New Internationalism

As we reported last night, the Congressional Supercommittee has failed to reach an agreement on one point two trillion dollars in budget cuts. To understand the implications of this failure, and examine alternatives to the partisan impasse, KBOO’s Crystal leighty spoke with Sarah Anderson. Anderson co-authored the report ‘America isn’t Broke’, which lays out a plan for reform that would generate seven times the total savings that the supercommittee was supposed to identify.

Truthout posts the transcript of Amy Goodman's interview with Sarah Anderson on Democracy Now. IPS's "America Isn't Broke report, says Anderson, "reminds people that we’re a rich country, we’ve just been spending too much money on war and handing out tax breaks to rich people and corporations, and we identify a number of fiscal reforms that could, as you said, save—-create $824 billion in savings while making the country stronger by making us more equitable, by having a cleaner environment and making us safer."

The congresstional supercommittee fails to reach a deal on the debt. John Cavanagh, IPS Director, discusses what's next, moving beyond the debate.

John Cavanagh discusses the IPS report "America Isn't Broke" and the budget supercommittee failure on KPFK's "Sojourner Truth" show with Margaret Prescod. "Sojourner Truth" airs mornings on KPFK Los Angeles.

The bipartisan so-called "supercommittee" has failed to reach an agreement on reducing the federal deficit after three months of negotiations over taxes and spending. The full Congress will now have a little over a year to come up with an alternative. A trigger of $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over 10 years to military and domestic programs takes effect in 2013. “What people need to remember is that we are a rich country and that this crisis is actually an opportunity to harness our abundant resources in ways that will position us better for the future,” says Sarah Anderson, co-author of a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, “America Isn’t Broke: “How to Pay for the Crisis While Making the Country More Equitable, Green, and Secure.”

Anthony McCarthy, host of the Anthony McCarthy Show, joins Marc for a look at the failure of the debt supercommittee, with its members failing to to reach agreement on deficit savings.  We're also joined by Deneen Borelli, Project 21 Fellow, and Sarah Anderson, Director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, and co-author of the report America Is Not Broke.

Keynote speaker Phyllis Bennis, fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, noted, however, that the discourse is changing. Previously there was an assumption that Israel was the region’s only democracy, and the U.S.’s only friend there. That’s changed with the coming of the Arab Spring. And Israel’s policies are causing them to lose allies. No country in Europe now buys Israeli agricultural products. A 2010 Zogby poll found that 63 percent of Democrats support tearing down the settlements. It’s no longer political suicide to criticize Israeli policies. The question is, how to turn a shift in discourse into a change in U. S. policy?