The National Debt and The Deficit: two terms that are often used interchangeably, but take on different meanings when it comes to the government. Louise Sheiner is a Policy Director for The Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution and she helped guide us through the differences between the debt and the deficit, and what it means for a country to carry debt.
If you’d like to try your hand at navigating the fiscal ship, the Brookings Institution has designed a game to “challenge you to put the federal budget on a sustainable course”: The Fiscal Ship