QOTD: Ed Rendell
by digby
This is the man who has been living on TV for the last few weeks, especially MSNBC, speaking for the Democrats:
"If President Obama loses the election — and I'm not sure he will, I like to say he's a slight favorite — but if he loses he lost it because when the Simpson-Bowles Commission report [came out], he didn't do anything with it initially. … He didn't grab it by the horns and go with it,"
And in case you're wondering about his Pete Peterson Catfood Campaign, here's the latest:
More than 80 chief executive officers of U.S. companies, including Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp.and Loews Corp., are now supporting a campaign to reduce U.S. federal deficits through spending cuts and tax increases.
The Campaign to Fix the Debt announced its expanded list of CEO support today. Among the campaign’s leaders are Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of President Barack Obama’s 2010 fiscal commission.
“What we’re trying to do is drive support for the radical middle,” David Cote, CEO of Honeywell International Inc., said on a conference call with reporters.
Congress has been deadlocked over deficit reduction. Obama wants a plan that combines some changes to spending programs with higher taxes on top earners. Republicans want cuts to entitlement programs and oppose tax increases.
“They are likely to be relatively successful in setting the terms of the discussion,” said Michael Linden, director of tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington group typically aligned with Democrats. “No amount of CEO pressure or any pressure, frankly, from sort of outside groups is going to make a difference if Republican congressional members simply won’t agree to new revenue.”
Ah, but what if they will? After all, they have bigger fish to fry. Dday found bipartisan tweedle dee and tweedle dumb (Saxby Chambliss and Mark Warner) also begging CEOs to join the deficit party. He points to this post by Felix Salmon showing just what a self-serving little soirée it is:
This is ridiculous. There are lots of serious threats out there to the economic well-being and security of the United States, and the national debt is simply not one of them. Nor is it growing. The chart on the right, from Rex Nutting, shows what’s actually going on: total US debt to GDP
was rising alarmingly until the crisis, but it has been falling impressively since then. In fact, this is the first time in over half a century that US debt to GDP has been going down rather than up.
So when the CEOs talk about “our growing debt”, what they mean is just the debt owed by the Federal government. And when the Federal government borrows money, that doesn’t even come close to making up for the fact that the CEOs themselves are not borrowing money.
Money is cheaper now than it has been in living memory: the markets are telling corporate America that they are more than willing to fund investments at unbelievably low rates. And yet the CEOs are saying no. That’s a serious threat to the economic well-being of the United States: it’s companies are refusing to invest for the future, even when the markets are begging them to
Dday points out that they are just using this phony debt crisis to lower their own taxes.
Also too, that means they are willing to tank the economy once again. These are the people we are supposed to admire for their great business savvy. In fact, half the country thinks we should elect one of these bozos as president.
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This is ridiculous. There are lots of serious threats out there to the economic well-being and security of the United States, and the national debt is simply not one of them. Nor is it growing. The chart on the right, from Rex Nutting, shows what’s actually going on: total US debt to GDP