The Center for American Progress (CAP) is publicly calling on Congress to abandon job-killing cuts and "grand bargains"— which aren't so "grand" for America's working families —and focus on what the country really needs: jobs. 

Why do deficit reduction plans always "seem to involve cutting taxes for the top 1% of U.S. income earners while cutting Social Security retirement benefits  (average monthly check: $1,230 )  for everyone else?" asks Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik  in his latest column . 

House Republicans shed crocodile tears about the deficit in the same breath they cast votes for legislation like the Ryan budget plan, which asks the poor to pay for deficit reduction. The Ryan budget ends Medicare  as we know it, guts  low-income programs  and gives millionaires  another   tax cut they don’t need.

As much as the GOP claims they are the party willing to tackle the deficit (mainly by gutting federal programs), the House Republicans voted 33 times to increase the deficit. That’s right: 33.

Here’s mandatory reading material for lawmakers returning to Capitol Hill this week. A new United Nations study “savages ” U.S. and European economic policies that call for austerity measures and deficit cuts, which the report says is pushing the world economy toward disaster “in a misguided attempt to please global financial markets.” The report  called for:

wage increases, stricter regulation of financial markets, including a return to a system of managed exchange rates, and a conscious break with market-led thinking.