November 19, 2010
BusinessWeek editor Peter Coy told Market Place radio listeners that Peter Peterson spent $1 billion of his own money to inform people about the budget problems facing the country (emphasis in original). This is not true.
Peterson has consistently pushed for cuts to Social Security and Medicare. He has never supported the presentation of a balanced picture of the country’s budget situation. For example, even though it is easy to show that the projected long-term budget deficit is entirely attributable to projections that per person health care costs in the U.S. will rise to three or four times the average for rich countries, this fact is largely concealed in Peterson-financed budget projects.
Peterson has almost completely excluded any discussion of financial sector taxes (the source of his wealth) from budget debates, even though there is wide recognition that the sector is a source of massive waste and rents. He has also routinely misrepresented the state of Social Security’s finance in his public statements, repeatedly insisting that there is no trust fund. This is completely untrue and is an invention of Mr. Peterson. As can be seen in the Social Security trustees report and numerous other budget documents, the trust fund currently holds more than $2.5 trillion in government bonds.
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