Wonkblog's "Choose Your Own Fiscal Cliff Adventure"

While Speaker Boehner and President Obama attempt to bridge their differences in the fiscal cliff negotiations, you can try your hand at creating a plan using the "Choose Your Own Fiscal Cliff Adventure" simulator from Wonkblog. The simulator offers users a chance to come up with their own plan to avoid the fiscal cliff while reducing the deficit in the long run to stabilize the debt.

The simulator allows users to choose among various policy options dealing with the fiscal cliff components, additional stimulus, and deficit reduction. The deficit reduction options include changes to federal health programs, Social Security, discretionary spending, and the tax code. The simulator then displays the effect your choices have on GDP growth over the next three years and deficits over the next ten years.

Wonkblog's simulator is helpful in showing the trade-offs between short-term growth and longer-term deficit reduction. Lawmakers could look to these options and many others, such as those we list in our recently released "Revenue and Health Care Savings Options" report, as they figure out how to navigate the fiscal cliff and the mountain of debt.

Try Wonkblog's simulator and our own debt reduction simulator.