader focus should be on widespread public school improvement and reform.

Amy Baral is a Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline Fellow performing legal and policy research on the Boston Public Schools, focusing on access to quality education and school choice. She is also a 1st year law student at Boston University School of Law.

With work still yet to be done, President Obama's State of the Union kept the momentum from the 2008 election going for young Americans.

In November 2008, I voted in my first presidential election. The summer had been a brutal battle for the Democratic nomination, and young people were campaigning in record numbers to take hold of our futures (and, of course, that of "Joe the Plumber"). That fall, approximately 23 million young people comprised almost two-thirds of the overall 5.4 million voter turnout increase. NDN states that the Millennial Generation (born 1978 - 2000) voted for Barack Obama by a 34-point margin, a 25-point increase from John Kerry's support in 2004.

Nearly four years later, the State of the Union address reminded me of the great sense of duty we felt to turn our country around. Here stood a president who had showed us that the future of our country was in our hands but fell victim to the realities of catalyzing significant political change.

At the close of his address, Obama used the capture of Osama bin Laden to allude to the enlightened self-interest lost in Congress: "One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn't deserve credit for the mission. It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job: the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs. More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other, because you can't charge up those stairs into darkness and danger unless you know that there's somebody behind you watching your back."

Obama's reference was intended to inspire Congress to overcome its partisan gridlock, but its expression on a national platform illuminated more than a slap on the wrist to politicians who had acted selfishly since the last State of the Union address. It was all too obvious that the chamber full of culturally polarized baby boomers, apathetic to the president's comments, maintains a very different perspective on the role of the individual in society than my generation does.

The president's steadfast, civic-minded tone on Tuesday reflected one that inspired Millennials to act in 2008 and powerfully endures today. Many Millennials became quickly disenchanted by Washington's realities, but have continued to turn out in record numbers to enter public service. In 2009, 16 percent more recent college graduates worked for the federal government than in the previous year and 11 percent more for nonprofit groups, according to the American Community Survey of the Census Bureau. Applications to AmeriCorps and City Year tripled, and interest in Teach for America and the Peace Corps also skyrocketed.

For many of today's Americans in our early twenties, there is no alternative to taking an active role in civil society. We are skeptical that America will always be #1 because we don't remember what life was like before 9/11 and came of age during a fiscal crisis.

The realities facing our progressive and socially conscious generation breed a sense of emergency. In the fall of 2011, the media focused on the idea of a "lost generation" of young adults holding undergraduate and master's degrees, unable to both find employment and advance in the workplace. Young people wonder if public service will continue to be an option as the wealth gap grows larger and higher education becomes more expensive.

Tuesday night, the Obama administration sought to justify our continual investment of ourselves in the future of the nation, calling upon Congress to realize their self-interest and describing promises that make young voters swoon. We elected him in 2008, and he wants to keep our support for the upcoming 2012 standoff. If fulfilled, Obama's solutions could lead to a prosperous Millennial America.

American Manufacturing: Obama's blueprint for revitalizing the American middle class began with manufacturing, highlighting a large productivity increase in science and technology industries. He referenced a national skills training program, which would partner with community colleges to transform them into career centers for emerging industries. Moreover, he outlined tax incentives for companies to "in-source," continue manufacturing domestically, and relocate to communities that lost factories throughout the recession.

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With the gradual decline of manufacturing and rise of the knowledge-based economy, the opportunity to pursue the "American Dream" has increasingly relied on obtaining a college degree. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake said in a "60 Minutes" interview that he believes the foremost driver of a rapidly expanding American wealth gap is education disparity. He stated that for college graduates the current unemployment rate is 5 percent, but for those without a degree it's 10 percent. Unfortunately, the majority of educations are funded by borrowed money. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 61 percent of students and their families at public four-year institutions, 70.6 percent at private non-profit universities, and 97 percent at private for-profit schools accrue educational debt. A college degree is becoming more indispensable, but less affordable.

This phenomenon has resulted in a saturated job market, full of young adults with bachelor's and master's degrees deep in debt. The revitalization of American manufacturing might give millions of young people the opportunity to pursue a productive and lucrative lifestyle without a college diploma and the rising debt that comes with it. In the short term, this means offering these national training opportunities through community colleges to recent high school graduates in underserved areas.

Education: While skills-based jobs should be more available to young people, higher education should be accessible. Obama rightfully pointed out that Americans owe more in tuition debt than in credit card debt, and interest rates on student loans are slated to double in July. He conveniently neglected to point out that interest on graduate Stafford loans had been altered this year in order to help balance the budget, however.

Many Millennials believe access to higher education to be the single biggest issue of our generation as tuition increases (and exponentially rising text book costs) threatens the accessibility of education to the middle class and burdens graduates with immense debt. Obama called for extending the tuition tax credit, doubling the number of work-study jobs in the next five years, and requiring that states prioritize student aid in their budgets. Finally, he stated, "Let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can't stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down."

While these reform proposals are good, we should challenge leaders to go one step further and address the current student debt crisis. Specifically, the administration should propose better regulation of the private student loan industry to account for public service time and income-calculated minimum payments. Longer term solutions are on the rise, but a short-term solution to student debt would help alleviate a generation's fear of being economically unviable.

Trade and International Cooperation: Millennial America desperately needs a larger job market for their skills, with the highest number of college degrees compared to any other generation. However, we aren't willing to sacrifice the global perspective and civic-minded values we have developed and displayed prominently through consumer patterns.

Obama announced the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit to investigate unfair or unlawful trade practices. He stated enthusiastically, "Our workers are the most productive on Earth, and if the playing field is level, I promise you -- America will always win." Hopefully, this unit will work alongside the World Trade Organization to promote fair trade principles for all countries. Just execution of such a governmental entity will include cooperation with international trade agreements, construction of new, progressive principles, and full participation in multilateral negotiations.

The end of the State of the Union is traditionally a "USA!" rally, but exiting Iraq and the fall of Osama bin Laden gave a little extra enthusiasm. According to the Greenberg Millennial Study, cited in Generation We, 68 percent of American Millennials questioned believe the generation of Americans under 30 has a great deal or a fair amount in common with young adults of their generation in other countries. Opportunities to collaborate with foreign universities and students are abundant, and rising leaders know the importance of not alienating our competitors. The administration should tread carefully in advancing a progressive foreign policy that emphasizes multilateral cooperation, aligning with its young supporters globalized perspectives.

Monika Johnson is the co-Chapter Head for the Roosevelt Institute | Pipeline in Washington, DC and a member of the Pipeline Advisory Committee.

The president showed he understands that Millennials are concerned about paying for college, getting a job, and not getting left out of health care if they can't.

Last night, listening to the State of the Union, I felt really proud of my president. I felt inspired. He spoke to me as a member of the Millennial generation.

There seems to be a lot of chatter in politics about how to help out my cohort -- talk of how to save my generation from a dystopian future of mountains of federal debt, an oppressive federal health care system, and illegal immigrants stealing our jobs. Lord knows, if you've caught any of the recent political debates on TV or in Washington, you've heard it too. (See the phrase: "It's for our children and grandchildren!")

Last night, President Obama showed that he understood that this kind of rhetoric is not what my generation needs. Fairness is at the heart of the solution. Millennials know it, and the president gets it. He also understands that fairness is not merely a virtue to aspire to, but a core value that we can tangibly work on -- and one that is at the center of what makes our country as strong and resilient as it is.

But the president was also right when he said that the defining issue of our time is how to keep the American dream alive. I know this to be true. Like the rest of my generation, I've watched friends and family struggle with what can feel at times like a Sisyphean challenge, but is, in fact, a challenge that can be met.

A close friend of mine, I'll call her Sara, found herself in trouble a few years ago. With the help of her extended family, she was able to afford attendance to a fantastic liberal arts school and major in what she loves. As a college student, she was eligible for health care under her parents' plan. Unfortunately, with the onset of the recession, her family was no longer able to support her education and she was forced to drop out of school. Sara moved back home and began searching for a job. No longer a student, she was now ineligible for coverage under her parents' health care plan. She was out of school, out of a job, without health care. At the time, she described to me her health care strategy: "Don't get hit by a bus."

Sara was not alone in her experience, nor in her health care strategy. And this unfortunate experience has become one that is too familiar.

This is the kind of experience that the president had in mind when he said we need to "return to the American values of fair play and shared responsibility." We must ensure that my generation gets a fair shake: a fair chance to get a good education, a good-paying job, and an opportunity like everyone else to support ourselves and our future families without having to adopt a "don't get hit by a bus" strategy.

The 2012 election is already in full swing and the ideological camps are staked out. The pundits and candidates have painted a campaign pitting individual liberty against the shared responsibility and fair deal the president laid out. This is, in fact, a false choice.

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As the president said, "No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because we built it together." We were able to do so because individuals made the choice to do great things as a community, as a state, as a nation. The role of government is and should be to, as Lincoln said and the president reminded us, "do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves." Yet there is much that we simply cannot do alone -- much that we must work together to achieve.

Many of the challenges that the president has faced thus far required not individuals, communities, or states to address, but a country as a whole. Because the president understands this reality, 2.5 million young people now have health insurance, thousands of college students are now eligible for more funding through Pell Grants and can more easily pay back their federal loans, tens of thousands of young people are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and millions of Americans are finding work and climbing out of the terrible hole they are in.

The president encouraged us to act as a nation so that we can take on these larger questions. Furthermore, the notion that these accomplishments run counter to or limit individual liberty misses the mark. Beyond the fact that health care, college aid, and employment maximize individual liberty, they allow us to begin at the same starting line. It is disappointing, and perhaps surprising, when such an agenda is labeled "extreme" and "pro-poverty," as it was in the formal response to the State of the Union, or dismissed as "a hodgepodge of little ideas" in the Tea Party response.

There is still plenty of progress to be made, and like many Americans and many Millennials, there are policies and goals I have wanted to see politically that haven't been realized. I know we're not there yet.

But I was thrilled to hear the president make proposals that are directed at my generation: doubling the number of federal work-study jobs in the next five years, calling on Congress to send him a law to give young immigrants the chance to earn their citizenship, and reducing the red tape that stifles the creativity of young entrepreneurs.

In 1910, Teddy Roosevelt went to Osawatomie, Kansas, and declared, "I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the games, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service."

Fairness isn't important simply because it speaks to the best of us as people. For after the famously profound "we hold these truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," just after the piece about "inalienable rights," a little bit past explaining that among those are "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," there is an oft forgotten piece: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men."

Last night, the president clearly and compellingly reminded us of the potential we hold and the great work we stand to accomplish together.

Adin Lenchner is the president of the Wheaton College (MA) Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network chapter and is majoring in political science.