I spent much of the last week in San Francisco assisting our Northern California Fiscal Advisory Council in their discussions of the possible solutions to the country's fiscal challenges.

Speakers in the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour sometimes worry that all the bad news they are delivering may be leave audiences too discouraged about the country’s future. Too much gloom and doom, after all, could cause some people to simply throw up their hands in despair.

But while people who attended this week’s Wake-Up program in Kennebunkport, Maine, found the presentations sobering, they also seemed engaged and in many cases energized to seek solutions.

That was reflected both in the wide-ranging questions during the program and in comments from some audience members afterwards.

On June 15 and June 16, leaders from various youth organizations traveled to Washington, D.C. for a youth conference hosted by The Concord Coalition and the Youth Entitlements Summit (YES), and underwritten by The Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

Over the last week and a half, I've watched the launch and rapid growth of a very promising movement. It is called "80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs" and represents the coalescence of over a dozen leading youth organizations to advocate for a new American economy.

This is the kind of movement, the kind of coordinated effort that America needs to tackle our greatest and most glaring problems.