Targeting the Middle Class

During the 1992 election campaign, at least one person agreed with Peter G. Peterson: Governor Bill Clinton. Candidate Clinton said that, as president, he would focus on America's economic problems. Reducing the federal budget deficit, he emphasized, was the key to America's future, both at home and abroad. If the present deficits continued there would be too little savings to finance the investments needed to increase American productivity; both our domestic prosperity and our external influence would decline.

That is the theme of the book. But what no presidential candidate could say, Peterson, a prominent investment banker, does: cutting middle-class entitlements