The American Majority Rejects Austerity, Wants Jobs

Washington, DC – The Campaign for America’s Future is launching a campaign to urge the mainstream media to cover the views of the American Majority. Many respected economists, and most voters, want the government to address unemployment and a stagnating economy before turning to government deficits. The American Majority project is designed to remind pundits, editors and producers, as well as politicians, that polls consistently show most Americans reject cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The American Majority project is part of an effort to exhort the media to feature the views of economists, experts and advocates whose ideas are more in line with the American Majority.

The American Majority project includes a list of policy experts who have written that deficits are not the major threat to U.S. prosperity, and that getting revenue back into the budget is far less damaging than cutting spending and crippling needed programs for low income and elderly Americans.

Releasing a collection of polls that document the economic policy views of Americans, Campaign for America’s Future’s co-director Roger Hickey pointed out that strong majorities would be more inclined to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires and reduce military spending than to impose big cuts in spending, “But the views of the American Majority are rarely heard on TV talk shows or seen in the news articles and opinion pages of major newspapers. Hickey said, “In the dangerous showdown over the budget, those of us who share the views of the American Majority must demand to be heard. Out in the real world, the people who represent the American Majority are finding their voice – as Republican Members of Congress, including Rep Paul Ryan, discovered when they went home last month to defend the Ryan/GOP budget they all voted for.”

“You can also see the American Majority stirring powerfully in the populist rebellion against the attempt to cripple workers’ rights in Wisconsin, Indiana, Maine and around the country,” Hickey said.

The American Majority project is asking journalists to include a wider variety of policy experts in their stories. Campaign for America’s Future will be asking liberal activists to remind their Members of Congress of policy options that should be on the top of the solutions list: like raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires, which is wildly popular, according to polls, but is getting scant traction legislatively and little attention in the news.

View polling data here: http://www.ourfuture.org/report/2011051806/american-majority-project-pol... [1]
View list of experts here: http://www.ourfuture.org/plain-page/2011051806/american-majority-project... [2]

View a commentary from Campaign for America’s Future’s co-founder Roger Hickey on the American Majority project: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011051909/american-majority-rejects... [3]

View the letter to editors, reporters and producers here: http://www.ourfuture.org/news-release/2011051910/letter-reporters-editor... [4]