Lynn C. Woolsey: “Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke testified on Capitol Hill last week and warned us that deficit reduction ``should be…”

“Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke testified on Capitol Hill last week and warned us that deficit reduction ``should be a top priority'' and that current spending projections are unsustainable. In response, the gentleman from Wisconsin, who chairs the Budget Committee, said that we needed to get our fiscal house in order, otherwise, ``it's going to get ugly pretty fast.'' To him, I would say: It's already ugly. It's really ugly for 13 million Americans who woke up this morning without a job to go to. And it would get uglier still if we embraced his vision of a shredded safety net and a voucher program that ends Medicare as we know it. Here is what I find particularly distressing and disturbing: for my colleagues in the majority, every other sentence out of their mouths is about reducing Federal spending, and yet the programs they want to cut are the very ones that are keeping working families afloat. They never seem to aim their ax at the part of the budget that has shot through the roof the last 10 years and now eats up more than half of discretionary spending. I'm talking, of course, about the Pentagon budget. It doesn't make any sense that the military industrial complex has gotten a virtually blank check while important domestic programs--and also important civilian international programs that promote national security--look for change in the couch in order to survive. If we're in belt-tightening mode, then we should all be in belt- tightening mode.…”