FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 22, 2010
2:00 PM
CONTACT: Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA)
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Peterson's "Rigged" Drive to Cut Social Security
WASHINGTON - June 22 -
BARBARA KENNELLY, PAMELA TAINTER CAUSEY
Kennelly is president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security; Causey is communications director for the group, which has written several pieces that critique the Peterson Foundation including "Ahhh ... the Good Old Days ... Debtor's Prisons and No Entitlements" and "The Campaign Against Social Security." See: ncpssm.org 
DEAN BAKER
Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Baker is author of the new book "Taking Economics Seriously." He just wrote the piece "America Speaks Back: Derailing the Drive to Cut Social Security and Medicare," which states: "Next weekend will feature another milestone in the drive to cut Social Security and Medicare. The organization America Speaks will be hosting a series of 20 meetings in cities across the country. They will ask the people at these meetings, a cross section of the nation, to come up with proposals for dealing with the country's projected long-term budget deficit.
"The way the problem is outlined for these meetings virtually guarantees that most of the participants will opt for big cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The results of this song-and-dance exercise will then be presented to President Obama's fiscal responsibility commission on June 30, which will use it as further ammunition for plans by its co-chairs to gut these programs.
"The rigged deck approach should come as no surprise. America Speaks is largely funded by Peter G. Peterson, the investment banker billionaire who has been on a decades-long crusade to gut these programs. In recent years, Peterson has redoubled his efforts, committing more than a billion dollars to a wide variety of groups in addition to America Speaks. To advance his agenda Peterson has even set up a fake news service, the Fiscal Times. To fill the staff, Peterson's son hired a number of reputable reporters who were displaced by the collapse of the newspaper industry."
Baker will be at Politics and Prose on Wednesday evening in Washington, D.C. to discuss his latest book "Taking Economics Seriously" in which he argues that the free market is a myth, given corporate interests in government interventions. He is also author of "False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy" and "The Conservative Nanny State." Baker writes a blog on economic reporting, Beat the Press. |
