Chamber of Commerce Aims to Make Deficit Reduction a Top Goal

Including entitlement reform

The Chamber of Commerce on Thursday declared federal deficit reduction its top goal for 2013 and questioned whether Washington politicians were brave enough to take the steps necessary to rein in a fast-growing national debt.

"Do we have leaders with the courage to put the country first—ahead of their own careers, politics, ideologies and egos?" asked Thomas Donohue, president of the country's largest business group.

Donohue, in the chamber's 2013 "state of American business" address, said the upcoming budget fights in Congress should be addressed mainly by "controlling deficit spending through common sense entitlement reform."