Isn't it amazing what $41 million will buy?
Here's a riddle: Why aren't deficit hawks willing to talk about taxing Wall Street profiteers?
Let's see if we can figure this one out. First, Dean Baker writes:
The intensity with which the country's leading deficit hawks continue to ignore financial speculation taxes (FST) is getting ever more entertaining. While deficit hawks like Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson, Morgan Stanley Director Erskine Bowles and The Washington Post never tire of preaching the virtues of shared sacrifice, somehow sacrifice for Wall Street never features as a part of this story.
Baker suggests one reason why Wall Street is excluded from conversations about debt reduction:
In short, it is hard to understand why taxing financial speculation never appears on the agenda of the deficit hawks or gets mentioned in budget reporting, if the issue really is deficit reduction. On the other hand, if this is all about using an economic crisis to push a longstanding agenda to cut Social Security and Medicare, then everything suddenly makes sense.
So maybe the powers that be are less concerned with actually cutting the deficit than with cutting our social programs, and deficit cutting is a convenient cover. Or maybe it's even simpler than that. Via TPM:
Members of the deficit-reduction super committee have received a combined total of $41 million from the financial and real estate sectors during their time in Congress, according to a new report from Public Campaign and National People's Action.
Huh. So Wall Street has paid $41 million to the members of Congress tasked with cutting the deficit. And those members of Congress, and the lobbyists who love them, think Wall Street should be exempt from that "shared sacrifice" they love to talk about. But I'm sure one has nothing to do with the other. It must just be a coincidence.