What would you buy with $16 trillion? A check in your name with that amount could easily pay off all your student loans, gas up your car for life and pay for other expenses your parents may not necessarily approve of a hundred times over. And you’d still have a chunk of change left over.

Or, you could help our government pay off the debt they’ve accumulated with our money.

Last week, the Treasury Department reported the United States national debt exceeded $16 trillion – the highest in history. At this point, it’s not whether the government might downsize the multitude of services it provides – or even which programs are going to see the deepest cuts. It’s only a matter of time. When the checks bounce, millions of Americans dependent on entitlement programs are going to suffer more than they ever have.

This isn’t just about our nation’s seniors receiving Medicare, our poor receiving welfare or our veterans receiving their benefits. Many students dependent on student loans won’t be able to get them because the money to front the bill simply won’t be there.

Logically, the federal response to being so deep in the red will be to drastically raise taxes to break even. Record amounts of capital will be removed from the private sector and the pockets of working Americans. And not just the demonized “1 percent”, who already pay close to half of all income taxes in the country. Straining economic producers to this extent will put our markets in a basket case. American exceptionalism becomes a thing of the past.

Our government has done a fine job in directing our nation’s economy toward financial ruin, but we have a chance to reverse the trend. The 2012 presidential election is that chance.

President Obama’s policy proposals and legislative record reflect a governing philosophy tried and failed in every other continent. Excessive entitlement spending, effectively looting economic producers of their own income, created a web of financial dependence that cannot co-exist with a market economy in its current setting. “Social democracy,” or socialism under the guise of a republic, has failed Europe. There’s no reason to believe it will do any better in the United States, where jobs are already being exported. In four years, President Obama has done nothing to attack this issue.

Governor Romney presents Americans with a different choice, one the media has made it very hard for college students to accept. The college vote is one the Democrats pushing the “social democracy” agenda have always had in their pockets. But their agenda is failing you. The unemployment rate has not once dipped below 8 percent, while it peaked at 7.2 percent under the Bush administration. Do you really believe there will be a job for you when you get out of paradise, when the powerful demand more and more of everyone’s paycheck?

A vote for Romney, who offers to cut taxes and reform entitlements, sends a message the Democrats won’t be able to ignore – stop spending our money.  Stop wasting our future. No, you can’t buy us off. We want to take care of ourselves.