PBS host Tavis Smiley, on the April 17 Meet the Press, cast efforts to curb spending as "rewarding the rich and punishing the poor." Smiley decried: "Budgets are moral documents....And I’m not so sure that this is not anything more than an immoral document where the poor are concerned....We avoided a shutdown of government, but we effectively locked out the American people, namely, the poor. And I don’t understand why it is in this town that every debate about money always begins and ends with how we can further reward the rich and more punish the poor.”