AFL-CIO Blog: New Budget Blueprint

[LongTomH]

From the AFL-CIO blog: New Budget Blueprint a 'Voice of Reason,' Says Trumka.

A new budget “blueprint” that makes job creation and long-term investments the cornerstones for a sustainable federal budget is a “starting point for the debate over budgeting for broadly shared prosperity,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. The proposal is a voice of reason and sanity in a budget debate that has become increasingly unhinged from reality. It’s a surreal debate in which people who claim to be deficit hawks hypocritically clamor to bust the budget by showering the richest Americans with over $700 billion in wasteful tax cuts, while starving the economic growth essential to budget vitality.

he proposal, “Investing in America’s Economy: A Budget Blueprint for Economic Recovery and Fiscal Responsibility,” was developed by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), The Century Foundation and www.demos.org/. It was released today.

EPI research and policy director John Irons told a tele-press conference this afternoon that the plan puts “jobs and economic growth as the Number One priority” and provides:

substantial and sustained increased funding for job creation… solid footing for Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid in long term….Failing to invest adequately is not fiscally responsible.

The federal deficit commission is set to release its final report Wednesday. A preliminary report by the commission’s two co-chairs called for deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare and could cost the economy more than 4 million jobs. Click here and here for more.

The AFL-CIO and President Trumka have been following the 'progress' (regress?) of the Deficit Commission and asking its members to contact their congresspeople in opposition to the commission's expected recommendations.