The New York Times created a cool interactive exercise to solve both short- and long-term federal budget problems. It’s a lot of fun and will open your eyes to exactly what is at stake.

You can play for yourself here.

The lesson is to keep no sacred cows. I used a combination of spending cuts (68%) and tax increases (32%) to bring the country back into a surplus situation. You can see my solution here. When you’re done, post your results to Twitter so that everyone can see!