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Posted on December 20, 2012
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Public Affairs
Connections - No Easy Way Out: Citizens Talk About Tackling the Debt
While citizens across the United States agree that tackling the national debt requires tough measures, many question whether elected officials will take those measures even if there's broad public support for them, a report from the Charles F. Kettering Foundation finds. Based on public conversations promoted by the National Issues Forums network, No Easy Way Out: Citizens Talk About Tackling the Debt (36 pages, PDF), found that most participants saw shared sacrifice as the best approach to tackling the debt, so long as that sacrifice is distributed in a way that protects the most vulnerable members of society. At the same time, many respondents worried that allowing the economy to strengthen and stabilizing the debt were incompatible goals and that the nation might, in the short term, have to choose one over the other. The challenges for lawmakers and the media, the report adds, include balancing austerity with stimulus, possibly through "phase-in" solutions, and addressing the public's distrust of the political elite and their ability to come up with solutions to the nation's problems.
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