Titanic Liars
by digby
Lookie what I got today:
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation is pleased to announce that its first national television ad will run on Sunday, February 22 as part of a $1 million-plus public education campaign aimed at raising awareness of America’s fiscal challenges.
The awareness campaign was first announced at a February 5 Capitol Hill press conference by Foundation President and CEO David M. Walker, the former U.S. Comptroller General from 1998-2008, who was joined by Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Reps. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) and Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.).
The TV ad will air during Sunday morning public affairs programming in advance of President Barack Obama’s Fiscal Responsibility Summit on Monday, February 23. Additionally, as part of the awareness campaign, the Foundation will continue to advertise in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Roll Call, and other publications. Both the print and TV ads can be downloaded at: http://www.pgpf.org/newsroom/MainFeature/feb20/.
The text of the TV ad is below:
SMALL ICEBERG LOOMS UP, GOES PAST.
Voiceover: “Everyone’s focused on the obstacles now facing our economy.”
MUCH BIGGER ICEBERG LOOMS UP. IT IS HUGE.
“But there’s a much larger threat: $56 trillion dollars in unfunded retirement and health care obligations, and the over-reliance on foreign lenders that endanger us all.”
Screen Shot: $56 TRILLION
Screen Shot: $483,000 PER U.S. HOUSEHOLD
STEERING AWAY FROM ICEBERG.
Screen Shot: BIPARTISAN COMMISSION
“An action-oriented bipartisan commission would begin to steer us in the right direction.”
FINAL SHOT OF CLEAR SEAS, BLUE SKY AHEAD, ICEBERGS NOW IN BACKGROUND.
“America must chart a more responsible fiscal course, to navigate a brighter future for our children and grandchildren.”
Now, I know that the American people aren't entirely fools. But that message is designed to confuse and obfuscate and convince people that our current problems have been caused by "unfunded" entitlements, running as it is right alongside Peterson's convenient (and recent) emphasis on foreign investment. (You'll notice that there's no mention of the trillion dollar ongoing expenditures in the Iraq debacle.)
These people are going to be spending a lot of money to push this agenda. Maybe it will fail. I hope so. But I don't think pretending that this isn't a threat is a very smart position, nor do I think it's wise to depend on the overwhelmed, month-old Obama administration to cleverly jiu-jitsu this without the left making it quite clear that they oppose it. If he doesn't intend to barter away pieces of the safety net, it's the left's job to back him up. If he does, it's our job to register our opposition. Either way, I think liberals should make noise about it. Peterson and his pals are very powerful and it doesn't make sense to let them go unanswered out of sheer faith that the Obama administration's somewhat confusing signals mean what we think they mean. Not to mention that the politics of this, and what they portend for the future, are potentially lethal.
At the very least, this fearmongering about "entitlements" is going to make universal health care much more difficult. Which is the point. Peterson has been leading a crusade for the past 30 years that's made it impossible to necessarily expand the safety net, to the point where we now have 50 million people uninsured and many tens of millions more ready to go over the cliff. This isn't just about social security. He wants to eliminate pensions for federal workers too. And medicare and medicaid. The man's mission is to eliminate all "entitlements." He's not going to be on board any workable plan to provide health care to all Americans. It's the antithesis of what he's trying to do. (And yet, for some reason, Democrats always seem to love him. Go figure.)
You can't just let him and his acolytes run around unanswered. They've been making things worse for average Americans for decades, largely because Democrats keep validating their premises.
Ian Welsh effectively rebuts the notion that the Orszag-Diamond plan to cut social security benefits is the liberal alternative. Breaking the generational compact has always been the necessary first step for the social security destroyers, and that's what the Orszag-Diamond plan does.
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