Unbalanced Deficit Reduction Deal Would Avoid Devastating Default, But Focus Should Be on Job Creation, Investment for the Future

Washington, D.C. — Wade Henderson and Nancy Zirkin of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 national civil and human rights organizations, issued the following statement regarding the deficit reduction deal:

“Sunday’s deficit reduction deal may avoid a devastating federal default this week, but the same result could easily have been achieved months ago if Congress had simply and sensibly voted to raise the debt ceiling to match the spending obligations that lawmakers themselves had already approved. The noxious budget plan approved by the House earlier this year would itself have required a very large increase in the debt ceiling had it become law. Yet the same House members who embraced that plan were principally responsible for what amounted to hostage negotiations with the White House to extract damaging spending cuts as the price for not destroying our economy. The recklessness of their approach in manufacturing and then exploiting this default crisis has been breathtaking.

This deal doesn’t change the fact that, with 25 million people out of work or underemployed, job creation remains the most important challenge facing our nation. It’s the one proven path to getting our economy back on track and generating sufficient revenues to both invest in our future and pay down our long-term debt. Instead of wasting precious time on this manufactured default crisis, our leaders could have – and should have – been focused on creating jobs, addressing the foreclosure crisis, and getting our economy moving again. The lack of additional assistance to long-term unemployed workers in the deal is a glaring omission that Congress should move expeditiously to address.

While The Leadership Conference is pleased that he deal includes cuts in our bloated defense budget and delays a second round of discretionary domestic spending cuts until 2013, we have grave concerns about whether the deal – and the trigger mechanism that could kick in later this year – will fully protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other vital programs that reduce poverty and provide a foundation for building a strong middle class.

We also have serious concerns that the Super Committee established under the agreement will produce indiscriminate spending cuts that will undermine our economy even more, especially for those who suffered the most in the recession – communities of color, low-income families, seniors and people with disabilities. The lack of shared sacrifice in this deal, which protects oil company profits and tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, means that there will not be the revenues to help those very same communities weather the moribund recovery and position themselves to share in our future prosperity.

While we share the interest of all Americans in ensuring long-term fiscal stability, deficit reduction should not be the only prism through which we make collective decisions about the future of our nation. The long-term health and well-being of our society depends on our ability to create opportunity so that every person has a good job, can educate their children, support their families, and retire with security. To do otherwise would be to tarnish our values and lose sight of our goals.”