William Hartung & Michael Hudson: Wall Street & Pentagon Emerge Victorious on Debt Deal

DemocracyNow.org - After months of a bitterly partisan stalemate, the U.S. House of Representative has voted 269 to 161 in favor of raising the federal borrowing limit and avoiding a default on the national debt. The final count showed 174 Republican ayes, with Democrats split evenly — 95 on each side. The vote came just hours before a Department of Treasury deadline that potentially would have seen the United States run out of cash and default for the first time in its history. The bill is expected to be approved by the Senate and signed into law by President Obama today. The deal includes no new tax revenue from wealthy Americans, provides no additional stimulus for the lagging economy, and will cut more than $2.1 trillion in government spending over 10 years, while extending the borrowing authority of the Treasury Department.

The debt deal was a victory of sorts for the Pentagon. Rather than cutting $400 billion in defense spending through 2023, as President Barack Obama had proposed in April, it trims just $350 billion through 2024, effectively giving the Pentagon $50 billion more than it had been expecting over the next decade. Democracy Now! interviews William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, and Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

To read the complete transcript, download the podcast, and for more Democracy Now! reports on the debt deal, visit http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/2/...

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