Demanding sacrifice from the innocent, letting the guilty off scot free
'The Obama budget also continues to demand more sacrifice from federal employees than from Wall Street. Federal employees did not cause the Great Recession. They did not cause the deficits that resulted from the Great Recession. Yet their pay and their retirement keeps getting cut. Why?
'Putting aside the injustice of demanding sacrifice from the innocent while letting the guilty off scot free, the Obama budget falls short of putting our economy on a path towards higher wages and full employment. As we have said many times, the greatest economic challenge facing America is the jobs crisis, not the deficit. Yet the administration cuts the part of the budget that pays for investments in worker training and jobs, which has already been cut to its lowest level since the Eisenhower administration, by another $100 billion. This austerity budget is bad economic policy at a moment when the economy remains weak and we urgently need more job-creating investments.'