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"A negotiating process that started eighteen months ago with talk of trillions of dollars in deficit reduction ended in an agreement that will hardly reduce the deficit at all. From a historical perspective, indeed, the overall impact of the compromise is to bestow another big and costly tax cut on the American populace."
— John Cassidy on the fiscal-cliff deal as a tax cut for all: http://nyr.kr/YQZssI(Source: newyorker.com)
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"With Republicans in Congress still intent on pursuing a strategy similar to the failed one adopted by the Brits, this is a story that needs trumpeting. Austerity policies are self-defeating: they cripple growth and reduce tax revenues. The only way to bring down the U.S. government’s deficit in a sustainable manner, and put the nation’s finances on a firmer footing, is to keep the economy growing."
— John Cassidy on the U.K.’s official confirmation that austerity policies don’t work: http://nyr.kr/WMwJnY(Source: newyorker.com)
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Close Read on Veterans and the Deficit
“It’s Veterans Day, so let’s look at the cuts proposed in a draft report by the chairmen of the President’s deficit-reduction commission from veterans’ perspective. That is not the same, always, as looking at it from the Pentagon’s perspective, although it should be. First—and, again, these are draft proposals—there is a freeze on the base, non-combat pay of service members, at a time when demands on them are increasing, to save nine billion dollars. Next, the institution of co-pays at Veterans’ Administration hospitals, just as a new generation of young veterans, decades from eligibility for Medicare, are coming home to jobs that may not have insurance, with wounds and traumas that are not yet fully understood. One of the challenges with post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, is getting veterans to seek treatment at all. New walls to that are not helpful.”
Read the rest.
