Monday, November 15, 2010 at 10:00 AM EST
Deficit Commission: What’s Fair?
We look at deficit reduction plans, inequality and fairness in the United States. See the specific proposals that are on the table.
Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson says a big deficit reduction plan is now on the table for Americans to chew on. Former Clinton aide, Democrat Erskine Bowles, says the deficit’s a cancer we’ve got to cure.
They’re the chairmen of the panel that’s supposed to recommend how. Reaction to their first word is hot.
Inequality expert Jacob Hacker says it would make inequality markedly worse. He’s with us. So are voices of support and of conservative resistance to more taxes.
We look at what’s right, what’s fair, what will work in bringing down the great American deficit.
Erskine Bowles, left, accompanied by former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, co-chairmen of the bipartisan deficit commission, Nov. 10, 2010. (AP)
They’re the chairmen of the panel that’s supposed to recommend how. Reaction to their first word is hot.
Inequality expert Jacob Hacker says it would make inequality markedly worse. He’s with us. So are voices of support and of conservative resistance to more taxes.
We look at what’s right, what’s fair, what will work in bringing down the great American deficit.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:Lori Montgomery, financial reporter for the Washington Post.
Jacob Hacker, professor of political science at Yale University. Co-authors, with Paul Pierson, of “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.” You can read an excerpt here.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and director of the Fiscal Policy Program at the New America Foundation.
Ryan Ellis, director of tax policy at Americans for Tax Reform.
