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"Hold for Peter G. Peterson."
Legendary financial journalist William Greider was unaccustomed to receiving a phone call and then being told to wait. But Pete Peterson was a billionaire, a former cabinet secretary under Richard Nixon, and a man accustomed to getting his way. Peterson spent decades financing efforts to reduce government spending, with a special interest in cutting Social Security and Medicare.
"Bill," boomed the voice from the other end of the line, "Pete Peterson here. You know, Bill, we have a lot in common."
"No, we don't," Greider said as he hung up.
Influence Man
That was not the response Peterson usually got from journalists or politicians, whom he carefully cultivated (and sometimes financed) in pursuit of his anti-government agenda. Greider was one of the few journalists who regularly documented and exposed Peterson's efforts. He was perhaps the only journalist to ever hang up on Pete Peterson. I shared an office with Greider, who gleefully told the story to his colleagues afterward.
They assume a "responsible" federal budget is one that limits deficit spending, even if it costs human lives and makes budgeting harder for real families sitting around real tables.
Peterson spent a reported half billion dollars trying to convince the public that government deficits were a greater crisis than, say, the country's epidemics of poverty and needless deaths. Peterson's associates and front organizations like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) presented a series of false choices to the public under the guise of making "tough choices," listing all the options under the guise of impartiality while carefully slanting their arguments in favor of less spending and against higher taxes.
In other words, they acted in the interests of billionaires like Peterson, and against those of virtually everyone else.
The underlying question was not even, Are you concerned about government deficits? Even under the most conservative economic models, the Peterson machine's presentations are inevitably biased. Nevertheless, reporters ate up the prepackaged story lines and 'facts,' while politicians ate up the campaign contributions.
For decades, the Peterson crowd reigned supreme in Washington policy circles. Then, in recent years, the "deficit hawk" mentality seemed to lose its clout. Under Donald Trump, Republicans engaged in a deficit spending spree on an unprecedented scale. Joe Biden came into office with a $3.5 trillion spending plan.
Now, the Peterson crowd has returned for your Social Security.
As if to celebrate their revival, Republicans are giving CRFB director Maya MacGuineas a prominent seat at the Senate Budget Committee's hearing this Thursday on expanding Social Security. (The official title of the hearing, under Committee chair Sen. Bernie Sanders, is "Saving Social Security: Expanding Benefits and Demanding the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share or Cutting Benefits and Increasing Retirement Anxiety.")
It's time to talk about the Peterson crowd's ideology.
Table Talk
A favored rhetorical gambit among Peterson's friends and allies is the "federal government as home" metaphor. The Clinton Administration used it in its 1996 "Citizens Guide to the Federal Budget":
"In a typical American household, a father and mother might sit around the kitchen table to review the family budget. They might discuss how much they earn each year and, in turn, how much they can spend on food, shelter, clothing, and perhaps a vacation ...They might discuss whether to spend less, such as by cutting back on restaurants, movies, or other entertainment. Or they might borrow. In a sense, the Federal Government plans its budget much the same way."
The Obama Administration adopted the theme in 2011 when budget director Jacob Lew told reporters: "We're doing what every family does when it sits around its kitchen table. We're making the choice about what do we need for the future."
This rhetorical tone--familiar, informal, condescending--is a mainstay of Peterson-ism. Robert Bixby, then the Executive Director of the Peterson-funded Concord Coalition, is glowingly described this way in the anti-deficit book (also a film) I.O.U.S.A:
"In an effort to explain the budget in an easily understandable way, Bixby uses metaphors that resonate with the average American. First, he likens a budget to going on a diet ... Next, he likens the budget committee to a family meeting ... like Mom and Dad sitting at the kitchen table at the beginning of the year, figuring out what the family can afford."
Economists differ about the role government deficits play in the larger economy, but no serious economist would argue that the budget of a sovereign nation--with its own currency and the ability to levy taxes--is comparable to that of a family. (And few families would balance their budgets by denying food or sustenance to older family members.)
3,000 Tweets from a Hawk
The CRFB's veneer of neutrality is perhaps the thinnest when it comes to taxing the rich. Their websites are always careful to mention taxation as an option. But I analyzed 3,201 tweets from the group during the Build Back Better debates of last year and found no mention of a wealth tax or taxes on high-income earners--even though billionaires had amassed more than $1.8 trillion in new wealth since the pandemic began.
The CRFB did resist Democratic proposals to raise the cap on so-called SALT (state and local tax) deductions. That would disproportionately benefit higher-income earners, as the group claims, but would only negligibly help the extremely wealthy. It also gave lip service to changes in capital gains taxation and has noted that other tax changes, like increasing the top marginal tax rate, would reduce the deficit. But it hasn't pushed very hard for them.
Beyond SALT, a search for the word "billionaires" only revealed one fawning tweet to Elon Musk. Musk, who had already gained in $150 billion in pandemic wealth by that time, and reportedly paid no taxes in 2018, tweeted in October 2021 that
"US national debt is ~$28,900 billion or ~$229k per taxpayer. Even taxing all 'billionaires' at 100% would only make a small dent in that number, so obviously the rest must come from the general public. This is basic math."
In addition to betraying a lack of economic understanding (and enclosing the word 'billionaires' in quotes for no discernable reason), Musk concluded that "spending is the real problem." The CRFB, is usually careful to sound neutral about spending vs. revenue, took the bait, tweeting:
"Hey @ElonMusk you're right. Fixing our debt will require tough tradeoffs and can't be done with taxes on billionaires alone. We'd love to work with you to help policymakers understand."
Playing with Your Security
The Peterson network has a long history of oddball (that is to say, lame) PR campaigns. These include bus tours, shadow organizations, made-up games, and interactive websites, using names like "Budgetball" and "The Can Kicks Back." Today, visitors to the CRFB website can "play" (their words) "Boomers vs. Zoomers," which pits generations against one another for federal resources and asks, "How would you allocate the federal budget between generations?" CRFB is closely allied with retired senator Alan Simpson, who called seniors "greedy geezers," and its "game" quickly makes its feelings known. "Seniors are doing pretty well," it claims.
(The National Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found that "even if households work to age 65 and annuitize all their financial assets, including the receipts from reverse mortgages on their homes, roughly half of households are at risk" of a serious decline in living standards.)
"Allocat(ing) the federal budget between generations" is something of a "Sophie's Choice" question, since both groups are facing deep economic and health challenges. It's also a good example of the group's rhetorical gamesmanship, which often poses false choices while eliding the real issues: Why should we have to choose between generations at all? Why should we make seniors responsible for child poverty that's caused by economic inequality, the decline of the middle class, and other forces that don't involve seniors?
Similarly, the group's interactive "Debt Fixer" lets "you" choose from pre-selected options to achieve the stated goals of stabilizing federal debt at 90 percent of the economy by 2031. "$5,520 billion to go," it tells you as you begin.
Another interactive test allows users to find their "budget personality." It concluded I was a "Big Spender," adding somewhat censoriously that "future generations will need to figure out how to handle the high debt left to them."
The website also offers "The Reformer: An Interactive Tool to Fix Social Security," warning users that "Social Security remains insolvent. The trust fund will run out in 2034 at which point all beneficiaries will face a sudden 22% benefit cut." They surely know that this is not true, because Congress would never make that political mistake. (By their logic, the US military will be insolvent and bankrupt in 2023 because Congress has not yet allocated funding for it.)
Oddly, while the group's blog has explained that Rep. John Larson's Social Security 2100 Act would boost benefits and bring the trust funds into long-term balance, the "Reformer" doesn't even give users the opportunity to choose it.
Social Security
The Budget Committee hearing will look at the feasibility and wisdom of expanding Social Security. How will the CRFB testify on this question? Its "games" (described above) should give you some idea.
The CRFB website misleadingly states that "for every $6 spent per senior, only $1 is spent per child." This ignores the direct payments seniors have made to fund their Social Security benefits/ It also artfully elides the fact that most childhood education is funded at the local level, not by the federal government.
"Most retirees get far more out of Social Security and Medicare than they pay into them during their working years," it claims, without mentioning that this also typically happens when money is invested.
"Seniors have the lowest poverty level of any generation," it adds, without pointing out that Social Security lifts 30-40 percent of seniors out of poverty. Or is their argument that we don't have enough poverty in this country?
The CRFB gave its full-throated support in 2019 to Sen. Mitt Romney's TRUST Act, which would create "bipartisan committees" designed to complete the work earlier committees and commissions failed to do: cut Medicare and Social Security benefits. MacGuineas deployed the group's usual rhetoric when Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Sen. Shelly Capito reintroduced Romney's TRUST Act in 2021.
"Senator Manchin and the other lead lawmakers deserve immense credit," MacGuineas said, adding: "The TRUST Act is a sensible, bipartisan and balanced approach that would bring together lawmakers to develop fixes ... "
Regressive Revenue
The CRFB has noted the negative impact of tax cuts on the federal debt, with blog posts like this one from 2010, and spoke out publicly against Trump's 2017 tax cuts (although it knew there was no way they weren't going to pass). But it has not endorsed what may be the largest revenue-generating suggestion of recent years, Sen. Bernie Sanders' proposed wealth tax.
The CRFB's 2021 campaign to offset the cost of the Democrats' proposed Medicare expansion--which would cover vision, hearing, and dental care--left the ultra-wealthy all but intact, offering instead a regressive premium tax on Medicare enrollees (during a pandemic that has hit seniors especially hard). CRFB policy head Marc Goldwein tweeted that he thought Medicare expansion was a "bad use of $$, if you ask me," but added:
"But if we going to expand Medicare anyway, let's at least not waste money in the process! Medicare Part B and D have premiums to cover ~1/4 of their costs -- why not this new benefit? Adding a premium would cut costs by ~$18 billion."
$18 billion is less than one-eighth of the wealth CRFB's would-be friend Elon Musk had already gained during the pandemic.
The group did express support for the drug price negotiation provisions in Build Back Better, even suggesting an increase in the number of drugs under negotiation. But it also celebrated politicians like House Dems Scott Peters and Kathleen Rice as "Fiscal Heroes." Peters and Rice subsequently voted against drug pricing reductions, a move which failed to draw even a mild rebuke from the CRFB. (Adding to the double-talk around this issue, Rice claimed she voted against this cost-saving measure in the name of "fiscal responsibility.")
Stealth Lobbyists
The Peterson network has always been closely aligned with corporate lobbyists. As the New York Times reported of "the Campaign to Fix the Debt" in 2013,
"... many of the campaign's members will be juggling their private interests with their public goals: they are also lobbyists, board members or executives for corporations that have worked aggressively to shape the contours of federal spending and taxes, including many of the tax breaks that would be at the heart of any broad overhaul."
This group, ostensibly an impromptu alliance of concerned corporate CEOs, also attempts to project an air of neutrality. When Sen. Chuck Schumer said in 2012 that the "Fix the Debt" CEOs supported a lower tax rate for the wealthy, the group's head promptly issued a statement: "The Campaign to Fix the Debt does not have a position on raising tax rates."A statement issued by the group, however, specifically called for "comprehensive and pro-growth tax reform, which broadens the base, lowers rates, raises revenues, and reduces the deficit." (Emphasis ours.)
Oh, and the head of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, the one who incorrectly claimed that the group does not have a position on raising tax rates? That was Maya MacGuineas.
From Our Table to Yours
The CRFB has positioned itself as an unbiased arbiter while keeping its thumb firmly on the scale. But its bias is revealed in that word: responsible. They assume a "responsible" federal budget is one that limits deficit spending, even if it costs human lives and makes budgeting harder for real families sitting around real tables. If the Budget Committee listens to them, it could mean disaster for millions of Social Security recipients.
The Peterson crowd should not be entrusted with Social Security--not in Thursday's hearing, and not ever.
Political revenge. Mass deportations. Project 2025. Unfathomable corruption. Attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Pardons for insurrectionists. An all-out assault on democracy. Republicans in Congress are scrambling to give Trump broad new powers to strip the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit he doesn’t like by declaring it a “terrorist-supporting organization.” Trump has already begun filing lawsuits against news outlets that criticize him. At Common Dreams, we won’t back down, but we must get ready for whatever Trump and his thugs throw at us. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. By donating today, please help us fight the dangers of a second Trump presidency. |
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a journalist who has written for a number of major publications. His weekly program, The Zero Hour, can be found on cable television, radio, Spotify, and podcast media.
"Hold for Peter G. Peterson."
Legendary financial journalist William Greider was unaccustomed to receiving a phone call and then being told to wait. But Pete Peterson was a billionaire, a former cabinet secretary under Richard Nixon, and a man accustomed to getting his way. Peterson spent decades financing efforts to reduce government spending, with a special interest in cutting Social Security and Medicare.
"Bill," boomed the voice from the other end of the line, "Pete Peterson here. You know, Bill, we have a lot in common."
"No, we don't," Greider said as he hung up.
Influence Man
That was not the response Peterson usually got from journalists or politicians, whom he carefully cultivated (and sometimes financed) in pursuit of his anti-government agenda. Greider was one of the few journalists who regularly documented and exposed Peterson's efforts. He was perhaps the only journalist to ever hang up on Pete Peterson. I shared an office with Greider, who gleefully told the story to his colleagues afterward.
They assume a "responsible" federal budget is one that limits deficit spending, even if it costs human lives and makes budgeting harder for real families sitting around real tables.
Peterson spent a reported half billion dollars trying to convince the public that government deficits were a greater crisis than, say, the country's epidemics of poverty and needless deaths. Peterson's associates and front organizations like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) presented a series of false choices to the public under the guise of making "tough choices," listing all the options under the guise of impartiality while carefully slanting their arguments in favor of less spending and against higher taxes.
In other words, they acted in the interests of billionaires like Peterson, and against those of virtually everyone else.
The underlying question was not even, Are you concerned about government deficits? Even under the most conservative economic models, the Peterson machine's presentations are inevitably biased. Nevertheless, reporters ate up the prepackaged story lines and 'facts,' while politicians ate up the campaign contributions.
For decades, the Peterson crowd reigned supreme in Washington policy circles. Then, in recent years, the "deficit hawk" mentality seemed to lose its clout. Under Donald Trump, Republicans engaged in a deficit spending spree on an unprecedented scale. Joe Biden came into office with a $3.5 trillion spending plan.
Now, the Peterson crowd has returned for your Social Security.
As if to celebrate their revival, Republicans are giving CRFB director Maya MacGuineas a prominent seat at the Senate Budget Committee's hearing this Thursday on expanding Social Security. (The official title of the hearing, under Committee chair Sen. Bernie Sanders, is "Saving Social Security: Expanding Benefits and Demanding the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share or Cutting Benefits and Increasing Retirement Anxiety.")
It's time to talk about the Peterson crowd's ideology.
Table Talk
A favored rhetorical gambit among Peterson's friends and allies is the "federal government as home" metaphor. The Clinton Administration used it in its 1996 "Citizens Guide to the Federal Budget":
"In a typical American household, a father and mother might sit around the kitchen table to review the family budget. They might discuss how much they earn each year and, in turn, how much they can spend on food, shelter, clothing, and perhaps a vacation ...They might discuss whether to spend less, such as by cutting back on restaurants, movies, or other entertainment. Or they might borrow. In a sense, the Federal Government plans its budget much the same way."
The Obama Administration adopted the theme in 2011 when budget director Jacob Lew told reporters: "We're doing what every family does when it sits around its kitchen table. We're making the choice about what do we need for the future."
This rhetorical tone--familiar, informal, condescending--is a mainstay of Peterson-ism. Robert Bixby, then the Executive Director of the Peterson-funded Concord Coalition, is glowingly described this way in the anti-deficit book (also a film) I.O.U.S.A:
"In an effort to explain the budget in an easily understandable way, Bixby uses metaphors that resonate with the average American. First, he likens a budget to going on a diet ... Next, he likens the budget committee to a family meeting ... like Mom and Dad sitting at the kitchen table at the beginning of the year, figuring out what the family can afford."
Economists differ about the role government deficits play in the larger economy, but no serious economist would argue that the budget of a sovereign nation--with its own currency and the ability to levy taxes--is comparable to that of a family. (And few families would balance their budgets by denying food or sustenance to older family members.)
3,000 Tweets from a Hawk
The CRFB's veneer of neutrality is perhaps the thinnest when it comes to taxing the rich. Their websites are always careful to mention taxation as an option. But I analyzed 3,201 tweets from the group during the Build Back Better debates of last year and found no mention of a wealth tax or taxes on high-income earners--even though billionaires had amassed more than $1.8 trillion in new wealth since the pandemic began.
The CRFB did resist Democratic proposals to raise the cap on so-called SALT (state and local tax) deductions. That would disproportionately benefit higher-income earners, as the group claims, but would only negligibly help the extremely wealthy. It also gave lip service to changes in capital gains taxation and has noted that other tax changes, like increasing the top marginal tax rate, would reduce the deficit. But it hasn't pushed very hard for them.
Beyond SALT, a search for the word "billionaires" only revealed one fawning tweet to Elon Musk. Musk, who had already gained in $150 billion in pandemic wealth by that time, and reportedly paid no taxes in 2018, tweeted in October 2021 that
"US national debt is ~$28,900 billion or ~$229k per taxpayer. Even taxing all 'billionaires' at 100% would only make a small dent in that number, so obviously the rest must come from the general public. This is basic math."
In addition to betraying a lack of economic understanding (and enclosing the word 'billionaires' in quotes for no discernable reason), Musk concluded that "spending is the real problem." The CRFB, is usually careful to sound neutral about spending vs. revenue, took the bait, tweeting:
"Hey @ElonMusk you're right. Fixing our debt will require tough tradeoffs and can't be done with taxes on billionaires alone. We'd love to work with you to help policymakers understand."
Playing with Your Security
The Peterson network has a long history of oddball (that is to say, lame) PR campaigns. These include bus tours, shadow organizations, made-up games, and interactive websites, using names like "Budgetball" and "The Can Kicks Back." Today, visitors to the CRFB website can "play" (their words) "Boomers vs. Zoomers," which pits generations against one another for federal resources and asks, "How would you allocate the federal budget between generations?" CRFB is closely allied with retired senator Alan Simpson, who called seniors "greedy geezers," and its "game" quickly makes its feelings known. "Seniors are doing pretty well," it claims.
(The National Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found that "even if households work to age 65 and annuitize all their financial assets, including the receipts from reverse mortgages on their homes, roughly half of households are at risk" of a serious decline in living standards.)
"Allocat(ing) the federal budget between generations" is something of a "Sophie's Choice" question, since both groups are facing deep economic and health challenges. It's also a good example of the group's rhetorical gamesmanship, which often poses false choices while eliding the real issues: Why should we have to choose between generations at all? Why should we make seniors responsible for child poverty that's caused by economic inequality, the decline of the middle class, and other forces that don't involve seniors?
Similarly, the group's interactive "Debt Fixer" lets "you" choose from pre-selected options to achieve the stated goals of stabilizing federal debt at 90 percent of the economy by 2031. "$5,520 billion to go," it tells you as you begin.
Another interactive test allows users to find their "budget personality." It concluded I was a "Big Spender," adding somewhat censoriously that "future generations will need to figure out how to handle the high debt left to them."
The website also offers "The Reformer: An Interactive Tool to Fix Social Security," warning users that "Social Security remains insolvent. The trust fund will run out in 2034 at which point all beneficiaries will face a sudden 22% benefit cut." They surely know that this is not true, because Congress would never make that political mistake. (By their logic, the US military will be insolvent and bankrupt in 2023 because Congress has not yet allocated funding for it.)
Oddly, while the group's blog has explained that Rep. John Larson's Social Security 2100 Act would boost benefits and bring the trust funds into long-term balance, the "Reformer" doesn't even give users the opportunity to choose it.
Social Security
The Budget Committee hearing will look at the feasibility and wisdom of expanding Social Security. How will the CRFB testify on this question? Its "games" (described above) should give you some idea.
The CRFB website misleadingly states that "for every $6 spent per senior, only $1 is spent per child." This ignores the direct payments seniors have made to fund their Social Security benefits/ It also artfully elides the fact that most childhood education is funded at the local level, not by the federal government.
"Most retirees get far more out of Social Security and Medicare than they pay into them during their working years," it claims, without mentioning that this also typically happens when money is invested.
"Seniors have the lowest poverty level of any generation," it adds, without pointing out that Social Security lifts 30-40 percent of seniors out of poverty. Or is their argument that we don't have enough poverty in this country?
The CRFB gave its full-throated support in 2019 to Sen. Mitt Romney's TRUST Act, which would create "bipartisan committees" designed to complete the work earlier committees and commissions failed to do: cut Medicare and Social Security benefits. MacGuineas deployed the group's usual rhetoric when Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Sen. Shelly Capito reintroduced Romney's TRUST Act in 2021.
"Senator Manchin and the other lead lawmakers deserve immense credit," MacGuineas said, adding: "The TRUST Act is a sensible, bipartisan and balanced approach that would bring together lawmakers to develop fixes ... "
Regressive Revenue
The CRFB has noted the negative impact of tax cuts on the federal debt, with blog posts like this one from 2010, and spoke out publicly against Trump's 2017 tax cuts (although it knew there was no way they weren't going to pass). But it has not endorsed what may be the largest revenue-generating suggestion of recent years, Sen. Bernie Sanders' proposed wealth tax.
The CRFB's 2021 campaign to offset the cost of the Democrats' proposed Medicare expansion--which would cover vision, hearing, and dental care--left the ultra-wealthy all but intact, offering instead a regressive premium tax on Medicare enrollees (during a pandemic that has hit seniors especially hard). CRFB policy head Marc Goldwein tweeted that he thought Medicare expansion was a "bad use of $$, if you ask me," but added:
"But if we going to expand Medicare anyway, let's at least not waste money in the process! Medicare Part B and D have premiums to cover ~1/4 of their costs -- why not this new benefit? Adding a premium would cut costs by ~$18 billion."
$18 billion is less than one-eighth of the wealth CRFB's would-be friend Elon Musk had already gained during the pandemic.
The group did express support for the drug price negotiation provisions in Build Back Better, even suggesting an increase in the number of drugs under negotiation. But it also celebrated politicians like House Dems Scott Peters and Kathleen Rice as "Fiscal Heroes." Peters and Rice subsequently voted against drug pricing reductions, a move which failed to draw even a mild rebuke from the CRFB. (Adding to the double-talk around this issue, Rice claimed she voted against this cost-saving measure in the name of "fiscal responsibility.")
Stealth Lobbyists
The Peterson network has always been closely aligned with corporate lobbyists. As the New York Times reported of "the Campaign to Fix the Debt" in 2013,
"... many of the campaign's members will be juggling their private interests with their public goals: they are also lobbyists, board members or executives for corporations that have worked aggressively to shape the contours of federal spending and taxes, including many of the tax breaks that would be at the heart of any broad overhaul."
This group, ostensibly an impromptu alliance of concerned corporate CEOs, also attempts to project an air of neutrality. When Sen. Chuck Schumer said in 2012 that the "Fix the Debt" CEOs supported a lower tax rate for the wealthy, the group's head promptly issued a statement: "The Campaign to Fix the Debt does not have a position on raising tax rates."A statement issued by the group, however, specifically called for "comprehensive and pro-growth tax reform, which broadens the base, lowers rates, raises revenues, and reduces the deficit." (Emphasis ours.)
Oh, and the head of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, the one who incorrectly claimed that the group does not have a position on raising tax rates? That was Maya MacGuineas.
From Our Table to Yours
The CRFB has positioned itself as an unbiased arbiter while keeping its thumb firmly on the scale. But its bias is revealed in that word: responsible. They assume a "responsible" federal budget is one that limits deficit spending, even if it costs human lives and makes budgeting harder for real families sitting around real tables. If the Budget Committee listens to them, it could mean disaster for millions of Social Security recipients.
The Peterson crowd should not be entrusted with Social Security--not in Thursday's hearing, and not ever.
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a journalist who has written for a number of major publications. His weekly program, The Zero Hour, can be found on cable television, radio, Spotify, and podcast media.
"Hold for Peter G. Peterson."
Legendary financial journalist William Greider was unaccustomed to receiving a phone call and then being told to wait. But Pete Peterson was a billionaire, a former cabinet secretary under Richard Nixon, and a man accustomed to getting his way. Peterson spent decades financing efforts to reduce government spending, with a special interest in cutting Social Security and Medicare.
"Bill," boomed the voice from the other end of the line, "Pete Peterson here. You know, Bill, we have a lot in common."
"No, we don't," Greider said as he hung up.
Influence Man
That was not the response Peterson usually got from journalists or politicians, whom he carefully cultivated (and sometimes financed) in pursuit of his anti-government agenda. Greider was one of the few journalists who regularly documented and exposed Peterson's efforts. He was perhaps the only journalist to ever hang up on Pete Peterson. I shared an office with Greider, who gleefully told the story to his colleagues afterward.
They assume a "responsible" federal budget is one that limits deficit spending, even if it costs human lives and makes budgeting harder for real families sitting around real tables.
Peterson spent a reported half billion dollars trying to convince the public that government deficits were a greater crisis than, say, the country's epidemics of poverty and needless deaths. Peterson's associates and front organizations like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) presented a series of false choices to the public under the guise of making "tough choices," listing all the options under the guise of impartiality while carefully slanting their arguments in favor of less spending and against higher taxes.
In other words, they acted in the interests of billionaires like Peterson, and against those of virtually everyone else.
The underlying question was not even, Are you concerned about government deficits? Even under the most conservative economic models, the Peterson machine's presentations are inevitably biased. Nevertheless, reporters ate up the prepackaged story lines and 'facts,' while politicians ate up the campaign contributions.
For decades, the Peterson crowd reigned supreme in Washington policy circles. Then, in recent years, the "deficit hawk" mentality seemed to lose its clout. Under Donald Trump, Republicans engaged in a deficit spending spree on an unprecedented scale. Joe Biden came into office with a $3.5 trillion spending plan.
Now, the Peterson crowd has returned for your Social Security.
As if to celebrate their revival, Republicans are giving CRFB director Maya MacGuineas a prominent seat at the Senate Budget Committee's hearing this Thursday on expanding Social Security. (The official title of the hearing, under Committee chair Sen. Bernie Sanders, is "Saving Social Security: Expanding Benefits and Demanding the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share or Cutting Benefits and Increasing Retirement Anxiety.")
It's time to talk about the Peterson crowd's ideology.
Table Talk
A favored rhetorical gambit among Peterson's friends and allies is the "federal government as home" metaphor. The Clinton Administration used it in its 1996 "Citizens Guide to the Federal Budget":
"In a typical American household, a father and mother might sit around the kitchen table to review the family budget. They might discuss how much they earn each year and, in turn, how much they can spend on food, shelter, clothing, and perhaps a vacation ...They might discuss whether to spend less, such as by cutting back on restaurants, movies, or other entertainment. Or they might borrow. In a sense, the Federal Government plans its budget much the same way."
The Obama Administration adopted the theme in 2011 when budget director Jacob Lew told reporters: "We're doing what every family does when it sits around its kitchen table. We're making the choice about what do we need for the future."
This rhetorical tone--familiar, informal, condescending--is a mainstay of Peterson-ism. Robert Bixby, then the Executive Director of the Peterson-funded Concord Coalition, is glowingly described this way in the anti-deficit book (also a film) I.O.U.S.A:
"In an effort to explain the budget in an easily understandable way, Bixby uses metaphors that resonate with the average American. First, he likens a budget to going on a diet ... Next, he likens the budget committee to a family meeting ... like Mom and Dad sitting at the kitchen table at the beginning of the year, figuring out what the family can afford."
Economists differ about the role government deficits play in the larger economy, but no serious economist would argue that the budget of a sovereign nation--with its own currency and the ability to levy taxes--is comparable to that of a family. (And few families would balance their budgets by denying food or sustenance to older family members.)
3,000 Tweets from a Hawk
The CRFB's veneer of neutrality is perhaps the thinnest when it comes to taxing the rich. Their websites are always careful to mention taxation as an option. But I analyzed 3,201 tweets from the group during the Build Back Better debates of last year and found no mention of a wealth tax or taxes on high-income earners--even though billionaires had amassed more than $1.8 trillion in new wealth since the pandemic began.
The CRFB did resist Democratic proposals to raise the cap on so-called SALT (state and local tax) deductions. That would disproportionately benefit higher-income earners, as the group claims, but would only negligibly help the extremely wealthy. It also gave lip service to changes in capital gains taxation and has noted that other tax changes, like increasing the top marginal tax rate, would reduce the deficit. But it hasn't pushed very hard for them.
Beyond SALT, a search for the word "billionaires" only revealed one fawning tweet to Elon Musk. Musk, who had already gained in $150 billion in pandemic wealth by that time, and reportedly paid no taxes in 2018, tweeted in October 2021 that
"US national debt is ~$28,900 billion or ~$229k per taxpayer. Even taxing all 'billionaires' at 100% would only make a small dent in that number, so obviously the rest must come from the general public. This is basic math."
In addition to betraying a lack of economic understanding (and enclosing the word 'billionaires' in quotes for no discernable reason), Musk concluded that "spending is the real problem." The CRFB, is usually careful to sound neutral about spending vs. revenue, took the bait, tweeting:
"Hey @ElonMusk you're right. Fixing our debt will require tough tradeoffs and can't be done with taxes on billionaires alone. We'd love to work with you to help policymakers understand."
Playing with Your Security
The Peterson network has a long history of oddball (that is to say, lame) PR campaigns. These include bus tours, shadow organizations, made-up games, and interactive websites, using names like "Budgetball" and "The Can Kicks Back." Today, visitors to the CRFB website can "play" (their words) "Boomers vs. Zoomers," which pits generations against one another for federal resources and asks, "How would you allocate the federal budget between generations?" CRFB is closely allied with retired senator Alan Simpson, who called seniors "greedy geezers," and its "game" quickly makes its feelings known. "Seniors are doing pretty well," it claims.
(The National Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found that "even if households work to age 65 and annuitize all their financial assets, including the receipts from reverse mortgages on their homes, roughly half of households are at risk" of a serious decline in living standards.)
"Allocat(ing) the federal budget between generations" is something of a "Sophie's Choice" question, since both groups are facing deep economic and health challenges. It's also a good example of the group's rhetorical gamesmanship, which often poses false choices while eliding the real issues: Why should we have to choose between generations at all? Why should we make seniors responsible for child poverty that's caused by economic inequality, the decline of the middle class, and other forces that don't involve seniors?
Similarly, the group's interactive "Debt Fixer" lets "you" choose from pre-selected options to achieve the stated goals of stabilizing federal debt at 90 percent of the economy by 2031. "$5,520 billion to go," it tells you as you begin.
Another interactive test allows users to find their "budget personality." It concluded I was a "Big Spender," adding somewhat censoriously that "future generations will need to figure out how to handle the high debt left to them."
The website also offers "The Reformer: An Interactive Tool to Fix Social Security," warning users that "Social Security remains insolvent. The trust fund will run out in 2034 at which point all beneficiaries will face a sudden 22% benefit cut." They surely know that this is not true, because Congress would never make that political mistake. (By their logic, the US military will be insolvent and bankrupt in 2023 because Congress has not yet allocated funding for it.)
Oddly, while the group's blog has explained that Rep. John Larson's Social Security 2100 Act would boost benefits and bring the trust funds into long-term balance, the "Reformer" doesn't even give users the opportunity to choose it.
Social Security
The Budget Committee hearing will look at the feasibility and wisdom of expanding Social Security. How will the CRFB testify on this question? Its "games" (described above) should give you some idea.
The CRFB website misleadingly states that "for every $6 spent per senior, only $1 is spent per child." This ignores the direct payments seniors have made to fund their Social Security benefits/ It also artfully elides the fact that most childhood education is funded at the local level, not by the federal government.
"Most retirees get far more out of Social Security and Medicare than they pay into them during their working years," it claims, without mentioning that this also typically happens when money is invested.
"Seniors have the lowest poverty level of any generation," it adds, without pointing out that Social Security lifts 30-40 percent of seniors out of poverty. Or is their argument that we don't have enough poverty in this country?
The CRFB gave its full-throated support in 2019 to Sen. Mitt Romney's TRUST Act, which would create "bipartisan committees" designed to complete the work earlier committees and commissions failed to do: cut Medicare and Social Security benefits. MacGuineas deployed the group's usual rhetoric when Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Sen. Shelly Capito reintroduced Romney's TRUST Act in 2021.
"Senator Manchin and the other lead lawmakers deserve immense credit," MacGuineas said, adding: "The TRUST Act is a sensible, bipartisan and balanced approach that would bring together lawmakers to develop fixes ... "
Regressive Revenue
The CRFB has noted the negative impact of tax cuts on the federal debt, with blog posts like this one from 2010, and spoke out publicly against Trump's 2017 tax cuts (although it knew there was no way they weren't going to pass). But it has not endorsed what may be the largest revenue-generating suggestion of recent years, Sen. Bernie Sanders' proposed wealth tax.
The CRFB's 2021 campaign to offset the cost of the Democrats' proposed Medicare expansion--which would cover vision, hearing, and dental care--left the ultra-wealthy all but intact, offering instead a regressive premium tax on Medicare enrollees (during a pandemic that has hit seniors especially hard). CRFB policy head Marc Goldwein tweeted that he thought Medicare expansion was a "bad use of $$, if you ask me," but added:
"But if we going to expand Medicare anyway, let's at least not waste money in the process! Medicare Part B and D have premiums to cover ~1/4 of their costs -- why not this new benefit? Adding a premium would cut costs by ~$18 billion."
$18 billion is less than one-eighth of the wealth CRFB's would-be friend Elon Musk had already gained during the pandemic.
The group did express support for the drug price negotiation provisions in Build Back Better, even suggesting an increase in the number of drugs under negotiation. But it also celebrated politicians like House Dems Scott Peters and Kathleen Rice as "Fiscal Heroes." Peters and Rice subsequently voted against drug pricing reductions, a move which failed to draw even a mild rebuke from the CRFB. (Adding to the double-talk around this issue, Rice claimed she voted against this cost-saving measure in the name of "fiscal responsibility.")
Stealth Lobbyists
The Peterson network has always been closely aligned with corporate lobbyists. As the New York Times reported of "the Campaign to Fix the Debt" in 2013,
"... many of the campaign's members will be juggling their private interests with their public goals: they are also lobbyists, board members or executives for corporations that have worked aggressively to shape the contours of federal spending and taxes, including many of the tax breaks that would be at the heart of any broad overhaul."
This group, ostensibly an impromptu alliance of concerned corporate CEOs, also attempts to project an air of neutrality. When Sen. Chuck Schumer said in 2012 that the "Fix the Debt" CEOs supported a lower tax rate for the wealthy, the group's head promptly issued a statement: "The Campaign to Fix the Debt does not have a position on raising tax rates."A statement issued by the group, however, specifically called for "comprehensive and pro-growth tax reform, which broadens the base, lowers rates, raises revenues, and reduces the deficit." (Emphasis ours.)
Oh, and the head of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, the one who incorrectly claimed that the group does not have a position on raising tax rates? That was Maya MacGuineas.
From Our Table to Yours
The CRFB has positioned itself as an unbiased arbiter while keeping its thumb firmly on the scale. But its bias is revealed in that word: responsible. They assume a "responsible" federal budget is one that limits deficit spending, even if it costs human lives and makes budgeting harder for real families sitting around real tables. If the Budget Committee listens to them, it could mean disaster for millions of Social Security recipients.
The Peterson crowd should not be entrusted with Social Security--not in Thursday's hearing, and not ever.
"I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away," said the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde.
The inaugural interfaith service at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday proceeded with the usual prayers and music, but after delivering her sermon, the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde appeared to go off-script and made a direct appeal to President Donald Trump.
Recalling the Republican president's assertion on Monday that he was "saved by God" after a bullet hit his ear in an assassination attempt in July, Budde asked Trump, who was seated in the church, "in the name of our God... to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now."
"There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families," said Budde, "some who fear for their lives. And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals."
"I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here," said Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C.
Budde's appeal followed Trump's signing of 26 executive orders in his first day in office, with dozens more expected in the first days of his second term. The president signed orders ending birthright citizenship—provoking legal challenges from immigrant rights groups and state attorneys general—and pausing refugee admissions, leading to devastation among people who had been waiting for asylum appointments at ports of entry. Official proclamations declared a national emergency at the southern border and asserted that the entry of migrants there is an "invasion."
Trump also took executive action to declare that the federal government recognizes only two sexes, male and female.
"May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love, and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people in this nation and the world," said Budde in her address to Trump.
The president kept his eyes on Budde for much of her speech, at one point looking annoyed and casting his eyes downward. Vice President JD Vance leaned over and spoke to his wife, Usha Vance, as Budde talked about undocumented immigrants, and raised his eyebrows when she said the majority of immigrants are not criminals.
Trump later told reporters that the service was "not too exciting."
"I didn't think it was a good service," he said. "They can do much better."
Democratic strategist Keith Edwards applauded Budde's decision to speak directly to the president, calling her "incredibly brave."
Budde "confronted Trump's fascism to his face," he said on the social media platform Bluesky.
The study was published as President Donald Trump was blasted for an executive order that one critic said shows he wants to turn the Alaskan Arctic into the "the world's largest gas station."
For thousands of years, the land areas of the Arctic have served as a "carbon sink," storing potential carbon emissions in the permafrost. But according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change Tuesday, more than 34% of the Arctic is now a source of carbon to the atmosphere, as permafrost melts and the Arctic becomes greener.
"When emissions from fire were added, the percentage grew to 40%," according to the Woodwell Climate Research Center, which led the international team that conducted the research.
The study, which was first reported on by The Guardian, was released the day after President Donald Trump issued multiple presidential actions influencing the United States' ability to confront the climate crisis, which is primarily caused by fossil fuel emissions, including one directly impacting resource extraction in Alaska, a section of which is within the Arctic Circle.
Sue Natali, one of the researchers who worked on the study published in Nature Climate Change, told NPR in December (in reference to similar research) that the Arctic's warming "is not an issue of what party you support."
"This is something that impacts everyone," she said.
As the permafrost—ground that remains frozen for two or more years—holds less carbon, it releases CO2 into the atmosphere that could "considerably exacerbate climate change," according to the study.
"There is a load of carbon in the Arctic soils. It's close to half of the Earth's soil carbon pool. That's much more than there is in the atmosphere. There's a huge potential reservoir that should ideally stay in the ground," said Anna Virkkala, the lead author of the study, in an interview with The Guardian.
The dire warning was released on the heels of Trump's executive order titled "Unleashing the Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential" that calls for expedited "permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska," as well as for the prioritization of "development of Alaska's liquefied natural gas (LNG) potential, including the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to other regions of the United States and allied nations within the Pacific region."
The order also rolls back a number of Biden-era restrictions on drilling and extraction in Alaska, which included protecting areas within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil and gas leasing.
"Alaska is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, a trend that is wreaking havoc on communities, ecosystems, fish, wildlife, and ways of life that depend on healthy lands and waters," said Carole Holley, managing attorney for the Alaska Office of the environmental group Earthjustice, in a statement Monday.
"Earthjustice and its clients will not stand idly by while Trump once again forces a harmful industry-driven agenda on our state for political gain and the benefit of a wealthy few," she added.
Trump wants to turn the Alaskan Arctic into the "the world's largest gas station," said Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, in a statement Monday. "Make no mistake, Trump's rushed and sloppy actions today are an existential threat to these lands and waters, and the communities and wildlife that depend on them."
The U.N. ambassador nominee also shrugged off the Nazi salutes made by Elon Musk on Inauguration Day.
As U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik faced questioning by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday regarding her nomination for a top diplomatic position, the rights group Jewish Voice for Peace Action called on lawmakers to consider her "record of antisemitic, anti-Palestinian, anti-immigrant, and anti-democracy rhetoric and policy" and block her confirmation.
Stefanik's (R-N.Y.) record was reinforced at the hearing as she was asked about her views on Palestine, expressions of antisemitism in the United States, and far-right Israeli leaders' political agenda, with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) recalling a meeting he had with the congresswoman after President Donald Trump nominated her to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
At the meeting, Van Hollen said, Stefanik had expressed support for the idea that Israel has a Biblical right to control the entire West Bank—a position that is held by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, but runs counter to the two-state solution that the U.S. government has long supported.
"Is that your view today?" asked Van Hollen, to which Stefanik replied, "Yes."
Van Hollen noted that Stefanik's viewpoint also flies in the face of numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions and international consensus about the Middle East conflict.
"If the president is going to succeed at bringing peace and stability to the Middle East, we're going to have to look at the U.N. Security Council resolutions," said the senator. "And it's going to be very difficult to achieve that if you continue to hold the view that you just expressed, which is a view that was not held by the founders of the state of Israel."
Stefanik also refused to answer a direct question from Van Hollen regarding whether Palestinian people have the right to self-determination, saying only that she supports "human rights for all" and pivoting to a call for Israeli hostages to be released by Hamas.
Jenin Younes, litigation counsel with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, said Stefanik expressed "religious fanaticism, pure and simple" at the confirmation hearing—which was held as Israeli settlers and soldiers ramped up attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
"That [Stefanik] will now play a major role with respect to our foreign policy in the region is terrifying," said Younes.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action noted that in addition to supporting "the Israeli government's brutal genocide of Palestinians," Stefanik has also "amplified the antisemitic Great Replacement theory"—which claims the influence and power of white Christian Americans is being deliberately diminished by Jewish Americans and immigration policy.
Despite her support for the debunked conspiracy theory, Stefanik made headlines last year for her accusations against college students, faculty, and administrators over the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that exploded across campuses as Americans spoke out against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza. The congresswoman said the protests were expressions of antisemitism and pushed for the resignation of university leaders who declined to discipline students who spoke out against Israel.
The hearings where Stefanik lambasted college leaders "were part of a broader campaign to silence anti-war activism and dissent on college campuses while forwarding the MAGA culture war campaign against [diversity, equity, and inclusion], critical race theory, and LGBTQ+ rights," said JVP Action.
An exchange between Stefanik and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Tuesday also raised questions over Stefanik's views on antisemitism. Murphy asked the nominee about the Nazi salute twice displayed by billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk—whom the president has named to lead his proposed Department of Government Efficiency—at an event Monday night.
" Elon Musk did not do those salutes," Stefanik asserted.
Murphy countered by reading several comments from right-wing commentators who applauded Musk's "Heil Hitler" salute.
"Over and over again last night, white supremacist groups and neo-Nazi groups in this country rallied around that visual," said Murphy.
JVP Action said Stefanik has "deeply embraced Trump's anti-democratic agenda."
"Her nomination must be blocked," said the group.