Our Phony Budget Battles Are All Smoke and Mirrors

By Richard D. Wolff, TruthOut.org
Posted on April 15, 2011, Printed on April 16, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150631/our_phony_budget_battles_are_all_smoke_and_mirrors

Weeks of highly publicized debates - some in Congress, more in the mass media - brought Republicans and Democrats to a budget deal. To maximize public attention, they threatened a possible government shutdown. Both parties said that large government deficits and accumulated debt were "serious problems." They agreed that solving them required only spending cuts, not revenue increases. In unison, they repeated, "we" must "learn to live within our means."

In fact, both sides never actually engaged the deficit and the debt. They limited themselves to purely cosmetic, symbol-laden cuts (Republicans) and refusals to cut (Democrats). Aiming at the 2012 election, both parties used the deficit and budget debates purely to impress their voters.