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It's Simple: Cutting the Deficit Will Kill Jobs and Hurt Growth; Taxing the Rich Won't

We've got to stop obsessing about the deficit.

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Finally, the biggest driver of future deficits is overstated — rising health-care costs that underlie projections for Medicare and Medicaid spending. The rate of growth of health-care costs is slowing because of the Affordable Care Act and increasing pressures on health providers to hold down costs. Yet projections of future budget deficits haven’t yet factored in this slowdown.

So can we please stop obsessing about future budget deficits? They’re distracting our attention from what we should be obsessing about — jobs and growth.

Robert Reich is the nation's 22nd Secretary of Labor and a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
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