On behalf of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, I cordially invite you to attend the 2010 Fiscal Summit: America’s Challenge and a Way Forward. This event will take place in Washington, DC on April 28, 2010, featuring a moderated discussion of the issues with President Bill Clinton. We will send a more detailed agenda shortly, but we hope that you will save the date and plan to join us for this important forum.
The purpose of this event is to further a national dialogue on solving America’s fiscal challenges through several moderated discussions with leaders on the issue from across the political spectrum. In addition to President Bill Clinton, who will be interviewed by George Stephanopoulos, we will hear from a range of experts, including Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, Former Chairmen of the Federal Reserve; Bob Rubin, Former Secretary of the Treasury; Alice Rivlin, former OMB Director and Member, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform; Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), Member, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform; John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress; John Castellani, President of Business Roundtable, and others.
The audience for this gathering will include prominent thought leaders, policymakers, business executives and academics. The national news media will also be invited. There is limited space for this event, so if you could provide us with an attendance response, as soon as possible, we’d be most grateful.
We will be sending you more information and details very soon, but wanted to urge you to put this event on your calendar now.
.This is such a travesty that it's hard to know where to begin.
For starters, note the prominent role of Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan. If any two Americans are responsible for the economic, financial and fiscal mess we're in, they are Rubin and Greenspan. Much of the rising deficit, after all, is the result of the financial collapse. The main reason for the big deficits is that tax revenues are down in a severe recession. The financial collapse also required the government to step in with increased public spending.
If the orgy of financial deregulation that led to the crash had two prime sponsors, the Democratic one was Rubin and the Republican one was Greenspan. Inviting these characters to a fiscal summit to devise a way out of the crisis is like inviting arsonists to design a seminar on fire prevention.
[...]This is billed as a "national dialogue on solving America's fiscal challenges," but spare me. This is a propaganda event. For the most part, the featured speakers follow the Peterson line. John Podesta, the closest thing to a liberal playing a headliner role, accepts that there is a serious deficit problem, but would entertain a value-added tax as part of the remedy. But the speakers' list is clearly stacked and there is no one to Podesta's left.
[...]
Obama himself has contributed to this trap by creating the presidential commission, a clear majority of whose members are deficit hawks. There are just four liberals out of the commission's 18 members. Its executive director is Bruce Reed of the Democratic Leadership Council, home of the Democratic Party's corporate faction. The Peterson summit comes a day after the official commission's opening meeting April 27...It's worth a look at the Peterson Foundation's website, which is one part fiscal fear-mongering and one part homilies about thrift so syrupy that they would make Polonius blush. If you want the counter-argument, have a look at fiscalhighroad.org, a partnership of the Economic Policy Institute, Century Foundation and Demos (where I am a part time senior fellow.) Another good resource is the Scholars' Strategy Network, founded last year by Harvard's Theda Skocpol.
Basically, the counter-story goes like this: Yes, we will have a national debt problem if we don't get a return to high growth soon. But the more immediate problem is restoration of prosperity--and in the near term that will require more public outlay, not less. Once a real recovery is on track, we need to increase progressive taxation, both to moderate deficits and to pay for sustained public spending on things the economy and society need, such as 21st century infrastructure, a green economy, good jobs, as well as a national health and pension system.
We need a national debate on this basic choice, with equal prominence for the folks who want to gut social spending and deliver austerity, and those who propose a high road to fiscal stability. But nearly all the resources and the largest megaphone are on one side of the debate. Peterson's April 28th event should be the occasion for counter-argument, and no small measure of ridicule for the proposition that anyone should take the likes of Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, or Pete Peterson seriously as fiscal prophets.