President Obama's compromise with Congressional Republicans to reduce the deficit is "a rotten deal" that "hits the poor and the middle class the hardest," The Nation magazine said in a May 2 nd editorial.
The president may have called for "shared sacrifice"to reduce the budget by $4 trillion over the next 12 years but for every $1 raised by closing tax loopholes for the wealthy, he proposes $2 in spending cuts, the liberal magazine says.
And "Two-thirds of those cuts would come from education, health and other social programs while one-third would come from the military budget," the magazine editorialized.
" The president's vision of 'shared sacrifice,' in other words, hits the poor and the middle class hardest. Meanwhile, wealthy Americans and the military are asked to sacrifice less, even though it was unfunded tax cuts and wars that got us a deficit in the first place," the editorial continued.
To avoid a government shutdown, the president agreed to a 2011 budget compromise that cut spending by $38 billion, "the majority of which will come from the departments of education, labor and health," The Nation pointed out.
The magazine concluded Mr. Obama's "balanced approach" "conceded too much too early to the deficit hawks and austerity pushers." Where he "needed to reset the debate," instead "he split the difference."
In a similar vein, former Labor Secy. Robert Reich wrote on his blog the president "is losing the war of ideas because he won't tell the American public the truth: That we need more government spending now---not less---in order to get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession."
That's because "the increasingly lopsided distribution of income and wealth has robbed the vast working middle class of the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going at full capacity," Reich explained.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
3
3
