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, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs reported on Tuesday. Private consumption rose 0.2% from the fourth quarter, driven mainly by housing and health care as well as banking services and insurance, the agency said. Consumption spending on food and clothing fell, the secretariat t from Democrats, who charge it would "end Medicare as we know it." The Senate rejected it in a vote last week, but also unanimously struck down an alternative plan proposed by President Obama.  Democrats said they wanted to leave it off the table while Vice President Biden leads a bipartisan group of senators to come up with a new budget that would include cuts in spending that would satisfy lawmakers who don't want to increase the nation's borrowing limit without reducing government's size. "The one thing we can't do is nothing," McConnell said. "The president, to his credit, is at the table. ... We're going to negotiate the contours of the plan in these negotiations. I'm personally very comfortable with the way Paul Ryan would structure it in the out years, but we have a Democratic president. We're going to have to negotiate with him on the terms of changing Medicare so we can save Medicare." Appearing on the same program, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called on Republicans to abandon the House Medicare plan, noting an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that says it would require seniors to shoulder an increasingly large share of their health care costs. Schumer said there are only three options -- doing nothing, the Ryan plan or a Democratic vision that preserves benefits and changes "delivery systems," but does "not let providers many disciplines. One winner wants to create a mobile banking system for the developing world. Another is working to create cheaper biofuels. One wants to build robots that can help out around the house. The prizes come at a time when debate in the U.S. over the value of higher education has become heated. New graduates mired in student loan debt are encountering one of the toughest job markets in decades. Rising tuitions and diminishing prospects have led many to ask whether college is actually worth the time and money. "Turning people into debt slaves when they're college students is really not how we end up building a better society," Thiel says. Thiel made his fortune as a co-founder of online payment service PayPal shortly after graduating from Stanford Law School. He then became the first major investor in Facebook. In conversation and as a philanthropist, Thiel pushes his strong belief that innovation has stagnated in the U.S. and that radical solutions are needed to push civilization forward. The "20 Under 20" fellowship is one such effort. Thiel believes that the best young minds can contribute more to society by skipping college and bringing their ideas straight to the real world. And he has the shining example of Facebook to back up his claim. Thiel's faith in the world-changing potential of Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg's idea led him to invest $500,000 in the company, a stake that is now worth billions. Still, the Zuckerbergs of the tech industry are famous because they are the exceptions. Silicon Valley is littered with decades-worth of failed tech startups. Vivek Wadhwa, director of research at Duke University's Center for Entrepreneurship and a writer for TechCrunch and Bloomberg Businessweek, has assailed Thiel's program for sending what he sees as the message that anyone can be Mark Zuckerberg. "Silicon Valley lives in its own bubble. It sees the world through its own prism. It's got a distorted view," Wadhwa says. "All the people who are making a fuss are highly educated. They're rich themselves. They've achieved success because of their education. There's no way in hell we would have heard about Peter Thiel if he hadn't graduated from Stanford," he says. Thiel says the "20 Under 20" program shouldn't be judged on the basis of his own educational background or even the merits of his critique of higher education. He urges his critics to wait and see what the fellows achieve over the next two years. According to data compiled by the Ge