Group Decries Debt Commission Draft For Omitting Wall Street Tax

The organization Public Citizen says President Barack Obama’s fiscal commission must target Wall Street in its attempt to find ways to reduce the nation’s debt.

The group is upset with the commission’s co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson for failing to propose a tax on financial speculation in their 50-page report released earlier this week.

“The draft recommendations…were both disappointing and highly suspect when they blatantly omitted a speculation tax on Wall Street and the financial industry,” said Craig Mehall with Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division.

In the report, a draft which the co-chairmen must now get a large percentage of the commission to support, Simpson claimed to “have harpooned every whale in the ocean - and some minnows.”

However, that assessment is being met with skepticism by some who allege that the panel would prefer not to draw the ire of the financial sector.

“It is worth noting that one of the co-chairs, Erskine Bowles, is literally on Wall Street’s payroll. He earned $335,000 last year for his role as a member of Morgan Stanley’s (MS (one of the bailed out banks) board of directors. Morgan Stanley would likely see a large hit to its profits from a financial speculation tax,” wrote Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.