This post was written by Hatchet reporter Eric Osman

With policymakers finally out of election mode, it is time for them to bridge their partisan divides and stop the impending fiscal cliff, a panel of journalists and former Congress members said Monday.

The panelists, which gathered for the final leg of GW’s Face the Facts USA campaign, urged lawmakers to strike a deal and avert $600 billion in spending cuts and tax increases set to take place next January.

Director of the School of Media and Public Affairs Frank Sesno coordinated the months-long information-driven movement and  moderated the conversation, while engaging the audience through interactive polls. The discussion jumped from social security, defense spending, and Medicare, with speakers demanding Congress to put the issues before their own political stakes.

“They all need to hold hands and not jump off this fiscal cliff, but hopefully walk right up to it and say this is the way we are going to put our own careers at risk to put our country first,” former Rep. Jane Harman, D-Cal., said.

Ryan Schoenike, executive director of a youth-driven debt-reduction campaign called The Can Kicks Back, voiced the frustration of young Americans.

“The deal with the can is that Congress continuously kicks the can down the road,” Schoenike said, using the phrase that inspired his grassroots organization that launched at GW Monday. “That can represents our generation, the millennial generation, those between 18 and 32. And what we’re saying is enough is enough.”

The Can Kicks Back, hailed by the Washington Post’s Wonk Blog as “millennial deficit hawks,” demands a grand bargain from Congress by next July.

Still, panelists expressed optimism moving forward.

“I think the American economy has come a long way in the past four or five years. If you look at business and banks, they have shown significant improvements,”

, chief economist of Moody Analytics, said. “The only thing between us and a better economy is a piece of legislation and I think we can do it.”