Congratulations are rightfully due to the 2.5 million students graduating from college in 2010. Their academic credentials and strong work ethic will benefit our country for many decades. Hopefully those students who incurred an average of $40,000 in student loan debts will quickly find good paying jobs.

But their $40,000 student loan debt is minimal next to the $600,000 debt imposed upon each of them this year by the federal government ($1.5 trillion budget deficit divided by 2.5 million graduates). There is some good news for future graduating classes. Average budget deficits over the next 10 years are forecasted to decrease to $1.0 trillion per year. An average of just $400,000 per student!

Piling massive amounts of debt onto our children is intolerable and should end immediately. Readers will correctly claim that federal debt is owed by everyone. This statement is true. But the federal deficit is the amount that spending exceeds taxes collected from every existing taxpayer. Thus college graduates entering into potentially high income jobs are the only practical new source of tax revenue to pay off these deficits. We have a moral obligation to give our students a debt paydown by balancing the federal budget!

Chris Payne, Bel Air