Be a Budget Hero »

If you ever wanted to control where your tax dollars go, here’s your chance to decide »

Firearm and immigration issues have dominated the news out of Washington lately, but many Americans say they are most concerned about economic topics, including the state of the federal debt, the size of the national deficit and shoring up Social Security and Medicare.

Those issues of budget and finance will take center stage in the coming months as the White House seeks a “grand bargain” with congressional Republicans over taxes, spending and entitlements.

Today, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office published its new 10-year estimates of federal spending, tax revenues and deficits. Its analysis of President Obama’s budget plan will be released Friday.

Since his second inauguration, Obama has pitched changes to Social Security and Medicare as part of a budget plan that the White House says would point the nation on a path toward reducing the national deficit. While he says his proposals were designed to meet congressional Republicans halfway, they make some of the president’s Democratic colleagues nervous as they look ahead to midterm elections.

With entitlements set to take center stage in Washington’s latest round of budget battles, we took the opportunity to find out how players of Budget Hero approached such hot-button federal issues.

Let’s start with Budget Heroes en masse. (Later this week, we’ll hear some individual players’ views on federal spending.) Since 2008, the game has been played more than 1.6 million times. While most players choose to remain anonymous, nearly 50,000 players shared their demographic information through the Public Insight Network.

Working with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Jefferson Institute (with funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation), we’ve created a data visualization that lets you explore the policy options Budget Heroes preferred as they played the game between May 2008 and December 2012, broken down by players’ demographics.

Take a look.

PLAY WITH THE DATA: The Wilson Center analyzed demographic and interaction data on nearly 50,000 plays of the Budget Hero game that occurred between May 2008 and December 2012 to get a better idea of Americans’ spending priorities.

A majority of players who identified themselves across political parties tended to both raise the Social Security age and to slowly increase Social Security benefits.

That data contradicts a Pew Research Center survey from late 2012 in which 56 percent of Americans polled said they opposed gradually raising the age at which people can begin receiving Social Security benefits. Thirty-eight percent of those polled matched the Budget Hero players, and were in favor of raising the minimum age.

To be clear: Budget Hero isn’t a scientific poll. Each version of the game has included dozens of different tax and policy options for players to pick. Since its launch, Budget Hero has undergone three major revisions to allow players to choose from among the latest economic projections and policy options being seriously considered by lawmakers. And because it’s a game, players’ choices do not necessarily reflect their political beliefs directly.

While the most recent Budget Heroes of all political stripes have largely been willing to calculate Social Security increases using the chained Consumer Price Index, an AARP survey released in April found “broad bipartisan opposition to chained CPI among voters over 50, with 69 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of unaffiliated voters in agreement that Congress should not support the policy.”

Despite Budget Heroes’ widespread willingness to make changes to Social Security, players were far less receptive to the idea of gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67.

That option was most popular among self-identified Republicans and Libertarians from May 2008 through July 2011, but it saw huge drops in popularity across the board from July 2011 through December 2012, especially among Republicans and Libertarians. It’s been more popular among players who identify as Democrats and independents in that same time frame.

Of course, the game launched in 2008, as the United States was beginning to feel some of the toughest effects of the economic collapse.

What did you find interesting in the Budget Hero data visualization? Share your insights through the Public Insight Network.

We’re planning to launch another major Budget Hero iteration this summer, based on the latest CBO projections of federal spending, revenue and the president’s budget proposals. Follow @BudgetHero to find out when the new version is released. If you haven’t played the game before — or if it’s been a while, – give Budget Hero a shot.

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While all-day Kindergarten has support from most educators, one school district chooses to keep a majority of its students in kindergarten for only half a day.

Discovered through our Public Insight Network, Jessie Thompson fixes ravioli for her family while two-year-old Gavin watches the Disney Channel and six-year-old Riley works outside with dad.

Riley attends Heritage Trails Elementary in Moore Public Schools; one of just 22 students at the institution picked to attend all-day Kindergarten.

Jessie loves the fact that Riley was picked in a lottery system to go to school all-day although she raised concerns at first.

“He did the half-day pre-K last year and he had a little bit of a problem adjusting to time away from home, but he’s reading level 2 books now, just about at a second grade level.”

The move to all-day Kindergarten started with the passage of Senate Bill 982, the Achieving Classroom Excellence Act in 2005.

Under the bill signed by then Governor Brad Henry all schools needed to provide all-day kindergarten for their students by 2011.

Lawmakers later pushed it back by two years to the start of the 2013/2014 school year.

A freedom of information request by KOSU to the State Department of Education shows all but 14 of the state’s 520 school districts have 100% of students enrolled in all-day Kindergarten.

Moore Public School, the largest of those out of compliance, holds half-day kindergarten for more than 1,100 of its students

Superintendent Susan Pierce explains as the largest growing district in the state it doesn’t have the space to provide all-day kindergarten for every student

“Right now capacity for full day kindergarten and converting all of our classes to full day prohibit us from having all of our kindergarten classes be converted, but we do have an offering of full day kindergarten.”

But, only for kids like Riley who were picked to be in the full-day classes.

Superintendent Pierce believes the district is staying true to the law as she interprets it.

“That would be a requirement for all schools to have converted all programs to full day when Oklahoma reached the regional funding average or the funding average for our region, our surrounding states.”

The State Department of Education knows about Moore’s decision.

“We understand the Moore Public School is questioning that interpretation of the law. I think that’s well within their local right to do that and we’ll see how that challenge moves through the process.”

Chief of Staff Joel Robison believes lawmakers removed that provision later because it wasn’t feasible.

He says over the summer Regional Accreditation Officers or RAOs will visit Moore to make sure the school follows Department of Education rules and Oklahoma law.

“There will be RAOs discussing this with Moore. I suspect if Moore wants to push this it will end up in court and we’ll let the court decide what the interpretation of that law is.”

While the Department of Education and even Moore Superintendent Pierce recognize the need for all-day kindergarten, not all Oklahomans see its importance.

Rebecca Westbrook Toker taught special education and elementary education in a “home school away from home” in Durant.

She says all-day Kindergarten puts too much stress on the kids.

“I think that the length of the day is way too much for kiddos. They need more sleep than that and they don’t need to be getting out of bed at like 6:00 or 6:30 maybe 7:00 if they’re lucky.”

In a few years, when her son reaches kindergarten age, she will likely not have him participate in all-day classes.

“I have no uncertainty about the idea that I’ll have him in a non-traditional program. I don’t feel that full-day kindergarten is appropriate. I’ll either home school him or have him in a program that’s shorter.”

For Jessie Thompson just finishing up dinner, she hopes that she doesn’t have to go through the lottery system when Gavin hits kindergarten in 2016.

“The fact that we were able to get full day for riley we were really excited and happy and yeah, now that we don’t have to worry about it for Gavin is, yeah, it’s a weight off.”

A bill to make the move to all-day kindergarten optional rather than mandatory died in the legislature this session when it failed to get a hearing in the Senate.

Marine Cpl. Mike Liguori riding in a convoy in Iraq during his deployment there in 2004. (Photo shared by Mike Liguori)

Editor’s note: This is the third post in our series on veterans, reintegration and mental health.

“Writing saved my life,” says former Marine Cpl. Mike Liguori.

When Liguori, 29, returned home to San Carlos, Calif., in 2006, after two tours in Iraq, he felt numb and disconnected. He fell into a deep depression. He hated being alone yet felt intense loneliness when surrounded by people.

Eventually, he turned to the VA’s mental health services and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

His therapist gave him an assignment: Think back to the first traumatic event of the war and write about it.

Transporting himself to that moment was wrenching, Liguori says. His writing was filled with pain and self-loathing.

Then the therapist told him to do it again. And again. He continued to write and rewrite the same thing for weeks, for a month. Over time, the story began to change. The facts remained the same, but how he wrote it, the details he included and the details he left out, began to shift. He began to forgive himself.

“I had felt responsible,” he says. “But I wasn’t responsible. I wasn’t the one in charge.”

Liguori has continued to write. In August 2012 Liguori published a book of short stories called “The Sandbox, Stories of Human Spirit and War.” The book features a version of that first story he wrote about in therapy. It is retold here with excerpts from Liguori’s own writing.

In 2004, Liguori arrived in Iraq as a member of a motor transport team. He spent much of his time driving around Anbar province, resupplying bases. According to Liguori, these missions were both incredibly dangerous and mind-numbingly boring.

I still haven’t seen combat. I still haven’t seen what I had imagined it to be, rounds coming at you with hand-to-hand fighting in the trenches against the enemy. A couple months out here, I have nothing to tell my friends and family back home. I thought war was going to be constant battle. I thought it was going to be days filled with grenades and firefights. I just have been driving miles and miles without a single firefight to show for it.

This wasn’t the experience Liguori signed up for. He enlisted in the Marines right out of high school, inspired by the events of 9/11. Liguori says his mission was to protect the United States from future attacks. In other words, he wanted to kill terrorists.

It is a little discouraging that I haven’t had a chance to kill. All those hours I spent cleaning weapons seem pointless. I keep getting this itch to shoot anything while I’m out on the roads. I just want to kill something. I want to tell my friends I killed out here, that it was one less terrorist they had to worry about.

His opportunity arrived late one night while returning to base after a supply run.

A shadow behind a cement barrier slowly slipped out between the chain link fence and concrete barrier. I couldn’t make out his face but the shadow looked like a child, maybe eight to ten years old. He held something in his hand as he pointed at one of the trucks in front of me. With the whip of his arm, he rolled something under one of the trucks. The gunner on the second truck, a guy named Dakota, peered through the opening in his gun turret to watch the item’s path. It rolled fast underneath his truck. As Dakota attempted to look closer over his turret, the item exploded as shards of metal went in all directions.

Another explosion quickly followed with more force. I didn’t realize how real this all felt until the second explosion. At first, it felt like a training exercise. All the preparation for a moment like this, all the times I mentally went through thinking about how I would shoot my weapon, how I would empty multiple ammo cartridges, shooting and killing the enemy, had not have prepared me for how scared I felt. My ass cheeks clenched as I pulled the trigger of my rifle as fast as my finger could, shooting in the direction of the blast. I slammed the gas pedal of the truck as the engine roared at my feet.  I whipped the truck hard into a left turn while red tracer rounds lit up the night sky.

Dakota whipped his .50 cal machine gun towards the small boy. The boy made eye contact with Dakota’s barrel.  His eyes lit up as if he had seen a ghost as his head swiveled quick to his right, looking for an escape route. The boy pumped his arms in furious motion as his feet followed. For the next few seconds, it seemed the interaction between Dakota and the small boy was in slow motion. The boy ran for his life as Dakota aimed in on him, Dakota’s eyes and war face behind the power of the machine gun.

I wanted this kid dead. The combat-hungry part of me wanted him to be the first casualty of our unit. I wanted him to be made an example to the villagers of [al-Qaim] that our unit was not to be fucked with anymore. No more throwing rocks at us, no more cursing in Arabic or we will kill you. But I felt something else during my want for blood. The human side of me, the little that was left, thought that if Dakota kills this kid, blood will always be on his hands. I would’ve watched a young boy die in front of me. I would have had the image of his death etched in my mind. I would have to live with that.

In the end, the boy escaped, but Liguori still thinks about what might have been.

“I have three younger brothers who were around the same age as that kid,” he says. “I would’ve had blood on my hands if that kid had died. It’s like, I killed the enemy, but the enemy was a 9-year-old boy.”

You can find more of Liguori’s writing at his blog, The Spirituality of War.

>> Are YOU a veteran with a story to share about how you have – or haven’t – been able to move on from war? Share it here.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general’s assessment team included this photo in its look at the department’s Roanoke, Va., regional office. Inspectors found veterans’ files stacked on top of already-full filing cabinets throughout the offi ce. (Photo via Office of Inspector General, Dept. of Veterans Affairs)

Facing criticism over a severe backlog of disability claims, the Department of Veterans Affairs made headlines this month by saying it will start prioritizing benefits claims that have been pending for longer than a year. The decision will affect about a quarter of the nearly one million claims waiting to be processed.

So if one group of disability claims take priority, which groups will now wait longer? It turns out there’s no good answer to that question, leading to one criticism we’ve heard a lot in our reporting: that there is no “front of the line.”

A more accurate assessment may be that there seems to be no “line” at all.

Claims are processed at regional VA offices around the country — offices that vary widely in the size of their backlogs, the average time it takes them to process claims, and their level of organization and leadership. According to the latest data from the VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration, the number of pending claims ranges from the hundreds (Lincoln, Neb.) to more than 40,000 (Waco, Texas).

The VA’s stated goal with this latest announcement — to process the year-plus claims inside of six months — is ambitious, and veterans advocates, Congress and the VA itself all agree that ambition is needed. But without significant structural changes (moving from paper to digital files, for example, which is underway but moving slowly), the VA is on a steep, slippery hill.

No matter how long it takes them to get through the priority claims, new claims will continue to pile up behind them. More than a decade of sending women and men to war guarantees it — and there is no way to predict how quickly the new claims will pile up.

For more background on the disability claims backlog, see our story, “After combat, a wait.”

>>   If you are a veteran waiting on a disability claim, share your experience with us.

>>   If you are a reporter looking to do the backlog story in your area, I’ve posted a reporting guide that might help you out.

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Members of a police SWAT team comb through a neighborhood in Watertown, Mass. on April 19, 2013, as they search for 19-year-old Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev. After a car chase and shoot out with police earlier in the day, the other suspect in the bombing, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was shot and killed by police. (Photo by Spencer Platt | Getty Images)

Explosions in the streets. House-to-house searches. Snipers placed on rooftops. For those who’ve seen combat overseas, these things may be familiar, but seeing them out their own window back home is not.

The bombings at the Boston Marathon and the extensive manhunt that followed temporarily transformed the city of Boston into what some in the media called “a war zone.”

Now, we’re reaching out to those who’ve actually served in a war zone to hear your reaction. How did your past experiences affect the way you reacted to what your saw on the news? Were you called on to participate in any way?

Share your story: How did your service affect your reaction to the Boston bombings?

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Today, beginning at 1 p.m. CDT, we’re hosting a Google Hangout featuring Astronaut Abby – a 15-year-old high school student in Minneapolis, Minn. who has her sights set on being the first person to walk on Mars – and her mentor, Italian European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Luca Parmitano – one of the three astronauts traveling to the International Space Station on May 28.

This should be a very exciting chat. Luca will soon be blasting off on his first space mission, six months at the ISS. And Abby will be at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to watch the launch as Luca’s guest.

You have three options to send us your questions to Abby, Luca or both: Fill out this query we have written; send questions via Twitter using the hashtag #ScienceNight; or join us live and ask your question there!

Meet our astronauts

• Abigail “Astronaut Abby” Harrison is a 15-year-old high school student in Minneapolis, Minn. who has her sights set on being the first astronaut to land on Mars. Since she was in fifth grade, she has been fascinated with space and flying, and has participated in a number of programs designed specifically for those interested in engineering, mathematics and science. Along with her passion for school and science, she participates with her high school’s gymnastics team. She is currently working toward her goal of attending the Air Force Academy for college.

• Luca Parmitano is an Italian astronaut for the European Space Agency (ESA). Parmitano is a pilot for the Italian Air Force who has logged more than 2,000 hours of flying time, is qualified on more than 20 types of military airplanes and helicopters and has flown more than 40 different kinds of aircraft. He was chosen to be an ESA astronaut in 2009 and is currently participating in astronaut training in Russia. He will be travelling to the International Space Station (ISS) on May 28 for his first trip to outer space. He will board the Soyuz TMA-09M and make the journey to the ISS, where he will remain for six months before returning to Earth.

Mission to Mars: Is Mars your muse? This is the place for you. We’ll post our favorite submissions — and share the best about the Red Planet from across the web

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Mountain Community Radio, WMMT, which broadcasts from Whitesburg, Ky., has developed an engagement project focused on giving people in Appalachia a voice in the conversation about unemployment and healthcare resources, issues that are among the most pressing problems in the region.

To do that, they’ve organized a series of interactive booths at local festivals, art showcases, storytelling events, musical performances and dances. These community engagement events have become a venue for local artists — and they also allow WMMT to connect with local residents who want to be part of an ongoing conversation about regional issues. The conversation, in turn, helps inform WMMT’s public affairs programming.

Sam Neace, WMMT’s community engagement director, answered a few of our questions about this project.

1. What is your role in this reporting project?

As community engagement director for WMMT, I am responsible for organizing our community events, which includes finding the venue, booking whatever artists, speakers, or entertainers we need, and leading the event.

I am the host, so I introduce all activities. I also lead conversations at the events. I talk with attendees about issues, gather their responses and schedule guests for the radio program, “Mountain Talk,” that WMMT has established to broadcast community issues.

Finally, I either host the radio program or schedule a member of our staff to host it.

2. Where did the idea for this topic come from?

Our area of emphasis for this project is economic transition in central Appalachia. The collapse of the coal industry is causing major economic downfall in an area that was already economically depressed.

Basically, the idea was natural since we are surrounded by this issue every day. By engaging the community, we hear from the families who are struggling.

By taking part in journalism efforts, we see the inside story about what the future holds for coal and economics in the mountains.

By forming relationships with local groups, such as Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and MACED (Mountain Association for Community Economic Development), that have missions devoted to finding economic transition, we are able to take an active role in promoting alternative methods of economic endurance.

More than anything, the idea comes from us simply living here as part of the culture and feeling the ever-tightening strains along with our families and friends.

3. What communities or groups are you focused on engaging with? Why?

Our listening area includes the majority of coal-producing counties in central Appalachia. WMMT covers eastern Kentucky, western Virginia, northeastern Tennessee and southwestern West Virginia.

These are the communities we are focusing on because they feel the direct effects of coal industry collapse. These areas are already highly impoverished, and yet there is no other source of industry for them to fall back on after coal is completely gone.

Also, these communities are not directly served by a major media outlet, and the media attention that is granted by other entities usually does not even begin to scratch the surface of what is needed to help promote economic transition.

To put it bluntly, the coal industry controls a lot of media in this area. Transition away from coal, and the true reasons for the decline of coal, is not always a focus of media reports — and therefore the community is kind of left in limbo, instead of preparing for the inevitable.

However, we also want to promote and celebrate our Appalachian culture. It is an enchanting area, with beautiful landscapes, intelligent young people who are making great academic strides despite living in economically depressed conditions, and brilliant artists in all forms of expression.

There is a lot of promising potential here, and we hope to be able to share some of that with the world, along with discussing the issues that have a negative impact on our region. So we discuss the negative but also promote the positive. That is our plan.

4. How are you planning to engage with your audience around this topic?  What do you think they will find compelling about these stories?

Interestingly, we have found that the communities are beginning to open up more and more to the discussion of economic transition as we open the door.

We have already held one community event in Hazard, Ky. It had great participation, and we have aired one hourlong public affairs program on economic transition.

During the on-air program, we heard from experts representing various groups that are organizing efforts to improve Appalachia’s economy. We even had a former coal miner join us on the air to share an insider’s view of the mining industry. The miner also voiced support for our need to start the transition process.

WMMT is going out into as many communities as possible to host or attend events and generate the conversation. We are already scheduled for events in five communities throughout the listening area. We plan to do many more.

5. What are you hoping the impact of this project will be?

WMMT hopes to get the conversation started and to keep it going.

Ultimately, it will take community leadership, devoted organizations and the citizens themselves to get the initiative going full-steam. However, the first obstacle we must overcome is getting all sides together in a conversation that is devoted to brainstorming ideas, sharing information and organizing efforts.

We want to provide a voice to people who are otherwise not given one, and be an outlet for people to inform and be informed.

We are very excited about the fact that the first conversation has occurred and was met not with resistance, but rather with acceptance and a desire to know more.

We must keep the conversation going and take an active role in doing what is necessary to avoid what could be a crippling blow to our community, one from which we might not recover, but one which can be avoided if we unify and act now.

The Public Insight Network awarded engagement funding to 17 public media newsrooms across the country. We’ll continue to track the work of those newsrooms and others in this Partner Notes blog series.

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KPCC’s Ashley Alvarado took notice. “As soon as I saw the Fronteras Desk map, I had idea and source envy,” she says. “We had done a similar query early this year, which fed on-air segments and some online content. But we hadn’t mapped anything. And, as I looked at what John at Fronteras put together, I was struck by the notion of how powerful it would be to see this represented on a national level. They already have responses from several states, but there are many holes, too. I thought we could work together to fill that space.”

Ashley reached out to John about collaborating, and they decided to open the project to everyone in the network.

If you’d like to share the query with your sources and contribute to the map, we’d love for you to join the project! Get started by contacting Ashley Alvarado at aalvarado@scpr.org. She’ll add your organization to the AIR project and you’ll be able to send the query to sources in your network.

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