Virtual Summit

Robert Borosage is the co-director of Campaign for America's Future.

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The drumbeat about deficits has reached deafening levels. The president warns about "out of control" spending. Fed Chair Ben Bernanke calls for bringing deficits down. The opinion pages bristle with rants about the U.S. turning into Greece, headed to default. Next week, the first session of the president's "National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform" will convene. The next day, shamelessly, the two co-chairs and the staff director (all committed deficit hawks) will grace a forum sponsored by the Peterson Foundation, established by Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson largely to gin up hysteria about America's long term deficits.

Premature Ejaculation

This potion is being served long before its time. Sure, deficits are big and the projections are scary. But the economy is struggling to get out of a big hole. Unemployment is still near 10%. Foreclosures are still rising. Banks aren't lending; businesses aren't hiring. Deficit spending is critical to what little growth we've seen.

The president and the Congress should be focused on jobs, not deficits. Ironically, when pushed, most of the purveyors of the hysteria agree. Bernanke admits we shouldn't roll back the spending too soon, and is keeping interest rates (for the banks) near zero. David Walker, head of the Peterson Foundation, agrees deficits might be larger in the short run to create jobs and help get the economy going. But these cautions can't be heard amid the clamor about deficits.

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Representative John Conyers, Jr., a Detroit Democrat, was re-elected to represent the 14th Congressional District in November of 2008, to his 22nd term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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At the end of this month, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform will hold its first meeting and begin to consider ways to dig our nation out from the irresponsible deficits created by the Bush Administration. This presidentially-created 18-member commission is tasked with addressing "the growth of entitlement spending and the gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal Government."

While I and many of my fellow Members of Congress support efforts to balance the budget, it is critically important that this commission examine every part of the federal budget during this process. For example, the Commission should most certainly consider the $985 billion dollars spent on foreign wars since 2001. more »

Barbara Burt is the Executive Director of the Frances Perkins Center.

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The 18 commission members have been named to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Fait accompli. But that doesn't mean that those of us who feel inadequately represented can't point out the problems with the current cast. As a woman, I feel particularly invisible to this commission.

President Obama had the prerogative to name six commission members. Two of his appointees are women, Alice Rivlin and Ann Fudge. Republican Congressional leadership named six members, all male. Democratic Congressional leadership named six members, only one of whom is a woman--Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky--appointed by House Speaker Pelosi.

Does it matter? You bet it does. more »

Dean Baker is the chief economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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Do you have to be clueless about the economy to talk about fiscal responsibility? This is a question that people should be asking, given the list of prominent economists and economic analysts who are headlining the debate on deficit reduction. Should we be listening to lectures on the need for belt-tightening from the group of luminaries who could not see the $8 trillion housing bubble that wrecked the economy and put 15 million people out of work? Let's look at the record of the people being asked to lead the debate. more »

Kim Wright is the assistant director of communications for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

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We’re focusing our attention on some basic truths about Social Security. Most of these truths have been lost, ignored, or even lied about in an orchestrated campaign to persuade Americans that we must cut Social Security if we’re “serious” about returning fiscal sanity to Washington. more »

ourfuture.org — There's a strange affliction impairing several New York Times reporters, Deficit Reduction Blindness. The syndrome blocks your ability to see a government reduce a budget deficit without also seeing massive pain inflicted upon its people.

Reporters with DRB can easily spot deficit reduction when it involves shredding Social Security and slashing Medicare. In milder forms, they can sometimes see deficit reduction when it involves raising taxes, though not on multimillionaires or their heirs. But in all cases, DRB victims are unable to see the deficit reduced when people are actually helped at the same time.

Such as when the President and Congress enacted health reform, slashing the projected deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next two decades, perhaps the biggest deficit reduction act in history.

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