So if you had a prime time cable news show and were looking for thoughtful insight into the current tax-cut debate being waged on Capitol Hill, who might you invite on your show? How about the guy with a show on your network with a focus on foreign policy?
And so goes CNN’s “Parker Spitzer.”
On the December 14 broadcast of Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker’s relatively young show, Fareed Zakaria appeared to elaborate on his December 13 Washington Post column in which he attacked government spending and tax cuts.
“The Chinese are the ones who should be celebrating Thanksgiving and we should be having a big Mardi Gras party,” Zakaria said. “But that’s what we pick up, a kind of a culture of overconsumption.”
Parker asked Zakaria if he had faith the American people could handle the fiscal discipline he advocated. Zakaria used the platform as an opportunity to attack Americans and refute the notion “the American people are wonderful.” His solution: Less consumption by the American people.
“No, I think the people are the big problem,” Zakaria said. “I mean, Americans — everybody wants to say the American people are so wonderful. You know, I think that when they come to recognize that they have to make sacrifices too that it’s not just wasteful — they need to have — they need to recognize that some of what’s going to happen here is fewer. They have to consume fewer things. They have to accept slightly higher taxes. And in the long run, you will have a much better economy.”
Watch: