The Students for Daniels will continue their political work as the newly named Students for Solvency.

When Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels announced on Sunday that he would not seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, the Yale-led Student Initiative to Draft Daniels was left without a candidate. But one of the group’s causes, regardless of Daniels’ decision, was to encourage legislators to address the nation’s debt problem.

“Our generation must tell our parents and theirs the plain mathematical truth that the ‘red menace’ will destroy our American dream unless we set out on a bold program of entitlement reform,” national director Max Eden ’11 and political director Michael Knowles ’12 wrote in a joint statement released Thursday night.

To draw attention to the nation’s increasing debt, the group will continue to scrutinize the records of the remaining candidates in the 2012 Republican field, whose frontrunners include former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, the former Governor of Minnesota.

The group will also lobby politicians in Washington, D.C. over the summer to ensure the nation’s debt ceiling is not raised without changes to entitlement and other spending.

“This movement is about a cause, not just a candidate,” Knowles said in an interview late Thursday. “Although the vessel of our cause has chosen not to run, our cause continues and we’re going to lobby and fight for that all we can, we’re going to continue full steam ahead.”

Still, Daniels might yet figure in the group’s activities. All members of the original group have agreed to form the “Student Initiative to Draft Daniels for Vice President or Treasury Secretary” once a Republican nominee is selected, according to the statement.

Read the statement in full below:

On Sunday Governor Daniels decided not to run for President. We were disappointed.

On Monday a poll showed that the majority of Americans believe the debt can be tackled without touching Social Security or Medicare. We gained a new sense of purpose.

Daniels urged us to keep going if he didn’t run, and that’s what we’re doing. The youth movement for fiscal sanity must go on. Our generation must tell our parents and theirs the plain mathematical truth that the “red menace” will destroy our American dream unless we set out on a bold program of entitlement reform. The generational theft must stop.

The Students for Daniels will become the Students for Solvency PAC. Students for Solvency will be an issue advocacy group centered on the national debt and the reforms needed to manage it. We will continue to raise the alarm about the threat of the debt and set straight those who think it can be handled without entitlement reform.

In addition to critically examining the records and statements of the remaining 2012 candidates, we will lobby in Washington this summer to assure that the debt ceiling is not raised without a strong program of reform.

Members of the remaining 2012 Presidential campaigns have approached us in the hope of an endorsement. Members of our organization are free to support the candidate of their choice, though all have agreed to form the “Student Initiative to Draft Daniels for Vice President or Treasury Secretary” once the nominee is picked.