Issue Position: Debt

Issue Position

We reduce federal debt when we grow Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We can do two things, in particular, to reduce the federal debt. First, we can restore short and long-term benefits to the most marginalized and injured citizens in our society, the poor, who are being punished by austerity economics and austerity politics. Government should restore unemployment benefits to the most fragile part of our workforce -- the long-term unemployed (cut for nearly two million people now since December 28, 2013) and we should work across party and geographic lines in states and municipalities to restore food stamp benefits to millions of Americans struggling to feed their families in the richest nation in the world. Both of these parts of the social safety net actually increase investment in our economy because the money gets spent directly in the economy. Investing in Americans helps us all, and leads to economic recovery. Second, we can focus on job creation and workforce education, which includes higher education.

Speaker Boehner has been benignly neglectful of workers and their needs if not hostile toward them given how harsh this economy has been on them through no fault of their own. Blaming the poor and those out of work for not being able to get a job in this economy is the worst kind of cynicism.

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