President Obama, Meet the President of Brazil
President Barack Obama is complaining that Republicans want to cut federal spending too much--$61 billion for the rest of this fiscal year.
Meanwhile, the recently elected president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, is pushing to cut $30 billion in government spending. Considering the U.S. economy is about $14.6 trillion compared to Brazil’s $2 trillion, $30 billion for Brazil is a much bigger step--equal to about a $210 billion U.S. spending cut. And yet Rousseff presses on.
She even fought against a battle for a higher minimum wage increase--and won. The reason: Minimum wage increases translate into significantly higher government pension costs. And the government just can’t afford it.
And it’s not because Rousseff is a mean-spirited right-winger trying to undermine unions. She was a socialist in her youth; you might even say she was a left-wing community organizer.
Who would have thought that in tough financial times we’d have to encourage the U.S. president to look to the president of Brazil--a former socialist and guerrilla fighter--for the resolve and gumption it takes to cut federal spending?
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