Debt Debate Offers Something For Everyone To Hate

wbur.org — A proposal by a bipartisan task force co-led by Brookings Institute fellow and former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin, like the one the chairmen of President' Obama's deficit commission released last week, has something for everyone to hate: spending cuts and tax hikes. And it will probably be attacked the same way that first proposal was -- by advocates on the left and right

In this interview with NPR's Mara Liasson, Roger Hickey sees the deficit commissions as a trap for Democrats. "Starting this deficit commission, it has shifted the entire discussion away from 'how do you get jobs' to 'how do you get deficits under control,' " he says. "It would be the worst thing in the world for the Democrats to allow conservatives to mousetrap them into embracing cuts -- draconian cuts, really -- to Social Security."