The person you are at 13 or 17 is not the person you are at 30, 40, or 50. Everyone old enough to look back on his or her teenage years knows this.

Restoring and maintaining a great nation's fiscal health will require not just sound arguments and an engaged public but something more. It will require an electoral system that encourages our representatives to place the long-term interests of the public ahead of parochial special interests.

When a young person is sent 'up the river,' we need to remember that all rivers can change course.

Money's dominance over politics isn't merely one problem of many our country faces. It is the problem! It is a growing crisis that prevents us from tackling anything else.

Peer pressure is a huge part of youth behavior, whether one grows up in Washington, D.C., or Cody, Wyo.

America's Founders were committed to a wide-open public forum in which all voices and perspectives could have a chance of being heard.

Rather than serving in the U.S. Senate for almost 20 years or having so many other wonderful life experiences, I could have served a longer sentence in prison for some of the stupid, reckless things I did as a teenager.

Stemming the tide of special interest campaign cash - and restoring fiscal responsibility in Congress - is no easy task. But there is one place where concerned citizens in both parties can begin: Changing the source of money that funds all campaigns.

I am living proof that youth possess a unique capacity to grow and change - that the child who seems hopeless today could go on to change the world.

The AARP is a group of 3.8 million Americans bound together by a common love of airline discounts and insurance discounts.