Via The Globe and Mail: Americans grapple with how much should be sacrificed by whom. Excerpt:
When he kicked off the epic political debate over how to reverse his country’s debt spiral this week, Barack Obama underscored the “hard truth” that slashing the deficit will entail “broad sacrifice” from all Americans.
But as the co-chairmen of the President’s “fiscal responsibility” commission formally tabled their plan to cut nearly $4-trillion (U.S.) from projected deficits by 2020, Mr. Obama’s core premise was already being challenged by a member of his own party.
“The top 1 per cent of Americans owns 34 per cent of America’s private net worth right now, and the bottom 90 per cent owns just 29 per cent,” debt commission member Jan Schakowsky told the panel’s final meeting on Wednesday. “So we’re not starting at the same point when we say we need to share the sacrifice.”
Ms. Schakowsky, the Democratic congresswoman for a working-class suburban Chicago district, indicated she will not support the plan put forward by co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles when commission members vote on Friday.
The reforms it envisions, she warned, would inflict disproportionate pain on those “who have not been part of the party” that wealthy Americans have enjoyed during successive booms since the 1980s.
Comments