This is an excerpt from Alternet.org. Click on link to read entire article.

The fetish of long-term deficit reduction is politically poisonous — and economically pointless. In reality, we need big budget deficits. We need them now — and down the road.

Shockingly, President Obama has announced his support for a commission whose purpose is to ramrod Social Security and Medicare cuts through Congress. Thinly disguised as a program for “deficit reduction,” the proposed commission will meet its first test today, when the Senate may vote to authorize it as part of a bill to raise the national debt ceiling. A large progressive coalition is already on record against it. But the progressives’ case is flawed; it’s not tough enough. Here’s why.

According to a press release issued by the Campaign for America’s Future on January 20, describing the progressive coalition:

Speakers stressed the need for a long-term deficit reduction strategy…. Joan Entmacher of National Women’s Law Center noted that responsible ways to cut the deficit were available now if austerity activists weren’t only interested in attacking Social Security and Medicare…. Hillary Shelton of the NAACP said the responsibility for debt reduction should remain with democratically elected representatives from each congressional district…

Now, when our civil rights leaders speak of deficits, no one supposes they do so from deep conviction. It’s a political move. They are intoning phrases calculated to lend a tone of respectability to a larger and more important cause. That cause — in this case protecting Social Security and Medicare from predators on Wall Street — is a good one. But good political purposes don’t guarantee good economics. And, let me argue, if the economics are based, as they are here, on a false premise, then you can’t make the politics work in your favor. …”