Editor’s Note: The Washington press corps often assesses how “serious” a politician is by whether he or she is ready to slash the benefits going to Americans via Social Security and Medicare, clearly the way to impress on “Meet the Press.”
President Obama’s center-right-dominated fiscal commission is currently pondering its own recommendations for how deeply to slash those programs, while showing a lot less interest in cutting military spending or raising taxes on the wealthy, as Kevin Zeese notes in this guest essay:
The bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which was created by President Barack Obama earlier this year, is using exaggerated rhetoric to heighten deficit fears at a time when many economists say more government spending is needed to spur hiring and avert a second dip in the worst recession since the Great Depression.
The commission – co-chaired by former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles – is talking about cuts to Social Security, Medicare and middle-class benefits like the home mortgage deduction rather than focusing on three key causes of the deficit: massive war and weapons spending, giant tax cuts for the wealthy, and the faltering economy.
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