June 20, 2010
On the last day of 2009 (yes, coincidentally December 31st), the Washington Post departed from standard journalistic practice by running material produced by the “Fiscal Times” in its own news section. The Fiscal Times is a news service funded by billionaire investment banker Peter Peterson. Peterson has been working to gut Social Security and Medicare for at least two decades, starting and funding a wide variety of organizations that have this as their purpose.
The Fiscal Times is Peterson’s latest creation in this line. He had his kid hire some of the journalists displaced by the collapse of the newspaper industry to put it together. While most newspapers would not publish as news material produced by an organization with such a clear agenda, the Washington Post apparently had few concerns along these lines.
Today the Post ran a piece from the Fiscal Times that glorified the efforts of two members of President Obama’s deficit commission who are trying to push through a plan that is likely to involve substantial cuts to Social Security and Medicare, the country’s most important social programs. The piece implied that the two members who accepted the view that it is necessary to reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the current political environment are getting beyond ideology. In contrast, those who think it is important to protect social programs that virtually the entire working population will depend on in retirement are somehow being ideological.
It told readers that: “On the fiscal commission, Stern [Andy Stern, former head of the Service Employees Internation Union, one of members highlighted in the peice] is already looking for ways to break through the ideological camps on deficit-reduction.” In fact, individuals who are not motivated by ideology would note that the country’s projected long-term deficit problem is driven almost entirely by the broken U.S. health care system.
If per person health care costs were the same in the United States as in any other wealthy country, then the projections would show huge budget surpluses rather than deficits. It also should be possible for the people in the United States to take advantage of lower-cost health care systems elsewhere, even if the power of special interests like the insurance and pharmaceutical industry prevent reform here. This basic fact should feature prominently in any discussion of the long-term deficit that is not motivated by ideology. It is never mentioned in this piece.
The article also treats an assertion from Mr. Stern as a basic fact: “Now Stern argues that deficit reduction isn’t simply a conservative issue. ‘What I keep saying to the progressive community is that when the crisis hits, it’s students, workers and poor people who pay the price.'”
Of course, the crisis has hit – the country is facing its worst downturn since the Great Depression. While students, workers, and poor people have paid the price, this is entirely the result of politics. The government quickly moved to rescue the major banks, using vast amounts of public money to save Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America from bankruptcy. At the same time, it has refused to spend enough money to boost the economy back to full employment levels of output or take serious steps to prevent people from being thrown out of their homes.
However, the decision to protect the wealthy rather than students, workers, and poor people was entirely a political decision. The banks were able to use their political power to ensure that they got the resources needed to prevent their collapse. On the other hand, those not interested in helping students, workers, and poor people began to highlight concerns about deficits in order to head off additional spending. It may always be the case that the wealthy will dominate the political process to the extent that they do today, but it is worth pointing out that it is politics, not economics, that determines who suffers in a crisis.
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